"Oh don't ask me," Anne said. "I'm a virgin. Ask anyone. Ask Mother or Father or my uncle. Ask Cardinal Wolsey, he made it official. I'm a virgin. I am an attested official sworn-to-it virgin. Wolsey, the Archbishop of York himself, says I am a virgin. You can't be more of a virgin than me."

"I shall tell you all about them," George said more cheerfully. "I shall write to you at Hever, Anne, and you can read my letter aloud to Grandmother Boleyn."

George was pale as a bride on his wedding morning. Only Anne and I knew it was not from heavy drinking the night before. He did not smile as Jane Parker approached the altar, but she was beaming broad enough for them both.

With my hands clasped over my belly I thought it was a long time since I had stood before the altar and promised to forsake all others and cleave to William Carey. He glanced across at me with a slight smile, as if he too was thinking that we had not foreseen this when we had been handclasped, and hopeful, only four years ago.

King Henry was at the front of the church, watching my brother take his bride, and I thought that my family were doing well out of my heavy belly. The king had come late to my wedding, and more to oblige his friend William than to honor the Boleyns. But he was at the forefront of the well-wishers when this pair turned from the altar and came down the aisle of the church, and the king and I together led the guests into the wedding feast. My mother smiled on me as if I were her only daughter, as Anne left quietly by the side door of the chapel and took her horse and rode home to Hever accompanied only by serving men.

I thought of her riding to Hever alone, seeing the castle from the lodge gate, as pretty as a toy in the moonlight. I thought of the way the track curved through the trees and came to the drawbridge. I thought of the rattle of the drawbridge coming down and the hollow sound that the hoof beats made as the horse stepped delicately on the timbers. I thought of the dank smell of the moat and then the waft of meat cooking on a spit as one entered the courtyard. I thought of the moon shining into the courtyard and the haphazard line of the gable ends against the night sky, and I wished with all my contrary heart that I was squire of Hever and not the pretend queen of a masquing court. I wished with all my heart that I might have been carrying a legitimate son in my belly and that I could have leaned out of the window and looked out over my land, just a little manor farm perhaps, and known that it would be all his by right one day.

But instead I was the lucky Boleyn, the Boleyn blessed by fortune and the king's favor. A Boleyn who could not imagine the boundaries of her son's land, who could not dream how far he might rise.

Summer 1524 I WITHDREW FROM THE COURT FOR THE WHOLE OF THE MONTH of June to prepare for my lying in. I had a darkened room hung with thick tapestries, I should see no light nor breathe fresh air until I emerged six long weeks after the birth of my baby. Altogether I would be walled up for two and a half months. I was attended by my mother and by two midwives, a couple of serving maids and a lady's maid supported them. Outside the chamber, taking turn and turn about night and day, were two apothecaries waiting to be called. of June to prepare for my lying in. I had a darkened room hung with thick tapestries, I should see no light nor breathe fresh air until I emerged six long weeks after the birth of my baby. Altogether I would be walled up for two and a half months. I was attended by my mother and by two midwives, a couple of serving maids and a lady's maid supported them. Outside the chamber, taking turn and turn about night and day, were two apothecaries waiting to be called.

"Can Anne be with me?" I asked my mother as I eyed the darkened room.

She frowned. "Her father has ordered that she must stay at Hever."

"Oh, please," I said. "It'll be such a long time and I'd like her company."

"She can visit," my mother ruled. "But we can't have her present at the birth of the king's son."

"Or daughter," I reminded her.

She made the sign of the cross over my belly. "Please G.o.d it is a boy," she whispered.

I said nothing more, content to have carried my way by getting Anne to visit me. She came for a day and stayed for two. She had been bored at Hever, infuriated by our Grandmother Boleyn, desperate to get away, even to a darkened room and a sister biding her time by sewing little nightshirts for a royal b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

"Have you been over to Home Farm?" I asked.

"No," she said. "I've ridden past it."

"I wondered how they were getting on with their strawberry crop?"

She shrugged.

"And the Peters' farm? Did you go over for the sheep shearing?"

"No," she said.

"D'you know what hay crop we got this year?"

"No."

"Anne, what on earth do you do all day?"

"I read," she said. "I practice my music. I have been composing some songs. I ride every day. I walk in the garden. What else is there to do in the country?"

"I go round and see the farms," I remarked.

She raised an eyebrow. "They're always the same. The gra.s.s grows."

"What d'you read?"

"Theology," she said shortly. "Have you heard of Martin Luther?"

"Of course I've heard of him," I said, stung. "Enough to know that he's a heretic and his books are forbidden."

Anne gave her small secretive smile. "He's not necessarily a heretic," she said. "It's a matter of opinion. I have been reading his books and others who think like he does."

"You'd better keep it quiet," I said. "If Father and Mother find you've been reading banned books they'll send you to France again, anywhere to get you out of the way."

She shrugged. "No one pays any attention to me, I'm quite eclipsed by your glory. There is only one way to come to the attention of this family and that is to climb into the king's bed. You have to be a wh.o.r.e to be beloved by this family."

I folded my hands over my swollen belly and smiled at her, quite unmoved by her malice. "There's no need to pinch me because my stars have led me here. There was no need for you to set yourself at Henry Percy and onward to disgrace."

For a moment the mask of her beautiful face dropped and I saw the longing in her eyes. "Have you heard from him?"

I shook my head. "If he wrote to me they'd not let me have the letter," I said. "I think he's still fighting against the Scots."

She pressed her lips together to keep back a little moan. "Oh G.o.d, what if he is hurt or killed?"

I felt my baby stir and I put my warm hands on my loose stomacher. "Anne, he should be nothing to you."

Her eyelashes flickered down over the heat in her gaze. "He is nothing to me," she replied.

"He's a married man now," I said firmly. "You will have to forget him if you ever want to get back to court."

She pointed at my belly. "That is the problem for me," she said baldly. "All anyone can think of in this family is that you might be carrying the king's son. I have written to Father half a dozen times and he has had his clerk reply to me once. He doesn't think about me. He doesn't care about me. All anyone cares about is you and your fat belly."

"We'll know soon enough," I said. I was trying to sound serene but I was afraid. If Henry had got a girl on me and she was strong and lovely then he should be happy enough to show the world that he was potent. But this was no ordinary man. He wanted to show the world that he could make a healthy baby. He wanted to show the world that he could make a boy.

She was a girl. Despite all those months of hoping and whispered prayers and even special Ma.s.ses said in Hever and Rochford church, she was a girl.

But she was my my little girl. She was an exquisite little bundle with hands so tiny that they were like the palms of a little frog, with eyes so dark a blue that they were like the sky above Hever at midnight. She had a dusting of black hair on the crown of her head, as unlike Henry's ruddy gold as anything one could imagine. But she had his kissable rosebud mouth. When she yawned she looked like a very king, bored with insufficient praise. When she cried, she squeezed real tears onto her outraged pink cheeks, like a monarch denied his rights. When I fed her, holding her in my arms and marveling at the insistent powerful sucking on my breast, she swelled like a lamb and slept as if she were a drunkard lolling beside a tankard of mead. little girl. She was an exquisite little bundle with hands so tiny that they were like the palms of a little frog, with eyes so dark a blue that they were like the sky above Hever at midnight. She had a dusting of black hair on the crown of her head, as unlike Henry's ruddy gold as anything one could imagine. But she had his kissable rosebud mouth. When she yawned she looked like a very king, bored with insufficient praise. When she cried, she squeezed real tears onto her outraged pink cheeks, like a monarch denied his rights. When I fed her, holding her in my arms and marveling at the insistent powerful sucking on my breast, she swelled like a lamb and slept as if she were a drunkard lolling beside a tankard of mead.

I held her in my arms constantly. There was a wet nurse to attend her, but I argued that my b.r.e.a.s.t.s hurt so much that I must let her suckle, and I cunningly kept her to myself. I fell in love with her. I fell completely and utterly in love with her and I could not for a moment imagine that anything would have been any better if she had been a boy.

Even Henry melted at the sight of her when he visited me in the shadowy peace of the birthing room. He picked her up from her cradle and marveled at the tiny perfection of her face, her hands, her little feet under the heavy embroidered gown. "We'll call her Elizabeth," he said, rocking her gently.

"May I choose her name?" I asked, greatly daring.

"You don't like Elizabeth?"

"I had another name in mind."

He shrugged. It was a girl's name. It did not matter much. "As you wish. Call her what you like. She's a pretty little thing, isn't she?"

He brought me a purse of gold and a necklace with diamonds. And he brought me some books, a critique of his own work of theology, some heavy works that Cardinal Wolsey had recommended. I thanked him for them and put them to one side, and thought that I would send them to Anne and ask her to write me a synopsis so that I might bluff my way through a conversation.

We started his visit formally enough, seated on chairs either side of the fireplace, but he took me to the bed and lay beside me and kissed me gently and sweetly. After a little while he wanted to have me and I had to remind him that I was not yet churched. I was not clean. Timidly I touched at his waistcoat and with a sigh he took my hand and pressed it against his hardness. I wished that someone would tell me what he wanted of me. But then he himself guided my touch, and whispered in my ear what he wanted to do, and then after a little while of his movement and my blundering caresses he gave a sigh and lay still.

"Is it enough for you?" I asked timidly.

He turned and gave me his sweet smile. "My love, it is a great pleasure for me to have you, even like this, after this long time. When you go to be churched don't confess it-the sin is all mine. But you would tempt a saint."

"And you do love her?" I pressed him.

He gave an indulgent, lazy chuckle. "Why yes. She's as lovely as her mother."

He rose up after a few moments and straightened his clothes. He gave me his delicious roguish grin that still delighted me, though half my mind was on the baby in her cradle, and the other half on the ache in my milk-heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"You shall have rooms nearer to mine when you are churched," he promised me. "I want you by me all the time."

I smiled. It was a delicious moment. The King of England wanted me with him, constantly at his side.

"I want a boy off you," he said bluntly.

My father was angry with me that the baby was a girl-or so my mother said-reporting from an outside world which seemed very remote. My uncle was disappointed but determined not to show it. I nodded as if I cared but I felt only a total delight that she had opened her eyes this morning and looked at me with a sort of bright intensity that made me certain that she had seen me and known me for her mother. Neither my father nor my uncle could be admitted into the birthing room, and the king did not repeat his single visit. There was a sense of this place being a refuge for us, a secret room where men and their plans and their treacheries would not come.

George came, breaking the conventions with his usual comfortable grace. "Nothing too awful going on in here, is there?" he asked, putting his handsome head around the door.

"Nothing," I said, welcoming him with a smile and my cheek to kiss. He bent over me and kissed me deeply on the mouth. "Oh how delicious, my sister, a young mother, a dozen forbidden pleasures all at once. Kiss me again-kiss me like you kiss Henry."

"Go away," I said, pushing him off. "Look at the baby."

He peered at her as she lay sleeping in my arms. "Nice hair," he said. "What shall you call her?"

I glanced at the shut door. I knew I could trust George. "I want to call her Catherine."

"Rather odd."

"I don't see why. I am her lady in waiting."

"But it's her husband's baby."

I giggled, it was impossible for me not to revel in my sense of joy. "Oh George, I know. But I have admired her from the moment I entered her service. And I want to show her that I respect her-whatever else has happened."

Still he looked doubtful. "D'you think she'll understand? Won't she think it's some kind of mockery?"

I was so shocked that I gripped Catherine a little. "She cannot imagine that I would triumph over her."

"Here, why are you crying?" George asked. "There's no reason to cry, Mary. Don't cry, you'll curdle the milk or something."

"I'm not crying," I said, ignoring the tears on my cheeks. "I'm not meaning to cry."

"Well, stop," he urged me. "Stop it, Mary. Mother will come in and everyone will blame me for upsetting you. And they'll say that I shouldn't be here in the first place. Why don't you wait till you come out and then you can see the queen and ask her yourself if she would like the compliment? That's all I'd suggest."

"Yes," I said, feeling immediately more cheerful. "I could do that, and then I might explain."

"But don't cry," he reminded me. "She's a queen, she won't like tears. I bet you've never seen her cry, for all you've been with her day and night for four years."

I thought for a moment. "No," I said slowly. "D'you know, in these four years, I have never ever seen her cry."

"You never will," he said with satisfaction. "She's not a woman who crumbles into distress. She's a woman of most powerful will."

My only other visitor was my husband, William Carey. He arrived, gracefully enough, bearing a bowl of early strawberries which he had ordered to be brought up from Hever.

"A taste of home," he said kindly.

"Thank you."

He glanced into the cradle. "They tell me it's a girl and she is well and strong."

"She is," I said, a little chilled by the indifference of his tone.

"And what name are you calling her? Other than mine? I a.s.sume she is to carry my name, she isn't to be Fitzroy or some other acknowledgment that she is a royal b.a.s.t.a.r.d?"

I bit my tongue and bowed my head. "I am sorry if you are offended, husband," I said meekly.

He nodded. "So what name?"

"She is to be Carey. I thought Catherine Carey."

"As you wish, madam. I have been granted five good stewardships of land, and a knighthood. I am Sir William now, and you are Lady Carey. I have more than doubled my income. Did he tell you?"

"No," I said.

"I am in the highest of favor. If you had obliged us with a boy I might have looked for an estate in Ireland or France. I might have been Lord Carey. Who knows how high a boy b.a.s.t.a.r.d might have taken us?"

I did not reply. William's tone was mild, but the words had a cutting ring to them. I did not think he was truly asking me to celebrate his good fortune in being England's most famous cuckold.

"You know, I had thought to be a great man at the king's court," he said bitterly. "When I knew he liked my company, when my star was rising. I hoped to be something like your father, a statesman who might see the whole picture of the scene, who might play his part in arguing at the great courts of Europe, dealing one with the other and always taking his own country's interest as his byword. But no, here I am, rewarded ten times over for doing nothing but looking the other way while the king takes my wife to his bed."