“She must be soothing, after Anne,” Montague points out.
“And is it love again?”
He nods. “He is besotted with her. He thinks she is a quiet country girl, shy, ignorant. He thinks she has no interest in matters that concern men. He looks at her family and thinks she will be fertile.”
The young woman has five brothers. “But he cannot think that she is the finest woman at court,” I object. “He has always wanted the very best. He cannot think that Jane outshines all the others.”
“No, he’s changed. She is not the best—not by a long way—but she admires him much more than anyone else,” Montague says. “That’s his new benchmark. He likes the way she looks at him.”
“How does she look at him?”
“She’s awestruck.”
I take this in. I can see that for the king, shaken by his own mortality after hours of unconsciousness, facing the prospect of his own death without a male heir, the adoration of a pure country girl might be a relief. “And so?”
“I dine with Cromwell and Henry Courtenay tonight. Shall I tell him that we will join with them against Anne?”
I remember the huge newly accreted power of the Boleyns and the vast wealth of the Howards and I think that, even so, we can face them down. “Yes,” I say. “But tell him that our price for this is the restoration of the princess and the abbeys. We will keep the excommunication secret, but the king must return to Rome.”
Montague comes back from his dinner with Cromwell with his feet weaving under him, so drunk that he can hardly stand. I have gone to bed as he raps on my door and asks may he come in, and when I open the door, he stands at the threshold and says that he won’t intrude.
“Son!” I say, smiling. “You’re drunk as a stable boy.”
“Thomas Cromwell has a head of iron,” he says regretfully.
“I hope you said nothing more than we agreed.”
Montague leans against the doorjamb and sighs heavily. A warm gust of ale, wine, and I think brandy, for Cromwell has exotic tastes, blows gently into my face. “Go to bed,” I say. “You will be sick as a dog in the morning.”
He shakes his head in wonderment. “He has a head of iron,” he repeats. “A head of iron and a heart like an anvil. You know what he is doing?”
“No.”
“He is setting her own uncle, her own uncle, Thomas Howard, to gather evidence against her. Thomas Howard is going to find evidence against the marriage. He is going to ask for witnesses against his niece.”
“Men of iron with hearts of stone. And the Princess Mary?”
Owlishly, Montague nods at me. “I don’t forget your love of her, I never forget, Lady Mother. I raised it at once. I reminded him at once.”
“And what did he say?” I ask, curbing my impatience to dunk my drunken son’s head in a bucket of icy water.
“He said that she will get a proper household, and be honored in her new house. She will be declared legitimate. She will be restored. She will come to court, Queen Jane will be her friend.”
I nearly choke at the new name. “Queen Jane?”
He nods. “ ’Mazing, isn’t it?”
“You’re sure of this?”
“Cromwell is certain.”
I reach up to him, ignoring the odor of wine and brandy and mulled ale. I pat his cheek, as he beams at me. “Well done. That’s good,” I say. “Perhaps this will end well. And this is not just Cromwell casting bread on the waters? This is the king’s will?”
“Cromwell only ever does the king’s will,” Montague says confidently. “You can be sure of that. And now the king wants the princess restored and the Boleyn woman gone.”
“Amen,” I say, and gently push Montague out of the door of my privy chamber, where his men are waiting for him. “Put him to bed,” I say. “And leave him to sleep in the morning.”
MANOR OF THE ROSE, ST. LAWRENCE POUNTNEY, LONDON, APRIL 1536
Hugging this secret, and suddenly filled with hope, I go to visit my cousin Gertrude Courtenay at her house in St. Lawrence Pountney, London. Her husband, Henry, is at court, preparing for the May Day joust, and Montague must stay with the court too. After the joust they are all going on to a great feast to be held in France, with King Francis as the host. Whatever Cromwell is planning against the Boleyn woman, he is taking his time, and this is no way to further the friendship with Spain or the return to Rome. Since I don’t trust Thomas Cromwell any more than I would trust any mercenary soldier from the stews of Putney, I think it very likely that he is playing both sides at once, Boleyn and France against my Princess Mary and Spain, until he can be sure which side will win.
Cousin Gertrude is bursting with gossip. She gets hold of me the moment I am off my horse and walking into the hall. “Come,” she says. “Come into the garden, I want to talk to you and we can’t be overheard.”
Laughing, I follow her. “What is it that’s so urgent?”
As soon as she turns to speak my laughter dies, she looks so serious. “Gertrude?”
“The king spoke in private to my husband,” she says. “I did not dare write it to you. He spoke to him after the concubine lost her child. He said that now he sees that God will not give him a son with her.”
“I know,” I say. “I heard it too. Even in the country I heard it. Everyone at court must know, and since everyone knows, it can only be that the king and Cromwell must want everyone to know.”
“You won’t have heard this: he says that she seduced him with witchcraft, and that this is why they will never have a son together.”
I am stunned. “Witchcraft?” I drop my voice to repeat the dangerous word. To accuse a woman of witchcraft is tantamount to sentencing her to death, for what woman can prove that a disaster was not of her making? If someone says that they have been overlooked or bewitched, how can one prove that it was not so? If a king says that he has been bewitched, who is going to tell him that he is mistaken?
“God save her! What did my cousin Henry say?”
“He said nothing. He was too amazed to speak. Besides, what could he say? We all thought she had driven him mad, we all thought that she was driving everyone mad, he was clearly besotted, he was beside himself, who’s to say that it wasn’t witchcraft?”
“Because we saw her play him like a fish,” I say irritably. “There was no mystery, there was no magic. Don’t you see Jane Seymour being advised on the same game? Coming forward, going back, half seduced and then withdrawing? Haven’t we seen the king madly in love with half a dozen women? It’s not magic, it’s what any slut does if she has her wits about her. The difference with Boleyn was that she was quicker-witted than all the others, she had a family who backed her—and the queen, God bless her, was getting old and could have no more children.”
“Yes.” Gertrude steadies herself. “Yes, you’re right. But there again, if the king thinks he was enchanted, and the king thinks she was a witch, and the king thinks that this explains her miscarriages—then that’s all that matters.”
“And what matters next is what he will do about it,” I say.
“He’ll put her aside,” Gertrude says triumphantly. “He will blame her for everything, and put her aside. And we and Cromwell and all our affinity will help him to do it.”
“How?” I say. “For this is the very thing that Montague is working on with Cromwell, and Carew and Seymour.”
She beams at me. “Not just them,” she points out. “Dozens of others. And we don’t even have to do it. That devil Cromwell will do it for us.”
I stay to dine with Gertrude and I would stay longer but one of Montague’s men comes for me in the afternoon and asks me will I return to L’Erber.
“What’s happened?” Gertrude comes with me to the stable yard, where my horse is saddled and ready.