The Last Boleyn (28 page)

“But he is asleep already, lady. We must not let him sleep,” Nancy's voice came from behind her.

“I think it is early yet, and he will need his strength.”

“My sister said once they sleep they never wake, lady.”

“Hush, girl, and fetch the myrtle and rose leaves for the sheets.”

Mary marvelled at her own control in the next hours. She was sharp with the servants, but as the room became an inferno in the late afternoon sun with the fireplace roaring, they all dripped sweat and spoke no more. She kept Will awake as best she could, but he wafted in and out of consciousness even though his stomach and head pain increased.

“The whole room is spinning,” he whispered dazedly. “Is Eleanor here yet?”

A new fear grew in her like an ugly gray mushroom. “Eleanor, my lord? No, Eleanor is not here yet.”

“You have not sent for Staff to marry, have you?” he nearly shouted, then fell back on the bed exhausted.

Tears coursed down her face. “No, of course not, my lord. Rest. Do not fret. I am here. I will care for you.”

The stench of the room enveloped them now, smothering the sweeter scents of the medicinal myrtle, rose, and lavender from the fur robe in which she desperately wrapped him. He sucked the special powdered wine hourly through a goose quill Stephen brought as the night wore on. Yet he sweated out all the liquid and never had to urinate. She sent Stephen and Nancy to sleep in the corridor within call and kept the fire burning herself. Maybe they could escape from the smell and they would not hear his tortured ravings of his lost name and his accusations of the Bullens and his wife. In the waves of heat, she stripped to her soaked shift and began to bathe his face again when his eyes shot open and he seized her wrist weakly.

“Is that His Grace calling me? I have to go. He is wanting me to come to him.” He feebly tried to move aside the heavy covers but could not. “Is it night, Mary?”

“Yes, my dear lord. It is night.” She gently sponged his forehead.

“Then he must be calling for me. It will anger him if I do not come and we will lose everything, my dear love.”

“You must rest, Will. I am here. I will not leave you.”

“Oh, my dearest Eleanor, we will lose everything we have worked for!”

Tears flowed down her cheeks to mingle with the sweat which already stung her eyes. His love was for his sister and his cause. He had never loved her and it was her fault. She had been a terrible wife to him. He could have loved her. He gave her two beautiful children. She had hurt him so with five years of shaming his treasured name with the king while he was sent here and there on trumped-up missions. And now, with Staff, whom he had once trusted and even idolized a bit...Was that her fault too?

“Dearest God, I have sinned greatly,” her lips said and she bowed her head in utter exhaustion and hopelessness. They said the sweat was sent as a curse from God to sinners. But why Will and not the sinner?

“You look beautiful, Mary.”

Her eyes opened and she stared at him through a heavy mist.

“In dresses for revels or in your shift, so beautiful. Maybe the king will summon you to him tonight and not me.” His trembling lips tried to smile. “Then you can try to save the Carey lands again.” He made a weak attempt to clear his throat of its roughness, but only wheezed. “Is Eleanor here yet?” he asked again. “She will want to go to Durham with me, even though you do not.”

She gave up fighting to keep him conscious, for the pains increased in his head and stomach and shot him wide awake when he tried to doze. She sponged him still, and held his fluttering hands in hers, and quoted Bible verses to him for her own comfort as much as his, but he constantly interrupted and asked for water or his sister.

Near dawn she called to Stephen for more wood and in utter terror at Will's shallow pained breathing sent the disheveled Nancy for a priest. The girl could find no one of the cloth, not even at the friary outside the grounds, which served the royal chapel. She returned breathless and teary-eyed as the first glimmer of light permeated the gray room.

“There is no one, lady, no one. I am sorry. Everything seems so deserted.”

Will stared up at the new voice and managed a wan smile. “I knew she would come. I knew she would come if I called her.”

Mary pressed his trembling, cold hand between hers. “Yes,” she choked out, “yes, she came, my lord. Rest now. All is well.”

He narrowed his eyes and they seemed to focus momentarily on Mary's bent head. “I am sorry, Mary,” came the quiet words. His head dropped back suddenly, and his eyes stared beyond her.

“I am sorry too, my dear lord. Can you not forgive me?”

She raised her hand to sponge his forehead, but the words went unheard. With the first light of the new day upon his face, Will Carey died.

Stephen and some husky groom had put the wrapped corpse on a table board and carried him to the chapel yard for burial after a stunned Mary and silent Nancy had washed and reclothed him. Victims of the sweat must be buried immediately so their decay would not send the rampant poisons into the air, especially in the summer months when it was most virulent. There was no one to give them permission, to bury him on chapel grounds, but Mary sent Stephen and two others there to dig the grave anyway.

The next day Nancy found a kind, old chaplain on the outskirts of Kingston to come the five miles to recite over the grave and give the last rites posthumously, as was allowed for any plague victim. They stood in a tiny circle around the sunken fresh grave two days after his death. Mary still felt it was unreal. She felt nothing but a vast, gnawing emptiness.

“Perhaps we can ask the king to have him moved later and buried at Durham Priory where he would have wanted. Perhaps we can get the money for a fine brass monument so he can lie with his forefathers there,” she had said over and over that day to Stephen or Nancy or the old priest.

Now he was dead three days and she insisted on lying on the raw ropes of the bed which had supported the mattress on which he had died. They had burned the mattress and robe and all the bedclothes in a bonfire in the courtyard. There was no one left to panic but the deserted servants of nobles who had fled and no one to comfort her but Stephen and Nancy. She wanted no one. She felt dead too, and she stared at the whitewashed ceiling that had seen him die for hours on the third day.

It seemed to her she had slept in the evening, but she could not tell where her waking and dreaming thoughts began or ended. Nancy was strewing fresh herbs on the floor she had scrubbed. How dare other people go on about their duties so calmly when poor Will had died and his God-given wife had failed him so miserably. She had turned against him all the months he had needed her understanding. She had reveled in her power over the king at her husband's expense and, when she could not care for the king, she had turned to another. She had loved another man desperately with her whole heart and slept with him willingly, gladly, while her poor husband sought to earn his way back with his king. Earn his way back for himself and for their children too.

Mary thanked God again that Catherine was safe at Hever. Explaining to Catherine would be terrible, but their seven-year-old son was old enough to grasp the impact. She had sent word to Will's poor Eleanor ensconced in her priory at Wilton. That will be the death of her dreams, Mary reasoned through the mist of her exhaustion.

She still wore her funeral clothes. She had no black, but she would get a mourning dress somewhere, even though they had no ready coins. She had a white dress though. In France widows wore white for a husband's death. Perhaps some of the king's gifts to her could be sold, or one of the parklands His Grace had granted Will on their marriage. She would just lie here forever doing penance for her sins until they all came back to court in the autumn and found her here, laid out just like this. Her heavy eyelids closed again.

Then a bird's song somewhere outside the window pierced the darkness of her thoughts, and it came to her in a rush. She must go to Hever!

She sat up instantly and a terrible dizziness assailed her. She felt weak and panicked instantly. “But no, I do not sweat. I do not feel the slightest bit hot or have any stomach pain besides hunger,” she assured herself aloud.

“Lady, are you up? You feel better now? I have watched you sleep these many hours, and I knew you were still healthy,” Nancy said bending close and still holding the herbs in her gathered apron.

“Yes. Yes, I am better now, Nance. I must have food and drink and get my strength back now.”

“The Lord be praised,” the girl recited solemnly, crossing herself.

“And then we must walk in the gardens before nightfall and get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow, as soon as we can pack some things, you and Stephen and I are going home, Nance. Home to Hever.”

“We cannot travel the road clear to Hever, the three of us and you so obviously a fine lady. It is too unsafe and especially in plague times, lady. There be robbers all over the roads. Stephen will tell you so.”

“I cannot help that, Nancy. I will go in disguise if I must. We cannot hire anyone to ride with us as we used to. And we are going tomorrow, so you may tell Stephen while I eat. Go on!”

The tall girl opened her mouth as if to protest, but instead dumped her stuffed apron on the table and strode out the door.

“Yes. One hard day's ride and we shall be at Hever. Home to mother and Catherine.” She rapidly began to eat a peach.

Mary slept much later than she had meant to, and was immediately angered that Nancy had let so much of the morning go by without waking her. “I do not intend to stay in some house or inn before we get there,” Mary scolded Nancy as she donned her brown riding dress. She had considered the idea of disguise, but had no men's garments to fit, and she could not bear to put on any of Will's things even if it
did
mean she could ride astride instead of the bothersome sidesaddle, for the long trek. Since they would travel without a single packhorse, no one would think they had anything to steal anyway.

She had told Stephen exactly where to bury her jewels in the rose garden. They were safely hidden under the turf in the trellised bower where she and Staff had found shelter from the rain, Will and His Grace so long ago. She bit her lip hard. All that was behind her now and she had much penance to do. The Carey cause might be dead with Will, but she had his children to raise and care for. She must put her own foolish longings aside.

The door opened behind her as she stuffed the two dresses she would take into the saddle sacks. “Did you bury them where I said, Stephen?” she inquired tautly, not turning. That was the last of the packing. They could go now and leave everything else behind.

“Mary.”

The voice was deep and soft and it terrified her. She spun wide-eyed to face William Stafford. Her new-won resolve fled from her face, and her strength went from her knees. He was beside her, pulling her gently to him, her face nestled against his black linen chest.

“Thank God you are safe. I am so sorry to hear about poor Will, despite my feelings for you.”

She stood for endless moments pressed to him like that, not moving, not thinking. Then she stepped back and her hips hit the bed behind her. “How did you know?”

“The messenger you sent to Wilton stopped at Eltham on the way back. The word has rocked the court—and frightened them that the sweat would come again to Hampton and claim one of their own kind. His Grace regrets he had no doctors to leave behind when he fled. He had sent his last spare one to your sister, and he did not believe Will would really remain here when he had a country manor.”

“A doctor to Anne? Is she ill? But Catherine is there!”

“Not ill, I think. It is only that the king worried that he might lose her in any way. I warrant your blonde moppet is quite safe at Hever with your mother and the royal doctor hovering about.” His sweeping gaze took her in from hem to hair. “You are thinner, sweetheart, but as beautiful as ever. I know it must have been awful for you.”

She turned her back on him slowly and took a deep breath. “That is what Will said before he died, you know. He said that I looked beautiful. Oh, Staff, I have failed him so, and I have to make it up somehow.”

“Failed him? What are you talking about? Much of what he had that he valued he owed to you. It was his own decision to turn bitter, to cast you adrift where you might—well, be susceptible to other emotional ties.” He put both hands on her shoulders, but did not turn her to face him.

“He was delirious, and he said other things. He accused me of sending for you and the day he fell ill, we argued and I admitted I loved you. He took that with him instead of the love I could never give to him. Now—and now, I cannot bear it.” A little sob wracked her. He pulled her slowly against him and rested his chin on the top of her head.

“Death is hard to bear, but the living must not feel guilty to go on living, Mary. Yes, Will Carey was a good man in many ways and the snare he found himself in with the Bullens was not of his own making. He was the king's pawn, love, but he agreed to that. He reveled in it until he saw the price did not suit his family pride. But then he took it all out on you and not on the devils who make the rules to such games.”

“He needed the king to earn his way back.”

“This king can be denied on such matters if one is careful. And I meant to accuse your father as well as the king for all the dirty dealings where you and Will were concerned.”

“Anne is being careful in refusing the king and getting away with it in fine style. Is that what you mean?”

“I spoke of myself in refusing marriage when His Grace wills it, Mary. I will never marry the Dorsey wench now and the king will accept it from me. Wait and see.”

A quick irrational joy shot through her that he would not marry. She had privately grieved that he would these last six months since he had told her the king's wish. But it must not matter to her now. She must be strong against him.