‘I’ll do all I can but the Percys are a proud lot, Anne. They meant him for Mary Talbot until Wolsey came out against the match. They won’t want you instead of her.’
‘Is it just his wealth that you want?’ I asked.
‘Oh, the title too,’ Anne said crudely.
‘I mean, really. What d’you feel for him?’
For a moment I thought she was going to turn aside the question with another hard joke which would make his boyish adoration of her seem like nothing. But then she tossed her head and the clean hair flew through George’s hands like a dark river.
‘Oh, I know I’m a fool! I know he is nothing more than a boy, and a silly boy at that, but when he is with me I feel like a girl myself. I feel as if we are two youngsters, in love and with nothing to fear. He makes me feel reckless! He makes me feel enchanted! He makes me feel in love!’
It was as if the Howard spell of coldness had been broken, smashed like a mirror, and everything was real and bright. I laughed with her and snatched up her hands and looked into her face. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ I demanded. ‘Falling in love? Isn’t it the most wonderful, wonderful thing?’
She pulled her hands away. ‘Oh, go away, Mary. You are such a child. But yes! Wonderful? Yes! Now don’t simper over me, I can’t stand it.’
George took a hank of her dark hair and twisted it onto the top of her head and admired her face in the mirror. ‘Anne Boleyn in love,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Who’d have believed it?’
‘It’d never have happened if he hadn’t been the greatest man in the kingdom after the king,’ she reminded him. ‘I don’t forget what’s due to me and my family.’
He nodded. ‘I know that, Annamaria. We all knew that you would aim very high. But a Percy! It’s higher than I imagined.’
She leaned forward as if to interrogate her reflection. She cupped her face in her hands. ‘This is my first love. My first and ever love.’
‘Please God that you are lucky and that it is your last love as well as your first,’ George said, suddenly sober.
Her dark eyes met his in the mirror. ‘Please God,’ she said. ‘I want nothing more in my life but Henry Percy. With that I would be content. Oh – George, I cannot tell you. If I can have and hold Henry Percy I will be so very content.’
Henry Percy came, at Anne’s bidding, to the queen’s rooms at noon the next day. She had chosen her time with care. The ladies had all gone to Mass, and we had the rooms to ourselves. Henry Percy came in and looked around, surprised at the silence and emptiness. Anne went up to him and took both his hands in hers. I thought for a moment that he looked, not so much courted as hunted.
‘My love,’ Anne said, and at the sound of her voice the boy’s face warmed; his courage came back to him.
‘Anne,’ he said softly.
His hand fumbled in the pocket of his padded breeches, he drew a ring out of an inner pocket. From my station in the windowseat I could see the wink of a red ruby – the symbol of a virtuous woman.
‘For you,’ he said softly.
Anne took his hand. ‘Do you want to plight our troth now, before witnesses?’ she asked.
He gulped a little. ‘Yes, I do.’
She glowed at him. ‘Do it then.’
He glanced at George and me as if he thought one of us might stop him.
George and I smiled encouragingly, the Boleyn smile: a pair of pleasant snakes.
‘I, Henry Percy, take thee, Anne Boleyn, to be my lawful wedded wife,’ he said, taking Anne by the hand.
‘I, Anne Boleyn, take thee, Henry Percy, to be my lawful wedded husband,’ she said, her voice steadier than his.
He found the third finger of her left hand. ‘With this ring I promise myself to you,’ he said quietly, and slipped it on her finger. It was too loose. She clenched a fist to hold it on.
‘With this ring, I take you,’ she replied.
He bent his head, he kissed her. When she turned her face to me her eyes were hazy with desire.
‘Leave us,’ she said in a low voice.
We gave them two hours, and then we heard, down the stone corridors, the queen and her ladies coming back from Mass. We knocked loudly on the door in the rhythm that meant ‘Boleyn!’ and we knew that Anne, even in a sated sleep, would hear it and jump up. But when we opened the door and went in, she and Henry Percy were composing a madrigal. She was playing the lute and he was singing the words they had written together. Their heads were very close so that they might both see the hand-written music on the stand, but excepting that intimacy, they were as they had been any day these last three months.
Anne smiled at me as George and I came into the room, followed by the queen’s ladies.
‘We have written such a pretty air, it has taken us all the morning,’ Anne said sweetly.
‘And what is it called?’ George asked.
‘“Merrily, merrily”,’ Anne replied. ‘It’s called “Merrily Merrily and Onward We Go”.’
That night it was Anne who left our bedchamber. She threw a dark cloak over her gown and went to the door as the palace tower bell rang for midnight.
‘Where are you going at this time of night?’ I demanded, scandalised.
Her pale face looked out at me from under the dark hood. ‘To my husband,’ she said simply.
‘Anne, you cannot,’ I said, aghast. ‘You will get caught and you will be ruined.’
‘We are betrothed in the sight of God and before witnesses. That’s as good as a marriage, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said unwillingly.
‘A marriage could be overthrown for non-consummation, couldn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘So I’m making it fast,’ she said. ‘Not even the Percy family will be able to wriggle out of it when Henry and I tell them that we are wedded and bedded.’
I kneeled up in the bed, imploring her to stay. ‘But Anne, if someone sees you!’
‘They won’t,’ she said.
‘When the Percys know that you and he have been slipping out at midnight!’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t see the how or where makes much difference. As long as it is done.’
‘If it should come to nothing –’ I broke off at the blaze of her eyes. In one stride she was across the room and she had her hands at the neck of my nightdress, twisting it against my throat. ‘That is why I am doing this,’ she hissed. ‘Fool that you are. So that it does not come to nothing. So that no-one can ever say that it was nothing. So that it is signed and sealed. Wedded and bedded. Done without possibility of denial. Now you sleep. I shall be back in the early hours. Long before dawn. But I shall go now.’
I nodded and said not a word until her hand was on the ring of the door latch. ‘But Anne, do you love him?’ I asked curiously.
The curve