Greenwich Palace, Spring. 1536
Greenwich Palace, Spring
ALL OUR FRIENDS and allies conspire to make Anne’s rooms a whirlwind of play, sport, flirtation, music, and gambling.
Mary Boleyn – ‘Mistress Stafford now!’ – goes back to rural obscurity – too slow for this whirling parade of provocation.
We circle Anne as if she were the only woman left in all the world.
Mary Shelton writes little riddles and poems for Anne to recite as her own; her sister, Margaret Shelton, releases her betrothed Henry Norris to kneel at Anne’s feet.
Every man who comes through the door of the queen’s rooms is teased and badgered and courted, until he swears that Anne is the most beautiful woman in the world and the only woman he desires.
Every dance presents her at her best; every disguising costume is cut to suit her; she wins every bout of archery, she wins at bowls, she wins at cards.
She sings the king’s love songs; she challenges the poets Thomas Wyatt and her brother George to admit that the king’s rhymes are best; she partners the king in everything he does.
She overwhelms him with the dazzle of her looks and charm.
We create a frenzy of desire, and she is at the head of it, always directing it to him.
The usual subtlety of courtly love gets swept away as the court becomes more urgent, more bawdy.
All the songs are love songs; all the love is heated.
There are no steady friendships even between women.
Everything is passionate; everything is quick and furtive.
Hands roam freely. A woman’s fingers touch her own lips, stroke along the line of the gown at her neck as if she has to be caressed, even by herself.
Men adjust a woman’s veil, touch her necklace, stray behind her ear.
A kiss of courtesy on a cheek becomes lingering; a man feels a woman yield to his slightest touch.
Courtships speed up – Anne Parr and William Herbert are openly besotted; Margaret Douglas and her young lover Lord Thom are always sneaking off together.
Even noble wives like me are fair game to the young men of court, who slide a hand up to touch the underside of my breast when they should be holding me by the waist to dance. I allow it. I am caught up in the frenzy of the court for love; we are all in season, we are all in heat.
Anne pushes her French hood further and further back on her head so her dark hair frames her face.
When she gets up from her throne to dance, she whisks her skirts and shows the embroidered clocks on her stockings.
When she leans forward to curtsey to the king, he can see the creamy curves of the top of her breasts.
Everything which should be concealed can be glimpsed if you are quick enough – and everyone is quick to stare, and everyone is quick to show.
Only the king refuses to be swept along.
He rollicks in the heated swirl of the queen’s rooms, every evening, watches every woman with sideways secret glances; but he goes to his own rooms at night and sleeps alone.
He has no desire for Anne though night succeeds night – and the wine flows into everyone’s glass, and the music plays faster and faster, and we are like the girl in the story condemned to dance until death.
We feel as if we are dancing for our lives in the scarlet shoes of whores.
None of us are safe in our places, with our fortunes, until the king comes back to the queen’s bed and gives her another boy.
We have to whirl through this life of frantic extravagance and enjoyment until Anne is finally satisfied and the mother of a prince.
I brush her dark hair before the mirror, and I do not tell her that I can see a hair – just one – silver-white, in the sleek ebony mane.
‘He’s a man of contradictions,’ she says, her eyes closed, nodding her head against the rhythmic sweep of the brush.
‘A king who must have an heir but cannot bed his queen. His mother died after childbirth, as if to teach him that lust is fatal. He was raised by his grandmother, who declared herself celibate. Then he was married to a woman as cold as holy water, who gave him one girl and more than a dozen dead-borns. He thinks that lust for a wife leads only to death.’
‘Conceiving a prince is an act blessed from God. It’s not carnal lust; it doesn’t lead to death . . .’
‘But he’s never managed it, has he? He lay in the old queen’s bed, and he lay in my bed, and all he ever gets are girls and dead babies.
It was me who told him that his marriage was sinful and that was why he had nothing but death from the old queen.
The little coffins were the proof. Now someone – Charles Brandon or the Courtenays or the Poles or Nicholas Carew or some Papist – has told him that our marriage is sinful, too.
You heard him! God told him that’s why I lost the babies. ’
‘Just one,’ I remind her. ‘We only admit to one. But you’re wrong. The Spanish party aren’t plotting against you; they’re in a panic about Lady Mary. Someone has told them she is in danger.’
‘What if they think that the easiest way to save her, is to destroy me?’
I am horror-struck. I turn my face from her gaze in the mirror, until I can find a false smile. ‘No, no – they wouldn’t dare do that. They’ll send for a Spanish ship and take her away. I am sure that’s what they’ll do. They don’t have the power to attack you.’
‘They’ll send for Italian poison and do away with me.’
THE KING GIVES George more lands and makes an inventory of everything that he has given us so far – as if to confirm our wealth before he adds more.
I walk into Anne’s bedroom, unannounced, to tell her the good news of George’s new fortune, and she and Elizabeth Somerset spring apart as if I have caught them in a secret act.
I am so accustomed to glimpsing couples hiding in shadows that for a moment my heart sinks, thinking that they are kissing or touching in some new love-play, and then Elizabeth tucks a purse into the top of her stomacher and flicks out of the room without another word.
‘What was that?’ I demand flatly.
Anne shakes her head as if to silence me. ‘Nothing. She needed some money, and I lent it her.’
‘How much?’
She laughs. ‘Who are you? My treasurer?’
‘She shouldn’t be borrowing money from you. What’s she done to earn it?’
Anne tosses her head. ‘It’s a loan only. I’ve lent her a hundred pounds.’
I gasp – this is the same as George’s entire yearly wage as a senior courtier. This is a fortune and it will show up in the queen’s accounts, and everyone will wonder what Elizabeth has done, or what Elizabeth knows.
‘What d’you want me to do? Refuse a friend in need?’
‘Yes,’ I say flatly. ‘Why can’t she tell her husband?’
‘It’s a secret.’
‘But she can tell you?’
Anne laughs harshly. ‘She holds a secret of mine as security.’
‘What does she know?’ I demand, myself a trader and a broker of secrets.
Anne makes a little face. ‘She caught me . . . talking to . . . someone.’
‘Who?’
‘Mark, beautiful Mark.’ Anne gives a courtier laugh – empty of humour.
‘The lute player?’ I spell it out. ‘The king’s lute player?’
‘There’s only one beautiful Mark. And folly is cheap at a hundred pounds if it buys Elizabeth’s silence. She’ll be silent. She’s no better than me. We are agreed: she’s no worse than me and I no better than her, and all of us are going mad this season. I swear we have spring fever.’
I shake my head. ‘Anne, you can’t live like a lady-in-waiting – and a loose one at that. Elizabeth Somerset allows liberties that a queen cannot.’
Anne shrugs. ‘Nobody knows anything about Elizabeth’s liberties, and nobody knows anything about mine.’
I AM LONGING FOR summer even more than when I was in the cold and dark of the country.
If we can get to May Day then we are in the happiest of all seasons at court.
From midsummer the king and Anne will go on royal progress, hunting and travelling and living off other people’s money in other people’s houses.
Away from court and from the frantic play of the queen’s rooms, he will turn to her again.
If we can get through to the summer, we will win him back, and she only has to have one lucky night.
Once she is with child we are secure again – a royal family with a prince in the cradle.
Then she can flirt with a lute player and nobody will care, and the Spanish party can steal Lady Mary away, and nobody will miss her.
The wound in the king’s leg heals, and under our relentless joyfulness he becomes more cheerful.
He comes to Anne’s bed again, and we make jokes about his lustiness, about her fertility.
Over and over again, we say how desirable she is, how every man is in love with her.
Only a king could win her; only the most handsome prince in the world could hold her.
The old Spanish ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, has no grudge against Anne now that the old Spanish-born queen is dead.
He comes to court, and for the first time, they meet face to face, and he bows to her; she acknowledges him.
It is a diplomatic triumph for us and a blow for the Spanish party, who see their own ambassador acknowledge Anne as queen.
George dines with Chapuys, sitting up over their wine late into the night, persuading him that the Boleyns are the ones who govern England.
The ambassador’s old allies, the Spanish party, who nag him for a ship for Lady Mary’s escape, are yesterday’s men.
He need not trouble with them. We are the greatest advisors – and the ambassador will have to deal with us if he wants English soldiers for Spain’s war against the infidel.
‘And that’s the turn of the tide!’ George says with quiet satisfaction, coming into our rooms after showing Eustace Chapuys to his barge.