“Good Evening , Sir John. I hope that you will accept a little gift from me.'I should be honored, Your Majesty.'I want to give you a little carved stool from my privy chambers. A pretty little piece from France. I hope you will like it.'I should be grateful.'It is for your daughter. For Jane. To sit on. She seems not to have a seat of her own but she must borrow mine.”

“Jane," I said quietly.She opened her eyes, she had been far away in prayer."Yes, Mary? Forgive me, I was praying.""If you go on flirting with the king with those sickly little smiles, one of us Boleyns is going to scratch your eyes out.”

“Do you really think that God in his heaven with all the angels, there from the beginning of time and looking towards the day of judgement day, really looks down on all the world and see's you and little harry and says 'whatever you choose to do is my will?' "Yes i do." she says uncertainly.”

“The stewards, and then the bailiffs, and then finally the lawyers meet. They wrangle, they agree, and we are to be married in June. It is no little decision for me - for the first time in my life I have my own lands in my own hands as a widow; once I become a wife everything becomes Lord Stanley's property. I have to struggle to reserve what I can from the law that rules that a wife has no rights, and I keep what I can, but I know that I am choosing my master.”

“Oh yes. Draw your hem back from my mud, little sister.”

“I was born to be your rival,' she [Anne] said simply. 'And you mine. We're sisters, aren't we?”

“I have given my word that only death will take me from you.”