"This is more important," she said. "This has to be gone before anyone has even the slightest idea of it."

I put the poker into the fire and turned over the hot embers. My mother knelt at the fireside and ripped the sheet into a strip and laid it on the flames, it curled and burned with a hiss. Patiently, she ripped another and another, until she came to the very center of the bundle, the awful dark mess which had been Anne's baby. "Put on kindling," she said shortly.

I looked at her in horror. "Shouldn't we bury...?"

"Put on kindling," she spat at me. "How long d'you think any of us will last if everyone knows that she cannot carry a baby?"

I looked into her face and measured the power of her will. Then I piled the fire with the little scented fir cones, and when they burned up brightly we packed the guilty bundle onto the flames and sat back on our heels like a pair of old witches and watched all that was left of Anne's baby go up the chimney like some dreadful curse.

When the sheet was burned, and the sizzling mess gone too, my mother threw on some more fir cones and some herbs from the floor to purify the smell of the room, and only then did she turn back to her daughter.

Anne was awake, leaning up on one elbow to watch us, her eyes gla.s.sy.

"Anne?" my mother said.

With an effort my sister turned her gaze up to her.

"Your baby is dead," my mother said flatly. "Dead and gone. You have to sleep and get well. I expect you to be up within the day. Do you hear me? If anybody asks you about the baby you will say that you made a mistake, that there was no baby. There never has been a baby and you never announced one. But for a certainty, one will come soon."

Anne turned a blank look to her mother. For a moment I was seized with a dreadful fear that the posset and the pain and the heat had driven her mad, and that she would forever look without seeing, hear without understanding.

"The king too," my mother said, her voice cold. "Just tell him you made a mistake, that you were not with child. A mistake is innocent enough but a miscarriage is proof of sin."

Anne's face never changed. She did not even protest her innocence. I thought she was deaf. "Anne?" I said gently.

She turned to me, and when she saw my shocked eyes, and the s.m.u.ts on my face, I saw her expression alter. She understood that something very terrible had taken place.

"Why are you in such a mess?" she asked coldly. "It's not as if anything has happened to you, has it?"

"I'll tell your uncle," my mother said. She paused at the threshold and looked at me. "What has she done that this should happen?" she asked as coldly as if she were inquiring after a broken piece of china. "She must have done something to lose her child like this. D'you know what it was?"

I thought of the days and nights of seducing the king and breaking the heart of his wife, of the poisoning of three men and the destruction of Cardinal Wolsey. "Nothing out of the ordinary."

My mother nodded and went from the room without touching her daughter, without another word to either of us. Anne's empty gaze came back to me, her face as blank as the gold hawk mask. I kneeled at the head of her bed and held out my arms. Her expression never altered but she leaned slowly toward me and rested her heavy head on my shoulder.

It took us all that night and the next day to get Anne back on her feet again. The king kept away, once we gave out that she had a cold. Not so my uncle, he came to the doorway of her bedchamber as if she were still nothing more than a Boleyn girl. I saw her eyes darken with rage at his disrespect.

"Your mother has told me," he said shortly "How could such a thing happen?"

Anne turned her head. "How should I know?"

"You consulted no wise women to conceive? You tried no potions or herbs or anything? You invoked no spirits and did no spells?"

Anne shook her head. "I would not touch such things," she said. "You can ask anyone. Ask my confessor, ask Thomas Cranmer. I have a care to my soul as much as you."

"I have more of a care for my neck," he said grimly. "Do you swear it? For I may have to swear for you one day."

"I swear it," Anne said sulkily.

"Get up as soon as you can and conceive another, and it had better be a boy."

The look she turned on him was so filled with hatred that even he recoiled. "Thank you for that advice," she snarled. "It is something that had occurred to me before. I have to conceive as swiftly as possible and it has to go full term and it has to be a boy. Thank you, Uncle. Yes. I know that."

She turned her face away from him to the rich hangings on her bed. He waited for a moment and then he smiled his grim hard-faced smile at me, and went away. I closed the door and Anne and I were alone.

Her eyes, when she looked at me, were filled with fear. "But what if the king cannot get a legitimate son?" she whispered. "He never did it with her. I will get all the blame and what will happen to me then?"

Summer 1534 IN THE FIRST DAYS OF JULY I WAS SICK IN THE MORNINGS AND my b.r.e.a.s.t.s were tender to the touch. William, kissing my belly in a dark-shaded room one afternoon, patted me with his hand and said quietly: "What d'you think, my love?" my b.r.e.a.s.t.s were tender to the touch. William, kissing my belly in a dark-shaded room one afternoon, patted me with his hand and said quietly: "What d'you think, my love?"

"About what?"

"About this round little belly."

I turned my head away so he could not see me smile. "I hadn't noticed."

"Well I have," he said bluntly. "Now tell me. How long have you known?"

"Two months," I confessed. "And I have been torn between joy and fear, for this will be our undoing."

He gathered me into the fold of his arm. "Never," he said. "This is our firstborn Stafford and a cause for the greatest of joy. I couldn't be more pleased. A son to bring the cows in or a daughter to do the milking, what a clever girl you are."

"D'you want a boy?" I asked curiously, thinking of the constant theme of the Boleyns.

"If you have one," he said easily. "Whatever you have in there, my love."

I was released from court to meet my children at Hever in July and August while Anne and the king went off. William and I had the best summer we had ever spent together with the children, but when the time came to go back to court I was carrying the baby so high and so proudly that I knew I would have to tell Anne the news and hope that she would shield me from my uncle's rage in my pregnancy, as I had shielded her miscarriage from the king.

I was lucky when I arrived at Greenwich. The king was out hunting and most of the court with him. Anne was sitting in the garden, on a turf bench, an awning over her head and a group of musicians playing to her. Someone was reading love poetry. I paused for a moment and took a second look at them. They were all older than I had remembered. This was no longer the court of a young man. They were all seasoned in a way that they had not been when Queen Katherine had been on the throne. There was a hint of extravagance and glamour about them all, there were a great deal of pretty words being spoken and a certain heat in the group which was not all late-summer sunshine and wine. It had become a sophisticated court, an older court; I could almost have said corrupt. It felt as if anything could happen.

"Why, here is my sister," Anne remarked, shading her eyes with her hand. "Welcome back, Mary. Have you had enough of the country?"

I kept my riding cloak loosely about me. "Yes," I said. "I have come seeking the sunshine of your court."

Anne giggled. "Very nicely put," she said. "I shall have you trained as a true courtier yet. How is my son Henry?"

I gritted my teeth on that, as she knew I would. "He sends his love and duty to you. I have a copy of a letter he has written to you in Latin. He is a bright boy, his schoolmaster is pleased with him, and he has learned to ride very well this summer."

"Good," Anne said. Clearly, I was not worth tormenting for she turned from me to William Brereton. "If you cannot do better with 'love' than 'dove' I shall have to award the prize to Sir Thomas."

"Shove?" he suggested.

Anne laughed. "What? My sweetest queen, my only love, I long to give you a hearty shove?"

"Love is impossible," Sir Thomas remarked. "In poetry as in life, nothing goes with it."

"Marriage," Anne suggested.

"Clearly love does not go with marriage, marriage is quite another thing. For a start it is three beats as opposed to one. And for another it has no music to it."

"My marriage has music," Anne said.

Sir Thomas bowed his head. "Everything that you do has music," he pointed out. "But still the word does not rhyme with anything helpful."

"The prize goes to you, Sir Thomas," Anne said. "You need not flatter me as well as make poetry."

"It is no flattery to tell the truth," he said, kneeling before her. Anne gave him a little gold chain from her belt and he kissed it and tucked it away in the pocket of his doublet.

"Now," Anne said. "I shall go and change my gown before the king comes home from his hunting wanting his dinner." She rose to her feet and looked around at her ladies. "Where is Madge Shelton?"

The silence which greeted her told her everything. "Where is she?"

"Hunting with the king, Your Majesty," one of the ladies volunteered.

Anne raised an eyebrow and glanced at me, the only member of her court who knew that Madge had been appointed as the king's mistress by our uncle but only for the duration of Anne's confinement. Now it seemed that Madge was making progress on her own account.

"Where's George?" I asked her.

She nodded, it was a key question. "With the king," she said. We knew that George could be trusted to protect Anne's interests.

Anne nodded and turned to the palace. The lightness of the afternoon had faded at the first mention of the king with another woman. Anne's shoulders were set, her face grim. I walked at her side as we went up to her rooms. As I had hoped, she gestured that the ladies in waiting should wait in the presence chamber and she and I went into her privy chamber alone. As soon as the door was closed I said: "Anne, I have something to tell you. I need your help."

"What now?" she said. She seated herself before a golden mirror and pulled her hood from her head. Her dark hair, as lovely and l.u.s.trous as ever, tumbled down over her shoulders. "Brush my hair," she said.

I took a brush and swept it through the dark locks, hoping to soothe her. "I have married a man," I said simply. "And I am carrying his child."

She was so still that for a moment I thought she had not heard me, and in that moment I hoped to G.o.d that she had not. Then she turned around on the stool and her face was like thunder. "You have done what?" She spat out the question.

"Married," I said.

"Without my permission?"

"Yes, Anne. I'm very sorry."

Her head came up, her eyes met mine in the mirror. "Who?"

"Sir William Stafford."

"William Stafford? The king's usher?"

"Yes," I said. "He has a small farm near Rochford."

"He is nothing," she said. I could hear her temper rising in her voice.

"The king knighted him," I said. "He is Sir William."

"Sir William Nothing!" she said again. "And you are with child?"

I knew it was that she would hate the most. "Yes," I said humbly.

She leaped to her feet and dragged the cloak away so that she could see the broad spread of my stomacher. "You wh.o.r.e!" she swore at me. Her hand came back, I froze, ready to take the blow, but when it came I felt my neck snap back with the force of it. It threw me backward against the bed, and she stood over me like a fighter. "How long has this been going on? When will this next b.a.s.t.a.r.d of yours be born?"

"In March," I said. "And he is no b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"D'you think to mock me, coming into my court with a belly on you like a fat brood mare? What d'you mean to do? You mean to tell the world that you you are the fertile Boleyn girl and I am all but barren?" are the fertile Boleyn girl and I am all but barren?"

"Anne..."

Nothing would stop her.

"Showing the world that you are in pup again! You insult me by even being here. You insult our family."

"I married him," I said, I could hear my voice shake a little at her anger. "I married him for love, Anne. Please, please don't be like this. I love him. I can go from court, but please let me see..."

She did not even let me finish. "Aye, you'll go from court!" she cried. "To h.e.l.l for all I care. You'll go from court and never come back to it."

"My children," I finished breathlessly.

"You can say good-bye to them. I'll not have my nephew brought up by a woman who has no pride in her family and no knowledge of the world. A fool who is dragged through life by her l.u.s.t. Why marry William Stafford? Why not a lad from the stable? Why not the miller at Hever mill? If all you want is a good thumping why stop at one of the king's men? A soldier in the ranks would do as well."

"Anne, I warn you." The anger was creeping into my own voice even as my cheek still throbbed with the heat from her blow. "I will not take this. I married a good man for love, I did no more than the Princess Mary Tudor did when she married the Duke of Suffolk. I married once to oblige my family, I did as they bid me when the king looked my way, and now I want to please myself. Anne-only you can defend me against our uncle and father."

"Does George know?" she demanded.

"No. I told you he does not. I only came to you. Only you can help me."

"Never," she swore. "You have married a poor man for love, you can eat love, you can drink it. You can live off it. Go to his little farm in Rochford and rot there, and when Father or George or I come down to Rochford Hall make very sure that you are nowhere in our sight. You are banished from court, Mary. You have ruined yourself and I will set a seal on it. You are gone. I have no sister."

"Anne!" I cried, utterly aghast.

She turned a furious face to me. "Shall I call the guards and have you thrown out of the gates?" she demanded. "For I swear I will do so."

I fell to my knees. "My son," was all I could say.

"My son," she said vindictively. "I will tell him that his mother is dead and that he is to call me mother. You have lost everything for love, Mary. I hope it brings you joy." son," she said vindictively. "I will tell him that his mother is dead and that he is to call me mother. You have lost everything for love, Mary. I hope it brings you joy."

There was nothing I could say. I rose awkwardly to my feet, my heavy belly making it hard for me to rise. She watched me struggle as if she would sooner push me down than help me. I turned to the door and hesitated with my hand on the handle in case she should change her mind. "My son..."

"Go," she said. "You are dead to me. And don't approach the king or I shall tell him what a wh.o.r.e you have been."