The Queen of Subtleties

‘That’s what Silvester says: Smeaton’s always like that. All chivalrous.’ Said as if it’s a dirty word. Which is a new one on me.

‘And since when has there been anything wrong with chivalry?’

He still doesn’t look up. ‘Oh, come on, Lucy,’ he murmurs, low-key, casual. ‘He’s like some fifteenth-century knight. Love and devotion. He’s kidding himself. This is the real world.’

Is it?

‘Of course, he’d like to be a knight; but he’s the son of a seamstress, you know, and a Dutch father who’s dead. You won’t know, of course, because he doesn’t like it known.’

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

He could at least look at me. If he’s going to be that rude about a friend of mine, he could at least look at me when he does it. ‘So? At least he knows who he’s the son of.’

Richard’s expression as he does look up isn’t the one I’m already cringing from. It’s one of surprise. ‘Oh, Lucy.’ And disappointment has softened his voice. ‘That was a bit close to the bone.’

But he deserved it; he deserved it, didn’t he? ‘Well, don’t be so quick to judge people!’

How on earth did I bring him up to be so shallow? Why have I always let him get away with it?

He makes a small show of giving in gracefully. Resumes his work. Says nothing.

Me, likewise.

So, we’re not speaking. Which has never happened before.

Anne Boleyn (#ulink_3e2007a5-e1a7-5c53-8225-7bc90b8083da)

We moved into 1527 and it seemed that the rain that’d started a year earlier still didn’t let up. Spring was slow off the ground. Our rooms were choked with woodsmoke, our clothes bitter-smelling with it. I remember my brother’s wife at a window, wondering, ‘When will this weather break?’ I remember the longing in her voice. The weather didn’t bother me greatly; I was happy and had so much to look forward to. Henry would be divorced, that year, and he’d marry me. I’d be queen, we’d have a baby prince, and there would be a long-overdue new beginning: a young, strong monarchy, busy and respected in Europe. There’d be reform, if I had my way, and of course I would have my way. I wasn’t interested in looking out of windows at monotonous, drenching rain.

Mid-May, when summer should have been peeking from the trees but was in fact still slithering in the mud, Henry asked for an ecclesiastical court to meet in secret to rule his marriage invalid. Wolsey, Warham—the old archbishop—and the other bishops, and a lot of church lawyers, they were all there: the great and the good, in most people’s view, although I can think of other ways to describe them. They informed Henry that he’d be called to give evidence. He did his homework. He was nervous, and asked me to listen to him rehearsing his case. As far as I could see, there was no case to answer; it was open and shut: she was no wife to him. And anyway, why answer to them? ‘Who’s king?’ I’d complain. It infuriated me that he had to go scraping and bowing to those old men in their dingy robes.

I was right not to have held them in any esteem. They heard him out (which was big of them), then met twice more (to avail themselves of Henry’s ample hospitality), before announcing on the very last day of May that they weren’t men enough to give a ruling without the blessing of the Pope. Well, there was one problem with that: three weeks earlier, Rome and the Pope had been taken by the Imperial Army. Catherine’s own nephew, the emperor, was holding the Pope captive. How likely was it that the Pope could rule unfavourably for his captor’s aunt?

Nevertheless, that was what Wolsey reckoned we had to have: the Pope’s permission. But then off he went to France—with boatloads of servants—on some vague, alliance-building, anti-Spanish mission. I can’t say I missed him, but I was annoyed by the delay he was causing us. Although Henry knew, by now, not to bother asking me to spend the nights with him, there were evenings now when I made a point of retiring early. You know the deal, my sour glance said; sort it out.

I didn’t have all that many opportunities for sweeping exits, though, because Henry insisted I spend much of my time back at Hever. Something I hadn’t foreseen was that Henry now had to look respectable. He was a king anxious about his sinful marriage; not an adulterer. No one should know about me; although of course everyone did. Or, they knew something; but perhaps, like Wolsey, they assumed I was a distraction for Henry before the next royal marriage. Nevertheless, they were to see no distractions. Just a distraught, godly king.

So, back to Hever for me while a lot of incompetent, Pope-obsessed old men mishandled Henry’s case for him. Although I love Hever, I’d have put up more of a fight if I’d known that I’d end up spending the best part of two years of the prime of my life holed up there. Back and forth to Hever, where I had only my mother and our maids for daily company. Visiting the parish sick and giving to the parish poor. Lacemaking and lute-playing. Looking at the view. Looking into the moat. Hoping hard for visitors—as long as they didn’t include Auntie Liz, who came regularly to treat us to complaints about her estranged husband—my Uncle Norfolk—and his new girlfriend. No matter that he was my mother’s brother and my uncle; we were a captive audience, so we’d do. She’d exhausted everyone else’s goodwill with her lies about Beth (a washerwoman? She’d worked in their household, yes, but as nanny, and the children adored her). Every visit, she pressed us for our support, and I suppose we let her think she had it—raising our eyebrows, sighing indignantly—just to get rid of her. The truth is that the one human move Uncle Norfolk has ever made, in his whole life, was to leave that thin-lipped, bile-sodden Stafford-daughter, to take his children with him away from their slap-happy mother, and set up home with Beth.

I’d sit there, across from Auntie Liz, thinking how there’d bound to be this kind of carry-on from Fat Cath once she knew about me. But at least I wouldn’t be the one to have to hear it. Indeed, as few people as possible should hear anything of it. To contain her protests, I decided, Henry should present their separation as a fait accompli.

Tell her nothing, I’d say.

And he’d look lily-livered.

‘Henry…’

And he’d smile, but look away.

Mid-June, while I was stuck at Hever and unable to stop him, he did it: he went to her, told her that their marriage seemed to be invalid and would have to be annulled. Imagine a female version of the Pope being told that she’d been living in sin for nearly twenty years. She reacted as you’d expect: cried. A lot. And he—stupid sod—did what you’d predict: got flustered. Giving her time to dry those tears and insist that what she’d said at the time was true: she’d never slept with his brother; so, that first marriage was no marriage at all. She seemed to be blaming it all on Wolsey; she couldn’t believe it of Henry.

Henry has never been any good at secrets. He’d told my father our plans back before those ineffectual meetings of the bishops in May.

‘I’ve told your father,’ he’d owned up, somehow both shamefaced and proud.

‘You’ve told my father?’

When I next saw my father, the next day, on our way into the council chamber to dine, I didn’t quite know what to say. ‘You’ve heard,’ was what I managed. My mother wouldn’t yet know: she was at Hever, and my father hadn’t been back there for a couple of weeks. And no way would he have trusted the news to a letter, to servants’ hands. I suppose I wasn’t quite sure what he’d think. He’s an intensely ambitious man, so of course he’d relish the prospect of his daughter as queen. But as befits the highest of achievers, he’s a formidable pragmatist. He requires everything to run smoothly. No unnecessary risks. He might have been anticipating trouble that I couldn’t foresee, and trouble would have been the last thing he’d want for the Boleyns. As it happened, though, he nodded appreciatively. Slightly incredulous, I thought. ‘Good move,’ was all he said.

He’d already told Uncle Norfolk, his brother-in-law: this I discovered when my uncle immediately left his place at his table and came over to say, ‘I’ve heard.’ That sharp-toothed smile on that pointed face. Admiration, avarice, and envy, all at once. No incredulity. ‘Congratulations,’ he whispered. ‘This really is something.’ For us, he meant; for our families. And then, ‘We’ll have Wolsey running for cover, won’t we,’ and there was that phlegmy laugh of his as he turned and was on his way.

They thought they were the first to know, those two, my father and my uncle, but of course I’d already told my brother, George. He’d been impatient at my previous reticence with Henry. He was as ambitious as my father and me; but he lacked, on the one hand, my father’s caution and, on the other, my desire to play for the highest stakes. He simply took whatever—or whomever—was available. He was good at seeing what might be available to him, and making sure that it—or he, or she—then was. He couldn’t appreciate what would be wrong with being Henry’s mistress. ‘Listen,’ I’d told him, often enough: ‘I want a proper marriage.’ We both knew what that meant: a marriage nothing like his. It had been regarded as a good marriage, the marriage between the Boleyn boy and the Parker girl, but it wasn’t good for them. Not that I cared about her. They’d married at parental instigation, back when I was heartsick over Harry Percy. Three years had passed and there was no pretence now that there was anything between them. At the time, George had tried to persuade me that she perhaps wasn’t all that bad, and, when I’d sceptically raised an eyebrow, admitted, ‘Well, what difference does it make, anyway.’ Sure enough, he’d continued womanizing and God knows what else. What he hadn’t bargained for was her open, much-voiced displeasure. I don’t know what she’d expected, marrying George.

Make no mistake, I had no sympathy for her and if I’d known then what I know now, I’d have wished her more than marital unhappiness. I might not have had the gift of foresight, but I did have sharp instincts and I knew from the beginning to mistrust her. She tried to be sisterly with me, at first. Well, I had one sister and I didn’t need another. More importantly, I had a brother, and my allegiance was to him. And I could sense that he’d need it before long. In those early days, she’d bring me things. Posies. Do I seem like someone who has any use for posies? There was a heaviness to it, this present-giving. Ceremony, bribery: Look, I’ve brought you something.

What she wanted from me was Thank you, thank you, thank you, although I doubt there’d ever have been enough thanks. And she’d have liked, Here in return is just a little something I’ve picked for you, cooked for you, sewn for you, grown for you.

What she was after was attention. Conspiracy, even.

Well, no. No way.

We’re friends, you and I, she’d say, aren’t we. Desperate, pushing it, ready for the spurning which she’d wanted all along so that she could say, That Boleyn bitch…which was what she’d always thought. And with that, she could claim herself some more attention, build herself some more conspiracy. In her view, George and I were in league against her and she was keen to out-do us.

When Henry agreed to go for a divorce, George was who I told. I tracked him down to Francis’s room; he was playing poker with Francis, Billy and Harry Norris. The room stank of ale and I’d have liked to open the window, but I circled the table—only Harry glancing up at me, a half-smile—to whisper in my brother’s ear, ‘It’s on.’

‘Hmm?’

‘The wedding,’ I breathed, so that no one else could hear. ‘Mine and Henry’s.’

Is it possible that someone sitting completely still can turn even more so? Because that’s what he did. All except the eyes—those big, dark Boleyn-eyes—which swooped up to mine.

‘Anne,’ this was Francis, for once oblivious, merely irritated at the interruption; he spoke without raising his one uncovered eye, ‘fuck off

It was George who was waiting to greet me at the gatehouse at Beaulieu, that August, after Henry had finally relented and allowed me out of confinement at Hever to join him and the select few of his household spending the month there. George came up the avenue to meet us, calling, ‘Well, look who it is!’

‘Yes,’ I said, as he helped me down, ‘your future queen—’ which made him laugh—‘and, would you believe, her chaperone.’ I nodded towards Mum, who bridled. Poor Mum, she had been Henry’s one condition, and I doubt the prospect was all that enticing for her. George kissed her, reassured her, ‘You’ll love it; it’s lovely, here.’

She did; it was. Despite the dank weather—cloud-stuffed skies, splashy summer rain—it was an idyll. The garden’s resilient lavender borders puffed scent when brushed by our skirts, and we grew as sleepy on it as if we were sitting in sunshine. Henry went hunting all day, every day. Sometimes I joined him, sometimes I chose to stay. I was among friends. One afternoon in particular I remember: cherry-picking with Harry Norris, who’d earlier had one of his headaches and missed the hunt. Also there in the orchard—also cherry-picking—was the confectioner’s boy; or that’s who he said he was, when we asked him. Funny little kid. All eyes. All ears, no doubt, while Harry and I gossiped. But then, quite abruptly, he seemed self-absorbed, up to something. When we challenged him, he reluctantly opened his cupped hands to reveal a scrawny fledgling.

‘Something’s wrong with it,’ he confided, hushed, pained. ‘It can’t fly.’

Harry took a closer look. ‘It’s scared,’ he said, gently. ‘It’s a baby. That’s all. We have to let it go.’

The boy looked panic-stricken. ‘But it can’t fly.’

‘It will,’ Harry reassured him. ‘Chances are, it will.’

Dear Harry, he was a favourite of my mother’s, a feeling which was reciprocated. She was the oldest person at Beaulieu, a distinction which she learned to play up to and was amply rewarded for, all the boys being fond of her. Gone were the likes of Uncle Norfolk—to Beth, in his case, at Kenning Hall—and of course Wolsey was a million miles away, in France. We could be ourselves. Our meals were gloriously informal—no separate chambers—and we all dined on whatever Henry hauled home with him. Henry could eat uninterrupted by Wolsey’s usual end-of-day missives: no dictating a response, his meal going cold while he did so. We ate so well; it was impossible to give credence to the occasional reports we had from London of people crushed to death around bread carts. Impossible, too, out there in the calm, empty countryside, to worry about the reportedly rampaging sweating sickness. We were safe. Henry had brought his confectioner with him and her stunning, glinting work was brought into us every evening after dinner. Silly on sugar, with specks of goldleaf between our teeth and under our fingernails, we all danced and talked for hours, laughing at Henry’s fool’s dry, witty commentary on us.