Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (142 page)

“Where’s the king going?” Anne said, looking round.

I glanced toward the London road, longing for the sight of William’s horse. But there, on the road, was the king’s standard, there was the unmistakable bulk of the king on his horse. There was Norris beside him, and a small escort of men. They were riding quickly, west to London.

“Where is he going in such haste?” Anne demanded, uneasily. “Did he say he was leaving?”

Jane Parker stepped forward. “Didn’t you know?” she asked brightly. “Secretary Cromwell had that lad Mark Smeaton at his house all last night and has now taken him to the Tower. He sent to tell the king so. Perhaps the king is going to the Tower to see what the lad has confessed to? But why should he take Henry Norris?”

♦   ♦   ♦

George and I were with Anne in her rooms like prisoners in hiding. We sat in silence. We had a sense of being completely besieged.

“I shall leave at first light,” I said to Anne. “I am sorry, Anne, I must get Catherine away.”

“Where is William?” George asked.

“He went to fetch Henry home from his tutor.”

Anne’s head came up at that. “Henry is my ward,” she reminded me. “You cannot take him without my consent.”

For once I did not rise to her. “For God’s sake, Anne, let me keep him safe. This is no time for you and I to quarrel over who can claim what. I shall keep him safe and if I can protect Elizabeth, I shall guard her too.”

She paused for a moment as if even now she would compete with me, but then she nodded. “Shall we play cards?” she asked lightly. “I can’t sleep. Shall we play all night?”

“All right. Just let me go and make sure that Catherine is sleeping.”

I went to find my daughter. She had been at dinner with the other ladies and told me that the hall was buzzing with gossip. The king’s throne was empty. Cromwell was missing too. No one knew why Smeaton had been arrested. No one knew why the king had ridden away with Norris. If it had been a mark of special honor then where were they tonight? Where were they dining on this special May Day night?

“Never mind,” I said repressively. “I want you to pack a few things, a clean shift, and some clean stockings in a bag, and be ready to leave tomorrow.”

“Are we in danger?” She was not surprised, she was a child of the court now, she would never be a girl fresh from the country again.

“I don’t know,” I said shortly. “And I want you strong enough to ride all day, so you must sleep now. D’you promise?”

She nodded. I put her into my bed, and let her rest her head on the pillow where William usually lay. I prayed to God that tomorrow would bring William and Henry back and we all might go together, to where the apple tree leaned low over the road, and the little farm nestled in the sunshine. Then I kissed her good night and sent a pageboy running to our lodgings to warn the wet nurse that she must be ready to leave at dawn.

I slipped back to the queen’s rooms. Anne was huddled over the fire with George at her side, seated on the hearthrug as if they were both chilled though the windows stood open and the hot airless night did not even stir the hangings.

“Boleyns,” I said, coming quietly through the door.

George turned and put an arm out for me and pulled me down beside him so he could hold us both.

“Bet you we brush through this,” he said stoutly. “Bet you we rise up and confound them all, and this time next year Anne has a boy in the cradle and I am a Knight of the Garter.”

♦   ♦   ♦

We spent the night huddled together like vagrants in fear of the beadle, and when the window started to grow light I went quietly down the stairs to the stable yard and threw a stone up at the window where the grooms slept. The first lad who put out his head got the job of pulling my horse out of the stable and tacking her up. But when he had Catherine’s hunter in the yard he stopped and shook his head. “Cast a shoe,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ll have to take her to the smith.”

“Can she go now?”

“Smithy won’t be open yet.”

“Tell him to open it!”

“Mistress, the forge will be cold. He has to wake and light the fire and get the forge hot and then he can shoe her.”

I swore in my frustration and turned away from him. “You could take another horse,” the lad suggested, yawning.

I shook my head. It was a long ride and Catherine was not a strong enough rider to manage a new horse. “No,” I said. “We’ll have to wait for the mare to be shod. Take her to the smith and wake him and get him to shoe her. Then come and find me, wherever I am, and tell me privately that she is ready. And don’t tell the rest of the castle.” I glanced anxiously at the dark windows of the palace looking down on me. “I don’t want every fool in the world to know I am riding out.”

He pulled his forelock, his hand cupped empty air. I slid a coin from the pocket of my gown into his grimy palm. “There’s another one for you, if you do this right.”

I went back into the palace. The sentry at the door raised a sleepy eyebrow at me, wondering what I was doing strolling out at dawn and back in again. I knew he would report to someone: Secretary Cromwell, or perhaps my uncle, or perhaps Sir John Seymour, who was now grown so great that he must have men watching for him too.

I hesitated on the stairs. I wanted to go and see Catherine, sleeping sweetly in my big bed; but there was candlelight under the door of the queen’s apartments and I felt I belonged to the night-long vigil of the two of them. The sentry stepped to one side and I opened the door and slipped in.

Still they were wakeful, cheek to cheek in the firelight, whispering as soothingly as a pair of doves cooing in the cote. Their heads turned together as I came into the room.

“Not gone?” Anne asked.

“Catherine’s horse has cast a shoe. I couldn’t go.”

“When will you leave?” George asked.

“As soon as she is shod. I paid a lad to take her to the smith and tell me as soon as she is fit to ride.”

I crossed the room and sat on the hearthrug with them. We all three turned our faces to the fire and watched the flames. “I wish we could stay here like this, for always,” Anne said dreamily.

“Do you?” I said, surprised. “I was thinking that this is the worst night of my life. I was wishing that it had never started and that I might wake up in a moment and it could all have been a dream.”

George’s smile was dark. “That’s because you don’t fear tomorrow,” he said. “If you feared tomorrow as much as we do, you would wish that the night would go on forever.”

♦   ♦   ♦

However they wished, it grew steadily lighter, and we heard the servants stirring in the great hall and then a maid clanking up the stairs with a bucket of kindling to light the fire in the queen’s bedroom, followed by another with brushes and cloths to wipe the tables for the start of another new day.

Anne rose up from the hearthrug, her face bleak, her cheeks smeared with ash as if she had been mourning in church on Ash Wednesday.

“Have a bath,” George said encouragingly to her. “It’s so early. Send them for your bath and have a hot bath and wash your hair. You’ll feel so much better after.”

She smiled at the banality of the suggestion and then she nodded.

George leaned forward and kissed her. “I’ll see you at matins,” he said, and he went from the room.

It was the last time we saw my brother as a free man.

♦   ♦   ♦

George was not at matins. Anne and I, rosy from our bath and feeling more confident, looked for him but he was not there. Sir Francis did not know where he was, nor Sir William Brereton. Henry Norris had still not returned from London. There was no
news of what charge was laid against Mark Smeaton. The weight of fear came down on us again, like the low bellies of the clouds which rested on the palace roofs.

I sent a message to my baby’s wet nurse to wait for my coming, we would try to leave within the next hour.

There was a tennis match and Anne had promised to award the prize, a gold coin on a gold chain. She went to the courts and sat under the awning, her head moving, with all the discipline of a dancer, to the left and to the right, her head following the ball but her eyes sightless.

I was standing behind her, waiting for the lad from the stables to come and tell me that the horse was ready, Catherine was at my side, waiting only for my word to run and change into her riding gown, when the gate to the royal enclosure opened behind me and two soldiers of the guard came in with an officer. The moment that I saw them I had the sense of something profound and dreadful happening. I opened my mouth to speak but no words came. Mutely, I touched Anne’s shoulder. She turned and looked up at me, and then beyond me to the hard faces of the men.

They did not bow as they should have done. It was that which confirmed our fear. That, and the screaming of a seagull which suddenly flew low over the court and shrieked like an injured girl.

“The Privy Council commands your presence, Your Majesty,” the captain said shortly.

Anne said, “Oh,” and rose up. She looked at Catherine and she looked at me. She looked around at all her ladies and suddenly their eyes were everywhere but looking at her. They were quite fascinated by the tennis. They had learned Anne’s trick, their heads went left, right, while their eyes saw nothing and their ears were on the prick and their hearts were pounding in case she commanded them to go with her.

“I must have my companions,” Anne said flatly. Not one of the little vixens looked around. “Some lady must come with me.” Her eyes fell on Catherine.

“No,” I said suddenly, seeing what she would do. “No, Anne. No. I beg you.”

“I can take a companion?” she asked the captain.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I shall take my maid in waiting, Catherine,” she said simply, and then she went quietly out of the gate which the soldier held open for her. Catherine shot one bewildered glance at me and then fell into step behind her queen.

“Catherine!” I said sharply.

She looked back at me, she did not know, poor little girl, what she should do.

“Come along,” Anne said in her dead calm voice, and Catherine gave me a little smile.

“Be of good cheer,” she said suddenly, oddly; as if she were acting a part in a play. Then she turned and followed the queen with all the composure of a princess.

I was too stunned to do anything but watch them go, but the minute they were out of sight I picked up my skirts and fled up the path to the palace to find George, or my father, anyone who might help Anne, and who would get Catherine away from her, safely back to me, and on the road to Rochford.

I ran into the hall and a man caught me as I headed for the stairs, I pushed him away and then I realized it was the one man in the whole world that I wanted. “William!”

“Love, my love. You know, then?”

“Oh my God, William. They have taken Catherine! They have taken my girl!”

“Arrested Catherine? On what charge?”

“No! She is with Anne. As maid in waiting. And Anne is ordered to the Privy Council.”

“In London?”

“No, meeting here.”

He released me at once, swore briefly, took half a dozen steps in a small circle and then came back to me and caught up my hands. “We’ll just have to wait then, until she comes out.” He scanned my face. “Don’t look like that, Catherine is a little lass. They’re questioning the queen, not her. They probably won’t even speak to her, and if they do she has nothing to hide.”

I took a shuddering breath and nodded. “No. She has nothing to hide. She has seen nothing that is not common knowledge. And they would only question her. She is gentry. They wouldn’t do anything worse. Where is Henry?”

“Safe. I left him at our lodgings with the wet nurse and the baby. I thought you were running because of your brother.”

“What about him?” I said suddenly, my heart hammering again. “What about George?”

“They’ve arrested him.”

“With Anne?” I said. “To answer to the Privy Council?”

William’s face was dark. “No,” he said. “They have taken him to the Tower. Henry Norris is there already, the king himself rode with him into the Tower yesterday. And Mark Smeaton—you remember the singer?—he is there too.”

My lips were too numb to frame any words. “But what is the charge? And why question the queen here?”

He shook his head. “Nobody knows.”

♦   ♦   ♦

We waited until noon for any further news. I hovered in the hall outside the chamber where the Privy Council were questioning the queen but I was not allowed into the antechamber for fear that I might listen at the door.

“I don’t want to listen, I just want to see my daughter,” I explained to the sentry. He nodded and said nothing, but gestured me back from the threshold.

A little after noon the door opened and a pageboy slipped out and whispered to the sentry. “You have to go,” the sentry said to me. “My orders are to clear the way.”

“For what?” I asked.

“You have to go,” he said stubbornly. He gave a shout down the stairs to the great hall and an answering shout came ringing up. They gently pushed me to one side, away from the Privy Council door, away from the stairs, away from the hall, away from the garden door, and then out of the very garden itself. All the other courtiers encountered on the way were thrust to one side too. We all went as we were bid; it was as if we had not recognized how powerful the king was before that moment.

I realized that they had cleared a way from the Privy Council room to the river stairs. I ran to the landing stage where the common people disembarked when they came to the palace. There were no guards on the common landing stage, no one to stop me standing at the very end of it, straining my eyes to see toward the Greenwich Palace stairs.

I saw them clearly: Anne in her blue gown that she had worn to watch the tennis, Catherine a pace behind her in her yellow gown. I was pleased to see that she had her cloak with her, in case it was cold on the river, then I shook my head at the folly of worrying if she would catch cold when I did not know where they were taking her. I watched them intently, as if by watching I could protect her. They went in the king’s barge, not the queen’s ship, and the roll of the drum for the rowers sounded to me as ominous and as doleful as the roll of drums when the executioner raises his axe.