He smiles. ‘We are to be fellow courtiers but not lovers?’
‘We were never lovers,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t think you know how to love any woman but Anne.’
THE SPRING FEVERof the queen’s rooms continues through early summer, and, though the king is inspired by dancing and drink to go to Anne’s bed most nights, he still moons around after Jane Seymour in the day, preferring her as his partner in every game of courtly love. The Seymour boys coach their sister in the lost art of simpering refusal, and people start to lay odds on how many days they will play this game, until they order her to yield to the king and get into his bed. The Seymours are not a wealthy family; they cannot afford to prolong a courtship where the drama is the refusal of rich gifts. It was a grave error for them to demonstrate her virtue by refusing money: she could have made a good profit from little liberties along the way; but they have staked everything on her maidenhead.
Most of the older men, the king’s friends from his youth, hardly notice the new intense flirting and the playing of dangerous games in the queen’s rooms. They were young men at the court of Katherine, they kept their lusts out of her rooms and safely in the alehouses and stews, where they were notoriously violent and vile. Half of them are too old to stay up late. Nor are they any threat to our reform of the Church and the diminishing of parliament. They don’t understand the shift of power that we have made – they don’t see the benefit to the courtier in making the court into a tyrant.
Some of the old lords see what we are doing and despise us for it. Francis Bryan turns his one eye on our games, and the scar beneath the patch on the other eye wrinkles up as if he is smiling behind his mask.
He greets me first as I am by the door, and beyond me, he sees Elizabeth Somerset playing cards with Jane Ashley for buttonsrather than money, and beyond them, the king whispering to Jane Seymour, so close that his lips are against her little ear.
Francis rolls his one eye around the busy noisy rooms and misses nothing. ‘In debt again?’ he whispers, bowing over Elizabeth Somerset’s hand. ‘Who’s going to pay for your new baby’s cradle? The father? But who is he, exactly?’
‘Not in debt at all,’ she says in a peal of pretty laughter, and then – more quietly to him: ‘Francis, be a true knight for me – don’t mention I have no money to my husband?’
‘I never thought he cared about your debts one way or another?’ His mouth twists in a smile that matches his lopsided face. ‘I thought it was your good brother Anthony, who kept you on such a tight rein that you have to play with buttons?’
She flutters her lashes. Even with a big belly, she manages to be inviting. ‘Oh Lord!, I can’t do a thing right!’
‘You’re fortunate,’ he tells her. ‘I never do a right thing, and nobody cares at all. But an attentive brother is in fashion at this court. Does your brother visit you in bed?’
She gives a little trill of laughter. ‘Only to scold me!’ she says and waves him towards Anne.
Sir Francis bows low, kisses Anne’s hand, and presses it to his heart. With one eye on her smiling face, he slides her fingers down his chest, over his embroidered doublet towards his codpiece.
Anne snatches her hand from him. ‘Sir Francis! You’re very wild today. I don’t know where you would take me.’
‘Take you where?’ Sir Francis asks, playing at stupidity.
‘Why, where would you want to take me?’ This is lacking in Anne’s usual subtlety, but she has her eye on the king, who has now taken Jane Seymour’s hand and seems to be imploring her for a favour.
‘No, I don’t like other men’s leavings,’ Francis whispers.
‘The king has not left me!’ She looks murderously across at Jane Seymour. ‘You know very well that is courtly play.’
‘Not him,’ he says triumphantly. ‘I didn’t mean the king’sleavings. I meant Henry Percy’s. Aren’t you Henry Percy of Northumberland’s leavings?’
For a moment, she is stunned into silence at this resurrection of old gossip. ‘What are you saying? Why are you saying—?’
‘Haven’t you heard? Percy’s wife has announced their marriage is invalid! Such a scandal! And worse, she is saying it’s invalid because he was married: wedded, and bedded by you. She’s left him. She says he’s your husband and you can have him back?’
Thank God no one is close enough to hear him but me. Anne’s dark eyes turn to points of black ice; but she never falters. She does not even shrink from him; her head is still cocked encouragingly towards him, her smile pinned in place. If the king were to look away from Jane, he would see Anne being courted by his old friend Sir Francis Bryan, in the very posture and place of courtly love.
‘Years ago,’ Anne says slowly in a low hiss, her smile never wavering. ‘That was years ago, as you well know. And Henry Percy denied it on oath. Nobody even dared to ask me then. Nobody would have dreamed of asking me then. Not then, and not now. Then, it was a lie, a stupid lie. But now, it is treason, and whoever says it is a traitor. One more word, Sir Francis, and you’re a dead man.’
‘Poisoned soup?’ he asks, smiling. ‘Like you sent to Bishop Fisher? Or the headsman that you sent to Sir Thomas More?’ He steps back before she can answer, bows as low as he should, hand on heart, and goes to the king, leans over his shoulder, whispers a bawdy joke, sets him in a roar, and melts into the crowd in the hot rooms.
Anne, left alone on her golden chair, throws back her head and laughs at nothing; only I see the shudder that runs down her spine. She looks blankly at me, as if she cannot believe what just happened. She beckons to Mark Smeaton. ‘Play! Why aren’t you playing?’ she snaps.
‘A song to stir the heart?’ he asks, looking at her meaningfully, but she is looking past him, for George, who comes in, throwing a remark over his shoulder to someone else, as if he is casually passing through the room.
‘Sir Francis has gone mad,’ she whispers.
George does not hear her, he is hiding his own fury. ‘I’ve not got the Order of the Garter!’ he spits. ‘Nicholas Carew has the place I was promised. I’m passed over again. They didn’t vote for me. I’m not to be a Knight of the Garter this year. Again!’
‘Carew? I won’t have Carew preferred over you. This is to insult me and all of us. This is a vote for the Spanish party hidden under his name. I won’t have it. I’ll order him to step back – he’s our kinsman. I’ll tell our uncle the duke to make him step back.’
I am thinking furiously. ‘Is this a move against us or just a jostling among the noblemen? Who voted for Carew and against George?’
