"And this is why you are so dull?"
"I am not dull," I said flatly. "I am sad. I am so sad that I want to do nothing but lie on my bed and put my face into my pillows and weep and weep."
"Because you miss your child?" My mother had to have confirmation, the thought was so strange to her.
"Did you never miss me?" I cried out. "Or if not me, then Anne? We were taken away from you when we were little more than babies and sent to France. Did you not miss us then? Someone else taught us to read and write, someone else picked us up when we fell, someone else taught us to ride on our ponies. Did you never think that you would have liked to have seen your children?"
"No," she said simply. "I could not have found you a better place than the royal court of France. I would have been a poor mother if I had kept you at home."
I turned away. I could feel my tears very wet on my cheeks.
"If you could see your baby would you be happy again?" my mother asked.
"Yes," I breathed. "Oh yes, Mother, yes. I would be happy if I could see him again. And Catherine."
"Well, I will tell your uncle," she said grudgingly. "But you must be really happy: smiling, laughing, dancing blithe, pleasing to the eye. You must win the king back to your side."
"Oh, has he strayed so very far?" I asked acidly.
She did not look ashamed, not for a moment. "Thank G.o.d Anne has him in her toils," she said. "She plays with him like you might tease the queen"s dog. She has him on a thread."
"Why not use her then?" I demanded spitefully. "Why bother with me at all?"
The swiftness of her answer warned me that this had already been decided at a family council.
"Because you have the king"s son," she said simply. "Bessie Blount"s b.a.s.t.a.r.d is made Duke of Richmond, our Baby Henry has as good a claim. It is nothing to annul your marriage to Carey, and next to nothing to annul the marriage to the queen. We are looking to have him marry you. Anne was our decoy while you were in childbed. But we are placing our fortunes with you."
She was silent for a moment as if she expected me to respond with joy. When I said nothing she spoke again, a little more sharply. "So get up now, and get the maid to brush your hair and lace you tightly."
"I can come to dinner because I am not ill," I said grimly. "They say the bleeding does not matter and perhaps it does not. I can sit near the king and I can laugh at his jokes and ask him to sing for us. But I cannot be merry in my heart, Mother. Do you understand me at all? I cannot make myself merry any more. I have lost my joy. I have lost my joy. And no one but me even knows what this feels like, and how dreadful it is."
She looked at me with a hard determined stare. "Smile," she ordered me.
I drew back my lips and felt my eyes fill with tears.
"That"s good enough," she said. "Stay like that, and I will make arrangements for you to see your children."
My uncle came to my new rooms after dinner. He looked around with some pleasure, he had not seen how richly I was housed since I came out of the birthing chamber. Now I had a privy chamber as large as the queen"s and four ladies of my household to sit with me. I had a pair of personal maids for my service and a pageboy. The king had promised me a musician of my own. Behind the privy chamber was my bedchamber which I shared with Anne, and a little retiring room where I could go to read and be alone. Most days I went in there, closed the door tightly behind me and wept without anyone seeing.
"He"s keeping you very fine."
"Yes, Uncle Howard," I said politely.
"Your mother says you are pining for your babies."
I bit my lip to try to stop the tears coming to my eyes.
"What in G.o.d"s name are you looking like that for?"
"Nothing," I whispered.
"Smile then."
I showed him the same gargoyle face that had satisfied my mother and he stared at me rudely and then nodded. "Well enough. Don"t think you can be idle and spoiled just because you have his boy. The baby is no use to us unless you take the next step."
"I can"t make him marry me," I said quietly. "He"s still married to the queen."
He snapped his finger. "Good G.o.d, woman, d"you know nothing? That never mattered less. He"s one step away from war with her nephew now. He"s all but in alliance with France and the Pope and Venice against the Spanish emperor. Are you so ignorant that you don"t know that?"
I shook my head.
"You should make it your business to know these things," he said sharply. "Anne always does. The new alliance will fight against Charles of Spain and if they start to win then Henry will join them. The queen is the aunt of the enemy of all of Europe. She has no influence with him any more. She is the aunt of a pariah."
I shook my head in disbelief. "It"s not long since Pavia when she was the country"s savior."
He snapped his fingers. "Forgotten. Now, as to you. Your mother says that you are not well?"
I hesitated. The impossibility of confiding in my uncle was very apparent to me. "No."
"Well, you have to be back in the king"s bed by the end of this week, Mary. You do that or you"ll never see your children again. D"you understand?"
I gave a little gasp at the cruelty of the bargain and he turned his hawk-face toward me and looked at me with his dark eyes. "I"ll settle for nothing less."
"You cannot forbid me the sight of my children," I whispered.
"You"ll find that I can."
"I have the king"s favor."
His hand slammed the table with a sound like a pistol shot. "You do not! That is my very point! You do not have the king"s favor, and without it, you do not have mine. Get back into his bed and you can do whatever you like. You can ask him to set up a nursery for you, you can dandle your babies on the throne of England. You can banish me! But outside his bed you are nothing but a silly used wh.o.r.e that no one cares for."
There was a dead silence in the room.
"I understand," I said stiffly.
"Good." He moved away from the fireplace and pulled down his jerkin. "You"ll thank me for this on your coronation day."
"Yes," I said. I could feel my knees giving way. "May I sit?"
"No," he said. "Learn to stand."
That night there was dancing in the queen"s rooms. The king had brought his musicians to play for her. It was apparent to everyone that though he sat beside her, he was there to enjoy watching her ladies as they danced. Anne was among them. She was wearing a gown of dark blue, a new gown, and she had a matching hood. She was wearing her usual necklace of pearls with the "B" in gold as if she wanted to flaunt her status as a single woman.
"Dance," George said to me very quietly, his mouth next to my ear. "They"re all waiting for you to dance."
"George, I dare not. I"m bleeding. I might faint."
"You have to get up and dance," he said. He looked at me with a bright smile on his face. "I swear it, Mary. You have to do it or you"re lost." He held out his hand.
"Hold me tight," I said. "If I start to fall then catch me."
"Into the breach. Come on. It has to be done."
He led me to join the circle of dancers. I saw Anne"s quick gaze take in the strength of George"s grip under my elbow, and the whiteness of my face. For a moment she turned her back and I knew she would have been happy to see me drop to the floor. But then she saw the gaze of our uncle upon us, and our mother"s bright demanding stare, and she gave up her place to me in the set of dancers, summoning her partner Francis Weston away, and George led me down the line toward the king and I looked up and smiled at His Majesty.
I danced that set, and then the next, and then the king himself came toward us and said to George: "I"ll take your place and dance with your sister, if she"s not too tired."
"She"d be honored."
I smiled radiantly. "I could dance all night if Your Majesty was my partner."
George bowed and stepped back. I saw him take a fold of Anne"s dress in his fingers and draw her away to the wall of the room.
The king and I touched hands, turned toward each other, and started the dance. The steps drew us close and then led us apart, his eyes never left me.
Beneath the tight lacing of my stomacher my belly ached as if I were filled with poison. I could feel the sweat trickling down between my tightly strapped b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I kept smiling my bright mirthless smile. I thought if I could get Henry alone I might persuade him to let me see my children at Hever when he went hunting this summer. The thought of my baby son made my b.r.e.a.s.t.s p.r.i.c.kle with pain as the milk tried to flow under the tight strapping. I smiled as if I were filled with joy. I looked across the circle of dancers at the father of my children and I smiled at him as if I could not wait to lie with him for his own sake, and not for what he could do for me and mine.
Anne supervised my washing that evening with a spiteful efficiency which caused her to slap me with a cold washing sheet, and complain of the bloodstained water.
"Good G.o.d, you disgust me," she said. "However will he bear it?"
I wrapped myself in a sheet and combed my own hair before she could fly at me with the lice comb and rip the hairs from my head under the pretext of making me clean.
"Perhaps he won"t send for me," I said. I was so tired from the dancing and from patiently standing for half an hour while Henry took his formal leave of the queen that I wanted to do nothing more than to tumble into bed.
There was a tap at the door, George"s knock. He put his head around the door. "Good," he said, seeing me washed and half-naked. "He wants you. You can just put on a robe and come."
"He"s a brave man then," Anne said spitefully. "Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s still leak milk, she"s still bleeding, and at the smallest thing she bursts into tears."
George giggled like a boy. "Bless you, Annamaria, you are the sweetest sister. I should think she wakes every day and thanks G.o.d she has a bedfellow like you to comfort and cheer her."
Anne had the grace to look discomfited.
"And I have something for the bleeding," he said. He pulled a small piece of wadding from his pocket. I looked at it with suspicion.
"What is it?"
"One of the wh.o.r.es told me about it. You push it up your cunny and it stops the bleeding for a while."
I made a face. "Doesn"t it get in the way?"
"She says not. Do it, Marianne. You have to get into his bed tonight."
"Look away then," I said. George turned to the window and I went to the bed and struggled with unskillful fingers to do as he told me.
"Let me," Anne said crossly. "G.o.d knows I do everything else for you."
She thrust the stuff up inside me and then pushed again. I let out a hoa.r.s.e gasp of pain and George half-turned. "No need to murder the girl," he said mildly.
"It"s got to go up, hasn"t it?" Anne demanded, flushed and cross. "She"s got to be plugged, hasn"t she?"
George offered me a hand. I tumbled off the bed, wincing with pain. "Good G.o.d, Anne, if you ever leave court you could set up as a witch," he said pleasantly. "You have all the gentleness already."
She scowled at him.
"Why are you so sour?" he asked as I tied the gown around me and stepped into my shoes with the high scarlet heels.
"Nothing," Anne said.
"Oho!" he said with sudden understanding. "I see it all, little Mistress Anne. They"ve told you to step back and leave him to Mary. You are to be nothing more than lady in waiting to the old queen while your sister mounts up to the throne."
She scowled at him, her beauty completely erased by jealousy. "I am nineteen years of age," she said bitterly. "Half the court thinks I"m the most beautiful woman in the world. All of them know that I am the wittiest and the most stylish. The king cannot take his eyes off me. Sir Thomas Wyatt has gone to France to escape me. But my sister, a year younger than me, is married and has two children by the king himself. When is it going to be my turn? When am I to be wed? Who is going to be the match for me?"
There was a little silence. George put his hand to her flushed cheek. "Oh Annamaria," he said tenderly. "There couldn"t be a match for you. Not the King of France himself or the Emperor of Spain. You are a perfect piece, finished in every way. Be patient. When you are sister to the Queen of England we could look anywhere. Better to secure Mary where she might be well-placed to serve you, than throw yourself away on some paltry duke."
She gave an unwilling chuckle at that and George bent his dark head and brushed her cheek with his lips. "You are," he a.s.sured her. "You are indeed utterly perfect. We all of us adore you. Keep it up, for G.o.d"s sake. If anyone ever knows what you are truly like in private we"ll all be lost."
She drew back and would have slapped him but he jerked his head out of the way and laughed at her and snapped his fingers to me. "Come on, little queen in the making!" he said. "All ready? All prepared?" He turned to Anne. "He can get his c.o.c.k up, yes? You"ve not packed her too tight, like a ship"s keel?"
"Of course," she said crossly. "But I should think it"ll hurt like the devil."
"Well, we won"t worry about that, will we?" George smiled at her. "After all, this is our meal ticket and our fortune that we are sending to his bed, hardly a girl at all. Come, child! You have work to do for us Boleyns, and we are counting on you!"
He kept up a flow of chatter as we went through the great hall and up the shadowy stairs to the king"s chambers. When we entered Cardinal Wolsey was sitting with Henry and George drew me to a window seat and brought me a gla.s.s of wine while we waited for the king and his most trusted counselor to finish their low-voiced talk.
"Probably counting the sc.r.a.ps from the kitchen," George whispered to me mischievously.
I smiled. The cardinal"s attempts to make the king"s court run with less waste was a source of continual amus.e.m.e.nt to those courtiers, my family among them, whose comfort and profit came from exploiting its folly and extravagance.
Behind us, the cardinal bowed and nodded to his page to gather up his papers. He nodded to George and to me as George led me forward to sit in his chair by the fireside.
"I shall bid you goodnight, Your Majesty, madam, sir," he said and left the room.
"Will you take a gla.s.s of wine with us, George?" the king asked.
I shot a swift glance of appeal to my brother.
"I thank Your Majesty," George said and poured wine for the king, for me, and for himself. "You are working late, sire?"
Henry waved a dismissive hand. "You know how the cardinal is," he said. "Unceasing in his labors."