impossible, but it is not my place to say so. ‘Who says that she may not be free to marry?’
‘The king fears to proceed. His conscience is uneasy.’
I pause, I cannot think fast enough to make sense of this. This is a king who married his own brother’s wife, and then put her aside because he said the lifelong marriage was invalid. This is a king who put Anne Boleyn’s head on the block as a matter of his own judgement under the exclusive guidance of God. Clearly, this is not a king who would be deterred from marrying a woman just because some German ambassador did not have the right piece of paper to hand. Then I remember the moment when she pushed him aside, and his face as he stepped back from her at Rochester.
‘It is true then. He doesn’t like her. He can’t forgive her for her treatment of him at Rochester. He will find a way to get out of the marriage. He is going to claim pre-contract again.’ One glance at the duke’s dark face tells me that I have guessed right and I could almost laugh aloud at this new twist in the play that is King Henry’s comedy. ‘He doesn’t like her and he is going to send her home.’
‘If she confessed that she was pre-contracted she could go home again, without dishonour, and the king would be free,’ the duke says quietly.
‘But she likes him,’ I say. ‘At any rate, she likes him enough. And she can’t go home again. No woman of any sense would go home again. Go back to be spoiled goods in Cleves when you could be Queen of England? She would never want that. Who would marry her if he refuses her? Who could marry her if he declares her pre-contracted? Her life would be over.’
‘She could clear herself of the pre-contract,’ he says reasonably.
‘Is there one?’
He shrugs. ‘Almost certainly not.’
I think for a moment. ‘Then how can she be released from something that does not exist?’
He smiles. ‘That is a matter for the Germans. She can be sent home against her will, if she does not co-operate.’
‘Not even the king can abduct her and fling her out of the kingdom.’
‘If she could be entrapped into saying that there was a pre-contract.’ His voice is like a whisper of silk. ‘If it came from her own mouth that she is not free to marry …’
I nod. I begin to see the favour he would have of me.
‘The king would be most grateful to the man who could tell him that he had a confession from her. And the woman who brought such a confession about would be most high in his favour. And in mine.’
‘I am yours to command,’ I say to give myself time to think. ‘But I cannot make her lie. If she knows she is free to marry, then she would be mad to say otherwise. And if I claim that she has said otherwise, she has only to deny it. Then it is her word against mine and we are back to the truth again.’ I pause as a fear occurs to me. ‘My lord, I take it that there is no possibility of an accusation?’
‘What sort of accusation?’
‘Of some crime?’ I say nervously.
‘Do you mean she might be charged with treason?’
I nod. I will not say the word myself. I wish that I could never hear the word again. It leads to the Tower Green and the executioner’s block. It took the love of my life from me. It ended the life we lived forever.
‘How could it be treason?’ he asks me, as if we do not live in a dangerous world where everything can be treason.
‘The law has changed so much, and being innocent is no defence any more.’
Abruptly he shakes his head. ‘There’s no possibility of him accusing her, anyway. The King of France is entertaining the Holy Roman Emperor in Paris at this very moment. They could be planning a joint attack on us even as we speak. We can do nothing that might upset Cleves. We have to have an alliance with the Protestant princes or we risk standing alone to face a Spain and France that have united against us. If the English Papists rise again as they did before we will be finished. She has to confess herself betrothed to another and go home by her own free will so that we lose the girl and keep the alliance. Or if someone were to trap her into making a confession, that would be good enough. But if she persists in saying that she is free to marry and if she insists upon marriage, then the king will have to do it. We cannot offend her brother.’
‘Whether the king likes it or not?’
‘Though he hates it, though he hates the man who contrived it, and even though he hates her.’
I pause for a moment. ‘If he hates her and yet marries her he will find some way to be rid of her later.’ I am thinking aloud.
The duke says nothing but his eyelids hood his dark eyes. ‘Oh, who can foretell the future?’
‘She will be in the greatest of danger every day of her life,’ I predict. ‘If the king wants rid of her he will soon think that it is God’s will that he is rid of her.’
‘That is generally the way that God’s will seems to be manifest,’ the duke says with a wolfish grin.
‘Then he will find her guilty of some offence,’ I say. I will not say the word treason.
‘If you care for her at all, you would persuade her to go now,’ the duke says quietly.
I walk slowly back to the queen’s rooms. She will not be advised by me, in preference to her ambassadors; and I am not free to tell her what I truly think. But if I had been her true friend I would have told her that Henry is not a man to take as a husband if he hates you before the wedding day. His malice towards women who cross him is fatal. Who would know better than me?
Anne, Greenwich Palace, 3 January 1540
The lady in waiting Jane Boleyn seems troubled and I tell her that she can sit beside me and I ask her, in English, if she is well.
She beckons my translator to come and sit with us, and she says that she is troubled by a matter of some delicacy.
I think it must be something about precedence at the wedding, they are so anxious about the order of the service and what jewels everyone may wear. I nod as if it is a serious matter and ask her if I may serve her.
‘On the contrary; I am anxious to be of service to you,’ she says, speaking quietly to Lotte. She translates for me, I nod. ‘I hear that your ambassadors have forgotten to bring the contract that releases you from a previous betrothal.’
‘What?’ I speak so sharply that she guesses the meaning of the German word, and nods, her face as grave as my own.
‘So they have not told you?’
I shake my head. ‘Nothing,’ I say in English. ‘They tell nothing.’
‘Then
