“Setting in,” William said. He had wrapped sacking around his legs and boots and he stood in the little porch outside the door untying it and kicking off the snow. I came slowly down the stairs and smiled at him. He was arrested by the sight of me. “Are you well?”
“Dreamy,” I said. “I have been watching the snow all the morning.”
He exchanged one swift meaningful glance with the midwife who was making porridge at the fire, and then he hopped across the kitchen floor in his bare feet and drew me into a chair at the fireside. “Are your pains coming?” he asked.
I smiled. “Not yet. But I think it will be today.”
The midwife slopped porridge into a big bowl and passed it to me with a spoon. “Sup up then,” she said encouragingly. “We’ll all need our strength.”
In the end it was an easy birth. My baby girl came in only four hours of labor and the midwife wrapped her in a warm white sheet and put her to my breast. William, who was at my side for every moment of the four hours, put his hand on her little bloodstained head and blessed her, his mouth trembling with emotion. Then he lay down on the bed beside me. The old woman threw a cover over the three of us and left us warm, wrapped in each other’s arms, fast asleep.
We did not wake until the baby stirred and cried two hours later and then I put her to my breast and felt the familiar, wonderful sensation of a beloved child feeding. William tucked a shawl around my shoulders and went downstairs to fetch me a cup of mulled ale. It was still snowing, I could see the white flakes against the darker sky from the bed. I snuggled down into the warmth and leaned back against the goosefeather pillows and knew that I was a woman blessed indeed.
Spring 1535
Dear Sister,
The queen our sister commands me to tell you that she is with child once more and that you are to come to court to help her but that your husband must stay at Rochford and the baby with him. She will not see either. Your pension will be restored to you and you may be allowed to see your children at Hever this summer.
That is the message I have been ordered to give you, and I tell you as well that we need you at Hampton Court. Anne expects her confinement in the autumn of this year. We will go on progress this summer but not very far. She is anxious to have you with her, because she is desperate to keep this child, as you can imagine, and she wants a friend at court as well as me. In truth, at the moment, she is the loneliest woman in the world. The king is quite taken up with Madge who goes everywhere in a new gown for every day of the week. There was a family conference held the other day by our uncle to which neither I nor Father nor Mother was bid. The Sheltons went. I leave you to imagine what Anne and I made of that. Anne is still queen, but she is no longer favorite either with the king or with her own family.
I warn you of one other thing before you arrive. The city is in an uneasy mood. The oath of succession has driven five good men to the Tower of London and to their deaths and it may drive more. Henry has discovered that his power is without limits and now there is neither Wolsey nor Queen Katherine nor Thomas More to keep him steady. The court itself is a wilder place than when you knew it before. I have been in the forefront of it, and it sickens me. It is like a runaway cart and I cannot see how to leap clear. It is not a happy place that I am bidding you visit. No—that I am begging you to visit.
As inducement, I can promise you a summer with your children, if Anne is well enough to let you leave her.
George.
I took the letter with the heavy Boleyn seal to my husband where he was in the yard, milking a cow with his head pressed against her warm flank and the milk hissing into the bucket.
“Good news?” he asked, reading my bright face.
“I am allowed back to court. Anne is with child again and she wants me there.”
“And your children?”
“I can see them this summer if she will release me.”
“Thank God,” he said simply, and he turned his head to the cow’s belly and closed his eyes for a moment and I realized, as I had not fully known before, that he had been suffering for me in the loss of my children.
“Any forgiveness for me?” he asked after a little while.
I shook my head. “You’re forbidden. But I suppose you could just come with me.”
“I’d be sorry to leave the farm again for long.”
I chuckled. “Have you become a rustic, my love?”
“Arr,” he said. He rose from the milking stool and patted the cow on the rump. I held open the gate for her and she went out into the field where the spring grass was coming through rich and green. “I’ll come to court with you, whether they say so or not; and when the summer comes, we’ll come back here.”
“After Hever,” I stipulated.
He smiled at me and his warm hand closed on mine as it rested on the top of the gate. “After Hever, of course,” he said. “When is the queen’s baby due?”
“In the autumn. But no one knows.”
“Pray God this time she can carry it.” He hesitated for a moment and then dipped a ladle into the warm milk. “Taste,” he commanded.
I did as I was bid and drank a draught of the warm foamy milk.
“Good?”
“Yes.”
“D’you want it in the dairy for churning?”
“Yes,” I said. “I thought I’d do it myself.”
“I don’t want you getting too tired.”
I smiled at his concern. “I can do it.”
“I’ll carry it in for you,” he said tenderly. And he led the way into the dairy where our baby, named Anne to please her aunt, wrapped tight in her swaddling, was asleep on the bench.
The royal barge was sent to bring me back to Hampton Court. William, the wet nurse, and myself embarked at Leigh very grand in our court clothes. Our horses were to follow later. The imposing nature of our send-off was rather spoiled by my husband who kept shouting last-minute instructions to Megan’s husband who would care for the farm while we were away.
“I am sure he would have remembered the shear the sheep,” I remarked mildly when William finally settled down into his seat and stopped hanging over the rail and bawling like a seaman. “When their coats grew very long, he would probably have noticed.”
He grinned. “I am sorry. Did I disgrace you?”
“Well, since you are a member of the royal family, I do think you might find a way to behave which is not quite like a drunk farmer on market day.”
He was quite unrepentant. “Beg your pardon, Lady Stafford,” he said. “I swear, when we get to Hampton Court I shall be discretion itself. Where shall I sleep, for instance? Would a hayloft in your stable be sufficiently humble?”
“I thought we might take a little house in the town. And I’ll come every day for most of the day.”
“And you had better come home to sleep at night,” he said emphatically. “Or I shall come up to the palace and fetch you. You’re my wife now, my acknowledged wife. I expect you to act like one.”
I smiled and turned my head away so that he should not see the amusement in my face. Pointless to remind my straightforward determined husband, that my previous marriage had been a court marriage and I had all but never slept in my husband’s bed, and no one had been in the least surprised.
“Makes no difference,” he said, with his intuitive knowledge of my thoughts. “No difference at all how your first marriage was. This is my marriage, and I want my wife in my bed.”
I laughed aloud and snuggled back into his arms. “It’s where I want to be,” I confessed. “Why would I ever want to be anywhere else?”
The royal barge went smoothly upriver, the rowers keeping to the rhythmic beat of the drum, the tide, rushing inward, carrying us as fast as a cantering horse. The familiar landmarks came into sight, the great square white tower and the yawning mouth of the watergate at the Tower of London. The bridge was a dark shadow across the river like a doorway opening up to the beauty of the waterside palaces and their gardens and all the bu
stle and excitement of the central waterway of a great city. The little wherries and ferries and fishing boats criss-crossed the river before us, at Lambeth the great ponderous horse ferry hesitated while we went swiftly by. William pointed to a great gray heron nesting awkwardly in some trees at the water’s edge and a cormorant as it upended and dived, a dark acquisitive shadow under water.
Many faces turned in the direction of the royal barge but there were few smiles. I remembered riding in the barge with Queen Katherine and how everyone had pulled off their hats as we went by and the women curtsied, and the children kissed their hands and waved. There had been a trust that the king was wise and strong and that the queen was beautiful and good and that nothing could go wrong. But Anne and the Boleyn ambition had opened a great crack in that unity and now everyone could see into the void. They could see now that the king was no better than some paltry little mayor of a fat little town, who wanted nothing more than to feather his own nest, and that he was married to a woman who knew desire, ambition and greed and longed for satisfaction.
If Anne and Henry had expected the people to forgive them then they must be disappointed. The people would never forgive. Queen Katherine might be all but a prisoner in the cold marshes of Huntingdonshire, but she was not forgotten. Indeed, every day that there was no new christening of a new heir for England, her banishment seemed more and more pointless.
I lay back against William’s comforting shoulder and dozed. I heard our baby cry after a little while and I woke to see the wet nurse clasping her close and feeding her. My own breasts, firmly bound, ached in longing, and William tightened his grip around my waist and kissed the top of my head. “She’s well cared for,” he said gently. “And no one will ever take her away from you.”
I nodded. I could order her to be brought to me at any time of the day or night. She was my child in a way that my other two had never been. There was no point in telling him that when I saw her blue intent eyes that I grieved even more for the two I had lost. She could not take their place, she only reminded me that I was a mother of three and that though I might have a warm little bundle in my arms, there were two children of mine somewhere else in the world, and I did not even know where my son lay his head at night.
It was twilight before we saw the great pier of Hampton Court and the great iron gates behind them. The drummer gave an extra roll of drums and we saw the watermen tumbling along the pier making ready for us to land. There was a brief cursory fanfare to honor the king’s standard, and then the barge was docked and we were landed and William and I were back at court.
Discreetly, William, our baby and the wet nurse took the tow path down to the village and left me to enter the palace on my own. He squeezed my hand briefly before he turned away. “Be brave,” he said with a smile. “Remember, she needs you now. Don’t sell your services too cheap.”
I nodded, gathered my cloak around me and turned to face the great palace.
I was shown in as if I were a stranger, up the great stairs to the queen’s apartments. When the guards opened the door and I walked in there was a moment of dead silence and then a storm of female enthusiasm burst about my head. Every woman in the room touched my shoulders, my neck, the sleeves of my gown, the hood over my hair, and remarked how well I was looking, how motherhood became me, how the country air suited me and how delightful it was to see me back at court. Every single woman was my dearest friend, my sweetest cousin, I should have my pick of bedchambers, everyone wanted to share with me. It was so delightful for them to see me back at court that I could only be amazed that they had managed so long without me, not one of them ever writing, not one of them ever asking my sister for clemency.
And was I indeed married to William Stafford? And did he indeed have a manor farm? Just the one? Just one? But a large place? No? How odd! And did we have a baby? A boy or a girl? And who were the godparents and the sponsors? And what was her name? And where were William and the baby now? At court? No? Well, how curious.
I fended off the questions with all the skill that I could manage and looked around for George. He was not there. The king had ridden out late with just a handful of hard-drinking hard-riding favorites and they were not yet back. The ladies had changed for dinner and were awaiting the return of the men. Anne was in her privy chamber, alone.
I took my courage in my hands and went to her door. I tapped on it and turned the handle, and went in.
The room was in shadow, the only illumination coming from the windows which were still unshuttered, the gray light of the May twilight, and a little flickering glow from the small fire. She was kneeling at her prie dieu and I had to choke back an exclamation of superstitious fear. I saw Queen Katherine on her knees at her prie dieu, praying with all her heart that she might conceive a son for her husband and that he might turn back to her, away from the Boleyn girls. But then the ghost queen turned her head and it was Anne, my sister, pale and strained, with her flirtatious eyes shadowed with fatigue. At once my heart went out to her and I crossed the room and wrapped my arms around her where she knelt and said, “Oh Anne.”
She rose to her feet and put her arms around me and her heavy head came down on my shoulder. She did not say that she had missed me, that she was miserably lonely in a court which was turning its attention away from her; but she did not need to. The droop of her shoulders was enough to tell me that queenship was not a great joy to Anne Boleyn in these days.
Gently, I put her in a chair and I took a seat, without permission, opposite her.
“Are you well?” I asked, going to the main point, the only point.
“Yes,” she said. Her lower lip trembled slightly. Her face was very pale with new lines either side of her mouth. For the first time in my life I looked into her face and saw that she resembled our mother, I could see how she would look in old age.
“No pains?”
“None.”
“You look very pale.”
“I’m weary,” she confessed. “It is draining the strength out of me.”
“How many months?”
“Four,” she said, with the instant recollection of a woman who has been thinking about nothing else.
“You’ll feel better soon then,” I said. “The first three are always the worst.” I nearly said, “and then the last three,” but it was no joke to Anne who had only once carried a child through to the last three months.
“Is the king home?” she asked.
“They told me he was still out hunting, George with him.”
She nodded. “Is Madge out there with the ladies?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And that Seymour white-faced thing?”
“Yes,” I said, having no difficulty in recognizing Jane Seymour from that description.
Anne nodded. “Well enough then,” she said. “As long as neither of them are with him then I am content.”
“You should try to be content anyway,” I said gently. “You don’t want a belly full of bile with a baby in there.”
She gave me a swift glance and a hard laugh. “Oh aye, very content. Did your husband come with you?”
“Not to court,” I said. “Since you said he could not.”
“Are you still besotted? Or are you weary now of him and his handful of fields?”
“I love him still.” I was not in the mood to rise to Anne’s baiting. The thought of William filled me with such peace that I did not want to quarrel with anyone, least of all a woman as pale and weary as this queen.
She gave me a bitter little smile. “George says that you are the only Boleyn with sense,” she said. “He says that of the three of us you made the wisest choice. You’ll never be wealthy, but you have a husband who loves you, and a healthy baby in the cradle. George’s wife looks at him as if she would kill him and eat him, her desire is so mixed with hatred; and Henry flits in and out of my room like a butterfly in the springtime. And those two girls flit after him with nets at the ready.”
I laughed aloud at the
thought of the increasingly fat Henry as a butterfly in the springtime. “Big net,” was all I said.
Anne gleamed for a moment, and then laughed too: her merry familiar laugh. “Dear God, I’d give anything to be rid of them.”
“I’m here now,” I said. “I can keep them off you.”
“Yes,” she said. “And if it goes wrong for me you can help me, can’t you?”
“Of course,” I said. “Whatever else happens, you always have George and you always have me.”
There was a flurry of noise from the outer room: an unmistakable bellow of laughter, the great Tudor roar. Anne heard her husband’s joy and she did not smile. “Now I suppose he’ll want his dinner.”
I stopped her as she went to the door. “Does he know that you’re with child?” I asked quickly.
She shook her head. “No one knows but you and George,” she said. “I dare not tell.”
She opened the door and we saw, just as she opened it, Henry tying a locket around the blushing neck of Madge Shelton. At the sight of his wife he flinched but finished his task. “A little keepsake,” he remarked to Anne. “A small wager won by this clever girl here. Good evening, my wife.”
“Husband,” Anne said through her teeth. “Good evening to you.”
The Other Boleyn Girl Page 52