The queen started. ‘How amazed we are!’ she said warmly. ‘And what a delight!’
The king’s companions and friends followed their master into the room. My brother George came in first, checked on the threshold at the sight of Anne, held his pleasure hidden behind his handsome courtier’s face, and bowed low over the queen’s hand. ‘Majesty.’ He breathed on her fingers. ‘I have been in the sun all the morning but I am only dazzled now.’
She smiled her small polite smile as she gazed down at his bent dark curly head. ‘You may greet your sister.’
‘Mary is here?’ George asked indifferently, as if he had not seen us both.
‘Your other sister, Anne,’ the queen corrected him. A small gesture from her hand, heavy with rings, indicated that the two of us should step forward. George swept us a bow without moving from the prime place near the throne.
‘Has she changed much?’ the queen asked.
George smiled. ‘I hope she will change more with a model such as you before her eyes.’
The queen gave a little laugh. ‘Very pretty,’ she said appreciatively, and waved him towards us.
‘Hello, little Miss Beautiful,’ he said to Anne. ‘Hello, Mistress Beautiful,’ to me.
Anne regarded him from under her dark eyelashes. ‘I wish I could hug you,’ she said.
‘We’ll go out, as soon as we can,’ George decreed. ‘You look well, Annamaria.’
‘I am well,’ she said. ‘And you?’
‘Never better.’
‘What’s little Mary’s husband like?’ she asked curiously, watching William as he entered and bowed over the queen’s hand.
‘Great-grandson of the third Earl of Somerset, and very high in the king’s favour.’ George volunteered the only matters of interest: his family connections and his closeness to the throne. ‘She’s done well. Did you know you were brought home to be married, Anne?’
‘Father hasn’t said who.’
‘I think you’re to go to Ormonde,’ George said.
‘A countess,’ Anne said with a triumphant smile to me.
‘Only Irish,’ I rejoined at once.
My husband stepped back from the queen’s chair, caught sight of us, and then raised an eyebrow at Anne’s intense provocative stare. The king took his seat beside the queen and looked around the room.
‘My dear Mary Carey’s sister has come to join our company,’ the queen said. ‘This is Anne Boleyn.’
‘George’s sister?’ the king asked.
My brother bowed. ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
The king smiled at Anne. She dropped him a curtsey straight down, like a bucket in a well, head up, and a small challenging smile on her lips. The king was not taken, he liked easy women, he liked smiling women. He did not like women who fixed him with a dark challenging gaze.
‘And are you happy to be with your sister again?’ he asked me.
I dipped a low curtsey and came up a little flushed. ‘Of course, Your Majesty,’ I said sweetly. ‘What girl would not long for the company of a sister like Anne?’
His eyebrows twitched together a little at that. He preferred the open bawdy humour of men to the barbed wit of women. He looked from me to Anne’s slightly quizzical expression and then he got the joke and laughed out loud, and snapped his fingers and held out his hand to me. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘No-one can overshadow the bride in her early years of wedded bliss. And both Carey and I have a preference for fair-haired women.’
Everyone laughed at that, especially Anne who was dark, and the queen whose auburn hair had faded to brown and grey. They would have been fools to do anything but laugh heartily at the king’s pleasantry. And I laughed as well, with more joy in my heart than they had in theirs, I should think.
The musicians played an opening chord, and Henry drew me to him. ‘You’re a very pretty girl,’ he said approvingly. ‘Carey tells me that he so likes a young bride that he’ll never bed any but twelve-year-old virgins ever again.’
It was hard to keep my chin up and my smile on my face. We turned in the dance and the king smiled down on me.
‘He’s a lucky man,’ he said graciously.
‘He is lucky to have your favour,’ I started, stumbling towards a compliment.
‘Luckier to have yours, I should think!’ he said with a sudden bellow of laughter. Then he swept me into a dance, and I whirled down the line of dancers and saw my brother’s quick glance of approval, and what was sweeter still: Anne’s envious eyes as the King of England danced past her with me in his arms.
Anne slipped into the routine of the English court and waited for her wedding. She still had not met her husband-to-be, and the arguments about the dowry and settlements looked as if they would take forever. Not even the influence of Cardinal Wolsey, who had his finger in this as well as every other pie in the bakehouse of England, could speed the business along. In the meantime she flirted as elegantly as a Frenchwoman, served the king’s sister with a nonchalant grace, and squandered hours every day in gossiping, riding, and playing with George and me. We were alike in tastes and not far apart in age; I was the baby at fourteen to Anne’s fifteen and George’s nineteen years. We were the closest of kin and yet almost strangers. I had been at the French court with Anne while George had been learning his trade as a courtier in England. Now, reunited, we became known around the court as the three Boleyns, the three delightful Boleyns, and the king would often look round when he was in his private rooms and cry out for the three Boleyns and someone would be sent running from one end of the castle to fetch us.
Our first task in life was to enhance the king’s many entertainments: jousting, tennis, riding, hunting, hawking, dancing. He liked to live in a continual roar of excitement and it was our duty to ensure that he was never bored. But sometimes, very rarely, in the quiet time before dinner, or if it rained and he could not hunt, he would find his own way to the queen’s apartments, and she would put down her sewing or her reading and send us away with a word.
If I lingered I might see her smile at him, in a way that she never smiled at anyone else, not even at her daughter the Princess Mary. And once, when I had entered without realising the king was there, I found him seated at her feet like a lover, with his head tipped back to rest in her lap as she stroked his red-gold curls off his forehead and twisted them round her fingers where they glowed as bright as the rings he had given her when she had been a young princess with hair as bright as his, and he had married her against the advice of everyone.
I tiptoed away without them seeing me. It was so rare that they were alone together that I did not want to be the one to break the spell. I went to find Anne. She was walking in the cold garden with George, a bunch of snowdrops in her hand, her cloak wrapped tight about her.
‘The king is with the queen,’ I said as I joined them. ‘On their own.’
Anne raised an eyebrow. ‘In bed?’ she asked curiously.
I flushed. ‘Of course not, it’s two in the afternoon.’
Anne smiled at me. ‘You must be a happy wife if you think you can’t bed before nightfall.’
George extended his other arm to me. ‘She is a happy wife,’ he said on my behalf. ‘William was telling the king that he had never known a sweeter girl. But what were they doing, Mary?’
‘Just