"I shall not tolerate it," she said flatly.

"You will have to," he said, as uncompromising as she was.

"He never looked away from me in all the years of our courtship," she said. "Not once."

George raised an eyebrow to me. I said nothing. Apparently, I did not count.

My uncle gave a short laugh and I saw my father smile.

"Courtship is different. Anyway, I've chosen the girl to divert him," my uncle said. "A Howard girl."

I felt the sweat break out on me. I knew that I had gone white when George suddenly hissed: "Sit up!" out of the corner of his mouth.

"Who?" Anne said sharply.

"Madge Shelton," Uncle said.

"Oh, Madge," I said, my heart pounding with relief and my cheeks blazing as the color came rushing back. "That Howard girl."

"She'll keep him busy and she knows her place," my father said judicially, not at all as if he were handing another niece over to adultery and sin.

"And your influence is undiminished," Anne spat.

My uncle smiled. "That is true of course, but who would you rather? A Seymour girl? Given that it is a certainty, isn't it best for us that it should be a girl who'll do our bidding?"

"It depends on what you bid her," Anne said shortly.

"To divert him while you are confined," my uncle said smoothly. "Nothing else."

"I won't have her setting herself up as his mistress, I won't have her in the best rooms, wearing jewels, in new gowns, flaunting herself around me," Anne warned.

"Yes, you of all women would know how painful that can be for a good wife," my uncle concurred.

Anne's dark eyes flashed at him. He smiled. "She shall divert the king during your confinement, and when you are back at court she will disappear," he promised. "I shall see that she makes a good marriage and Henry will forget her as easily as he takes her up."

Anne drummed her fingers on the table. We could all see that she was fighting with herself. "I wish I could trust you, Uncle."

"I wish you would." He smiled at her unwillingness. He turned to me and I felt the familiar tremor of fear at his attention. "Madge Shelton beds with you, doesn't she?"

"Yes, Uncle," I said.

"Tell her how to go along, tell her how to manage herself." He turned to George. "And you keep the king's attention on Anne and on Madge."

"Yes, sir," George said easily, as if he had never wished for any career other than that of a pander in the royal harem.

"Good," Uncle said, rising to his feet to signal that the meeting was at an end. "Oh, and one other thing..." We all obediently waited on his word, except Anne, who was looking out of the window at the gardens in the sunshine and the court playing bowls, with the king at the center of all the attention, as always.

"Mary," Uncle remarked.

I flinched at the mention of my name.

"I think we should have her married, don't you?"

"I'd be pleased to see her betrothed before her sister is brought to bed," my father remarked. "That way there's no uncertainty if Anne fails."

They did not look at Anne, who might be pregnant with a girl and thus diminish our bartering strength in the marriage market. They did not look at me, who was to be traded like a farmer's cow. They looked at each other, merchants with a deal to make.

"Very well," our uncle said. "I'll speak to Secretary Cromwell, it's time she was wed."

I got away from Anne and George, and found my way to the king's rooms. William was not in the presence chamber and I dared not go looking for him in the privy chamber. A young man strolled by with a lute, Sir Francis Weston's musician, Mark Smeaton. "Have you seen Sir William Stafford?" I asked him.

He made a pretty bow to me. "Yes, Lady Carey," he said. "He's still playing at bowls."

I nodded and went toward the great hall. As soon as I was out of his sight I took one of the little doors that led out to the broad terrace before the palace and then down the stone steps to the garden. William was picking up the b.a.l.l.s, the game had ended. He turned and smiled at me. The other players hailed me and challenged me to a game.

"Oh, very well," I said. "What are the stakes?"

"A shilling a game," William said. "You have fallen among desperate gamblers, Lady Carey."

I felt in my purse and put down my shilling and then took a ball and rolled it carefully along the gra.s.s. It was nowhere near. I stepped back to make a place for another player and found William at my elbow.

"All well?" he asked quietly.

"Well enough," I said. "But I have to be alone with you as soon as we can."

"Oh, I feel it myself," he said with a laugh at the back of his voice. "But I didn't know you were so shameless."

"Not for that!" I said indignantly and then had to stop and look away before anyone could see me laugh and blush. I longed to touch him, I could hardly stand beside him and not reach out for him. I took a careful step away from him as if to see the game more clearly.

I was knocked out early on, and William took care to lose soon after. We left our shillings on the green for the eventual winner and strolled, as if to take the air, down the long gravel path toward the river. The windows of the palace overlooked the garden, I did not dare touch him or let him take my arm. We walked side by side, like courteous strangers. Only when I stepped up to the landing stage could he touch my elbow, as if to hold me steady, and then he kept hold of me. That simple contact of his hand on my arm warmed me all through.

"What is it?" he asked.

"It's my uncle. He's planning my marriage."

At once his face was dark. "Soon? Does he have a husband in mind?"

"No. They're considering."

"Then we must be ready for when they find someone. And when they do we must just confess, and hope to brazen it out."

"Yes." I paused for a moment, glanced at his profile and back to the river. "He frightens me," I said. "When he said he wanted to see me married, in that moment I thought that I would have to obey him. I always have obeyed him, you see. Everybody always obeys him. Even Anne."

"Don't look like that my love, or I will take you in my arms in full view of the whole palace. I swear to you that you are mine and I will let no one take you from me. You are mine. I am yours. No one can deny that."

"They took Henry Percy from Anne," I said. "And she was as much married as us."

"He was a young lad," William said. "No man comes between me and mine." He paused for a moment. "But we may have to pay for it. Would Anne stand your friend? If we have her support then we are safe."

"She won't be pleased," I said, knowing full well the intense concentrated selfishness of my sister. "But it doesn't hurt her."

"Then we wait until we are cornered, and then we confess," he said. "And in the meantime we will be as charming as we can be."

I laughed, "To the king?" thinking he meant to deploy courtier's skills.

"To each other," he said. "Who matters the most to me in the whole world?"

"Me," I said with quiet joy. "And you for me."

We spent the night in each other's arms in the room of a little inn. When I woke and turned to him he was already moving toward me. We fell asleep wrapped in each other as if we could not bear to part, even in sleep we could not bear to let each other go. When I woke in the morning he was still on top of me, still inside me, and when I moved underneath him I felt him stir with desire for me again. I closed my eyes and let myself drift away while he loved me until the early morning sun came brightly through the shutters and the noise from the courtyard downstairs warned us that we should get back to the palace.

He came up the river with me in a little wherry, and left me at the landing stage so that he could disembark further downriver and stroll home half an hour behind me. I thought I would get in by the garden door and creep up to my room in time to appear for morning Ma.s.s but when I got to my door George appeared from nowhere and said: "Thank G.o.d you're back, another hour or two and everyone would have known."

"What is it?" I asked quickly.

His face was grim. "Anne's taken to her bed."

"I'll go to her," I said and ran quickly down the corridor. I knocked at the door to Anne's bedroom and put my head inside. She was quite alone in the imposing chamber, white and wan on the bed.

"Oh you," she said unpleasantly. "You might as well come in."

I stepped into the room and George shut the door firmly behind us. "What's the matter?" I asked.

"I'm bleeding," she said shortly. "And I've got gripping pains, like the pains of childbirth. I think I'm losing it."

The blank horror of her words was too much for me to take in. I was powerfully aware of my disheveled hair and the scent of William on every inch of my skin. The contrast between last night's loving and this dawning disaster was too much for me. I turned to George.

"We should get a midwife," I said.

"No!" Anne hissed like a snake. "Don't you see? If we call in that crowd, we tell the world. At the moment no one knows for sure whether I am with child or not; it's all rumor. I can't risk them knowing I lost it."

"This is wrong," I said flatly to George. "This is a baby we are talking about here. We can't let a baby die for fear of scandal. Let's move her to a back room, a little room, nothing fine. And cover her face, and draw the curtains. I'll get a midwife and tell her it's a maid at court. n.o.body important."

George hesitated. "If it's a girl it's not worth the risk," he said. "If it's another girl, it'd be better dead."

"For G.o.d's sake, George! This is a baby. This is a soul. This is our kith and kin. Of course we should save her if we can."

His face was hard, for a moment he did not look like my beloved brother at all, he looked like one of the iron-featured men at court who would sign the death warrant for anyone, provided that they were themselves secure.

"George!" I cried. "If this is another Boleyn girl she has a right to live as much as Anne or me."

"All right," he said reluctantly. "I'll move Anne. You get a midwife and make sure you're discreet. Who will you send?"

"William," I said.

"Oh G.o.d: William!" he said irritably. "Does he have to know everything about us? Does he know a midwife? How will he find one?"

"He'll go to the bath house," I said bluntly. "They must need midwives there in a hurry. And he'll keep his mouth shut for love of me."

George nodded and went to the bed. I heard him start to whisper an explanation to Anne in a tender low voice, and her murmured reply, and I ran from the room to the back door of the palace where I expected William to stroll in at any moment.

I caught him on the threshold and sent him out to find a midwife. He was back within the hour with a surprisingly clean young woman, with a small sack of bottles and herbs.

I took her to the little room where George's pageboys slept and she looked around the darkened room and recoiled. In some grotesque moment of fancy George and Anne had raided the palace costume box to find a mask to hide her well-known face. Instead of a simple disguise they had found a golden bird face mask, which she had worn in France to dance with the king. Anne, panting with pain, half-lit by guttering candles, lay back on a narrow bed, her huge belly straining under the sheet and above it a glittering gold mask with a face like a hawk, a great gilt beak and flaring eyebrows. It was like a scene from some dreadful morality painting with Anne's face like a depiction of greed and vanity, with her dark eyes glittering through the holes in the proud gold face at the head of the bed, while below her vulnerable white thighs were parted over a mess of blood on the sheets.

The midwife peered at her, taking care to touch her very little. She straightened up and asked a string of questions about the pains, how fast they were coming, how strong they were, how long they were lasting. Then she said she could make a posset which would put Anne to sleep and that might save the child. Her body would rest and perhaps the child would rest too. She did not sound hopeful. The expressionless beak of the golden mask turned from the woman to George's drawn face; but Anne herself said nothing.

The midwife brewed up the posset over the fire and Anne drank from a mug of pewter. George held her until she leaned back against his shoulders, the dreadful gleaming mask looking wildly triumphant, even as the midwife gently covered her up. The woman went to the door and George laid Anne gently down and followed us out. "We can't lose her, we can't bear to lose her," George said, and for a moment I heard the pa.s.sion in his voice.

"Pray for her then," the woman said shortly. "She's in the hands of G.o.d."

George said something indistinguishable and turned back to the bedroom. I let the woman out of the door and William escorted her down the long dark corridor to the palace gates. I returned to the room and George and I sat either side of the bed while Anne slept and moaned in her sleep.

We had to get her back into her own room, and then we had to give it out that she was unwell. George played cards in her presence chamber as if he had not a care in the world and the ladies flirted and gamed and diced as if everything was the same as usual. I sat with Anne in her bedchamber, and sent a message to the king in her name that she was tired and would see him before dinner. My mother, alerted by George's loud insouciance and my disappearance, came to find Anne. One sight of her in a drugged sleep with blood on the sheets and she went white around the mouth.

"We did the best that we could," I said desperately.

"Does anyone else know?" she demanded.

"No one. Not even the king."

She nodded. "Keep it that way."

The day wore on. Anne started to sweat and I began to doubt the wise woman's posset. I put my hand on her forehead and felt the heat burn against my palm. I looked at my mother. "She's too hot," I said. My mother shrugged.

I turned back to Anne. She was rolling her head on the pillow, and then without warning, she lifted up, curved herself inward and gave a great groan. My mother ripped back the covers and we saw the sudden flood of blood and a ma.s.s of something. Anne dropped back on the pillows and cried out, a heartbroken pitiful cry, and then her eyelids fluttered and she was still.

I touched her forehead again, and put my ear to her breast. Her heart was beating steadily and strongly, but her eyes were shut. My mother, her face like stone, was bundling up the stained sheets, wrapping them around the mess. She turned to where the fire was burning, a little summertime fire.

"Stoke it up," she said shortly.

I hesitated, glancing to Anne. "She's so hot."