To her surprise, the guards stepped aside at once. She hurried past them into the next room, which was much busier with people waiting to see the king. A little pang of fear gripped Thomasin’s stomach: it reminded her of her family complaining to Henry at Greenwich last Christmas, on the occasion of Cecilia’s disgrace.
She was relieved to see Archbishop Warham seated on a chair by a low table, where a clerk was copying down a letter as he dictated. Striding across the room boldly, she curtseyed before him. Warham looked up, his ancient, pale eyes rimmed with red. Approaching eighty, he had lived through decades of conflict, through the reigns of five kings, through famine, plague and fire, and now the weight of the world seemed to settle on his shoulders.
“Forgive the interruption, my lord.”
“You are the queen’s lady, are you not?” His voice was thin and reedy.
“Thomasin Marwood. She sends you this.”
She came closer and held out the letter. The back of the archbishop’s hand was a knot of blue veins. He took the paper and broke the seal.
“Tell her I will be there.”
Thomasin curtseyed again, then cast a look towards the next pair of closed doors, through which Anne had passed. “I was wondering if John Clerk or Bishop Fisher might be within.”
“I doubt it,” said the old man. “The king is at pleasure this morning, not the business he professed.”
Thomasin did not respond to the air of judgement, and just at that moment, a woman’s laugh was heard from within. This was really the point at which she should turn around and go and seek the others to fulfil her commission, but she had come this far.
She knew one of the men on the door. He was John of Hampshire, whom she had once spoken with in the stables while waiting for Catherine to mount her horse.
“Good morning, John,” she said with a smile, casting her eyes up at his tall frame. “Might you do something for me?”
He gazed at her, half interested, half suspicious. “Will it get me in trouble?”
“Not at all, or I should never ask. I just wondered if you might call Rafe Danvers out for me, for a moment. Say there is someone wishing to speak with him.”
“You’ve come a-courting here, in the king’s chambers?”
“No!” Thomasin said defensively, flushed with annoyance. “I just need to speak with him, if you would be so kind.”
“Very well, one moment.”
But at that moment, the doors swung wide. In a flurry of skirts, a vision of green came striding through and then stopped abruptly.
Anne Boleyn looked Thomasin right in the face. She was bold and dazzling as ever, holding herself with an ease and grace that surpassed all but royalty. Her cheeks were flushed and her dark, dancing eyes, framed by long lashes, caught the intruder.
“Well, well, what do we have here?”
Thomasin immediately dropped a curtsey.
“Thomasin Marwood. What on earth are you doing, creeping around the king’s apartments uninvited, listening at doors?”
The words came rushing to her defence before she could stop them. “It wasn’t that. Ask the guards — I was awaiting admittance.”
“But what on earth for? What business can you have here?”
Thomasin lifted her chin, refusing to be intimidated. “The queen’s business. I have letters to deliver.”
Jean du Bellay crept alongside them and stared down at the letters in Thomasin’s hand as if they might go up in flames. He leaned close and whispered something to Anne.
Anne’s hand shot out. “Give them to me and I shall see that they are delivered.”
Immediately, Thomasin drew the papers close to her chest. “Forgive me, madam, but I was enquiring of the guards whether the recipients are within. If they are not —” and she knew they were not — “then I must carry them away to deliver elsewhere.”
“Who are they for?”
Thomasin hesitated but could not ignore a question from someone of Anne’s status, no matter how much of the queen’s authority she carried with her. “John Clerk and Bishop Fisher.”
