‘She’s watching me,’ I whispered back.
‘Course she is. More to the point he’s watching you. And most important of all, Father and Uncle Howard are watching you, and they expect you to carry yourself as a young woman on the rise. Up you go, Mistress Carey, and all of us go up with you.’
I raised my head at that and I smiled at my brother as if I were carefree. I danced as gracefully as I could, I dipped and turned and twirled under his careful hand. And when I looked up at the king and the queen they were both watching me.
They held a family conference at my uncle Howard’s great house in London. We met in his library where the dark bound books muffled the noise from the streets. Two men in our Howard livery were stationed outside the door to prevent any interruptions, and to ensure that no-one stopped and eavesdropped. We were to discuss family business, family secrets. No-one but a Howard could come near.
I was the very cause and subject of the meeting. I was the hub around which these events would turn. I was the Boleyn pawn that must be played to advantage. Everything was concentrated on me. I felt my very wrists throb with a sense of my own importance, and a contradictory flutter of anxiety that I would fail them.
‘Is she fertile?’ Uncle Howard asked my mother.
‘Her courses are regular enough and she’s a healthy girl.’
My uncle nodded. ‘If the king has her, and she conceives his bastard, then we have much to play for.’ I noticed with a sort of terrified concentration that the fur on the hem of his sleeves brushed against the wood of the table, the richness of his coat took on a lustre from the light of the flames of the fire behind him. ‘She can’t sleep in Carey’s bed any more. The marriage has to be put aside while the king favours her.’
I gave a little gasp. I could not think who would say such a thing to my husband. And besides, we had sworn that we would stay together, that marriage was for the making of children, that God had put us together and no man could put us apart.
‘I don’t …’ I started.
Anne tweaked at my gown. ‘Hush,’ she hissed. The seed pearls on her French hood winked at me like bright-eyed conspirators.
‘I’ll speak to Carey,’ my father said.
George took my hand. ‘If you conceive a child the king has to know that it is his and none other’s.’
‘I can’t be his mistress,’ I whispered back.
‘No choice.’ He shook his head.
‘I can’t do it,’ I said out loud. I gripped tightly on my brother’s comforting clasp and looked down the long dark wood table to my uncle, as sharp as a falcon with black eyes that missed nothing. ‘Sir, I am sorry, but I love the queen. She’s a great lady and I can’t betray her. I promised before God to cleave only to my husband, and surely I shouldn’t betray him? I know the king is the king; but you can’t want me to? Surely? Sir, I can’t do it.’
He did not answer me. Such was his power that he did not even consider replying. ‘What am I supposed to do with this delicate conscience?’ he asked the air above the table.
‘Leave it to me,’ Anne said simply. ‘I can explain things to Mary.’
‘You’re a little young for the task of tutor.’
She met his look with her quiet confidence. ‘I was reared in the most fashionable court in the world,’ she said. ‘And I was not idle. I watched everything. I learned all there was to see. I know what is needed here, and I can teach Mary how to behave.’
He hesitated for a moment. ‘You had better not have studied flirtation too closely, Miss Anne.’
Her serenity was that of a nun. ‘Of course not.’
I felt my shoulder lift, as if I would shrug her away. ‘I don’t see why I should do what Anne says.’
I had disappeared, though this whole meeting was supposed to be about me. Anne had stolen their attention. ‘Well, I shall trust you to coach your sister. George, you too. You know how the king is with women, keep Mary in his sight.’
They nodded. There was a brief silence.
‘I’ll speak with Carey’s father,’ my father volunteered. ‘William will be expecting it. He’s no fool.’
My uncle glanced down the table to Anne and George where they stood either side of me, more like jailers than friends. ‘You help your sister,’ he ordered them. ‘Whatever she needs to ensnare the king, you give her. Whatever arts she needs, whatever goods she should have, whatever skills she lacks, you get them for her. We are looking to the two of you to get her into his bed. Don’t forget it. There will be great rewards. But if you fail, there will be nothing for us at all. Remember it.’
My parting with my husband was curiously painful. I walked into our bedroom as my maid was packing my things to take them to the queen’s rooms. He stood amid the chaos of shoes and gowns thrown on the bed, and cloaks tossed over chairs, and jewel boxes everywhere; and his young face showed his shock.
‘I see you are on the rise, madam.’
He was a handsome young man, one that any woman might have favoured. I thought that if we had not been ordered by our families into this marriage and now out of it that we might have liked each other. ‘I am sorry,’ I said awkwardly. ‘You know that I have to do what my uncle and my father tell me.’
‘I know that,’ he said bluntly. ‘I have to do what they all order as well.’
To my relief, Anne appeared in the doorway, her mischievous smile very bright. ‘How now, William Carey? Well met!’ It seemed as if it were her greatest joy to see her brother-in-law amid the mess of my things and the wreckage of his own hopes for a marriage and a son.
‘Anne Boleyn.’ He bowed briefly. ‘Have you come to help your sister onwards and upwards?’
‘Of course.’ She gleamed at him. ‘As we all should do. None of us will suffer if Mary is favoured.’
She held his gaze for one fearless moment, and it was he who turned away to look out of the window. ‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘The king bids me to go hunting with him.’ He hesitated a moment and then he came across the room to where I stood surrounded by the scatterings of my wardrobe. Gently, he took my hand and kissed it. ‘I am sorry for you. And I am sorry for me. When you are sent back to me, perhaps a month from now, perhaps a year, I will try to remember this day, and you looking like a child, a little lost among all these clothes. I will try to remember that you were innocent of any plotting; that today at least, you were more a girl than a Boleyn.’
The queen observed that I was now a single woman, lodged with Anne as my bedfellow in a little room off her chambers, without comment. Her outward manner to me changed not at all. She remained courteous and quiet-spoken. If she wanted me to do something for her: write a note, sing, take her lap dog from the room, or send a message, she asked me as politely as she had ever done. But she never again asked me to read to her from the Bible, she never asked me to sit at her feet while she sewed, she never blessed me when I went to bed. I was no longer her favourite little maid.
It was a relief to go to bed at night with Anne. We drew the curtains around us so that we were safe to whisper in the shadowy darkness without being overheard and it was like France in the days of our childhood. Sometimes George would leave the king’s rooms and come to find us, and climb onto the high bed, balance his candle perilously on the bedhead, and bring out his pack of cards or his dice and play with us while the other girls in nearby rooms slept,