Cromwell takes my hint and joins in. ‘We could send a messenger to suggest a delay. Someone of importance – so they know there’s no disrespect.’

  The Duke of Norfolk, George’s uncle, the head of the House of Howard, is the obvious choice; but he and Anne are barely speaking since he pulled off the brilliant trick of marrying his daughter to a royal bastard: the king’s illegitimate son. And almost all the other noblemen are secretly on the side of the old queen.

  ‘Oh, not one of the old lords!’ Anne exclaims. ‘Not one of the ancients!’

  The king taps her cheek. ‘Old friends,’ he says. ‘Faithful friends.’

  ‘Exactly so! Old friends, old men!’ She smiles at him. ‘Stuck in their old ways – not like you!’

  ‘Viscount Rochford?’ Cromwell suddenly exclaims, as if my husband George were not standing right in front of him.

  The king laughs. ‘Perfect! But can you spare him, Lady Rochford? Or are you with child, too, and won’t let him go?’

  It is my hidden grief that we have been married ten years with no sign of a child. But I laugh as merrily as if I have never cried in George’s arms. ‘Ah, Sire, we can’t all have our first child in the first year of marriage and a second in the second year! We are not all as happy as you and the queen!’

  ‘“The Most Happy”,’ George confirms. We never allow anyone to forget Anne’s motto.

  The king takes Anne’s hand and kisses it again. ‘She has done all that she promised me,’ he says dotingly. ‘And I have done more than anyone thought possible. I am making a new England, for a new royal family. And my newborn son will prove that God blesses me and my bride.’

  Anne glows at him and spreads her hand on the slight curve of her belly to make it look bigger.

  ‘George shall go to France and tell them the meeting must be delayed until after the birth of my son,’ the king declares. ‘We’ll visit in the autumn.’

  ‘I’m honoured by your trust,’ George says, as if he was going out to kill dragons. ‘I’ll not fail you.’

  The heroic note is exactly right. Henry takes George’s lower arm in a knight’s grip. ‘I know it, George. You are my brother.’

  ‘We would have confidence in no other.’ Anne smiles. She slides her hand on the king’s arm and invites him to walk in the cool of the garden before we go to breakfast, just the two of them. I know that she wants to be rid of her ladies, trailing behind to distract him; but he imagines a young handsome king with a beautiful queen leaning on his arm, walking on grass speckled with flowers as bright as a new-woven tapestry.

  Master Cromwell bows and goes out. George and I are left alone with Francis Weston.

  ‘See how we rise!’ George exclaims. ‘Thank you, my love. You steered us right, as always – and now I can tell the King of France that I am to have a royal nephew!’

  ‘Just my duty,’ I say modestly.

  He beams. ‘You know, there were times when I thought I’d always be here, running love notes between Anne and the king, a diplomat in the maids’ chamber, an ambassador in the sewing rooms, never getting to the source of power, always bobbing around in the froth.’

  ‘Lord, I wish I could come with you,’ Francis says, who has years of bobbing around ahead of him. ‘But I shall guard your lady while you are gone, if she will accept my service.’ He puts his hand on his heart and bows low to me.

  ‘Oh yes, yes.’ George waves away the game of courtly love as pointless without an audience. ‘Jane – send a message to the stables. I’ll need my horses reshod before we start. I’ll take two spare. I’m famous for how fast I make this journey.’ He kisses my outstretched hands. ‘I’ll come home quickly to you.’

  I make sure I do not cling. ‘I shall miss you,’ I tell him.

  ‘I’ll be back inside a month,’ he promises.

  THE QUEEN’S ROOMS are dull without George to suggest a theme for a masque, a new way to wear a French hood, or a round of games. We are visited by an old lady of the former royal family: Margaret Pole, kinswoman to the king. Years ago, she used to come to hear our lessons in the royal schoolroom and praised me for being the cleverest of the old queen’s little maids. She has never said one word against the tragedy of the divorce, or the humiliations that Anne heaped upon the old queen and her daughter. She begged for permission to serve Lady Mary or Queen Katherine, and even offered to serve for free, but Anne insists that she is always refused.

  Lady Margaret Pole wears a serene mask over her heartache. Today, she is accompanied by another royal kinswoman, Gertrude Courtenay. They curtsey to Anne to exactly the right depth, but somehow, they look as if they are doing her a favour. We sense their unspoken opinion that we are too noisy, too playful and young. Gertrude learned her manners from a strictly raised Spanish queen; we learned ours from the fashionable French. They think us too flirtatious, too witty. We read theology; we question too much for these unswervingly faithful Papists. Lady Margaret Pole’s favourite son is a scholar at Rome, and has been writing a book about the errors of reform for all his life. It may be very fine – my father the scholar says it will be brilliant – but I think it would be better for Reginald Pole, and better for his old mother, if he were to accept that Anne has persuaded the king to become Protestant, and all of England must be Protestant, too.

  Lady Margaret Pole and all her noble family are supporters of the old queen’s daughter, Lady Mary, and nobody knows how far they will go to get her returned to court, acknowledged as a princess and royal heir, and restored to her lands and titles. They hate our Princess Elizabeth who has replaced her, and our queen who has replaced theirs; but you would never know it from their fine courtly manners. From the sharp pinnacle of their old-fashioned gable hoods to their elegant plain leather shoes, these are noble ladies condescending to their inferiors. In return, we do everything we can to make them feel outdated and out of place in our fashion-mad court.

  Lady Margaret Pole greets the king’s niece Margaret Douglas with affection and asks after her mother, who was Queen Regent of Scotland and still advises her son King James of Scotland. The old lady quietly remarks on Margaret’s French hood and the raised hem of her gown that shows the embroidery on her silk stockings. Margaret blushes at this mild rebuke from her former governess, and Anne laughs aloud and says this is what they are wearing in Paris – and even the countess must surely remember what it was like to be a pretty young girl, however long ago it was?

  Anne is reckless in her power. She won’t tolerate Lady Margaret Pole coming into her rooms and making her look like an upstart but Lady Margaret never wavers in her quiet dignity. No one but George could smooth Anne’s ruffled feathers. He’s so well read that he can argue like Martin Luther himself, and his love for Anne turns the vapid games of courtly love in her rooms into something tender and true.

  Without him, the love-talk grinds on by rote; and more than one young man is reduced to stammering silence, strolling into the queen’s room in a new silk cape, with a spray of roses in his hand, signifying true love, but no witty words ready-prepared. The lute player Mark breaks off his song and does a little twang to draw everyone’s attention to his embarrassment, and we laugh unkindly at the young nobleman’s shyness.

  Anne needs me and George for she has no friends of her own. A self-made queen relies on self-made courtiers; everyone wants the chance to ride on this new queen’s coattails. Anne’s sister Mary is little use: more rival than supporter, as she was once the king’s lover. She is at the Boleyn family home, Hever Castle, this summer, and Anne is in no hurry to bring her back to court. We are a court of upstarts, soaring without firm foundations, so, everyone is relieved when George comes home early, making the journey from the Queen of Navarre and her brother King Francis in three weeks, bringing gifts and messages of goodwill from the French court.

  He has brought back a new tennis racquet from Paris and swears that he will challenge all comers. Anne promises a prize to the winner, and the master of revels draws up a tournament with all the noblemen of court on the list. They start in the early morning, and we ladies sit through the heat of the day on the queen’s balcony, under the wooden roof that gets hotter and hotter as the day goes on. We watch the players sweat and lunge for difficult shots, enduring the nagging bang of the ball against the back of the court and the loud rolling on the roof above our heads.

  ‘Shall I get you a tisane?’ I whisper to Anne.

  ‘You can tell your husband to hurry up and finish,’ she says sourly.

  He is playing the final match against the king, who is flushed and strong, dressed in white linen. The king has played two matches before this one, and his red-gold hair is dark with sweat, his damp shirt clinging to his muscled chest. When he stretches to hit a high ball or races to the net, he is as graceful as a bounding dancer.

  George loses by a few points; he misses the last shot with a desperate lunge and goes off court laughing to Francis Weston, who wraps him in a drying sheet. The king, beaming with triumph, comes to stand below the queen’s balcony, excited by his victory and laughing at George’s Parisian racquet – demanding it as his prize as well as the gift from the queen.

  George hands it over without hesitation, though it cost us a small fortune, and says that the king is by far the better player; but he will have his revenge next week. The ladies chime in, their voices like bells in full peal; everyone agrees that the king is as strong and as quick as a youth of twenty.

  Not Agnes. She spent the entire tournament in the cool draught at the back of the queen’s box, out of the burning sunshine. While we lean over the edge of the box to praise the king and tease his opponents, she says nothing; but drifts forward to stand beside me, and when the king rubs his red sweating face on the sleeve of his shirt, she drops her handkerchief – like a floating petal – down to him. He snatches it out of the air as if it were a thistle seed and puts it against his flushed cheek. He looks up at her and presses it to his mouth.

  Anne’s smile never wavers. She hands down the prize for the tournament – a gold hat pin – and she leads the way back to the queen’s side of the palace. She sets her ladies to sewing shirts for the poor – it is always shirts for the poor when she is in a rage.

  She waves George and me into her bedchamber, and I close the door quickly so that no one else can hear the storm break the moment we are alone.

  ‘You saw that. She insults me.’

  George is hot from the tennis court, with the sheet around his neck and his muslin shirt sticking to his back. ‘I have to go and wash.’

  ‘No, stay. You saw what she did. She insults me.’

  ‘I smell like a horse.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Tell me what I should do. She’s throwing herself at him!’

  ‘At least let me wash!’

  She flicks her hand in dismissal, and he goes into the grand stool room that adjoins her bedroom. We hear him splashing the big ewers of water over himself and lathering up her fine soap, and finally he comes out, his hair curly from the water, one bath sheet embroidered with her crowned initial wrapped around his waist and another thrown over his shoulders. She pays no attention to his nakedness.

  ‘You saw her. She’s doing everything but swive him under my nose.’

  ‘Did this start while I was away in France?’

  ‘Not that I’ve seen,’ I say.

  George rubs water from his ear with the sheet. ‘Jane misses nothing. If Jane didn’t see it, it’s only just started. So, it’s nothing: it’s the game – the courtly love game. We all play it, all the time. You can’t object … in your condition …’

  ‘My condition’s supposed to be my saviour!’

  George looks at me to intervene.

  ‘Your condition is your saviour,’ I agree. ‘It means you’re above challenge. Even if he flirts with someone else, even if he falls in love …’

  ‘He’s already in love!’ she shrieks. ‘Unending love! Not like you, married by arrangement!’

  ‘All marriages are arranged,’ George says quickly. ‘It’s just that you arranged your own. And all marriages are of love. I didn’t choose Jane, but I was glad to have the daughter of Lord Morley as my wife, and she’s been as loyal as a …’ He breaks off, trying to imagine a simile for loyalty in this false court.

  ‘As a dog!’ she snaps.

  George puts his arm around my waist. ‘Well, anyway, loving and loyal – and right! Jane’s always right. As she says: you’re above challenge. But while you’re pregnant and he can’t swive you, he’s bound to have other women. He’s not going to live like a monk for five or six months until your son’s born and you’re churched and can come back to your place – he’s going to have someone! He always did before.’

  ‘Before!’ she repeats. ‘Of course he had other women when he was married to an old queen constantly losing her babies! She was old and sick, and their marriage was cursed. But he’s not going to have anyone other than me! I held him at arm’s length for six years! Six years!’

  ‘You didn’t hold him at arm’s length,’ George points out. ‘There was all sorts of kissing and pleasuring. Sortilèges. French tricks.’

  I didn’t know of this perverse and sinful behaviour. I had truly believed it was all courtly love. I hide my shock, and Anne doesn’t thank George for the reminder.

  ‘Next to nothing, and I could do it again now! Why shouldn’t I hold him for another six months?’

  The marriage is less than two years old, and it was made – uniquely – for love. Anne has made herself into a new sort of queen, a new sort of wife: a beloved-wife, a love-queen. She has made a new age for women – recognised for our beauty and brains. Is such a queen, married for love, as secure on her throne as one pledged in a cold-hearted international alliance? Or should a marriage made for love, last only as long as love? Does a husband, married for love, have to be seduced and won over and over again?

  Of course, we know the answer to that! The king tells us in every joust he wins and every masque where he plays the hero. He must be courted and fall in love daily. He never tires of the game of courtly love. Every day he has to fall in love again. Every day: fresh and new and passionate. And this was all very well when Anne was a honeymoon wife, and we, ambitious courtiers, played the music and danced him into her arms. But how can a wife heavy with child dance like a seductive girl? What can she do when he is strictly forbidden by the Church from coming to her bed?

  ‘He’s never going to stop playing at courtship,’ George says gently. ‘He has to be adored. It’s going to be “declare I dare not” to someone new every time you’re with child. He has to be the great lover – desired above all others. You know that! You’ll have to look the other way and know that when your son is born, you’re back in the game. Until then, look the other way.’

  ‘The queen looked the other way!’ she exclaims bitterly. ‘Never said a word against me until it was too late! See where that got her? Dowager princess in Kimbolton Castle and a household of half a dozen? Her daughter named “Lady Mary” – never to command as a princess again? If the queen had nipped it in the bud, I’d not be here today – and she’d not be there!’

  George laughs – it is a masterstroke; only he would dare to laugh at her in her rage – and take her in his arms, half-naked. ‘Nobody could ever have nipped you in the bud,’ he assures her. He wraps his arms around her, sways her from side to side, and she closes her eyes and puts her hot angry face against his cool bare skin. ‘Anne, sweetheart. Wait – what did he call you? Lady of my heart!’

  Reluctantly, she giggles, remembering the king’s laborious poetry. ‘Never let us be apart.’

  ‘Storm-tossed maiden!’ he reminds her, and she laughs outright, leaning back in his arms. ‘I can’t blame him for that,’ she says. ‘That was one of my lesser lines.’

  ‘It was brilliant,’ he assures her. ‘And you’ll always be the love of his life. Agnes doesn’t matter. You don’t stoop to complain of a girl like her. Don’t bring her to the court’s attention; ignore her, and he’ll court her and have her, and then he’ll get bored and find another Agnes. He’ll find dozens of Agneses during your reign. You won’t care. We’ve won. You’re queen, and once you have a prince and heir, you don’t even need him in your bed.’

  I think he has soothed her, and the storm has passed.

  ‘He promised he would love me forever,’ she says resentfully.

  George shrugs. ‘He married you. That’s forever.’

  Of course, Katherine of Aragon exiled in a cold castle, shows us all: it is not.

  ‘Agnes shall leave court if she upsets you,’ I suggest. ‘Your mother can speak to her parents.’

  ‘That’s right.’ George gentles Anne; he presses her into a chair and takes off her heavy hood. ‘Rest,’ he urges her. ‘Rest and be calm for the baby. This baby’s going to make everything all right.’

  ‘Jane can get rid of Agnes.’

  ‘I don’t know how …’ I begin, looking to George.

  They laugh, their eyes bright as weasel kits. ‘Oh, Jane, don’t pretend!’ George exclaims. ‘You’ve been at court long enough.’

  ‘Spill ink on her gown or wine on her linen, loosen her girth so her saddle slips and she falls from her horse.’ Anne laughs.

  ‘I can’t loosen her girth!’

  ‘No, don’t kill her!’ George agrees.

  ‘Put a forbidden book in her chest and report her,’ Anne suggests. ‘Rub her shoes in dog shit. Or just tell the girls that you don’t like her, and they’ll do the rest for you.’

  ‘I’m supposed to keep them orderly, not bully them – they’ll hate me!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who hates you, if we love you!’ Anne knows the note to strike with me. ‘We love you! George will protect his clever wife; the earl my father will protect his daughter-in-law; my uncle the duke will protect his niece! Remember, you’re a Boleyn, of the House of Howard. You belong to us, and nobody can do anything against you.’ She stops and laughs at me. ‘Dear Jane! Look how she melts at the thought of being loved!’