“Mayhap he’ll pass on afore you can meet with him. God rest his soul.”

“Anne!” I said, shocked that she’d speak aloud my shameful hope. She, who was not given to examining herself in shame, burst out laughing. I laughed with her.

“I jest. But come to court till he is well. He can summon you from there just as easily as from here. And…. Edmund is not at court.”

This was true.

Within the week Edithe and I finished packing. I was to join Anne at court.

SEVEN

Year of Our Lord 1526

Richmond Palace

and

Year of our Lord 1527

Allington Castle

And so we spent the autumn at court. I was now a member of the aristocracy, thanks to my as-yet-unkissed husband, and therefore entitled to better rooms. Anne certainly had better rooms; her chambers were draped with among the finest tapestries I’d ever seen. There were more than one hundred ladies waiting upon the queen in various capacities and those she kept closest were, naturally, Spanish women who had joined her when she came to England decades ago to marry Prince Arthur.

Alas, Katherine’s marital bliss had lasted only a few short months ere Arthur succumbed to consumption. The new princess had to wait, her temper and gowns growing threadbare, till her knight in shining armor, Henry, rescued and married her just after his father died.

I studiously learnt many things from the busy lips of those hundred women as we dealt cards or sorted ribbons and silks, paying careful attention so that I could better guide Anne. I learnt that the king had not joined the queen in her bedchamber in many years and that she had not had a monthly flux for many years, either. I learnt that she spent long hours praying in Spanish in a chapel aflame with candles, beseeching the Lord for a miracle son. While I didn’t share her zealous religious devotion, I admired her constancy to it. I learnt that though she was haughty to nearly all but her closest friends, when Henry did talk to her she was gentle, and perhaps too pleading to hold his respect or interest. I learnt that there were some principles she would not bend on—her marriage, her faith, and her daughter, Mary, even if it meant locking horns with Henry. I was shocked that a woman of such intelligence would not understand that locking horns with Henry on anything meant that she would lose, and lose badly. Anyone who had heard the king in temper, or had it spoken of, or remembered the death of poor Buckingham should have learnt that well.

I learnt through whispered conversations that although the queen would not cause direct harm to those in her path, there were others in her household who had no such scruples. They smelt blood, and as times became more desperate they would become bolder in protecting their mistress. Well, there were those of us who would protect Anne, too, though none, I dared say, would stoop to bloodshed.

Though the king attended to royal business during the day, Anne was the first one he sought for companionship during musical performances, his most frequent dance partner, the confidante he could be seen laughing with as the court made its way from gallery to gallery after dinner. I sensed nothing amiss for some time because, after all, courtly flirtation was the lingua franca and we were always among a crowd. Anne’s high profile and clear favor with the king would allow her father to find a husband for her, something we’d oft discussed. But it eventually became clear to all, and they spoke of it in hushed tones at feasts and in darkened hallways, that Henry was besotted with Anne in a way he’d never been with either Bessie Blount or Mary Boleyn, the two ladies who had most publicly shared his attentions. The reason why was clear to me. Anne was Henry’s equal, and he, the consummate jouster, relished her for her ability to parry. He’d styled his friend Charles Brandon the Duke of Suffolk for the same set of skills.

One of the joys of being at court was the pleasantries of spending time with my brother Thomas. I walked with him in the autumn gardens among the leaves tinted magenta and, yea, even purple, as this was a royal household after all. As he was unhappy in his marriage I had poured out my sorrow to him about my last meeting with Will, and how I felt, noli tangere, now that he belonged to our Lord. Thomas understood. Neither of us spoke of Baron Blackston. Anne joined us from time to time and one day, for a lark, Thomas snatched a jewel that Anne had on a knitted string, hanging from a pocket in her gown. After Anne had introduced the fashion I noticed several other ladies at court imitating it.

“Give that back!” she insisted. Thomas shook his head and instead plunged the jewel and its chain into his bosom.

“’Tis mine now,” he said. “I shall use it as an excuse to speak to you when I will—come to return your favor or ask one of you, you’ll know not.”

“Thomas,” I said quietly. He looked at me, winked, and backed away. Anne waved him off with a laugh.

“’Tis only a courtly banter,” she said, relenting. “And a paste jewel. Let him have it.” She linked arms with me and we strolled back to the palace, wind now picking up. A few days later, she burst into my chamber.

“Your brother,” she said before closing the door, “is not to be trusted.”

I sat her down next to me. “Edmund is here?”

She shook her head impatiently and dismissed Edithe from the room—really my prerogative, though I said nothing. “Thomas. Apparently he was playing bowls with the king and other gentlemen when the king hit a shot that he claimed had made the mark though it hadn’t. Thomas, fool that he is, disagreed with the king.”

Oh no. Everyone knew that the king, once settled on a matter, would not be dissuaded. His opinion was always right, his assumptions and assertions the correct ones, and he never changed his mind because that would imply that, impossibly, he’d been wrong in the first place. To claim otherwise was foolhardy indeed.

“That’s not the worst of it,” Anne pressed on. “Thomas withdrew the jewel he stole from me and used the knitted chain to measure the distance from the king’s bowl to the mark and his own bowl to the mark whence he claimed victory—showing the king my jewel as he so declared! The king, completely understanding that Thomas was claiming me, and not the bowl, replied that it might be true but then he had been deceived. Henry Norris had come to warn me of it and I am come to ask you—please tell Thomas to keep his distance from me. I dare not be seen telling him on my own.”

I nodded and as I did heard Edithe quietly come into the room. “Mistress Boleyn’s maid is here,” she said, her voice sounding like one who suffered watery bowels. “The king has asked for her.”

Anne left and I went to listen to some musicians that the queen had arranged to play in her room. She sat eating Seville oranges and tapping her toe to the melancholy refrain so different from the galliards Henry preferred. I peeled an orange and worried about Anne. Later that night Anne appeared in the queen’s chambers and, smiling, settled down next to me. Every eye was upon her and the queen’s mouth grew pinched.

Later Anne snuck into my chamber and told me that she’d convinced the king that Thomas’s actions were a playful gesture left over from childhood and that he meant nothing more to her, and perhaps a great deal less, than a true brother. The king was well pleased and asked her to stay with him for dinner in his chambers.