‘She must be losing hope of it,’ George said. ‘What is she now? Thirty-eight? Thirty-nine?’
‘Only thirty-seven,’ I said indignantly.
‘Does she still have her monthly courses?’
‘Oh George!’
‘Yes she does,’ Anne said, matter-of-factly. ‘But little good they do her. It’s her fault. It can’t be laid at the king’s door with his bastard from Bessie Blount learning to ride his pony.’
‘There’s still plenty of time,’ I said defensively.
‘Time for her to die and him to remarry?’ Anne said thoughtfully. ‘Yes. And she’s not strong, is she?’
‘Anne!’ For once my recoil from her was genuine. ‘That’s vile.’
George glanced around once more to ensure that there was no-one near us in the garden. A couple of Seymour girls were walking with their mother but we paid no attention to them. Their family were our chief rivals for power and advancement, we liked to pretend not to see them.
‘It’s vile but it’s true,’ he said bluntly. ‘Who’s to be the next king if he doesn’t have a son?’
‘Princess Mary could marry,’ I suggested.
‘A foreign prince brought in to rule England? It’d never hold,’ George said. ‘And we can’t tolerate another war for the throne.’
‘Princess Mary could become queen in her own right and not marry,’ I said wildly. ‘Rule as a queen on her own.’
Anne gave a snort of disbelief, her breath a little cloud on the cold air. ‘Oh aye,’ she said derisively. ‘She could ride astride and learn to joust. A girl can’t rule a country like this, the great lords’d eat her alive.’
The three of us paused before the fountain that stood in the centre of the garden. Anne, with her well-trained grace, sat on the rim of the basin and looked into the water, a few goldfish swam hopefully towards her and she pulled off her embroidered glove and dabbled her long fingers in the water. They came up, little mouths gaping, to nibble at the air. George and I watched her, as she watched her own rippling reflection.
‘Does the king think of this?’ she asked her mirrored image.
‘Constantly,’ George answered. ‘There is nothing in the world more important. I think he would legitimise Bessie Blount’s boy and make him heir if there’s no issue from the queen.’
‘A bastard on the throne?’
‘He wasn’t christened Henry Fitzroy for no reason,’ George replied. ‘He’s acknowledged as the king’s own son. If Henry lives long enough to make the country safe for him, if he can get the Seymours to agree, and us Howards, if Wolsey gets the church behind him and the foreign powers … what should stop him?’
‘One little boy, and he a bastard,’ Anne said thoughtfully. ‘One little girl of six, one elderly queen and a king in the prime of his life.’ She looked up at the two of us, dragging her gaze away from her own pale face in the water. ‘What’s going to happen?’ she asked. ‘Something has to happen. What’s it going to be?’
Cardinal Wolsey sent a message to the queen asking us to take part in a masque on Shrove Tuesday which he was to stage at his house, York Place. The queen asked me to read the letter and my voice trembled with excitement over the words: a great masque, a fortress named Chateau Vert, and five ladies to dance with the five knights who would besiege the fort. ‘Oh! Your Majesty …’ I started and then fell silent.
‘Oh! Your Majesty, what?’
‘I was just wondering if I might be allowed to go,’ I said very humbly. ‘To watch the revels.’
‘I think you were wondering a little more than that?’ she asked me with a gleam in her eyes.
‘I was wondering if I might be one of the dancers,’ I confessed. ‘It does sound very wonderful.’
‘Yes, you may be,’ she said. ‘How many ladies does the cardinal command of me?’
‘Five,’ I said quietly. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Anne sit back in her seat and close her eyes for just a moment. I knew exactly what she was doing, I could hear her voice in my head as loudly as if she was shouting: ‘Choose me! Choose me! Choose me!’
It worked. ‘Mistress Anne Boleyn,’ the queen said thoughtfully. ‘The Queen Mary of France, the Countess of Devon, Jane Parker, and you, Mary.’
Anne and I exchanged a rapid glance. We would be an oddly assorted quintet: the king’s aunt, his sister Queen Mary, and the heiress Jane Parker who was likely to be our sister-in-law, if her father and ours could agree her dowry, and the two of us.
‘Will we wear green?’ Anne asked.
The queen smiled at her. ‘Oh, I should think so,’ she said. ‘Mary, why don’t you write a note to the cardinal and tell him that we will be delighted to attend, and ask him to send the master of the revels so that we can all choose costumes and plan our dances?’
‘I’ll do it.’ Anne rose from her chair and went to the table where the pen and ink and paper were ready. ‘Mary has such a cramped hand he will think we are writing a refusal.’
The queen laughed. ‘Ah, the French scholar,’ she said gently. ‘You shall write to the cardinal then, Mistress Boleyn, in your beautiful French, or shall you write to him in Latin?’
Anne’s gaze did not waver. ‘Whichever Your Majesty prefers,’ she said steadily. ‘I am reasonably fluent in both.’
‘Tell him that we are all eager to play our part in his Chateau Vert,’ the queen said smoothly. ‘What a shame you can’t write Spanish.’
The arrival of the master of the revels to teach us our steps for the dance was the signal for a savage battle fought with smiles and the sweetest words as to who would play which role in the masque. In the end the queen herself intervened and gave us our parts without allowing any discussion. She gave me the role of Kindness, the king’s sister Queen Mary got the plum part of Beauty, Jane Parker was Constancy – ‘Well she does cling on so,’ Anne whispered to me. Anne herself was Perseverance. ‘Shows what she thinks of you,’ I whispered back. Anne had the grace to giggle.
We were to be attacked by Indian women – in reality the choristers of the royal chapel – before being rescued by the king and his chosen friends. We were warned that the king would be disguised and we should take great care not to penetrate the transparent ruse of a golden mask strapped on a golden head, taller than anyone else in the room.
It was a great romp in the end, far more fun than I had expected, much more of a play-fight than a dance. George flung rose petals at me and I drenched him with a shower of rosewater. The choristers were just little boys and they got over-excited and attacked the knights and were swung off their feet and spun around and dumped, dizzy and giggly, on the ground. When we ladies came out from the castle and danced with the mystery knights it was the tallest knight who came to dance with me, the king himself, and I, still breathless from my battle with George, and with rose petals in my headdress and my hair, and sugared fruit tumbling out of the folds of my gown, found that I was laughing and giving my hand to him, and dancing with him as if he were an ordinary man and I little more than a kitchen maid at a country romp.
When the signal for the unmasking should have come the king cried out: ‘Play on! Let’s dance some more!’ and instead of turning and taking another