Only the Duke of Norfolk, Anne’s uncle, speaks of it. But never to his niece the queen, nor to her mother – his sister. It is me, that he follows to the edge of the great hall after dinner, as they take away the tables to make space for dancing.

  ‘Is she quite well now?’ His dark eyes sweep my face; his hard lean face is turned towards me.

  ‘She is, Your Grace.’

  Anne is laughing with the king, leading him to the card table to play whist with George and the king’s brother-in-law, Charles Brandon.

  ‘Is she able to get another child? She got Elizabeth easily, didn’t she? My sister tells me nothing but lies.’

  ‘Do you trust anyone, Your Grace?’ I ask curiously.

  ‘I trust you,’ he tells me. ‘You’ve never coined the truth to me, nor clipped it. You keep your eyes open, and you’re not squeamish. That’s why I prefer you to any other, my little poppet. Will she get another?’

  ‘The midwife said she can, if the husband could do his part.’

  ‘God’s breath! The midwife said that? And everyone heard her? She questioned the king’s potency?’

  ‘Oh – she didn’t know she was speaking of the king. They gave her my name. She thought she was speaking about George. She thought it was my dead-birth.’

  He makes a little grimace of sympathy. ‘No reason for you to give up hope, anyway. You’re not yet thirty – plenty of time.’

  I nod. A child will bind me even closer into this family. I want them to think me a true Boleyn, mother to a boy of the House of Howard, loyal by blood.

  ‘Now, Jane, I’ll want to know the moment that Anne conceives. You tell me at the very first sign. Not when Anne wants it given out. You tell me the moment you know anything – anything.’

  A good courtier needs a patron, and a man of power needs information. We are paired, like a falcon and the falconer. I hunt for him; he protects me.

  ‘I hear Anne’s pressing for another new law in which everyone swears loyalty?’ he asks me. ‘Is it not enough for her that her children: Elizabeth and all the ones to come, are named as the only heirs?’

  ‘It’s not enough,’ I say. ‘She wants all the hidden Spanish party forced to a public oath. Too many bow their head to Anne as queen and her children as heirs, but are secretly loyal to the old queen and Lady Mary.’

  ‘Face-value was always good enough before.’

  ‘No, this is an end to false faces.’

  ‘They have to swear loyalty to a babe unborn?’

  ‘Or face a charge of treason.’

  ‘It’s clever,’ he says begrudgingly. ‘I give you that – it’s clever. And it’ll expose the Spanish party. But it doesn’t suit me – it disinherits my son-in-law.’

  The king’s bastard son Henry Fitzroy has been married to the duke’s daughter for nearly a year. It’s not a full marriage, it has not been consummated, and now the great triumph of the wedding might come to nothing. Under Anne’s new law – the young man will only ever be an acknowledged royal bastard, never a royal heir.

  ‘D’you regret the wedding?’ I ask curiously. Mary Howard does, for sure. She is cold as ice when she and her husband meet publicly. Most of the time they are apart.

  ‘The king’s like a wet nurse over the precious boy,’ the duke grumbles. ‘Says he’s still too young to bed his own wife.’ He scowls for a moment. ‘Can’t you get Anne to drop a word for me? She’s no friend of mine these days, but we’re still family, for God’s sake!’

  ‘She’s at work on her own account,’ I warn. ‘The king didn’t like her taking to her bed. And now, there’s Agnes Trent.’

  ‘That little slut?’ The duke drops his voice to a bad-tempered growl. ‘You can tell Anne I’m with her against Agnes. We can’t have a Spanish party favourite slipping into the king’s bed. We can’t have the king distracted from Anne. Get rid, Jane. Do whatever you have to do. Just make sure she goes.’

  ANOTHER NIGHT, AND though Anne could not have been more charming through a long day of amusements and entertainments, the king does not send word that he is coming to her bedroom. ‘You can be my bedfellow tonight, Jane,’ she says, pretending to be cheerful as the ladies plait her hair and I hand her her white cap.

  ‘His Grace said that he will rise early for prayer,’ I say.

  She nods. ‘There is no king more devout than ours.’

  All the ladies agree, and curtsey and leave us.

  ‘Did he?’ Anne asks abruptly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is he with Agnes?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t,’ I say, though I do.

  ‘He doesn’t want me as he used to do,’ she says restlessly. She sits by the fireside and puts out her hand for the posset of herbs that she takes every night to make her womb rich and ready for his seed. ‘He’s one of those problems where the solution is the problem itself.’

  ‘Aporia.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ she snaps. ‘Your endless learning! Who cares?’

  We are silent for a moment. ‘So, what’s the question?’ I ask patiently. ‘What’s the question that contains its own answer?’

  ‘The king can’t desire a willing woman,’ she says simply.

  ‘He’s never forced anyone!’

  She shows me a bitter smile. ‘No. But he desires refusal. He likes the old Romances – a mistress that flees from desire, a beautiful woman who refuses the finest of knights. He’s all Lancelot and Guinevere – forbidden love. So that’s what I did – I was a heroine in a Romance. I gave him the challenge: throw down the queen, and then throw down the pope, if you want to win me. As big a quest as killing any dragon. He did it. Just like in the Romances, he triumphed and won his reward – the fair lady: me.’

  She looks deep into the fire as if she is telling fortunes. ‘And now the virgin is on his knee. The storm-tossed maiden has made it into port and tied up. So, what now? What can a knight errant do with a woman who is wooed and won? Wedded and bedded? Of course – nothing. The story’s ended. Satisfaction is no joy for him – when the disguises come off, there I am! His wife: bound to him. By law, I can’t refuse him, and he cannot desire a woman who does not refuse him.’

  ‘He loves the chase …’

  She shakes her head. ‘No, it’s worse than that. Normal men love the chase and the capture. But for him, there is nothing but chase. He doesn’t want capture; he doesn’t want satisfaction. He wants to seek, forever seek, and never find. He likes to see himself bravely seeking, he likes pursuit more than he likes me, found and taken.’

  ‘He got Elizabeth on you …’ I protest.

  ‘Before we were married!’ she exclaims impatiently. ‘Don’t you see? That was still part of the quest? Don’t you remember the fuss I made about swiving him? I refused him for six years and drove him half mad – I only let him into my bed when he made me a marquess and promised we would marry. I only agreed to marry him when he had defied the pope himself. But there’s only ever one first time.’ She glares at me as if I should have a solution. ‘Jane, I was the greatest quest of his life, and now I am the one woman in the world that he cannot desire. He can swive a smiling slut who doesn’t matter, he can long for an unobtainable maiden with all his heart, but he can’t stand up for an honest loving wife.’

  THREE NIGHTS LATER, long after midnight, the king sends Francis Weston to say that he is coming to Anne’s bed. They have been drinking all night, and the king leans on the door frame as they bring him in. I leave the king and queen, side by side in bed, like effigies on a tomb, and go through the darkened galleries to our Rochford rooms.

  George is in his night robe, blinking at the flames of our fireplace. He raises his head, pours me a drink and pulls up a chair for me. ‘Have a drink. God knows I’ve had enough. He’s in bed?’

  ‘He is, but I don’t know if it’ll do any good.’

  He raises a scornful eyebrow. ‘Christ knows, we’ve done all that we can. We sent him to her pot-valiant. We swear he’s the greatest lover since Sir Gawain. We tell him we all desire her; we’re all panting like dogs for her, but she’ll stoop to no one but him. It excites him to think that we all want her but only he can have her. We’ve lit the fuse tonight – she’ll just have to jump on him before he fizzles out.’

  ‘She’s his wife! She can’t play the whore.’

  He shrugs. ‘She’s got to do something to get another baby off him. Anything that works. French tricks … anything.’

  I hesitate, standing behind his chair as he gazes into the fire. ‘But, George, as a wife she can’t provoke lust. It has to be a holy act to make a prince. The king’s conscience won’t allow French tricks, and it’s against church law for her to mount him. She shouldn’t stoop to whorish games; it’s … it’s not queenly.’

  George snorts derisively. ‘She won’t get fucked being queenly.’

  I lean forward and wind my arms around him. After a moment, he tips his head back against me with a sigh, and I kiss his temples and his frowning forehead. ‘And what about us?’ I whisper. ‘Shall we go to bed?’

  ‘To sleep,’ he says. ‘I’ve drunk so much that I’m less use than the king himself.’

  Greenwich Palace, Autumn

  1534

  GEORGE IS MASTER of the buckhounds, and it is his task to make sure that the hunt goes off perfectly for all the court. The king and all his friends are magnificent horsemen, trained for a cavalry charge, and they come out into the yard laughing and shouting bets on the day’s sport. They will hunt stags and bucks this late in the season, and they make crude jokes about being bucks and stags themselves.

  They jump up on the mounting blocks as the grooms bring the horses, who are sidling and pulling at their reins in eagerness. The king rides heavier every year; his horse is a big Chapman horse, well-muscled with strong shoulders and huge haunches. George is at his side on his new chestnut mare.

  ‘She’ll never last the day,’ the king says to George.

  ‘Would you put a guinea on it, Sire?’

  The king laughs, and the bet is laid.

  Agnes is riding a neat grey, and I see her mount and gather up the reins. My groom brings me my roan, a gift from the Duke of Norfolk, and I get into the saddle and bring her up alongside Agnes.

  ‘Don’t crowd the king,’ I tell her. ‘He’s riding with my husband the viscount.’

  ‘If he asks for me, I’ll have to ride beside him.’ She smiles at me from under her green velvet cap. ‘Or d’you want me to tell him that you forbid it?’

  ‘I want you to behave like a young woman who knows her place,’ I snap. ‘It is an honour to be in the queen’s rooms; it is an art to be a courtier. It is not jostling for favours like a fishwife in a marketplace.’

  ‘Of course,’ she says simply. ‘But the queen was a maid-of-honour just as I am now. Her sister Mary too. Didn’t they jostle?’

  My reprimand is drowned out by the baying of the hounds and the blast of the horns as the dogs pour out of the kennel yard into the great park, across the public highway, where the common people wait and cheer as we go by. Agnes shows me a small triumphant smile and loosens her reins to let her horse go forward with the others.

  We ride deep into the forest of the great park and then wait, while the hounds cast about for a scent and the huntsmen shout their names and watch them trace the ground and turn and cast again. Then, suddenly, the first hound bays, a great excited roar, and all the hounds peel away after him, the whippers-in behind them and the king ahead of George and behind him, everyone else at full gallop, wherever the dogs lead, through streams, over fallen trees, and bursting out into the park over hedges and ditches. I ride cautiously at the back of the hunt, going round hedges rather than jumping them, finding my way along grassy lanes rather than tearing across rough ground. But the men ride as if their lives depend on it, and some of the ladies recklessly keep up with them.

  The kill comes quickly with the stag at bay, and the huntsman hold off the hounds, and three of them get hold of the poor beast, hauling its head upwards for the king to strike the murderous slash across his throat. It is the perfect end to a long, exciting chase – the creature defeated, helpless before the king, and then the spurt of pumping blood. Excited by the chase, wiping his bloodstained dagger, seeing that Anne has not yet arrived in her litter, the king beckons Agnes to ride beside him to the little city of tents the servants have set up for us in a forest clearing.

  The horses halt, and the king swings heavily down from his saddle and reaches up for her. She drops her reins and puts her hands on his shoulders, as if he were her groom, and he lifts her down from the saddle. He slides her down his body, holding her close even though half the court is watching and half of them will report to their patrons that the king has a new favourite. The Spanish party will celebrate putting their spy in the royal bed to supplant the Protestant queen.

  ‘Stop her,’ George hisses in my ear. ‘Anne’ll be here any moment.’

  I can hear the hoofbeats of a dozen horses, Anne’s guard around her mule litter, her mother riding on one side. The king hears it too, and abruptly releases Agnes and turns to greet his wife. He helps Anne out of her litter, tells her that he has had a great day’s sport, and escorts her to dinner.

  She is looking her best, in a dark-red riding jacket with a gold net over her black hair, as if she has ridden here on a high-bred palfrey. She asks the king if George’s new mare kept up; she turns and laughs with George and Nicholas Carew; she strips off her red leather gloves and washes her hands in the golden basin. She is at her best at these informal events. She glows so brightly that she makes the king shine beside her, boosting his pride, making him feel equally beautiful, equally clever, equally beloved in a court of lovers.

  The cooks have set up charcoal burners to roast meat, and ovens to bake bread, and the sweet-smelling smoke hangs in the dappled sunshine and makes everyone hurry to their places at the rustic tables. There are crocks of thick creamy butter to go with three sorts of bread, huge wheels of cheeses, fish in crisp skins, and crayfish and oysters in their shells.

  Anne throws back her head to swallow an oyster from the shell, looks at the king and licks her lips, sensual as a cat. The king flushes and waves the silver platter away from her. ‘They’re not fit for you in your condition.’

  Smilingly, she agrees; but she misunderstands. He does not mean her fertility; he means her condition as a queen. He does not like to see Anne sucking on oyster shells like a woman with earthly desires and a healthy appetite. Now that they are married, he does not want a real woman. He wants a wife who is above other women: a saintly wife and a remote queen.

  They bring roasted game, pheasant and woodcock, and pies of beef and lamb, honey puddings and mead cakes and pond-pudding with a ball of spiced butter at its sweet heart. The king drinks deeply of strong red wine; his server refills his glass again and again, and he toasts the huntsmen and the deer, the day and the ladies. Anne, at his side, is drinking water with a splash of wine, stone-cold sober while the king laughs more and more loudly at his own jokes. He repeats a story about hunting in France that he told at the beginning of the meal, and his men roar with laughter as if they are hearing it for the very first time; the ladies echo the false merriment but cast a nervous look towards his stone-faced wife.

  Anne won her place in this court as the young woman who would stay and drink with the men and laugh with the king. She refused to withdraw with Queen Katherine, who always left as soon as her young husband became rowdy. No one ever told a bawdy jest to the Spanish queen, but Anne was the first to tell a joke, the first to challenge the king to a riddle or a poem or a game. She made herself the heart of the laughing, lovemaking, singing, noisy court. No one was over thirty years old; no one cared for the rules in Anne’s court as it undermined the sombre dignity of the older queen.

  But now Anne is the queen, her rival court is now the only court, and no one quite knows what to do as this new Anne: sober, pale, and quiet, sits beside her hard-drinking husband while he starts making toasts to her ladies.

  ‘To the beautiful Lady Rochford!’ he bellows, and the court raises their gold cups to me, and I have to stand and smile and drink a toast in reply to the king.

  ‘To the beautiful countess, Elizabeth Somerset!’ the king declares. ‘Our favourite county!’

  Somebody shouts that he has been in Somerset often, and Elizabeth’s brother, Anthony Browne, slams down his gold cup and glares at her. But the king sees nothing; he is working his way through the ladies. I can see at once where this is going and what is going to happen next; but I am powerless to stop it.

  ‘To Lady Margaret Douglas, my dear niece,’ he says.

  All the men cheer, and Lord Thom Howard – the Duke of Norfolk’s baby-faced half-brother – raises his cup to Margaret in a silent pledge. She rises to her feet and takes the toast, her eyes on Lord Thom, and then the king shouts loudly: ‘To the most beautiful lady of your heart! And you must each drink to your own choice!’

  The men roar with laughter, and the women flutter and smile. Some wives shoot cautionary glances at their husbands, the men rise to their feet and raise their cups to their favourite flirts. Some old lords leer at their second wives, young enough to be their daughters. Charles Brandon’s pretty ward is now his duchess, and young Catherine Brandon stands up to drink in reply to her husband – old enough to be her grandfather.

  This is all part of the game of courtly love that the king likes to play; but the dividing line between his prudishness and his rowdy joy is always hard to guess. The old queen drew a clean line – her ladies were strictly raised and modestly behaved. But Anne is trapped in the paradox of mistress turned wife, poacher turned gamekeeper. She has to play the part of a Spanish duenna and yet be as exciting and promising as a new lover. She must be both lascivious favourite and dignified queen: it is a paradoxos. It can’t be done.

  George looks straight past me, his wife, and raises his cup to Anne. So does William Brereton – in a sober reproach to the king; so does Francis Bryan, with a twisted smile on his masked face, as if he is winking under his black eye patch. Surprisingly, so does Charles Brandon, up on his unsteady legs for the second time. He has always been our enemy, a staunch friend to the old queen, a loyal member of the Spanish party, and for a moment I hope that his courtesy to Anne means that he has changed sides. But then I understand that both Francis Bryan and Charles Brandon are giving the king cover for his own game, as he gets to his feet, staggering a little, and points his cup directly at Agnes and whispers her name.