subtle. . . . Once before she had been careless; this time she had been equally foolish, but she had learned her lesson at last. George would bear her no gratitude for what she had done; he would say: “What a clumsy fool you are, Jane!” Or if he did not say it, he would think it.
All this she had done for George really . . . and he cared not, had no feeling for her at all. “Methinks I begin to hate him!” she murmured, and looked through her narrow windows onto the cobbles beneath.
George came to see his sister; he was secretly alarmed.
“Jane has been sent to the Tower!” he said. Anne told him what had happened. “This grows mightily dangerous, Anne.”
“You to tell
“Anne, you must go very carefully.”
“You tell me that persistently,” she answered pettishly. “What must I do now? I have gone carefully, and I have been brought to this pass. What is happening to us? Mary in disgrace, our father quite often absenting himself from court, shamefaced, hardly looking at me! And Uncle Norfolk becoming more and more outspoken! You, alarmed that I will not be cautious, and I . . .”
“We have to go carefully, that is all. We have to stop this affair of the King’s with this girl; it must not be allowed to go on.”
“I care not! And it were not she, it would be another.”
“Anne, for God’s sake listen to reason! It matters not if it were another one; it only matters that it should be
“You mean . . . there is more in this than a simple love affair?”
“Indeed I do.”
Madge Shelton looked in at the door.
“I beg your pardon. I had thought Your Majesty to be alone.” She and George exchanged cousinly greetings, and Madge retired.
“Our cousin is a beautiful girl,” said George.
Anne looked at him sharply.
He said: “You’ll hate what I am about to say, Anne. It is a desperate remedy, but I feel it would be effective. Madge is delightful, so young and charming. The other affair may well be beginning to pall.”
“George! I do not understand. . . .”
“We cannot afford to be over-nice, Anne.”
“Oh, speak frankly. You mean—throw Madge to the King, that he may forget that other . . .”
“It is not a woman we have to fight, Anne. It is a party!”
“I would not do it,” she said. “Why, Madge . . . she is but a young girl, and he . . . You cannot know, George. The life he has lived. . . .”
“I do know. Hast ever thought we are fighting for thy life?”
She tried to throw off her fears with flippancy. She laughed rather too loudly; he noticed uneasily that of late she had been given to immoderate laughter.
“Ever since I had thought to be Queen, there have been those ready to thrust prophecies under my eyes. I mind well one where I was depicted with my head cut off!” She put her hands about her throat. “Fret not, George. My husband, after the manner of most, amuses himself. He was all eagerness for me before our marriage; now? She shrugged her shoulders and began to laugh again.
“Be silent,” said George. “What of Elizabeth?”
She stopped laughing.
“What of Elizabeth?”
“It has been decreed that Mary Tudor is a bastard, because the King tired of her mother and decided—as she could no longer hope to give him a son—that he was no longer married to her. Oh, we know of his conscience, we know of his treatise . . . we know too well the story. But, Anne, we are alone and we need not fear each other. . . . Ah! What a good thing it is to have in this world one person of whom you need not cherish the smallest fear! Anne, I begin to think we are not so unlucky, you and I.”
“Please stop,” she said. “You make me weep.”
“This is no time for tears. I said Mary has been decreed a bastard, though her mother is of Spain and related to the most powerful man in Europe. Anne, you are but the daughter of the Earl of Wiltshire—Sir Thomas Boleyn not long since—and he was only raised to his earldom to do honor to you; he could be stripped of that honor easily enough. He is no Emperor, Anne! Dost see what I mean? Mary was made a bastard; what of Elizabeth? Who need fear
“Yes,” said Anne breathlessly. “Yes!”
“If the King has no sons, Elizabeth will be Queen of England . . . or Mary will! Oh, Anne, you have to fight this, you have to hold your place for your daughter’s sake.”
“You are right,” she said. “I have my daughter.”
“Therefore . . .”
She nodded. “You are right, George. I think you are often right. I shall remember what you said about our being lucky. Yes, I think we are; for who else is there, but each other!”
The next day she sent Madge Shelton with a message to the King. From a window she watched the girl
