a great lady at court,’ one of them protested. His gaze took in the neat tassels on my leather boots, the inlaid saddle, the richness of my dress and the golden brooch in my hat. ‘There’s more on your back today than I earn in a year.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘And that’s where it stays. On my back.’
‘But your father must give you money, or your husband,’ the other man said persuasively. ‘Better to gamble it on your own fields than on the turn of a card.’
‘I’m a lady. It’s none of it mine. Look at you. You’re doing well enough – is your wife a rich woman?’
He chuckled sheepishly at that. ‘She’s my wife. She does as well as I do. But she doesn’t own anything of her own.’
‘It’s the same for me,’ I said. ‘I do as my father does, as my husband does. I dress as is proper for their wife or their daughter. But I don’t own anything on my own account. In that sense I am as poor as your wife.’
‘But you are a Howard and I am a nobody,’ he observed.
‘I’m a Howard woman. That means I might be one of the greatest in the land or a nobody like you. It all depends.’
‘On what?’ he asked, intrigued.
I thought of the sudden darkening of Henry’s face when I displeased him. ‘On my luck.’
In the middle of my third month of exile, the month of June, with the garden of Hever filled with heavy-headed roses and their scent hanging in the air like smoke, I had a letter from Anne.
It is done. I have put myself in his way and talked about you. I have told him that you miss him unbearably and you are pining for him. I have told him that you have displeased your family by showing too openly your love for him and you have been sent away to forget him. Such is the contrary nature of men that he is much excited at the thought of you in distress. Anyway, you can come back to court. We are at Windsor. Father says you can order half a dozen men from the castle to escort you and come at once. Make sure that you arrive quietly before dinner and come straight to our room where I will tell you how you are to behave.
Windsor Castle, one of Henry’s prettiest castles, sat on the green hill like a grey pearl on velvet, the king’s standard fluttering from the turret, the drawbridge open, and a continual coming and going of carts and pedlars and brewers’ drays and wagons. The court sucked the wealth out of the countryside wherever it rested and Windsor was experienced in servicing the profitable appetites of the castle.
I slipped into a side door and found my way to Anne’s rooms, avoiding anyone who knew me. Her room was empty. I settled myself down to wait. As I had expected, at three o’clock she came into the room, pulling her hood off her hair. She jumped when she saw me.
‘I thought you were a ghost! What a fright you gave me.’
‘You told me to come privately to your room.’
‘Yes, I wanted to tell you how things are. I was speaking to the king just a moment ago. We were in the tiltyard watching Lord Percy. Mon dieu! It’s so hot!’
‘What did he say?’
‘Lord Percy? Oh he was enchanting.’
‘No, the king.’
Anne smiled, deliberately provoking. ‘He was asking about you.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘Let me think.’ She tossed her hood on the bed and shook her hair free. It tumbled in a dark wave down her back and she swept it up in one hand to leave her neck cool. ‘Oh, I can’t remember. It’s too hot.’
I was too experienced in Anne’s teasing to let her torment me. I sat quietly in the little wooden chair by the empty fireplace and did not turn my head while she washed her face and splashed her arms and neck and tied her hair back again, with many exclamations in French and complaints about the heat. Nothing made me look around.
‘I think I can remember now,’ she offered.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I’ll see him myself at dinner. He can tell me anything he wants to tell me then. I don’t need you.’
She bridled at that at once. ‘Oh yes you do! How will you behave? You don’t know what to say!’
‘I knew enough to have him head over heels in love with me and ask for my kerchief,’ I observed coolly. ‘I should think I know enough to talk to him civilly after dinner.’
Anne stepped back and measured me. ‘You’re very calm,’ was all she said.
‘I’ve had time to think,’ I replied levelly. ‘And?’
‘I know what I want.’ She waited.
‘I want him,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘Every woman in England wants him. I never thought that you would prove exceptional.’
I shrugged off the snub. ‘And I know that I can live without him.’
Her gaze narrowed. ‘You’ll be ruined, if William doesn’t take you back.’
‘I could bear that too,’ I rejoined. ‘I liked it at Hever. I liked riding out every day and walking round the gardens. I was on my own there for nearly three months, and I’ve never been on my own in my whole life before. I realised that I don’t need the court and the queen and the king or even you. I liked riding out and looking at the farmland, I liked talking to the farmers and watching their crops and seeing how things grow.’
‘You want to become a farmer?’ she laughed scornfully.
‘I could be happy as a farmer,’ I said steadily. ‘I’m in love with the king –’ I snatched a breath ‘– oh, very much. But if it all goes wrong, I could live on a little farm and be happy.’
Anne went to the chest at the foot of the bed and drew out a new hood. She watched herself in the mirror as she smoothed back her hair and drew on the headdress. At once her dramatic dark looks took on a new elegance. She knew it, of course.
‘If I were in your shoes it would be the king or nothing for me,’ she said. ‘I’d put my neck on the block for a chance at him.’
‘I want the man. Not because he’s king.’
She shrugged. ‘They’re one and the same thing. You can’t desire him like an ordinary man and forget the crown on his head. He’s the best there is. There is no greater man than him in the kingdom. You’d have to go to France for King Francis or Spain for the emperor to find his equal.’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve seen the emperor and the French king and I wouldn’t look twice at either of them.’
Anne turned from the glass and tugged her bodice down a little lower so that the curve of her breasts showed. ‘Then you’re a fool,’ she said simply.
When we were ready she led me to the queen’s chambers. ‘She’ll accept you back, but she won’t give you a warm welcome,’ Anne threw over her shoulder as the soldiers before the queen’s door saluted us, and held the double doors open. The two of us, the Boleyn girls, walked in as if we owned half the castle.
The queen was sitting in the windowseat, the windows flung wide open for the cooler evening air. Her musician was beside her, singing as he played his lute. Her women were around her, some of them sewing, some of them sitting idle, waiting for the summons to dinner. She looked perfectly at peace with the world, surrounded by friends, in her husband’s