Page 45 of Boleyn Traitor
‘When is His Grace returning?’ I ask at the threshold, peering over his shoulder into the hall.
He bows. ‘His Grace did not say.’
I turn from him as if it does not matter at all. ‘Where did he go?’
‘He did not tell me, your ladyship.’
I walk down the king’s gallery and down the little stairs past Cromwell’s dark chamber to the stable-yard. At least here, every-thing is normal. The grooms are filling their buckets at the well, someone is whistling while mucking-out, and three horses are saddled and waiting for their riders. George’s horses are in their usual stall, and the groom is brushing one of them down.
‘Get ready to go to Whitehall Palace,’ I say. ‘I’ll give you a note for your master. You can take a wherry.’
He nods, and I step into the office of the master groom, where there is a desk with pen and paper for sending orders to the corn merchants and hay farmers. I take up a blunt pen and dip it in the sticky ink and write:
Our sister has gone by barge upstream with our uncle and others of the council. Please write what I should do. J
If it falls into the wrong hands, it is not incriminating in any way – nor does it even identify us Boleyns. I cannot think why I am worrying about this simple note. I add another line.
Don’t fail to reply.
And then I give it to the groom and send him on his way with a sixpence.
It is the strangest evening. We dine in the queen’s presence chamber; nobody talks above a whisper at dinner, and though the tables are laid with cards after we have eaten, and the servants are pouring wine, no one plays or laughs. The musicians thump out dances by rote, with their eyes on us; but nobody stands up. The men dine on the king’s side and visit us, after they have eaten, aimlessly, as if they have nothing else to do. When they see Anne’s empty chair, they go quietly away again. Everyone looks at me, as if I must know what is happening, and I turn up my mouth in a false smile and look around as if I am ready to be amused; but I know nothing, and George has not replied to my message.
I even get hold of Jane Seymour, who reappears, blank as vellum, and I ask her where has she been all day, and if she knows when the king is coming back? She shakes her fair head and looks at me with her grey-blue eyes and says that her brothers needed her for family business and that she knows nothing.
I sleep in my own quiet room, in my marriage bed, restless, hoping that George will return in the night, having sailed home to me on the ebb tide. But he does not come.
WHENIWAKEearly in the warm sunshine of a May morning, I throw a robe over my shift and go through the little door to Anne’s bedroom. It is empty; she is not back either. I cannot think where she might be, nor what she can be doing without me, without her ladies.
As I am standing helplessly before her chest of gowns, wondering what she has at Whitehall and what she will need, there is a knock on the door of the privy chamber outside. I leave her bedroom and cross the privy chamber.
‘Yes?’ I snap.
‘The Boleyn groom for Lady Rochford,’ the guard says outside the door.
I open the door, and there is my groom, and in his hand is my letter to George.
‘Why didn’t you give it to him?’
‘He wasn’t there.’ His face is set in the same expressionless mask that we are all wearing. ‘I went to his rooms at Whitehall Palace, and he was already gone. His horse was in the stables where he left it – he went by barge.’
‘But our barge is here? Whose barge did he take? And where’s he gone now?’
‘It was an unmarked barge,’ he says very quietly. ‘An unmarked barge with no standards. It took him to the Tower. Him, and Henry Norris with him.’
This means nothing; I need fear nothing. The Tower is a royal palace; we have our own rooms there.
‘Henry Norris went, too? With my husband in the barge? As good company?’
He spreads his hands as if to tell me it was not a pleasure trip, but he does not contradict me.
‘Good company. Very well,’ I say as calmly as I can; my voice trembles, and I clear my throat. ‘Don’t gossip of this in the stables. It’s probably just a game of the king’s. You know how heloves disguising and surprises. It’ll be a masque – a May Day masque.’
He nods uncertainly.
I tuck my note to George in my pocket to burn later, and I go back to my own rooms to dress. Foolishly, I hesitate over the chest of clothes, and when my maid comes in, I don’t know what I should wear. I don’t know what I am doing today. I don’t know if I should dress prettily, for a May dinner in the greening woods, or warmly, for the barge to the Tower. My head hammers as if I have a fever. I cannot decide on my gown; everything whirls past my eyes. I keep seeing Henry Norris’ horse backing and nobody able to make it go forward.
When I am dressed and walk stiffly into the queen’s presence chamber, there are just a few of the ladies – and half of them disloyal – stitching shirts for the poor. As if they care about the poor! I look around at the missing places.
