Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1

by Philippa Gregory

  George stretched and yawned and smiled lazily down at me from his extended height. ‘She was hot,’ he said. ‘And she could take it out on no-one else. She was hot and once that wears off then please God she has a baby in her belly and a ring on her finger and a crown on her head. Vivat Anna! And grudge who grudges it – it’s done.’

  I left Anne sleeping and thought that I might see William Stafford if I went to my uncle’s rooms at this hour in the morning. The castle was stirring, the lanes approaching the kitchen were crowded with the wagons bringing cords of firewood and charcoal from the woods, fruit and vegetables from the market, and meat, milk and cheese from the farms. In my uncle’s rooms there was the bustle of a great household setting about the day. The maids had finished sweeping and cleaning in the presence chamber and the scullions were loading the fireplaces with logs and blowing on the embers to make them flame up.

  My uncle’s gentlemen were housed in half a dozen small rooms off the great hall, his men at arms slept in the guard room. William could be anywhere. I walked through the presence chamber and nodded at a couple of the gentlemen I knew and tried to look as if I were waiting to see my uncle or my mother.

  The door to my uncle’s privy chamber opened and George came out in a rush.

  ‘Oh good,’ he said on seeing me. ‘Is Anne still asleep?’

  ‘She was when I left her.’

  ‘Go to her and wake her up. Tell her that the clergy has submitted to the king, or at least enough of them to mean that we have won, but Thomas More has announced that he has resigned his post. The king will learn it during Mass today when he receives More’s letter, but she should be forewarned. The king is bound to take it hard.’

  ‘Thomas More?’ I repeated. ‘But I thought he was on our side?’

  My brother tutted at my ignorance. ‘He promised the king never to comment publicly on the dissolution of the marriage. But it’s obvious what he thinks, isn’t it? He’s a lawyer, a logical man, he’s hardly likely to be convinced by the twisting of the truth that’s been going on in a thousand universities in Europe.’

  ‘But I thought he wanted the church reformed?’ I asked. Not for the first time I was adrift in the sea of politics which was my family’s natural element.

  ‘Reformed; not taken to pieces and headed by the king,’ my brother said quickly. ‘Who knows better than Thomas More that the king is not fit to play Pope? He’s known him from childhood. He’d never accept Henry as the heir to St Peter.’ My brother laughed shortly. ‘It’s a ridiculous notion.’

  ‘Ridiculous? I thought we supported it.’

  ‘Of course we do,’ he said. ‘It means that Henry can rule on his own marriage, he can marry Anne. But no-one but a fool would think that there was the least justification for it in law, in morality, or in common sense. Look, Mary, don’t worry. Anne understands all this. Just go and wake her and tell her that More is resigning and the king will learn of it this morning and she is to be calm. That’s what my uncle said. Anne must be calm.’

  I turned to do as he bid me, and just at that very moment, William Stafford came into the hall, shrugging on his doublet. He paused when he saw me and made me a low bow. ‘Lady Carey,’ he said. He bowed to my brother. ‘Lord Rochford.’

  ‘Go,’ my brother said to me and gave me a little push. He ignored William. ‘Go and tell her.’

  There was nothing I could do but hurry from the room without even being able to touch William’s hand and say ‘good morning’ to him.

  Anne and the king were closeted alone for most of the morning, considering what the resignation of Thomas More might mean to them. My father and uncle were with them, and Cranmer and Secretary Cromwell, all the men attached to Anne’s cause, all determined that the king should take the power and the profit of the church in England. Anne and the king came out to dinner in very good harmony and she sat at his right hand as if she were already queen.

  After dinner the two of them went to his privy chamber and everyone was sent away. George raised an eyebrow at me with a little smile and whispered: ‘As long as a little prince comes out of it, eh, Mary?’ and then went strolling off to play at cards with Francis Weston and a couple of the others. I went out into the garden to sit in the sunshine and look at the river, and all the time I knew that I was longing for William Stafford.

  As if I had summoned him, he was suddenly there before me.

  ‘Were you looking for me this morning?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said, lying as quick as a courtier. ‘I was looking for my brother.’

  ‘Whatever the case, I have come looking for you,’ he offered. ‘And glad I am to find you. Very glad, my lady.’

  I moved a little on the seat and gestured that he might sit beside me. The moment he was within touching distance I felt my heart hammer. There was a scent about him, a warm sweet male scent that lingered about his hair and his soft brown beard. I found that I was leaning towards him and I made myself sit back.

  ‘I am to come with your uncle to Calais,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I can be of service to you on the journey.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘I am sorry about the stable yard,’ I said. ‘I was afraid of Anne seeing us together. While she has the guardianship of my son I dare not offend her.’

  ‘I understand,’ William said quickly. ‘It was just the moment – I had hold of your little riding boot. I didn’t want to let go.’

  ‘I can’t be your lover,’ I said in a very low voice. ‘Clearly not.’

  He nodded. ‘But were you looking for me this morning?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered, honest at last. ‘I couldn’t go for another minute without seeing you.’

  ‘I have been hovering in this garden and outside the marquess’s chambers all of the day, hoping to see you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been out here so long that I thought of getting a spade and doing something useful in the time while I was waiting.’

  ‘Gardening?’ I said with a gurgle of laughter, thinking of Anne’s face if I were to announce that I was in love with the man who dug the garden. ‘That hardly helps.’

  ‘No,’ he said, sharing my amusement. ‘But I was hanging round the ladies’ chambers like a pimp so it’s the better of the two. Mary, what shall we do? What is your desire?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, speaking nothing but the truth. ‘I feel as if this is a sort of madness which I am going through and if I had a true friend they would tie me down until it had passed.’

  ‘You think it will pass?’ he asked, as if it were an interesting viewpoint that he had not considered.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘It is a fancy, isn’t it? It is just that it happened to both of us at once. I have taken a fancy to you and if you had not liked me, I would have mooned around a little and made sheep’s eyes at you for a while, and then got over it.’

  He smiled at that. ‘I should have liked that. Couldn’t you do that anyway?’

  ‘We will laugh at this later.’

  I expected him to argue. In truth I was counting on him to argue that this was a real love, an undying love, and persuade me that I had to follow my heart whatever the cost.

  But he nodded. ‘A fancy, then? And nothing more?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, surprised.

  William rose to his feet. ‘How soon do you expect to recover?’ he asked conversationally.

  I stood close to him. I was drawn to him as if every bone in my body needed his touch whatever my mouth might say.

  ‘Just think a little,’ he said to me gently. His mouth was so close to my ear that his breath stirred the tendril of hair which had escaped from my hood. ‘You could be my love, you could be my wife. We would have Catherine, would we not? They would not take her away from you? And as soon as Anne has her own son she will give you Henry back, our boy.’

  ‘He’s not our boy,’ I said, clinging to common sense with difficulty under this low-voiced torrent of persuasion.

  ‘Wh
o bought him his first pony? Who made him his first sailing boat? Who taught him to tell the time by the sun?’

  ‘You,’ I admitted. ‘But no-one but you and me would consider that.’

  ‘He might.’

  ‘He’s only a little boy, he has no say in anything. And Catherine will never have a say in anything. She’ll be just another Boleyn girl who will be sent where they want her.’

  ‘Then break the pattern for yourself, and we’ll rescue the children too. Don’t you be just another Boleyn girl for a day longer. Come and be Mrs Stafford, the one and only most beloved Mrs Stafford, who owns her fields outright and her little farmhouse, and is learning to make cheese and skin a chicken.’

  I laughed and at once he caught at my hand and pressed his thumb against my palm. Despite myself my fingers closed on his hand and we stood for a moment, handclasped in the warm sunshine, and I thought, like a lovesick girl: ‘This is heaven.’

  There was a footstep behind us and I dropped his hand as if it had burnt me and whipped around. Thank God it was George and not that spying wife of his. He looked from my blushing face to William’s impassive expression and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Sister?’

  ‘William here is just telling me that my hunter has strained her fetlock,’ I said at random.

  ‘I’ve poulticed it,’ William said quickly. ‘And Lady Carey can borrow one of the king’s horses while Jesmond is recovering. Shouldn’t be more than a day or two.’

  ‘Very good,’ George said. William bowed and left us.

  I let him go. I did not have the courage, even before George whom I would have trusted with any other secret, to call him back. William walked away, his shoulders a little stiff with resentment.

  George followed my gaze after him. ‘A little lust stirring in the lovely Lady Carey?’ he asked idly.

  ‘A little,’ I conceded.

  ‘Is this the nobody that meant nothing?’

  I smiled ruefully. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t,’ he said simply. ‘Anne has to be immaculate between now and her wedding day, especially now that she is bedding the king. We are all of us on show. If you have a little lust for the man, then sit on it, my sister, for until Anne is married we have to be as chaste as angels, and she has to be head seraphim.’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to roll in the hay with him,’ I protested. ‘My reputation is as good as anyone’s. Certainly better than yours.’

  ‘Then tell him to stop looking at you as if he wanted to eat you alive,’ George said. ‘The man looks completely besotted.’

  ‘Does he?’ I said eagerly. ‘Oh George, does he?’

  ‘God help us,’ George said. ‘Coal on the fire. Yes, I’m afraid he does. Tell him to keep it to himself until Anne is married and Queen of England and then you can choose for yourself.’

  There was an explosive row going on in Anne’s privy chamber. George and I, coming in from a ride, froze in the presence chamber and looked around at Henry’s gentlemen and Anne’s ladies, who were all maintaining a wonderful pretence of not listening while straining to hear every word through the thick door. I heard Anne’s scream of rage over Henry’s rumble of discontent.

  ‘What use has she of them? What use? Or is she to come back to court at Christmas again? Is she to sit in my place and am I to be thrown down now that you have had me?’

  ‘Anne, for God’s sake!’

  ‘No! If you loved me at all I would not have had to ask! How can I go to France in anything but the queen’s jewels? What does it say if you take me to France as a marquess with nothing but a handful of diamonds?’

  ‘They’re hardly a handful …’

  ‘They’re not the crown jewels!’

  ‘Anne, some of those were bought for her by my father for her first marriage, they are nothing to do with me …’

  ‘They are everything to do with you! They are England’s jewels, given to the queen. If I am to be queen then I must have them. If she is queen then she can keep them. Choose!’

  We all heard Henry’s goaded roar. ‘For God’s sake, woman, what do I have to do to please you? You have had every honour that a woman could dream of! What d’you want now? The gown off her back? The hood off her head?’

  ‘All that and more!’ Anne yelled back at him.

  Henry flung open the door, we all began talking with tremendous animation, started upon seeing him, and dropped into our bows.

  ‘I shall see you at dinner,’ he said icily over his shoulder to Anne.

  ‘You will not,’ she said very loudly. ‘For I shall be long gone. I shall take my dinner on the road and my breakfast at Hever. You do not treat me with disdain.’

  At once he turned back to her and the door swung behind him. We all strained forward to hear what we could not see. ‘You would not leave me.’

  ‘I will not be half a queen,’ she said passionately. ‘Either you have me or not at all. Either you love me or not at all. Either I am all yours or I am nobody’s. I will have no half-measures with you, Henry.’

  We heard the rustle of her gown as he crushed her to him and her little sigh of delight.

  ‘You shall have every diamond in the Tower, you shall have her diamonds and her barge as well,’ he promised huskily. ‘You shall have your heart’s desire, since you have given me mine.’

  George stepped forward and closed the door. ‘Anyone for a game of cards?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘I think we may have to wait for some time.’

  There was a ripple of half-suppressed laughter and someone produced a pack of cards and someone else a pair of dice. I sent the page running for the musicians to make some noise to drown whatever indiscreet sighs came from Anne’s privy chamber. I was as busy and as bustling as I could be to make sure that the court was at play while my sister and the king made love. I did everything I could do, so that I did not have to think of the queen, moved to her new and less comfortable house, being told by a messenger from the king that she had to hand over her royal jewels, her very own rings, bracelets and necklaces, and every little token of love that he had ever given her, because my sister wanted to wear them to France.

  It was an enormous expedition, the greatest ever undertaken by Henry’s court since the journey to the Field of the Cloth of Gold; and it was in every way as extravagant and ostentatious as that fabled event had been. It had to be – Anne was determined that anything that Katherine had seen and done must be bettered by her; so we rode through England from Hanbury to Dover like emperors. A troop of horse went ahead of us to clear any malcontents out of the road, but the sheer weight of the expedition and the number of horses, carriages, wagons, soldiers, men at arms, serving men, camp followers and the beauty of the ladies on horseback and their gentlemen companions stunned most of the country into amazed silence.

  We had a clear sailing across the Channel. The ladies went below, Anne retired to her cabin and slept for much of the voyage. The gentlemen were up on deck, wrapped in their riding coats, watching the horizon for other ships and sharing jugs of hot wine. I came up on deck and leaned over the ship’s rail, and watched the movement of the waves rolling beneath the prow of the boat and listened to the creaking of the timbers.

  A warm hand covered my cold one. ‘Are you feeling well?’ William Stafford whispered in my ear. ‘Not sick?’

  I turned towards him and smiled. ‘Not at all, praise God. But all the sailors say that this is a very calm crossing.’

  ‘Please God it stays that way,’ he said fervently.

  ‘Oh! My knight errant! Don’t tell me that you are ill?’

  ‘Not very,’ he said defensively.

  I wanted to take him in my arms. I thought for a moment what a test of love it is, when the beloved is less than perfect. I would never have thought that I could be drawn to a man suffering from seasickness and yet here I was, longing to fetch spiced wine for him and wrap him up warm.

  ‘Come and sit down.’ I glanced around. We were as unobserved as one might ever be in this court which was a
very mine of gossip and scandal. I led him to a rolled pile of sails and settled him against the mast so that he might lean back. I tucked his cloak around him as carefully as if he had been my boy Henry.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ he said in a tone so plaintive that for a moment I thought that he was teasing me, but I met a look of such limpid innocence that I touched his cheek with my cold fingers.

  ‘I’m just going to get us some hot spiced wine.’ I went to the galley where the cooks were heating wine and ale and serving chunks of bread, and when I came back William moved up on the roll of sail so that I could sit beside him. I held the cup while he ate the bread and then we shared the wine, sip for sip.

  ‘Are you better?’

  ‘Of course, is there anything I can do for you?’

  ‘No, no,’ I said hastily. ‘I was just pleased that you look better. Can I get you some more mulled wine?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Thank you. I think I should like to sleep.’

  ‘Could you sleep if you leaned back against the mast?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I could.’

  ‘Or if you lay down on the sail?’

  ‘I think I’d roll off.’

  I glanced around. Most people had gone over to the leeward side of the boat and were dozing or gambling. We were all but alone. ‘Shall I hold you?’

  ‘I should like that,’ he said softly, as if he were almost too ill to speak.

  We exchanged seats, I went with my back to the mast and then he put his dear curly-haired head into my lap and put his arms around my waist and closed his eyes.

  I sat stroking his hair and admiring the softness of his brown beard and the flutter of his eyelashes on his cheek. His head was warm and heavy on my lap, his arms tight around my waist. I felt the total contentment that I always knew when we were close together. It was as if my body had yearned for him all of my life, whatever my mind might have been thinking; and that at last, I had him.

  I tipped my head back and felt the cold sea air on my cheeks. The rocking of the boat was soporific, the muted creak and hush of the wind in the sheets and the sails. The noise grew fainter and fainter as I fell asleep.