"But you must have an image that you pursue throughout the poem," Anne said to Henry Percy. "If you are going to write a poem to your mistress you must compare her to something and then twist the comparison round to some witty conclusion."
"How can I?" Percy asked her. "I cannot compare you to anything. You are yourself. What should I compare you to?"
"Oh very pretty!" George said approvingly. "I say, Percy, your conversation is better than your poetry, I should stay on one knee and whisper in her ear, if I was you. You"ll triumph if you stick to prose."
Percy grinned and took Anne"s hand. "Stars in the night," he said.
"Something something something something, some delight," Anne rejoined promptly.
"Let"s have some wine," William suggested. "I don"t think I can keep up with this dazzling wit. And who will play me at dice?"
"I"ll play," George said before William could challenge me. "What will the stakes be?"
"Oh a couple of crowns," William said. "I should hate to have you as my enemy for a gambling debt, Boleyn."
"Or any other cause," my brother said sweetly. "Especially since Lord Percy here might write us a martial poem about fighting."
"I don"t think something something something is very threatening," Anne remarked. "And that is all that his lines ever say."
"I am an apprentice," Percy said with dignity. "An apprentice lover and an apprentice poet and you are treating me unkindly. "Fair lady-thou dost treat me with disdain-" is nothing but the truth."
Anne laughed and held out her hand for him to kiss. William drew a couple of dice from his pocket and rolled them on the table. I poured him a gla.s.s of wine and put it by him. I felt oddly comforted to be serving him when the man that I loved was bedding his wife in the room next door. I felt that I had been put aside, and for all I knew I might have to stay to one side.
We played until midnight and still the king did not emerge.
"What d"you think?" William asked George. "If he means to spend the night with her we might as well go to our beds."
"We"re going," Anne said firmly. She held out a peremptory hand to me.
"So soon?" Percy pleaded. "But stars come out at night."
"Then they fade at dawn," Anne replied. "This star needs to veil herself in darkness."
I rose to go with her. My husband looked at me for a moment. "Kiss me goodnight, wife," he ordered.
I hesitated and then I went across the room. He expected me to put a cool kiss on his cheek but instead I bent over and kissed him on his lips. I felt him respond as I touched him. "Goodnight, husband. And I wish you a merry Christmas."
"Goodnight, wife. My bed would have been warmer tonight with you in it."
I nodded. There was nothing I could say. Without intending it, I glanced toward the closed door of the queen"s privy chamber where the man I adored slept in the arms of his wife.
"Maybe we"ll all end up with our wives in the end," William said quietly.
"For sure," George said cheerfully, shoveling his winnings from the table into his cap, and then pouring them into the pocket of his jacket. "For we will be buried alongside each other, whatever our preferences in life. Think of me, melting to dust with Jane Parker."
Even William laughed.
"When will it be?" Percy asked. "Your happy nuptial day?"
"Sometime after midsummer. If I can contain my impatience for that long."
"She brings a handsome dowry," William remarked.
"Oh who cares for that?" Percy exclaimed. "Love is all that matters."
"Thus speaks one of the richest men in the kingdom," my brother observed wryly.
Anne held out her hand to Percy. "Pay no attention, my lord. I agree with you. Love is all that matters. At any rate, that"s what I think."
"No you don"t," I said as soon as the door was shut behind us.
Anne gave me a tiny smile. "I wish you would take the trouble to see who I am talking to, and not what I am saying."
"Percy of Northumberland? You are talking of marriage for love to Percy of Northumberland?"
"Exactly. So you can simper at your husband all you like, Mary. When I marry I shall do better than you by far."
Spring 1523 IN THE EARLY WEEKS OF THE NEW YEAR THE QUEEN FOUND HER youth again, and blossomed like a rose in a warm room, her color high, her smiles ready. She put aside the hair shirt she usually wore under her gown, and the telltale rough skin at her neck and shoulders disappeared as if smoothed away by joy. She did not tell anyone the cause of these changes; but her maid told another that she had missed one of her courses, and that the soothsayer was right: the queen had taken with child. youth again, and blossomed like a rose in a warm room, her color high, her smiles ready. She put aside the hair shirt she usually wore under her gown, and the telltale rough skin at her neck and shoulders disappeared as if smoothed away by joy. She did not tell anyone the cause of these changes; but her maid told another that she had missed one of her courses, and that the soothsayer was right: the queen had taken with child.
Given her past history of not going full term, there was every reason for her to be on her knees, her face turned up to the statue of the Virgin Mary in the little prie dieu in the corner of her privy chamber, and every morning found her there, one hand upon her belly, one hand on her missal, her eyes closed, her expression rapt. Miracles could happen. Perhaps a miracle was happening for the queen.
The maids gossiped that her linen was clean again in February and we began to think that soon she would tell the king. Already he had the look of a man waiting for good news, and he walked past me as if I were invisible. I had to dance before him and attend his wife and endure the smirks of the ladies and know once again that I was nothing more than a Boleyn girl, and not the favorite any more.
"I can"t stand it," I said to Anne. We were sitting by the fireplace in the queen"s apartments. The others were walking with the dogs, but Anne and I had refused to go out. The mist was coming off the river and it was a bitterly cold day. I was shivering inside a fur-lined gown. I had not felt well since Christmas night when Henry had gone past me into her room. He had not sent for me since then.
"You are taking it hard," she observed contentedly. "That"s what comes of loving a king."
"What else could I do?" I asked miserably. I moved to the window seat to get more light on my sewing. I was hemming the queen"s shirts for the poor, and just because they were for old laboring men did not mean that I was allowed sloppy work. She would look at the seams and if she thought they were clumsily executed she would ask me, very pleasantly, to do them again.
"If she has a child and it"s a son then you might as well have stayed with William Carey and started your own family," Anne observed. "The king will be at her beck, and your days will be done. You"ll just be one of many."
"He loves me," I said uncertainly. "I"m not one of many."
I turned my head away and looked out of the window. The mist was curling off the river in great coils, like dust under a bed.
Anne gave a hard little laugh. "You"ve always been one of many," she said brutally. "There are dozens of us Howard girls, all with good breeding, all well taught, all pretty, all young, all fertile. They can throw one after another on the table and see if one is lucky. It"s no real loss to them if one after another is taken up and then thrown aside. There"s always another Howard girl conceived, there"s always another wh.o.r.e in the nursery. You were one of many before you were even born. If he does not cleave to you then you go back to William, they find another Howard girl to tempt him, and the dance starts all over again. Nothing is lost for them."
"Something is lost for me!" I cried out.
She put her head on one side and looked at me, as if she would sift the reality from the impatience of childish pa.s.sion. "Yes. Perhaps. Something is lost for you. Your innocence, your first love, your trust. Perhaps your heart is broken. Perhaps it will never mend. Poor silly Marianne," she said softly. "To do one man"s bidding to please another man and get nothing for yourself but heartbreak."
"So who would come after me?" I asked her, turning my pain into taunting. "Who d"you think the next Howard girl will be that they push into his bed? Let me guess-the other Boleyn girl?"
She flashed me a quick black glance and then her dark eyelashes swept down on her cheeks. "Not me," she said. "I make my own plans. I don"t risk being taken up and dropped again."
"You told me to risk it," I reminded her.
"That was for you," she said. "I would not live my life as you live yours. You would always do as you were bid, marry where you were told, bed where you were ordered. I am not like you. I make my own way."
"I could make my own way," I said.
Anne smiled disbelievingly.
"I"d go back to Hever and live there," I said. "I wouldn"t stay at court. If I am put aside I could go to Hever. At least I will always have that now."
The door to the queen"s apartment opened and I glanced up as the maids came out, lugging the sheets from the queen"s bed.
"That"s the second time this week she"s ordered them to be changed," one said irritably.
Anne and I exchanged a quick look. "Are they stained?" Anne demanded urgently.
The maid looked at her insolently. "The queen"s sheets?" she asked. "You ask me to show you the queen"s own bed linen?"
Anne"s long fingers went to her purse and a piece of silver changed hands. The maid"s smile was triumphant as she pocketed the coin. "Not stained at all," she said.
Anne subsided and I went to hold the door open for the two women.
"Thank you," the second one said, surprised at my politeness to a servant. She nodded to me. "Rank with sweat, poor lady," she said quietly.
"What?" I asked. I could hardly believe that she was giving me freely a piece of information that a French spy would pay a king"s ransom for, and that every courtier in the land was longing to know. "Are you saying the queen is having night sweats? That her change of life is on her?"
"If not now then very soon," the maid said. "Poor lady."
I found my father with George in the great hall, head to head while the servants set the great trestle tables for dinner around them. He beckoned me to him.
"Father," I said, dropping him a curtsy.
He kissed me coolly on the forehead. "Daughter," he said. "Did you want to see me?"
For a chilling moment I wondered if he had forgotten my name. "The queen is not with child," I told him. "She started her course, this day. She missed her other times because of her age."
"G.o.d be praised!" George said exultantly. "I bet myself a gold crown on this. That is good news."
"The best," my father said. "The best for us, the worst for England. Has she told the king?"
I shook my head. "She started to bleed this afternoon, she has not seen him yet."
My father nodded. "So we have the news before him. Anyone else know it?"
I shrugged. "The maids who changed her linen, and so anyone who was paying them. Wolsey, I suppose. Perhaps the French might have bought a maid."
"Then we have to be fast if we want to be the ones to tell him. Should I?"
George shook his head. "Too intimate," he said. "What about Mary?"
"It puts her before him at the very moment of his disappointment," my father mused. "Better not."
"Anne then," George said. "It should be one of us to remind him of Mary."
"Anne can do it," my father agreed. "She could turn a polecat off the scent of a mouse."
"She"s in the garden," I volunteered. "At the archery b.u.t.ts."
The three of us walked from the great hall into the bright light of the spring sunshine. There was a cold wind blowing through the yellow daffodils that nodded in the sunshine. We could see the little group of courtiers at the archery b.u.t.ts, Anne among them. As we watched she stepped up, sighted the target, drew her bow and we heard the tw.a.n.g of the string and the satisfying thud as the arrow hit the bull"s-eye. There was a scattering of applause. Henry Percy strode up to the target and plucked Anne"s arrow from it and tucked it into his own quiver, as if he would keep it.
Anne was laughing, holding out her hand for her arrow, as she glanced over and saw us. At once, she turned from the company and came toward us.
"Father."
"Anne." He kissed her more warmly than he had kissed me.
"The queen has started her courses," George said bluntly. "We think that you should tell the king."
"Rather than Mary?"
"It makes her look low," my father said. "Tattling with chambermaids, watching them empty p.i.s.s pots."
For a moment I thought that Anne would remark that she did not want to look low either, but she shrugged her shoulders. She knew that serving the Howard family ambition always had a price attached.
"And make sure that Mary is back in his eye," my father said. "When he turns against the queen it must be Mary who picks him up."
Anne nodded. "Of course." Only I could have heard the edge in her voice. "Mary comes first."
The king came to the queen"s rooms that evening as usual to sit beside her at the fireside. We three of us watched him, certain that he must tire of this domestic peace. But the queen was skilful in entertaining him. There was always a game of cards or dice going on, she had always read the most recent books and could venture and defend an interesting opinion. There were always other visitors, learned or well-traveled men who would talk with the king, there was always the best music, and Henry loved good music. Thomas More was a favorite of hers and sometimes the three of them would walk on the flat roofs of the castle and look at the night skies. More and the king would speak of interpretations of the Bible and whether there would ever come a time when it would be right to allow an English Bible that common people could read. And there were always pretty women. The queen was wise enough to fill her rooms with the prettiest women in the kingdom.
This evening was no exception, she entertained him as if he were a visiting amba.s.sador that she had to favor. After he had talked with her for a while someone asked if he would sing and he took the floor and sung us one of his own compositions. He asked for a lady to take the soprano part and Anne reluctantly and modestly came forward and said that she would try. Of course she had it note perfect. They sang an encore, well pleased with themselves, and then Henry kissed Anne"s hand and the queen called for wine for our two songsters.
It was nothing more than a touch to his hand and Anne had him a little aside from the rest of the court. Only the queen and us Boleyns knew that the king had been drawn away. The queen called for one of the musicians to play us another air, she had too much sense ever to be caught glaring after her husband as he started another flirtation. She shot one quick look at me to see how I was taking the sight of my sister on the king"s arm and I gave her a bland, innocent smile.
"You are becoming a fine courtier, my little wife," William Carey remarked.
"I am?"
"When you first came to court you were a fresh piece of goods, hardly glazed by the French court, but now the gilt seems to be entering your soul. Do you ever do a thing without thinking twice?"