LITMIR.BIZ

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pursuits—the gambling, wine, and whores, and the music and poetry upon which you squander so much of your time! Your will is weak, George, and I would be the one to make you strong. Banish them all, George. You need none of them—only me!’

      ‘Oh, but I do,’ he insisted. ‘I need them all. And I do not want to be your everything, Jane. Verily, I find your love as stifling and oppressive as a tomb. When I am with you I feel as if I am boxed inside a coffin. It is a sad truth that we are mismatched, and not one common interest do we share. You married for love—or, if you want to quibble words, you married your ideal of love—while I married as my father dictated. Let us be friendly, Jane, but let us abandon all pretense and go our separate ways, and perhaps we will both find happiness after a fashion. I wish you well, Jane, and would you did the same for me.’

      ‘I’ve no doubt that you will go your own way, as you have always done!’ I cried, and I would have slapped his face had he not divined my intentions and caught hold of my wrist. ‘Would that I could be like Anne; perhaps then you would love me!’ Stumbling, blind with tears, I fled back to my chamber and threw myself weeping upon the bed. If only, if only, if only I could be like Anne! How very different my life would be, and George would love me!

      

      With her sumptuous new finery, Anne returned to court and resumed her duties in Queen Catherine’s household, though it was the King who most often availed himself of her services.

      He summoned her to his chamber to play her lute and sing for him, or read aloud when his eyes were wearied, or to walk with him by the river or in the pleasure gardens. Dutifully, she hunted and hawked and danced with him. She diced and risked fortunes at cards with him, and applauded his performance at the tennis court, bowling green, tiltyard, and archery butts. Yet through it all she remained aloof, toying with him like a cat plays with dead things. At Henry’s side she seemed more a wax figure than a flesh-and-blood woman.

      It was only with George and their merry band of friends that she truly came alive. With them her spirits soared and her laughter rang like a bell. Henry noticed this too, and I think it was then that his heart first began to harden against these men who had long been his most loyal servants and friends, the gentlemen of his privy chamber who attended him at all his most private functions—his baths and bowel movements, robings and disrobings—and who each took turns sleeping on a pallet at the foot of his great bed whenever he retired alone. Herein, I believe, is the answer to why, years later, it was so easy for him to condemn George, Weston, Brereton, and Norris—they had Anne in a way that he never could.

      But Anne continued to turn her lips away from his and to shun and evade his embrace. She steadfastly refused to become his mistress, though Henry avowed, ‘It is not just your body I covet, Anne, but you, Anne, you! Your vivacity and bold, daring, untamed spirit! I can talk to you of books and ideas, for you are no docile, simpering sycophant; you have a mind of your own and are not afraid to speak it, and I want to possess and know all of you. I want to stir your soul as well as your body and heart!’

      ‘Your wife I cannot be; your mistress I will not be.’ Those were her words, cold and to the point, like a dagger in the heart.

      ‘But if I were free of Catherine…’ he persisted.

      ‘But you are not.’ Anne shrugged and continued along the rose-bordered path, pausing to inhale the perfume of a lush pink rose.

      They were in the rose garden at Hever once again, and I was secreted behind the shrubbery, just like before.

      Anne had all of a sudden quit the court without the King’s consent and, summoning George to be her escort, returned to Hever, leaving Henry to come scurrying after, the moment that he missed her.

      ‘But if I were…’

      ‘But you are not and cannot be,’ Anne said crisply, snapping the rose’s stem and holding it against the skirt of her pink satin gown. ‘Her Majesty strikes me as being a woman in excellent health, nor have I heard her express the desire to renounce the world and retire to a convent.’

      ‘For the third and last time’—Henry seized her arm and spun her round to face him—‘if I were free of Catherine, would you marry me and give me sons?’

      ‘Verily, Sire, I do not know,’ said Anne, idly twirling the rose by its stem. ‘I should have to think on it.’

      She pulled her arm free of his grasp and strolled onward, humming to herself and twirling the pink rose.

      

      This was the spark that lit the fuse of what would at first be called ‘The King’s Secret Matter,’ then ‘The King’s Great Matter’ when it became common knowledge.

      Henry confided to Anne that for some time his conscience had been troubling him. He feared that his marriage was accursed by God, and for this reason he had been denied a living son, the male heir that was vital to safeguard the succession.

      It all began with a verse from Leviticus that Henry interpreted to suit his desires. ‘If a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.’ These words hammered at his mind, while lust for Anne hammered at his loins. To Henry’s mind, being childless and sonless amounted to the same thing.

      Catherine had been first and briefly wed to his elder brother Arthur, and by marrying her, Henry had convinced himself, he had unknowingly committed a sinful and incestuous act. God had shown his displeasure by denying him living male issue; all the baby boys had been born dead or died shortly after as divine punishment. The Pope who had issued the dispensation that allowed them to marry had committed a grave error, he insisted, and it was one that must be rectified as soon as possible. The Pope must grant him a divorce from Catherine so that he might lawfully remarry and beget sons while there was still time. And Anne, he had already decided, would be the mother of those sons. Already he could see them in his mind’s eye, a brood of hale and hearty red- and black-haired boys, replicas of himself, lusty, broad-shouldered, and strong-minded. To Henry it all seemed such a simple matter.

       6

      Like a shuttlecock hurtling to and fro, Anne would, upon a moment’s whim, leave court and return to Hever. Then the King would come, hot on her heels, or else his messenger would follow, bearing lavish gifts and ardent love letters.

      But every time, Anne would just laugh and dismiss the messenger with a haughty wave of her hand and the words, ‘No answer.’

      Often she allotted these outpourings of the King’s anguished heart no more than a cursory glance, and she was very careless with them, leaving them lying about where anyone could find them.

      I remember a day when she sat idly by the hearth in the Great Hall, with Henry’s latest letter in her hand and the accompanying gift lying at her feet.

      ‘ “Because I cannot always be in your presence,”’ Anne read aloud, aping Henry’s voice—she really was an excellent mimic—‘ “I send you the thing that comes nearest—my portrait set in bracelets, wishing myself in their place. Signed, Your Servant and Friend, Henry Rex.” ’

      With a bored and indifferent sniff and a shrug of her shoulders, Anne let the letter fall to the floor, ignoring her father’s pursed lips, her mother’s worried frown, and Mary’s quizzical stare as she again grandly intoned the words, ‘No answer,’ and sent the messenger on his way.

      ‘Anne!’ Elizabeth Boleyn wrung her hands and looked near to tears. ‘It is cruel of you to keep the poor King dangling with no reply!’

      ‘Indeed, Mother, I never said it was not.’

      ‘Anne.’ Sir Thomas Boleyn approached her, rubbing his palms, with a crafty gleam in his eyes. ‘Your mother is correct. It is most unkind…’

      ‘Verily, you should know, Father. Upon unkindness you are expert!’ Anne answered flippantly, while toying with her sapphire

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