The Queen of Subtleties

by Suzannah Dunn

He frowns, ‘No…’ and tries again, ‘I’m leaving.’ He’s still over by the door. ‘Silvester’s leaving, and I’m…’

  Leaving with him. Silvester: the page, his friend. What does he mean, leaving?

  ‘For London,’ he says, his gaze holding mine. ‘We’re going to London.’

  ‘Today?’ A long trip, for one day.

  ‘To live, Lucy.’

  But that’s impossible. What would he—they—do in London? ‘Richard—’ It comes as an exasperated half-laugh. They live here, the two of them. They work here.

  He comes closer, now, by a step or two. ‘I’ll find work.’ He adds, ‘I’m sorry, Lucy,’ and sounds it.

  ‘But you have work. Here.’ That laugh, again, from me. ‘What work would you find, in London?’

  He doesn’t take offence; comes to my bench, rests on it, leans across it towards me with a wan little smile. ‘I’m a dab hand at confectionery.’

  Yes, and who taught you that? I don’t say it, I don’t. Instead, I say, ‘You can’t,’ and the way he cocks his head, trying to take me seriously, makes me realize how forcefully I must have said it; how confidently, definitely. And because that’s not how I feel, I say it again, but even more so. ‘You can’t go.’ Because I have to keep him here with me. I can’t lose him, too. I can’t lose him. ‘This is your home, Richard. This is our home. You come from here.’ And isn’t that true? He could almost have been bubbled up, here in the kitchens, by mistake, in some pot: funny little fish. Baked tough, over the years, at the mouths of the ovens, and grown on royal scraps. Then drawn by his nose to the confectionery.

  ‘Yes, but now it’s time—’ He places a hand over one of mine.

  I snatch mine away. ‘London?’ What will people make of him, in London? Him and Silvester. I’ve never met Silvester, but I’m quite sure he’s unusual; Richard wouldn’t take up with someone who wasn’t.

  ‘Lucy,’ he says, pained. ‘Lucy, listen.’ That hand of his, free of mine, rises, emphatic, before dropping back gently onto the benchtop. ‘With what’s happened to Sir Henry—’ Sir Henry, Henry Norris, the nice widower, Silvester’s employer. ‘—We don’t want to stay here.’

  We used to be ‘we’, didn’t we? Richard and me. We were always ‘we’.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he whispers before I realize that’s what I’m doing. ‘Don’t, Lucy; don’t cry.’ He runs his fingertips through my tears; they’re slick with my tears, they’re sliding on them. He keeps saying it—Don’t cry, don’t cry—but he doesn’t mean it; he means, Cry, cry. So, I do. I stand there in front of him, just crying, not even dealing with the mess of my own tears but leaving them to him. I want to say, Take me with you, but I don’t mean it, not really. I can’t mean it, I can’t go with him. He’s going with someone else. Just as I would have done. And anyway, he came to me, all those years ago. I can’t now go with him. That’s not how it works. And I wouldn’t want to; that’s not what I’d want.

  I must have stopped crying because he cups my face in his hands. ‘I’ll come back and visit,’ he says. He assumes I’ll be here. And I suppose I will, won’t I. ‘High days and Holy days,’ he says.

  That, I can take him to task for. ‘I’m busy, high days and holy days.’ Confectioners’ busy days: high days and holy days.

  He allows it, with a smile. ‘Well, I can come and lend a hand.’

  ‘But if you’re a confectioner, you’ll be busy.’

  ‘Listen: I’ll visit.’

  That’s the best I’m going to get. It’s better than nothing. He’s back to smiling in that nervous way—tentative, appeasing—and he glances around the kitchen. ‘Anyway, just think,’ he chivies, ‘All this to yourself, without me to distract you.’

  I can’t help but say it: ‘Richard, I don’t know what I’ll do without you.’

  His smile lessens a little, settles a little. ‘Oh, you don’t need me,’ he says, misunderstanding.

  The last of him to go is one hand, the hand that closes the door. And as it does, I realize one thing for certain: I won’t ever replace him.

  Anne Boleyn

  Although it took a while to be sure, by the time we were home again from the summer progress last year, I suspected I was pregnant again. I should’ve been pleased, shouldn’t I, but all I remember is misery. Because it could all go wrong. Could already be wrong. This pregnancy felt like my last chance, and there was nothing I could do about it. Alongside everything I could make happen—have the vision for, argue for, insist upon—was something about which I could do nothing. I found it intolerable that something so close to me—inside my own body—was down to sheer chance. Nothing to do with me. Everything and nothing to do with me.

  What didn’t help was that I was so sick with this one. And tired: more tired than I’d ever been. I fell asleep at night dreading the morning—the morning already weighing on me—because then I’d feel so exhausted all over again. And this wasn’t like my previous pregnancies: no one was pleased for me. They simply expected it of me. They’d been expecting it for a while. That was Henry’s attitude: of course he was relieved, but his attitude towards me was an only faintly cheerful, Get on with it. The transparency of it was what I found so difficult to take. I suppose I’d known it all along: that this was the deal. Well, I had, hadn’t I? If I hadn’t, quite, I certainly did, now.

  The dim Seymour spinster had come back to court, and Henry was spending a lot of time with her. I used to wonder: what does he do with her? Embroidery? Because as far as I could see, that was all she could do. He insists upon seeing her as a good woman. The truth is, she’s a thick woman. And Henry’s a stupid man. The Seymour spinster’s much-vaunted goodness made me badder than ever. If she was the angel, I was the devil. The role had been left to me, so I might as well embrace it. I was too sick to want to drink the boys under the table but—trust me—if I could’ve, I would’ve.

  It was easy for Jane Seymour, wasn’t it. Walks in the gardens are a pleasure if you’re not chafe-nippled, and it’s easy to smile serenely when you don’t have dried sick on your lips.

  My fear had always been that Catherine would be the death of me, but when she finally died, just after Christmas, my situation only changed for the worse. Henry broke the news to me by saying, ‘We’re safe.’ He’d rushed into my Privy Chamber. I was resting by the fire, my stockinged feet in Billy’s lap for massaging. Billy dropped them, and stood.

  ‘We’re safe,’ Henry said, his face lit up. ‘Catherine’s dead.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ I repeated. I had to say it aloud to stand any chance of believing it. And although I hadn’t spoken it as a question, I suppose I did mean how? Where? When? She’d been sick for ages, but I thought she’d never die unless I killed her. ‘She’s dead?’

  I looked at Billy, who broke with a laugh: a single, brief note of sheer relief. Mark Smeaton had suddenly stopped playing for us; the sounds were of people, their gasps and shufflings and Billy’s one note.

  I didn’t know my own response. It wouldn’t come. It just wouldn’t come.

  Henry had his back to me; he was pacing, excitedly.

  Gone, I said to myself. Gone, the woman who would have taken everything from me, if she could. Taken him from me.

  Henry whirled to me. ‘Safe from Spain,’ he said.

  Spain. Spain wouldn’t bother to attack, now. The emperor had had no heart for it for years and now there wasn’t even any face-saving to be done. England, safe from Spain: that’s what Catherine’s death meant to Henry. And of course it did: he was thinking—feeling—like a king. But if Catherine’s death had happened when it should have done, or even only a year or so ago, we’d have—what? Hugged each other? Something, anyway. Something physical. Something loving. Her death would have been good news for us. Now, nothing was good news for us. There was Henry, pacing; and me, here, sitting. Suddenly, everything—the years and years—felt such a waste of time.

  ‘I’m going to fetch Elizabeth,’ he said, more to the room than specifically to me. ‘Let’s
have a party.’ He flashed us a boyish grin. ‘We’re safe!’

  I did dress up, that evening; I did celebrate with the rest of them—We’re safe! But all I could think, by then, was, You’re safe, all of you.

  England’s safe.

  But me? Me, whom the Spanish would always loathe? French-educated, French-speaking me? If Spain was becoming our new friend—and I’d seen how well Chapuys had been received by Henry and Tom, at Christmas—and France was in the cold, where did that leave me?

  There was worse to come, and it started almost immediately. One afternoon, only a week or so later, I was reading by the fireside when Harry Norris rushed in, unannounced, boots brutal on the carpets. I stood so fast that my blood failed to keep up. He caught me, steadied me.

  ‘Sit,’ he said, pressing me into my chair. ‘Sit.’ He was dishevelled, smelling of dried sweat and damp outdoors.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s Henry.’ Crouching in front of me, he looked up into my face; his own, blank. ‘He’s had a fall from his horse. We’ve brought him in. He’s not conscious.’

  ‘Not conscious?’ I couldn’t take it in.

  ‘Not conscious.’

  I went to stand. ‘I’ll go to him.’

  He pressed me back down. ‘No. Not—’ he touched his free hand briefly to my stomach ‘—in your condition.’ And then he said it: ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Harry—’ A plea.

  ‘No. Listen. We’ll call you.’ If we need to. ‘Rest. Rest. Please.’ He was on the verge of tears.

  I touched his face; he closed his eyes, exhausted. My stomach rose and I felt as if I were falling. I whispered, ‘I don’t know what I’ll do.’ If he dies. ‘I just don’t know what I’ll do.’

  Henry.

  ‘He’s strong,’ Harry said with such certainty that I recognized the opposite as the truth. We’d been kidding ourselves for a while now. Henry was no longer the man he’d been; he was nearing fifty, and turning from muscle to bulk. He could easily be felled.

  I sat all night, waiting to be called. Marooned in a palace, listening for the sounds that would tell me that their king was dead although I didn’t know what those sounds would be. With every distant shutting of a door, I crept to my own, listening hard for something else. And every time, there’d be nothing. I couldn’t cry, for fear of blotting that silence, but my throat was full of the loss that I’d already endured. Why didn’t Henry and I love each other any more? How had we come to this, and so quickly?

  If he survived—please, God—could we make it work? But if he didn’t survive? I’d be a queen without a king. A kingless and—as yet—princeless queen. A queen no one believed in, and her little girl.

  When finally I was called, it was because Henry had started to come round. It was Harry, again, who came for me. With less urgency, though, this time. But still unwashed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘he’s back with us.’ Gave me a weary smile. ‘From time to time.’ He took my hand into his own startlingly cool one and led the way.

  For the next day, Henry didn’t make much sense; he was sleepy, and gloomy. My presence at his bedside seemed irrelevant to him; he directed his numerous complaints past me to Harry and the physicians. It was only when he was up, the following day, that I came in for my share. Harry’s warning glances at me said all the right things: principally, Give him time.

  Catherine’s funeral followed at the end of that week, at Peterborough Cathedral. Neither of us attended. By the time it happened, it felt like no victory at all. I’d been as irritable as Henry, all week. On the actual day, I spent the morning sewing and took a walk in the afternoon with George. In the evening, when Henry went to a Mass for Catherine, I went to bed. I was still sitting on my bed when Annie reappeared and stood there, at the foot of it, apparently dumbstruck. When I asked her what was the matter, she proffered a linen bundle that looked as if it were one of my shifts—presumably the one I’d just taken off and handed to her—and unfolded it to reveal a blotch of wet blood. Coin-sized. Flower-sized: a single bloom. Mine? I’d felt nothing. It’d crept from me. Panic churned me. I’m going to miscarry. I looked from the blood to Annie; she looked away. I lay back down, and curled up.

  She spoke, but barely: ‘Shall I call someone?’

  Who?

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It might not happen.’ I didn’t move. I knew she was standing there, behind me, but I couldn’t think of what to do with her. I couldn’t think of anyone or anything. Just, Not this. Please, not this.

  Eventually, Annie stepped forward and tried to help me into bed, but I curled tighter, making myself impossible to move. She wanted to help but I wanted none of it; nothing.

  I did miscarry, although there was scant blood for a further few days before the worst of it came. It happened at night. I knelt on my bed, rocking through the pain, glad I was alone, focusing on getting it over. When I told Henry—days later—I said it straight. Kept my chin up.

  Fact: I’ve miscarried.

  His response mirrored mine; he gave nothing away.

  I added, ‘I think it was the worry.’

  ‘Of?’

  ‘Your fall.’

  He made a show of nods, as if giving serious consideration to my explanation but somehow clearly doing the opposite. The bastard.

  ‘Oh,’ I added, ‘and of your carrying-on with that dim Seymour cow.’

  He got up and left the room.

  He left the palace, a few days later. Still without having spoken to me. I let him go; wouldn’t stoop to following him. It was almost a relief that he was gone. And, anyway, I was still bleeding: not usually more than staining, but an occasional difficult, messy hour or two so that I couldn’t yet contemplate the river-journey to Whitehall. I stayed, convalescing. Or that’s what I told myself.

  What was I thinking, back in those February-dark days, just three months ago? I don’t know. I’m not sure I was thinking at all, in those Greenwich-bound days. Something I felt: I felt unrelated to the thirty-two-year-old woman who, a couple of years ago, had become Henry’s queen and given birth to England’s princess. That woman had been strong, proud, gorgeous, and had had everything to live for.

  I did spend time musing on how Henry was wrapped up in the dim spinster. I doubted it’d last. Because what could they possibly find to talk about? I supposed she was making soothing noises and giving him understanding looks. Well, a monkey could do that. More importantly, what was Henry doing? Making a point, I suspected. The point being that he was tired of spirited women, and hankered for the good, old-fashioned kind. Well, guess what: I didn’t have much regard for self-pitying, narrow-minded middle-aged men.

  Within a fortnight, I was back to the job of being queen and Henry’s wife. Back to the hubbub. At Whitehall. My only problem was, that was where she was: the Seymour spinster. And her following: because, predictably, an entourage had gathered. Including my cousin Francis, the one-eyed turncoat. There the Seymour spinster was, in the middle of it all, looking sanctimonious. Sitting around, pudding-like; her dim little eyes forever seeking those brothers of hers, awaiting instructions. I’d have loved to send that country bumpkin back where she belonged, to spend her remaining tedious years sewing kneeling cushions for her local church, but Henry would’ve over-ruled me and how would that have looked? Sit it out, I told myself.

  On one of my first days back, when I hadn’t yet learned to absent myself from her scintillating company, she was sitting there in the corner of my room, clicking open and shut a locket. This, accompanied by the appreciative murmurs of various pea-brained, easily impressed ladies, told me that it was a gift. No wonder she was spellbound: I doubt anyone had ever given her anything, before. And now her fat neck was graced by the king’s gold. Click, click, click.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, stop that!’ I stalked over and yanked it. Managed it, too, but only by having the chain bite hard into the fold of my index finger. I dropped the locket to cradle my bleeding hand. Annie had to dress it for me.

  I might not be able
to beat her and her po-faced retinue, but I certainly wouldn’t join them. It was a relief to spend time with my own friends. They might have been fewer, but at least they were genuine. What was happening at court? Fun had become a dirty word. I could still enjoy myself, though: me and my friends, we’d still have fun. More of it, even, at the po-faced retinue’s expense. And more of everything else, at Henry’s expense. I was determined there should be no let up on being queen. I had my bed canopied with Florentine cloth of gold and hung with Venetian gold tassels. My bed, a bed better enjoyed at that time with no Henry in it. And myself: my new passions were a tawny velvet and a russet silk. Mr Matte was busier than ever, dressing a queen and her little princess.

  Strategy, was what George called it. He was buoyant, he was everywhere. Determined, I suppose, that there’d be no let up in being a Boleyn. He was down every passageway and around every corner; in every room, in the thick of every conversation. Being George to the utmost: the man with the quickest wit, the sharpest eye, the biggest laugh. Beside him, the Seymour brothers were shown up in their true, insipid colours.

  It was Boleyn strategy. We weren’t to be put off our stride by a passing fancy for the Seymours. And we’d follow the way the wind was blowing, turning our backs on France and looking instead to Spain. Tom had become very keen on Spain; and Tom was policy, policy was Tom. His change of tactic was clear from the attention he was paying to Chapuys, if nothing else. There was something else, though: his panderings to the bastard half-Spaniard, Mary. He returned one of her mother’s crosses to her, I was told. It was something she’d been asking for but had previously been denied.

  George’s opinion was that we couldn’t beat Tom. So, after Tom’s lengthy tête-à-tête with Chapuys on the last day of March, news of which spread like wildfire, my brother began lying in wait. Within a couple of days, his chance came: he waylaid Chapuys coming into the palace and accompanied him to Mass, issuing an invitation to supper afterwards. Chapuys was caught off-guard, but he’s nothing if not polite. As they walked into Chapel, I was ready, I was there. George stopped and bowed to me. Flustered, Chapuys copied. I was acknowledged, at last. Bowed to, no less. There was a collective intake of breath behind me: Seymours and Mary-supporters, seriously displeased. Chapuys flinched, a spasm of self-disgust. Chapuys, compromised. Well, good. About time.