I go quite cheerfully to dinner in the great hall; the royal table is weighted with silverware and the servers will bring twenty coursesout of respect to the absent king, who is still at Whitehall but said to be dining out in London in the happiest of moods. We all enter in order of precedence and bow to the throne. Half a dozen ladies sit with me at the ladies’ table, and we eat in silence. There is no music, and nobody wants to dance when half the court has a kinsman in the Tower tonight.
After dinner, some of the gentlemen sit over their wine, but the ladies disappear to their own rooms. I am at the doorway to the Boleyn rooms when Thomas Howard appears. He steps inside with me, without asking permission, and waves away the servant.
‘Has Cromwell promised you safety?’ he asks without preamble. ‘You and George? I know you’ve not been called to give evidence – and he’s going to get Thom Wyatt off – has he promised to release George too?’
‘He’s made me no promise,’ I say, which is true: he has not. ‘I need none. No inquiry can find anything against me or George. It is a plot by the Spanish party against Anne, with imaginary accusations. It will blow up in their faces.’
His sharp face is more hawklike than ever. ‘Of course it’s a plot,’ he says grimly. ‘But it’s a good one. They’ll prove their accusations. They’ll drag her down. Question is: will they take you and George, too?’
‘If the marriage was invalid, then she is no wife,’ I explain patiently. The duke is deadly at the head of his men, but not the sharpest blade when faced with ideas. ‘If she is no wife, there is no adultery. As her uncle, as the head of our house, your task is to wait for them to make fools of themselves, and then take Anne away.’
His laugh is like the sharp bark of a dog. ‘You’re behind the times, Jane – it’s gone far beyond validity; it’s gone far beyond adultery! If she’s not his wife, then adultery doesn’t matter – suppose Anne kissed Henry Norris? Even if she swived him? The archbishop will rule that she’s adulterous and send her to a nunnery. A modern Guinevere. That’s not enough for them – now they want her dead!Some fool told them that Anne said it was her or Lady Mary. So they’re all out for the death sentence on Anne. They’re throwing every filth they can. They say she was plotting with her own brother for the king’s death, in an enseamed bed? They’ll both have to die for it.’
‘Treason? With George? It’s ridiculous!’
‘Worse! They say they bedded. Brother-and-sister lovers! Incestuous lovers!’
He has knocked the breath out of me.
‘You think you’re so clever,’ he says, with lightning malice. ‘The three of you. So clever and young and sinful. Were you in the bed, too?’
‘Nobody can say it! Nobody will have witnessed it! There’s no evidence for it!’
‘Everyone’s given evidence of it,’ he jeers. ‘Everyone witnessed it.’
‘Lies! And such a thing to say? Such a wicked...’ I break off. Actually, it’s clever; everyone knows their intimacy. I, myself, said to Cromwell that George is always with his sister. Impossible to deny what happens behind a closed door. But it is the worst of accusations, made by the worst of imaginations. And why attack George? And why add incest to the accusations of adultery?
I can feel my uncle’s hard scrutiny of my white face, and I look up, hoping for help. ‘But – why?’ I ask simply. ‘If this is an attack on Anne by her enemies – the Poles, and the Seymours and the rest of the Spanish party, all working together – why so gross an accusation? Why incest as well as witchcraft?’
‘Something so ungodly that it drives the king mad,’ he tells me. ‘Nobody’s going to ask “but was she married before?” when they hear about this. Nobody will care. It’s such a vile sin that everyone will call for her death. The king loudest of all. They’ll frighten him half to death about the lust he felt for her. By the time they’ve finished, he’ll think of her as a witch who tempted him and destroyed his life, made him impotent, dropped a horse on him, killed hisfirst wife and sickened his daughter. Nothing will satisfy him but her death.’
‘Wait!’ I say. ‘I can vouch for George. At least I can save him. There was no treason. There was no incest. There was no plotting the death of the king. I was there at every meeting.’
He grips me by the arm and draws me close. ‘If you were at every meeting, then you are a traitor and part of the queen’s adulterous murderous witchcraft,’ he growls in my ear. ‘If you were there at every meeting, then you were in bed with the two of them, hanging on each other, kissing with tongues, hiding dead babies, cursing the king into impotence, taking potions. You choose! Go to your spymaster Cromwell: his book is open at the page for confessions.’
His grip is tight, but I hardly feel it; I sway with sickness. He pauses and looks into my ashen face. ‘D’you want to die? D’you want to die as an incestuous witch-traitor with George and Anne?’
‘They’re not going to die.’
‘D’you want to die with them?’
I know that I don’t. ‘No.’
‘Then do as I do: condemn them.’
‘You can’t condemn them – your own niece and nephew. You can’t send them to their deaths without a word?’
He grins, showing his yellow teeth. ‘Oh, I’m going to speak a word,’ he says mirthlessly. ‘I’ll speak a word all right. I’m going to say: “Guilty”.’
NO ONE TELLSthe ladies to leave; but there is nothing for us to do here without a queen. Those of us who have families in rooms at court can go to them, and the others – like Anne Basset whose mother is in Calais – stays with friends in London. Sir Nicholas Carew does not open his grand house at Croydon for any other maid-of-honour but Jane Seymour, who does not reappear to help as we pack up our things.
‘Where will you go?’ I ask Margery Horsman.
‘Home,’ she says shortly. ‘I’ve told them everything they asked. I don’t have to stay.’
‘What d’you mean, everything they asked? Who asked you?’
‘Master Cromwell asked me; his clerk wrote down my answers. “Who spoke to who? Who danced with the queen? Who did she favour?” I told them that I saw what everyone saw – the king himself saw everything. Master Holbein could’ve painted it! There’s no news to be made from it. Masquing, dancing, plays, courtly love, everything as normal. Will you go to Beaulieu?’
