She has the prettiest bonnet on her head, silvery white with a sweeping feather; she has a rich jacket of white embroidered with silver thread and stitched with pearls. Her deep, full skirt is white too, falling either side of the saddle, and she rides well, her reins held firmly in her hand, her head up.
At her side, riding alongside on a little bay pony as if she had a right to be there, is the three-year-old Boleyn girl, her pretty face bright under a scarlet hat, waving her hand to everyone. Mary speaks to her from time to time. It is obvious that she loves her little half sister Elizabeth. The crowd applauds her for it. Mary has a tender heart, and she is always looking for someone to love.
“Can’t I make a bow? Can’t I bow to her?” Harry demands.
I shake my head. “Not today. I will take you to her another time.”
I step back so that she does not see me. I don’t want to be a reminder of harder days, and I don’t want her to think that I am seeking her attention on this, the day of her triumph. I want her to feel the joy that she should have had from childhood, I want her to be a princess with no regrets. She has had few happy days, none since the coming of the Boleyn whore, but this is one. I don’t want it overshadowed by her sorrow that she cannot have me by her side, that still we are parted.
I am content to watch her from the riverbank. I think that at last the king is coming to his senses and we have endured some strange years of mad cruelty, when he did not know what he was doing, when he did not know what he was thinking, and there was no one with the courage to stop him. But now the people themselves have stopped him. With the courage of the saints, the common people have stood up and warned Henry Tudor that his father conquered the country but cannot take their souls.
Wolsey would not do it, the Boleyn girl could not do it, Cromwell never thought to do it, but the people of England have said to their king that he has come to a line they have drawn. He does not have power over everything in the kingdom. He does not have power over the Church, he does not have power over them.
I don’t doubt that the day will come when he sees that he was wrong over Queen Katherine too, and shows justice to her daughter. Of course he will. He gains nothing by naming her as his bastard now. He will name her as his eldest daughter, he will recall me to her service, and he will make a great marriage for her with one of the crowned heads of Europe. I will go with her, and make sure that she is safe and happy in her new palace, wherever she has to go, whoever she has to marry.
“I will be her page,” Harry says, chiming with my thoughts. “I shall serve her, I will be her page.” I smile down at him and touch his cold cheek.
A great bawl goes up from the waiting crowd as the yeomen of the guard come marching along, keeping time though now and then someone slips. Nobody falls; they sometimes have to use the heel of the pike to stay upright but they look brave and bright in their green and white livery, and then finally, at last, there is the king, riding behind them, glorious in imperial purple as if he were the Holy Roman Emperor himself, with Jane beside him, overloaded with furs.
He is a massive figure now. High on the back of a big horse, almost a plow horse, Henry matches the broad shoulders and the huge rump of the horse with his own brawn. His jacket is padded so thick and fat that he is as wide as two men, his hat trimmed all round with fur, like a great basin on his balding head. He wears his cape thrown back, so that we can all see the glory of his jacket and waistcoat, and yet admire the flow of the cape, a rich purple velvet, sweeping almost to the ground.
His hands are on the reins in leather gloves glinting with diamonds and amethysts. He has precious stones in his hat, on the hem of his cape, on his very saddle. He looks like a gloriously triumphant king entering his own, and the citizens and the commons and the gentry of London bellow their approval of this larger-than-life giant astride his giant horse as he rides on a great frozen river.
Jane beside him is tiny. They have dressed her in blue and she looks cold and insubstantial. She has a blue hood that stands high and heavy on her head. She has a rippling blue cloak that catches and jerks her backwards from time to time and makes her clutch at her reins. She is mounted on a beautiful gray horse but she does not ride like a queen; she looks nervous as the horse slides once on the ice, and finds its feet again.
She smiles at the loud cheers but she looks around her, almost as if she thinks they are for someone else. I realize that she has seen two other wives respond to the bellow of “God save the queen,” and she has to remind herself that the loyal shout means her.
We wait till the whole court has ridden by, the lords and their households, and all the bishops, even Cromwell in his modest dark gown lined with hidden rich fur, and then the foreign ambassadors. I see the dainty little Spanish ambassador, but I pull up the hood of my fur-lined cape and make sure that he does not see me. I don’t want any hidden sign from him; this is not a day for plotting. We have won the victory that we needed: this is a day for celebration. I wait with my household until the last of the soldiers have gone by and all that will follow them are the household wagons, and I say: “That’s the end of the show, Harry, Katherine, Winifred. Time to go home.”
“Oh, Lady Grandmother, can’t we wait till the huntsmen take the hounds by?” Harry pleads.
“No,” I rule. “They’ll have taken them already, and all the hawks will be on their perches with the curtains drawn against the cold. There’s nothing to see and it’s getting too late.”
“But why can’t we go with the court?” Katherine asks. “Don’t we belong at court?”
I tuck her little hand under my elbow. “Next year we will,” I promise her. “I am sure the king will have us back at his side, with all our family, and next year we will have Christmas at court.”
It is Christmas Eve at L’Erber, and I am in the chapel, on my knees, waiting for the moment when I will hear first one, then another, then a hundred bells chime the hour for midnight, and then break into a full peal to celebrate the birth of Our Lord.
I hear the outside door suddenly open, then thud shut, and feel the swirl of cold air as the candles bob, and then suddenly my son Montague is bowing to the altar and then kneeling before me for my blessing.
“My son! Oh, my son!”
“Lady Mother, blessings of the season.”
“Happy Christmas, Montague. Have you just come from the North?”
“I rode down with Robert Aske himself,” he says.
“He’s here? The pilgrims are in London?”
“He’s bidden to court. He is the king’s guest at the Christmas feast. He is honored.”
I hear his words but I cannot believe them. “The king has asked Robert Aske, the leader of the pilgrims, to court for Christmas?”
“As a loyal subject, as an advisor.”
I put out my hand to my son. “The pilgrim leader and the king?”
“It is peace. It is victory.”
“I can’t believe that our troubles are over.”
“Amen,” he says. “Who would have believed it?”
L’ERBER, LONDON, JANUARY–FEBRUARY 1537
Montague goes to court himself the next day, taking Harry with him, who trots in his train, very solemn and serious, and when he comes back at the end of the twelve days of Christmas he comes straight to my private rooms to tell me about the meeting between the king and the pilgrim.
“He spoke to the king with unbelievable frankness. You would not think it possible.”