He had heard her voice, from the next room: low, relentless. Henry yelping in indignation. ‘Not me! Not me.’In the antechamber, Thomas Boleyn, Monseigneur, his narrow face rigid. Some Boleyn hangers-on, exchanging glances: Francis Weston, Francis Bryan. In a corner, trying to make himself inconspicuous, the lutenist Mark Smeaton; what's he doing here? Not quite a family conclave: George Boleyn is in Paris, holding talks. An idea has been floated that the infant Elizabeth should marry a son of France; the Boleyns really think this is going to happen.‘Whatever can have occurred,’ he says, ‘to upset the queen?’ His tone is astonished: as if she were the most placid of women.Weston says, ‘It's Lady Carey, she is – that is to say she finds herself –’Bryan snorts. ‘With a bellyful of bastard.’‘Ah. Didn't you know?’ The shock around him is gratifying. He shrugs. ‘I thought it a family matter.’Bryan's eyepatch winks at him, today a jaundiced yellow. ‘You must watch her very closely, Cromwell.’‘A matter in which I have failed,’ Boleyn says. ‘Evidently. She claims the child's father is William Stafford, and she has married him. You know this Stafford, do you?’‘Just about. Well,’ he says cheerfully, ‘shall we go in? Mark, we are not setting this affair to music, so take yourself off to where you can be useful.’Only Henry Norris is attending the king: Jane Rochford, the queen. Henry's big face is white. ‘You blame me, madam, for what I did before I even knew you.’They have crowded in behind him. Henry says, ‘My lord Wiltshire, can you not control either of your daughters?’‘Cromwell knew,’ Bryan says. He snorts with laughter.Monseigneur begins to talk, stumbling – he, Thomas Boleyn, diplomat famed for his silver-tongued finesse. Anne cuts him off: ‘Why should she get a child by Stafford? I don't believe it's his. Why would he agree to marry her, unless for ambition – well, he has made a false move there, for he will never come to court again, nor will she. She can crawl on her knees to me. I care not. She can starve.’If Anne were my wife, he thinks, I'd go out for the afternoon. She looks haggard, and she cannot stay still; you wouldn't trust her near a sharp knife. ‘What to do?’ Norris whispers. Jane Rochford is standing back against the tapestries, where nymphs entwine themselves in trees; the hem of her skirt is dipped in some fabulous stream, and her veil brushes a cloud, from which a goddess peeps. She lifts her face; her look is one of sober triumph.I could have the archbishop fetched, he thinks. Anne wouldn't rage and stamp under his eyes. Now she has Norris by the sleeve; what is she doing? ‘My sister has done this to spite me. She thinks she will sail about the court with her great belly, and pity me and laugh at me, because I have lost my own child.’‘I feel sure that, if the matter were to be viewed –’ her father begins.‘Get out!’ she says. ‘Leave me, and tell her – Mistress Stafford – that she has forfeited any claim on my family. I don't know her. She is no longer a Boleyn.’‘Wiltshire, go.’ Henry adds, in the tone in which a schoolboy is promised a whipping, ‘I shall speak to you later.’He says to the king, innocent, ‘Majesty, shall we do no business today?’ Henry laughs.