I think of the blaze of martyrdom in the princess’ eyes. ‘She certainly ought to,’ I say cautiously.

  ‘Does your father love Lady Mary?’

  ‘Courtly love,’ I tell him. ‘Fatherly love. You know that means nothing.’

  He looks intently. ‘Fatherly love means nothing, Lady Rochford?’

  ‘My father is a philosopher,’ I tell him. ‘The head rules the heart.’

  He nods. ‘Please tell him to advise Lady Mary that she must take the oath,’ he says gently. ‘Sooner, rather than late. And mention it to Lady Margaret Pole. Even to Gertrude Courtenay. Tell them that she should take the oath now, when it is offered in kindness, and not risk the queen’s disfavour. Thomas More risked the queen’s disfavour. We don’t want any more martyrs.’

  ‘Anne would never—’ I start, but I remember her saying: She is my death, or I am hers.

  ‘Exactly,’ he says. ‘The Spanish party should consider what will happen to Lady Mary when her mother is no longer here to protect her? Lady Mary’s friends might wish her safe – might wish her far away.’

  Thomas Cromwell never says a word that is not full of meaning. Is he now suggesting that Lady Mary should run away? ‘I suppose she can’t just leave!’

  ‘I would have thought she has friends enough, clever enough and rich enough to get her to a Spanish ship in some unwatched port.’

  ‘Are there any unwatched ports?’ I ask.

  ‘There could be.’

  ‘She would not get captured, trying to run away? That would be the worst thing that could happen. They would have advised her to go to her death?’

  ‘She would not be captured,’ he reassures me. ‘If she made the attempt, I am sure she would get away. If anyone were caught, it would be her assistants – the Spanish party. I imagine you Boleyns wouldn’t mind the Spanish party being caught in treason? In the very treasonous act that got Lady Mary safely out of the country?’

  He does not wait for me to answer, but makes his bow to the king and withdraws from the room, his clerk silently following behind. The queue for people waiting to offer gifts to the king is long, but I wait for Lady Margaret Pole to step forward, and her servant bows and puts down a handsome Spanish-made saddle. The clerk notes the value, Lady Margaret curtseys to the king, her cousin, and he rises from his throne and kisses her on both cheeks. His groom of the chamber passes him a small, jewelled box as his gift for her, as if she – born a princess – is honoured by a second-hand piece of rubbish. She curtseys and steps backwards deferentially, only turning her back on the king when she gets to the door of his presence chamber. I curtsey, too, and follow her down the gallery to the Pole rooms, where she stays with her sons: Lord Henry Montague and Sir Geoffrey Pole.

  ‘My lady?’ I catch her up.

  ‘Lady Rochford.’ She smiles at me as if she wants to see me as her clever little pupil in Queen Katherine’s rooms, and not the skilled courtier that I have become.

  ‘My father will visit Lady Mary after Twelfth Night,’ I say. ‘Shall I ask him to take your good wishes?’

  She is too cautious to trust me. ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘Please send her my blessings. Your father was always a good friend. Lady Mary and I used to have much pleasure in reading his translations.’

  I lower my voice. ‘He will advise her to take the oath of loyalty.’

  ‘I’m sure she will be glad of his advice.’ This woman has survived four kings; she is not going to be surprised into an indiscretion.

  ‘Lady Mary should understand – as Sir Thomas More did not – that there is no choice. If she is to live in England, she will have to declare her obedience to the King of England as Supreme Head of the Church, married to his first and only wife, Queen Anne. She must name herself as his bastard daughter …’ I pause. ‘If she is to remain in England,’ I add, to let her think of exile.

  Her hands are trembling; she tucks them into her sleeves. ‘I thank you for your advice.’ She speaks slowly, as if weighing every individual word. ‘I know that you loved Lady Mary when you were together in the schoolroom.’

  I laugh, my false laugh. ‘Oh, we were little rivals! I used to say to her: “Vaya a Esapña!”’

  She speaks Spanish as well as I do. She understands: Go to Spain! But she does not betray herself. ‘Oh yes, I had forgotten that,’ she says, smiling.

  I curtsey and leave her at the door of Pole rooms. She’s an intelligent woman; I don’t need to say more. I have the heady sense of power like a loosed falcon. I have done something very good for Lady Mary today, while leading the Spanish party into disaster. I stretch out my fingers like the talons of a hawk. I feel as if I could grasp anything.

  Greenwich Palace, January

  1536

  I MIGHT HAVE GOT Lady Mary safely out of the country and the Spanish party destroyed for their part in her escape, but they freeze into inaction, horrified by the decline of the old queen, in the dark days of the new year. Even I – sister to the woman who so brutally replaced her – am waiting, on edge for the daily arrival of bad news from Kimbolton Castle. I fear she is feeling the cold of the hard winter of the eastern fenlands. She was raised as a princess of Spain in the Alhambra Palace in Granada, she has always felt the cold in England. I think of her, solitary, confined to one tower of an uncomfortable castle, separated from her beloved daughter, nothing to leave her servants after a lifetime of wearing a queen’s jewels, knowing that her very name is denied, no certainty left but her faith. I imagine her shrinking from the cold wind from the east bringing more snow, knowing that none of us who once loved her can visit her, not even on her deathbed.

  I cross myself, half-hidden in the corner of the queen’s presence chamber, and I pray for the soul of the woman who Anne and I, and almost everyone here, served as if we truly loved, and then turned against, like traitors. I name her daughter as ‘Princess Mary’ in my prayers, and think of her, waiting for the news of her mother’s death, bitterly aware that she can only say goodbye to her mother, if she takes the oath to deny her. To Princess Mary, swearing an oath that her mother is neither wife nor queen, must be worse than death itself.

  Anne bursts into the presence chamber, handfast with the king, looking as radiant as if we have won a great victory in a war. ‘Thank God, thank God, she is gone, and we are safe!’

  All Anne’s ladies leap to their feet and mime surprise and joy; I turn from the cold garden, smiling brilliantly to greet the royal couple.

  ‘And free from the danger of war with Spain!’ the king exclaims. ‘No one’s going to invade us with no cause! And the pope will never publish my excommunication – we have outwitted him!’ He puffs up his broad chest. ‘We were too quick for him! Ha!’

  Anne does not blink at the claim that the old queen’s death is a credit to our quick-wittedness. The king’s friends trail in behind the joyful couple, all laughing and talking like a chorus enacting victory in a masque. The Spanish party – the queen’s old courtiers and her closest friends – mouth the words, nodding their heads like puppets in agreement, but they cannot make their lips smile. Gertrude Courtenay is as pale as the pearls she wears for mourning, and her husband, the Marquess of Exeter, is grim.

  ‘And now we can meet with the pope and with the emperor as friends.’ My uncle, Thomas Howard the Duke of Norfolk, arrives smoothly at the king’s elbow. ‘They have no cause against us. We can make agreements with them, step back into Christendom. We don’t have to dance around the French any more. We can get back to the old ways.’

  ‘We won’t befriend Spain!’ Anne snaps back. ‘They’ve been our enemy for years. Why should we trust them just because their old queen is dead?’

  Her uncle gives her his slow smile, his thin mouth like a trap. ‘For sure, they’d never trust you,’ he says. ‘Already, the gossips are saying that the queen was poisoned and that it was your famous soup.’

  The king hears none of this, turning to be congratulated by his friends, but the colour flames into Anne’s cheeks and George silences her, grabbing her arm. ‘Dowager princess,’ he corrects steadily. ‘There is only one queen. And Spain has no cause against us. They’re not going to listen to gossip against the only queen of England when they need our alliance against France.’

  Henry Courtenay and Henry Pole – leaders of the Spanish party – studiously ignore each other.

  ‘Thank God!’ Thomas Howard turns away from Anne and George to clasp the king’s hand as if to congratulate him. ‘Thank God that the woman who wrongly claimed you is dead.’

  The woman who claims him right now narrows her dark eyes at her uncle but says nothing. The realisation that Henry will now be seen by the pope – by the whole Roman Catholic world – as a widower, free to marry again in the true church, gives her pause.

  But we have choreographed a joyful masque, and we cannot admit to doubts. We have dancing and drinking, and the king’s friends toast to his freedom, and next day, the king and queen process to church for a thanksgiving mass, with the little Princess Elizabeth dressed in bright yellow, carried before them as the undeniable heiress of their undeniable marriage. Anne wears a flowing dress with her belt tied high and tight to show her three-months pregnancy – as if to declare she is far past the losing time and marching on to certainty.

  If this baby is a boy, he will wear the royal christening gown, and this time, there will be no exiled queen to claim that it was her family gown, brought from Spain, and that Anne’s baby is a bastard and unworthy. This baby will have the title Duke of Cornwall and be named Henry, and everyone will forget that there was ever another little Henry Duke of Cornwall who lived only fifty-two days and died in Queen Katherine’s arms. By the time this one is born in midsummer, that first queen will have been forgotten; like a May Day queen – gone by midnight and replaced the next year.

  ‘WRITE TO MY sister, Mary,’ Anne commands me, as she is resting in the afternoon.

  ‘Mary? Why?’ I would not have thought Anne would want her sister – a former mistress of the king with two children to her credit in the nursery at Hever – ever at court again.

  She gleams. ‘She can see my triumph. She doubted me, and now she will see I am queen – the only queen. And I need her; I need my family around me; I need loyal family around me. I can trust no one but those who depend on me.’

  ‘Mary doesn’t depend on you,’ I point out. ‘She chose poverty with the farmer rather than depend on you?’

  ‘Just write and tell her,’ Anne repeats.

  ‘But will she come? You didn’t part on the best of terms, did you? You called her a whoring slut, didn’t you?’

  The great scandal of Mary’s dismissal from court took place while I was away at Morley Hall. Apparently, Mary said she was married for love and showed her broad belly. I don’t know which annoyed Anne the more, since I missed the shouting and the screaming and the tears.

  ‘She’ll come if I tell her,’ Anne says simply. ‘She has to.’

  MARY BOLEYN ARRIVES, sulky as a serf, in time for the great joust – it has no title, but everyone knows it is to celebrate the death of the queen, and those of us who loved her – like Mary and me – hide our secret grief. We waste no time on mutual sympathy: Mary despises me as a woman who has given my life to ambition, and I am comforted when I see that though she chose love, she cannot escape the tyranny of the Boleyns: she still has to serve.

  The king rides in the joust himself, revelling in his youth and vitality now that his old wife is dead. You would think he was a dozen years her junior. He plays the part of a young husband to a young pregnant wife.

  The tiltyard is Henry’s stage; he designed it as a viewing ground for his performance of himself. Either side of the yard are two matching octagonal towers with open galleries – one for the ladies of the court, one for the noblemen – so that we can sit up high and see every detail of the king’s brilliant horsemanship and his unfailing courage. Opposite the towers are spectator stands for the people of London to admire their king, riding under his own standard, wearing his own colours. Even when the joust is in costume, everyone knows who he is. He was a great jouster when he was younger, and even now, he does not spare himself. Of course, he almost always wins.

  Today is no different. Anne is in the great octagonal tower at the side of the tiltyard, at the forefront of the ladies overlooking the yard, all of us avid with admiration all morning. Mary Boleyn – now Mistress Stafford, as she reminds everyone – stands at the back: returned to court but not to favour. George rides well and wins his round with Anne’s glove on his lance. The king takes one tilt, breaks his lance against his opponent’s chest, and is the victor over a younger man. Everyone says loudly that he rides like a twenty-year-old.

  He will rest, as others ride in the next bouts, and then he will ride at the ring at the end of the afternoon, so the huge audience of courtiers and the wealthy merchants and citizens who have come from London can see their king excel.

  Anne goes back to the palace to rest for an hour in the cool while the other men are jousting. She takes Mary Shelton with her, and Jane Seymour, the king’s former and current flirt, and leaves us ladies to stay behind to watch the other jousts.

  One knight withdraws a lame horse from the contest, and another joust is finished quickly in one pass, so the king is due to ride earlier than was planned. He decides to ride at once; he does not want anyone to think he needs to rest. I send a page running to the queen’s rooms to tell Anne that the king is riding now – she must come at once.

  Henry strides out of his tent and waits for them to bring up his great horse. It too is carrying heavy armour, its head and shoulders burdened with forged plates: a shell of steel encloses the great warhorse of flesh and blood. One groom makes it halt; the other goes on his hands and knees on the ground beside the huge hooves. The king steps heavily on the man’s back, puts one boot into the stirrup and heaves himself into the saddle. The big charger sidles as the weight comes down, and the king gathers up his reins. He drops the visor on his helmet with a clang, and now he is a mythical being, a faceless monster of enamelled steel, high on a huge metalled creature. His squire mounts his own horse and rides before the king to announce him: his motto for this joust is Anne’s own, ‘The Most Happy’, as a compliment to Anne and a final jibe to his dead queen – he is the most happy, and she is not even buried yet.

  He is going to tilt at the ring, a display of horsemanship and quickness of eye and hand: a crowd-pleasing show before he rides at full tilt in the final joust. There are three rings, dangling from arches, one after another on the long ground between the two viewing towers; he will gallop beneath them and catch them on his lance. The king parades around the arena; the crowd cheers him – but they are subdued: too many remember the old queen, and some point to the empty throne in the ladies’ viewing box and say that no woman will ever be fit to take her place.

  The king raises his lance to encourage applause, gallops round a second time to make sure that everyone is watching him and then crams his spurs into the sides of the horse. It leaps forward and thunders down the arches where the rings hang. The king raises his lance, strikes one, and pulls it free in one smooth movement, strikes the second, and then there is a clang and a shriek as he misjudges the third and his lance gets stuck on the arch, stopping dead, striking a terrible blow, to the galloping horse.

  Henry is thrown from the saddle, falling towards the ground, his weight pulls the frightened horse down with him so that it staggers and, with a terrible clatter, falls on him, armoured king beneath armoured horse, and he is crushed beneath its dreadful weight.

  Everyone screams; all the grooms and squires sprint onto the tiltyard towards the horse struggling on the ground. But they cannot get to it – the huge front hooves are blindly clawing the air; its back legs are kicking out. It is blinded by the head armour and weighed down by the iron plates. While it struggles, trying to roll over and pull itself up, trapped beneath it is the armoured body of the king, terribly still, as his horse rolls up and falls back and rolls again.

  One groom dares to fling himself at the horse’s head, pulls off the armoured headpiece so the creature can see, and hauls on the reins to make it rise. I hear him scream: ‘Up, Thunder! Up! For the love of God! Get off him!’

  At last, it gets its front hooves squarely on the ground and raises its big head; but its body, the terrible weight of the big body and muscled haunches grind down on the unmoving rider. Then it heaves itself to all four feet. It shakes – a terrible clatter of bent and loosened armour – and steps away from the fallen man, who lies still as death.

  My hands are clamped over my mouth; I am not breathing. I take a shuddering gasp and cling to the front of the balcony. The king’s physician Dr Butts comes running from the viewing tower, stumbling through the churned sand of the tiltyard. He throws himself on his knees beside the still body and, tenderly, with infinite care, lifts the visor on the helmet and puts down his ear to listen for a breath. He nods – perhaps the king is breathing? He puts his hand tenderly inside the helmet, feeling for a pulse. He nods more certainly and gets to his feet.

  ‘He lives,’ he says quietly to the waiting arena, and then the king’s pages come running up with a table top snatched from someone’s tent. They put it on the ground beside the king and, slowly, with Dr Butts guiding them, dig the board into the sand beneath the inert body from feet to helmet, as if they are lifting a forged iron effigy of a king.

  They raise the board in one movement, straining under the weight, and shuffle cautiously out of the tiltyard. The sand pours off the board like water, as if they were carrying a drowned iron statue from the seabed. There is a long sigh, like a groan of pain, from the hundreds watching, as the King of England, our only king, our king without an heir, is carried like a shipwreck from the tiltyard to the palace.

  Saying nothing, I lead the ladies in a silent procession which forms behind the pages with their terrible burden. Even at this moment of horror, we fall into the orders of precedence. Dukes first: my uncle, Thomas Howard the Duke of Norfolk, closely behind the king’s still body; Charles Brandon the Duke of Suffolk, beside him; Robert Radcliffe the Earl of Sussex alongside. Then lords and knights. We ladies come behind them, men with lesser titles behind us. It is as if we were going to a great banquet or about to dance – we are all in order. But it is as if we were ranked ghosts, for we are completely silent, and when it is my turn to step into the great hall of the palace, I shiver in the sudden cool – blinking in the shadow after the bright sunshine. Everyone’s face is as white as if we are underwater.