Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (114 page)

“What did the king say?”

“At first he was furious, he was going to send in the soldiers, teach them a lesson; but it was the same at every village. There were too many. And what if the people started fighting against the king’s soldiers? What would happen then?”

The seamstress turned me round with a gentle touch on my hips. I moved as she bid me but I hardly knew what I was doing. I had been brought up in the steady peace of Henry’s reign; I could hardly take in the thought of English men rising up against this king.

“What does Uncle say?”

“He says to thank God that we have only the Duke of Suffolk to fear as an enemy, because when the king is stoned and insulted in his own kingdom then a civil war will follow swift behind.”

“Suffolk is our enemy?”

“Absolutely declared,” she said shortly. “He says that I have cost the king the church, will he lose the country as well?”

I turned once more and the seamstress kneeled back and nodded. “Shall I take these gowns and re-model them?” she asked in a whisper.

“Take them,” I said.

She picked up her materials and her sewing bag and went from the room. The seamstress hemming Anne’s gown put in the final stitch and snipped off the thread.

“My God, Anne,” I said. “Was it really everywhere?”

“Everywhere,” she said grimly. “They turned their backs on me in one village, they hissed at me in another. When we rode down the country lanes the boys scaring crows cried out against me. The goose girls spat on the road before me. When we went through any market town the women at the stalls threw stinking fish and rotten vegetables in our way. When we went to stay at a house or a castle we had a mob of people following behind us, abusing us, and we had to shut the gates against them.” She shook her head. “It was worse than a nightmare. When our hosts came out to greet us their faces would fall to see half their tenants in the road shouting out against the lawful king. We came to every door with a train of unhappiness. We can’t go into the City of London, and now we can’t go into the country either. We are hiding in our own palaces, where the people can’t get to us. And they are calling her Katherine the Well-Beloved.”

“What does the king say?”

“He says we won’t wait for the ruling from Rome. As soon as Archbishop Warham dies, then he will appoint a new archbishop who will marry us and we’ll just do it, whether Rome rules in our favor or not.”

“What if Warham lingers?” I asked nervously.

Anne laughed harshly. “Oh don’t look like that! I won’t send
him soup! He’s an old man, he’s been in his bed most of this summer. He’ll die soon and then Henry will appoint Cranmer and he will marry us.”

I shook my head disbelievingly. “As easily as that? After all this time?”

“Yes,” she said. “And if the king was more of a man and less of a schoolboy he could have married me five years ago and we could have had five sons by now. But he had to make the queen see that he was right, he had to make the country see that he was right. He has to be seen to be doing the right thing, whatever the truth of the matter. He’s a fool.”

“You’d better not say that to anyone but me,” I cautioned her.

“Everyone knows,” she said stubbornly.

“Anne,” I said. “You had better watch your tongue and your temper. You could still fall, even now.”

She shook her head. “He’s going to give me a title in my own right, and a fortune that no one can take from me.”

“What title?”

“Marquess of Pembroke.”

“Marchioness?” I thought I had not heard her properly.

“No.” Her face glowed with pride. “Not a title that you give to a woman who is married to a marquess. The title that a person can hold in their own right. Marquess. I am to be Marquess, and no one can take that away from me. Not even the king himself.”

I closed my eyes on a surge of pure jealousy. “And the fortune?”

“I am to have the manors of Coldkeynton and Hanworth in Middlesex, and lands in Wales. They’ll bring me about a thousand pounds a year.”

“A thousand pounds?” I repeated, thinking of my annual pension of one hundred pounds.

Anne gleamed. “I shall be the richest woman in England and
the most noble,” she said. “Rich in my own right, noble in my own right. And then I will be queen.”

She laughed as she realized how bitter her triumph was for me. “You must be happy for me.”

“Oh, I am.”

♦   ♦   ♦

Next morning the stable yard was in a great fuss and bother, the king was hunting and everyone had to go with him. The hunters were being brought out of their stables and the hounds were waiting in a corner of the great yard, whipped in by the huntsmen but forever dashing off to one corner or another, sniffing and yowling with excitement. Grooms were running round with straps and buckles and helping their masters into the saddles. Stable lads were out with cloths to give shining haunches and glossy necks one last polish. Henry’s black hunter, arching its neck and pawing the ground, was by the mounting block, waiting for the king.

I looked everywhere for William Stafford, then I felt the lightest of touches at my waist and a warm voice in my ear said: “I was sent on an errand, I ran back all the way.”

I turned around to see him. I was almost in his arms. We were so close that if he moved forward half an inch we would have touched all down the length of our bodies. I closed my eyes for a moment in desire at the scent of him, and when I opened them I saw his eyes dark with lust for me.

“For God’s sake, step back,” I said shakily.

Unwillingly he released one hand and stepped half a pace back from me. “Before God, I have to marry you,” he said. “Mary, I am beyond myself. I have never been like this in my life before. I cannot go another moment without holding you.”

“Ssshh,” I whispered. “Put me up in the saddle.”

I had thought that if I was up there and out of his way then
the weakness in my knees and the dizziness in my head would matter less. Somehow I got into the saddle, crooked my leg around the pommel and arranged my riding habit so that it fell as it should. He pulled the hem straight, and cupped my foot in his hand. He looked up at me, his face filled with determination.

“You have to marry me,” he said simply.

I glanced around, at the wealth of the court, the bobbing feathers in the hats, the velvets and silks—all dressed like princes, even for a day in the saddle. “This is my life,” I said, trying to explain. “This has been my home since I was a little girl. First the French court and now here. I have never lived in an ordinary house, I have never stayed in the same room for a whole year. I am a courtier from a family of courtiers. I can’t become a country wife at the snap of your fingers.”

There was a blast of horns and the king, very broad but smiling, came out of the castle door with Anne at his side. Her quick glance raked the courtyard and I snatched my foot back from William’s grasp and met her gaze with a blandly innocent smile. The king was helped onto his horse, he sat heavily in the saddle for a moment, and then gathered the reins and was ready, and everyone who was still on foot scrambled into the saddle and jockeyed for the best position in the cavalcade, the gentlemen trying to be close to Anne, the ladies riding, as if by accident, alongside the king.

“Are you not coming?” I asked urgently.

“Do you want me to?”

Slowly the horsemen were leaving the courtyard, jostling and waiting at the arched gateway.

“You’d better not. My uncle is out today, and he sees everything.”

William stepped back and I saw the light die from his eyes. “As you wish.”

For all the world I would have jumped off my horse and kissed the smile back into his face. But he bowed, and stepped back to lean against the wall and watched the hunt and me ride out and away from him. He did not even call to me when he would see me again. He let me go.

A
NNE WAS ENTHRONED AS
M
ARQUESS OF
P
EMBROKE
with all the ceremony of a coronation, in the king’s presence chamber at Windsor Castle. He sat in his throne flanked by my uncle and Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, newly forgiven and returned to court in time to witness Anne’s triumph. Suffolk looked as if he was chewing on lemons, his smile was so bitter, my uncle was torn between joy at the wealth and the prestige for his niece and his increasing hatred of her arrogance.

Anne wore a gown of red velvet trimmed with the white fluffy fur of ermine. Her hair, dark and glossy as a racehorse’s mane, was spread over her shoulders like a girl on her wedding day. Lady Mary, the duke’s daughter, held the robe of state, and the rest of Anne’s ladies, Jane Parker, me, the other dozen or so, all dressed in our best, followed in her train and stood behind in sycophantic silence while the king tied the robe of state about her shoulders, and put a gold coronet on her head.

At the banquet George and I sat side by side and looked up to our sister, seated beside the king.

He did not ask if I was envious. It was an answer too obvious to be worth inquiry. “I don’t know another woman who could have done it,” he said. “She has a unique determination to be on the throne.”

“I never had that,” I said. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted from childhood was not to be overlooked.”

“Well you can forget that,” George said with brotherly frankness. “You’ll be overlooked now for the rest of your life. We’ll both be as nothing. Anything I achieve will be seen as her gift. And you’ll never match her. She’s the only Boleyn anyone will ever know of or remember. You’ll be a nobody forever.”

It was the word “nobody.” At the very word the bitterness drained out of me, and I smiled. “You know, there might be some joy in being a nobody.”

♦   ♦   ♦

We danced till late and then Anne sent all the ladies to their beds but me.

“I’m going to him,” she said.

She did not need to explain what she meant. “Are you sure?” I asked. “You’re still not married.”

“Cranmer will be installed any day,” she said. “I’m going to France as his consort and Henry has insisted that they treat me as queen. He’s given me the title of Marquess and the lands, and I cannot keep saying no.”

“Good God, you want to!” I suddenly understood her impatience. “Do you love him at last?”

“Oh no!” she exclaimed impatiently, as if it were irrelevant. “But I have kept him at arm’s length so long that he has been driven nearly mad, and me too. Sometimes I have been so aroused by his desire and his pulling and teasing of me that I could have done it with a stable lad. And I have his promise, I can see my way to the throne. I want to do it now. I want to do it tonight.”

I poured water for her into the ewer and warmed a drying sheet for her while she washed. “What will you wear?”

“The gown I was wearing to dance,” she said. “And the coronet. I’ll go to him like a queen.”

“George had better take you.”

“He’s coming, I already told him.”

She finished washing and took the sheet from me to pat herself dry. Her body in firelight and candlelight was as beautiful as a wild animal. There was a tap on the door. “Let him in,” she said.

I hesitated. She was tying her skirt around her waist but apart from that she was naked. “Go on,” she said wilfully.

I shrugged and opened the door. George recoiled at the sight of his sister, her dark hair tumbled over her naked breasts.

“You can come in,” she said carelessly. “I’m nearly ready.”

He threw one shocked interrogative look at me and came into the room and dropped into the chair at the fireside.

Anne, holding the stomacher across her naked breasts and belly, turned her bare back to George to lace her up. He rose to his feet and threaded the laces through the holes in the crisscross pattern. At every insertion of the thread his hand brushed her skin and I saw her close her eyes in pleasure at the continual caress. George’s face was dark, he was scowling as he did her bidding. “Anything else?” he asked. “Tie your shoes for you? Polish your boots?”

“Don’t you want to touch me?” she taunted him. “I’m good enough for the king.”

“You’re good enough for the bagnio,” he said brutally. “Get your cape, if you’re coming.”

“But I
am
desirable,” she said, confronting him.

George hesitated. “Why on earth ask me? Half the court was weak at the knees this evening. What more do you want?”

“I want everyone,” she said, unsmiling. “I want you to say that I am the best, George. I want
you
to say it here, in front of Mary.”

He gave his low chuckle. “Oh the old rivalry,” he said slowly.
“Anne, Marquess of Pembroke, you are the most desired and the richest girl in the family. You have eclipsed us both in success. You will shortly eclipse your revered father and uncle in terms of pride and position. What more do you want?”

She had been glowing with his praise but at that question she looked suddenly afraid, as if she remembered the curses of the fishwives and the shouts of “Whore!” from the market traders. “I want everyone to know it,” she said.

“Shall I take you to the king?” George asked pragmatically.

Anne put her hand on his arm and I saw him tense at the turn of her head and her sidelong smile. “Wouldn’t you rather take me to your chamber?”

“If I wanted to be beheaded for incest—yes.”

She gave her sexy little laugh. “Very well then. To the king. But remember, George, you are my courtier, like all the others.”

He bowed and led her from the room. I listened to them cross the presence chamber and then go down the stairs, and I waited till I heard the door at the bottom of the stairs bang shut. I thought that Anne’s desire to be first with everyone must be powerful indeed if she would pause to torment her own brother on the very night of her bedding the king.

♦   ♦   ♦

She came back at daybreak, huddled into her clothes, just as I used to do. George brought her back and together we stripped her and pushed her into bed. She was too weary to speak.

“So it’s done,” I said as her eyes closed.

“Several times, I should think,” he said. “I waited outside the chamber and slept in the chair and a couple of times in the night they woke me with their crying out and panting. Please God we get an heir from it.”