saw it, and I turned away; I turned to my little cousin Maria. She and Hal, Uncle Norfolk’s children, were at court for distraction from the worst of their parents’ separation, and they’d come along with me to the joust. Maria was snuggled up to me and I turned to check she was wrapped tight against the cold. Behind me came a distinctive crowd-gasp: low, blunt. I snapped back to see Harry Norris sprinting across the tiltyard. He was aiming for Henry and Francis, who were dismounted and fighting, or so it looked: Henry, trying to hold Francis’s visored head; and Francis, frantic, reeling, crouching, pushing him away. The horses stood by, helpless; Governatore, subdued. Henry’s shouting was becoming words, a name: Vicary; get Vicary. His surgeon.
Vicary’s good but he can’t perform miracles. In the days after the accident, Francis’s eye dried up and he never again removed the patch. It doesn’t seem to have hampered him. On the contrary. Somehow he looks more dashing with it. No one knew how it had happened, that splinter into Francis’s eye; not even Henry or Francis. Francis and I were good friends, back then; Francis and George and I. He was one of us. But that hasn’t been true for a while now, to say the least, and I have found myself wishing that I’d seen it and could relish the memory of it: that sly, stunning blow.
No comment? But those in the know, already knew. Privacy at court is scarce; and, of course, the bigger you are, the less you have. There was all the Dance with me, Anne; and only so many ruby earrings that I could explain away and sugar stallions that I could get the boys to eat. I was beginning to understand that my resistance was, to a great extent, irrelevant. Word was that the king was obsessed with Anne Boleyn; and no one cared about the details, such as which favours he was or wasn’t being granted. Why not play along with it, then? Go with it, get what I could from it? In a way, I didn’t have a choice. Or, that wasn’t the choice; the choice was not to end up as mother to some half-royal son and wife to some compliant, paid-off nonentity. That, I definitely wouldn’t have. But why not have some fun, for a while? I should have been Countess Northumberland, with my own vast household, but instead I was still in the queen’s rooms—all that praying and sewing—with no other suitor daring to raise his head. Why shouldn’t I have a little fun, perhaps, and some jewellery?
So, I went to Henry, one evening, after a year or more of his attentions; I went changed, resolved, chancing it. He didn’t register my change and was as unassumedly welcoming as usual: this king who, for my sake, was learning to live with so little of what he most wanted. I loved it, that evening: his guilelessness, openness. It dizzied me, made me tender. He was a sweet-natured man, in those days. His real nature is that of a soft-hearted man. At the end of that evening, when everyone had gone, I was still there. Me, the six weary musicians, and a whey-faced Franky Weston who was on duty to prepare Henry’s bed. Outstaying my brother and the others—cousin Francis, Harry, Billy—had taken some doing, even for me. Did I say evening? The small hours, more like. The banquet table was littered with sugar lemons, oranges, figs and walnuts that had been cracked open and chiselled away at, bitten into: shells, now, on a sugary sand. I told Henry that I’d like a word. ‘In private,’ I said, quietly.
He leaned towards me, expectant.
‘Strictly private,’ I whispered.
He indicated to the others: Skedaddle, would you?
Six lots of strings winding to a sudden silence, seven pairs of feet released across the carpet. He turned to me, pleasant; nothing too much trouble. I felt both solemn—this was some undertaking, this was it—and ridiculously giggly. I kissed him, and he took up the kiss and carried it on.
Later that night, that dawn, he asked me if I’d stay, and I said no. He didn’t mind; he was happy, it was a novelty, and there was everything to look forward to. Not long now, he was probably thinking. ‘You,’ he chided: indulgent, familiar.
Those early days were bliss, for me. It had been a long time since someone had placed his lips on my pulse. Too long since someone’s forefinger had run down my naked ring finger. Every evening, that summer, we stayed alone on the riverbank when the shadows were too blue for comfort.
But that was all we did. Every night, he asked me if I’d stay; every night, I said no. I wouldn’t be his mistress. Our relationship, as far as I was concerned, was a dalliance. I even liked the word, dalliance. And of course I liked the jewellery. But then, one day, sometime late in 1526, something happened. All that happened was that he walked into a room, smiling, and sat down. That was all, but that was it. He didn’t see me, when he came through that door. He came in with Billy Brereton, relating some tale that had Billy weak with laughter. I don’t think he saw any of us in particular, merely raised a hand to the room, Don’t get up. He strode past us all and slung himself into his throne; a long-limbed, loose-limbed man. He was grinning, pleased with himself: this king, this most kingly of kings, grinning like a boy. His hand flicked through his hair before he settled back and closed those gem-like eyes. Look at you, I thought, and knew, in that instant, that I’d been naive: we would have to spend our lives together. It was time, I saw, for him to move on. His marriage was over. Not that it was ever a marriage. Only ever a formality.
So, later that same evening, I asked him: ‘If you love me so very much—’
‘—Oh, I do, I do,’ punctuated with kisses to my shoulder.
‘—why don’t you marry me?’
He laughed, ‘Well—’ Stopped. Stopped laughing.
Yes. Precisely. You’re already married.
Shaken, he tried to make light of it: ‘Anyway, you wouldn’t marry me.’
‘Wouldn’t I?’
That smile was frozen; behind it, I could see, he was thinking fast. ‘A clever young girl like you.’
‘I thought there was no one like me.’
‘There isn’t.’
‘Well, then.’
He sat back, the better to see my face. ‘But you wouldn’t, would you?’
And now I allowed him a smile. ‘You asking?’
The next time he asked me to sleep with him, he tried to bolster his case by reminding me that we were going to be married.
‘When we’re married,’ I said, ‘I’ll stay.’
I could see that he barely believed it—that I was still refusing him—and was about to laugh me down, to protest long and loud. But of course there was no denying it: when we were married, we’d sleep together.
I pressed on: ‘Henry, Henry, listen: what you don’t need is another bastard.’
He might not have liked hearing it, but it was the truth. He said nothing for a moment, and then he conceded, ‘Well, it’d better be soon, anyway.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that’s right, it’d better be.’
Why hadn’t it happened sooner? If it was the perfect match that I claim it was, a meeting of minds, why didn’t it begin as soon as we met? I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve been thinking about those six years we lived alongside each other at court before he asked his confectioner to make me that sugar rose. It wasn’t as if we hadn’t been well-acquainted. The Boleyns couldn’t have been closer to Henry: my father was Treasurer; my brother was a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, one of the elite attending to the king; my sister doing the same, but differently,
