Chapter Twenty-Four #2
“Your son. Look, I have relaxing herbs, lavender and camomile. Take some and breathe them in; they will help your body to rest.”
“And what about my mind, Thomasin? What will help my mind to rest when they speak against me daily, and I might die in childbed, and Henry is already lining up my replacement?”
“Hush now, you will work yourself up. None of these things are true. You will deliver a son and many more, I have no doubt.”
“Don’t you? Like all the astrologers, all so confident, they even predict the day.”
“And which day will it be, according to their work?”
“That’s the thing. They all choose a different day, I suppose, hoping to be the one that is rewarded. This is what I am reduced to, a mere body for men to wager upon.”
“Is that what you really think?”
Anne narrowed her eyes.
“This isn’t the Anne I recall — the one who blazed with confidence and pride. Where has she gone? You are on the verge of your greatest triumph, and yet you speak of this.”
Anne reached out her hand for the herbs and held a bouquet of dried lavender to her nose. “You know what he said to me?”
Thomasin had some inkling after her conversation with Sir Thomas.
“That he could cast me down as easily as he had raised me up.”
“I am sure that was said in the heat of anger. The king does not mean that.”
“Oh, but I think he does. I have come to know the man I married, far better than I ever knew him before. He has it within him to do it.”
“Come now, this is fear speaking. Breathe deeply. You need to rest. You are queen; you are secure. You have carried a healthy, strong child to term, who will soon be born, and then nothing will touch your position, not as the mother of a prince.”
“I will be, won’t I? Secure?”
“Yes, indeed. You already are.”
Anne gave a deep sigh. “My father brought you here?”
“Yes.”
“He told me he had, and I liked it not at the time. He told me how you heard the man hiding in the corridor, at my coronation feast.”
“I was in the right place. It was fortune.”
“Good fortune. You brought me good fortune that day. Perhaps you will again.”
“I will do all I can to assist, my lady.”
“I know you were loyal to Catherine. I admired that loyalty, but I am queen now.”
“I know.”
“Perhaps we might forget the past. Look to the future.”
“As you wish, my lady.”
“How strange things have become.” Anne looked towards the windows. “It is so dark in here, so very dark. I will dine in the hall tonight, as I have not yet formally retired. God knows I shall spend enough days cloistered away in here that I do not need to begin yet.”
“Are you sure? You sister Mary said…”
“I am sure. What does Mary know?”
Thomasin remained with Anne until the dinner hour.
Her women came and went: Lady Elizabeth and Mary; the dark-haired Nan Gainsford, who Thomasin learned was now Mistress Zouche, having married the courtier George Zouche; Bess Holland, who frowned whenever she saw her; and the pale-haired Jane Seymour, offering to read or sing or play, or bringing fresh pillows and wine.
“She is very solicitous, this Jane,” observed Lady Elizabeth, “so eager to be of assistance.”
At the dinner hour, Thomasin watched as they straightened Anne’s clothing, brushed out her long, dark hair and pinned a new headdress in place.
Jane Boleyn found her discarded shoes and eased them onto her sister-in-law’s tired feet.
It felt natural, so much like the way she and Ellen had once cared for Queen Catherine, performing these small, intimate acts for her.
And then it struck Thomasin that perhaps she might find a time to speak for Catherine.
She could ask for mercy for the former queen, clemency in her long, dark days.
Perhaps if she grew closer to Anne and gained her trust, she might be in a position to do some good.
If nothing else, she might explain to Anne that word might discreetly be passed between Catherine and her daughter, or at least that Anne might turn a blind eye to the needs of a mother and daughter, especially if Anne was to become a mother herself.
Anne went down to the hall on the arm of her father.
Thomasin walked behind them, among her ladies, feeling that she stuck out among them and wondering whether she would ever truly become one of them.
Henry was waiting on the dais and came down the hall to greet her as she appeared in the far doorway.
Once Anne was safely seated at the top table, Thomasin turned gratefully to Lady Elizabeth, who was saving her a place.
“Hopefully she will eat and sleep well tonight. It is likely that she will enter confinement tomorrow or the day after.”
“So soon?”
“The child might arrive any day now. Dr Butts has advised it.”
Thomasin looked over to where the doctor was dining, and wondered whether he remembered her from six years back, when he had treated her mother for pains in her breast, and offered a younger Thomasin an amulet and advice.
“This is the worst time,” said Mary Boleyn, sitting opposite them. “The long days of waiting beforehand. I wish this part were over and the child had been born.”
Anne’s face looked pinched and drawn, and her interactions with Henry were taut; no doubt, thought Thomasin, the queen wished the same.
As they were leaving the hall, earlier than usual, for Anne had grown restless, Thomasin spotted the figure of Eustace Chapuys by the outer door. The Imperial Ambassador stood on the edge of the group, watching as the various lords and ladies dispersed to their apartments.
“Good evening, my lord,” Thomasin greeted.
“Ah, good evening…”
“Lady Waterson,” she supplied, not expecting him to remember.
“Of course, we met at Whitehall. Forgive me, it has been an exhausting few days with the move. I recall you were a friend to our dear Queen Catherine.”
“I still am. I had a letter from her shortly before I left Suffolk, only a few days ago.”
“She is well, I hope?”
“As well as might be expected.”
He nodded. “I like not this uneasy atmosphere. It is more than just the child’s arrival. Things do not feel stable. The king and queen are at odds and the whole court feels it.”
“At odds?”
“Has her great bed been delivered?”
Thomasin recalled what Baynton had told her. “The gold one, that used to belong to the Duc d’Alencon? Yes, it has.”
“Had she requested it now, the king would not have granted it. She could do no wrong in his eyes before and now it seems she can do no right, on account of his other lady.”
“Other lady?”
“Some flirtation he has had with the daughter of a northern lord. The queen gave him choice words for that, I tell you, and he did not like it.”
Thomasin could find no satisfaction in Anne’s distress. “But she carries his child. She should not be provoked in that way.”
“Do you wish to tell the king so?”
“No, of course not.”
“She had good cause to be jealous, but she went about it like a spiteful cat, so he squashed her down.”
“No wonder she is on edge.”
“The sooner this child arrives, the better. Now, I must take a barge back to my lodgings. I hope to see you again soon, mistress. It is good to have an ally on the inside.”
Thomasin watched him hurry away, not sure whether she would class herself as his ally, but at least he was another source of information.
When she thought of the gentleness, consideration and respect with which she and Giles treated each other, she could only pity the poor queen in her unhappy situation and pray that things would improve.
Chapuys was right. When Anne bore her son, all this tension would melt away and she and Henry would be reconciled.