‘I know,’ I say patiently. ‘I don’t expect it.’
‘So, when do you expect to go? If you know everything?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say, gritting my teeth on my irritation. ‘Master Secretary will send for me, when the queen needs me.’
‘She gets everything she wants,’ she says with mild spite.
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘She’s queen.’
IT IS NOTuntil the end of summer that another letter comes for me, with the Cromwell seal on the outside and the loopy round initials ofTfor Thomas andCfor Cromwell at the foot of the page. Again, it is letterlocked: folded over and over and spliced on itself, though again, there is nothing in it to interest any spy.
Cromwell writes the usual courtesies: he tells me of the summer progress the court made to the West Country; they chose not to stay at Margaret Pole’s great palace at Bisham – which I read as a snub to the lady of the old royal family and a blow to the Spanish party, who are reeling with the death of their champions, Fisher and More – and their majesties are so merry that progress is to be prolonged into autumn.
Only at the very end of the letter do I find the invitation.
The queen’s rooms have missed your good sense, and her ladies have missed your supervision. Her Majesty will need the ladies of her family at her next confinement, and her sister, Mary Boleyn – now Mary Stafford – will never return to court. You may come back to your former place as senior lady-in-waiting in the queen’s rooms, living with your husband on the king’s side, on the usual terms. The queen commands me to say that you may come at once, and I trust you will consider me as your friend.
I note that Anne – now the wife of a pope and an emperor – is now ‘Her Majesty’. I don’t care. I will call her Holy Father if she wants.
I tap on the door of the library, and enter, confident of my welcome. My father is seated at his great carved table, parchment unrolled and weighted down around him, writing on a great folio of paper, with one of the many quills I trimmed for him. I see the scribbled versions of different translations and the blotted tries at rhyming words.
He looks up as I come in, and he smiles at me. ‘Master Secretary told me he would invite you back to court after the summer progress. Has he done so?’
I lay the letter before him, and I see his satisfied smile as he reads it.
‘You could not have a better man for your sponsor,’ my father says. ‘He’s not noble blood; but don’t despise him on that account, Jane. He’s a man of great abilities and a favourite of the king. In him, you see how a common man rises through work and education. His Italian is better than mine; I envy him his years in Florence.’
‘He says I am to consider him as my friend.’ I point to the looping words.
‘Yes, he means you’re to tell him all that passes in the queen’s rooms.’ My father picks up his pen and corrects an error in spelling, just for his own satisfaction, because he cannot help but improve a line, even from another author.
‘I’ll never interfere in royal business again,’ I say hotly. ‘I shan’t fight Anne’s battles for her!’
‘You’ll do your duty,’ he corrects me. ‘He’s not invited you back to court to be idle. You’ll observe her, and her ladies, and tell him what you see. He’s putting you in the queen’s rooms to give him forewarning. He’ll want to know everything before it gets out – that the pregnancy is going as it should, that her ladies are fit for their posts, that no one’s speaking against the new laws, who’s in favour of the old queen – that sort of thing. More than anything, he’ll want to know what Anne is thinking, before he hears from the king that he has had a new idea – quite his own – and it must be law tomorrow.’
‘As the queen’s senior lady, it is my duty to keep the king’s principal secretary informed,’ I say carefully.
‘Warn him what she’s thinking,’ he tells me. ‘If you can, tell him what she’s going to say, before she puts it into the king’s mind as his own idea. Get ahead of her, and you’re ahead of the king, and so – more to the point – is Cromwell.’
I hesitate. ‘But Father, is this not to make a tyrant? To do his willbefore he’s asked it? If the king is first among equals, should he not speak his wishes and his peers debate it in parliament? And now, as Head of the Church – should he not put his ideas to the bishops and scholars for them to test against the Bible and the philosophers? Otherwise, he is the only power in England? Is that not tyranny instead of monarchy? Wasn’t that the dilemma of Rome?’
My father puts a gentle hand on mine. ‘Yes,’ he says very quietly. ‘But I have just come from the execution of a man who warned of this. Think, Jane, as I have trained you to think. Machiavelli says that all kings have to become tyrants or be overthrown. This is the rise of the Tudors to tyranny; this is the rise of Anne to tyranny. Make sure you rise with them.’
Greenwich Palace, Autumn
1535
GEORGE IS NOTwaiting for me in the stable-yard at Greenwich when I ride in, at the head of a small train of my father’s servants. He is not in our rooms when I go to change from my travelling clothes. I understand at once, that I am restored to court, but not to a true wife’s place. The tidy well-swept room is cool, indifferent. I am not returning to a loving home. I make my way to the other side of the great hall, to the queen’s rooms. The guards open the doors with a bow, and I go in.
Anne barely looks up at my reverent curtsey. She is seated on a decorated chair, wearing a gown as big as a tent, as if to emphasise that she cannot bear tight lacing over the baby in her belly. This pregnancy is to be no secret. This baby, announced in the first month, cannot come soon enough. Her dark hair is loose, hanging down over her shoulders; she is crowned with a circlet of wheat.The ladies are practising tonight’s dance – the court is celebrating harvest – and Anne is seated at the centre of it.
She nods at me and says grimly: ‘I amCeres. Fertility.’
‘NotDemeter?’
She scowls and says: ‘For God’s sake! I see you’ve been in your father’s library all year.’
‘I didn’t mean to correct you... It’s just thatDemeteris the Greek goddess, and your gown is Greek style, so I thought...’
