Anne tosses her head. ‘It’s a loan only. I’ve lent her a hundred pounds.’
I gasp – this is the same as George’s entire yearly wage as a senior courtier. This is a fortune and it will show up in the queen’s accounts, and everyone will wonder what Elizabeth has done, or what Elizabeth knows.
‘What d’you want me to do? Refuse a friend in need?’
‘Yes,’ I say flatly. ‘Why can’t she tell her husband?’
‘It’s a secret.’
‘But she can tell you?’
Anne laughs harshly. ‘She holds a secret of mine as security.’
‘What does she know?’ I demand, myself a trader and a broker of secrets.
Anne makes a little face. ‘She caught me... talking to... someone.’
‘Who?’
‘Mark, beautiful Mark.’ Anne gives a courtier laugh – empty of humour.
‘The lute player?’ I spell it out. ‘The king’s lute player?’
‘There’s only one beautiful Mark. And folly is cheap at a hundred pounds if it buys Elizabeth’s silence. She’ll be silent. She’s no better than me. We are agreed: she’s no worse than me and I no better than her, and all of us are going mad this season. I swear we have spring fever.’
I shake my head. ‘Anne, you can’t live like a lady-in-waiting – and a loose one at that. Elizabeth Somerset allows liberties that a queen cannot.’
Anne shrugs. ‘Nobody knows anything about Elizabeth’s liberties, and nobody knows anything about mine.’
IAM LONGING FORsummer even more than when I was in the cold and dark of the country. If we can get to May Day then we are in the happiest of all seasons at court. From midsummer the king and Anne will go on royal progress, hunting and travelling and living off other people’s money in other people’s houses. Away from court and from the frantic play of the queen’s rooms, he will turn to her again. If we can get through to the summer, we will win him back, and she only has to have one lucky night. Once she is with child we are secure again – a royal family with a prince in the cradle. Then she can flirt with a lute player and nobody will care, and the Spanish party can steal Lady Mary away, and nobody will miss her.
The wound in the king’s leg heals, and under our relentless joyfulness he becomes more cheerful. He comes to Anne’s bed again, and we make jokes about his lustiness, about her fertility. Over and over again, we say how desirable she is, how every man is in love with her. Only a king could win her; only the most handsome prince in the world could hold her. The old Spanish ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, has no grudge against Anne now that the old Spanish-born queen is dead. He comes to court, andfor the first time, they meet face to face, and he bows to her; she acknowledges him. It is a diplomatic triumph for us and a blow for the Spanish party, who see their own ambassador acknowledge Anne as queen.
George dines with Chapuys, sitting up over their wine late into the night, persuading him that the Boleyns are the ones who govern England. The ambassador’s old allies, the Spanish party, who nag him for a ship for Lady Mary’s escape, are yesterday’s men. He need not trouble with them. We are the greatest advisors – and the ambassador will have to deal with us if he wants English soldiers for Spain’s war against the infidel.
‘And that’s the turn of the tide!’ George says with quiet satisfaction, coming into our rooms after showing Eustace Chapuys to his barge.
‘If Anne can get a boy in her belly this summer, we are safe with no enemies,’ I agree. He takes a chair beside me at the fireside. ‘Lady Mary can run away to Spain, and the only legitimate heirs in England will be Boleyn Tudors.’
He puts a hand over mine. ‘You’ve been invaluable,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t have got Anne out of despair and back on show on my own.’
He has not always thought me invaluable. I don’t melt at his touch. ‘It’s my duty to serve the queen,’ I say steadily.
‘For love?’ he asks me.
I know he is amusing himself, speaking of love to me, who has never had his love, who will never have it. ‘For love of my trade,’ I say. ‘I am a courtier. My father taught me to be a courtier, and your family taught me ambition.’
‘I didn’t marry a courtier, but a wife.’
‘Yes, I know you did,’ I say. ‘And then you dropped me.’
He laughs out loud, it is nothing to him. ‘Ah, Jane! Will you never forgive me for that? You know it was not my wish; you know I didn’t mean to hurt you!’
‘Would you do it again?’
‘Only if I had to,’ he says reasonably. ‘And reluctantly, and with regret!’
‘Then... reluctantly... and with regret... I will never forgive you.’
