“It is a pleasure to serve you, Queen Katherine,” I said, and I meant it.
For a moment she looked at me as if she understood some of what was in my mind and then she turned to her husband. “And are your horses fit for today?” she asked. “Are you confident, Your Majesty?”
“It’s me or Suffolk today,” he said.
“You will be careful, sire?” she said softly. “There’s no harm in losing to a rider like the duke; and it would be the end of the kingdom if anything happened to you.”
It was a loving thought, but he took it with no grace at all. “It would be indeed, since we have no son.”
She flinched and I saw the color go from her face. “There is time,” she said, her voice so quiet that I could hardly hear it. “There is still time…”
“Not much,” he said flatly. He turned away from her. “I must go and get ready.”
He went past me without a glance, though Anne and I and all the other ladies sank down into a curtsy as he passed by. When I rose up the queen was looking toward me, not as if I were a rival, but as if I were still her favorite little maid in waiting who might bring her some comfort. She looked at me as if for a moment she would seek someone who would understand the dreadful predicament of a woman, in this world ruled by men.
George strolled into the room and kneeled before the queen with his easy grace. “Your Majesty,” he said. “I have come to visit the fairest lady in Kent, in England and the world.”
“Oh George Boleyn, rise up,” she said, smiling.
“I would rather die at your feet,” he offered.
She gave him a little tap on the hand with her fan. “No, but you can give me odds for the king’s joust if you want.”
“Who would bet against him? He is the finest of horsemen. I will give you a wager of five to two against the second joust. Seymours against Howards. There’s no doubt in my mind of the winner.”
“You would offer me a bet on the Seymours?” the queen asked.
“Have them carry your blessing? Never,” George said quickly. “I would have you bet on my cousin Howard, Your Majesty. Then you can be sure of winning, you can be sure of betting on one of the finest and most loyal families in the country, and you can have tremendous odds as well.”
She laughed at that. “You are an exquisite courtier indeed. How much do you want to lose to me?”
“Shall we say five crowns?” George asked.
“Done!”
“I’ll take a bet,” Jane Parker said suddenly.
George’s smile vanished. “I could not offer you such odds, Mistress Parker,” he said civilly. “For you have all my fortune at your command.”
It was still the language of courtly love, the constant flirtatiousness which went on in the royal circles night and day and sometimes meant everything, but more often than not meant nothing at all.
“I’d just like to bet a couple of crowns.” Jane was trying to engage George in the witty flattering conversation that he could do so well. Anne and I watched her critically, not disposed to help her with our brother.
“If I lose to Her Majesty—and you will see how graciously she will impoverish me—then I will have nothing for any other,” George said. “Indeed, whenever I am with Her Majesty I have nothing for any other. No money, no heart, no eyes.”
“For shame,” the queen interrupted. “You say this to your betrothed?”
George bowed to her. “We are betrothed stars circling a beautiful moon,” he said. “The greatest beauty makes everything else dim.”
“Oh run away,” the queen said. “Go and twinkle elsewhere, my little star Boleyn.”
George bowed and went to the back of the tent. I drifted after him. “Give it me quick,” he said tersely. “He’s riding next.”
I had a yard of white silk trimming the top of my dress, which I took and pulled through the green loops until it was free and then handed it to George. He whisked it into his pocket.
“Jane sees us,” I said.
He shook his head. “No matter. She’s tied to our interest whatever her opinion. I have to go.”
I nodded and went back into the tent as he left. The queen’s eyes rested briefly on the empty loops at the front of my gown, but she said nothing.
“They’ll start in a moment,” Jane said. “The king’s joust is next.”
I saw him helped into his saddle, two men supporting him as the weight of his armor nearly bore him down. Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, the king’s brother-in-law, was arming also, and the two men rode out together and came past the entrance to the queen’s tent. The king dipped his lance in salute to her, and held it down as he rode past the length of the tent. It became a salute to me, the visor of his helmet was up, I could see him smile at me. There was a tiny flutter of white at the shoulder of his breastplate which I knew was the kerchief from my gown. The Duke of Suffolk rode behind him, dipped his lance to the queen and then stiffly nodded his head to me. Anne, standing behind me, gave a little indrawn breath.
“Suffolk acknowledged you,” she whispered.
“I thought so.”
“He did. He bowed his head. That means the king has spoken to him of you, or spoken to his sister Queen Mary, and she has told Suffolk. He’s serious. He must be serious.”
I glanced sideways. The queen was looking down the list where the king had halted his horse. The big charger was tossing his head and sidling while he waited for the trumpet blast. The king sat easily in the saddle, a little golden circlet round his helmet, his visor down, his lance held before him. The queen leaned forward to see. There was a trumpet blast and the two horses leaped forward as the spurs were driven into their sides. The two armored men thundered toward each other, divots of earth flying out from the horses’ hooves. The lances were down like arrows flying to a target, the pennants on the end of each lance fluttering as the gap closed between them, then the king took a glancing blow which he caught on his shield, but his thrust at Suffolk slid under the shield and thudded into the breastplate. The shock of the blow threw Suffolk back off his horse and the weight of his armor did the rest, dragging him over the haunches, and he fell with an awful thud to the ground.
His wife leaped to her feet. “Charles!” She whirled out of the queen’s pavilion, lifting her skirts, running like a common woman toward her husband as he lay unmoving on the grass.
“I’d better go too.” Anne hurried after her mistress.
I looked down the lists to the king. His squire was stripping him of his heavy armor. As the breastplate came off my white kerchief fluttered to the ground, he did not see it fall. They unstrapped the greaves from his legs and the guards from his arms and he pulled on a coat as he walked briskly up the lists to the ominously still body of his friend. Queen Mary was kneeling beside Suffolk, his head cradled in her arms. His squire was stripping off the heavy armor from his master as he lay there. Mary looked up as her brother came closer and she was smiling.
“He’s all right,” she said. “He just swore an awful oath at Peter for pinching him with a buckle.”
Henry laughed. “God be praised!”
Two men carrying a stretcher ran forward. Suffolk sat up. “I can walk,” he said. “Be damned if I’m carried from the field before I’m dead.”
“Here,” Henry said and heaved him to his feet. Another man came running to the other side and the two of them started to walk him away, his feet dragging and then stumbling to keep pace.
“Don’t come,” Henry called to Queen Mary over his shoulder. “Let us make him comfortable and then we’ll get a cart or something and he can ride home.”
She stopped where she was bid. The king’s page came running up with my kerchief in his hands, taking it to his master. Queen Mary put out her hand. “Don’t bother him now,” she said sharply.
The lad skidded to a halt, still holding my kerchief. “He dropped this, Your Majesty,” he said. “Had it in his breastplate.”
She put out an indifferent hand for it
and he gave it to her. She was looking after her husband being helped into the house by her brother and Sir John Lovick hurrying ahead of them, opening doors and shouting for servants. Absently she walked back to the queen’s pavilion with my kerchief balled up in her hand. I went forward to take it from her and then I hesitated, not knowing what to say.
“Is he all right?” Queen Katherine asked.
Queen Mary found a smile. “Yes. His head is clear; and no bones broken. His breastplate is hardly dented.”
“Shall I have that?” Queen Katherine asked.
Queen Mary glanced down at my crumpled kerchief. “This! The king’s page gave it me. It was in his breastplate.” She handed it over. She was quite blind and deaf to anything but her husband. “I’ll go to him,” she decided. “Anne, you and the rest can go home with the queen after dinner.”
The queen nodded her permission and Queen Mary went quickly from the pavilion toward the house. Queen Katherine watched her go, my kerchief in her hands. Slowly, as I knew she would, she turned it over. The fine silk slipped easily through her fingers. At the fringed hem she saw the bright green of the embroidered silk monogram: MB. Slowly, accusingly, she turned toward me.
“I think this must be yours,” she said, her voice low and disdainful. She held it at arm’s length, between finger and thumb, as if it were a dead mouse that she had found at the back of a cupboard.
“Go on,” Anne whispered. “You’ve got to get it.” She pushed me in the small of my back and I stepped forward.
The queen dropped it as I reached her, I caught it as it fell. It looked a sorry bit of cloth, something you might wash a floor with.
“Thank you,” I said humbly.
At dinner the king hardly looked at me. The accident had thrown him into the melancholy that was such a characteristic of his father, which his courtiers too were learning to fear.
The queen could not have been more pleasant and more entertaining. But no conversation, no charming smiles, no music could lift his spirits. He watched the antics of his Fool without laughing, he listened to the musicians and drank deep. The queen could do nothing to cheer him, because she was partly the cause of his ill-humor. He was looking at her as a woman near her change of life, he saw Death at her shoulder. She might live for a dozen years more, she might live for a score. Death was even now drying up her courses and putting the lines on her face. The queen was heading toward old age and she had made no heirs to follow them. They might joust and sing and dance and play all the day but if the king did not put a boy into Wales as prince then he had failed in his greatest, most fundamental duty to the kingdom. And a bastard on Bessie Blount would not do.
“I am sure that Charles Brandon will soon be well again,” the queen volunteered. There were sugared plums on the table and a rich sweet wine. She took a sip but I thought that she had little relish for it while her husband sat beside her with a face so drawn and dark that he could have been his father who had never liked her. “You must not feel that you did wrong, Henry. It was a fair joust. And you’ve taken hits from him before, God knows.”
He turned in his chair and looked at her. She looked back at him and I saw the smile drain from her face at the coldness of his stare. She did not ask him what was the matter. She was too old and wise ever to ask an angry man what was troubling him. Instead, she smiled, a dauntless endearing smile, and she raised her glass to him.
“Your health, Henry,” she said with her warm accent. “Your health and I must thank God that it was not you that was hurt today. Before now, I have been the one running from the pavilion to the lists with my heart half broken with fear; and though I am sorry for your sister Queen Mary, I have to be glad that it was not you that was hurt today.”
“Now that,” Anne said in my ear, “that is masterly.”
It worked. Henry, seduced by the thought of a woman sick with fear over his well-being, lost his dark sulky look. “I would never cause you a moment of uneasiness.”
“My husband, you have caused me days and nights of them,” Queen Katherine said, smiling. “But as long as you are well and happy, and as long as you come home at the end of it all; why should I complain?”
“Aha,” Anne said quietly. “And so she gives him permission and your sting is drawn.”
“What d’you mean?” I asked.
“Wake up,” Anne said brutally. “Don’t you see? She’s called him out of his bad temper and she has told him that he can have you, as long as he comes home afterward.”
I watched him lift his glass in a return toast to her.
“So what happens next?” I asked. “Since you know everything?”
“Oh he has you for a while,” she said negligently. “But you won’t come between them. You won’t hold him. She’s old, I grant you. But she can act as if she adores him and he needs that. And when he was little more than a boy she was the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. It’ll take a lot to overcome that. I doubt that you’re the woman to do it. You’re pretty enough and half in love with him, which is helpful, but I doubt that a woman such as you could command him.”
“Who could do it?” I demanded, stung by her dismissal of me. “You, I suppose?”
She looked at the two of them as if she were a siege engineer measuring a wall. There was nothing in her face but curiosity and professional expertise. “I might,” she said. “But it would be a difficult project.”
“It’s me that he wants, not you,” I reminded her. “He asked for my favor. He wore my kerchief under his breastplate.”
“He dropped it and forgot it,” Anne pointed out with her usual cruel accuracy. “And anyway, what he wants is not the issue. He’s greedy and he’s spoiled. He could be made to want almost anything. But you’ll never be able to do that.”
“Why should I not do that?” I demanded passionately. “What makes you think that you could hold him and I could not?”
Anne looked at me with her perfectly beautiful face as lovely as if it were carved from ice. “Because the woman who manages him will be one who never stops for a moment remembering that she is there for strategy. You are all ready for the pleasures of bed and board. But the woman who manages Henry will know that her pleasure must be in managing his thoughts, every minute of the day. It would not be a marriage of sensual lust at all, though Henry would think that was what he was getting. It would be an affair of unending skill.”
The dinner ended at about five o’clock on the cool April evening and they brought the horses around to the front of the house so that we could say good-bye to our host and mount and ride back to Eltham Palace. As we left the banqueting tables I saw the servants tipping the leftover loaves and meats into great panniers which would be sold at a discount at the kitchen door. There was a trail of extravagance and dishonesty and waste that followed the king round the country like slime behind a snail. The poor people who had come to watch the jousting and stayed on to watch the court dine now gathered at the kitchen door to collect some food from the feast. They would be given the broken meats: the slicings from the loaves, the off-cuts from the meats, the puddings which had been half-eaten. Nothing would be wasted, the poor would take anything. They were as economical as keeping a pig.
It was these perks that made a place in the king’s household such a joy for his servants. In every place, every servant could perform a little cheat, put a little by. The lowliest server in the kitchen had a little business in crusts of the pastry from the pies, in lard from the basting, in the juices of the gravy. My father was at the top of this heap of off-cuts, now that he was controller of the king’s household: he would watch the slice that everyone took of their bit of business, and he would take a slice of his own. Even the trade of lady in waiting who looks as if she is there to provide company and little services for the queen is well-placed to seduce the king under her mistress’s nose, and cause her the most grief that one woman can cause to another. She too has her price. She too has her secret work which takes place after the main dinner is over an
d when the company are looking the other way, and which trades in off-cuts of promises and forgotten sweetmeats of love-play.
We rode home as the light faded from the sky and it grew gray and cool. I was glad of my cloak which I tied round me, but I kept my hood pushed back so that I could see the way before me and the darkening skies above me, and the little pin-pricks of stars showing in the pale gray sky. We had been riding for half the journey when the king’s horse came alongside mine.
“Did you enjoy your day?” he asked.
“You dropped my kerchief,” I said sulkily. “Your page gave it to Queen Mary and she gave it to Queen Katherine. She knew it at once. She gave it back to me.”
“And so?”
I should have thought of the small humiliations which Queen Katherine managed, as part of the duty of queenship. She never complained to her husband. She took her troubles to God; and only then in a very low whispered prayer.
“I felt dreadful,” I said. “I should never have given it to you in the first place.”
“Well now you have it back,” he said without sympathy. “If it was so precious.”
“It’s not that it was precious,” I pursued. “It’s that she knew without a doubt that it was mine. She gave it back to me in front of all the ladies. She dropped it to the ground, it would have fallen to the floor if I had not caught it.”
“So what has changed?” he demanded, his voice very hard, his face suddenly ugly and unsmiling. “So what is the difficulty? She has seen us dancing together and talking together. She has seen me seeking your company, you have been handclasped with me before her very eyes. You didn’t come to me then with your complaints and your nagging.”
“I’m not nagging!” I said, stung.
“Yes you are,” he said flatly. “Without cause, and, may I say, without position. You are not my mistress, madam, nor my wife. I don’t listen to complaints about my behavior from anyone else. I am the King of England. If you don’t like how I behave then there is always France. You could always go back to the French court.”