‘Well, there is a question. You, or me, or Master Wyatt – who took the greater share in the work? I think it was you. We pricked out our little pattern, but you cut the cloth.’
‘In May, I counselled you, think before you speak. I warned you, if you give evidence against your husband, you will be shunned. You will be held in odium. You will be alone.’
‘How little you know of our lives,’ she says. ‘The lives of women, I mean. I have been alone for years.’
‘You must forget those days. No one speaks of Anne Boleyn. No one thinks of her. You must be jocund and pleasant and adapt yourself to the new queen, or you will be sent away again, and I shall not speak for you.’
‘Jane Seymour will not send me away. I know what she is. I know a thing about her.’
Inside his chest, a horrible slither and flip of the heart: Chapuys had asked, how could she be at your court so long, and still a virgin? He thinks, some wretch has dishonoured her. A wash of rage, like a current in the sea, almost knocks him off his feet.
Jane Rochford smirks. ‘It is not what you think. No one wanted Jane in their bed, she was too cold a fish. It is another thing, that I know – I know her method. I witnessed everything that she worked against Anne, maid against mistress. You will remember a day when Anne took fright because she found a paper in her bed? A drawing of a man crowned, and beside him a woman without a head?’
Dr Cranmer was there, and had reached across him to snatch it from Anne’s hand and tear it up. But Anne pulled away and read aloud:
He says, ‘Jane did not do it, she does not speak the French tongue.’
‘Everybody speaks that much.’ She laughs at him. ‘Do you know, I believe all these years you have been thinking it was me?’
‘It would have been a natural thought. There was no love lost between you and Anne.’
She says, ‘I have suffered since I was a girl from these people – the Howards, the Boleyns. George Boleyn talked to me as if I were a girl who carries coals for a living, or scrubs shirts. My family was as good as his. Why should Anne Boleyn be uplifted, and not me?’
She is like a starved child, he thinks. Offer her a morsel of attention and she feeds till she is sickened. He had seen Anne Boleyn in fear that day, but he had also heard her scorn.
‘At least that was spared,’ he says. ‘Burning.’
Jane raises an eyebrow. ‘In this world, perhaps. I am sure the devil knows his business.’
He picks up his papers: though they have not completed their own business, indeed they have not begun it.
‘So, I am dismissed?’ Lady Rochford stands. ‘I thank you for my return to court. With what I have from my settlement from the Boleyns, and with my allowance for waiting on Jane, I shall be able to keep myself as a gentlewoman, if I am careful. And I dare say you will help me out if I am not.’
‘My obligations are not unlimited.’
‘At least you do not say, “My coffers are not bottomless.” Now that would make me laugh.’ She turns at the door. ‘About Meg Douglas,’ she says. ‘You will be asking yourself, could I have mistaken the meaning of what I saw last spring – the coming and going by night, the hasty flitting, those swift glances, those burning sighs …’
‘My lady, if you knew of this intrigue, why did you not come to me? It would have prevented much mischief. It would have helped me –’
‘How would it have helped you? You never supposed for one moment those men to be guilty of all you charged them with. You said, let us throw mud, and see what will stick. But for all that, you may be easy in your mind. Do not think a mistake has been made, nor an injustice done. You were not wrong about Anne Boleyn.’
‘I trust your word,’ he says, lying.
‘She was false to the core. False in her heart. Whatever our deeds, it is the heart that God sees. Is that not so, Master Secretary?’
He says, ‘You must learn to use my new title, madam.’
As he walks into Austin Friars he meets Richard Cromwell. ‘My doorkeeper,’ he says. ‘Never let a woman in here. I never want to see or speak to one.’
‘What, never?’ Gregory says. ‘Will you join a monastery? But then I hear they are full of women, and women of the worst sort too. What if the queen sends for you – what excuse shall we make?’
‘Tell her she can write me a letter. I’ll write her one back. But I will never read another verse in praise of love. I will read stanzas in praise of military victories. Metrical translations of the psalms. But women’s matters – no.’
Gregory says, ‘It is only the other week you were speaking warmly of the Lady Mary, and saying she ought to have presents.’
His nephew says, ‘Richard Riche is here. And Call-Me.’
