Part 58 (1/2)

I nodded eagerly but she held up a hand. ”But what if she's mistaken? If it's a live baby in there? Just resting awhile? Just gone quiet?”

I looked at her, quite baffled. ”What then?”

”You've killed it,” she said simply. ”And that makes you a murderer, and her, and me too. D'you have the stomach for that?”

I shook my head slowly. ”My G.o.d, no,” I said, thinking of what would happen to me and mine if anyone knew that I had given the queen a potion to make her miscarry a prince.

I rose to my feet and turned away from the table to look out of the window at the cold gray river. I summoned my memory of Anne as I had seen her at the start of this pregnancy, her higher color, her swelling b.r.e.a.s.t.s; and as she was now, pale, drained, dry-looking.

”Give me the drink. She can be the one to choose whether to take it or no.”

The woman rose from her stool and waddled toward the back of the room. ”That'll be three s.h.i.+llings.”

I said nothing to the absurdly high fee but put the silver coins down on the greasy table in silence. She s.n.a.t.c.hed them up with one quick movement. ”It's not this you need fear,” she said suddenly.

I was halfway to the door but I turned back. ”What d'you mean?”

”It's not the drink but the blade you should fear.”

I felt a cold s.h.i.+ver, as if the gray mist from the river had just crept all over the skin of my back. ”What d'you mean?”

She shook her head, as if she had been asleep for a moment. ”I? Nothing. If it means something to you, then take it to heart. If it means nothing, it means nothing. Let it go.”

I paused for a moment in case she would say anything more, and when she was silent I opened the door and slipped out.

George was waiting, arms folded. When I came out he tucked his hand under my elbow in silence and we hurried down the slippery green steps to the gently rocking boat. In silence we made the longer journey home, the boatman rowing against the current. When he put us off at the palace landing stage I said urgently to George, ”Two things you should know: one is that if the baby is not dead then this drink will kill it, and we'll have that on our consciences.”

”Is there any way we can tell if it's a boy, before she drinks?”

I could have cursed him for the single track of his mind. ”n.o.body ever knows that.”

He nodded. ”The other thing?”

”The other thing the old woman said is that we should not fear the drink but fear the blade.”

”What sort of blade?”

”She didn't say.”

”Sword blade? Razor blade? Executioner's ax?”

I shrugged.

”We're Boleyns,” he said simply. ”When you spend your life in the shadow of the throne you're always afraid of blades. Let's get through tonight. Let's get that drink down her and see what happens.”

Anne went down to dinner like a queen, pale-faced, drawn, but with her head high and a smile on her lips. She sat next to Henry, her throne only a little less grand than his, and she chattered to him, and flattered him and enchanted him as she still could do. Whenever the stream of wit paused for even a moment his eyes strayed across the room and rested on the ladies in waiting at their table, perhaps looking toward Madge Shelton, perhaps to Jane Seymour, once even a thoughtful warm smile at me. Anne affected to see nothing, she plied him with questions about his hunting, she praised his health. She picked the nicest morsels from the dishes on the high table and put them on his already loaded plate. She was very much Anne, Anne in every turn of her head and her flickering flirtatious glance from under her eyelashes, but there was something about her determined charm that reminded me of the woman who had sat in that chair before and tried not to see that her husband's attention was drifting elsewhere.

After dinner the king said that he would do some business, so we all knew that he would be carousing with his closest friends. ”I'd better be with him,” George said. ”You'll see she takes it, and stay with her?”

”I'll sleep in her room tonight,” I said. ”The woman said that she'd be sick as a dog.”

He nodded, tightening his lips, and then he turned and went after the king.

Anne told her ladies that she had a headache and that she would sleep early. We left them in the presence chamber, sewing s.h.i.+rts for the poor. They were very diligent as we said goodnight but I knew that once the door was shut behind us there would be the usual endless stream of gossip.

Anne got into her nightdress, and handed me her lice comb. ”You might as well do something useful while we're waiting,” she said ungraciously.

I put the bottle on the table.

”Pour it for me.”

There was something about the dark gla.s.s with the gla.s.s stopper that repelled me. ”No. This has to be your doing, and your doing alone.”

She shrugged like a gambler raising stakes with empty pockets, and poured the drink into a golden cup. She raised it to me as a mock-toast, and threw her head back and drank it. I saw her neck convulse as she forced the three gulps of it down. Then she slammed down the cup and smiled at me, a savage defiant smile. ”Done,” she said. ”Pray G.o.d it works easily.”

We waited, I combed her hair, and then a little later she said: ”We might as well go to sleep. Nothing's happening.” And we curled up in bed, as we had slept together in the old days, and we woke just after dawn and she had no pain.

”It hasn't worked,” she said.

I had a small foolish hope that the baby had clung on, that it was a living baby, perhaps a little one, perhaps frail, but clinging on and staying alive, despite the poison.

”I'll go to my bed if you don't want me,” I said.

”Aye,” she said. ”Run off to Sir n.o.body and have a sweaty little thump, why don't you?”

I did not reply at once. I knew the tone of envy in my sister's voice and it was the sweetest sound in the world to me. ”But you are queen.”

”Yes. And you are Lady n.o.body.”

I smiled. ”That was my choice,” I said, and slipped through the door before she could get the last word.

All day nothing happened. George and I watched Anne as if she were our own child, but although she was pale and complained of the heat of the bright June sun, nothing happened. The king spent the morning at business, seeing pet.i.tioners who were in a hurry to catch him, before the court was traveling.

”Anything?” I asked Anne as I watched her dress before dinner.

”No,” she said. ”You'll have to go back to her tomorrow.”

At about midnight, I saw Anne into bed and then went to my own rooms. William was dozing when I got in, but when he saw me he slipped out of bed and untied my laces, as tender and as helpful as a good maid. I laughed at his intent face as he unlaced the waist of my skirt, and then held the skirt wide for me to step out, and then I sighed with pleasure as he rubbed the ridges on my skin where the ribs of the bodice had cut into me.

”Better?” he asked.