Cromwell bowed low to Anne. His eyes, well hooded by his thick brows, swept over Mary appreciatively as they always did when they met or talked. It was as though he had some sort of dire plan for her. She nodded slowly to him and had the strangest impulse to cover her breasts and cross her legs for protection. That was what she always felt near him—the fear that he wanted her, that he undressed her with his piercing eyes. But that was foolish. He would never dare.
“Since I see my news has preceded me, I shall save time and be on my way back to Westminster before high tide. And to your question, Lady Anne, I did serve His Eminence the Cardinal closely and carefully. Indeed, before I came to know His Grace as well as I do now, the wily cardinal taught me everything I know of how to deal with dangerous problems. Good evening to the Boleyn family.” He bowed and was gone.
The door shut behind him. “’Sblood, that man can throw a pall on a party faster than anyone I know. I always thank God in my prayers that he is on our side,” Anne said quietly. The wild look was gone from her eyes and Mary was silently grateful for that.
“I think we had best remember,” Thomas Boleyn said, pouring himself another goblet of dark, red wine, “that Master Cromwell and men like him are on the side of no one but themselves.”
It takes such a man to recognize one, Mary almost said, but she held her tongue. She and her lord father had kept a truce of silence since the terrible row they had had at Westminster on the night the queen had rescued her. If the Boleyns had known of the gentle Catherine’s kindness to her, and if they had ever guessed how she pitied the poor queen the loss of husband, position, and the right to raise her daughter, she would never have heard the end of it from any of them.
“Well, the masque in hell was a fine idea, anyway, Lady Anne,” Jane Rochford put in as she sat back in a velvet chair.
“I only thought His Grace might come himself as he did to tell me I would go to France with him. I thought it might amuse him. Could it be he still harbors some concern for the vicious, dead, old cardinal?”
“Wolsey served the king well and for a great while, Anne,” their father said, and he sank slowly into the chair next to Jane’s. “Again, it would do the Boleyns well to remember that the cardinal also taught His Grace much of what he knows of rule and authority—and ultimate power.”
“Ultimate power, father?” Anne giggled and leaned back on her hands on the huge polished table near her now-silent lutenist. “Shall I show you ultimate power? I can have the king here at this door, at my bidding, in the time it can take some poor simpleton to row the river twice.”
“And for what, Anne? What do you give him when he comes?” her father challenged. “Some silly little play about Wolsey? How long before you run out of pretty trinkets and sweet sayings and promises of sons to come? For five years you have dangled maybes and hopes before a starving man. I think...”
“You will not lecture me, Earl of Wilton! Earl of Wilton thanks to my power over the king! I would not be queen and merely the second Boleyn mistress if I had listened to your counsels long ago!”
The words stung Mary, but did not seem to faze their father, who sat motionless, his goblet perched on the arm of his chair. Mary stood mesmerized at this confrontation between her father and sister. For, although George had told her of the increasing frequency and intensity of their arguments, Mary had never beheld them herself.
“I am wiser, child, and know this king better than you. The miracle is that you have had it your way this long. But I tell you, I have seen him turn on those he loved when it suited him. When his beloved sister Mary wed in France with the duke, he...”
“Stop it! No one knows this king better than I, or is closer to his heart. He can never go back on me now. He is committed. He dissolved the church for me and they will all stand behind him, all the men who bow and need his goodwill. I go to France to meet with the French king, not Spanish Catherine, his incestuous sister-in-law who rots away in some dusty house in the country! And I will marry him, and I will bear him sons!”
“I pray God that will be the way of it, Anne,” he answered and downed his wine. “Now that he cannot go back, I am only counseling that you begin to share his bed before he doubts the sincerity of your promises—and passions.”
“And then,” came Jane’s voice as pointed as her face, “suppose you do not bear His Grace a son as soon as he wills it. Suppose he grows impatient. George and I have no son, so...”
“You stay out of this, Jane Rochford!” Anne glared at her sister-in-law, who merely shrugged at the words. “You bear no son to my brother because he loves you not, and I doubt if such cattiness as you show would breed anything but cats, or...or snakes! I am sorry, George, but it is true.”