“Old man?” I laughed. “You’re hardly of an age with the king.” Realizing that I may have just insulted the sovereign, I clapped my hand over my mouth. Anthony grinned. Now that we shared a secret I supposed I owed him a dance.
I danced with him more than once, more than twice, mayhap nigh on five or six times, though I danced with other partners as well. Afterward, he took me aside and we sat and drank a cup of wine to cool down and talked.
“Where is your wife?” I asked, though just after I said it I wished I hadn’t. It sounded like a personal inquiry! Anthony, a gentleman, did not press an advantage of my impulsive comment.
“I am not yet married. My father is completing my marriage negotiations even now.”
“Congratulations,” I said.
He wrinkled his nose. “Thank you. Methinks. I expect to be married after the court returns from Boulogne and France. Will you be going, to serve the marquess?”
I nodded. “Yes. And I expect that my own marriage will be settled shortly after we return. My brother has indicated that I’m given leave to attend Anne in France but that he will finish settling my own marriage matter shortly afterward. I’m to marry my former husband’s nephew and heir.”
“Congratulations are due to you, too, then,” Anthony said.
“Thank you. Methinks.” I set my tone and expression to indicate my distaste as well. I had so few friends. Anne was ever occupied, Lady Zouche newly wed. It was enjoyable to spend an evening with him.
“Then let us not waste time, lady. The musicians strike up again.” He led me to the dance and shared the latest news from the king’s privy chamber, funny tidbits about a courtier who cried when he lost a tennis match with the king and one who never paid his gambling debts but came up with feeble excuses such as the need to care for packs of sick greyhounds. When I returned to my chamber that evening I was lighter of heart than I had been for a long while.
* * *
On October the eleventh we set sail in the Swallow, leaving Dover for Calais. I leaned over the side of the ship, not sick, as others were, but giddy with excitement.
“I’ve never been anywhere but England!” I exclaimed. The wind ran wild through my hair and the sea salt sprinkled both skin and garments. I cared not. It was exhilarating. And, for a little while longer, I was free like the swallow we sailed on.
Anne laughed at me. “You’ll arrive in England again shortly. At Calais. But from there, nous irons à la France!”
Henry had spared no expense on this, her bridal trip. He knew he was safe now that he and Francis had become firm allies and his realm was under his control.
“Ten years ago you returned from France, lady. And now you return hence to become queen!”
She smiled. “I am hoping that Jean du Bellay, the bishop of Paris, will marry us,” she said. “With Marguerite to stand in for me. I feel as if I became a woman in France, and Marguerite is more a sister to me than Mary ever was. She first introduced me to true faith.”
“I wish that for you then, too,” I said. “Are you certain, about the king, I mean? That he is being completely forthright with you?”
“Yes,” she said. She did not chide me for asking yet again. It was my duty as her dearest friend, and she knew it. “I have looked into his eyes and he told me the truth of the matter with Katherine. Who besides a man, the woman, and our Lord would know if the woman was a maid or not? I am nobody’s fool,” she reminded me, and I stood reassured.
More than two thousand nobles and knights escorted Anne and Henry to Calais. Some of the most important Englishwomen were missing—Henry’s sister Mary, who loathed Anne, and the Duchess of Norfolk, who was as welcome as a persistent itch. But it mattered not. The Boleyn contingent was there in full force. Henry had even allowed my brother Thomas to accompany Edmund and me. Edmund speculated that it was because, as we were so close to Anne, our family had risen with the tide. I agreed that might be a part of it but I also suspected that the king wanted Thomas to witness the wedding for himself. Thomas had lost. Henry had won. Match over.
Although Anne had separate chambers, she lodged at the Exchequer with the king. I, and twenty or so of her other ladies, were nearby to attend to her needs, of course. We dined and danced every night; though Calais was English, French musicians and performers came from all over France to delight Henry and his bride-to-be. Anthony was among the men’s contingent and often sought me as a dance or conversation partner, which made the trip more pleasurable yet.
However, there was still no word from Father du Bellay about the wedding. On the fifteenth of October Francis sent a delegation of notables to Henry. They arrived in the room he’d commandeered for a receiving chamber.
“Sire.” The ambassador bowed low. “I am come to invite you to France. My noble master, King Francis, has planned a, how do you English say, a par-tee, une célébration, for your final days as a man unmarried, in advance of your wedding. There will be hunting and bowls and wrestling and all sorts of diversions suitable for Your Majesty. C’est ça!”
“Marvelous!” Henry boomed. “Have preparations been made for the marquess to attend as well?”
The room grew quiet. The ambassador wiped his hands on the sides of his breeches. “I am sorry, sire, but as the Princess Marguerite has taken ill there would be no femme of appropriate rank to meet your most gracious lady. My master does not wish to display any disrespect in that matter. He has, though, left instructions that the marquess and all her party are to be well entertained and taken care of in your absence. And le roi, King Francis, has made the arrangements pour retourner with you after the ten days, to visit his friend la marquise.”
Anne sat quietly, looking first at Henry, then back at the ambassador. It was a slap to her and she knew it. But what could Henry do? He could not decline Francis’s hospitality without endangering their alliance. And Francis had given a respectable reason for Anne’s dismissal. Anne herself came to Henry’s aid.
“Merci, monsieur,” she said in perfect lilting, sensual French. “Please thank your master, le roi Francis, for his thoughtfulness on my behalf, and tell him that I shall look forward to claiming the first dance with him when he arrives at Calais.”
A look of relief refreshed the ambassador’s face and the king became genial once more. Henry was always happy when someone eased him out of a pinch.
“Tu es vraiment une reine,” Henry whispered to her in familiar French on the way back to their lodging. You are truly a queen. She had handled it magnificently. I couldn’t have been the only person who viewed the gloating smirks exchanged between Sir Nicolas Carewe and the Duke of Suffolk.
In her quarters with her ladies, though, Anne wept hotly. “This is Eleanor’s doing, for certes. She prevented the bishop from coming to perform the marriage. She prevented me from going to France, and she prevented Marguerite from meeting with me.”
I made soothing murmurs to agree and reassure. Anne had been close to Queen Claude, Francis’s first wife, in whose court she had come of age. His second wife, Eleanor, was the sister of Charles the Fifth—niece, therefore, to Katherine of Aragon, incentive, therefore, to degrade Anne whenever possible.
An hour passed and then Anne dried her tears and looked in the mirror. Then she glanced up, a firm look upon her countenance. “This shall not stop me. Je suis vraiment une reine.”