now the wines he favours are heavy, perfumed, drowsy; his body is heavy, so sometimes he seems to block out the light. ‘Are we building from the foundations?’ he enquires. ‘Or just a layer of ornamentation? Both cost money.’
‘How ungracious you are,’ Anne says. ‘The king is sending you some oak for your own building at Hackney. And some for Master Sadler, for his new house.’
With a dip of his head he signals his thanks. But the king’s mind is up-country, with the woman who still claims to be his wife. ‘What use is Katherine’s life to her, now?’ Henry asks. ‘I am sure she is tired of contention. God knows, I am tired of it. She were better to join the saints and holy martyrs.’
‘They have waited for her long enough.’ Anne laughs: too loudly.
‘I picture the lady dying,’ the king says. ‘She will be making speeches and forgiving me. She is always forgiving me. It is she who needs forgiveness. For her blighted womb. For poisoning my children before they were born.’
He, Cromwell, flits his eyes to Anne. Surely now, if she has anything to tell, is the moment? But she turns away, leans down and scoops her spaniel Purkoy into her lap. She buries her face in his fur, and the little dog, startled from his sleep, whimpers and twists in her hands and watches Master Secretary bow himself out.
Outside waiting for him, George Boleyn’s wife: her confiding hand, drawing him aside, her whisper. If someone said to Lady Rochford, ‘It’s raining,’ she would turn it into a conspiracy; as she passed the news on, she would make it sound somehow indecent, unlikely, but sadly true.
‘Well?’ he says. ‘Is she?’
‘Ah. Has she said nothing still? Of course, the wise woman says nothing till she feels it quickening.’ He regards her: stony-eyed. ‘Yes,’ she says at last, casting a nervous glance over her shoulder. ‘She has been wrong before. But yes.’
‘Does the king know?’
‘You should tell him, Cromwell. Be the man with good news. Who knows, he might knight you on the spot.’
He is thinking, fetch me Rafe Sadler, fetch me Thomas Wriothesley, send a letter to Edward Seymour, whistle up my nephew Richard, cancel supper with Chapuys, but don’t let our dishes go to waste: let’s invite Sir Thomas Boleyn.
‘I suppose it is to be expected,’ Jane Rochford says. ‘She was with the king for much of the summer, was she not? A week here, a week there. And when he was not with her, he would write her love letters, and send them by the hand of Harry Norris.’
‘My lady, I must leave you, I have business.’
‘I’m sure you have. Ah well. And you are usually such a good listener. You always attend to what I say. And I say that this summer he wrote her love letters, and sent them by the hand of Harry Norris.’
He is moving too fast to make much of her last sentence; though, as he will admit later, the detail will affix itself and adhere to certain sentences of his own, not yet formed. Phrases only. Elliptic. Conditional. As everything is conditional now. Anne blossoming as Katherine fails. He pictures them, their faces intent and skirts bunched, two little girls in a muddy track, playing teeter-totter with a plank balanced on a stone.
Thomas Seymour says at once, ‘This is Jane’s chance, now. He will hesitate no more, he will want a new bedfellow. He will not touch the queen till she gives birth. He cannot. There is too much to lose.’
He thinks, already perhaps the secret king of England has fingers, has a face. But I thought that before, he reminds himself. At her coronation, when Anne carried her belly so proudly; and after all, it was only a girl.
‘I still don’t see it,’ says old Sir John, the adulterer. ‘I don’t see how he’d want Jane. Now if it were my daughter Bess. The king has danced with her. He liked her very well.’
‘Bess is married,’ Edward says.
Tom Seymour laughs. ‘The more fit for his purpose.’
Edward is irate. ‘Don’t talk of Bess. Bess would not have him. Bess is not in question.’
‘It could turn to good,’ Sir John says, tentative. ‘For until now Jane’s never been any use to us.’
‘True,’ Edward says. ‘Jane is as much use as a blancmange. Now let her earn her keep. The king will need a companion. But we do not push her in his way. Let it be as Cromwell here has advised. Henry has seen her. He has formed his intent. Now she must avoid him. No, she must repel him.’
‘Oh, hoity-toity,’ old Seymour says. ‘If you can afford it.’
‘Afford what’s chaste, what’s seemly?’ Edward snaps. ‘You never could. Be quiet, you old lecher. The king pretends to forget your crimes, but no one really forgets. You are pointed at: the old goat who stole his son’s bride.’
‘Yes, hold your peace, Father,’ Tom says. ‘We’re talking to Cromwell.’
‘One thing I am afraid of,’ he says. ‘Your sister loves her old mistress, Katherine. This is well known to the present queen, who spares no opportunity for harshness. If she sees that the king is looking at Jane, I am afraid she will be further persecuted. Anne is not one to sit by while her husband makes a – a companion – of another woman. Even if she thought it a temporary arrangement.’
‘Jane will pay no heed,’ Edward says. ‘What though she gets a pinch or a slap? She will know how to bear herself patiently.’
‘She will play him for some great reward,’ says old Seymour.
Tom Seymour says, ‘He made Anne a marquise before he had her.’
Edward’s face is as grim as if he is ordering up an execution. ‘You know what he made her. Marquise first. Queen thereafter.’
Parliament is prorogued, but London lawyers, flapping their black gowns like crows, settle to their winter term. The happy news seeps and leaks through the court. Anne lets out her bodices. Bets are laid. Pens scribble. Letters are folded. Seals pressed to wax. Horses are mounted. Ships set sail. The old families of England kneel and ask God why he favours the Tudors. King Francis frowns. Emperor Charles sucks his lip. King Henry dances.
The conversation at Elvetham, that early hour’s confabulation: it is as if it had never been. The king’s doubts about his marriage, it seems, have vanished.
Though in the desolate winter gardens, he has been seen walking with Jane.
Her family surround her; they call him in. ‘What did he say, sister?’ Edward Seymour demands. ‘Tell me everything, everything he said.’
Jane says, ‘He asked me if I would be his good mistress.’
They exchange glances. There is a difference between a mistress and a good mistress: does Jane know that? The first implies concubinage. The second, something less immediate: an exchange of tokens, a chaste and languorous admiration, a prolonged courtship…though it can’t be very prolonged, of course, or Anne will have given birth and Jane will have missed her chance. The women cannot predict when the heir will see the light, and he can get no further with Anne’s doctors.
‘Look, Jane,’ Edward tells her, ‘this is no time to be shy. You must give us particulars.’
‘He asked me if I would look kindly on him.’
‘Kindly on him when?’
‘For instance, if he wrote me a poem. Praising my beauty. So I said I would. I would thank him for it. I wouldn’t laugh, even behind my hand. And I wouldn’t raise any objection to any statements he might make in verse. Even if they were exaggerated. Because in poems it is usual to exaggerate.’
He, Cromwell, congratulates her. ‘You have it covered from every angle, Mistress Seymour. You would have made a sharp lawyer.’
‘You mean, if I had been born a man?’ She frowns. ‘But still, it is not likely, Master Secretary. The Seymours are not tradesmen.’
Edward Seymour says, ‘Good mistress. Write you verse. Very well. Good so far. But if he attempts anything on your person, you must scream.’
Jane says, ‘What if nobody came?’
