He glanced away to where the swallows were building their little mud-cups of nests under the turrets of the castle. "I should like a woman who was free as a bird. I should like a woman who came to me for love, and who wanted me for love, and cared for nothing more than me."

"You would have a fool as a wife," I said sharply.

He turned back to me and smiled. "Just as well that I have never yet met a woman I wanted," he said. "So there are no fools rather than two."

I nodded. It seemed to me that I had triumphed in the exchange but that it was somehow unresolved. "I hope to remain unmarried for a while," I said. Even to my own ears I sounded uncertain.

"I hope you do too," he said oddly. "I bid you farewell, Lady Carey." He bowed and was about to go. "And I think that you will find that your boy is still your little boy whether he is in breeches or short clothes," he said gently. "I loved my mother till the day she died, G.o.d bless her, and I was always her little boy-however big and disagreeable I became."

I should not have worried about the loss of Henry's curls. When they were shorn, I could see once more the exquisite rounded shape of his head, the tender vulnerable neck. He no longer looked like a baby, he looked like the smallest most engaging little boy. I liked to cup his head in the palm of my hand and feel the warmth of him. In his adult clothes he looked every inch a prince and, despite myself, I started to think that he might one day sit on the throne of England. He was the king's son, he was adopted by the woman who might well one day take the t.i.tle of Queen of England-but more than any of this, he was the most golden princely boy I had ever seen. He stood like his father, hands on hips, as if he owned the world. He was the sweetest-tempered boy that any mother has ever called to her and seen come running through a meadow, following her voice as trustingly as a hawk to the whistle. He was a golden child this summer and when I saw the boy he was, and the young man that he might become, I did not grieve any more for the baby he had been.

But I did learn that I wanted another child. The beauty of him as a boy meant that I had lost my baby and I thought of how it would be to have a baby that was not another p.a.w.n in the great game of the throne, but wanted for itself alone. How it would be to have a baby with a man who loved me and who looked forward to the child we might have together. That thought took me back to court in a very quiet and sombre mood.

William Stafford came to escort me to Richmond Palace and insisted that we leave early in the morning so that the horses could rest at midday. I kissed my children goodbye and came out into the stable yard where Stafford lifted me up into the saddle. I was crying at leaving them and, to my embarra.s.sment, one of my tears fell on his upturned face. He brushed it with a fingertip but instead of wiping his hand on his breeches he put his finger to his lips and licked it.

"What are you doing?"

At once he looked guilty. "You shouldn't have dropped a tear on me."

"You shouldn't have licked it," I burst out in reply.

He didn't answer, nor did he move away immediately. Then he said: "To horse," and turned from me and swung into his own saddle. The little cavalcade moved out of the courtyard of the castle and I waved at my boy and my girl, kneeling up at their bedroom window to see me go.

We rode over the drawbridge with our horses' hooves sounding like thunder on the hollow wooden boards, and down the long sweeping road to the end of the park. William Stafford edged his horse forward beside mine.

"Don't cry," he said abruptly.

I glanced sideways at him and wished he would go and ride with his men. "I'm not."

"You are," he contradicted me. "And I cannot escort a weeping woman all the way to London."

"I'm not a weeping woman," I said with some irritation. "But I hate to leave my children and know that I will not see them again for another year. A whole year! I should think I might be allowed to feel a little sad at leaving them."

"No," he said staunchly. "And I'll tell you why. You told me very clearly that a woman has to do as her family bids her. Your family has bidden you to live apart from your children, even to give your son into your sister's keeping. To fight them and to take your children back makes better sense than to weep. If you choose to be a Boleyn and a Howard then you might as well be happy in your obedience."

"I'd like to ride alone," I said coldly.

At once he spurred his horse forward and ordered the men at the front of the escort to fall back. They all went back six paces behind me and I rode in silence and in loneliness all the way up the long road to London, just as I had ordered.

Autumn 1530 THE COURT WAS AT RICHMOND AND ANNE WAS ALL SMILES after a happy summer in the country with Henry. They had hunted every day and he had given her gift after gift, a new saddle for her hunter and a new set of bow and arrows. He had ordered his saddler to make a beautiful pillion saddle so that she could sit behind him, her arms around his waist, her head against his shoulder so that they could whisper together as they rode. Everywhere they went they were told that the country was admiring them, favoring their plans. Everywhere they were greeted with loyal addresses, poems, masques and tableaux. Every house welcomed them with a shower of petals and freshly strewn herbs beneath their feet. Anne and Henry were a.s.sured over and over again that they were a golden couple with a certain future. Nothing could possibly go wrong for them. after a happy summer in the country with Henry. They had hunted every day and he had given her gift after gift, a new saddle for her hunter and a new set of bow and arrows. He had ordered his saddler to make a beautiful pillion saddle so that she could sit behind him, her arms around his waist, her head against his shoulder so that they could whisper together as they rode. Everywhere they went they were told that the country was admiring them, favoring their plans. Everywhere they were greeted with loyal addresses, poems, masques and tableaux. Every house welcomed them with a shower of petals and freshly strewn herbs beneath their feet. Anne and Henry were a.s.sured over and over again that they were a golden couple with a certain future. Nothing could possibly go wrong for them.

My father, home from France, decided to say nothing to disturb this picture. "If they're happy together then thank G.o.d for it," he remarked to my uncle. We were watching Anne at the archery b.u.t.ts on the terrace above the river. She was a skilful archer, she looked as if she might take the prize. Only one other lady, Lady Elizabeth Ferrers, looked as if she might out-shoot my sister.

"It's a pleasant change," my uncle said sourly. "She has the temper of a stable cat, your daughter."

My father chuckled comfortably. "She takes after her mother," he said. "All the Howard girls jump one way or another as soon as you look at them. You must have had some fights with your sister when you were children."

Uncle Howard looked cool and did not encourage the intimate note. "A woman should know her place," he said icily.

Father exchanged a quick look with me. The regular episodes of uproar in the Howard household were well-known. It was hardly surprising. Uncle Howard had openly kept a mistress from the moment that his wife had given him his sons. My aunt swore that she had been nothing more than the laundry woman to the nursery and that to this day the two of them could only couple if they were lying on dirty sheets. The hatred between her and her husband was a constant feature of court, and it was as good as a play to see him lead her in on state occasions when they had to keep up the semblance of unity and appear in public together. He held the very tips of her fingertips, and she turned her head away from him as if he smelled of unwashed hose and dirty ruffs.

"We're not all blessed with your happy touch with women," my father said.

My uncle shot one surprised look at him. He had been head of the family for so long that he was used to deference. But my father was an earl in his own right now, and his daughter, who at that very moment loosed an arrow and saw it fly straight to the heart of the target, could be queen.

Anne turned, smiling from her shot, and Henry, unable to keep from her, leaped to his feet out of the chair and hurried down to the b.u.t.ts and kissed her on the mouth, before all the court. Everyone smiled and applauded, Lady Elizabeth concealed as well as she could any sense of pique that she had lost to the favorite, and received a small jewel from the king while Anne took a little headdress shaped like a golden crown.

"A crown," my father said, watching the king hold it out to her.

In an intimate, confident gesture Anne pulled off her hood and stood before us all with her dark hair tumbling back from her forehead in thick glossy ringlets. Henry stepped forward and put the crown on her head. There was a pause of absolute silence.

The tension was broken by the king's Fool. He danced behind the king and peeped around him at Anne. "Oh Mistress Anne!" he called. "You aimed for the eye of the bull, but you hit very true at another part. The bull's b..."

Henry rounded on him with a roar of laughter and aimed a cuff which the Fool dodged. The court exploded in laughter and Anne, beautifully blushing, the little archery crown glinting on her black hair, shook her head at the Fool, wagged her finger at him, and then turned her face in confusion to Henry's shoulder.

I was sharing a bedroom with Anne in the second best rooms that Richmond Palace could offer. They were not the queen's apartments, but they were the next best. There seemed to be an unwritten rule that Anne might commandeer a set of rooms and furnish them as richly as the queen, almost as richly as the king, but she was not yet allowed to live in the queen's own rooms, even though the queen was never there. New protocols had to be invented all the time in this court which was not like any other before.

Anne was sprawled on the ornate bed, careless of creasing her gown.

"Good summer?" she asked me idly. "Children well?"

"Yes," I said shortly. I would never again speak willingly of my son to her. She had forfeited her right to be his aunt when she had laid claim to be his mother.

"You were watching the archery with Uncle," she said. "What was he talking about?"

I thought back. "Nothing. Saying you and the king were happy."

"I have told him that I want Wolsey destroyed. He's turned against me. He's supporting the queen."

"Anne, he lost the Lord Chancellorship, surely that's enough."

"He's been corresponding with the queen. I want him dead."

"But he was your friend."

She shook her head. "We both played a part to please the king. Wolsey sent me fish from his trout pond, I sent him little gifts. But I never forgot how he spoke to me about Henry Percy, and he never forgot that I was a Boleyn, an upstart like him. He was jealous of me, and I was jealous of him. We have been enemies from the moment I came home from France. He didn't even see me. He didn't even understand what power I have. He still does not understand me. But at his death, he will. I have his house, I will have his life."

"He's an old man. He's lost all his wealth and his t.i.tles that were his great pride and joy. He's retiring to his see at York. If you want your revenge, you can leave him to rot. That's revenge enough."

Anne shook her head. "Not yet. Not while the king still loves him."

"Is the king to love n.o.body but you? Not even the man who has guarded him and guided him like a father for years?"

"Yes. He is to love n.o.body but me."

I was surprised. "Have you come to desire him?"

She laughed in my face. "No. But I would have him see no one and speak to no one but me, and those I could trust. And who can I trust?"

I shook my head.

"You-perhaps. George-always. Father-usually. Mother-sometimes. Uncle Howard-if it suits him. Not my aunt, who has gone over to Katherine. Perhaps the Duke of Suffolk but not his wife Mary Tudor who can't bear to see me rise so high. Anyone else? No. That's it. Perhaps some men are tender-hearted to me. My cousin Sir Francis Bryan, perhaps Francis Weston from his friendship with George. Sir Thomas Wyatt cares for me still." She raised one other finger in silence and we both knew that we were thinking of Henry Percy, so far away in Northumberland, determinedly never coming to court, ill with unhappiness, living in the middle of nowhere with the wife he had married under protest. "Ten," she said quietly. "Ten people who wish me well against a whole world that would be glad to see me fall."

"But the cardinal can do nothing against you now. He has lost all his power."

"Then this is the very time when he is ripe to be destroyed. Now that he has lost all his power and he is a defeated old man."

It was some plot hatched between the Duke of Suffolk and Uncle Howard but it bore Anne's hallmark. My uncle had evidence of a letter from Wolsey to the Pope and Henry, who had been disposed to recall his old friend to high office, turned once more against him and ordered his arrest.

The lord that they sent to arrest him was Anne's choice. It was Anne's final gesture to the man who had called her a foolish girl and an upstart. Henry Percy of Northumberland went to Wolsey at York and said that he was charged with treason and must travel the long road back to London and stay not in his wonderful palace of Hampton Court which now belonged to the king, not in his beautiful London home of York Place which was now renamed Whitehall and belonged to Anne; instead he was to go, like a traitor, to the Tower and await his trial, as others had gone before him and taken the short walk to the scaffold.

Henry Percy must have felt a harsh joy to send to Anne the man who had separated them, now sick with exhaustion and despair. It was no fault of Henry Percy's that Wolsey escaped them all by dying on the road and the only satisfaction that Anne could take was that it was the boy she had loved who told the man that had parted them that her vengeance had come at last.

Christmas 1530 THE QUEEN MET THE COURT AT GREENWICH FOR CHRISTMAS and Anne held her rival Christmas feast in the dead cardinal's old palace. It was an open secret that after the king had dined in state with the queen he would quietly slip out, summon the royal barge and be rowed to the stairs at Whitehall where he would eat another supper with Anne. Sometimes he took some chosen courtiers with him, me among them, and then we had a merry night on the river, wrapped up warm against the biting cold wind, with the stars bright above us as we rowed home and sometimes a huge white moon lighting our way. and Anne held her rival Christmas feast in the dead cardinal's old palace. It was an open secret that after the king had dined in state with the queen he would quietly slip out, summon the royal barge and be rowed to the stairs at Whitehall where he would eat another supper with Anne. Sometimes he took some chosen courtiers with him, me among them, and then we had a merry night on the river, wrapped up warm against the biting cold wind, with the stars bright above us as we rowed home and sometimes a huge white moon lighting our way.

I was one of the queen's ladies again and I was shocked to see the change in her. When she raised her head and smiled for Henry she could no longer summon any joy into her eyes. He had knocked it out of her, perhaps forever. She still had the same quiet dignity, she still had the same confidence in herself as a Princess of Spain and Queen of England, but she would never again have the glow of a woman who knows that her husband adores her.

One day we were sitting together at the fireside of her apartment, the altar cloth spread from one side of the hearth to the other. I was working on the blue sky which was still unfinished, and she, unusually for her, had left the blue and moved on to another color. I thought that she must be weary indeed if she left a task unfinished. Usually she was a woman who would persist, whatever it cost her.

"Did you see your children this summer?" she asked.

"Yes, Your Majesty," I said. "Catherine is in long dresses now and is learning French and Latin, and Henry's curls are cut."

"Will you send them to the French court?"

I could not conceal the pang of anxiety. "Not yet at any rate. They're still so very young."

She smiled at me. "Lady Carey, you know that it is not how young they are, nor how dear. They have to learn their duty. As you did, as I did."

I bowed my head. "I know that you're right," I said quietly.

"A woman needs to know her duty so that she may perform it and live in the estate to which G.o.d has been pleased to call her," the queen p.r.o.nounced. I knew that she was thinking of my sister, who was not in the estate to which G.o.d had been pleased to call her, but was instead in some glorious new condition, earned by her beauty and her wit, and maintained now by an inveterate campaign.

There was a knock at the door and one of my uncle's men stood in the doorway.

"A gift of oranges from the d.u.c.h.ess of Norfolk," he said. "And a note."

I rose to receive the pretty basket with the oranges arranged in their dark green leaves. There was a letter marked with my uncle's seal laid on the top.

"Read the note," the queen said. I put the fruit down on the table and opened the letter. I read aloud: "'Your Majesty, having received a fresh barrel of oranges from the country of your birth I take the liberty of sending the pick of them to you with my compliments.'"

"How very kind," the queen said calmly. "Would you put them in my bedchamber, Mary? And write a reply to your aunt in my name to thank her for her gift."

I rose and carried the basket into her room. There was a rug in the doorway and I caught my heel in it. As I staggered to regain my footing the oranges tumbled everywhere, rolling over the floor like a schoolboy's marbles. I swore as quietly as I could, and hurriedly started to pile them back into the basket before the queen came in and saw what a mess I had made of a simple task.

Then I saw something that made me freeze. In the bottom of the basket was a tiny twist of paper. I smoothed it out. It was covered in small numbers, there were no words at all. It was in code.

I stayed there, on my knees with the oranges all around me, for a long time. Then I slowly packed them back in their arrangement and put the basket on a low chest. I even stepped back to admire them and alter their position. Then I put the note in my pocket and went back into the room to sit with the woman that I loved more than any other in the world. I sat beside her, and st.i.tched her tapestry, and wondered what smoldering disaster I had in the pocket of my gown and what I should do with it.

I had no choice. From start to finish I had no choice. I was a Boleyn. I was a Howard. If I did not cleave to my family then I was a n.o.body with no means to support my children, no future, and no protection. I took the note to my uncle's rooms and I laid it before him on the table.

He had the code broken in half a day. It was not a very complicated conspiracy. It was only a message of hope from the Spanish amba.s.sador, whispered to my aunt, and pa.s.sed on by her to the queen. Not a very effectual conspiracy. It was a plot in a desert. It meant nothing but some comfort to the queen, and now I had been the instrument in taking that comfort from her.

When the news of it all came out with a great quarrel in my uncle's apartments as he shouted at his wife that she was a traitor against the king and against him, and then there was a royal remonstrance from the king himself to my aunt, I went to the queen. She was in her room, looking out of the window at the frozen garden below her. Some people wrapped warm in furs were walking down to the river where the barges were waiting for them, going to visit my sister in her rival court. The queen, standing in silence, alone in her room, watched them go, the Fool capering round them, one of the musicians strumming a lute and singing them on their way.

I dropped to my knees before her.

"I gave the d.u.c.h.ess's note to my uncle," I confessed baldly. "I found it in the oranges. If it had not come to my hand I would never have searched for it. I always seem to betray you, but it is never my intention."

She glanced at my bowed head as if it did not much matter. "I don't know anyone who would have done any different," she observed. "You should be on your knees to your G.o.d, not to me, Lady Carey."

I did not rise. "I want to beg your pardon," I said. "It is my destiny to belong to a family whose interests run counter to yours. If I had been your lady in waiting at another time you would never have had to doubt me."

"If you had not been tempted you would not have fallen. If it was not in your interests to betray me then you would have been loyal. Go away, Lady Carey, you are no better than your sister who pursues her own ends like a weasel and never glances to one side or the other. Nothing will stop the Boleyns gaining what they want, I know that. Sometimes I think she will stop at nothing, even my death, to do it. And I know that you will help her, however much you love me, however much I loved you when you were my little maid-you will be behind her every step of her way."

"She's my sister," I said pa.s.sionately.

"And I am your queen," she said, like ice.

My knees ached on the floorboards but I did not want to move.

"She has my son in her keeping," I said. "And my king at her beck and call."

"Go away," the queen repeated. "Soon the Christmas feast will be over and we will not meet again till Easter. Soon the Pope will come to his decision and when he tells the king that he has to honor his marriage to me then your sister will make her next move. What have I to expect, d'you think? A charge of treason? Or poison in my dinner?"