The Other Boleyn Girl Part 5

"Go on," Anne whispered. "You've got to get it." She pushed me in the small of my back and I stepped forward.

The queen dropped it as I reached her, I caught it as it fell. It looked a sorry bit of cloth, something you might wash a floor with.

"Thank you," I said humbly.

At dinner the king hardly looked at me. The accident had thrown him into the melancholy that was such a characteristic of his father, which his courtiers too were learning to fear.

The queen could not have been more pleasant and more entertaining. But no conversation, no charming smiles, no music could lift his spirits. He watched the antics of his Fool without laughing, he listened to the musicians and drank deep. The queen could do nothing to cheer him, because she was partly the cause of his ill-humor. He was looking at her as a woman near her change of life, he saw Death at her shoulder. She might live for a dozen years more, she might live for a score. Death was even now drying up her courses and putting the lines on her face. The queen was heading toward old age and she had made no heirs to follow them. They might joust and sing and dance and play all the day but if the king did not put a boy into Wales as prince then he had failed in his greatest, most fundamental duty to the kingdom. And a b.a.s.t.a.r.d on Bessie Blount would not do.

"I am sure that Charles Brandon will soon be well again," the queen volunteered. There were sugared plums on the table and a rich sweet wine. She took a sip but I thought that she had little relish for it while her husband sat beside her with a face so drawn and dark that he could have been his father who had never liked her. "You must not feel that you did wrong, Henry. It was a fair joust. And you've taken hits from him before, G.o.d knows."

He turned in his chair and looked at her. She looked back at him and I saw the smile drain from her face at the coldness of his stare. She did not ask him what was the matter. She was too old and wise ever to ask an angry man what was troubling him. Instead, she smiled, a dauntless endearing smile, and she raised her gla.s.s to him.

"Your health, Henry," she said with her warm accent. "Your health and I must thank G.o.d that it was not you that was hurt today. Before now, I have been the one running from the pavilion to the lists with my heart half broken with fear; and though I am sorry for your sister Queen Mary, I have to be glad that it was not you that was hurt today."

"Now that," Anne said in my ear, "that is masterly." is masterly."

It worked. Henry, seduced by the thought of a woman sick with fear over his well-being, lost his dark sulky look. "I would never cause you a moment of uneasiness."

"My husband, you have caused me days and nights of them," Queen Katherine said, smiling. "But as long as you are well and happy, and as long as you come home at the end of it all; why should I complain?"

"Aha," Anne said quietly. "And so she gives him permission and your sting is drawn."

"What d'you mean?" I asked.

"Wake up," Anne said brutally. "Don't you see? She's called him out of his bad temper and she has told him that he can have you, as long as he comes home afterward."

I watched him lift his gla.s.s in a return toast to her.

"So what happens next?" I asked. "Since you know everything?"

"Oh he has you for a while," she said negligently. "But you won't come between them. You won't hold him. She's old, I grant you. But she can act as if she adores him and he needs that. And when he was little more than a boy she was the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. It'll take a lot to overcome that. I doubt that you're the woman to do it. You're pretty enough and half in love with him, which is helpful, but I doubt that a woman such as you could command him."

"Who could do it?" I demanded, stung by her dismissal of me. "You, I suppose?"

She looked at the two of them as if she were a siege engineer measuring a wall. There was nothing in her face but curiosity and professional expertise. "I might," she said. "But it would be a difficult project."

"It's me that he wants, not you," I reminded her. "He asked for my favor. He wore my kerchief under his breastplate."

"He dropped it and forgot it," Anne pointed out with her usual cruel accuracy. "And anyway, what he wants is not the issue. He's greedy and he's spoiled. He could be made to want almost anything. But you'll never be able to do that."

"Why should I not do that?" I demanded pa.s.sionately. "What makes you think that you could hold him and I could not?"

Anne looked at me with her perfectly beautiful face as lovely as if it were carved from ice. "Because the woman who manages him will be one who never stops for a moment remembering that she is there for strategy. You are all ready for the pleasures of bed and board. But the woman who manages Henry will know that her pleasure must be in managing his thoughts, every minute of the day. It would not be a marriage of sensual l.u.s.t at all, though Henry would think that was what he was getting. It would be an affair of unending skill."

The dinner ended at about five o'clock on the cool April evening and they brought the horses around to the front of the house so that we could say good-bye to our host and mount and ride back to Eltham Palace. As we left the banqueting tables I saw the servants tipping the leftover loaves and meats into great panniers which would be sold at a discount at the kitchen door. There was a trail of extravagance and dishonesty and waste that followed the king round the country like slime behind a snail. The poor people who had come to watch the jousting and stayed on to watch the court dine now gathered at the kitchen door to collect some food from the feast. They would be given the broken meats: the slicings from the loaves, the off-cuts from the meats, the puddings which had been half-eaten. Nothing would be wasted, the poor would take anything. They were as economical as keeping a pig.

It was these perks that made a place in the king's household such a joy for his servants. In every place, every servant could perform a little cheat, put a little by. The lowliest server in the kitchen had a little business in crusts of the pastry from the pies, in lard from the basting, in the juices of the gravy. My father was at the top of this heap of off-cuts, now that he was controller of the king's household: he would watch the slice that everyone took of their bit of business, and he would take a slice of his own. Even the trade of lady in waiting who looks as if she is there to provide company and little services for the queen is well-placed to seduce the king under her mistress's nose, and cause her the most grief that one woman can cause to another. She too has her price. She too has her secret work which takes place after the main dinner is over and when the company are looking the other way, and which trades in off-cuts of promises and forgotten sweetmeats of love-play.

We rode home as the light faded from the sky and it grew gray and cool. I was glad of my cloak which I tied round me, but I kept my hood pushed back so that I could see the way before me and the darkening skies above me, and the little pin-p.r.i.c.ks of stars showing in the pale gray sky. We had been riding for half the journey when the king's horse came alongside mine.

"Did you enjoy your day?" he asked.

"You dropped my kerchief," I said sulkily. "Your page gave it to Queen Mary and she gave it to Queen Katherine. She knew it at once. She gave it back to me."

"And so?"

I should have thought of the small humiliations which Queen Katherine managed, as part of the duty of queens.h.i.+p. She never complained to her husband. She took her troubles to G.o.d; and only then in a very low whispered prayer.

"I felt dreadful," I said. "I should never have given it to you in the first place."

"Well now you have it back," he said without sympathy. "If it was so precious."

"It's not that it was precious," I pursued. "It's that she knew without a doubt that it was mine. She gave it back to me in front of all the ladies. She dropped it to the ground, it would have fallen to the floor if I had not caught it."

"So what has changed?" he demanded, his voice very hard, his face suddenly ugly and unsmiling. "So what is the difficulty? She has seen us dancing together and talking together. She has seen me seeking your company, you have been handclasped with me before her very eyes. You didn't come to me then with your complaints and your nagging."

"I'm not nagging!" I said, stung.

"Yes you are," he said flatly. "Without cause, and, may I say, without position. You are not my mistress, madam, nor my wife. I don't listen to complaints about my behavior from anyone else. I am the King of England. If you don't like how I behave then there is always France. You could always go back to the French court."

"Your Majesty...I..."

He spurred his horse and it went into a trot and then into a canter. "I give you goodnight," he said over his shoulder and he rode away from me with his cloak in a flurry and the plume in his hat streaming, and he left me with nothing to say to him, no way to call him back.

I would not speak to Anne that night though she marched me in silence from the queen's rooms to our own and expected a full account of everything that had been said and done.

"I won't say," I said stubbornly. "Leave me alone."

Anne took off her hood and started to unplait her hair. I jumped onto the bed, threw off my gown, pulled on my night s.h.i.+ft and slipped between the sheets without brus.h.i.+ng my hair or even was.h.i.+ng my face.

"You're surely not going to bed like that," Anne said, scandalized.

"For G.o.d's sake," I said into the pillow, "leave me alone."

"What did he...?" Anne started as she slid into bed beside me.

"I won't say. So don't ask."

She nodded, turned and blew out her candle.

The smell of the smoke from the snuffed wick blew toward me. It smelled like the scent of grief. In the darkness, s.h.i.+elded from Anne's scrutiny, I turned over, lay on my back staring up at the tester above my head and considered what would happen if the king were so angry that he never looked at me again.

My face felt cold. I put my hand to my cheeks and found that they were wet with tears. I rubbed my face on the sheet.

"What is it now?" Anne asked sleepily.

"Nothing."

"You lost him," Uncle Howard said accusingly. He looked down the long wooden dining table in the great hall at Eltham Palace. Our retainers stood on guard at the doors behind us, there was no one in the hall but a couple of wolfhounds and a boy asleep in the ashes of the fire. Our men in Howard livery stood at the doors at the far end. The palace, the king's own palace, had been made secure for the Howards so that we could plot in private.

"You had him in your hand and you lost him. What did you do wrong?"

I shook my head. It was too secret to spill on the unyielding surface of the high table, to offer up to flint-faced Uncle Howard.

"I want an answer," he said. "You lost him. He hasn't looked at you for a week. What have you done wrong?"

"Nothing," I whispered.

"You must have done something. At the jousting he had your kerchief under his breastplate. You must have done something to upset him after that."

I shot a reproachful look at my brother George: the only person who could have told Uncle Howard about my scarf. He shrugged and made an apologetic face.

"The king dropped it and his page gave my scarf to Queen Mary," I said, my throat tight with nervousness and distress.

"So?" my father said sharply.

"She gave it to the queen. The queen returned it to me." I looked from one stern face to another. "They all knew what it meant," I said despairingly. "When we rode home I told him that I was unhappy at him letting my favor be found."

Uncle Howard exhaled, my father slapped the table. My mother turned her head away as if she could hardly bear to look at me.

"For G.o.d's sake." Uncle Howard glared at my mother. "You a.s.sured me that she had been properly brought up. Half her life spent in the French court and she whines at him as if she were a shepherd girl behind a haystack?"

"How could you?" my mother asked simply.

I flushed and dropped my head until I could see the reflection of my own unhappy face in the polished surface of the table. "I didn't mean to say the wrong thing," I whispered. "I'm sorry."

"It's not that bad," George interceded. "You're taking too dark a view. He won't stay angry for long."

"He sulks like a bear," my uncle snapped. "Don't you think there are Seymour girls dancing for him at this very moment?"

"None as pretty as Mary," my brother maintained. "He'll forget that she ever said a word out of place. He might even like her for it. It shows she's not overly groomed. It shows there's a bit of pa.s.sion there."

My father nodded, a little consoled, but my uncle drummed the table with his long fingers. "What should we do?"

"Take her away." Anne spoke suddenly. She drew attention at once in the way that a late speaker always does, but the confidence in her voice was riveting.

"Away?" he asked.

"Yes. Send her down to Hever. Tell him that she's ill. Let him imagine her dying of grief."

"And then?"

"And then he'll want her back. She'll be able to command what she likes. All she has to do-" Anne gleamed her spiteful little smile "-All she has to do when she returns is to behave so well that she enchants the most educated, the most witty, the most handsome prince in Christendom. D'you think she can do it?" she has to do when she returns is to behave so well that she enchants the most educated, the most witty, the most handsome prince in Christendom. D'you think she can do it?"

There was a cold silence while my mother and my father and my Uncle Howard and even George all inspected me in silence.

"Neither do I," Anne said smugly. "But I can coach her well enough to get her into his bed, and whatever happens to her after that is in the hands of G.o.d."

Uncle Howard looked intently at Anne. "Can you coach her in how to keep him?" he asked.

She raised her head and smiled at him, the very picture of confidence. "Of course, for a while," she said. "He's only a man after all."

Uncle Howard laughed shortly at the casual dismissal of his s.e.x. "You have a care," he urged. "We men are not where we are today because of some sort of accident. We chose to get into the great places of power, despite the desires of women; and we chose to use those places to make laws which will hold us there forever."

"True enough," Anne granted. "But we're not talking of high policy. We're talking of catching the king's desire. She just has to catch him and hold him for long enough for him to make a son on her, a royal Howard b.a.s.t.a.r.d. What more could we ask?"

"And she can do that?"

"She can learn," Anne said. "She's halfway there. She is his choice, after all." The little shrug she gave indicated that she did not think much of the king's choice.

There was a silence. Uncle Howard's attention had moved from me and my future as the brood mare for the family. Instead he was looking at Anne as if he had seen her for the first time. "Not many maids of your age think as clearly as you."

She smiled at him. "I'm a Howard like you."

"I'm surprised you don't try for him yourself."

"I thought of it," she said honestly. "Any woman in England today would be bound to think of it."

"But?" he prompted her.

"I'm a Howard," she repeated. "What matters is that one of us catches the king. It hardly matters which one. If his taste is for Mary and she has his acknowledged son then my family becomes the first in the kingdom. Without rival. And we can do it. We can manage the king."

Uncle Howard nodded. He knew that the king's conscience was a domesticated beast, given to easy herding but p.r.o.ne to sudden stubborn stops. "It seems we have to thank you," he said. "You have planned our strategy."

She acknowledged his thanks, not with a bow, which would have been graceful. Instead, she turned her head like a flower on the stem, a typically arrogant gesture. "Of course I long to see my sister as the king's favorite. These things are my business quite as much as yours."

He shook his head as my mother made a shus.h.i.+ng noise at her overly confident eldest daughter. "No, let her speak," he said. "She's as sharp as any of us. And I think she's right. Mary must go to Hever and wait for the king to send for her."

"He'll send," Anne said knowledgeably. "He'll send."

I felt like a parcel, like the curtains for a bed, or the plates for the top table, or the pewter for the lower tables in the hall. I was to be packed up and sent to Hever as bait for the king. I was not to see him before I left, I was not to speak to anyone about my going. My mother told the queen that I was overtired and asked for me to be excused from her service for a few days so that I might go home and rest. The queen, poor lady, thought that she had triumphed. She thought that the Boleyns were in retreat.