She arched her back and rolled back her shoulders, turning her face towards the sun.
Thomasin and Ellen took their baskets and picked their way through the long grass, which was dotted with wildflowers. The trees were spread out, with their little packages dangling enticingly between clumps of leaves.
“I fear it is too early in the season for many,” Ellen said, pulling down a nearby branch. “There are one or two, but most will be too hard yet.”
“Some are pale,” Thomasin admitted, inspecting a tree, “but there are a good few here. I think the orchard being so sheltered brings them on early.” She plucked a few firm, pale red fruits and dropped them into her basket.
“I suppose they could always be candied, or made into a conserve,” said Ellen, following her lead.
“I wonder what they are saying in the queen’s chambers right now,” Thomasin mused after a while.
“Not the truth, that is for sure,” Ellen replied swiftly.
Thomasin paused, her hand upon a branch. “What do you mean?”
“Well, no one is being brave enough to tell her the truth, are they?”
“What do you mean? What is the truth?”
Ellen stopped and looked at her cousin. “That she cannot win this. The king will have his way. He always does, no matter what the court finds. It can only cause more heartache and pain for the queen the longer she fights it.”
Thomasin looked at her cousin aghast.
“What?” said Ellen indignantly. “Surely you must see that? You don’t think Henry is ever going to return to her bed, when there is Anne, and a thousand others like her ready and willing?”
Thomasin swallowed. “I know, but it’s just … the way you put it, it’s so harsh.”
“But that’s the problem. No one is telling Catherine the truth. No one is being direct. She can’t win. Not for all the Popes and Emperors and foreign lawyers. She can’t win because Henry doesn’t wish it. And while they explore new legal arguments and find new biblical quotations, it only draws out her suffering.”
“Would you be the one to tell her, like this, as bluntly as you spoke to me?”
“Not for the world.”
“There we are, then.”
Thomasin turned back to the cherries, but Ellen had not yet finished.
“But someone must. She is living with false hopes, breaking her own heart.”
“I think the king has already done that for her.”
“Indeed. But the time has come for her to recognise the truth.”
A silence fell between them. Thomasin gazed at the dancing green leaves before her.
“What has brought about these thoughts?” she asked Ellen eventually.
Her cousin sighed. “Seeing how the queen suffers daily. How the king acts. Anne herself. It has gone on too long. He will never return to her.”
“But she will never give up her queenship.”
Ellen made no reply.
“What? You think she should step aside and admit that the marriage was untrue, and live as the dowager princess of Wales that she was twenty years before?”
“It may be the only way. I do not think Henry will wait much longer.”
Thomasin thought of the impatient king striding past her this morning. She could not deny he was a man who got his own way.
