“He did,” Thomas said. “He has risen a long way from the smithy and seems, in his own eyes, anyway, invincible. He likes that noblemen such as Carewe play to his ego. Carewe has promised that if Lady Jane Seymour is made queen she will be pliable to the will of Carewe, who will remain pliable to Cromwell’s. Carewe also reminded Cromwell of the fate that Anne had wrought on Wolsey, who had, as you know, been in Cromwell’s position for many years.”
“Henry wrought that on Wolsey, not Anne.” I sat down in my chair. “Exactly how do they expect to get Anne out of the way so Mistress Seymour can poach her stag?”
Thomas looked at me. “I know not for sure, because as they approached this juncture in the conversation they noticed I was about them, and all know, of course, my feelings for Anne. I do know that Carewe whispered ‘adultery’ to Cromwell.”
“And adultery against the king, under the new acts, is treason.”
“A capital offense,” Thomas agreed.
Capitalis. My Latin rushed back to me. Of the head.
“I must keep a low profile myself now, and, sickeningly, ingratiate myself with Cromwell so I myself am not suspect. But warn Anne to have a care where other men are concerned.”
He slipped out as quietly as he arrived. I could not go to Anne that night without drawing undue attention, but I did ensure an early arrival at her apartments the next day. The news didn’t seem to surprise her but did further aggravate her uneven nerves.
A week or more hence a young musician, Mark Smeaton, was mooning about Anne’s chambers, flirting with one woman or the next in between the songs that he played on his lute. He was a young lad, not yet twenty, and unschooled in the ways of the court though quick to pick up on courtly flirtation. When he tried it on Anne, however, she batted him down and he moped around playing melancholy songs. Finally, she could take it no more.
“Why are you so sad, Master Smeaton?” she asked.
He sighed, looked longingly in her direction, and replied, “Ah. ’Tis no matter.” He mooned after her in a distressingly familiar way and she needed to put it to rights.
“You may not look to have me speak to you as I should do to a nobleman,” she said, “because you be an inferior person.”
Truly, a man with any manners at all would not have placed her in such a position.
“No, no, madam,” he replied. “A look sufficed me; and thus fare you well.” He took his lute, and his charms, to Mistress Shelton, who received him as coldly as Anne did or worse.
Where Sir Henry Norris was concerned, though, Madge Shelton was not so ready to forgive nor forget an offense. It seems she had not forgotten being snubbed at Wolf Hall, and rather than blame her own loose shift for a lack of suitors she had decided to blame Anne.
“Tell us, Sir Norris, why have you not yet taken a wife?” Madge asked in her pretty voice one evening over cards.
“I would tarry for a time,” Norris said.
Madge laughed loudly, as did some of her friends. “Sir, a time? By your age many a man would now have sons and daughters ready to be placed at court.”
I held back a tart retort that many women her age would, too, because of course it could be directed back at me.
“Mayhap you prefer a woman who is already taken?” Madge badgered, looking at Anne. “A queen, mayhap?” Norris and Anne had enjoyed one another’s company, but only as friends; she played cards or engaged in light banter with him, as she, and all of us, did with many courtiers.
There was an audible gasp in the room. I recalled to mind that Madge’s mother was the governess to Mary, Katherine of Aragon’s daughter, whom many hoped to restore to the succession. Was she pushing Anne?
“Then you look for dead men’s shoes!” Anne snapped. “For if aught were to come to the king but good you would look to have me? Foolishness!”
The room grew silent. Naught had been charged afore Anne spoke, but under the new laws, by thus speaking of the king as dead, trying to forestall an accusation, Anne had rather stepped into a previously nonexistent trap. Norris knew it.
“If he should have any such thought,” he said, “I wish my head were off.”
“Begone!” Anne said, clearly shaken by the direction of the conversation. Norris fled from the room and one by one the ladies and gentlemen dispersed as well, leaving only Nan Zouche; my sister, Alice; and me to serve Anne.
Madge Shelton was one of the first to leave, of course, arm in arm with Jane Rochford. It was not difficult to guess where they were going. Sir Nicolas Carewe.
On April 30, Master Smeaton was arrested. No one spoke of it, but rumor filtered back that he was being racked in order to force a confession of adultery with the queen. As the king prepared for a week of celebrations, including a May Day joust, he introduced Anne to some visiting ambassadors as “my entirely beloved wife.”
His eyes, though, were dead. For the first time I felt that mayhap all was truly lost.
That night, Anne and I were in her rooms. “What shall I do?” she asked me. Her long, tapered fingers were clenched into fists. She was too thin, and there were ash smudges under her eyes.
“Can you go to him quietly, speak of your love?” I asked.
“He will not see me privately. In public, he acts as though all is well but he knows, and I know, that there is a wall between us. A wall he has placed.”
“Does he see Elizabeth?” I asked. We had previously judged the king’s affections for Katherine by his willingness to see and act kindly toward Princess Mary.
Anne’s face came to life. “Yes! Go fetch Elizabeth.” She was already in her quarters, having been brought from Hatfield for the celebration. I went to the princess’s chambers and brought her back to her mother, singing little songs to her along the way. Anne clung to the toddler when she arrived and Elizabeth entwined her little fingers in her mother’s hair. Anne kissed Elizabeth’s pretty pink cheeks a dozen times or more and cooed to her in French, and her daughter responded with uninhibited joy and love. Shortly thereafter, Anne sent for Elizabeth’s finest outfit, her carefully fitted hat, silk hose, and shoes.
“Where we go, maman?” Elizabeth asked prettily.
“To see Papa,” Anne replied. I tried to lighten the mood by teasing Anne that she was making Elizabeth a slave to fashion as she was herself, but she was now in no mood for joking. Already, I suspect, she knew what the stakes were and that she must use every tool at her disposal to save her life.
She scooped Elizabeth up and brought her outside of Greenwich proper, expecting the king to ride in from a hunt. When he did, he drew his horse near to them but did not dismount. I watched from the window as Anne pleaded with him, held their daughter to him, curtseyed to him, and cried. It seemed for naught. He slapped his horse’s flank with his gloves and headed back to the stable. Sir Nicolas Carewe, Anne’s traitorous cousin, had just been given the Order of the Garter promised to the now-overlooked George Boleyn. There were no surer sign for the courtiers who watched, unseen, from every window, that the king’s affections for Anne and her daughter had passed.
In my chambers, I cried for both of them, forsaken and forlorn on the castle green.
The next day, May Day, found the king in an unusually jovial mood. He had all of his favorites around him, both men and women. Anne’s brother was there, of course, as was Sir Henry Norris, who had well served the king for nigh on two decades. Afore that they had been brought up together. When Sir Norris’s charger stumbled, Henry graciously offered him the use of his own. Nicolas Carewe was there, and he’d brought along Jane Seymour.
Anne was regal in the queen’s box but she was thinner than ever and her dresses, though I’d had a care to have them taken in, still hung a bit about her. Her eyes, lovely jewels of black like the deep obsidian brought back from the Holy Land, still shone.