Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (109 page)

“But what of you, Mary? Leaving aside the titles? Do you, Mary, pretty Mary Boleyn, never look for me? Never think of me?”

“Never,” I said flatly, and left him standing in the archway to the stable yard.

T
HE COURT MOVED TO
W
INDSOR AND THE QUEEN
brought the Princess Mary, still very pale and thin, back with her to the castle. The King could not help but be tender to his only legitimate child. His attitude to his wife mellowed, and then hardened again, depending on whether he was with my sister or at the bedside of their daughter. The queen, sleepless with praying and nursing the princess, was never too weary to greet him with a smile and a curtsy, was always a steady star in the firmament of the court. She and the princess were to rest at Windsor for the summer.

She smiled at me when I came in with a posy of early roses. “I thought the Princess Mary might like these by her bedside,” I said. “They smell very sweet.”

Queen Katherine took them from me and sniffed at them. “You are a countrywoman,” she said. “None of my other ladies would think of picking flowers and bringing them indoors.”

“My children love to bring flowers into their rooms,” I said. “They make crowns and necklaces from daisies. When I kiss Catherine good night I often find buttercups on her pillow where they have fallen from her hair.”

“The king has said that you can go to Hever while the court is traveling?”

“Yes.” I smiled at her accurate reading of my contentment. “Yes, and stay there all the summer.”

“So we shall be with our children then, you and I. You will come back to court in the autumn?”

“I will,” I promised. “And I will come back to your service if you want me, Your Majesty.”

“And then we start again,” she said. “Christmas when I am unchallenged queen and summer when I am deserted.”

I nodded.

“She holds him, doesn’t she?” She looked out of the windows which faced toward the garden and the river. In the distance we could see the king with Anne, walking on the riverside path before they rode out on their summer progress.

“Yes,” I said shortly.

“What’s her secret, d’you think?”

“I think they’re very alike.” My distaste for the two of them crept into my tone. “They both know exactly what they want and they both stop at nothing to get it. They both have the ability to be absolutely single-minded. It’s why the king was such a great sportsman. When he chased a stag he saw nothing in his whole heart but the stag. And Anne is the same. She schooled herself to follow only her interest. And now their desires are the same. It makes them . . .” I paused, thinking of the right word. “Formidable,” I said.

“I can be formidable,” the queen said.

I gave her a sideways glance. If she had not been queen I would have put my arm around her shoulders and hugged her.

“Who knows it better than I? I have seen you stand up to the king in one of his rages, I have seen you take on two cardinals and the Privy Council. But you serve God, and you love the
king, and you love your child. You don’t think absolutely singly, ‘what is it that
I
want?’”

She shook her head. “That would be the sin of selfishness.”

I looked toward the two figures by the river’s edge, the most selfish two people that I knew. “Yes.”

♦   ♦   ♦

I went down to the stable yard to make sure that they had the trunks loaded and my horse ready for us to start next morning and found William Stafford checking the wheels of the wagon.

“Thank you,” I said, a little surprised to find him there.

He straightened up and turned his bright smile on me. “I am to escort you. Did your uncle not say?”

“I am sure he said someone else.”

His smile broadened to a grin. “It was. But he is not fit to ride tomorrow.”

“Why not?”

“He’s ill with drink.”

“Drunk now, and not fit to ride tomorrow?”

“I should have said he will be ill with drink.”

I waited.

“He will be ill with drink tomorrow, because he is going to be dead drunk tonight.”

“And you can foresee the future?”

“I can foresee that I will be pouring the wine,” he chuckled. “May I not escort you, Lady Carey? You know that I will make sure that you arrive safely.”

“Of course you may,” I said, a little flustered. “It’s just that . . .”

Stafford was very quiet, I had the impression that he was listening to me not just with his ears but with all his senses.

“Just what?” he prompted.

“I would not want you hurt,” I said. “You cannot be anything more to me than a man in my uncle’s service.”

“But what should prevent us liking each other?”

“The gravest of trouble with my family.”

“Would that matter so very much? Would it not be better to have a friend, a true friend, however lowly, than be a grand lonely woman at her sister’s beck and call?”

I turned away from him. The thought of being in Anne’s service grated on me, as it always did.

“So, shall I escort you to Hever tomorrow?” he asked, deliberately breaking the spell.

“If you like,” I said ungraciously. “One man is much the same as another.”

He choked on a laugh at that, but he did not argue with me. He let me go and I went from the stable yard rather wanting him to run after me and tell me that he was not the same as any other man, and that I might be very sure of that.

♦   ♦   ♦

I went up to my room and found Anne adjusting her riding hat before the mirror, glittery with excitement.

“We’re going,” she said. “Come out and bid us farewell.”

I followed her down the stairs, taking care not to step on the long hem of her rich red velvet gown.

We came out of the two huge double doors and there was Henry, already mounted on his horse with Anne’s dark hunter waiting restlessly beside him. I noted with horror that my sister had kept the king waiting while she adjusted her hat.

He smiled. She might do anything. Two young men sprang forward to help her up into the saddle and she coquetted for a moment, choosing which one might have the privilege of putting his cupped hands under her boot.

The king gave the signal to start and they all moved off. Anne looked over her shoulder and waved at me. “Tell the queen we’ve gone,” she called.

“What?” I asked. “You surely bid her good-bye?”

She laughed. “No. We’ve just gone. Tell her we’re gone and she’s left all alone.”

I could have run after her and pulled her off her horse and slapped her for that piece of spite. But I stayed where I was on the doorstep, smiling at the king and waving at my sister, and then, as the horsemen and wagons and outriders and soldiers and the whole household clattered past me, I turned and went slowly into the castle.

I let the door bang shut behind me. It was very very quiet. The hangings had gone from the walls, some of the tables had been taken from the great hall and the place was filled with the echoes of silence. The fire had died down in the grate, there were no men at arms to throw on extra logs and call for more ale. The sunlight filtered in through the windows and threw slabs of yellow light on the floor and the dust motes danced in the light. I had never been in a royal palace and heard nothing before. Always the place was alive with noise and work and business and play. Always there were servants scolding, and orders being shouted down the stairs, and people begging for admission or for some favor, musicians playing, dogs barking, and courtiers flirting.

I went up the stairs to the queen’s apartments, my heels tapping on the flagstones. I knocked on the door and even my fingertips on the wood seemed unnaturally loud. I pushed it open and thought for a moment that the room was vacant. Then I saw her. She was at the window, watching the road winding away from the palace. She could see the court which had been her court, led by the husband who had been her husband, and all her friends and servants, goods, furniture and even the household linen, winding away down the road from the castle, following Anne Boleyn on her big black hunter, leaving her alone.

“He’s gone,” she said wonderingly. “Without even saying good-bye to me.”

I nodded.

“He’s never done such a thing before. However bad it has been he always comes to me for my blessing before he goes away. I thought sometimes that he was like a boy, like my boy, that however much he might go away he would always want to know that he could come back to me. He would always want my blessing on any journey he made.”

A troop of horsemen clattered alongside the baggage train, urging the drivers to close up and keep better order. We could hear the noise of the wheels from the queen’s window. She was spared nothing.

There was a clatter of boots on the stair and a sharp tap on the half-open door. I went to answer it. It was one of the king’s men with a letter with the royal seal.

She turned at once, her face lit up with joy, and ran across the room to take it from his hand. “There! He didn’t leave without a word. He has written to me,” she said, and took it over to the light and broke the seal.

I watched her grow old as she read it. The color drained from her cheeks and the light went from her eyes and the smile left her lips. She sank down into the window seat and I pushed the man from the room and shut the door on his staring face. I ran over to her and knelt at her side.

The queen looked down at me but she did not see me, her eyes were filled with tears. “I am to leave the castle,” she whispered. “He is sending me away. Cardinal or no cardinal, Pope or no Pope, he is sending me into banishment. I am to be gone within a month and our own daughter is to go too.”

The messenger tapped on the doorway and cautiously put
his head inside the door. I leaped to my feet and would have slammed the door in his face for impertinence, but the queen put her hand on my sleeve.

“Any reply?” he asked. He did not even call her “Your Majesty.”

“Go where I may, I remain his wife, and I will pray for him,” she said steadily. She rose to her feet. “Tell the king that I wish him well on his journey, that I am sorry not to have said goodbye to him, if he had told me he was leaving so soon I should have made sure that he did not leave without his wife’s blessing. And ask him to send a message to tell me that he is in good health.”

The messenger nodded, shot a quick apologetic look at me, and got himself out of the room. We waited.

The queen and I went to the window. We could see the man on his horse ride the length of the baggage train which was still winding down the river road. He vanished from sight. Anne and Henry, perhaps handclasped, perhaps singing together, would be far ahead on the road to Woodstock.

“I never thought it would end like this,” she said in a small voice. “I never thought he would be able to leave me without saying good-bye.”

♦   ♦   ♦

It was a fine summer for the children and for me. Henry was five and his sister seven years old and I decided that they should each have a pony of their own; but nowhere in the county could I find a pair of good ponies small enough and docile enough for us. I had mentioned this plan to William Stafford as we rode to Hever and so I was not wholly surprised when I saw him returning, uninvited, a week later, riding up the lane with a small fat pony on either side of his rangy hunter.

The children and I had been walking in the meadows before
the moat. I waved to him and he turned off the lane and rode along the side of the moat toward us. As soon as Henry and Catherine saw the ponies they were leaping with excitement.

“Wait,” I cautioned them. “Wait and see. We don’t know that they’ll be any good. We don’t know that we want to buy them.”

“You’re right to be cautious. I’m such a huckster,” William Stafford said, sliding from his saddle and dropping to the ground. He took my hand in his and brought it to his lips.

“Wherever did you find them?”

Catherine had the rope of the little gray pony and was petting its nose. Henry was behind my skirt, eyeing the chestnut with a mixture of intense excitement and fear.

“Oh you know, on the doorstep,” he said idly. “I can send them back if you don’t like them.”

At once there was a wail of protest from Henry, still behind my skirts. “Don’t send them back!”

William Stafford dropped to one knee to be on a level with Henry’s bright face. “Come out, lad,” he said kindly. “You’ll never make a horseman hiding behind your mother.”

“Does he bite?”

“You have to feed him with your hand flat,” William explained. “Then he can’t bite.” He flattened Henry’s hand and showed him how a horse crops.

“Does he gallop?” Catherine asked. “Gallop like mother’s horse?”

“He can’t go as fast, but he does gallop,” William answered. “And he can jump.”

“Can I jump with him?” Henry’s eyes were like trenchers.

William straightened up and smiled at me. “You have to learn to sit on him first, walk, trot and canter. Then you can go on to jousting and jumping.”

“Will you teach me?” Catherine demanded. “You will, won’t
you? Stay here with us all the summer and teach us how to ride?”

William’s smile was shamelessly triumphant. “Well I should like to, of course. If your mother says that I may.”

At once the two children turned to me. “Say yes!” Catherine begged.

“Please!” Henry urged me.

“But I can teach you to ride,” I protested.

“Not to joust!” Henry exclaimed. “And you ride sideways. I need to ride straight. Don’t I, sir? I need to ride straight because I’m a boy and I’m going to be a man.”

William looked at me over the top of my son’s bobbing head. “What d’you say, Lady Carey? Can I stay for the summer and teach your son to ride straight?”

I did not let him see my amusement. “Oh very well. You can tell them in the house to prepare a room if you like.”

♦   ♦   ♦

Every morning William Stafford and I would walk for hours with the children seated on their little ponies walking beside us. After dinner we would put the ponies on long lunge reins and let them walk, trot and then canter in a circle while the two children clung on like a pair of little burrs.