She turned on her heel and headed for the stone staircase down to the garden. She did not speak until we had marched down the pretty winding paths and were deep in a bower of roses which were sprawling around a stone seat and opening their white and scarlet petals to the sunshine.
‘What can I do?’ she demanded. ‘Think! Think!’
I was about to answer that I could think of nothing, but she was not talking to me. She was talking to herself. ‘Can I outflank Northumberland? Get Mary to plead my case with the king?’ She shook her head for a moment. ‘Mary can’t be trusted. She’d bodge it.’
I bit back my indignant denial. Anne strode up and down the grass, her skirts swishing around her high-heeled shoes. I sank down to the seat and watched her.
‘Can I send George to stiffen Henry’s resolve?’ She took another turn. ‘My father, my uncle,’ she said rapidly. ‘It’s in their interest to see me rise. They could speak to the king, they could influence the cardinal. They might find me a dowry which would attract Northumberland. They would want me as duchess.’ She nodded with sudden determination. ‘They must stand by me,’ she decided. ‘They will stand by me. And when Northumberland comes to London they will tell him that the betrothal is done, and that the marriage has taken place.’
The family meeting was convened in the Howard house in London. My mother and father were seated at the great table, my uncle Howard between them. Myself and George, sharing Anne’s disgrace, were standing at the back of the room. And it was Anne who was before the table like a prisoner before the bar. She did not stand with her head bowed as I always did. Anne stood with her head high, one dark eyebrow slightly raised, and she met my uncle’s glare as if she were his equal.
‘I am sorry that you have learned French practices along with your style of dress,’ my uncle said baldly. ‘I warned you before that I would have no whisper against your name. Now I hear that you have allowed young Percy improper intimacies.’
‘I have lain with my husband,’ Anne said flatly.
My uncle glanced at my mother.
‘If you say that, or anything like it, ever again, you will be whipped and sent to Hever and never brought back to court,’ my mother said quietly. ‘I would rather see you dead at my feet than dishonoured. You shame yourself before your father and your uncle if you say such a thing. You make yourself a disgrace. You make yourself hateful to us all.’
Seated behind Anne I could not see her face, but I saw her fingers take in a fold of her gown, as a drowning man might catch at a straw.
‘You will go to Hever until everyone has forgotten about this unfortunate mistake,’ my uncle ruled.
‘I beg your pardon,’ Anne said bitingly. ‘But the unfortunate mistake is not mine but yours. Lord Henry and I are married. He will stand by me. You and my father must bring pressure to bear on his father, on the cardinal and the king, to let this marriage be made public. If you will do this then I am the Duchess of Northumberland and you have a Howard girl in the greatest duchy of England. I would have thought that gain was worth a little struggle. If I am duchess and Mary has a son then he is the nephew of the Duke of Northumberland and the king’s bastard. We could put him on the throne.’
Uncle’s gaze flared at her. ‘This king executed the Duke of Buckingham two years ago for saying less than that,’ he said very quietly. ‘My own father signed the death warrant. This is not a king who is careless of his heirs. You will never, ever speak like this again or you will find yourself not at Hever but behind the walls of a nunnery for life. I mean it, Anne. I will not have the safety of this family jeopardised by your folly.’
He had shocked her with his quiet rage. She gulped and tried to recover. ‘I will say no more,’ she whispered. ‘But this could work.’
‘Can’t be done,’ my father said flatly. ‘Northumberland won’t have you. And Wolsey won’t let us leap up that high. And the king will do what Wolsey says.’
‘Lord Henry promised me,’ Anne said passionately.
My uncle shook his head and was about to rise from the table, the meeting was over.
‘Wait,’ Anne said desperately. ‘We can achieve this. I swear to you. If you will stand by me then Henry Percy will stand by me, and the cardinal and the king and his father will have to come round to it.’
My uncle did not hesitate for a moment. ‘They won’t. You are a fool. You can’t fight Wolsey. There isn’t a man in the country who is a match for Wolsey. And we won’t risk his enmity. He would put Mary out of the king’s bed and pop a Seymour girl in her place. Everything we are striving to do with Mary will be overset if we support you. This is Mary’s chance, not yours. We won’t have you spoil it. We’ll have you out of the way for the summer at least, perhaps for a year.’
She was stunned into silence. ‘But I love him,’ she said.
There was a silence in the room.
‘I do,’ she said. ‘I love him.’
‘That means nothing to me,’ my father said. ‘Your marriage is the business of the family and you will leave that to us. You’ll go to Hever for at least a year’s banishment from court and think yourself lucky. And if you write to him, or reply to him, or see him again, then it will be a nunnery for you. A closed order.’
‘Well, that didn’t go too badly,’ George said with forced cheerfulness. He and Anne and I were walking down to the river to get the boat back to York Place. A servant in Howard livery went before us, pushing beggars and street sellers out of the way, and one came behind to guard us. Anne walked blindly, quite unaware of the eddy of disturbance all down the crowded street.
There were people selling goods from off the backs of carts, bread and fruit and live ducks and hens, fresh up from the country. There were fat London housewives bartering for the goods, quicker-tongued and quicker-witted than the countrymen and -women, who were slow and careful, hoping to get a fair price for their provender. There were pedlars with chapbooks and music sheets in their sacks, cobblers with sets of ready-made shoes trying to persuade people that they would fit all varieties of foot. There were flower sellers and watercress sellers, there were lounging pageboys and chimney sweeps, there were link boys with nothing to do till the dark came, and street sweepers. There were servants idling on their way to and from marketing, and outside every shop there was the wife of the owner, sat plump on her stool, smiling at the passers-by and urging them to step inside and see what was for sale.
George threaded Anne and me through this tapestry of business like a determined bodkin. He was desperate to get Anne home before the storm of her temper broke.
‘Went very well indeed, I’d say,’ he said staunchly.
We reached a pier leading out into the river and the Howard servant hailed a boat. ‘To York Place,’ George said tersely.
The tide was with us and we went quickly upriver, Anne looking blindly at the beach on either side strewn with the dirt of the city.
We landed at the York Place jetty and the Howard servants bowed and took the boat back to the City. George swept Anne and me up to our room and finally got the door closed behind us.
