pleasant tone. ‘Mademoiselle Boleyn, Mistress Parker, Mistress Carey? I know you three for keen riders. Would you like to ride with the king today?’
Jane Parker shot a swift malicious gleam at me for being named third. She does not know, I thought, inwardly hugging myself. She can triumph all she likes because she does not know.
‘We would be enchanted to ride with the king,’ Anne said smoothly. ‘All three of us.’
In the great courtyard before the stables the king mounted his big hunter while one of the grooms lifted me up into the saddle of the horse he had given me. I hooked my leg firmly around the pommel and arranged my gown to fall becomingly to the ground. Anne scrutinised me, without missing the tiniest detail, as she always did, and I was pleased when her head, capped with the neatest of French hunting hats with a dainty plume, gave a small approving nod. She called to the groom to lift her up into the saddle and she brought her hunter up beside mine and held him steady while she leaned over.
‘If he wants to take you off into the woods and have you, you’re to say no,’ she whispered. ‘Try to remember that you are a Howard girl. You’re not a complete slut.’
‘If he wants me …’
‘If he wants you, he’ll wait.’
The huntsman blew his horn and every horse in the courtyard stiffened with excitement. Henry grinned across at me like an excited boy and I beamed back. My mare, Jesmond, was like a coiled spring, and when the master of the hunt led the way over the drawbridge we trotted quickly after him, the hounds like a sea of brindle and white around the horses’ hooves. It was a bright day but not too hot, a cool wind moved the grass of the meadow as we trotted away from the town, the haymakers leaned on their scythes and watched us pass, doffing their caps as they saw the bright colours of the aristocratic riders, and then dropping to their knees as they saw the king’s standard.
I glanced back at the castle. A casement window in the queen’s apartments stood open and I saw her dark hood and her pale face looking out after us. She would meet us for dinner and she would smile at Henry and smile at me as if she had not seen us, riding side by side, out for a day’s sport together.
The yelping of the hounds suddenly changed in tone and then they fell silent. The huntsman blew his horn, the long loud blast which meant that the hounds had taken a scent.
‘Hulloa!’ Henry shouted, spurring his horse forward.
‘There!’ I cried. At the end of the avenue of trees opening before us I saw the outline of a large stag, his antlers held flat on his back as he crashed away from the hunt. At once the hounds streamed out behind him, almost silent except for the occasional bark of excitement. They plunged into the undergrowth and we pulled up the horses and waited. The huntsmen trotted anxiously away from the hunt, criss-crossing the forest by the little rides, hoping to spot the deer break away. Then one of them suddenly stood high in his stirrups and blew a loud note on his horn. My horse reared with excitement at the sound and spun round towards him. I clung gracelessly to the pommel and to a handful of mane, caring nothing how I looked as long as I did not tumble off backwards into the mud.
The stag broke away and was racing for his life across the rough empty ground at the edge of the woods that led to the watermeadows and the river. At once the dogs poured after him and the horses after them in a breakneck race. The hooves pounded all around me, I had my eyes squinted, half-shut, as divots of mud flew up into my face, I crouched low over Jesmond’s neck, urging her onwards. I felt my hat tear from my head and tumble away, then there was a hedge before me, white with summer blossom. I felt Jesmond’s powerful hindquarters bunch up beneath me and with one great leap she cleared it, hit the ground on the far side, recovered and was pounding into her fastest gallop again. The king was ahead of me, his attention fixed on the stag which was gaining on us. I could feel the ripple of my hair as it shook out from the pins and I laughed recklessly to feel the wind in my face. Jesmond’s ears went back to hear me laugh and then forward as we came to another hedge with a nasty little ditch before it. She saw it as I did and checked only for a moment and then made a mighty cat-jump: all four feet off the ground at once in order to clear it. I could smell the perfume of crushed honeysuckle as her hooves clipped the top of the hedge, then we were on and on, even faster. Ahead of me the little brown dot that was the stag plunged into the river and started to swim strongly for the other side. The master of the hunt desperately blew for the hounds not to follow the beast into the water but to come back to him and to run down the bank to keep pace with the quarry to bait it as it came to shore. But they were too excited to listen. The whippers-in surged forward but half the pack were after the deer in the river, some of them swept away by the fast current, all of them powerless in the deep water. Henry pulled up his horse and watched the chaos develop.
I was afraid that it would make him angry but he threw back his head and laughed as if he delighted in the stag’s cunning.
‘Go then!’ he shouted after him. ‘I can eat venison here without cooking you! I have a larder of venison!’
Everyone around us laughed as if he had made a wonderful jest and I realised that everyone had been afraid that the failure of the hunt would turn his mood sour. Looking from one bright delighted face to another I thought for one illuminating moment what fools we were to make this one man’s temper the very centre of our lives. But then he smiled towards me and I knew that for me at least, there was no choice.
He took in my mud-splashed face and my tumbling tangled hair. ‘You look like a maid for country matters,’ he said, and anyone could have heard the desire in his voice.
I pulled off my glove and put my hand to my head, ineffectually twisting a knot of hair and tucking it back. I gave him a little sideways smile which acknowledged his bawdiness and yet refused to answer it.
‘Oh shush,’ I ordered softly. Behind his intent face I saw Jane Parker suddenly gulp as if she had swallowed a horse fly and I saw that she had realised at last that she had better mind her manners around us Boleyns.
Henry dropped from his horse, threw the reins to his groom and came to my horse’s head. ‘Will you come down to me?’ he asked, his voice warm and inviting.
I unhooked my knee and let myself slide down the side of my horse and into his arms. He caught me easily and set me on my feet but he did not release me. Before the whole court kissed me on one cheek and then another ‘You are the Queen of the Hunt.’
‘We should crown her with flowers,’ Anne suggested.
‘Yes!’ Henry was pleased with the thought and within moments half the court was plaiting honeysuckle garlands and I had a crown of haunting honey perfume to put on my tumbled golden-brown hair.
The wagons came up with the things for dinner and they put up a little tent for fifty diners, the king’s favourites, and chairs and benches for the rest, and when the queen arrived, ambling on her steady palfrey, she saw me seated at the king’s left hand and crowned with summer flowers.
Next month and England was finally at war with France, a war declared and formal, and Charles, the Emperor of Spain, aimed his army like a lance at the heart of France while the English army in alliance with him marched out of the English fort of Calais, and headed south down the road to Paris.
The court lingered near the City, anxious for news, but then the summertime plague came to London and Henry, always fearful of illness, ruled that
