“Never forget the people’s reaction to you, Anne,” Norfolk continues. “‘We want no Nan Bullen.’” He lets the words of the rioting peasants fill her ears. She covers them and squeezes her eyes shut.
“We were on the barge,” she whispers, reliving her ordeal. “The poxy fishwives called it out from shore…” She shakes her head as though trying to banish the disturbing images. “And they mobbed me.” Tears gather at the corners of her black eyes. She blinks. George wraps a protective arm about her shoulders, drawing her close. The movement creates a pang of longing for my own brother.
“You have to try to endear yourself to them, Anne,” Norfolk says. “You have to make them love you and long for you as their queen. The king may weaken under the rejection of his subjects—he may decide you’re not worth all this bother with the pope and Catherine of Aragon’s supporters. Supporters like Charles of Spain.”
“He wants an heir,” Anne says, her voice taut with determination. “I can give him what he most desires. No one will deter him.”
“Everyone can deter him,” Norfolk argues. “Who do you think you are? You’re the lady of the moment. Even should this succeed you will only be useful to him till he gets his heir. And then? Then it is a mistress.”
“Not with me,” Anne says with a proud but joyless smile. “He’d never dare.”
“Oh, wouldn’t he? He dared with Catherine,” says the duke.
“He didn’t love Catherine.”
“He loved her dearly.” My father’s voice bears an edge of danger in it, and I find my fingernails are digging into my palms, sharp as a cat’s claws.
“Anne, you are always dispensable, remember that. If you don’t believe it, take a look at your own sister.” He indicates poor Mary Carey with a careless nod.
Anne draws in a breath. “It doesn’t matter,” she says with a shrug of one shoulder. I know it is a false sentiment. Anne is all about Anne; even I can perceive that. She will not take kindly to rivals. “I will be queen, won’t I?”
“If you play this right,” Norfolk says. “Which means you listen to me. Do you understand, girl?”
Anne draws her expression into one of serene dignity, offering him the slightest of nods. I call this her “queen’s face.” I practice this one when I’m alone, along with her smiles and looks of surprise and coquettish anger. To me she is the quintessence of charm and cultivation.
We are dismissed and prepare to go to supper, but Anne remains a moment, standing in front of my father with her small shoulders squared, a hint of a smile on her face.
“You are an old son of a bitch, Thomas Howard,” she says.
I am awed by the words. I expect my father to strike her for her insolence but instead, after the briefest of pauses, he says with a small smile of his own, “As are you, Anne.” He pats her elbow as he guides her from the room. “Take it as a compliment.”
Anne’s laughter peals forth as she quits the room.
I don’t know why, but I am jealous. Certainly not at the exchange of insults. Perhaps it is of the familiarity, the fact that they can vex each other and still retain some strange favor with one another. Of course Anne is very useful to my father…
I sigh, chastising myself for these uncharitable thoughts as I, too, quit the room, trying to chase away the feeling that I really am not useful at all.
I have mixed feelings. I begin to suspect that I am not on the right side. I think of the queen not as the princess dowager, as we are told to refer to Catherine of Aragon now, but as the queen—the sad, gentle queen who greeted me at Westminster when I first arrived. Now she is alone in her northern castle, suffering as it seems her fate to do. She is denied almost everything and retains the smallest of courts; a handful of loyal maids whose devotion I applaud. She is further punished for her stubbornness by being kept separated from her daughter, who is also in exile until she agrees to sign a document acknowledging the invalidity of her mother and father’s marriage and thus naming herself a bastard.
I am expected to make merry at the expense of such misery. I am not to express even the smallest amount of sympathy for the dethroned monarch or her poor rejected daughter. I am to celebrate the victory of the Howards.
Our victory seems so precarious. What is viewed as triumph one day can be looked upon as tragedy the next; everyone’s fate depends on the fluctuating moods of the increasingly cantankerous king.
“And what would you do if you were Queen Catherine?” asks Madge Shelton one night as we draw the covers over us. My dog, Fitz, sleeps between us; he is spoiled and content, innocent of treachery or plotting.
I do not answer right away. The queen has no friends here, and it would do me no good to offer sympathy of any kind. I measure my words with care. “I would grant the king his divorce; say what needs to be said even if it isn’t true, just to have peace.”
“Do you think it’s true? Do you think Catherine and Prince Arthur consummated their marriage?” she asks with a wicked gleam in her eye.
I shrug and turn my back to her. “Only she knows. I think it’s silly, really. Jesus says if your spouse dies you are free to marry again, which means it was divinely permissible for her to marry King Henry—”
“The Church goes by the Old Testament, clinging to the claim that a man cannot marry his brother’s widow,” Madge reminds me.
“They should go by what Jesus says, not some nameless scribe from Leviticus.” I am surprised at my passion regarding the matter. But I feel the queen has been wronged, so terribly wronged…I must watch my words.
“Don’t say that too loud,” Madge says in a conspiratorial whisper. “They’ll put you in the Tower for being too sympathetic to the qu—I mean, the princess dowager.”
I shiver and she rubs my shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Mary.” She laughs. “You’re Norfolk’s girl; your interests are attuned to Anne. No one could accuse you of papist sympathies.” She pauses, then returns to the original topic. “I’d love to know if it were true, though—about the consummation, I mean. Wouldn’t you?”
“Not really,” I say, not only because it seems a sacrilege to think such about the noble Queen Catherine, but because I already know the answer. No one who behaved with as much conviction as Queen Catherine could be clinging to a lie. She is the most pious, devout woman I know, as well as the most honorable, which means it is exactly as she insists. The marriage to Arthur was not consummated; her marriage to the king is valid.
I sigh. “It doesn’t matter if it is or isn’t,” I say. “Because the king will get what he wants in the end.”
“He always does,” Madge agrees with a yawn as she drifts off to sleep, leaving me to ponder these great things in a mind that, to me, feels very small.
I have become interested in writing verse. Though I do not find myself to be of any unique talent, I am compelled to scribble my little observations and feelings to give them vent. There is a solace in it, an escape. Even bliss, when the words flow right and inspiration surges through my limbs like the aftereffects of mulled wine. I even set some to music, as I am quite accomplished on the virginals and lute, but I dare not say a word about it. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hear me sing, anyway.
The only person I cannot wait to discuss my newfound passion with is my brother Surrey, who once told me I had a “poet’s heart.” Like him. I would be glad to be like Surrey.
This is a poetic circle, and the ladies and gentlemen often share their compositions. I do not share mine, however. I keep them to myself, in my little locked casket with the few letters and other treasures it is my privilege to hold dear.
Often