Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (117 page)

“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 toward 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 harbor 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 catcall 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 toward 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 harbor 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 favorable wind? This is it. The wind’s changed. We’ll sail tomorrow.”

The words finally sunk into my understanding. “So what do we do?”

He looped his horse’s reins over his arm and came around to my horse to lift me up into the saddle.

“Set sail, I suppose.” He cupped his hands underneath my boot and tossed me up into the saddle. I recognized the ache in my body as unfulfilled desire, more desire, another day of desire, the twelfth day of unfulfilled desire.

“And then what?” I persisted. “We can’t meet like this at Greenwich.”

“No,” he agreed pleasantly.

“So how shall we meet?”

“You can find me in the stable yard, or I can find you in the garden. We’ve always managed, have we not?” He mounted his own horse, lightly; he was not trembling like me.

I could not find the words. “I don’t want to meet you like that.”

William adjusted his stirrup leather, frowning slightly, then he straightened up and gave me a polite, rather distant smile.

“I could escort you to Hever in the summer,” he offered.

“That’s seven months away!” I exclaimed.

“Yes.”

I rode a little closer to him, I could not believe he was indifferent. “Don’t you want to meet me every afternoon like this?”

“You know I do.”

“Then how is it to be done?”

He gave me a little half-teasing smile. “I don’t think it can be done,” he said gently. “There are too many enemies of the Howards who would be quick to report you for light behavior. There are too many spies in your uncle’s train for me to be undetected for long. We’ve been lucky, we’ve had our twelve days, and they’ve been very sweet. But I don’t think we can have them again in England.”

“Oh.”

I turned my horse’s head and felt the sun warm on my back. The waves washed in gently and my horse, fretting a little, shied as they splashed her fetlocks and knees. I could not hold her steady, I could not command her. I could not command myself.

“I think I shan’t stay in your uncle’s service.” William drew his horse up alongside mine.

“What?”

“I think I’ll go to my farm and try my hand as a farmer. It’s all there waiting for me. I’m tired of court. I’m not suited to the life. I’m too independent a man to serve a master, even a great family like yours.”

I straightened up a little. The Howard pride helped. I put back my shoulders and I lifted my chin. “As you wish,” I said, as cold as he.

He nodded and let his horse drop a little back. We rode toward the walls of the town like a lady and her escort. The entranced lovers of the sand dune were far behind us, we were the Boleyn girl and the Howards’ man returning to court.

The sallyport was still open, it was not yet dusk, and we rode side by side through the cobbled streets up to the castle.
The gates were open, the drawbridge down, we rode straight into the stable yard. There were men watering the horses and rubbing them down with wisps of straw. The king and Anne had returned half an hour before and their horses were being walked till they were cool before being fed and watered. There was no chance at all of a private conversation.

William lifted me down from the saddle and at the touch of his hands on my waist, his body against mine, I was filled with a sudden fierce yearning for him, so acute that I gave a little cry of pain.

“Are you all right?” he asked, setting me on my feet.

“No!” I said fiercely. “I am not all right. You know that I am not.”

For a moment he too was shaken out of calmness. He caught my hand and roughly pulled me back to him. “How you are feeling now is how I have been feeling for months,” he swore in a passionate undertone. “How you are feeling now is how I have been feeling night and day since I first saw you, and I expect to go on feeling like this for the rest of my life. Think about it, Mary. And you send for me. Send for me when you know that you cannot live without me.”

I twisted my hand out of his grip and I pulled myself away. I half-expected him to come after me but he did not. I walked so slowly that if he had as much as whispered my name I would have heard him, and turned. I walked away from him though my feet dragged at every step. I went through the archway to the castle door though every inch of my body was crying out to stay with him.

♦   ♦   ♦

I wanted to go to my room and weep but as I went through the great hall George rose up out of a chair and said: “I’ve been waiting for you, where’ve you been?”

“Riding,” I said shortly.

“With William Stafford,” he accused me.

I let him see my red eyes and the quiver of my mouth. “Yes. So?”

“Oh God,” George said, brother-like. “Dear God no, you silly whore. Go and wash and get that look off your face, anyone can guess what you’ve been doing.”

“I’ve done nothing!” I exclaimed in sudden passion. “Nothing! And much good it has done me!”

He hesitated. “Just as well. Hurry up.”

I went to my room and splashed water on my eyes and rubbed my face on a drying sheet. When I came into Anne’s presence chamber there were half a dozen ladies playing cards, and George waiting, very somber, in the window embrasure.

He gave a quick cautious look around the room and then tucked my hand under his arm and led me away to the picture gallery which ran the length of the great hall but was empty at this time of the day.

“You’ve been seen,” he said. “You can’t have thought you’d get away with it.”

“With what?”

He stopped short, and looked at me with a seriousness I had never seen before. “Don’t be pert,” he urged me. “You were seen coming out of the sand dunes with your head on his shoulder and his arm around your waist and your hair all blowing loose in the wind. Don’t you know that Uncle Howard has spies everywhere? Didn’t you think that you would be bound to be caught?”

“What’s going to happen?” I asked fearfully.

“Nothing, if it stops here. That’s why it’s me telling you, and not Uncle or Father. They don’t want to know. As far as you’re concerned, they don’t know. It’s just between you and me and it need go no further.”

“I love him, George,” I said very quietly.

He put his head down and ploughed on down the gallery, dragging me with him by my hand in his arm. “Doesn’t make any difference to people like us. You know that.”

“I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t do anything but think about him. At night I dream of him, all day I wait to see him, and when I do see him my heart turns over and I think I will faint with desire.”