I smiled and turned my head a little so that he could not see my weariness at this deceit. He was not to be put off. He dropped to his knees before me and peered up into my face.
“Tell me, Mistress Carey,” he begged. “I have not slept for nights. I have not eaten for days. I am a soul in torment. Tell me if you think that she loves me, if you think that she might love me. Tell me, for pity’s sake.”
“I cannot say.” Indeed, I could not. The lies would have stuck in my throat. “You must ask her yourself.”
He sprang up, like a hare out of bracken with the beagle hounds behind it. “I will! I will! Where is she?”
“Playing at bowls in the garden.”
He needed nothing more, he tore open the door and ran out of the room. I heard the heels of his boots ring down the stone stairs to the door to the garden. Jane Parker, who had been seated across the room from us, looked up.
“Have you made another conquest?” she asked, getting the wrong idea as usual.
I gave her a smile as poisonous as her own. “Some women attract desire. Others do not,” I said simply.
He found her at the bowling green, losing daintily and deliberately to Sir Thomas Wyatt.
“I shall write you a sonnet,” Wyatt promised. “For handing me victory with such grace.”
“No, no, it was a fair battle,” Anne protested.
“If there had been money on it I think I would be getting out my purse,” he said. “You Boleyns only lose when there is nothing to gain by winning.”
Anne smiled. “Next time you shall put your fortune on it,” she promised him. “See—I have lulled you into a sense of safety.”
“I have no fortune to offer but my heart.”
“Will you walk with me?” Henry Percy interrupted, his voice coming out far louder than he intended.
Anne gave a little start as if she had not noticed him there. “Oh! Lord Henry.”
“The lady is playing bowls,” Sir Thomas said.
Anne smiled at them both. “I have been so roundly defeated that I will take a walk and plan my strategy,” she said and put her hand on Lord Henry Percy’s arm.
He led her away from the bowling green, down the winding path that led to a seat beneath a yew tree.
“Miss Anne,” he began.
“Is it too damp to sit?”
At once he swung his rich cloak from his shoulder and spread it out for her on a stone bench.
“Miss Anne…”
“No, I am too chilled,” she decided and rose up from the seat.
“Miss Anne!” he exclaimed, a little more crossly.
Anne paused and turned her seductive smile on him.
“Your lordship?”
“I have to know why have you grown so cold to me.”
For a moment she hesitated, then she dropped the coquettish play and turned a face to him which was grave and lovely.
“I did not mean to be cold,” she said slowly. “I meant to be careful.”
“Of what?” he exclaimed. “I have been in torment!”
“I did not mean to torment you. I meant to draw back a little. Nothing more than that.”
“Why?” he whispered.
She looked down the garden to the river. “I thought it better for me, perhaps better for us both,” she said quietly. “We might become too close in friendship for my comfort.”
He took a swift step from her and then back to her side. “I would never cause you a moment’s uneasiness,” he assured her. “If you wanted me to promise you that we would be friends and that no breath of scandal would ever come to you, I would have promised that.”
She turned her dark luminous eyes on him. “Could you promise that no one would ever say that we were in love?”
Mutely, he shook his head. Of course he could not promise what a scandal-mad court might or might not say.
“Could you promise that we would never fall in love?”
He hesitated. “Of course I love you, Mistress Anne,” he said. “In the courtly way. In the polite way.”
She smiled as if she were pleased to hear it. “I know it is nothing more than a May game. For me, also. But it’s a dangerous game when played between a handsome man and a maid, when there are many people very quick to say that we are made for each other, that we are perfectly matched.”
“Do they say that?”
“When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.”
“What else do they say?” He was quite entranced by this portrait.
“They say that you love me. They say that I love you. They say that we have both been head over heels in love while we thought we were doing nothing but playing.”
“My God,” he said at the revelation. “My God, it is so!”
“Oh my lord! What are you saying?”
“I am saying that I have been a fool. I have been in love with you for months and all the time I thought I was amusing myself and you were teasing me, and that it all meant nothing.”
Her gaze warmed him. “It was not nothing to me,” she whispered.
Her dark eyes held him, the boy was transfixed. “Anne,” he whispered. “My love.”
Her lips curved into a kissable, irresistible smile. “Henry,” she breathed. “My Henry.”
He took a small step toward her, put his hands on her tightly laced waist. He drew her close to him and Anne yielded, took one seductive step closer. His head came down as her face tipped up and his mouth found hers for their first kiss.
“Oh, say it,” Anne whispered. “Say it now, this moment, say it, Henry.”
“Marry me,” he said.
“And so it was done,” Anne reported blithely in our bedroom that night. She had ordered the bath tub to be brought in and we had gone into the hot water, one after another, and scrubbed each other’s backs and washed each other’s hair. Anne, as fanatical as a French courtesan about cleanliness, was ten times more rigorous than usual. She inspected my fingernails and toe-nails as if I were a dirty schoolboy, she handed me an ivory earscoop to clean out my ears as if I were her child, she pulled the lice comb through every lock of my head, reckless of my whimpers of pain.
“And so? What is done?” I asked sulkily, dripping on the floor and wrapping myself in a sheet. Four maids came in and started to bale out the water into buckets so that the great wooden bath could be carried away. The sheets they used to line the bath were heavy and sodden, it all seemed like a great deal of effort for very little gain. “For all I have heard is more flirtation.”
“He’s asked me,” Anne said. She waited till the door was shut behind the servants and then wrapped the sheet more tightly around her breasts and seated herself before the mirror.
There was a knock at the door.
“Who is it now?” I called in exasperation.
“It’s me,” George replied.
“We’re bathing,” I said.
“Oh let him come in.” Anne started to comb through her black hair. “He can pull out these tangles.”
George lounged into the room and raised a dark eyebrow at the mess of water on the floor and wet sheets, at the two of us, half naked, and Anne with a thick mane of wet hair thrown over her shoulder.
“Is this a masque? Are you mermaids?”
“Anne insisted that we should bathe. Again.”
Anne offered him her comb and he took it.
“Comb my hair,” she said with her sly sideways smile. “Mary always pulls.” Obediently, he stood behind her and started to comb through her dark hair, a strand at a time. He combed her carefully, as he would handle his mare’s mane. Anne closed her eyes and luxuriated in his grooming.
“Any lice?” she asked, suddenly alert.
“None yet,” he reassured her, as intimate as a Venetian hair-dresser.
“So what’s done?” I demanded, returning to Anne’s announcement.
“I have him,” she said frankly. “Henry Percy. He has told me he loves me, he has told me that
he wants to marry me. I want you and George to witness our betrothal, he can give me a ring, and then it’s done and unbreakable, as good as a marriage in a church before a priest. And I shall be a duchess.”
“Good God.” George froze, the comb held in the air. “Anne! Are you sure?”
“Am I likely to botch this?” she asked tersely.
“No,” he allowed. “But still. The Duchess of Northumberland! My God, Anne, you will own most of the north of England.”
She nodded, smiling at herself in the mirror.
“Good God, we will be the greatest family in the country! We’ll be one of the greatest in Europe. With Mary in the king’s bed and you the wife of his greatest subject, we will put the Howards so high they can never fall.” He broke off for a moment as he thought through to the next step.
“My God, if Mary was to fall pregnant to the king and to have a boy, then with Northumberland behind him he could take the throne as his own. I could be uncle to the King of England.”
“Yes,” Anne said silkily. “That was what I thought.”
I said nothing, watching my sister’s face.
“The Howard family on the throne,” George murmured, half to himself. “Northumberland and Howards in alliance. It’s done, isn’t it? When those two come together. They would only come together through a marriage and an heir for both of them to strive for. Mary could bear the heir, and Anne could weld the Percys to his future.”
“You thought I’d never achieve it,” Anne said, pointing a finger at me.
I nodded. “I thought you were aiming too high.”
“You’ll know another time,” she warned me. “Where I aim, I will hit.”
“I’ll know another time,” I concurred.
“But what about him?” George warned her. “What if they disinherit him? Fine place you’ll be in then, married to the boy who used to be heir to a dukedom, but now disgraced and owning nothing.”
She shook her head. “They won’t do that. He’s too precious to them. But you have to take my part, George; and Father and Uncle Howard. His father has to see that we are good enough. Then they’ll let the betrothal stand.”
“I’ll do all I can but the Percys are a proud lot, Anne. They meant him for Mary Talbot until Wolsey came out against the match. They won’t want you instead of her.”
“Is it just his wealth that you want?” I asked.
“Oh, the title too,” Anne said crudely.
“I mean, really. What d’you feel for him?”
For a moment I thought she was going to turn aside the question with another hard joke which would make his boyish adoration of her seem like nothing. But then she tossed her head and the clean hair flew through George’s hands like a dark river.
“Oh, I know I’m a fool! I know he is nothing more than a boy, and a silly boy at that, but when he is with me I feel like a girl myself. I feel as if we are two youngsters, in love and with nothing to fear. He makes me feel reckless! He makes me feel enchanted! He makes me feel in love!”
It was as if the Howard spell of coldness had been broken, smashed like a mirror, and everything was real and bright. I laughed with her and snatched up her hands and looked into her face. “Isn’t it wonderful?” I demanded. “Falling in love? Isn’t it the most wonderful, wonderful thing?”
She pulled her hands away. “Oh, go away, Mary. You are such a child. But yes! Wonderful? Yes! Now don’t simper over me, I can’t stand it.”
George took a hank of her dark hair and twisted it onto the top of her head and admired her face in the mirror. “Anne Boleyn in love,” he said thoughtfully. “Who’d have believed it?”
“It’d never have happened if he hadn’t been the greatest man in the kingdom after the king,” she reminded him. “I don’t forget what’s due to me and my family.”
He nodded. “I know that, Annamaria. We all knew that you would aim very high. But a Percy! It’s higher than I imagined.”
She leaned forward as if to interrogate her reflection. She cupped her face in her hands. “This is my first love. My first and ever love.”
“Please God that you are lucky and that it is your last love as well as your first,” George said, suddenly sober.
Her dark eyes met his in the mirror. “Please God,” she said. “I want nothing more in my life but Henry Percy. With that I would be content. Oh—George, I cannot tell you. If I can have and hold Henry Percy I will be so very content.”
Henry Percy came, at Anne’s bidding, to the queen’s rooms at noon the next day. She had chosen her time with care. The ladies had all gone to Mass, and we had the rooms to ourselves. Henry Percy came in and looked around, surprised at the silence and emptiness. Anne went up to him and took both his hands in hers. I thought for a moment that he looked, not so much courted as hunted.
“My love,” Anne said, and at the sound of her voice the boy’s face warmed; his courage came back to him.
“Anne,” he said softly.
His hand fumbled in the pocket of his padded breeches, he drew a ring out of an inner pocket. From my station in the window seat I could see the wink of a red ruby—the symbol of a virtuous woman.
“For you,” he said softly.
Anne took his hand. “Do you want to plight our troth now, before witnesses?” she asked.
He gulped a little. “Yes, I do.”
She glowed at him. “Do it then.”
He glanced at George and me as if he thought one of us might stop him.
George and I smiled encouragingly, the Boleyn smile: a pair of pleasant snakes.
“I, Henry Percy, take thee, Anne Boleyn, to be my lawful wedded wife,” he said, taking Anne by the hand.
“I, Anne Boleyn, take thee, Henry Percy, to be my lawful wedded husband,” she said, her voice steadier than his.
He found the third finger of her left hand. “With this ring I promise myself to you,” he said quietly, and slipped it on her finger. It was too loose. She clenched a fist to hold it on.
“With this ring, I take you,” she replied.
He bent his head, he kissed her. When she turned her face to me her eyes were hazy with desire.
“Leave us,” she said in a low voice.
We gave them two hours, and then we heard, down the stone corridors, the queen and her ladies coming back from Mass. We knocked loudly on the door in the rhythm that meant “Boleyn!” and we knew that Anne, even in a sated sleep, would hear it and jump up. But when we opened the door and went in, she and Henry Percy were composing a madrigal. She was playing the lute and he was singing the words they had written together. Their heads were very close so that they might both see the handwritten music on the stand, but excepting that intimacy, they were as they had been any day these last three months.
Anne smiled at me as George and I came into the room, followed by the queen’s ladies.
“We have written such a pretty air, it has taken us all the morning,” Anne said sweetly.
“And what is it called?” George asked.
“‘Merrily, merrily,’” Anne replied. “It’s called ‘Merrily Merrily and Onward We Go.’”
That night it was Anne who left our bedchamber. She threw a dark cloak over her gown and went to the door as the palace tower bell rang for midnight.
“Where are you going at this time of night?” I demanded, scandalized.
Her pale face looked out at me from under the dark hood. “To my husband,” she said simply.
“Anne, you cannot,” I said, aghast. “You will get caught and you will be ruined.”
“We are betrothed in the sight of God and before witnesses. That’s as good as a marriage, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said unwillingly.
“A marriage could be overthrown for non-consummation, couldn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So I’m making it fast,” she said. “Not even the Percy family will be able to wriggle out of it when Henry and I tell them that we are wedded and bedded.”
I kne
eled up in the bed, imploring her to stay. “But Anne, if someone sees you!”
“They won’t,” she said.
“When the Percys know that you and he have been slipping out at midnight!”
She shrugged. “I don’t see the how or where makes much difference. As long as it is done.”
“If it should come to nothing—” I broke off at the blaze of her eyes. In one stride she was across the room and she had her hands at the neck of my nightdress, twisting it against my throat. “That is why I am doing this,” she hissed. “Fool that you are. So that it does not come to nothing. So that no one can ever say that it was nothing. So that it is signed and sealed. Wedded and bedded. Done without possibility of denial. Now you sleep. I shall be back in the early hours. Long before dawn. But I shall go now.”
I nodded and said not a word until her hand was on the ring of the door latch. “But Anne, do you love him?” I asked curiously.
The curve of her hood hid all but the corner of her smile. “I am a fool to own it, but I am in a fever for his touch.”
Then she opened the door, and was gone.
Summer 1523
THE COURT SAW IN THE MAY WITH A DAY OF REVELS, PLANNED and executed by Cardinal Wolsey. The ladies of the queen’s court went out on barges, all dressed in white, and were surprised by French brigands, dressed in black. A rescue party of freeborn Englishmen, dressed all in green, rowed to the rescue and there was a merry fight with water thrown from buckets, and water cannonade with pigs’ bladders filled with water. The royal barge, decorated all over in green bunting and flying a greenwood flag, had an ingenious cannon that fired little water bombs which blasted the French brigands out of the water, and they had to be rescued by the Thames boatmen who were well paid for their trouble and then had to be prevented from joining in the fight.
The queen was thoroughly splashed in the battle and she laughed as merry as a girl to see her husband with a mask on his face and a hat on his head, playing at Robin of Nottingham and throwing a rose to me, as I sat in the barge beside her.
We landed at York Place and the cardinal himself greeted us on shore. There were musicians hidden in the trees of the garden. Robin of Greenwood, half a head taller than anyone else and golden-haired, led me into the dance. I saw the queen’s smile never falter as the king took my hand and placed it on his green doublet, over his heart, and I tucked his rose into my hood so that it bloomed at my temple.