Secrets of the Tudor Court by D. L. Bogdan

may weaken under the rejection of his subjects—he may decide you’re not worth all this bother with the pope and Catherine of Aragon’s supporters. Supporters like Charles of Spain.”
    “He wants an heir,” Anne says, her voice taut with determination. “I can give him what he most desires. No one will deter him.”
    “Everyone can deter him,” Norfolk argues. “Who do you think you are? You’re the lady of the moment. Even should this succeed you will only be useful to him till he gets his heir. And then? Then it is a mistress.”
    “Not with me,” Anne says with a proud but joyless smile. “He’d never dare.”
    “Oh, wouldn’t he? He dared with Catherine,” says the duke.
    “He didn’t love Catherine.”
    “He loved her dearly.” My father’s voice bears an edge of danger in it, and I find my fingernails are digging into my palms, sharp as a cat’s claws.
    “Anne, you are always dispensable, remember that. If you don’t believe it, take a look at your own sister.” He indicates poor Mary Carey with a careless nod.
    Anne draws in a breath. “It doesn’t matter,” she says with a shrug of one shoulder. I know it is a false sentiment. Anne is all about Anne; even I can perceive that. She will not take kindly to rivals. “ I will be queen, won’t I?”
    “If you play this right,” Norfolk says. “Which means you listen to me. Do you understand, girl?”
    Anne draws her expression into one of serene dignity, offering him the slightest of nods. I call this her “queen’s face.” I practice this one when I’m alone, along with her smiles and looks of surprise and coquettish anger. To me she is the quintessence of charm and cultivation.
    We are dismissed and prepare to go to supper, but Anne remains a moment, standing in front of my father with her small shoulders squared, a hint of a smile on her face.
    “You are an old son of a bitch, Thomas Howard,” she says.
    I am awed by the words. I expect my father to strike her for her insolence but instead, after the briefest of pauses, he says with a small smile of his own, “As are you, Anne.” He pats her elbow as he guides her from the room. “Take it as a compliment.”
    Anne’s laughter peals forth as she quits the room.
    I don’t know why, but I am jealous. Certainly not at the exchange of insults. Perhaps it is of the familiarity, the fact that they can vex each other and still retain some strange favor with one another. Of course Anne is very useful to my father…
    I sigh, chastising myself for these uncharitable thoughts as I, too, quit the room, trying to chase away the feeling that I really am not useful at all.
     
     
    I have mixed feelings. I begin to suspect that I am not on the right side. I think of the queen not as the princess dowager, as we are told to refer to Catherine of Aragon now, but as the queen—the sad, gentle queen who greeted me at Westminster when I first arrived. Now she is alone in her northern castle, suffering as it seems her fate to do. She is denied almost everything and retains the smallest of courts; a handful of loyal maids whose devotion I applaud. She is further punished for her stubbornness by being kept separated from her daughter, who is also in exile until she agrees to sign a document acknowledging the invalidity of her mother and father’s marriage and thus naming herself a bastard.
    I am expected to make merry at the expense of such misery. I am not to express even the smallest amount of sympathy for the dethroned monarch or her poor rejected daughter. I am to celebrate the victory of the Howards.
    Our victory seems so precarious. What is viewed as triumph one day can be looked upon as tragedy the next; everyone’s fate depends on the fluctuating moods of the increasingly cantankerous king.
    “And what would you do if you were Queen Catherine?” asks Madge Shelton one night as we draw the covers over us. My dog, Fitz, sleeps between us; he is spoiled and content, innocent of treachery