Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (131 page)

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.

‘Who 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.