Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1

by Philippa Gregory

  I woke to the warmth of his touch, his head nuzzling my crotch, rubbing against my thighs, his hands exploring inside my cape, stroking my arms, my waist, my neck, my breasts. As I sleepily opened my eyes to this flood of sensation, he lifted his head and kissed my bare neck, my cheek, my eyelids, and then finally, passionately, my mouth. His mouth was warm and sweet and lingering, his tongue slid between my lips and stirred me. I wanted to eat him, I wanted to drink him, I wanted him to kiss me and then bear me down onto the holystoned boards of the deck and to have me, then and there, and never let me go.

  When he loosened his grip on me and would have released me it was me who put my hands behind his head and pulled his mouth towards me again, it was my desire which drove us onwards, not his.

  ‘Is there a cabin? A bunk? Anywhere we can go?’ he asked me breathlessly.

  ‘The ladies have all the accommodation, and I gave my bunk away.’

  He gave a little groan of frustrated desire and then ran his hands through his hair and laughed at himself. ‘Good God, I am like a cunt-struck page!’ he said. ‘I am shaking with desire.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Oh God, me too.’

  William got to his feet. ‘Wait here,’ he ordered me, and disappeared down into the body of the ship. He came back with a cup of small ale which he offered to me first, and then took a long draught himself.

  ‘Mary, we must marry,’ he said. ‘Or you must take full responsibility for me going insane.’

  I laughed weakly. ‘Oh my love.’

  ‘Yes I am,’ he said fervently.

  ‘You are what?’

  ‘I am your love. Say it again.’

  For a moment I thought I might refuse and then I knew I was weary of denying the truth. ‘My love.’

  He smiled at that, as if for the moment it was enough for him. ‘Come here,’ he said, opening his cape like a wing and summoning me to the rail of the ship. Obediently, I went and stood beside him and he put his arm and his warm riding cape around my shoulders and held me close to him. Under the shelter of the cape I slid my hand around his waist, and unseen by any but seagulls, I rested my head on his shoulder and we stood there, swaying hip to hip with the motion of the ship for a long peaceful time.

  ‘And there’s France,’ he said finally.

  I looked ahead and could see the dark shape of the land and then gradually the quayside and the masts of the boats and the walls and the castle of the English fortress of Calais.

  Reluctantly, he released me. ‘I shall come and find you as soon as we are settled.’

  ‘I shall look for you.’

  We stood apart, there were people coming up on deck, marvelling at the smoothness of the crossing and looking over the narrowing strait of water to Calais.

  ‘Do you feel all right now?’ I asked, out of arm’s reach, feeling the habitual coldness of my life take the place of that passionate intimacy.

  For one moment William had the grace to look confused. ‘Oh, my seasickness, I had forgotten it.’

  I suddenly realised I had been tricked. ‘Were you ever ill at all? No! You never were! It was all a scheme to get me to sit beside you and to wrap you up and to hold you while you slept.’

  He was delightfully shamefaced, he dropped his head like a scolded boy and then I saw the gleam of his smile. ‘But you tell me, my Lady Carey,’ he challenged me. ‘Did you have the happiest six hours of your life, just now? Or did you not?’

  I bit my tongue. I paused and thought. There must have been in my life a dozen happy moments. I had been the beloved of a king, I had been reclaimed by a loving husband, and I had been the more successful sister for many years. But the happiest six hours?

  ‘Yes,’ I said simply, conceding him everything. ‘Those were the happiest six hours of my life.’

  We docked the ship in a bustle of noise and activity and the harbourmaster and the sailors and dockers all came down to the quayside to watch the king and Anne disembark and cheer them as they touched English soil in France. Then we all went up to hear Mass in the chapel of St Nicholas with the governor of Calais, who made a great fuss, treating Anne with the same courtesy as if she were a crowned queen. But whatever the governor might say and do to appease her in her anxious hunt for reassurance, the King of France was not so amenable and Henry had to leave Anne behind in Calais while he rode out to meet Francis.

  ‘He’s such a fool,’ Anne muttered to herself, looking out of the window of Calais Castle as Henry rode out at the head of his men at arms, his hat off his head to bow in acknowledgement to the crowd, and then turning in the saddle to wave up to the castle in the hope that she would be watching him.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He must have known that the Queen of France wouldn’t meet with me, she’s a Spanish princess like Katherine. And then he let the Queen of Navarre refuse to meet me as well. She should never have been asked but it gave her the chance to say that she would not.’

  ‘Did she say why not? She was always so kind to us when we were little.’

  ‘She said my behaviour was a scandal,’ Anne said shortly. ‘Good God, how these women do put on airs when they are married and safe. You would think none of them ever struggled to catch a husband.’

  ‘So will we not see King Francis at all?’

  ‘We cannot meet him officially,’ Anne said. ‘There’s no lady to meet me.’ She drummed her fingers on the windowsill. ‘Katherine was greeted by the Queen of France herself and everyone says now how friendly they were.’

  ‘Well, you’re not queen yet, you know,’ I said injudiciously.

  The look she turned on me was like ice. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know that. I have observed that over the last six years. I have had a little while to become aware of that, thank you. But I will be. And when I next come to France as queen I shall make her sorry for this insult to me, and when Margaret of Navarre seeks to marry her children to my sons I will not forget that she called me a scandal.’ She looked hard at me. ‘And I shall not forget that you are always very quick to point out that I am not yet queen.’

  ‘Anne, I was only saying …’

  ‘Then you should be silent and try thinking before you speak for once,’ she snapped.

  Henry invited King Francis of France back to the English fort of Calais and for two days we ladies in waiting, with Anne at our head, had to content ourselves with peeping from the castle window at the French king, and seeing nothing more of his fabled good looks than the top of his head. I expected Anne to be in a state of absolute fury at being excluded but she was smiling and secretive, and when Henry came to her room every night after dinner he was welcomed with such pleasant humour that I was certain that she had something planned.

  She set us to rehearsing a special dance which was to be led in by her and then to include the seated diners, who would be summoned to dance with us. It was obvious that she was planning to enter the king’s banquet with the King of France and dance with him.

  Some of the younger ladies wondered how she dared run against the conventions, but I knew that she would have had her plan approved by Henry. His surprise when she entered would be as counterfeit as all the amazement that Queen Katherine had learned to show when her husband had entered her rooms so many times in his disguises. It made me feel old and world-weary to think that we had pretended for years not to recognise the king, and now Anne would play the same games, and the court would still have to admire them.

  Despite the demands of riding with Anne in the morning and dancing with her and the ladies in the afternoon I found time every noon to stroll in the streets of Calais where, at a little alehouse, I would always find William Stafford waiting for me. He would draw me inside, away from the prying eyes of the street, and set a mug of small ale before me.

  ‘All well, my love?’ he would ask me.

  I would smile at him. ‘Yes. And with you?’

  He nodded. ‘I am to ride out with your uncle tomorrow, I have news of some horses he might like. But the prices are absu
rd. Every French farmer is determined to fleece an English lord this season, for fear we never come again.’

  ‘He said that he might make you master of his horse. That would be a good thing for us, wouldn’t it?’ I said wistfully. ‘We could see each other more easily if you had charge of my horse, and we could ride together.’

  ‘And marry of course,’ he said, teasing me. ‘Your uncle would be delighted if the master of his horse married his niece. No, my love, I don’t think it would be a good thing for us at all. I don’t think there’s any way for us at court.’ He touched my cheek. ‘I don’t want to see you every day by luck. I want to see you every night and day because we are married and living in the same house.’

  I was silent.

  ‘I will wait for you,’ William said softly. ‘I know that you are not ready now.’

  I looked up at him. ‘It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s the children, and my family, and Anne. More than anything else – it’s Anne. I don’t know how I can leave her.’

  ‘Because she needs you?’ he asked, surprised.

  I gave a little gurgle of laughter. ‘Good God! No! Because she won’t let me go. She needs me in her sight, so that she knows that she is safe.’ I broke off, unable to explain to him the long determined rivalry between the two of us. ‘Any triumph she has is halved if I am not there to see it. And anything that goes wrong for me, any slight or humiliation, she is quick to perceive and she would even be quick to revenge – oh! – but inside her heart is singing to know that I have taken a blow.’

  ‘She sounds like a devil,’ he said, loyal to me.

  I giggled again. ‘I wish I could say yes,’ I confessed. ‘But to tell you the truth, it is the same for me. I am as envious of her as she is of me. But I have seen her rise and rise. I will never do better than her now. I have come to accept it. I know that she caught and held the king when I could not. But I also know that I didn’t really want to. After I had my son, I wanted nothing but to be with my children and far from the court, and the king is so –’

  ‘So?’ he prompted.

  ‘He’s so desirous. Not just of love; but of everything. He’s like a child himself and when I had a child of my own, a real child, I found I had no patience with a man who wanted to be diverted like a child. When once I saw King Henry was as selfish as his own little son, I couldn’t really love him any more. I couldn’t look at him but with impatience.’

  ‘But you didn’t leave him.’

  ‘You don’t leave the king,’ I said simply. ‘He leaves you.’

  William nodded, acknowledging the truth of it.

  ‘But when he left me for Anne I saw him go without regret. And when I dance with him now, or dine with him, or walk and talk with him, I do my job as a courtier. I let him think that he is the most delightful man in the world and I look up at him and I smile and I give him every reason to think that I am still in love with him.’

  William’s arm came around my waist and held me rather tightly. ‘But you’re not,’ he specified.

  ‘Let me go,’ I whispered. ‘You’re squeezing me too tight.’

  His grip tightened a little more.

  ‘Oh very well,’ I said. ‘No, of course not. I am doing my job as a Boleyn girl, as a Howard courtier. Of course I don’t love him.’

  ‘And do you love anyone at all?’ he asked conversationally. His grip around my waist was as fierce as ever.

  ‘Nobody,’ I said provocatively.

  One finger under my chin forced my face up and his bright brown gaze scanned me as if he would look into my soul.

  ‘A nobody,’ I specified.

  His kiss, when it came, was as light on my mouth as the brush of a warm feather.

  That night, Henry and Francis dined privately at Staple Hall. The ladies in waiting, with Anne leading the way, slipped out from the castle with cloaks around our fine gowns and hoods up over our headdresses. We gathered in the hall outside the chamber and put off our cloaks and helped each other put on our golden dominoes, our golden masks, and our golden hoods. There were no mirrors in the hall so I could not see what I looked like but the others around me were a blaze of gold and I knew I was glittering among them. Anne in particular, her dark eyes glinting through the slits of the golden mask shaped like the face of a hawk, looked rich and wild, her dark hair falling to her shoulders under the golden veil of the hood.

  We waited for our cue and then ran in to do our dance. Henry and King Francis could not take their eyes from her. I danced with Sir Francis Weston who whispered appalling suggestions in my ear in French, under the transparent pretext that he thought I was a French lady who would welcome such invitations, and I saw George leading out another lady in his haste to avoid dancing with his wife.

  The dance ended and Henry turned to one dancer and unveiled her, then, ceremonially, went around the room taking the visors off all the masked ladies and coming lastly to Anne.

  ‘Ah, the Marquess of Pembroke,’ King Francis said with every appearance of surprise. ‘When I knew you before you were Mistress Anne Boleyn and the prettiest girl at my court then, just as you are the most beautiful woman at my friend Henry’s court now.’

  Anne smiled and turned her head towards Henry to smile at him.

  ‘There was only one girl who could ever match you and that was the other Boleyn girl,’ King Francis said, looking around for me. Anne’s moment of triumph abruptly dissolved and she gestured me to come forward as if she wished she were showing me to a scaffold. ‘My sister, Your Majesty,’ she said shortly. ‘Lady Carey.’

  Francis kissed my hand. ‘Enchanté,’ he whispered seductively.

  ‘Let’s dance again!’ Anne said suddenly, irritated as I knew she would be by any attention paid to me. At once the musicians struck a chord, and for the rest of the night the court made merry and everyone took a great deal of trouble to ensure that Anne was happy.

  That evening concluded the formal visit to France and the following day we spent in packing up the goods for the journey home. The wind was against us and we had to linger in Calais, sending every morning to the master of the ship to ask if he could get out of harbour on this day, or the next. Anne and Henry hunted and entertained themselves as well as if they had been in England. Better, actually, since in France there was no-one to cat-call when Anne rode down the street or to shout ‘whore’ at her horse’s hooves. And in the delay William and I were free to meet.

  We rode out every afternoon on a firm sand beach to the west of the town, which stretched almost as far as the eye could see. Sometimes the horses would strain to gallop on the hard sand at the water’s edge and we let them have their heads and fly away. Then we would ride up into the dunes, and William would lift me down from the saddle, spread his cape on the ground and the two of us would lie together, arms around each other, kissing and whispering until I was near to weeping with desire.

  There were many afternoons when I was tempted to untie the laces of his breeches and let him have me, without ceremony, like a country girl under the seductive sun with only the cry of seagulls to distract us. He kissed me till my mouth was sore with kissing, my lips swollen and chapped, and all the long evening when I had to dine with the ladies without him, I could still feel the bruises from his passionate biting when I put my lips to a cool glass to drink. He touched me all over my body, without shame. His hands unlaced my stomacher at the back so that he could slide it down to my hips, and caress my naked breasts. He bent his brown curly head and suckled at me till I cried out with pleasure and thought that I would rise up in more and more pleasure until I could hardly bear another moment of it, and then he would plunge his head into my belly and bite me hard on the navel so I flinched with pain and pushed him away and found that I was screaming and fighting him off instead of sighing.

  He would wrap me warmly and lie beside me unmoving for long moments until my hunger for him subsided a little. Then he would turn me over and lie his long lean body against my back, take off my cap and lift a handful
of hair, so that he could nibble at the nape of my neck and press himself against me so that I felt his hardness even through my gown and underskirt, and I knew myself to be pressing back like a whore, as if to beg him to do the deed, and do it without permission, for I could not say ‘Yes’. And God knew that I would not say ‘No’.

  He would thrust against me, pause, and thrust again, and I would press back, knowing and longing for what would happen next, he would go faster and I would find myself rising towards pleasure, and getting to a point where I could not stop whether I would or no – and then, before I had reached my pleasure, before he had so much as touched me skin to skin, he would pause and give a little sigh and lie down beside me again and gather me to him and kiss my eyelids, and hold me till I stopped trembling.

  Every day while the wind blew onshore and kept the ships in the harbour we rode out into the sand dunes and made love which was not making love but which was the most passionate of courtships. And every day I hoped, against myself, that today would be the day when I would whisper ‘Yes’ or that he would force me to it. But every day he stopped just a second, just a moment, before my consent, and enfolded me in his arms and soothed me as if I were racked with pain instead of desire – and there were many days when I could not have told the one from the other.

  We were walking the horses out of the dunes and back to the beach on the twelfth day when William suddenly paused and looked up. ‘The wind’s changed.’

  ‘What?’ I asked stupidly. I was still dazed with pleasure. I did not know that there was a wind. I was hardly aware of the sand beneath my riding boots, the breakers on the beach, the warmth of the evening sun on my left cheek.

  ‘It’s offshore,’ he said. ‘They’ll be able to sail.’

  I rested my arm on my horse’s neck. ‘Sail?’ I repeated.

  He turned and saw my dazed expression and laughed at me. ‘Oh sweetheart, you are far away, aren’t you? Remember we cannot sail for England because we are waiting for a favourable wind? This is it. The wind’s changed. We’ll sail tomorrow.’