Page 28 of The Queen’s Witch

I woke screaming, and Pipkin scurried from under a corner of my blanket to stare at me. But my familiar could not provide me with comfort, no more than could anything else.

The two courts continued until the king tired of being rowed back and forth. “A day when I do not see you is as a month,” he told Anne. His small blue eyes shone with longing. “Do you not miss me the same?”

“I see you nearly every day,” Anne said in that light, teasing voice that both invited him and held him at bay. The king, ignoring my presence, stroked her breast, and she moved away. “Not yet yours, my liege,” she said in the other voice she used with him, laden with warning and wariness both, prey ready to bolt should an arrow be nocked.

He scowled, but I could see that the challenge of her excited him still. He tried again. “And you must be at court for Christmas, to arrange a masque and other entertainments—no one does that as well as you, my Anne.”

“Not the dowager princess?”

I held my breath; it was the first time she had referred to Katherine as such in his presence. His blue eyes darkened, but all he said was, “No one. Oh, Anne!”

She darted me a glance and I crept from the room. She was a maid still—they were never alone long enough for her not to be—but she allowed these brief moments of intimacy. And when they entered her reception room, thronged with awaiting courtiers, the king was flushed. “Let us dance!” he cried, and called to the musicians for the brawl.

We were back at Greenwich Palace by November.

10

Greenwich Palace

The Lady Mary, now deprived of her title as princess, had returned to court after three years in Wales. My first sight of her surprised me: She was short even for twelve years old and slightly made, unlike her father the king. But she resembled him in a sun-bleached fashion: hair a paler red than his, eyes a paler blue. Grave and reserved, she regarded her parents, visiting noblemen, Anne, and everyone else without dismay, curiosity, wariness, or any other emotion one might expect in circumstances that struck me, if no one else, as peculiar. Perhaps she was more open-hearted when alone with her mother.

Katherine glowed at again having her daughter by her side. For the first time, I glimpsed the lost beauty she must have had when she, the king, and the world were young. Katherine no longer danced, but she watched her daughter move with grace and skill, and occasionally she smiled. On her head, neck, wrists, ears, waist, she wore the queen of England’s jewels.

After the first such evening at court, I risked an act of divination.

True divination, which foretells an exact future, belongs only to the most powerful of thrice-braided witches, usually in a group of three. Even for them, it saps so much power that they are sometimes inert for days. I could not do that. Small magick extended only to searching for an elusive and sometimes inaccurate feeling, not unlike groping in a carpet for a lost sewing needle. A vision of the past might sometimes be clear enough, as when I had seen Anne’s lost pearl. But divining the future clearly lay only with the thrice braided.

I sneaked a goblet with dregs of wine into my alcove. The price of such a theft was hanging, but I would return the goblet. Meanwhile, a ward gave some small protection, and my position with Anne even more. I was an outcast, but I was an outcast belonging to the king’s favorite.

As I uttered the spell and asked my question, the wine turned cloudy. The clouds swirled. A few beads of liquid rose up the goblet’s sides, as if trying to escape. All at once, a stench arose, lasting only a moment, and then all was over.

Shaking, I set the goblet beside my pallet and lay down. My breath rasped. I knew that stench; everyone country bred knew that stench. Carrion left by boars or bears, chickens torn by foxes and not found in time for the stewpot, a body laid out on a hot summer day before a burial delayed too long. Someone I had named in my spell, Henry or Katherine or Anne or Mary, would die.

As would we all, eventually. So in that way, the spell told me nothing. But the stench meant not only that someone would die, but that they would die violently and before their natural time. But who?

In the kitchens were whispers about poisoning either Katherine or Mary.

The king, fond of jousting, had more than once taken a bad fall from his horse, the kind of fall that could kill.

And Anne . . .

I must again urge her toward my thrice-braided ceremony. My Third must not die before the ceremony took place, nor before I freed Grandmother from torture by her unnatural daughter.

Crouching on the lumpy straw, I put my hands over my face but did not cry. I would never cry again. Crying required a heart lush and soft enough to yield water. Mine no longer was.

On November 8, the king made a public speech at Bridewell Palace. I was not present, of course, but a few hours after Henry stopped speaking, the kitchen had heard about it, even parroting some of the king’s actual words. The speech, made to nobility, judges, the lord mayor of London, aldermen, and other important people, explained the king’s troubled conscience for having contracted an “unlawful” marriage to Katherine of Aragon, his brother’s widow. Though he had a dispensation from the former pope, the marriage was wrong in God’s eyes, as set forth in the Christian Bible. That was why the king had sent for a legate from Rome “to know the truth and settle my conscience.” It was for no other reason, Henry said. He praised the richness of Katherine’s qualities, her noble character “without comparison.” In fact, he valued her so much, that if he could marry again—“and the marriage be good—I would choose her above all other women.”

I could only imagine Anne’s response.

But again, she surprised me. No rage, no tears. Perhaps, like me, she had already used all her tears. She was cool and reserved when the king, looking suddenly like a boy about to be punished by his master, came to sup in her apartments. Alone. Lady Rochford once more had an “unfortunate” headache.

“Anne,” he said.

She curtsied, a gesture she somehow made both correct and isolating, setting herself apart from him.

The king looked confused but followed her lead. The first dishes were brought in. I tasted; the musicians played. Anne spoke about the masque she was preparing for his pleasure; she might have been newly named Master of Revels instead of a woman hoping for love.

Finally he blurted, “I cannot help it, sweetheart. You know I must do whatever will influence Campeggio.”