Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (125 page)

‘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 –'

‘Helped you! We bloody well pushed you!'

‘But now I am here I will be queen. And you will be my subjects and in my service. I will be the queen and mother to the next King of England. So you had better remember that, George, for I won't tell you again.'

Anne rose up from the floor and swept towards the door. She stood before it, waiting for someone to open it for her, and when neither of us sprang up she flung it open herself. She turned on the threshold. ‘And don't call me Annamaria any more,' she said. ‘And don't call her Marianne. She is Mary, the other Boleyn girl. And I am Anne, Queen Anne to be. There is a world of difference between us two. We don't share a name. She is next to nobody and I will be queen.'

She stalked out, not troubling to close the door behind her. We could hear her footsteps going to her bedroom. We sat in silence while we heard her chamber door slam.

‘Good God,' George said, heartfelt. ‘What a witch.' He got up and closed the door against the cold draught. ‘How long has she been like this?'

‘Her power has grown steadily. She thinks she is untouchable.'

‘And is she?'

‘He's deeply in love. I should think she is safe, yes.'

‘And he still hasn't had her?'

‘No.'

‘Good God, what do they do?'

‘Everything, but the deed. She daren't allow it.'

‘Must be driving him crazy,' George said with grim satisfaction.

‘Her too,' I said. ‘Almost every night he is kissing her and touching her and she is all over him with her hair and her mouth.'

‘Does she speak to everyone like this? Like she spoke to me?'

‘Far worse. And it is costing her friends. Charles Brandon is against her now, Uncle Howard is sick of her; they have quarrelled outright, at least a couple of times since Christmas. She thinks she is so safe in the king's love that she needs no other protection.'

‘I won't tolerate it,' George said. ‘I'll tell her.'

I maintained my look of sisterly concern, but my heart leaped at the
thought of a gulf opening up between Anne and George. If I could get George on my side, I would have a real advantage in any fight to regain the ownership of my son.

‘And truly, is there no-one that has caught your eye?' he asked.