was these perks that made a place in the king’s household such a joy for his servants. In every place, every servant could perform a little cheat, put a little by. The lowliest server in the kitchen had a little business in crusts of the pastry from the pies, in lard from the basting, in the juices of the gravy. My father was at the top of this heap of off-cuts, now that he was controller of the king’s household: he would watch the slice that everyone took of their bit of business, and he would take a slice of his own. Even the trade of lady in waiting who looks as if she is there to provide company and little services for the queen is well-placed to seduce the king under her mistress’s nose, and cause her the most grief that one woman can cause to another. She too has her price. She too has her secret work which takes place after the main dinner is over and when the company are looking the other way, and which trades in off-cuts of promises and forgotten sweetmeats of love-play.
We rode home as the light faded from the sky and it grew grey and cool. I was glad of my cloak which I tied round me, but I kept my hood pushed back so that I could see the way before me and the darkening skies above me, and the little pinpricks of stars showing in the pale grey sky. We had been riding for half the journey when the king’s horse came alongside mine.
‘Did you enjoy your day?’ he asked.
‘You dropped my kerchief,’ I said sulkily. ‘Your page gave it to Queen Mary and she gave it to Queen Katherine. She knew it at once. She gave it back to me.’
‘And so?’
I should have thought of the small humiliations which Queen Katherine managed, as part of the duty of queenship. She never complained to her husband. She took her troubles to God; and only then in a very low whispered prayer.
‘I felt dreadful,’ I said. ‘I should never have given it to you in the first place.’
‘Well now you have it back,’ he said without sympathy. ‘If it was so precious.’
‘It’s not that it was precious,’ I pursued. ‘It’s that she knew without a doubt that it was mine. She gave it back to me in front of all the ladies. She dropped it to the ground, it would have fallen to the floor if I had not caught it.’
‘So what has changed?’ he demanded, his voice very hard, his face suddenly ugly and unsmiling. ‘So what is the difficulty? She has seen us dancing together and talking together. She has seen me seeking your company, you have been handclasped with me before her very eyes. You didn’t come to me then with your complaints and your nagging.’
‘I’m not nagging!’ I said, stung.
‘Yes you are,’ he said flatly. ‘Without cause, and, may I say, without position. You are not my mistress, madam, nor my wife. I don’t listen to complaints about my behaviour from anyone else. I am the King of England. If you don’t like how I behave then there is always France. You could always go back to the French court.’
‘Your Majesty … I …’
He spurred his horse and it went into a trot and then into a canter. ‘I give you goodnight,’ he said over his shoulder and he rode away from me with his cloak in a flurry and the plume in his hat streaming, and he left me with nothing to say to him, no way to call him back.
I would not speak to Anne that night though she marched me in silence from the queen’s rooms to our own and expected a full account of everything that had been said and done.
‘I won’t say,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Leave me alone.’
Anne took off her hood and started to unplait her hair. I jumped onto the bed, threw off my gown, pulled on my night shift and slipped between the sheets without brushing my hair or even washing my face.
‘You’re surely not going to bed like that,’ Anne said, scandalised.
‘For God’s sake,’ I said into the pillow, ‘leave me alone.’
‘What did he …?’ Anne started as she slid into bed beside me.
‘I won’t say. So don’t ask.’
She nodded, turned and blew out her candle.
The smell of the smoke from the snuffed wick blew towards me. It smelled like the scent of grief. In the darkness, shielded from Anne’s scrutiny, I turned over, lay on my back staring up at the tester above my head and considered what would happen if the king were so angry that he never looked at me again.
My face felt cold. I put my hand to my cheeks and found that they were wet with tears. I rubbed my face on the sheet.
‘What is it now?’ Anne asked sleepily.
‘Nothing.’
‘You lost him,’ Uncle Howard said accusingly. He looked down the long wooden dining table in the great hall at Eltham Palace. Our retainers stood on guard at the doors behind us, there was no-one in the hall but a couple of wolfhounds and a boy asleep in the ashes of the fire. Our men in Howard livery stood at the doors at the far end. The palace, the king’s own palace, had been made secure for the Howards so that we could plot in private.
‘You had him in your hand and you lost him. What did you do wrong?’
I shook my head. It was too secret to spill on the unyielding surface of the high table, to offer up to flint-faced Uncle Howard.
‘I want an answer,’ he said. ‘You lost him. He hasn’t looked at you for a week. What have you done wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ I whispered.
‘You must have done something. At the jousting he had your kerchief under his breastplate. You must have done something to upset him after that.’
I shot a reproachful look at my brother George: the only person who could have told Uncle Howard about my scarf. He shrugged and made an apologetic face.
‘The king dropped it and his page gave my scarf to Queen Mary,’ I said, my throat tight with nervousness and distress.
‘So?’ my father said sharply.
‘She gave it to the queen. The queen returned it to me.’ I looked from one stern face to another. ‘They all knew what it meant,’ I said despairingly. ‘When we rode home I told him that I was unhappy at him letting my favour be found.’
Uncle Howard exhaled, my father slapped the table. My mother turned her head away as if she could hardly bear to look at me.
‘For God’s sake.’ Uncle Howard glared at my mother. ‘You assured me that she had been properly brought up. Half her life spent in the French court and she whines at him as if she were a shepherd girl behind a haystack?’
‘How could you?’ my mother asked simply.
I flushed and dropped my head until I could see the reflection of my own unhappy face in the polished surface of the table. ‘I didn’t mean to say the wrong thing,’ I whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not that bad,’
