The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

  The cardinal’s cooks had surpassed themselves. As well as stuffed peacock and swan, goose and chicken, there were great haunches of venison and four different sorts of roasted fish, including his favorite, carp. The sweetmeats on the table were a tribute to the May, all made into flowers and bouquets in marchpane, almost too pretty to break and eat. After we had eaten and the day started to grow chilly, the musicians played an eerie little tune and led us up through the darkening gardens into the great hall of York Place.

  It was transformed. The cardinal had ordered it swathed in green cloth, fastened at every corner with great boughs of flowering may. In the center of the room were two great thrones, one for the king and one for the queen, with the king’s choristers dancing and singing before them. We all took our places and watched the children’s masque and then we all rose and danced too.

  We made merry till midnight and then the queen rose and signaled to her ladies to leave the room. I was following in her train when my gown was caught by the king.

  “Come to me now,” Henry said urgently.

  The queen turned to make her farewell curtsy to the king and saw him, with his hand on the hem of my gown and me hesitating before him. She did not falter, she swept him her dignified Spanish curtsy.

  “I give you good night, husband,” she said in her deep sweet tone. “Good night, Mistress Carey.”

  I dropped like a stone into a curtsy to her. “Good night, Your Majesty,” I whispered, my head down. I wished that the curtsy might take me down further, into the floor, into the ground below the floor, so she could not see my scarlet burning face as I came up.

  When I rose up she was gone and he was turned aside. He had forgotten her already, it was as if a mother had left the young people to play at last. “Let’s have some more music,” he said joyously. “And some wine.”

  I looked around. The ladies of the queen’s court were gone with her. George smiled reassuringly at me.

  “Don’t fret,” he said in an undertone.

  I hesitated, but Henry, who had been taking a glass of wine, turned back to me with a goblet in his hand. “To the Queen of the May!” he said, and his court, who would have repeated Dutch riddles if he had recited them, obediently replied: “To the Queen of the May!” and raised their glasses to me.

  Henry took me by the hand and led me up to the throne where Queen Katherine had been sitting. I went with him but I could feel my feet drag. I was not ready to sit on her chair.

  Gently he urged me up the steps and I turned and looked down at the innocent faces of the children below me, and the more knowing smiles from Henry’s court.

  “Let’s dance for the Queen of the May!” Henry said, and swept a girl into a set and they danced before me, and I, seated on the queen’s throne, watching her husband dance, and flirt prettily with his partner, knew that I wore her tolerant mask-like smile on my own face.

  A day after the May Day feast Anne came whirling into our room, white-faced.

  “See this!” she hissed and threw a piece of paper on the bed.

  Dear Anne, I cannot come to see you today. My lord cardinal knows everything and I am bidden to explain to him. But I swear I shall not fail you.

  “Oh my God,” I said softly. “The cardinal knows. The king will know too.”

  “So what?” Anne demanded, like a striking adder. “So what if they all know? It’s a proper betrothal, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t they all know?”

  I saw that the paper was shaking in my hand. “What does he mean, he will not fail you?” I asked. “If it is an unbreakable betrothal then he cannot fail. There can be no question of failure.”

  Anne took three swift steps across the room, came up short against the wall, wheeled around and took three steps back again, prowling like a lion in the Tower. “I don’t know what he means by that,” she spat. “The boy’s a fool.”

  “You said you loved him.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s not a fool.” She reached a sudden decision. “I must go to him. He’ll need me. He’ll wilt beneath them.”

  “You cannot. You’ll have to wait.”

  She flung open the clothes press and pulled out her cloak.

  There was a thunderous knock on the door and we both froze. In one movement she had the cloak off her shoulders, slammed into the press and she was sitting on it, serene, as if she had been there all the morning. I opened the door. It was a serving man in the livery of Cardinal Wolsey.

  “Is Mistress Anne within?”

  I opened the door a little wider so he could see her, thoughtfully gazing out over the garden. The cardinal’s barge with the distinctive red standards was moored at the bottom of the garden.

  “Will you please come to the cardinal in the audience room,” he said.

  Anne turned her head and looked at him without replying.

  “At once,” he said. “My lord the cardinal said that you were to come at once.”

  She did not flare up at the arrogance of the command. She knew as well as I did that since Cardinal Wolsey ran the kingdom, a word from him carried the same weight as a word from the king. She crossed to the mirror, threw one glance at her reflection. She pinched her cheeks to draw a little color to them, bit her upper lip and then her lower.

  “Shall I come too?” I asked.

  “Yes, walk beside me,” she said in a rapid undertone. “It’ll remind him that you have the ear of the king. And if the king is there—soften him if you can.”

  “I can’t demand anything,” I whispered urgently.

  Even at this moment of crisis she shot me a swift patronizing smile. “I know that.”

  We followed the servant through the great hall and to Henry’s audience room. It was unusually deserted. Henry was out hunting, the court with him. The cardinal’s men in their scarlet livery were at the doors. They stepped back to let us through and then barred the way once more. His lordship had made sure that we would not be interrupted.

  “Mistress Anne,” he said as she entered the room. “I have heard a most distressing piece of news today.”

  Anne stood very still, her hands folded, her face serene. “I am sorry to hear that, Your Grace,” she said smoothly.

  “It seems that my page, young Henry of Northumberland, has presumed on his friendship with you and on the freedom which I allow him to dally in the queen’s rooms and prattle of love.”

  Anne shook her head, but the cardinal would not let her speak.

  “I have told him this day that such freakish sports are not fitting in one who will inherit the counties of the North and whose marriage is a matter for his father, for the king, and for me. He is not a lad on a farm who can tumble the milkmaid into the haystack and no one think the less. The marriage of a lord as great as he is a matter of policy.” He paused. “And the king and I make the policy in this kingdom.”

  “He asked me for my hand in marriage and I gave it to him,” Anne said steadily. I could see the gold “B” she wore on the pearl choker around her neck bumping to her rapid heartbeat. “We are betrothed, my lord cardinal. I am sorry if the match is not to your liking but it is done. It cannot be undone.”

  He shot her one dark look from under his plump hat.

  “Lord Henry has agreed to submit to the authority of his father and of the king,” he said. “I am telling you this out of courtesy, Mistress Boleyn, and so that you may avoid giving offense to those set above you by God.”

  She went white. “He never said that. He never said he would submit to his father’s authority instead of—”

  “Instead of yours? You know, I did wonder if that was how it was. Indeed, he did, Mistress Anne. All of this little matter is in the hands of the king and the duke.”

  “He is promised to me, we are betrothed,” she said fiercely.

  “It was a de futuro betrothal,” the cardinal ruled. “A promise to marry in the future if possible.”

  “It was de facto,” Anne replied unswervingly. “A betrothal made before witnesses, and consumma