I order the servant, and then I walk on, down the king’s gallery, my candle flame bobbing in the warm draught. Next door to the Boleyns is the bigger suite of rooms allocated to the Duke of Norfolk. Thomas Howard is here alone – estranged from his wife, who stayed faithful to Katherine of Aragon when the rest of us did not. Late as it is, the door opens at once to my quiet tap.
A servant waits for me to speak.
‘Is my lord here?’ I whisper.
He bows and gestures for me to come inside, closing the greatdoor behind me with a noiseless click. He crosses the big hall to the double doors of a grand bedroom and scratches against the oak panel. It, too, opens at once, and there is Thomas Howard the Duke of Norfolk, in a heavily embroidered night robe, wide awake, his long face grooved with lines, showing no surprise.
‘Yes? Jane?’
I have been his eyes and ears ever since I first arrived at court as a lonely little girl. Thomas Howard was the only one to notice me. He said I was a clever little poppet, and he gave me ribbons when I brought him news. He praised my learning and asked me what the queen had said in Spanish when she was alone with her ambassador, what she whispered in Latin to her confessor. Who came and went through the private door to her rooms? Who was her secret doctor, and why did she summons him?
When I married George, the duke became my uncle and the head of my house and said I was to think of him as a father, that I must go to him with all my little troubles, with any little secrets. Especially, I must tell him about the queen as the king turned against her and fell in love with my sisters-in-law: first Mary and then Anne.
I brought him news from the queen’s rooms, trivial gossip at first, and then I learned the number code that the Spanish diplomats used for writing secrets – and I copied her letters. I warned him when his own wife, Elizabeth, the young Duchess of Norfolk, hid a message to the queen in a basket of Seville oranges. The duke took my word against hers and locked her up far from her home and her children. At first, I was horrified that one word from me had destroyed a woman’s life: separated her from her children and made her home into a prison. But I felt proud that a great man like the duke trusted me, a child, more than her. He prized my whispered word above his wife’s denial. I learned a secret, I gave the secret to my patron, and he acted with power. It was as if the power was mine, as if I earned my own power with my secret.
After that, he trusted me completely. Together, we watched the growth of a Spanish party – a traitorous group formed deep insidethe court, with adherents all over the country, financed by Spain and the Roman Catholic Church, linked to many of the old lords, many of the old royal family, sworn to defend the old queen against the king, sworn to restore England to the Papist faith, sworn to restore Lady Mary as the king’s only heir, sworn to the death and destruction of Anne, of all of us.
‘What news?’ the duke asks me, knowing it must be terrible news for me to come to him, barefoot in my night robe.
‘Anne’s losing the baby,’ I whisper. ‘Her mother, your sister, told me to fetch a midwife.’
‘Did she tell you to wake me?’
‘No. It’s to be kept secret. Nobody knows I’m here.’
‘Well done. Go back to Anne. Tell me when it’s all over. Either way.’
He shows no sign of distress, though this is the end of a royal Howard baby. But of course it’s not the only chance for him. His daughter is married to the king’s bastard son; he might get a royal Howard baby from them.
‘Thank you for coming to me, Jane. I rely on you.’
I curtsey and turn to the door. The silent servant opens it for me, and I hear the quiet click as it closes behind me. I hurry back through the king’s private door into the queen’s bedroom.
THE SCENE INthe queen’s bedroom is familiar and vile. I have attended more than one death here, in exactly these rooms, with exactly this sense of unstoppable despair. Then it was Queen Katherine, lying flat on the bed with her legs raised high on a stack of pillows, white as her sheets, mouthing prayers, her rosary clutched in her hand, her eyes on a crucifix. Now it is Anne, holding the newly translated English Bible, her eyes fixed on her brother’s face, both of them whispering the psalm for courage in the valley of death.
Her mother has Anne swaddled tight, as if bedding stuffed between her legs can hold the baby in place. The blood seeps through thewhiteness as George mutters in English: ‘Why, though I shall go in the midst of the shadow of death, I shall not dread evils, for thou art with me, thou art with me, in the midst of the shadow of death, I shall not dread. I shall not dread. Though I shall go in the midst of the shadow of death, I shall not dread evils, for thou art with me.’
For a long time, there is no sound but the muttered psalm. Light seeps around the joints of the shutters. Then I can hear birdsong, the bubbling, rippling joy of a blackbird. Now, it is so light that the candle flames look yellow and tawdry, and I blow them out. The spreading stain on the sheets is not black in the darkness any more but red as jam; soon the servants will be waking, and someone will try the door and know there has been a night-time vigil over the queen’s bloodstained bed.
Still, Anne says nothing; her eyes are fixed on George’s dark face as he prays like a priest, and her mother tightens the sheets between her legs.
I want to hold them both; I want to hold Time itself, so that this dreadful day never dawns, instead I clutch at the bedpost and whisper ‘Amen, Amen,’ to their prayers.
A mouse-like scratch at the door interrupts us. A servant, half-dressed, whispers: ‘One of the Boleyn servants said this woman was wanted for Lady Rochford...’
‘Yes,’ I say, opening the door a crack. ‘Come in.’ I pull the midwife into the room and close the door on the waiting woman and the Boleyn servant.
‘This is Lady Rochford,’ Anne’s mother points to Anne. ‘Is she losing her baby?
The woman takes off her shawl, pulls back the bedding, unwraps the bloodied sheets. There is a sweaty smell of blood and juices.
‘She’s not losing it,’ the woman says, and we all look at her, with disbelieving hope in a miracle, as if she has come to save us, to save England itself. Even Anne lifts her head from George’s shoulder.
‘Not losing it?’ I whisper.
‘She’s lost it already,’ she says with brutal honesty. ‘It’s done.It’s all come away. This here’ – she unwraps the sheet to show a little mess of bloody clots. ‘This was it. Not much to see, and it’s all done. The blood is just the rest of it. She’ll likely stop bleeding in a few weeks.’
Anne drops her face into the crook of George’s shoulder and neck. He bends around her so they are like one strange creature with two dark heads – anOrthus– sprouting from a tangle of bloodied sheets and one pair of forked naked legs.
