‘He’s afraid,’ George says quietly, as if fear is a shameful thing, looking over the raked sand of the tiltyard. ‘He dreams of being crushed under his horse, and he wakes up screaming. He keeps remembering it. It’s as if he has realised, for the first time, that he is mortal. He’s afraid that he’s going to die.’
‘We’ll create a joust of poetry and music and let him win,’ Anne says, gesturing at the space, as if she can fill it with dancers and musicians and drown out the terrible shriek of metal as the heavy horse went down on the steel-clad man. ‘Something to make him feel young and strong again, the finest of everyone at court.’
‘A joust without jousting?’ he asks.
‘Why not?’ she says grimly. ‘Isn’t everything just for show now?’
We plan minutely, choreographing every move. There will be jousting at the centre of it all, but only the young men will ride. George and Henry Norris are principal challengers, and they will wear green for Tudor and green for spring, entering the arena one after another with their ladies’ favours on their lances. Each jouster will recite a poem or sing a song on the theme of love on a May Day morning, and the king, seated in his viewing balcony with his lame leg hidden, propped on a stool, will reply with a poem of his own, as if he has composed it in that moment. Thomas Wyatt will be at hand to prompt him so that he looks as if he is composing poetry on the spot.
It will be a joust of wit and poetry – and the king’s cleverness will defeat everyone else. The horse-riding will be the least importantpart, and when it is over, there will be a celebration dinner with more poetry and songs and dancing. But the dances will be for show, like the jousting; neither Anne nor the king will dance. There will be no tall king coming in disguise to surprise us this year; he cannot stand without pain, and his limping pace makes him furious, like a wounded bear at a baiting.
The maids are sewing ribbons on their headbands, with Anne irritably watching from her great chair at the centre of the queen’s presence chamber, when George comes lounging into the room with Henry Norris. He bows generally to us all and then goes to Anne and kisses her hand. Anne waves Henry into a stool at her side and spreads embroidery threads on her knees so that he can sort them. He bends his dark handsome head into her lap, so close that he could be kissing her knees.
‘Where’s Mark?’ George asks, looking round. ‘I wanted him to play while I sing my song at the joust.’
‘I’ll play for you,’ Mary Shelton offers at once.
‘No, it’s in the jousting area,’ George says.
‘Oh! Can’t I go disguised as your squire?’
They both look at Anne, who must say at once that this is not allowed. A lady cannot cavort in squire’s clothes in the tiltyard before anyone who has paid for a seat.
‘I’ll come, too!’ Anne says immediately. ‘What a picture we’ll make! George, you shall dress me in your livery, and we can both be masked...’
I gently lean to whisper. ‘Better not,’ I say.
‘Why not?’ she demands. ‘I’d look wonderful as a page boy.’
I shake my head. ‘Too wonderful.’
She shrugs her arm from my hand. ‘Oh, very well.’ She thinks for a moment. ‘But if I’m not going, then Mary’s certainly not dressing up as a squire and showing off. You’ll have to get one of the king’s musicians or one of the choristers. There are enough wanton boys to choose from, God knows.’
George frowns at her bad temper and looks to me for help.
I shrug. Now the old queen is dead and the Spanish party silent, Anne has no enemies to plot against. Time hangs heavy in this fairytale life.
‘I’ll find one,’ George says agreeably. ‘D’you have a favourite? I know they are all in love with you.’
‘There’s a pretty lad called Peter Last,’ Anne volunteers. ‘He blushes like a rose when he sees me.’
‘Then the Last shall be First,’ George says pleasantly. ‘I’ll write a love song to you, and he can sing it.’
‘Won’t you write a song for me?’ Elizabeth Somerset asks. George turns and whispers something in her ear and she giggles and draws him away.
As if she cannot bear a moment of George’s attention on another woman, Anne rounds on Henry Norris: ‘And what are you doing here, sitting mumchance?’ she demands. ‘You should be cooing like a dove to your betrothed, not getting my embroidery threads in a tangle? When are you going to marry poor Margaret?’
‘I’ll marry in my own good time.’ Henry leans a little closer over the silk threads spread out on her knee, and touches one and then another, resting his finger on each one, so that she feels the warmth of his finger through her gown on her thigh. ‘Besides, you have set me a quest to find the perfect rose – and I think it’s here – not in the silks but in the blush in your lips.’
‘I don’t believe you have any honourable intention towards Margaret at all,’ she scolds him, her mood sweetened by the flattery. ‘Why d’you haunt my rooms all day? Like a lovesick ghost!’
‘Because I am a ghost that has died of love!’ he says extravagantly. He takes up a red thread and winds it around her finger above her wedding ring. ‘It’s only you, for me,’ he says. ‘No one else.’
Caught up in the flirtation, she slides her wedding ring off her finger, leaving the scarlet embroidery silk in its place and holds it out for him to admire. ‘If anything were to happen to the king, I think you’d have me,’ she whispers.
For a brief moment only, they are caught up in the game; thenshe realises what she has said. Awkwardly, she rips the thread from her finger and crams her wedding ring back on.
Henry Norris makes a muttered exclamation. ‘I’d never lift my head so far... I’d rather it was off!’
