Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1

by Philippa Gregory

  My wife,

  I will not be forsworn if you will stand by the promises we have made to each other. I will not desert you if you do not desert me. My father is most angry with me, the cardinal too, and I do fear for us. But if we hold to each other then they must let us be together. Send me a note, a word only, that you will stand by me, and I will stand by you.

  Henry.

  ‘He said there should be a reply,’ the man said.

  ‘Wait outside,’ my mother said to the man, and closed the door in his face. She turned to me. ‘Write a reply.’

  ‘He’ll know her handwriting,’ I said unhelpfully.

  She slid a piece of paper before me, put a pen in my hand and dictated the letter.

  Lord Henry,

  Mary is writing this for me as I am forbidden to put pen to paper to you. It is no use. They will not let us marry and I have to give you up. Do not stand against the cardinal and your father for my sake for I have told them that I surrender. It was only a betrothal de futuro and is not binding on either one of us. I release you from your half-promise and I am released from mine.

  ‘You will break both their hearts,’ I observed, scattering sand on the wet ink.

  ‘Perhaps,’ my mother said coolly. ‘But young hearts mend easily, and hearts that own half of England have something better to do than to beat faster for love.’

  Winter 1523

  With Anne away I was the only Boleyn girl in the world, and when the queen chose to spend the summer with the Princess Mary it was I who rode with Henry at the head of the court on progress. We spent a wonderful summer riding together, hunting, and dancing every night, and when the court returned to Greenwich in November I whispered to him that I had missed my course and I was carrying his child.

  At once, everything changed. I had new rooms and a lady in waiting. Henry bought me a thick fur cloak, I must not for a moment get chilled. Midwives, apothecaries, soothsayers came and went from my rooms, all of them were asked the vital question: ‘Is it a boy?’

  Most of them answered yes and were rewarded with a gold coin. The eccentric one or two said ‘no’ and saw the king’s pout of displeasure. My mother loosened the laces of my gown and I could no longer go to the king’s bed at night, I had to lie alone and pray in the darkness that I was carrying his son.

  The queen watched my growing body with eyes that were dark with pain. I knew that she had missed her courses too, but there was no question that she might have conceived. She smiled throughout the Christmas feasts and the masques and the dancing, and she gave Henry the lavish presents that he loved. And after the twelfth night masque, when there was a sense that everything should be made clear and clean, she asked him if she might speak with him privately and from somewhere, God knows where, she found the courage to look him in the face and tell him that she had been clean for the whole of the season, and she was a barren woman.

  ‘Told me herself,’ Henry said indignantly to me that night. I was in his bedroom, wrapped in my fur cloak, a tankard of mulled wine in my hand, my bare feet tucked under me before a roaring fire. ‘Told me without a moment’s shame!’

  I said nothing. It was not for me to tell Henry that there was no shame in a woman of nearly forty ceasing her bleeding. Nobody had known better than he that if she could have prayed her way into childbed they would have had half a dozen babies and all of them boys. But he had forgotten that now. What concerned him was that she had refused him what she should have given him, and I saw once again that powerful indignation which swept over him with any disappointment.

  ‘Poor lady,’ I said.

  He shot me a resentful look. ‘Rich lady,’ he corrected me. ‘The wife of one of the wealthiest men in Europe, the Queen of England no less, and nothing to show for it but the birth of one child, and that a girl.’

  I nodded. There was no point arguing with Henry.

  He leaned over me to put his hand gently on the round hard curve of my belly. ‘And if my boy is in there then he will carry the name of Carey,’ he said. ‘What good is that for England? What good is that for me?’

  ‘But everyone will know he is yours,’ I said. ‘Everyone knows that you can make a child with me.’

  ‘But I have to have a legitimate son,’ he said earnestly, as if I or the queen or any woman could give him a son by wishing it. ‘I have to have a son, Mary. England has to have an heir from me.’

  Spring 1524

  Anne wrote to me once a week for all the long months of her exile and I was reminded of the desperate letters I had sent her when I had been banished from court. I remembered too that she had not bothered to reply. Now it was me at court and she was in outer darkness and I took a sister’s triumph in my generosity in replying to her often, and I did not spare her news of my fertility, and Henry’s delight in me.

  Our Grandmother Boleyn had been summoned to Hever to be a companion to Anne, and the two of them, the young elegant woman from the French court, and the wise old woman who had seen her husband leap from next to nothing to greatness, quarrelled like cats on a stable roof from morning to night and made each other’s lives a complete misery.

  If I cannot return to court, I shall go mad,

  Anne wrote.

  Grandmother Boleyn cracks hazelnuts in her hands and drops the shells everywhere. They crunch underfoot like snails. She insists that we walk out in the garden together every day, even when it is raining. She thinks that rainwater is good for the skin, and says this is why Englishwomen have such peerless complexions. I look at her weatherbeaten old leather and know that I would rather stay indoors.

  She smells quite dreadful and is completely unaware of it. I told them to draw a bath for her the other day and they tell me that she consented to sit on a stool and let them wash her feet. She hums under her breath at the dinner table, she doesn’t even know she is doing it. She believes in keeping an open house in the grand old way and everyone, from the beggars of Tonbridge to the farmers of Edenbridge, is welcome into the hall to watch us eat as if we were the king himself with nothing to do with our money but give it away.

  Please, please, tell Uncle and Father that I am ready to return to court, that I will do their bidding, that they need fear nothing from me. I will do anything to get away from here.

  I wrote a reply at once.

  You will be able to come to court soon, I am sure, because Lord Henry is betrothed against his will to Lady Mary Talbot. He was said to be weeping when he made his promise. He has gone to defend the Scottish border with his own men from Northumberland under his standard. The Percys have to hold Northumberland safe while the English army goes to France again this summer and, with the Spanish as our allies, finish the work they started last summer.

  George’s wedding to Jane Parker is to take place this month at last, and I shall ask Mother if you can be present. She will surely not refuse you that.

  I am well but very tired. The baby is very heavy and when I try to sleep at night it turns and kicks. Henry is kinder than I have ever known him, and we are both hoping for a boy.

  I wish you were here. He is hoping for a boy so much. I am almost afraid as to what will happen if it is a girl. If only there was something one could do to make it be a boy. Don’t tell me about asparagus. I know all about asparagus. They make me eat it at every meal.

  The queen watches me all the time. I am too big now for concealment and everyone knows it is the king’s baby. William has not had to endure anyone congratulating him on our first child. Everyone knows, and there is a sort of wall of silence that makes it comfortable for everyone but me. There are times when I feel like a fool: my belly going before me, breathless on the stairs, and a husband who smiles at me as if we were strangers.

  And the queen …

  I wish to God I did not have to pray in her chapel every morning and night. I wonder what she is praying for, since all hope for her is gone. I wish you were here. I even miss your sharp tongue.

  Mary.

  George and Jane Parker wer
e finally to marry after countless delays in the little chapel at Greenwich. Anne was to be allowed up from Hever for the day, she could sit in one of the high boxes at the back where no-one would see her, but she was not allowed to attend the wedding feast. Most importantly for us, since the wedding was to take place in the morning, Anne had to ride up the day before and the three of us, George, Anne, and I, had the night together from dinner time till dawn.

  We prepared ourselves for a night of talking like midwives settling in for a long labour. George brought wine and ale and small beer, I crept down to the kitchen and filched bread, meat, cheese and fruit from the cooks who were happy to pile a platter for me, thinking that it was my seven-month belly which was making me hungry.

  Anne was in her cut-down riding habit. She looked older than her seventeen years and finer, her skin was pale. ‘Walking in the rain with the old witch,’ she said grimly. Her sadness had given her a serenity which had not been there before. It was as if she had learned a hard lesson: that chances in life would not fall into her lap like ripe cherries. And she missed the boy she loved: Henry Percy.

  ‘I dream of him,’ she said simply. ‘I so wish I didn’t. It’s such a pointless unhappiness. I am so tired of it. Sounds odd, doesn’t it? But I am so tired of being unhappy.’

  I glanced across at George. He was watching Anne, his face full of sympathy.

  ‘When is his wedding?’ Anne asked bleakly.

  ‘Next month,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘And then it will be over. Unless she dies, of course.’

  ‘If she dies he could marry you,’ I said hopefully.

  Anne shrugged. ‘You fool,’ she said abruptly. ‘I can hardly wait for him in the hope that Mary Talbot drops dead one day. I’m quite a card to play once I’ve lived this down, aren’t I? Especially if you give birth to a boy. I’ll be aunt to the king’s bastard.’

  Without meaning to, I put my hands protectively before my belly as if I did not want my baby to hear that it was only wanted if it was a boy. ‘It’ll carry the name of Carey,’ I reminded her.

  ‘But what if it is a boy and born healthy and strong and golden-haired?’

  ‘I shall call him Henry.’ I smiled at the thought of a strong golden-haired baby in my arms. ‘And I don’t doubt but the king will do something very fine for him.’

  ‘And we all rise,’ George pointed out. ‘As aunts and uncles to the king’s son, perhaps a little dukedom for him, perhaps an earldom. Who knows?’

  ‘And you, George?’ Anne asked. ‘Are you merry, this merry merry night? I had thought you’d be out roistering and drinking yourself into the gutter, not sitting here with one fat lady and one broken-hearted one.’

  George poured some wine and looked darkly into his cup. ‘One fat lady and one broken-hearted one almost exactly suits my mood,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t dance or sing to save my life. She is a most poisonous woman, isn’t she? My beloved? My wife-to-be? Tell me the truth. It’s not just me, is it? There is something about her that makes you shrink from her, isn’t there?’

  ‘Oh nonsense,’ I said roundly. ‘She’s not poisonous.’

  ‘She sets my teeth on edge and she always has,’ Anne said bluntly. ‘If ever there’s tittle-tattle or dangerous scandal, or someone telling tales of someone else, she’s always there. She hears everything and she watches everyone, and she’s always thinking the worst of everyone.’

  ‘I knew it,’ George said glumly. ‘God! What a wife to have!’

  ‘She may give you a surprise on your wedding night,’ Anne said slyly, drinking her wine.

  ‘What?’ George said quickly.

  Anne raised an eyebrow over the cup. ‘She’s very well-informed for a virgin,’ she said. ‘Very knowledgeable about matters for married women. Married women and whores.’

  George’s jaw dropped. ‘Never tell me she’s not a virgin!’ he exclaimed. ‘I could surely get out of it if she was not a virgin!’

  Anne shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen a man do anything that was not from politeness,’ she said. ‘Who would, for God’s sake? But she watches and listens, and she doesn’t care what she asks or what she sees. I heard her whispering with one of the Seymour girls about someone who had lain with the king – not you –’ she said quickly to me ‘– there was very worldly talk about kissing with an open mouth, letting one’s tongue lick and suchlike, whether one should lie on a king or underneath him, and where one’s hands should go, and what could be done to give him such pleasure as he might never forget it.’

  ‘And she knows these French practices?’ George asked, astounded.

  ‘She talked as if she did,’ Anne said, smiling at his amazement.

  ‘Well, by God!’ said George, pouring himself another glass of wine and waving the bottle at me. ‘Perhaps I will be a happier husband than I thought. Where your hands should go, eh? And where should they go, Mistress Annamaria? Since you seem to have heard this conversation as well as my lovely wife-to-be?’

  ‘Oh don’t ask me,’ Anne said. ‘I’m a virgin. Ask anyone. Ask Mother or Father or my uncle. Ask Cardinal Wolsey, he made it official. I’m a virgin. I am an attested official sworn-to-it virgin. Wolsey, the Archbishop of York himself, says I am a virgin. You can’t be more of a virgin than me.’

  ‘I shall tell you all about them,’ George said more cheerfully. ‘I shall write to you at Hever, Anne, and you can read my letter aloud to Grandmother Boleyn.’

  George was pale as a bride on his wedding morning. Only Anne and I knew it was not from heavy drinking the night before. He did not smile as Jane Parker approached the altar, but she was beaming broad enough for them both.

  With my hands clasped over my belly I thought it was a long time since I had stood before the altar and promised to forsake all others and cleave to William Carey. He glanced across at me with a slight smile, as if he too was thinking that we had not foreseen this when we had been handclasped, and hopeful, only four years ago.

  King Henry was at the front of the church, watching my brother take his bride, and I thought that my family were doing well out of my heavy belly. The king had come late to my wedding, and more to oblige his friend William than to honour the Boleyns. But he was at the forefront of the well-wishers when this pair turned from the altar and came down the aisle of the church, and the king and I together led the guests into the wedding feast. My mother smiled on me as if I were her only daughter, as Anne left quietly by the side door of the chapel and took her horse and rode home to Hever accompanied only by serving men.

  I thought of her riding to Hever alone, seeing the castle from the lodge gate, as pretty as a toy in the moonlight. I thought of the way the track curved through the trees and came to the drawbridge. I thought of the rattle of the drawbridge coming down and the hollow sound that the hoof beats made as the horse stepped delicately on the timbers. I thought of the dank smell of the moat and then the waft of meat cooking on a spit as one entered the courtyard. I thought of the moon shining into the courtyard and the haphazard line of the gable ends against the night sky, and I wished with all my contrary heart that I was squire of Hever and not the pretend queen of a masquing court. I wished with all my heart that I might have been carrying a legitimate son in my belly and that I could have leaned out of the window and looked out over my land, just a little manor farm perhaps, and known that it would be all his by right one day.

  But instead I was the lucky Boleyn, the Boleyn blessed by fortune and the king’s favour. A Boleyn who could not imagine the boundaries of her son’s land, who could not dream how far he might rise.

  Summer 1524

  I withdrew from the court for the whole of the month of June to prepare for my lying in. I had a darkened room hung with thick tapestries, I should see no light nor breathe fresh air until I emerged six long weeks after the birth of my baby. Altogether I would be walled up for two and a half months. I was attended by my mother and by two midwives, a couple of serving maids and a lady’s maid supported them. Outside th
e chamber, taking turn and turn about night and day, were two apothecaries waiting to be called.

  ‘Can Anne be with me?’ I asked my mother as I eyed the darkened room.

  She frowned. ‘Her father has ordered that she must stay at Hever.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ I said. ‘It’ll be such a long time and I’d like her company.’

  ‘She can visit,’ my mother ruled. ‘But we can’t have her present at the birth of the king’s son.’

  ‘Or daughter,’ I reminded her.

  She made the sign of the cross over my belly. ‘Please God it is a boy,’ she whispered.

  I said nothing more, content to have carried my way by getting Anne to visit me. She came for a day and stayed for two. She had been bored at Hever, infuriated by our Grandmother Boleyn, desperate to get away, even to a darkened room and a sister biding her time by sewing little nightshirts for a royal bastard.

  ‘Have you been over to Home Farm?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve ridden past it.’

  ‘I wondered how they were getting on with their strawberry crop?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘And the Peters’ farm? Did you go over for the sheep shearing?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘D’you know what hay crop we got this year?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anne, what on earth do you do all day?’

  ‘I read,’ she said. ‘I practise my music. I have been composing some songs. I ride every day. I walk in the garden. What else is there to do in the country?’

  ‘I go round and see the farms,’ I remarked.

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘They’re always the same. The grass grows.’

  ‘What d’you read?’

  ‘Theology,’ she said shortly. ‘Have you heard of Martin Luther?’

  ‘Of course I’ve heard of him,’ I said, stung. ‘Enough to know that he’s a heretic and his books are forbidden.’