The Concubine by Norah Lofts

Author:Norah Lofts [Lofts, Norah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction - Historical, Tudors, England/Great Britain, Royalty, 16th Century
ISBN: 978-1439100653
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 1963-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

An entertainment, and not just any entertainment, one with a purpose, to be made ready within a few hours. She sped into the house and sent pages running. Her brother George, Norris, Weston, Brereton, Wyatt, and Smeaton, all to come at once to the chamber overlooking the Knot Garden. She ordered wine, dishes of ripe plums and pears, cold meats, cakes.

When the six men had arrived and the doors were closed, she said,

“You will have heard the news. Canterbury is dead.”

“So perish all your enemies, my dear sister,” George Boleyn said.

“He was old,” she said tolerantly. She had not rated Warham very highly, even as an enemy, and her thought now was to use his death as an excuse. “He was out of favor, too. Nevertheless, to hear of a death is never pleasant, so I pretended to the King that I had an entertainment planned for this evening. That seemed to cheer him. The question now is, what can we possibly make ready in the time?”

She seated herself in the window, spreading her tawny skirts about her; topazes glowed in her ears and at her throat. Alert and intent she looked her very best, and the men crowded round, eager to please, anxious to make suggestions; all except her brother who stood a little to one side and gnawed his knuckle. Up to something, he thought, and more than likely mischief!

The relationship between them was a rare one. In their distant childhood days they had played together, he as the boy and the senior always the leader and instigator. Then they had parted, and when she had appeared at the English Court they had met almost as strangers. But they had quickly found that they were so much in sympathy that they could communicate in half-finished sentences, in the lift of an eyebrow, the flick of a finger. Once he had said to her, “If I didn’t know otherwise, I should swear we were twins.” And once his wife had snapped at him, in the middle of his recounting some tale about Anne, “If she weren’t your sister I should suspect you of being in love with her. You talk of nothing else.” Jane, like many other women, was very jealous of Anne, always demanding to be informed what in the world the King could see in her, and angry when given the answer, “Only a man can understand that.”

He now said, “We could do The Man Leader. It is largely in mime and what words there are matter very little.” It was a clowning comedy, a caricature of the world, in which bears were the ruling race and one bear made a living by leading around a performing man.

“That wouldn’t be suitable,” Anne said.

“It’s cheerful.”

Norris said, “Who wants to wear a bearskin in this weather?” and George saw her throw him a grateful glance.

“That is what I meant when I said it wouldn’t be suitable. Think again. Here I sit, surrounded by the wittiest men in the wittiest

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