The women around Jane are in their finery, and in the heat of mid-morning the scent of lavender ripples into air like bubbles of laughter. It is a pity that preservative herbs can do nothing for the dowagers of England’s old families, who now stand about their prize like sentinels in brocade. The Boleyn women have melted from view: poor Mary Shelton, who thought that Henry Norris was going to marry her, and the vigilant Jane Rochford, George’s widow. The room is crowded with faces not seen at court since Queen Katherine’s day: and Jane, regrettably pale and as usual silent, is a little dough-figure in their midst. Henry has endowed her generously with the pick of the dead woman’s jewels, and her gown has been hastily sewn over with goldsmiths’ work, hearts and love-knots. As she stirs to greet him, a knot detaches itself; she stoops, but one of her attendants is quicker. Jane whispers, ‘Thank you, madam, for your courtesy.’
Her face is dismayed. She cannot believe that Margaret Douglas – the king’s niece, the Queen of Scotland’s daughter – is here to pick up after her. Meg Douglas is a pretty lass, nineteen or twenty now. She stands up with a flash of red hair, and steps back to her place. Her hood is the French style that Boleyn favoured, but most of the ladies have reverted to the older sort, concealing the hair. By Meg’s side is her best friend Mary Fitzroy, young Richmond’s wife; her husband has been and gone, one assumes, after congratulating his father on the new marriage. She is a very little wife, not seventeen; the clumsy gable gives her a scalped, wary look, and her eyes are travelling around. She sees him; nudges Meg; drops her eyes, breathes, ‘Cromwell.’
At once, both young women look away, as if to disappear him. Anne’s ladies don’t like to admit how they deluged him with gossip, once they knew the queen’s day was done. They don’t like to admit how fast they talked, what evidence they gave against her. Cromwell tricks you, they say. He puts words into your mouth. With his manner so suave, he makes you say things you don’t mean.
Before he can come at the new queen, her family sweep in: her mother Lady Margery, two brothers. Edward Seymour looks discreetly joyous. Tom Seymour looks rumbustious, and is dressed with a lavishness that even George Boleyn might have thought de trop. Lady Margery’s glance stabs the old dames. None of them have kept their looks as she has, nor have their girls become queen. She makes a deep, straight-backed curtsey to her daughter, then rises with an audible snap of knee-joints. The poet Skelton once compared her to a primrose. But now she is sixty.
Jane’s pale glance washes over her family. Then she turns her head, and lets it wash over him. ‘Master Secretary,’ she says. There is a long pause, while the queen masters her diffidence. At last she whispers, ‘Would you like to … kiss my hand? Or … or anything at all … like that?’
He finds himself on one knee, lips touching an emerald he had kissed on the narrow hand of the late Anne. With her other hand, with her stubby little fingers, Jane brushes his shoulder; as if to say, ah dear, it’s hard for both of us, but somehow we’ll stumble through the morning.
‘Your lady sister is not with us?’ he asks Jane.
‘Bess is on her way,’ Lady Margery says.
‘Only,’ Jane says, ‘it’s all been so sudden. Bess never thought I would be getting married. She is still in mourning for her husband.’
‘I think she should come out of black. Let me help dress her. I know the Italian clothiers.’
Lady Margery subjects him to a sharp scrutiny. Then she turns, and flicks a dismissive hand at the dowagers. For a moment, these great ladies lock their eyes with hers. They inhale, as if in pain. They lift their hems, and drop back a few paces. They see they must allow the bride’s immediate family to surround her, and pose the indelicate questions that must be asked the day after a wedding.
‘So, sister?’ Tom Seymour says.
‘Voice down, Tom,’ says brother Edward. He glances over his shoulder; he, Cromwell, is standing as an impassable barrier between the family and the court.
‘So,’ the new queen says.
‘We only require,’ her mother says, ‘the merest word of reassurance. As to how you find yourself this morning.’
Jane considers. For a long time she looks at her shoes. Tom Seymour is fidgeting. You almost think he’s going to pinch his sister, as if they were in the nursery still. Jane takes in a breath. ‘Yes?’ Tom demands.
Jane whispers, ‘Brothers, my lady mother … Master Cromwell … I can only say I find myself wholly unprepared for what the king asks of me.’
The brothers stare at Lady Margery. Surely the girl knows how a man and woman couple? And besides, she is not a girl, isn’t that the point?
‘Surely,’ Lady Margery says. ‘You are twenty-seven years old, Jane. I mean, your Grace.’
‘Yes, I am,’ Jane agrees.
‘The king should not have to coddle you like a thirteen-year-old,’ her mother says. ‘If he showed himself impatient, well, that is how men are.’
‘You’ll get used to it,’ Tom encourages her. ‘There’s a price to be paid for everything, you know.’
Jane nods miserably.
‘I am sure the king was not unkind,’ Lady Margery says firmly.
‘No, not unkind.’ Jane glances up. ‘But my difficulty is, he wants me to do some very strange things. Things I never imagined a wife had to do.’
They look at each other. Jane’s lips move: as if she were trying out her words, before daring to expose them to the air. ‘But I suppose … well, I hardly know … I suppose there are things men like.’
Edward looks desperate. Tom begs, ‘Master Secretary?’
How is he to intervene? Is he responsible for the king’s tastes?
Lady Margery’s face is taut. ‘Unpleasant things, Jane?’
‘I think so,’ the queen says. ‘Though I have no experience of them, of course.’
Tom looks wild. ‘My advice,’ he says. ‘Accommodate him, sister.’
‘The point is,’ Edward says, ‘this … whatever, his desire, his command … does it conduce to getting a child?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ Jane says.
‘You’ll have to talk to him,’ Edward says. ‘Cromwell, you’ll have to recall to him how a Christian man behaves.’
He takes Jane’s hands between his. It is a bold move but he can see no alternative. ‘Your Grace, put aside modesty, and tell me what it is the king requires of you.’
Jane slides her hands away. She slides her pale little person away, and nudges aside her brothers: she falters in the direction of her king, her court, her future. She whispers as she goes, ‘He wants me to ride down to Dover with him, and see the fortifications.’
Unsmiling, Jane walks the length of the great chamber. Every eye is on her; she looks proud, someone whispers. And if you knew nothing of her, you might think that. Henry stretches out his arms, as one does for a child learning to walk, and when he has her, he kisses her, full on the mouth. His lips form a question; she whispers an answer; he bends his head to catch it, his face full of solicitude and pride. Chapuys is in a huddle with the old dames and their menfolk. As if he were their envoy – as if he were their envoy to Cromwell – the ambassador peels himself away and says, ‘She appears to be wearing all her jewels at once, like a Florentine bride. Still, she looks well enough, for a woman who is so plain. Whereas the other one, the more she dressed up, the worse she looked.’
‘Latterly. Perhaps.’
He remembers the days, when the cardinal was still alive, when Anne needed no ornament but her eyes. She had dwindled away in those last months, her face pinched. When she landed at the Tower, and slipped from his grasp and fell at his feet on the cobbles, he had lifted her and she weighed nothing; it was like holding air.