‘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 realised, 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 inwards, 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 bustle 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 grey 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 honour 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 writin
g, 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 favourites 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 grey 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 recognising 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.’
He looked past her and saw me. ‘Why, Mary!’ he exclaimed, beaming with delight. ‘The beautiful Lady Carey, back with us again.’
I dropped my curtsey and looked up into his face. ‘Lady Stafford, if you please, Your Majesty. I have remarried.’
His quick nod showed that he remembered – and remembered the peal his wife had rung over his head as she banished me from court. As I saw his smile stay constant, and his eyes stay warm on my upturned face, I thought what a poisonous witch my sister was. She had sought and obtained my banishment quite alone, it had not been the will of the king at all. He would have forgiven me at once. If Anne had not needed me to help her hide her pregnancy then she would have left me at the little farmhouse forever.
‘And you have a child?’ he asked. He could not help a swift glance over my head to Anne, looking from the fertile Boleyn girl to the barren one.
‘A girl, Your Majesty,’ I said, thanking God that it had not been a son.
‘William is a lucky man.’
I smiled up at him intimately. ‘I certainly tell him so.’
Henry laughed and reached out a hand to draw me closer. ‘Is he not here?’ he said, looking around his gentlemen.
‘He was not asked …’ I started.
At once he grasped my meaning. He turned back to his wife. ‘Why is Sir William not bidden back to court with his wife?’ he asked.
Anne never even wavered. ‘Of course he was summoned. I invited them both to come back to us as soon as my dear sister was churched.’
I could do nothing but admire her as she delivered this barefaced lie. Nothing for me to do but accept the lie and then play it for all I was worth. ‘He will join me tomorrow if it please Your Majesty. And if I may, I will have my daughter with me too.’
‘The court is no place for a baby,’ Anne said flatly.
At once Henry rounded on her. ‘More the pity. And more the pity I should hear that from my wife. This court is the very place for a baby, as I would have thought you, of all people, would know.’
‘I was thinking of the baby’s health, my lord,’ Anne said coldly. ‘I was thinking that she should be brought up in the country.’
‘Her mother can be the judge of that,’ Henry said grandly.
I smiled, honey sweet, and then I snatched at my chance. ‘Indeed, with your permission, I should like to take my baby i
nto the country, to Hever this summer. She can meet my other children.’
‘My son Henry,’ Anne reminded me.
I turned a beguiling gaze upwards to the king.
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Whatever you wish, Lady Stafford.’
He offered me his arm and I swept him a curtsey and slipped my hand in the crook of his elbow. I gazed up at him as if he were still the most handsome prince in Europe, and not the balding fat man he had become. The clear line of his jaw had thickened. The hair on the top of his head was thin and sparse. The rosebud mouth which had been so kissable in a young face was now a self-indulgent little pout, and his dancing eyes were occluded by the fat of his eyelids and the puff of his cheeks. He looked like a man both indulged and yet unhappy. A man like a sulky child.
I smiled radiantly up at him, I tilted my head towards him, laughed at his remarks, and made him laugh with tales of my buttermaking and my cheesemaking, until we were at the high table and he went to his throne as King of England, and I went to my seat at the table for the ladies in waiting.
We sat long over dinner, this court had become gluttons. There were twenty different meat dishes: game and killed meat, birds and fish. There were fifteen different puddings. I watched Henry taste a little of everything, and continually send for more. Anne sat beside him with a face like ice, picking at her plate, her eyes forever flicking to one side and then the other as if she would see where danger waited.
When the plates were finally taken away there was a masque and then the court set to dancing in earnest. I kept a close watch on the side door to the left of the fireplace, even when I was taking my place in a circle of dancers, even when I was flirting with my old friends of the court. After midnight, my watch was rewarded: the door opened and my husband William slipped in, and looked around for me.
The candles were guttering down and there were so many people dancing and moving around that he was not seen. I excused myself from the dance and went over to him and he drew me at once into an alcove, behind a curtain.
‘My love,’ he said and took me in his arms. ‘It feels like a lifetime.’
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