The Kiss of the Concubine: A story of Anne Boleyn (36 page)

Morning is not long away by the time I get to my bed. I slide beneath the covers and wish that Henry was here, but he has been closeted with Cromwell and his council for hours. I have not seen him since his abrupt departure from the joust. I yawn and stretch my limbs. Perhaps it is as well to have the bed to myself for once.

I have still not shown any blood this month and I allow my hands to wander down to my belly. I stroke the taut skin above my womb, sending up a silent prayer that I may be fruitful
. Just a few more days and I will be certain. Henry will be so pleased. So proud.

Nan is unwell and Jane absent. No one knows where she has got to. I hope she is with George and he is keeping her busy, getting her with child. The women who help me dress do their best, but they do not know my habits so well. Several times I have to reject the proffered petticoats, the jewels they have selected.

When I am finally ready to hear
Mass I walk to the chapel, surprised to find that Henry is not there as he usually is at this time. Something bothers me, something nagging at my mind, unsettling and discomforting me, but I cannot identify what it is.

I watch a game of tennis, still missing Nan and Jane, and at noon I wander back to my apartments. I pause at the door and the chatter within ceases. My smile widens as Nan comes forward to greet me, still a little pale after her megrim. Perhaps she is pregnant too. How lovely it will be to share gravidity with friends, and if George is successful, even Jane may join us soon. She will soften once she is touched by motherhood.

“Your Grace, I must speak with you.” Nan tugs at my wrist. It is not like her to overstep boundaries but instead of scolding her, I follow, realising she has some important news.

“What is it?” Our French caps touching, she grips my hand tighter
, and I am aware she is trembling. She opens her mouth, her voice breathless.

“Mark
Smeaton has been arrested.”

Before I realise it isn’t a joke I give a half laugh,
but stop suddenly, my head feeling light, as the gravity of the news strikes me.

“
Smeaton? Why, what can he have done?”

She shakes her head. “We don’t know. They say he has been with Cromwell all night, and is now in the Tower.”

“It must be some mistake … Where is the king?”

“Gone to Westminster.”

Stillness settles upon me, a sharp conviction that something is definitely wrong.

“Without me?”

It isn’t possible. The unspoken words scream suddenly in my head.

And then I remember Cromwell’s scarcely concealed triumph of the day before, Henry’s coldness toward me at the joust, the splash of crimson silk on Norris’ chest. And last evening Norris and Weston were also missing from my apartments …

The floor beneath my feet dips and sways. A voice is screaming, “Where is George? Where is my brother? Where is George?”

The ornate ceiling comes crashing down, the floor is torn from under me and I
lie prostrate. Nan kneels beside me and my ladies are in disarray, squawking and shrieking in alarm.

“Oh,
Your Grace, Your Grace. Come let me help you up.”

Then I hear the door burst open, running footsteps, a voice breathless and full of fear.

“Cromwell is coming …”

He treads, soft
-footed, toward me. “Get out.” He tosses the words over his shoulder and some of my ladies scatter, but Nan and Margery falter, clinging to my side until he dismisses them again. “I said, leave us.”

Nan looks for my confirmation, her eyes full of fear
. With a jerk of my head, I dismiss her.

“Wait in the ant
e chamber,” I say, an unspoken command that she should listen at the door. She nods anxiously. She understands. And then she leaves me alone with Cromwell.

We face each other, all pretence stripped away. For the first time
, I glimpse my enemy. He lets me see his detachment, his determination to get a job done, no matter the cost.

I may be the queen but I am in his way.

I stand in the centre of the room while Cromwell circumnavigates, his hands behind his back, his head lowered, like a bull deciding when to charge, where best to sink in his horns. He pauses at the table to run a finger across the strings of my lute, and discordance floods the silence. He picks up a paperweight and puts it down again, raises his eyes to mine. His smile is slow and cold.

My instinct is to tell him to go, scream at him that I am his queen, and he is supposed to do my bidding. But Cromwell is unpredictable, dangerous
, and he has always primarily been the king’s servant. It is clear that today he works to the king’s benefit.

I do not speak. I force myself to keep silent, bite my tongue to stifle my acrimony. I also refuse to weep. I am queen of England and common-born or not, I am determined to behave like one.

Cromwell calmly pries into my private possessions, both of us silent, the only noises are from the gardens, indistinguishable voices from the river traffic that passes close beneath my windows.

“I am in possession of some information.”

When it comes his voice is so unexpected that I jump, let out a gasp. I do not answer but I swallow audibly, grapple to keep control of my nerve.

“Information that concerns you …”

A chess game, abandoned on his arrival, sits half-played. He picks up a knight, moves it across the board, and throws the queen toward a pile of dispensed pieces. She rolls away, falls from the edge of the table.

“…
and members of the king’s household. Some of them the king’s very good friends.”

“Indeed.” With my fingertip I trace the outline of a flower on a cushion, pretending disinterest, pretending I am not screaming inside with curiosity. He cannot know that fear is already nibbling at the
edges of my sanity, corroding my composure. My heart throbs against the constraints of my corset, but I must remain calm … at all costs. I must remain calm.

“The council
are on their way now. There are questions we must ask you. It is important that you answer truthfully.”

He levels his dark eye upon me. Even the suggestion that I might lie is an insult. I am nothing to him, just a hindrance to his plans,
a blight upon the pretty world he is building for himself. How could I ever have believed this man was my friend? He is no one’s friend. He is not working for reform, nor for the king. He is working for one person alone, and that person is Cromwell.

I deign to speak at last, curiosity impossible to ignore. “Of what, exactly, is my musician,
Smeaton, accused?”

He props himself on the edge of my table, his ankles crossed, his fingers forming a cathedral, the manicured tips pressed together. It is the most menacing stance I have ever seen and he knows it, relishes the power he has over me. His soft voice
is silken with spite.

“Your musician confessed last night to hav
ing known you carnally, on at least three occasions.”

This is the last thing I expect
ed. The foul words hang in the air like a bad smell.

“What?” I lean forward, thrusting my head toward him. “Are you quite, quite mad?”

***

They rise to their feet when I enter the room, their long faces inscrutable. I glide across the floor and remain standing in the centre of the room while they take their seats again; Sir William Fitzwilliam; Sir William
Paulet; and my uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. These men are expected to do Cromwell’s bidding, expected to find the allegations worth pursuing.

My uncle peruses the papers before him, tut-tutting at the outlandish accusations
, and refuses to meet my eye. In unison they wag their grey beards, and I know then that I am already condemned. They have no need of a trial. What comes next will be a formality.

Norfolk’s chair scrapes across the floor as he stands. He clears his throat, his words smearing like muck across my mind’s eye as he accuses me of evil behaviour, charging me with having committed adultery with not just Mark, but Norris too, and another whom they have not yet named.

“This is untrue.” My French accent is gratingly loud, bordering on shouting, my panic plain to all. “I am, and have always been, a true wife to the king, and I am untouched, totally untouched, by any other man.”

They shuffle papers
. Norfolk clears his throat, ignores my outcry and begins to speak, his eye fastened on the opposite wall, above my head, as if I am beneath notice.  A surge of anger rises in my breast.

“Will you not even look at me, Uncle, while you make these false accusations?”

Paulet, his face flushing red, leans forward across the table. “You will be able to have your say at the trial, Your Grace …”

My old enemy, Fitzwilliam, interrupts,
leers his hatred. “And we have Norris’ confession, given in good faith …”

Norris’ confession?
He has lied? Perjured himself? For what reason? I remember tales of instruments kept at the Tower, instruments guaranteed to make any man, even the most stalwart, confess to any crime.

“Under duress, I have no doubt.”

“Not at all.”

He picks up his pen, makes his mark upon a paper, dismissing me as if I am of no consequence.

Paulet intervenes again, clears his throat and informs me that the papers are drawn up and that there is enough evidence for charges to be made against me. Less than five minutes later, flanked by the council guards, I am marched back to my apartments.

The doors are thrust open and my ladies rush to meet me. I am in a daze as they take my arms, usher me toward a chair, their questions falling like rain, like tears.

I do not have the wherewithal to answer. They sit me down, thrust a cup into my hand, but I do not drink. I do not speak. I do not move. I let them do with me as they wish.

Henry will come soon, I tell myself. He will poke his head around the door and declare it has all been a horrible joke. He will take my hands, cover them with kisses, draw me tight into his soft, fragrant chest and I will be safe again.

But he does not come.

I sit unspeaking in the darkening room while fear gnaws at my sanity. I want to run but there is no escape
, for a guard has been placed upon my door preventing me from stirring. When they come to take me to bed, I refuse to go. Despite my women’s protests I sit there all night long, watching and waiting until morning peeps, clean-washed and pink, over the horizon.

***

It is two in the afternoon and I have begun to think that perhaps nothing will come of it. The king will order them all to leave me alone, remind them that I am their queen and the beloved wife of their king. But just as I am picking up the stump work I have been
concentrating on, Norfolk is announced.

He stands just inside the door, a parchment scroll rolled in his fist. He has the grace to avoid my eye.

“Why are you come?” I ask, although I already know what his answer will be. He clears his throat, as he always does before speaking.

“I am here at the king’s command, to conduct you to the Tower, where you are to bide during his Highness’ pleasure.”

His Highness’ pleasure? I know well how to pleasure Henry. A fleeting memory surfaces of him succumbing to my bedtime games, his faces flushed at the delicious indecencies I subjected him to. He can’t be tired of me, surely.

My mind returns unwillingly to the present, swiftly summing up my options. The Royal apartments at the Tower are sumptuous and warm, only recently renovated and updated for my coronation. There is nothing to fear in a short stay while the matter is cleared up. Even now
, George will be pleading my case with Henry. I raise my head, regard my uncle coldly, and reply as if I have a choice. “If it is indeed the king’s pleasure then I am ready to obey.”

Behind me, one of my ladies succumbs to a fit of weeping
, but I silence her with a snap of my fingers, a verbose frown. I call for my cloak.

I am not given time to say goodbye, or to order my possessions packed. Poor
Urien is left behind, my needlework is abandoned on the table, my lute placed lovingly against a chair … until I return. With my chin as high as I can raise it I follow Norfolk from the room, watching his lumpy feet creep along the torchlit corridors until we emerge into a rain-washed morning where a long, low barge is waiting at the wharf.

The river craft bobs and dips in the water. As the men pick up their oars
, I crane my neck to look up at the walls of Greenwich and wonder which window conceals the king.

But then I recall that Henry has left already, fled to Westminster, leaving me to the mercy of my enemies. He has discarded me like a soiled kerchief, or a broken lute string
, but such flaws can be repaired, washed clean, and taken up again. Soon Henry will realise that and summon me back. My stay at the Tower will not be prolonged.