Hampton Court, Autumn

  1537

  IN THE AUTUMN, we all go to Hampton Court for Jane to give birth in the newly renovated queen’s rooms – beautifully designed by Anne, who made the rooms into a glamorous shell to house a dazzling queen. Jane is overawed by the gold leaf on the wooden carvings, the heraldic beasts, the massive wood shutters, the heavy wood furniture. She looks like a country cousin on a visit and perches uncomfortably on the edge of her throne.

  It is a small court – only a few ladies are admitted. There is plague in London, and the king, always terrified of illness, insists that Jane is locked into the empty palace, as he hides from illness at Esher. He does not even say a proper goodbye in his haste to get away.

  I have seen two queens miscarry. All through the birth, which lasts a day and a night, I expect something to go wrong; but Jane labours with the trappings of her old-fashioned faith all around her: the unrolled manuscript which she calls the girdle of the Virgin around her straining belly, the communion wafer in a huge crystal monstrance in her sight, holy water on one side of the cradle, blessed wine on the other, holy oil in a jar, a piece of the true cross on her table, some saints’ bones enclosed in a crystal, half a dozen things – mostly fakes – and the prayers of a hooded priest muttering through the grille of a closed door. In the early hours of the second morning, she gives birth to a boy.

  The messengers in the presence chamber, who kept their horses saddled and ready all night, race to be first with the news to the king, to the lords, to London. I don’t need to tell my spymaster; his pigeon master frees his fastest bird from one of the towers at Hampton Court. He will have the news before anyone.

  There is a huge service of thanksgiving in St Paul’s and in every church in the country, and at once, the machinery of the court grinds into motion. The builders make the last touches to the royal chapel, and the palace fills up with nobles for the christening. The king greets the guests but will not attend the royal christening. He prefers to conform to tradition and stay away than risk being upstaged by a baby.

  My father is honoured to walk four-year-old Lady Elizabeth up the aisle of the royal chapel, carrying the vial of oil for anointing her baby half-brother, Edward Seymour, on her other side. Known Papists, and Anne’s enemies are honoured with prominent roles. Gertrude Courtenay of the Spanish party carries the precious baby, her husband beside her, Lady Mary is godmother. The final insult to Anne is that the wife of her jailor at the Tower, Lady Kingston, carries Lady Mary’s train. The men who gave fatal evidence against Anne – Sir Francis Bryan, Sir Nicholas Carew, and Sir Anthony Browne – are the guardians of the font. Anne’s judges: my uncle Thomas Howard, and Charles Brandon, and her confessor Archbishop Cranmer, are godfathers.

  The king does not see Jane alone, he will not meet her privately, until she has been churched and emerged from her confinement rooms. Loving husbands break these rules, but the king, equally horrified by illness and female mysteries, keeps his distance. So he does not see Jane’s quiet pride when we bring the baby back to her room and tell her that he has been christened Prince Edward for the saint’s day of his birth, like a good Roman Catholic baby.

  Indeed, the king never sees Jane again, as she dies of a fever a little more than a week later. He is not missed – Jane would have been horrified by a deathbed visit, and how could we have welcomed and flirted with him, when we were distracted by her dying? Without him, she makes a good death – better than her two predecessors: in comfort, fully shriven, drenched in the oil of extreme unction, revelling in the only moment of triumph of her entire selfless life.

  Greenwich Palace, Winter

  1537

  THE KING DECLARES that he will never marry again, that he has lost the love of his life. The part of heartbroken widower is new to him, though this is his third dead wife, and he takes to it as his greatest role. He orders her buried at Windsor and swears that he will lie beside her; they must enter heaven together. He likes her far better dead than he ever did alive. Her final service, is to restore his sense of eternal youth. She was a young woman, and yet she died before him: in his mind, that makes him her junior. He is elated to be alive though she is dead, to be healthy and strong, while she is in her grave, to have his whole life before him, while her life is over. And now he has his own baby, a son and heir, and no woman can claim the credit of having birthed him; he feels divine: like Zeus he can produce a child from his forehead.

  Once again, a queen is dead, and once again, the queen’s ladies are not dismissed. The queen’s chambers are closed, but the king cannot live without women admirers. We have to stay at court. Married ladies live with their husbands, young women return to their fathers. My uncle invites me to an elegant suite of rooms in the Howard chambers. This is not for love nor family loyalty; my uncle knows that my patron is on the rise: Lord Cromwell has taken the post of lord privy seal from Thomas Boleyn and has been awarded the Order of the Garter that George wanted so much.

  The king’s daughter, Lady Mary, has outlived two stepmothers and is now the first lady of the court. Lord Cromwell is negotiating foreign marriages; but with a boy in the royal cradle, the king can spare no thought for either of his daughters and cannot be brought to say whether Lady Mary is a legitimate princess or a bastard by-blow. Not even the Howards dare to ask about Lady Elizabeth, whose servants are transferred to serve a true, legitimate baby prince.

  Margaret Douglas, also displaced by this baby boy, is released from the Tower, desperately ill, and sent to Syon Abbey to recover. Her husband, poor Lord Thom, has died of fever, so she is a widow who was, so briefly, a secret wife. If she recovers from gaol fever and heartbreak, she will return to court to join this strange half-life that we all now live: ladies-in-waiting with no one to wait on, princesses without titles, heiresses with no inheritance, the queen’s ladies without queen’s rooms to attend or a queen to serve.

  It is a sign of how little the king truly values the ladies that he keeps us on with nothing to do, except for the evenings when he wants company, or dancing or singing. The grooms would not leave his horses standing idle; the huntsmen would not leave his hounds cooped up; but the ladies of his court are picked up and dropped.

  ‘He has no special favourite?’ Lord Cromwell asks me again, as the tables are put away after dinner in the king’s presence chamber and the musicians tune up for the ladies to dance. We go through our paces like mares in a market as the king watches and taps his one sound leg. ‘I don’t want to arrange a marriage for him with a foreign princess if another Jane is going to pop up from the countryside and overturn everything.’

  ‘He’s attentive to Anne Basset,’ I warn, looking towards the dancers where the king is taking his place in a circle dance which will take him around every lady. ‘Daughter of Lady Lisle of Calais, the Spanish party put her forward. And Mary Shelton as well as her sister. But he likes an audience more than a partner. He likes us in a flock.’

  ‘Bedding any?’ he asks me.

  It is treason to say that the king is impotent. ‘Not that I’ve noticed,’ I say discreetly. ‘Not noticeably at all.’ I am rewarded with his little grunt of amusement.

  ‘I understand you. Tell me if there is a rising star. Or if anything is rising at all …’ He lets the sentence trail away, and I incline my head with a hidden smile. I know what he means, but Jane taught her ladies to ignore bawdy jokes.

  ‘Won’t your cousin Mary Howard have a try at the king?’ he suggests. ‘She’s pretty enough, and clever enough? I can’t believe her father hasn’t suggested it? He’s always pushing a Howard into a royal bed. He wouldn’t wink at her marrying her father-in-law.’

  I shake my head. ‘She’s a young woman of principle; she’s adopted the reformed religion, and she’s sincere about it.’

  He crinkles his dark eyes in a smile. ‘And what about you, my dear Lady Rochford? You don’t deploy your charms – you don’t try sortilèges?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I am no longer mad, Lord Cromwell. I am sane and cold and dry. I live my own life, and I want neither court nor love nor courtly love.’

  He gives me a sympathetic, crooked smile. ‘I am a widower myself,’ he says. ‘There is a lot to be said for sane and cold and dry.’

  Greenwich Palace, Spring

  1538

  THIS YEAR, MY father’s new year gift to Lady Mary is a translation of Psalm 36. It is a hint for her to keep her friends – the Poles, the Courtenays, the Spanish ambassador and his spies – at a safe distance. The Spanish party are at the peak of their power. I cannot think they will ever overreach; nothing seems to be beyond their grasp. It feels part of their triumph that my mother-in-law, Elizabeth Boleyn, dies without returning to court, and my father-in-law faces the rest of his life alone, one daughter estranged, his two favourite children and his wife dead.

  My father is right to warn Lady Mary: Let not the foot of pride come against me.

  May Day is a muted celebration, appropriate for a king who swears he will never be happy again. Lord Cromwell talks to all the ladies and praises the king, whose leg is healed so well that he can take part in a circle dance and works his way around the ladies to arrive at me. I curtsey low to him as my new partner and observe the barrel circumference of his chest, the broadening of his belt, and the exaggerated embroidered codpiece thrusting between the thickly jewelled skirts of his jacket.

  ‘Pretty Jane,’ he says to me, and then his big round face flushes, and tears come into his eyes. ‘That’s what I called her.’

  I take his hand. ‘I know,’ I say. ‘And she was very pretty.’

  ‘She adored me.’

  ‘She did,’ I agree. ‘All the ladies do, Sire. But the greatest honour for her was that you loved her. You were her knight errant.’

  The musicians pause the music. Everyone is standing still, waiting for the king to start the dancing, noting the warmth of his gaze on my face, his head close to mine.

  ‘You understand me.’ He smiles through his tears. ‘Like she did.’

  ‘I have been at your court so long …’

  It is a mistake. I bite back my words. He does not want to think of my long service to three queens at an ageing court. He must be seen as a young widower, grieving for his one and only wife. He flushes with annoyance and drops my hand and repeats reproachfully: ‘You call it so long?’

  ‘Long enough to know and love you,’ I say quickly. ‘Not long enough at all! And you never seem a day older!’

  He smiles again; he kisses my hand. The musicians strike up and we dance together, and then he goes on to the next partner, Anne Basset, who sinks into a curtsey so deep that her smiling mouth is level with his codpiece.

  The dance finishes, the dancers disperse, and I find myself beside Lord Cromwell. The choristers begin the May Day carol of spring and youthful hope, promises, and love that will never die. I don’t smile at the words. My May Day is an anniversary of terror and loss.

  ‘You offended him?’ Cromwell asks me.

  ‘Who does not? It was a little slip of the tongue. But I recovered. I’m glad to see you, Lord Cromwell.’

  He tucks my hand in his arm, and he walks me away from the dancers towards the card tables. He presses me gently into a seat and takes a deck of cards and starts to shuffle. The pictures, each with a secret meaning, like a pack of codes, flicker through his strong hands.

  ‘You have news for me?’

  ‘I do. You remember that Lady Margaret Pole has an abbey, her family foundation, at her palace at Bisham?’ I ask him.

  ‘It was closed by my inspectors for corruption and harbouring a runaway heretical priest.’

  ‘The king has reopened it. He has promised it will never be closed again.’

  There is no check to his smooth shuffling. ‘I didn’t know this.’

  ‘It is to be a chantry for Queen Jane’s immortal soul. The king’s paying for a permanent foundation with nuns singing daily masses for Jane. The holy women will be housed at Bisham Abbey, under the protection of Lady Margaret Pole.’

  We reformers don’t believe in the existence of purgatory, nor that masses will release a sinner early from torment. It’s so obviously a ruse to fleece grieving families of their money. Once, the king agreed with us, but His Majesty’s grasp of theology is rarely as strong as his whims.

  Cromwell turns over cards at random. ‘Not quite the glorious Pilgrimage of Grace that Lady Margaret’s son Reginald promised to lead, is it?’ he says, unimpressed. ‘One abbey, reopened – just one – and that at the Poles’ own expense? But no doubt it will be a great joy for Lady Margaret to reopen her family abbey in defiance of my closure. This must give her hope.’ He pauses. ‘And if you see any other signs of hope: reading books against reform or letters from Reginald or Rome, or any sort of thing, you will let me know, dear Lady Rochford.’

  ‘I will,’ I say. ‘But she didn’t get to sixty-four years old, through four reigns, by leaving signs of hope lying around for a casual passerby.’

  ‘No,’ he says with a smile. ‘But she’s not surrounded by casual passersby but by a large family, indiscreet and all needing money. One of them is sure to betray her.’ His eyes rest on the youngest brother, Sir Geoffrey, the least handsome and least likeable of a handsome, likeable family. ‘Would you like to take a wager on which one?’

  Westmister Palace, Summer

  1538

  I AM TOO WISE to risk good money gambling on the unreliability of Lady Margaret’s youngest son. Sir Geoffrey is taken to the Tower for questioning in the dog days of August, while his powerful kinsmen are at their country homes, the king on progress, and all the court dispersed. No one notices that the young man has disappeared into the unbearably hot rooms, under the leads of the roof of the Tower, and Sir Geoffrey, simmering with resentment against his older brothers, heated by Lord Cromwell’s questions, melts into spiteful gossip.

  When the court returns to Westminster Palace in autumn and finds Sir Geoffrey under arrest, everyone assumes that he must have been taking bribes from the Spanish ambassador or even from the French, and is to be taught a lesson by a brief imprisonment. The Pole family are glacially disapproving of one of their kinsmen falling below their high standards, but we are all sure that his name and his debts will be cleared by the matriarch of the family: Lady Margaret Pole.

  There are other portents. The eternal chantry for Queen Jane, the Pole family’s abbey at Bisham, is closed again, only months after its brief reopening. The king has changed his mind. Now, he thinks it is ridiculous to believe that souls wait patiently in purgatory to be bought into heaven by thousands of sung masses. And if there is no purgatory, then there is no need for an expensive chantry, and the Pole family’s abbey can be closed again without regret – for anyone but the Poles: they are anguished, of course.

  This is not the only straw in the changing wind. The tomb of Thomas Becket, a sacred destination for the hundreds of pilgrim ways that cross and recross all Europe, is closed, too; the jewels gifted over centuries disappear into Thomas Cromwell’s Court of Augmentations, and the priceless bones of the saint are robbed from his tomb and promptly lost. The great ruby of Thomas Becket – the greatest treasure of the shrine – vanishes with the bones of saint but reappears – a resurrectionem – on the king’s fat thumb.

  The heartbreak in Canterbury is completely silent. I think of the priest in my father’s village church cutting all references to the pope from his missal; now he will have to cut out St Thomas Becket as well. He might as well throw away his Latin Bible. Every church is to have a new one in English; God will no longer be addressed in Latin. The king knows that God speaks English. It is an English God for an English pope and king.

  These are heavy reverses for the Papist Spanish party, but not their downfall. They believe that they are safe – their weakest link, Sir Geoffrey, has fallen silent in the Tower. They admit to nothing more than his minor indiscretion, and no one can be executed for an indiscretion.

  ‘I have good news for you,’ my spymaster tells me, finding me idle on the pier at the river, watching the fish rise in the still water.

  ‘Always welcome,’ I say.

  ‘I promised you a reward for keeping faith with me.’

  I wait.

  ‘Your father-in-law sees reason at last. He’s wanting to settle his accounts and – as luck would have it – your widow’s jointure gives you a life interest in the lands that he wants to leave to his only surviving child.’

  ‘He’s never paid me a penny of the rents,’ I say resentfully. ‘And Mary was not so dear to him when his other daughter was queen.’

  Cromwell smiles at my resentment. ‘I know. But I have put together an agreement that gives you good lands in Cambridge, in return for your jointure in Buckinghamshire. And –’ he pauses smiling – ‘you will be a tenant for life at Blickling Hall.’

  ‘Blickling?’ It was the Boleyn family home, before they had Hever.

  He nods. ‘I could not get it for you outright, but it is yours for life, and I will have it confirmed by Act of Parliament. The king himself will agree to it.’

  This man, this blacksmith’s son, has done for me what a duke of England, my uncle, would not do for me. He has turned around my fortunes, I am a woman of property once again. I can pay off my debts and my bills at court. I can buy gowns and horses and jewels that match my station in life. I can hold up my head. I am Lady Rochford with a grand house and lands to match my title. I am Jane Boleyn and I have the Boleyn family house as my home. I choose to live at court, it is a free choice, I am nobody’s dependent. I have a place of my own again.