“As her commander?”
She smiles at me. “As king consort.” Her words drop into the hushed silence of the chapel. “He is the white rose, he carries royal blood, he is the kinsman of every duke in the kingdom, he is the first among equals, he will marry her and they will be crowned together.”
I am stunned. I turn from her, and Montague is at my side at once. “Take her away,” I say. “She says too much. She speaks dangerous truths.”
She smiles, quite unperturbed. “Don’t speak of my sons,” I order her. “Don’t speak of us.”
She bows her head; but she does not promise.
“I’ll take her back to Syon,” Geoffrey volunteers. “They think much of her at the abbey. They are studying with her, old documents, legends. And hundreds of people come to the abbey doors to ask her advice. She tells them what is true. They speak of prophecies and curses.”
“Well, we don’t,” I say flatly. “We don’t ever speak of such things. Ever.”
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, SUMMER 1532
It is a hard morning when I come back from London and tell the princess that her father is going to a great council in France in October and taking his court; but not her.
“I am to follow later?” she asks hopefully.
“No,” I say. “No, you are not. And your mother, the queen, is not attending either.”
“My father is taking only his court?”
“Mostly noblemen,” I temporize.
“Is the Lady going?”
I nod.
“But who will meet her? Not the French queen?”
“No,” I say awkwardly. “The queen won’t, because she’s kinswoman to your mother. And the king’s sister will not either. So our king will have to meet with the French king alone, and Mistress Boleyn will stay in our fort of Calais and not even enter into France.”
She looks puzzled by this complicated arrangement, as indeed anyone would be. “And my father’s companions?”
“The usual court,” I say uncomfortably. Then I have to tell the truth to her pale, hurt face. “He’s taking Richmond.”
“He is taking Bessie Blount’s boy to France but not me?”
Grimly, I nod. “And the Duke of Richmond is to stay in France for a visit.”
“Who will he visit?”
It is the key question. He should visit the French king’s mistress. He should be put in a household with noble bastards. He should be paired, like to like, just as we all send our boys to serve as squires to our cousins and friends, so that they can learn their place in a household the match of their own. By all the rules of courtesy Richmond should go to a household that is the match of his own, a noble bastard’s house.
“He is going into the king’s household,” I say through gritted teeth. “And the King of France’s son will come and stay at our court.”
I would not have thought it possible for her face to go any whiter, and her hand creeps to her belly, as if there is a sudden twist in her gut. “He goes as a prince then,” she says quietly. “He travels with my father as a prince of England, he stays with the French king as an acknowledged heir; but I am left at home.”
There is nothing to say. She looks at me as if she hopes I will contradict her. “My own father wants to make me into a nobody, as if I had never been born to him. Or never lived.”
We are silent after this conversation. We are silent when the furrier from London brings Mary her winter cloak and tells us that the king sent to the queen demanding her jewels for Lady Anne to wear in Calais. The queen first refused to give them up, then explained that they were Spanish jewels, then claimed that they were her own jewels given to her by her loving husband, and not part of the royal treasury; and then, finally defeated, she sent them to the king to show her obedience to his will.
“Does he want mine?” Mary asks me bitterly. “I have a rosary which was a christening gift; I have the gold chain he gave me last Christmas.”
“If he asks, we will send them,” I say levelly, conscious of the listening servants. “He is the King of England. Everything is his.”
As the furrier leaves, discouraged by the bleak response to the story of the jewels, he tells me that the Lady did not sweep the board, for she sent her chamberlain to get the queen’s barge, and he stole it away from its moorings, and had the beautiful carved pomegranates burned off it, and Anne’s crest of the falcon imposed in its place. But apparently that was a step too far for the king. He complained that her chamberlain should never have done such a thing, that Katherine’s barge was her own possession, that it should not have been taken from her, and the Boleyn woman was forced to apologize.
“So what does he want?” the furrier demands of me, as if I have an answer. “What does he want, in God’s name? How is it well and good to take the old lady’s jewels but not her barge?”
“You don’t call her the old lady in my house,” I snap at him. “She’s the Queen of England, and she always will be.”
RICHMOND PALACE, WEST OF LONDON, AUTUMN 1532
Neither Montague nor Geoffrey writes me so much as one private note from France. I get a cheerful unsealed letter from Montague talking about the magnificent clothes and the hospitality and the success of the talks. They all swear to one another that they will mount a joint crusade against the Turk, they are the best of friends, they are on their way home.
It is not until Montague comes to Richmond Palace to pay his respects to the princess that he can tell me on their way back from France they stopped for the night at Canterbury, and Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent, walked through crowds of thousands of people and through the guards to the garden where the king was strolling with Anne Boleyn.
“She warned him,” Montague says to me gleefully. We are standing in an oriel window in the princess’s rooms. The room is unusually quiet; the princess’s ladies are getting ready for dinner, the princess is in her dressing room with her maids choosing her jewels. “She stood in front of him and then went down on her knees, very respectful, and warned him for his own good.”
“What did she say?”
The little windowpanes reflect our faces. I turn away in case someone outside in the darkness is looking in.
“She told him that if he put the queen to one side and married the Boleyn woman there would be plagues and the Sweat would destroy us all. She said that he would not live for more than seven months after the wedding and it would be the destruction of the country.”
“My God, what did he say?”
“He was afraid.” Montague’s voice is so quiet that I can hardly hear him. “He was very afraid. I have never seen him like that before. He said: ‘Seven months? Why would you say seven months?’ and he looked at Anne Boleyn as if he would ask her something. She stopped him with one glance, and then the Maid was taken away. But it meant something terrible to the king. He said ‘Seven months’ as they took her away.”
I feel sick. I see the panes of glass before me sway and then recede as if I am about to faint.
“Lady Mother, are you all right?” Montague demands. I feel him get hold of me and seat me in a chair, while someone opens the window and the cold air blows into the room and into my face and I gasp as if I cannot breathe.
“I swear that she’s told him she’s with child,” I whisper to Montague. I could weep at the thought of it. “The Boleyn whore. She must have lain with him when he made her a marquess and promised him a boy—seven months from now. That’s what the date means to the king. That’s why he was so shocked by the words seven months. He’s heard them from her. He thinks his child will be born in seven months, and now the Maid has told him he will die at the birth. That’s why he’s afraid. He thinks he’s cursed and that he and his heir will die.”