The Queen of Subtleties Read online

  I can’t ask what I want to ask, not immediately, so I say, ‘You’ll freeze.’ It sounds like an accusation, rather than sympathy.

  He won’t have it; gives me a sceptical look, shakes his head. Slots his hands into his armpits.

  ‘I mean it.’ As if I’m the one to freeze him.

  Earlier, back in our kitchen, I’d asked him if he’d do something for me, and he found that funny, because when—in his opinion—does he ever do anything else?

  Well, that’s a laugh. But, then, he was in a good mood. Which was why I felt I could ask.

  We’d been told that we’d be moving to Whitehall. The official royal residence, which was probably why I’d assumed that everyone would be going. Not some hunting lodge. This wasn’t a weekend away for a select gathering. Then, when Richard reappeared in buoyant spirits after a brief, unexplained absence and I remarked on his mood, he said, ‘Silvester’s coming; he’s on the move with us.’

  Silvester. That page of Sir Henry Norris’s. Richard’s friend.

  But wasn’t everyone coming?

  Mark.

  I asked, ‘Isn’t everyone coming?’

  Only the king, Richard said; the king’s household. Not the queen’s. She’s not well, he said.

  I was thinking: is Mark the king’s, or the queen’s? I asked: could Richard find out for me if Mark was coming?

  And he laughed.

  And the laugh made me feel as if I were standing there naked. ‘What?’

  ‘You and Smeaton,’ he mused.

  My stomach nipped: he knows.

  Oh yes? And what do you know, Richard? Tell me, what is it, exactly, that you know about love?

  He said, ‘You’re such an odd pair, aren’t you.’

  And something in his manner had me wondering anew: does he know? All at once I felt victorious and desolate.

  ‘Are we?’ I was gentle, now; humouring him, teasing it from him.

  ‘In your own little world,’ he said, with the same fondness.

  He doesn’t know, I realized. Reprieve: not Mark, me, and Richard; just Mark and me, for now.

  In our own little world.

  Well, yes, good, because there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

  Richard objected, ‘Just how am I supposed to do this finding-out?’

  Well, how would I know? ‘You have contacts, don’t you?’

  He shrugged, begrudgingly, unconvinced. ‘Suppose so.’

  It’s taken him most of the morning, but now he’s here. ‘Not easy,’ he starts, without me prompting him. ‘Not everyone is privy to Master Smeaton’s movements. Correction: no one is. I had to hang around, in the end, until I saw him.’

  ‘You what?’ I can’t have Richard hanging around the palace after men.

  He’s dismissive. ‘Chapel.’

  Oh. Hanging around chapel probably doesn’t count. Couldn’t he just have asked someone, though, if the musicians were coming? Or which musicians were coming? That’s what I’d envisaged: Richard asking, in conversation. Not that he’d have that kind of conversation, I suppose: a conversation about musicians. But not everyone’s to know that, are they.

  ‘And then what did you say?’ When you found him.

  He gives me a look, incredulous. ‘I said, Lucy wants to know if you’re coming to Whitehall.’

  Oh, no, ‘You didn’t.’

  He’s round-eyed with impatience. ‘But you do. Want to know. Don’t you?’

  It’s said in all innocence. What I need to know is the answer; that’s what’s important, here.

  ‘And he said, I’ve asked if I can stay.’

  ‘“Asked if I can stay”?’

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  But, ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t ask me.’

  ‘You didn’t ask him?’

  ‘Look: he was a bit “off “. Well, no, not “off”; but…in a hurry. God knows why—I mean, he’s not packing, is he; it’s me who’s haring about all over the place.’

  Richard, ambushing him: a mistake. My mistake. ‘Did you say we were going?’

  He stops to think. ‘Probably not. As such. But I did say “coming”, didn’t I: are you coming to Whitehall. Wouldn’t that imply that we were going?’

  ‘And did he say anything?’

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Just, anything?’

  Again, he needs to stop, to think. ‘No, that was it, more or less. You know—“bye”. That was it.’ He looks bored, now: looks around at the crowds on the bank.

  ‘Richard, is he sick, d’you think? Did he look ill?’ Because that must be it, the reason.

  Richard turns back to me, his attention snagged on the riverbank; he takes a second to focus. ‘It’s the queen,’ he says, calmly, ‘who’s sick. Smeaton probably thinks he can do her some good. He’s one of the faithful, isn’t he; rallying round.’ There’s no sneer; he’s purely matter-of-fact. ‘But I doubt anyone can help her, now. And you know what else I think?’

  This barge, the other barges, the king’s barge, and our packing cases: we’re leaving her, I understand suddenly. That’s what we’re doing. This is what this is. And just as suddenly I understand why: the promised baby has melted away—her last-chance princeling—and so are we, too, now, all of us; we’re moving upriver away from her.

  Richard speaks into my ear. ‘I think it won’t do him any good at all to stay associated with her. The best thing he could do would be to move, with us; the worst thing, to stay.’

  ‘Richard,’ stop; start again; please, please. ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘Ten days ago.’ Whispered.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I’m quieter, even, than he is.

  ‘I did. This morning. Said she was sick.’

  Sick? Sick. It sounds different when it’s whispered. Heavier.

  Ten days ago was Queen Catherine’s funeral.

  He looks down as if he’s not speaking at all. ‘The first I knew was this morning, when we were told to pack. And, actually, “sick” is all I know. But…’

  But this barge, these barges, the king and his household on the move. The king wouldn’t be leaving, would he, if she were sick, just sick; he’d stay, help, wait.

  It’s over, isn’t it.

  Richard says, ‘I don’t think anyone knew, before that. If Silvester didn’t know, then no one knew. Of the men, I mean. She’s been in her rooms for ten days, and the women weren’t saying much. Just “sick”.’

  A baby dropped away; as soft as butter but deadly red. Where is it, now? Where do they go, lost babies? Are they kept? Shrouded and buried. Under wraps. Or what? burned? Who does it, takes a lost baby away to lose it all over again? I’ve heard it said that Anne Boleyn poisoned Queen Catherine. I couldn’t help but hear it; everyone says it. This, I do know: while the queen lay dead, the king was knocked cold by a fall from his horse for two days until—like a fairytale princess—he woke. Now he limps, groans, rages, nothing like a princess and not much like a king, certainly not the king that he was. And the day the queen is slid into her tomb, her usurper’s baby turns to slush.

  What does she make of all that, Anne Boleyn? Anne Boleyn, emptied, somewhere behind the blind, unflinching stare of her windows. Even if she isn’t watching us, she’ll feel the ripple of floorboards, the eddies of doors. People packing and leaving.

  Mark is in there with her; she has him in there with her.

  Anne Boleyn

  I’ve never been good at keeping secrets, Elizabeth; they feel too much like lies. You, though, in those earliest months, tucked away, invisible, had no choice. No one but me could know, really, about you. But for someone so tiny, you were big news—the biggest possible news—and nonchalance has never been very me. Optimism was, though, in those days, before my subsequent pregnancies turned me cautious. I didn’t seriously doubt you’d survive. Hardly surprising, then, all in all, that I did drop the odd hint. The odd comet-tail of a hint.

  It was another three months, though, before I could make my first
victory parade of a kind. And then, marvellously, it coincided with the first parade of your own. I first recognized your somersaults for what they were, just before I walked into the world to be publicly acknowledged at last as Henry’s pregnant wife and queen-to-be. George had been sent to France to gauge Francis’s opinion on the matter, and he’d come back with good news. So then everything had been announced, in one go: that Henry and I were married, that I was pregnant, and my coronation was to follow. For now, though, it was the eve of Easter Sunday, and I was going to Mass. My dress alone, a month in the making, could have done the job of making me the biggest star that England had ever seen, but I’d also added diamonds. And only diamonds, for once. Diamonds swinging in my hair and scattered along my collarbones, with a beauty at the base of my throat. Diamonds ringing my wrists, cresting my fingers, clustered over my heart and roped around my waist. Annie was helping with the fastening and hooking, and it was while I was sitting very still, her hands fluttering at the back of my neck, that I first realized you were moving.

  At my intake of breath, Annie said, absently, ‘Sorry, did I catch you?’

  When you and I stepped out of my rooms for our walk to Mass, Elizabeth, we made quite a show. Trumpeters ahead, and sixty maids of honour behind. And all around, slack-jawed nobles. No one, it seemed, had quite expected this, or perhaps not all at once: the marriage, done; the pregnancy, underway; the coronation to come in six weeks’ time. As I approached, some of those faces shaped up, turned bit-lipped and bright-eyed. But others, of course, didn’t. When Henry had made his announcement, he’d suggested that they all come to me after Mass with their congratulations. So, they had to; every one of them. Some seemed giddied; others, strained and careful. It could have been fun, I suppose, but by that time I was exhausted. Sickness was no longer a problem, but my wonderful dress was dismayingly tight and I was desperate to strip off and sink into a bath.

  I took a lie-in, the following morning, to recover. Claimed I was fighting off a cold. Henry seemed unbothered but my mother was soon at my bedside, clucking that I should be feeding a cold and starving a fever. At her request came a special delivery from the Privy Kitchen. When I’d got rid of her, I put the tray aside. But then it was George’s turn to barge in and sit on my bed, in his case attempting to perk me up with gossip. I had to confess that this was just a lie-in.

  Give me an hour, I said.

  And then I lay there and imagined I could hear beyond the clamour of my own household. Beyond the distant chatter of the women who waited on me and the girls who were my wards. Beyond the murmurings, somewhere, of my chaplains and physician; the clattering of cooks below and stablehands outside. A whole, huge household, up and running around me. I listened beyond them, listened hard into an England-sized, England-shaped silence. Was it silence? Or was it full of the prayers that Henry had decreed be said for me—for ‘Queen Anne’—in every church, that morning? Did people out there in England even know who I was? Were there some—lots, perhaps, away from London and our usual routes—who were turning to their neighbours at that very moment and whispering, Is Queen Catherine dead, then?

  My Uncle Norfolk and his old partner in crime, Charlie, had been sent three days previously to break the news to Catherine that Henry and I were married and expecting a baby at the end of the summer. They told her that she was back to being what she’d been, all those years ago, when Henry’s brother had died: ‘Princess Dowager’. Her reaction? She wasn’t the king’s subject, she informed the perpetually embarrassed Norfolk and Suffolk, but his wife; she wasn’t subject to his rulings. Until the Pope ruled otherwise, she was still Queen of England, which was how her staff would continue to address her. To me, at the time, this little stand of hers seemed laughable: as if it mattered what they called her, her staff banished up there in Bedfordshire.

  Now, of course, I understand it. The stand was made for her daughter. If Catherine accepted that the royal marriage had in fact been no marriage, then the princess was a bastard. No prim new prefix of ‘Lady’ could hide that. Despite her much-vaunted faith, Catherine must have known for a long time that, in her own case, the game was up: Henry would never again love her, nor, probably, even see her; and her all-powerful but busy nephew had less and less time for an ageing aunt he’d never known, whose casting aside had happened years back. She had no future: that, for herself, I suspect, she could accept. Not, though, for her daughter.

  The divorce hearing, in the end, was deliberately low-key, despite the presence of the archbishop and various notable, amenable clergy. It took place in Dunstable, local to Catherine; near enough for her to come with no ceremony when she was sent for. But she refused, of course, to attend. She was still appealing to Rome: a tactic now forbidden, in law, for any subject of the king, but we know her views on that. In the last week of May, Thomas returned from Dunstable to make his announcement in Lambeth Palace: the divorce was done.

  And I was ready to go. The very next day, I sailed in the queen’s barge to the Tower, because tradition demanded that we spend a couple of days celebrating there before the procession back through London to Westminster and my coronation. Jostling for position alongside my barge were all the barges of the City Guilds draped with awnings and carpets, and crammed with musicians. It was no easier on land, I learned later: the crowded streets were crunchy with broken glass because no window could withstand the unrelenting, celebratory cannon-fire. Out there on the water, I couldn’t even hear myself laughing.

  Henry was already at the Tower, poised for a very public greeting. When he’d helped me ashore, he placed his big hands gently on my bump. We were home and dry, and, for all that laughing out there on the water, I was secretly relieved.

  The Tower, previously so damp and dingy, had been transformed by the year’s-worth of work we’d had done in readiness. The next day, our festivities continued with a round of knightings, as if this were the coronation of no mere consort but of a true regent. The message from Henry, unbelievable though it now seems, was loud and clear: he and I were partners.

  The day I left the Tower, the day of my ceremonial return to London, started badly for me with a barely contained clash with Dad. Mum was in my parents’ room, dressing. For no reason that I could fathom, Dad had come into my suite, which was unusual for him—he’s a man who keeps his distance—and he was pacing. In an adjoining room, I was still being dressed, my white-gold gown with its extra panel being fitted over my bump. I have to admit: I hated the drastic change in my shape. I was busy making my feelings known when Dad barked through the open doorway, ‘You should think yourself lucky.’

  It was the tone: it was vicious.

  Luck. As if it had all fallen into my lap. But luck had had nothing to do with it. I hadn’t been lucky: seven years and a break with Rome, just to marry the man I loved? I’d denied myself seven years, working long and hard for this coronation and for this first pregnancy of mine to be legitimate. How dare he stand there and put me down as if I were some giddy girl like my sister. As if I should be grateful. Well, I wasn’t grateful. If anything, I was furious. Even on that day of celebration, I was furious, underneath, at all those bastards. Of whom, I was beginning to see, my own father was one.

  I yanked myself free of Annie and stalked to the doorway, the better to let fly my accusation. ‘You actually resent this, don’t you.’ My success.

  He deflected it with an elaborate roll of his eyes; those black-flash Boleyn eyes. ‘Don’t start.’

  ‘You started it.’

  Behind me, George sounded a warning, ‘Anne…’

  Nice try, George, but he’s asking for it.

  Dad lobbed his next barb over my shoulder: ‘And you…’

  The vehemence in it took me with it, turned me around: George. Then I was back, quick, to Dad. ‘Him, what?’

  Suddenly, Dad looked sheepish. I saw that he didn’t know: he didn’t know what. He just didn’t like us: that’s what I saw.

  George reached around me and closed the door; closed i
t, didn’t slam it. ‘Now’s not the time,’ was all he said.

  I whirled, wounded, but he was gently emphatic: ‘I don’t want to hear it. Not now. Forget it. Leave the old sod to stew.’ His smile was sad, but affectionate. He indicated my unfastened gown. ‘Come on, get dressed.’

  True: it was the dress that people would come to see; I was under no illusions about that. On the brink of queenship, I needed to seem both girl and goddess. A white-gold dress, but with a jewel-wild bodice. And on my still-uncrowned head, a soft circlet of jewels. Around my neck, pearls, but each as big and luminous as a blind iris. And dropping down from that single string, a rosebud of a diamond. I had no worries that I’d fail to live up to expectations—to surpass them—as I was borne through the crowds: the centre-piece in a half-mile procession of just about every knight, bishop and ambassador, of anyone who was anyone, in England.

  And indeed the people of London did look and look. But it was all they did: gawp, bug-eyed and open-mouthed. Not, themselves, a pretty sight. Great stretches of them between the various displays at crossroads and City gates: the pageants, oratories, and child-choirs at which—despite my ferociously nagging bladder—I had to stop and respond appropriately, acting gracious and delighted. Between those distractions, the only sound beyond our horses was the tinkling of my canopy’s tiny silver bells. Once, the king’s fool could contain himself no longer and hollered into the crowd, ‘What’s up with you lot? Scurvy heads?’ And then a few caps were removed, but reluctantly.

  It seemed to take all day to get to Westminster Hall, to Henry, and I’ve never been so glad of a cuddle, some sugary tit-bits and a glass of mulled wine. And oh the joy of changing from that dress before being spirited away through a back door and onto the river for a secret journey to Whitehall and bed. I could hardly speak, by then, for weariness.