I am so touched that I bend down again and put my cheek to his.
‘Go and buy some pretty things,’ he commands me. ‘I want you to look like a beloved wife and the finest queen that England has ever known.’
I leave the room a little dazed. If I look like a beloved wife it will be for the first time. To my second husband, Lord Latimer, I was a partner and a helpmeet, someone to guard his lands and educate his children. He taught me the things that he needed me to know and he was glad to have me alongside him. But he never petted me, or gave things to me, or imagined how I would appear to others. He rode away and left me in terrible danger, expecting me to serve him as the captain of Snape Castle, confident I would command his men in his absence. I was his deputy, not his love. Now I am married to a man who calls me his beloved and plans treats for me.
Nan is waiting with Joan at the door, which opens before us. ‘Come on,’ I say to her. ‘I think there are some things you’ll want to see in my chambers.’
My own presence chamber is already filled with people come to congratulate me on my wedding and hoping to ask me for a place or a favour or an audience or a fee. I walk through them with a smile to one side and the other, without pausing. I will start my work as queen today. But right now, I want to see my husband’s gifts.
‘Oh, my,’ Nan says as the guards throw open the double doors to my private rooms and my ladies rise to their feet and gesture, rather helplessly, to the half-dozen boxes that the king’s men have put all around the room, the great keys ready in the locks.
It is a sin to feel this leap of cupidity. I laugh at myself. ‘Stand back!’ I say jokingly. ‘Stand back, for I am about to dive into treasure.’
Nan turns the key to the first chest and together we lift the heavy lid. It is a travelling chest and it holds the gold plates and goblets for the queen’s private tables. I nod to two of the maids-in-waiting to come forward. They unpack one glorious plate after another and tip the reflections so the golden lights dance around the room like mad angels. ‘More!’ I say and now everyone holds a plate and shines it into each other’s eyes and flashes discs of light into every corner of the room until the room is dappled with shifting reflections. I laugh with delight and we shine the gold plates on one another, rise up, dance, and the whole room is dancing with us, filled with dazzling light.
‘What’s next?’ I demand breathlessly, and Nan opens the next chest. This is filled with necklaces and belts. She draws out ropes of pearls and belts embroidered and encrusted with sapphires, rubies, emeralds, diamonds and stones that I cannot even name, sparkling dark beauties set in thick blocks of silver or gold. She spreads chains of gold on the arms of chairs, necklaces of silver and diamonds in the laps of the maids so that they dazzle against rich fabric. There are opals with their soft milky light gleaming in green and peach, there is amber in great chunks of dark orange, and there are handfuls of uncut stones in purses looking like pebbles, hiding the flash of precious light within their rocky depths.
Nan opens another chest that has been carefully packed with rolls of the softest leather. Out come rings heavy with precious stones, and single stones on long chains. Without comment, she lays before me Katherine of Aragon’s famous necklace of plaited gold. Another purse is undone and there are Anne Boleyn’s rubies. The royal jewels of Spain come from one great box, the dowry of Anne of Cleves is spread on the floor at my feet. The treasure that the king showered on Katherine Howard comes in a chest all to itself, untouched since she was stripped of everything and went out to take the axe on her bare neck.
‘Look at these earrings!’ someone exclaims, but instead I turn away and go to the window to look down on the formal gardens and the glimpse of the silvery river through the trees. I am suddenly sickened. ‘Those are dead women’s goods,’ I say unsteadily as Nan comes to my side. ‘They are the favourite treasures of dead queens. Those necklaces have been around the necks of the wife before me, some of them have been worn by every one of them who has gone before me. The pearls were warmed by their dead skins, the silver is tarnished by their old sweat.’
Nan is as pale as me. She wrapped Katherine Howard’s emeralds in their leather folders and put them in that very jewel box on the day of her arrest. She fastened Jane Seymour’s sapphires around her neck on her wedding day. She handed Katherine of Aragon her earrings and here they are now, on the table in my privy chamber for my use.
‘You are the queen, you get the queen’s treasures,’ she rules, but her voice trembles. ‘Of course. It’s how it has to be.’
There is a rap on the door and the guard swings it open. William Herbert, Nan’s husband, comes into the room and smiles to see us all surrounded by jewels like children amazed in the pastry kitchen, spoiled for choice. ‘His Majesty sent this,’ he says. ‘It was overlooked. He says I am to put it on your beloved head.’
As I rise to my feet and come towards my brother-in-law, I see he cannot meet my eyes. He looks at the window behind me, at the sky scudding with clouds; he does not look at the treasures at my feet as I step carefully around Katherine of Aragon’s hoods, Katherine Howard’s glossy black sables. In his hand is a small heavy box.
‘What’s this?’ I ask him. I think at once – I don’t want it.
In reply he bows, and unlocks the metal hasp. He lifts the lid and it falls back on its bronze hinges. There is a small ugly crown inside. The ladies behind me gasp. I see Nan make a little movement as if she would prevent what must come next.
William puts down the box and lifts out the elaborately worked crown, encrusted with pearls and sapphires. Mounted at the pinnacle, as if it were a domed church, is a plain gold cross.
‘The king wants you to try it on.’
Obediently, I bend my head for Nan to remove my hood, and her husband gives her the crown. It is the right size, it settles on my forehead like a headache.
‘Is it new?’ I ask faintly. I long for it to be newly made for me.
He shakes his head. ‘Whose was it?’
Nan makes a little gesture with her hand as if to warn him to be silent.
‘It was Anne Boleyn’s crown,’ he tells me. I feel it pressing down on my head as if I might sink beneath the weight of it.
‘Surely he doesn’t want me to wear it today,’ I say awkwardly. ‘He’ll tell you when,’ he says. ‘Important feast days or when you are meeting foreign ambassadors.’
I nod, my neck stiff, and Nan takes it off for me and puts it back in the box. She closes the lid as if she does not want to see it. Anne Boleyn’s crown? How can it be anything but cursed?
‘But I’m to take back the pearls,’ William says, embarrassed. ‘They were brought in error.’
‘Which pearls?’ Nan asks her husband.
He looks at her, still carefully not looking at me. ‘The Seymour pearls,’ he says quietly. ‘They’re to be kept in the treasure room.’
Nan bends down and picks up the ropes and ropes of pearls, milky and glowing in her hands, and piles them back in their long box, the strands running up and down the length of it like a quiescent snake. She hands them to William and smiles at me. ‘It’s not as if we didn’t have a fortune in pearls already,’ she says, trying to cover the awkward moment.
I walk with William to the doorway. ‘Why is he taking them back?’ I ask him in an undertone.
‘For remembrance of her,’ William tells me. ‘She gave him his son. He wants to keep them for the prince’s future wife. He doesn’t want anyone else wearing them.’
‘Of course, of course,’ I say quickly. ‘Tell him how pleased I am with everything else. I know that her pearls were special.’
‘He is at prayer,’ my brother-in-law says. ‘He is hearing a Mass for her now.’