Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (99 page)

“You’re not willing?” he asked.

“Of course I am willing. I am your wife,” I said levelly.

I feared he might trap me into a refusal which would allow him to put me aside; but his little sigh of disappointment showed
me that he was genuinely hoping for a warmer response. “We’ll sleep then.”

I was so relieved that I dared not say a word in case he changed his mind. I lay perfectly still until he turned his back on me, pulled the covers up over his shoulders, thumped his head down on the pillows and was quiet. Then, and only then, did I let my belly unknot and wiped the insincere Howard smile from my face. I let myself drift into sleep. I had survived another night, I was still at Hever, the Howards had everything to play for. Anything might happen tomorrow.

♦   ♦   ♦

We were woken by a knocking on the door. I was up and out of bed before William could wake and catch my hand. I opened the door and said sharply: “Hush. My lord is sleeping,” as if that were my only concern and not that I was determined to get out of his bed as quickly as possible.

“Urgent message from Mistress Anne,” the servant said and offered me a letter.

I dearly wanted to throw on a cloak and read it far away from William but he was awake and sitting up. “Our dear sister,” he said with a mocking smile. “And what does she say?”

I had no choice but to open the letter before him and hope to God that Anne was thinking of someone else for once in her selfish life.

Sister,

The king and I bid you and your husband come to meet us at Richmond where we will all be merry.

Anne.

William held out his hand for the letter. I handed it over.

“She guessed I was coming for you when I left court,” he observed.
I said nothing. “And so hip-hop, with one bound you are free of me,” he said bitterly. “And we are back where we were.”

He had spoken my very thought but behind the hardness of his tone I saw his hurt. Cuckold’s horns are not a comfortable headdress and he had been wearing them now for five years. Slowly I went to the bed. I put out my hand to him. “I am your wedded wife,” I said gently. “And I never forgot it, though our lives took us far apart. If we ever have to be married in very truth, William, you will find me a good wife to you.”

He looked up at me. “Is this a Howard speaking who fears the turning of the tide and thinks that life as Lady Carey would be a safer bet than being the other Boleyn girl when the first Boleyn girl is ruined?”

His guess was so precise that I had to turn my head rather than risk him seeing the truth in my eyes. “Oh, William,” I said reproachfully.

He drew me down to him and turned my face toward him with his finger under my chin. “Dearest wife,” he said sarcastically.

I closed my eyes rather than meet his scrutiny and then, to my surprise, felt the warmth of his face and tender, gentle little kisses on my lips. I felt desire well up in me like a long-forgotten spring. I put my hands around his neck and pulled him a little closer.

“I made a bad beginning last night,” he said gently. “So not now, and not here. But perhaps somewhere soon, don’t you think, little wife?”

I smiled up at him, hiding my relief at not being taken to Norfolk. “Somewhere soon,” I agreed. “Whenever you wish, William.”

A
NNE AT
R
ICHMOND WAS QUEEN IN ALL BUT NAME.
She had new apartments, which were adjacent to the king’s, she had ladies in waiting, she had a dozen new gowns, she had jewels, she had a couple of hunters to ride out with the king, she sat with him when his counselors discussed the matters of the country with him, she had her own chair at his side. Only in the great hall when the true queen came in to dinner was Anne demoted to a table on the floor of the hall while Katherine sat down to dinner in her majesty.

I was to sleep in Anne’s apartments, partly to give her countenance so that no one might think that the king’s constant companionship meant that they were lovers, but in truth, to help her keep him at arm’s length. He was desperate to have her, arguing that since they were betrothed they might bed. Anne played every trick she could summon. She protested her virginity and said that she would never forgive herself if she gave away her maidenhead before marriage, though God knew how much she desired him. She said that she would never forgive herself if she did not come before him on their wedding night a maid untouched—though God knew how much she desired him. She said that if he loved her as much as he said he did he would love the holy purity of her soul—though God knew la la la—and she
said that she was afraid, that she both yearned for and shrank from him, that she needed time.

“How long can it take?” she snarled at George and me. “For God’s sake! For some damn clerk to ride to Rome, get a paper signed and ride back? How long can it take?”

We were tucked away in our bedroom at the back of her privy chamber, the only private place in the whole of the palace. Everywhere else we were on unending public show. Everyone watched Anne for the slightest clue that the king was losing interest, or that he had finally had her. She was scanned by a hundred eyes for any sign of either desertion or pregnancy. George and I felt like her bodyguard some days, on other days like today we felt like jailers. She was prowling up and down in the small space, swishing between bed and window, unable to stop moving, unable to stop muttering.

George caught her hands and brought her to a standstill. One glance over her head warned me to grab her from behind if she went into one of her rages.

“Anne, be calm. We have to go out and watch the boatmen race at any moment. You have to be calm.”

She quivered in his grip and then the anger went out of her and her shoulders slumped. “I’m so tired,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said steadily. “But this could go on for a long while yet, Anne. You’re playing for the greatest prize in the world. You have to prepare yourself for a long game of skill.”

“If she would only die!” she suddenly flared up.

George’s glance went at once to the solid wooden door. “Hush. She might,” he said. “Or Wolsey might have pulled it off. He could be sailing up the river right now, and you could be wed tomorrow and in the king’s bed tomorrow night and
pregnant the next morning. Be at peace, Anne. Everything rests on you keeping your looks.”

“And your temper,” I supplemented quietly.

“You dare advise me?”

“He won’t stand for tantrums,” I warned her. “He’s spent all his married life with Katherine and she never raised so much as an eyebrow at him, let alone her voice. He’ll let you go far because he’s mad for you. But he won’t stand for one of your scenes.”

She looked as if she might flare up again, but then she nodded as she acknowledged the sense of it. “Yes, I know. That’s why I need you two.”

We both stepped a little closer to her, George still grasping her hands, and I put my hands on her hips and held her tightly.

“I know,” George said. “We’re in this together. This is for all of us: Boleyns and Howards. We all rise or fall on this. We’re all waiting and playing the long game. You have to lead the charge, Anne. But we’re all behind you.”

She nodded and turned to the new large mirror mounted on the wall, reflecting the light from the gardens and the river outside. She pushed back her hood, she straightened the pearl necklace. She turned her head and looked sideways at her reflection and tried that mischievous, promising smile. “I’m ready,” she said.

We made way for her as if she were queen already. As she went out of the door with her head held high George and I exchanged a swift look of players who have pushed the principal on stage, and we followed behind her.

My husband was on the royal barge to watch the boatmen race and he smiled at me and made a place beside him on the bench. George joined the young men of the court, Francis Weston among them. I glanced to see that Anne was seated beside the king. By the flighty turn of her head and her sideways
glance at him I could see that she was in full control of herself and of him, once more.

“Walk with me in the gardens before dinner,” my husband said quietly in my ear.

At once I was alert. “Why?”

He laughed at me. “Oh, you Howards! Because I like your company, because I ask it of you. Because we are man and wife and we may live as man and wife any day now.”

I smiled ruefully. “I don’t forget it.”

“Perhaps you will learn to anticipate it with pleasure?”

“Perhaps,” I said sweetly.

He looked out over the river where the afternoon sun was sparkling on the water. The boats of the noblemen all manned by their liveried rowers were drawn up under the starter’s orders. They made a colorful sight with the oars held high like trumpets, waiting for the command to start. They all looked toward the king, who took a scarlet silk kerchief and gave it to Anne. She stepped up to the edge of the royal barge and held it high over her head. For a moment she held the pose, well aware that all eyes were on her. From where I was sitting with William we could see her in profile, her head flung back, her hood well back from her face, her pale skin flushing with pleasure, her dark green gown tight around her breasts and slim waist. She was the very essence of desire. She dropped the red kerchief and the boats leaped forward under the thrust of the oars. She did not go back to her seat at the king’s side, she had a moment where she forgot to play the queen. She leaned over the rail so that she could see as the Howard boat pulled ahead of the Seymours.

“Come on, Howards!” she suddenly shouted. “Come on!”

As if they heard her call above all the other shouting from the riverbank the rowers quickened their stroke and the boat surged
forward, paused, and surged forward again to a quicker tempo than the Seymours’. I was on my feet now, everybody was cheering, the royal barge dipped precariously as the whole court forgot its dignity and crowded onto one side and yelled for their favorite house. The king himself, laughing like a boy again with his arm around Anne’s waist, was watching, careful not to shout for one lord or another, but clearly willing the Howards to win since that would delight the girl in his arms.

They went faster, the oars a blur of splashing water and light, and at the line they were unquestionably half a length before the Seymours. There was a great drum roll and a blast of trumpets to tell the Seymours that it was all over for them, that we had won the boat race, that we had won the race to be the first family in the kingdom, and that it was our girl in the arms of the king with her eye on the throne of England.

♦   ♦   ♦

Cardinal Wolsey came home, not in triumph with an annulment in his pocket, but in disgrace, and found that he could not even talk to Henry alone. The man who had managed every single thing from the amount of wine served at banquets to the terms of the peace with France and Spain found that he had to make his report before Anne and Henry, side by side, as if they were joint monarchs. The girl he had scolded for unchastity and for aiming too high sat at the right hand of the King of England and looked at him with narrowed eyes as if she were not very impressed with what he had to say.

The cardinal was too old and wily a courtier to let any surprise show on his face. He bowed very pleasantly to Anne and made his report. Anne smiled very equably and listened, leaned forward, whispered a little poison in Henry’s ear, and listened some more.

♦   ♦   ♦

“Idiot!” she stormed in our little room. I was sitting on the bed, my feet drawn out of the way. She was on her track running from window to bedpost like one of the lions in the Tower, I thought idly that she would leave a mark on the polished floorboards and we could show it to those who like relics and signs. We could call it “Anne’s Martyrdom to Time.”

“He’s a fool, and we have got nowhere!”

“What does he say?”

“That it is a serious matter to put aside the aunt of the man who holds the Pope and half of Europe in his grasp, and that, God willing, Charles of Spain will be defeated by Italy and France together when they go to war, and that England should promise support but not risk a man nor loose an arrow.”

“We wait?”

She threw her hands above her head and screamed. “We wait? No! You can wait! The cardinal can wait! Henry can wait! But I have to dance on the spot, I have to be seen to make progress while actually making none. I have to retain the illusion of things happening, I have to make Henry feel more and more intensely loved, I have to give him the belief that things are getting better and better because he is a king and all his life everyone has told him that he shall have the very best. He has been promised cream and gold and honey, I cannot give him ‘wait.’ How am I to keep going? How am I to do it?”

I wished that George was here. “You’ll manage,” I said. “You’ll go on as you have been going. You’ve done wonderfully well, Anne.”

She gritted her teeth. “I will be old and exhausted before this is done.”

Gently I took her and turned her toward her grand Venetian glass mirror. “Look,” I said.

Anne could always be comforted by the sight of her own beauty. She paused and took a breath.

“And you’re brilliant as well,” I reminded her. “He is always saying that you have the sharpest mind in the kingdom and if you were a man he would have you for cardinal.”

She smiled a little sharp feral smile. “That must please Wolsey.”

I smiled back, my face next to hers in the mirror, the two of us, as ever, a contrast in looks, in coloring, in expression. “I’m sure,” I said. “But there’s nothing Wolsey can do.”

“He doesn’t even see the king without an appointment now,” she gloated. “I’ve seen to that. They don’t wander off together for their friendly little talks as they used to. Nothing is decided without me being there. He cannot come to the palace for a meeting with the king without notifying the king and notifying me. He is pushed out of power and I am inside it.”

“You’ve done wonderfully well,” I said, the words sickening me as they soothed her. “And you have years and years ahead of you, Anne.”