She had learnt. I watched the king, and whilst he made as though he were happy to toy with Mistress Shelton, his eyes were upon Norris and Anne, laughing with the others at play.

Later that night as I helped her undress she told me, “He’s bedded her.”

She said naught else, and her tone warned me not to ask.

By late June Madge was an irritant to all in Anne’s chambers. She wore the king’s favor like a gaudy set of paste pearls and lorded her position over all.

“The king tells me that he is, of a time, not inclined to play cards, having lost to the queen too many times,” she said one day.

“The king is exceptionally tired these days, having worked all day and night on matters of state,” she said another morning as she idled on a chair whilst Jane Rochford and I repleated Anne’s dresses. “You forgot a crease, Lady Rochford,” Madge pointed out.

“And you forget your manners, mistress,” Jane snapped. “Be glad the queen suffers your presence. You are a nothing and a nobody without a brain in her head nor a thought worth sharing. So please don’t spread them like the plague upon the sensibilities that they are. Mayhap you think being the king’s doxy raises you to a position of knowledge and authority.”

“It did for….” Madge let her voice trail off and she caught the sharp look that passed between myself and Lady Rochford. She said nothing more but took her leave. By that afternoon Anne walked into my chambers as I prepared myself for that evening’s dinner.

“What transpired between Mistress Shelton and Lady Rochford today?” she asked.

I told her everything that had transpired, including the fact that Jane Rochford had, uncharacteristically, subtly come to Anne’s defense when Madge had been about to slander her. “Why?”

“The king has summoned me to discuss it. Seems Mistress Shelton went to him in great distress and said that Lady Rochford, and I, had harassed her.”

“You were not even present!”

Anne nodded. “I shall, delicately, put an end to this, I hope.”

That night after dinner there was a pounding on my door. When Edithe opened it there stood Jane Rochford, blustering in fury. “I am exiled from court for a month. Because of you! And Anne!”

“What are you speaking of?” I asked, indicating a chair where she might be seated. She waved me away with a wild hand.

“Mistress Shelton complained that I had been badgering and teasing her for weeks and then finally told her today that she was worthless and was poxy.”

“You said no such thing,” I exclaimed. “You called her a doxy.”

“Her vocabulary, like her morals, is sadly lacking. But that’s not all. Seems that the queen allowed him to believe that while I defended her. You heard me!”

I nodded. “And I told her so.”

Jane snorted. “For naught. I understand what is happening here. Anne wants me banished—so she can have George for herself!”

“Hush, Lady Rochford, ’tis in no way true, you work yourself up,” I said. I tried to put my hand on her arm but she swirled it away from me.

“You remain loyal, but ’tis for naught. She’ll turn on you one day. And, like me, you shan’t forgive her either.”

She turned and slammed the door behind her. Edithe came back into the room, clearly shaken. “Good riddance, my lady,” she said to me. “Shall I help you with your gown?”

I nodded and then, after I was prepared for bed, went to my chamber and closed the door. I opened up my copy of Holy Writ and read for comfort and companionship, and afterward spoke with the Lord Jesus about the situation. I sought peace, but instead, He forewarned me. I knew somehow that this situation with Jane had lit a small pile of kindling that, I knew not how, would blaze into a conflagration that would burn down the house.

Also, against my will, Jane had sown a seed of doubt in my heart about Anne’s loyalty toward me.

I recalled to mind one of King Solomon’s proverbs that Master Fulham had insisted that Anne, Rose Ogilvy, and I memorize as girls. These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto Him: a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

’Twas Jane Rochford, clearer than any Holbein portrait could want to be.

In early July, I went to Anne’s chambers one morn to help her dress for an audience with the Venetian ambassador, but she was still in bed, her beautiful hair matted like a tangle of dark thread on the underside of a tapestry, her skin sickly and taut.

Jane Rochford, just returned from exile, was already there. “She has pains,” she announced in a voice tinted with triumph. “Mayhap I should send for her mother.”

I nodded. “Indeed.”

“And our sister, Mary Stafford?” she insisted.

“Be gone!” I hissed loudly enough for her to hear but not, I hoped, for Anne. Jane laughed quietly and went to find Lady Boleyn. After her banishment she no longer even pretended to false affection for Anne.

Mary Boleyn Carey had married a lowborn soldier from Calais named William Stafford a few months before and, because she hadn’t asked either Anne’s or the king’s permission, she had been exiled from court for months. I knew the real reason that Anne could not tolerate Mary’s presence, though, and it had nothing at all to do with her lowborn husband nor her maddening manner. Rather, it had everything to do with the fact that unlike Anne, Mary had both a daughter and a son by the king. Baseborn, but healthy and alive. Anne, superior in nearly every way to Mary, was inferior in this one critical matter.

“She’s not going to call Mary to court,” Anne said. “I shan’t allow it.”

“She has no intention of recalling Mary,” I said. “Now, just lie back and we shall pray together that these pains will subside and all will be well.”

Anne clutched my hand and eased back. She rolled on her side like a tiny rowboat listing on the Thames and I prayed aloud.

“Lord, if it be your pleasure, please spare this child, for his sake and for my lady’s sake and for His Grace’s sake. Please stop the pains and soothe her womb and have a care to assist the child within.” All knew the pains were too early; a child born now could not survive.

Lady Boleyn arrived and we sat on either side of Anne, and, for a time, she seemed comforted. I sent word by Anne’s secretary to tell the Venetian ambassador that the queen was unwell. By noon, the chamber had grown as quiet as the Kentish fields in the dead of a summer day. Anne rolled from her side and looked at me.

“’Tis no use. I bleed.” We called the midwife and Anne travailed to deliver the babe, present in body and yet in spirit already with our Lord. It was just possible to see that the child had been a boy. I folded him in a small linen and prayed over the body as the midwife took care of the queen.

“Was it a boy?” Anne asked.

I nodded. She remained quiet for many minutes and then, as we eased her into a clean dressing gown, she said, “Mayhap the God I thought I knew I know not at all.”

I had the bloodstained sheets burnt.

His Majesty did not visit. He sent word that he was overoccupied with Master Cromwell but would keep her in his prayers and hoped for a swift return to health. It sounded like the fond but disinterested sentiments one would send to a worthy courtier, not to a wife.

She sent him a sweet letter apologizing that her ill health inconvenienced him and finished it by saying, “I look forward to the day when we, together, celebrate the birth of our son. I shall hasten to recover in order to hasten that day.”

Her atypical gentle manner had won a reprieve. A day later the king visited my lady’s chamber, bringing dates, a bracelet of diamonds, and sweet kisses and gentle words which I had not heard from him in some time. They gladdened her heart and gave her hope. “I believe he repents of his lack of attention,” she said to me as she called for Lady Zouche to bring her washbasin. “Meg, please find a suitable gown for tomorrow night’s dinner. The king is eager for my attendance.”

While Anne had not been able to deliver to His Grace what he wanted, Master Cromwell had.

That autumn, in the king’s mighty presence chamber, Master Cromwell announced in front of all gathered courtiers, politicians, gentry, and visiting notables that Parliament had passed the Act of Succession, which made Mary a bastard and the male issue of Anne and Henry, followed by Princess Elizabeth, the only legal successors to the crown.

Though she’d not authored the act, it seemed that Anne had indeed triumphed over Mary’s unbridled Spanish blood.

Cromwell then read out the Act of Supremacy, also passed by Parliament. “Parliament herein reaffirms the king of England as the only supreme head on earth of the Church in England. The English crown shall enjoy all honors, dignities, preeminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity. This is a recognized and inalienable right.”

The room grew warm with the sweat and fast breathing of hundreds of anxious listeners. The traditionalists, lead by Nicolas Carewe, appeared unseated. Sir Thomas More quietly left the room: Henry saw him leave, yet still appeared pleased, under the canopy of state crowning his great throne. Anne looked pleased for him, and indeed, for the reformist cause. Parliament had firmly declared that the pope had no jurisdiction in England, in fact, never had.

Finally, Cromwell read the last parliamentary act, the Treasons Act. All knew that treason was the worst charge to be laid against man or maid, with the exception of excommunication, which was, thankfully, no longer a valid threat. Cromwell, splendidly attired in his mighty robes of black, power draped about him like legal ermine, called out in a voice loud enough for all to hear.