Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1

by Philippa Gregory

  William was unendingly patient with them. He made sure that every day they learned a little more, and I suspected that he also made sure that they did not learn too fast. He wanted them to ride on their own by the end of the summer, but not before.

  ‘D’you have no home of your own to go to?’ I asked unkindly as we walked back to the castle one evening, each of us leading a pony. The sun was sinking behind the turrets and it looked like a little fairytale palace with the windows winking with rosy light and the sky all pale and cloud-striped behind it.

  ‘My father lives in Northampton.’

  ‘Are you his only son?’ I asked.

  He smiled at that key question. ‘No, I am a second son: good for nothing, milady. But I am going to buy a little farm if I can, in Essex. I have a mind to be a landowner of a small farm.’

  ‘Where will you find the money?’ I asked curiously. ‘You can’t do very well from my uncle’s service.’

  ‘I served on a ship and took a little prize money a few years ago. I have enough to start. And then I shall find a woman who would like to live in a pretty house amid her own fields and know that nothing – not the power of princes nor the malice of queens – can touch her.’

  ‘Queens and princes can always touch you,’ I said. ‘Else they would not be queens and princes.’

  ‘Yes, but you can be so small as to be of no interest to them,’ he said. ‘Our danger would be your son. While they see him as the heir to the throne then we would never be out of their sights.’

  ‘If Anne has a boy of her own she’ll give mine up,’ I said. Without realising it I had followed the train of his thoughts just as I had fallen into step beside him.

  Cunningly he said nothing to alert me. ‘Better than that, she’ll want him away from the court. He could be with us and we could bring him up as a little country squire. It’s not a bad life for a man. Perhaps the best life there is. I don’t like the court. And these last few years you never know where you are.’

  We reached the drawbridge and in accord helped the children from their saddles. Catherine and Henry ran ahead into the house as William and I led their ponies round to the stable yard. A couple of lads came out to take them from us.

  ‘Coming to dinner?’ I asked casually.

  ‘Of course,’ he said and threw me a little bow and was gone.

  It was only in my room, as I kneeled and prayed that night and found my mind wandering, as it always does, that I realised that I had let him talk to me as if I would be the woman who would want a pretty house amid my own fields, and William Stafford in my married bed.

  Dear Mary,

  We are to come to Richmond for autumn and then Greenwich for winter. The queen will not be under the same roof as the king, ever again. She is to go to Wolsey’s old house, The More in Hertfordshire, and the king is to give her a court of her own there, so she need not complain of being ill-treated.

  You are no longer to be in her service, you will serve me alone.

  The king and I are confident that the Pope is in terror of what the king might do to the church in England. We are certain that he will rule in our favour as soon as the courts reconvene in the autumn. I am preparing myself for an autumn wedding and a coronation soon after. It is all but complete – grudge who will grudge it!

  Uncle has been very cold towards me and the Duke of Suffolk has quite turned against me. Henry sent him away from us this summer and I was glad to have him taught a lesson. There are too many people envying me and watching me. I want you at Richmond when I arrive, Mary. You may not go to the que – to Katherine of Aragon at The More. And you may not stay at Hever. I am doing this for your son as much as for myself and you will help me.

  Anne.

  Autumn 1531

  That autumn when I returned to court I realised that the queen was finally thrown down. Anne had convinced Henry that there was no longer any point in keeping up the appearance of being a good husband. They might as well show their brazen faces to the world and defy anyone to come against them.

  Henry was generous. Katherine of Aragon lived in great state at The More and she entertained visiting ambassadors as if she were still a beloved and honoured queen. She had a household of more than two hundred people, fifty of them maids in waiting. They were not the best of the young women: those all flocked to the king’s court and found themselves attached to Anne’s household. Anne and I had a merry day in allocating young women that we disliked to the queen’s court, we got rid of half a dozen Seymours that way, and laughed at the thought of Sir John Seymour’s face when he found out.

  ‘I wish we could send George’s wife to wait on the queen,’ I said. ‘He would be happier if he came home and found her gone.’

  ‘I’d rather have her here where I can see her than send her to somewhere that she might cause more trouble. I want no-one around the queen but nonentities.’

  ‘You can’t still fear her. You have all but destroyed her.’

  Anne shook her head. ‘I’ll not be safe until she is dead,’ she said. ‘Just as she will not be safe until I am dead. It is not just a matter now of a man or a throne, it is as if I am her shadow and she is mine. We are locked together till death. One of us has to win outright and neither of us can be sure that we have won or lost until the other is dead and in the ground.’

  ‘How could she win?’ I demanded. ‘He won’t even see her.’

  ‘You don’t know how much people hate me,’ Anne whispered, I had to lean close to hear. ‘When we are on our progress we go from house to house now, and never stop in the villages. People have heard the rumours from London and they no longer see me as a pretty girl who rides beside the king, they see me as the woman who destroyed the happiness of the queen. If we linger in a village then people shout against me.’

  ‘No!’

  She nodded. ‘And when the queen came into the City and gave a banquet there was a mob outside Ely Palace and they were all calling out blessings on her and promising her that they would never bow the knee to me.’

  ‘A handful of sulky servants.’

  ‘What if it’s more than that?’ Anne asked bleakly. ‘What if the whole country hates me? What d’you think the king feels when he hears them booing and cursing me? D’you think a man like Henry can bear to be cursed when he rides out? A man like Henry, who has been used to praise ever since he was a child?’

  ‘They’ll get accustomed,’ I said. ‘The priests will preach in the churches that you are his wife, when you give them a son they’ll turn round in a moment, you’ll be the saviour of the country.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It all hangs on that, doesn’t it? A son.’

  Anne was right to fear the mob. Just before Christmas we went up the river from Greenwich to dinner with the Trevelyans. It was not an outing of the court. Nobody knew that we were going. The king was dining in private with a couple of ambassadors from France and Anne took a fancy to go into the City. I went with her, with a couple of the king’s gentlemen and a couple of the other ladies. It was cold on the river and we were wrapped up warmly in furs. No-one on the banks could even have seen our faces as the boat stopped at the Trevelyans’ stairs and we disembarked.

  But somebody saw us, and somebody recognised Anne, and before we had even started eating there was a servant running into the hall and whispering to Lord Trevelyan that there was a mob coming towards the house. His quick glance at Anne told us all who they were coming for. She rose at once from the table, her face as white as her pearls.

  ‘You’d better go,’ his lordship said ungallantly. ‘I cannot promise your safety here.’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘You can close your gates.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, there are thousands of them!’ His voice was sharp with fear. Now we were all on our feet. ‘This isn’t a gang of apprentice lads, it’s a mob coming, they are swearing to hang you from the rafters. You had better get to your boat and go back to Greenwich, Lady Anne.’

  She hesitated for a moment, he
aring his determination to get her away from his home.

  ‘Is the boat ready?’

  Someone ran from the hall shouting for the boatmen.

  ‘Surely we can beat them off!’ Francis Weston said. ‘How many men have you got here, Trevelyan? We can take them on, teach them a lesson, and then have our dinner.’

  ‘I have three hundred men,’ his lordship started.

  ‘Well then – let’s arm them and …’

  ‘The mob is eight thousand, and growing as they pass through every street.’

  There was a stunned silence. ‘Eight thousand?’ Anne whispered. ‘Eight thousand people marching against me in the streets of London?’

  ‘Quickly,’ Lady Trevelyan said. ‘For God’s sake, get to your boat.’

  Anne snatched her cape from the woman and I grabbed another, it wasn’t even mine. The ladies who had come with us were crying with fear. One of them ran away upstairs, she was afraid to be on the river in case they came after us on the dark waters. Anne raced out of the house and through the black garden. She flung herself into the boat and I was right behind her. Francis and William were with us, the rest threw the mooring ropes into the boat and pushed it off. They wouldn’t even come with us.

  ‘Get your heads down and keep covered,’ one of them shouted.

  ‘And take the royal standard down.’

  It was a shameful moment. One of the boatmen snatched out his knife and cut the ropes holding the royal standard for fear that the people of England should see their own king’s flag. He fumbled with it and then it slipped from his hand and fell overboard. I watched it turn in the water and sink down.

  ‘Never mind that! Row!’ Anne shouted, her face veiled in her furs.

  I ducked down beside her and we clung together. I could feel her trembling.

  We saw the mob as we pulled out into the swirling current. They had lit torches and we could see the bobbing flares reflected in the dark river. The string of lights seemed to go on for ever. Over the water we could hear them shouting curses on my sister. At each violent shout there was a roar of approval, a roar of naked hatred. Anne shrank lower in the boat, held onto me yet more tightly and shook with fear.

  The boatmen rowed like men possessed, they knew that none of us would survive an attack on the boat in this weather. If the mob even knew that we were out on the dark water they would heave up cobblestones and throw them, they would chase down the banks to get to us, they would find boats to commandeer and they would be after us.

  ‘Row faster!’ Anne hissed.

  We made ragged progress, too afraid to beat a drum or shout the rhythm. We wanted to slip past the mob, shielded by the darkness. I peered over the edge of the boat and saw the lights pause, hesitate, as if they were looking out into the darkness, as if they could sense with the preternatural awareness of a savage beast that the woman they wanted was muffling her sobs of terror into her furs only yards away from them.

  Then the procession went on, to the Trevelyans’ house. It wound along the curve of the river, the torches stretching for what seemed like miles. Anne sat up and pushed back her hood. Her face was aghast.

  ‘D’you think he’ll protect me against that?’ she demanded fiercely. ‘Against the Pope – yes – especially when it means that he gets the tithes of the church into his own keeping. Against the queen – yes – especially when it means that he gets a son and heir. But against his own people, if they come for me with torches and ropes in the night? D’you think he’ll stand by me then?’

  It was a quiet Christmas at Greenwich that year. The queen sent the king a beautiful cup of gold and he sent it back to her with a cold-hearted message. We felt her absence all the time. It was like a home when a beloved mother is missing. It was not that she had been sparkling or brilliant or provocative as Anne always, wearisomely, was – it was just that she had always been there. Her reign had gone on for so long that there were very few people who could remember the English court without her.

  Anne was determinedly bright and enchanting and active. She danced and she sang, she gave the king a set of darts in Biscayan fashion and he gave her a room full of the most expensive fabrics for her gowns. He gave her the key to the room and watched her as she went in and exclaimed in delight at the rich swathes of colour swagged from one golden pole to another. He showered gifts on her, on all of us Howards. He gave me a beautiful shirt with a collar of blackwork. But still, it was more like a wake than Christmas. Everyone missed the steadying presence of the queen and wondered what she was doing at the lovely house which had belonged to the cardinal, who had been her enemy till the very last when he had finally found the courage to acknowledge that she was in the right.

  Nothing could lift people’s spirits, though Anne wore herself to a shadow trying to be merry. At night she would lie beside me in the bed and even in her sleep I would hear her muttering, like a woman quite insane.

  I lit the candle one night and held it up to see her. Her eyes were closed, dark eyelashes sweeping her white cheeks. Her hair was tied back under a nightcap as bleached as her skin. The shadows under her eyes were violet as pansies, she looked frail. And all the time her bloodless lips, parted in a smile, were muttering introductions, jests, quick quips. Every now and again she would turn her head restlessly on the pillow, that enchanting turn of her head that she did so well, and she would laugh, a horrid breathy sound from a woman so driven that even in her deepest dreams she was trying to make a celebration come alive.

  She started to drink wine in the morning. It brought colour to her face and a brightness to her eyes, it lifted her from her intense fatigue and nervousness. Once she thrust a bottle at me when I came into her rooms with Uncle following me. ‘Hide it,’ she hissed desperately and turned to him with the back of her hand against her mouth so that he would not smell the drink on her breath.

  ‘Anne, you have to stop,’ I said when he had gone. ‘Everyone watches you all the time. People are bound to see, and they will tell the king.’

  ‘I can’t stop,’ she said darkly. ‘I can’t stop anything, not for a moment. I have to go on and on and on, as if I am the happiest woman in the world. I am going to marry the man I love. I am going to be Queen of England. Of course I am happy. Of course I am wonderfully happy. There couldn’t be a happier woman in England than me.’

  George was due to come home in the New Year and Anne and I decided on a private dinner in her grand rooms to welcome him. We spent the day consulting with the cooks and ordering the very best that they had, and then the afternoon lingering in the windowseats waiting to see George’s boat coming up the river with the Howard standard flying. I spotted it first, dark against the dusk, and I did not say a word to Anne but slipped from the room and ran down the stairs so that when George disembarked and came up the landing stage I was alone, into his arms, and it was me that he kissed and whispered: ‘Good God, sister, I am glad to be home.’

  When Anne saw that she had lost the chance of taking first place she did not run after me but waited to greet him in her rooms, before the great arching mantelpiece when he bowed and next kissed her hand and only then folded her into his arms. Then the women were dismissed and we were the three Boleyns together again, as we had always been.

  George had told us all his news over dinner and he wanted to know everything that had happened since he had been away from court. I noticed that Anne was careful what she told him. She did not tell him that she could not go into the City without an armed guard. She did not tell him that in the country she had to ride swiftly through peaceful little villages. She did not tell him that the night after Cardinal Wolsey had died she had designed and danced in a masque entitled ‘Sending the Cardinal to Hell’ which had shocked everyone who saw it by its tasteless triumphing over the king’s dead friend and its outright bawdiness. She did not tell him that Bishop Fisher was still against her and that Bishop Fisher had nearly died of poison. When she did not tell him these things I knew, as I had in truth known before, that she was
ashamed of the woman that she was becoming. She did not want George to know how deep this canker of ambition had spread inside her. She did not want him to know that she was not his beloved little sister any more but a woman who had learned to throw everything, even her mortal soul, into the battle to become queen.

  ‘And what about you?’ George asked me. ‘What’s his name?’

  Anne was blank. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Anyone can see – surely I’ve not got it wrong? – Marianne is glowing like a milkmaid in springtime. I would have put a fortune on her being in love.’

  I blushed a deep scarlet.

  ‘I thought so,’ my brother said with deep satisfaction. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Mary has no lover,’ Anne said.

  ‘I suppose she might have her eye on somebody without your permission,’ George suggested. ‘I suppose somebody might have picked her out without applying to you, Mistress Queen.’

  ‘He’d better not,’ she said, without a trace of a smile. ‘I have plans for Mary.’

  George let out a soundless whistle. ‘Good God, Annamaria, anyone would think you were anointed already.’

  She rounded on him. ‘When I am, I will know who my friends are. Mary is my lady in waiting and I keep good order in my household.’

  ‘Surely she can make her own choice now.’

  Anne shook her head. ‘Not if she wants my favour.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Anne! We’re family. You’re where you are because Mary stepped back for you. You can’t turn around now and act like a Princess of the Blood. We put you where you are. You can’t treat us like subjects.’

  ‘You are subjects,’ she said simply. ‘You, Mary, even Uncle Howard. I had my own aunt sent from court, I had the king’s brother-in-law sent from court. I had the queen herself sent from court. Is there anyone who has any doubt that I can send them into exile if I wish? No. You may have helped me to be where I am –’