“He wants us to promise that Reginald will not write against him, will cease urging the Pope to act against the king.”

I frown. “Why does he care so much for Reginald’s good opinion?’

“Because Reginald speaks for the Pope. And Cromwell is in living terror and the king is in living terror that the Pope will excommunicate them both, and then nobody will obey their commands. Cromwell needs our support for his own safety,” Montague goes on. “The king says one thing at breakfast and contradicts himself at dinner. Cromwell doesn’t want to go the way of Wolsey. If he pulls down Anne, as Wolsey pulled down Katherine, he wants to know that everyone will advise the king that it is a godly thing.”

“If he pulls down Anne and saves our princess, then we support him,” I say grudgingly. “But he must advise the king to return to obedience to Rome. He must restore the Church. We can’t live in England without our monasteries.”

“Once Anne is gone then the king will make an alliance with Spain and return the Church to the headship of Rome,” Montague predicts.

“And Cromwell will advise this?” I ask skeptically. “He has become a faithful papist all at once?”

“He doesn’t want the bull of excommunication published,” Montague says quietly. “He knows that would ruin the king. He wants us to keep it silent, and pave the way for the king to return to Rome.”

For a moment I have a sense of the joy that comes with having, at last, some stake in the game, some power. Ever since Thomas Cromwell started to advise the king to betray our queen, to destroy our princess, we have been shouting against the wind. Now it seems the weather is changing.

“He has to have our friendship against the Boleyns,” Montague says. “And the Seymours want us to support Jane.”

“Is she the king’s new sweetheart?” I ask. “Do they really think he will marry her?”

“She must be soothing, after Anne,” Montague points out.

“And is it love again?”

He nods. “He is besotted with her. He thinks she is a quiet country girl, shy, ignorant. He thinks she has no interest in matters that concern men. He looks at her family and thinks she will be fertile.”

The young woman has five brothers. “But he cannot think that she is the finest woman at court,” I object. “He has always wanted the very best. He cannot think that Jane outshines all the others.”

“No, he’s changed. She is not the best—not by a long way—but she admires him much more than anyone else,” Montague says. “That’s his new benchmark. He likes the way she looks at him.”

“How does she look at him?”

“She’s awestruck.”

I take this in. I can see that for the king, shaken by his own mortality after hours of unconsciousness, facing the prospect of his own death without a male heir, the adoration of a pure country girl might be a relief. “And so?”

“I dine with Cromwell and Henry Courtenay tonight. Shall I tell him that we will join with them against Anne?”

I remember the huge newly accreted power of the Boleyns and the vast wealth of the Howards and I think that, even so, we can face them down. “Yes,” I say. “But tell him that our price for this is the restoration of the princess and the abbeys. We will keep the excommunication secret, but the king must return to Rome.”

Montague comes back from his dinner with Cromwell with his feet weaving under him, so drunk that he can hardly stand. I have gone to bed as he raps on my door and asks may he come in, and when I open the door, he stands at the threshold and says that he won’t intrude.

“Son!” I say, smiling. “You’re drunk as a stable boy.”

“Thomas Cromwell has a head of iron,” he says regretfully.

“I hope you said nothing more than we agreed.”

Montague leans against the doorjamb and sighs heavily. A warm gust of ale, wine, and I think brandy, for Cromwell has exotic tastes, blows gently into my face. “Go to bed,” I say. “You will be sick as a dog in the morning.”

He shakes his head in wonderment. “He has a head of iron,” he repeats. “A head of iron and a heart like an anvil. You know what he is doing?”

“No.”

“He is setting her own uncle, her own uncle, Thomas Howard, to gather evidence against her. Thomas Howard is going to find evidence against the marriage. He is going to ask for witnesses against his niece.”

“Men of iron with hearts of stone. And the Princess Mary?”

Owlishly, Montague nods at me. “I don’t forget your love of her, I never forget, Lady Mother. I raised it at once. I reminded him at once.”

“And what did he say?” I ask, curbing my impatience to dunk my drunken son’s head in a bucket of icy water.

“He said that she will get a proper household, and be honored in her new house. She will be declared legitimate. She will be restored. She will come to court, Queen Jane will be her friend.”

I nearly choke at the new name. “Queen Jane?”

He nods. “ ’Mazing, isn’t it?”

“You’re sure of this?”

“Cromwell is certain.”

I reach up to him, ignoring the odor of wine and brandy and mulled ale. I pat his cheek, as he beams at me. “Well done. That’s good,” I say. “Perhaps this will end well. And this is not just Cromwell casting bread on the waters? This is the king’s will?”

“Cromwell only ever does the king’s will,” Montague says confidently. “You can be sure of that. And now the king wants the princess restored and the Boleyn woman gone.”

“Amen,” I say, and gently push Montague out of the door of my privy chamber, where his men are waiting for him. “Put him to bed,” I say. “And leave him to sleep in the morning.”

MANOR OF THE ROSE, ST. LAWRENCE POUNTNEY, LONDON, APRIL 1536

Cousin Gertrude is bursting with gossip. She gets hold of me the moment I am off my horse and walking into the hall. “Come,” she says. “Come into the garden, I want to talk to you and we can’t be overheard.”

Laughing, I follow her. “What is it that’s so urgent?”

As soon as she turns to speak my laughter dies, she looks so serious. “Gertrude?”

“The king spoke in private to my husband,” she says. “I did not dare write it to you. He spoke to him after the concubine lost her child. He said that now he sees that God will not give him a son with her.”

“I know,” I say. “I heard it too. Even in the country I heard it. Everyone at court must know, and since everyone knows, it can only be that the king and Cromwell must want everyone to know.”

“You won’t have heard this: he says that she seduced him with witchcraft, and that this is why they will never have a son together.”

I am stunned. “Witchcraft?” I drop my voice to repeat the dangerous word. To accuse a woman of witchcraft is tantamount to sentencing her to death, for what woman can prove that a disaster was not of her making? If someone says that they have been overlooked or bewitched, how can one prove that it was not so? If a king says that he has been bewitched, who is going to tell him that he is mistaken?

“God save her! What did my cousin Henry say?”

“He said nothing. He was too amazed to speak. Besides, what could he say? We all thought she had driven him mad, we all thought that she was driving everyone mad, he was clearly besotted, he was beside himself, who’s to say that it wasn’t witchcraft?”