At the King's Pleasure (Secrets of the Tudor Court) (34 page)

“When Father came into the king’s presence,” Buckingham
declared, “he intended to secret a knife upon his person and when he knelt before the king, he meant to rise up without warning and stab him.” As he spoke, the duke gripped the handle of his own dagger, although he did not draw it from its sheath.

Madge could not bear to listen to any more. To contemplate regicide was a terrible sin, worse even than killing a father or a mother. She ran from the room, her anguish made all the worse by her certainty that the duke had not even noticed her abrupt departure.

B
ess Boleyn’s daughter, Mary, a maid of honor to the queen, was married in a quiet ceremony at court. The groom was Sir William Carey, one of the king’s gentlemen. Neither the king nor the queen attended but the king made the same offering in honor of the day that he had when Anne and George were wed at Greenwich some ten years earlier.

It was a cold Saturday in the dead of winter. Those invited to the informal wedding feast were glad to have something new to distract them. Anne was a bit more distracted than she’d wished to be when she found herself seated between her husband and Will Compton.

“Is that the bitch I gave you?” Will asked when he noticed Dancer rooting in the rushes beneath the table for a discarded bone.

Anne acknowledged that she was, remembering too late that George had not known where the pup came from. She felt him stiffen at her right hand.

“She must be getting on in years. Perhaps I should present you with another.”

“Is there some advantage to youth?” Anne quipped. “We are all getting older but, one hopes, wiser.”

She sent a sideways glance in George’s direction. His attention
seemed to have returned to his food. They shared a trencher, as was the custom. Will was supposed to be partnered with the lady on his left, but so far he had ignored her very existence. She did not seem to mind. She was flirting with a gentleman farther down the table.

“There is nothing so faithful as a dog,” Will commented, “nor as useful.”

“That is true enough,” Anne agreed.

“Cardinal Wolsey keeps a cat.” He did not trouble to hide his contempt. “It even sleeps with him, dragging who knows what filth into the bed.”

Anne had to smile, given that Dancer was now rolling in something spilled in the rushes, covering her fur with “who knew what filth.” “Cats groom themselves,” she pointed out.

“Would Lancelot own a cat, or give one to his Guinevere?” Will liked to compare himself to that legendary knight. . . the one who had cuckolded his king.

This was all meaningless conversation, Anne reminded herself. Nothing had changed in the last decade. Men and women at court still pretended to be the knights and ladies of the tales of chivalry. Gallants wrote poetry to idealized damsels, untouchable and pure. It was nonsense, especially when half of them were creeping into each other’s bedchambers of a night! Anne had long since grown tired of the games, but so long as the queen commanded her presence, she was obliged to remain at court and at least such foolishness helped pass the time.

“Did you receive the silk flower I sent you?” Will asked.

“Oh, did that come from you?” She pretended surprise, although she’d known full well who had arranged for it to be left in her bedchamber.

“It is of a type called French fennel,” he informed her, wiping his fingers on the napkin across his shoulder, “all things French being back in fashion.”

She popped a slice of orange into her mouth to avoid having to answer. Oranges were also in fashion. Knowing she liked the flavor, George had purchased two hundred of them off a ship newly arrived
from Spain. They had been delivered to Greenwich packed together with fifty quinces in a sugar case.

She turned toward her husband, meaning to thank him publicly for the gift, but the words stopped in her throat when she saw his face. He was quietly furious.

“What is it?” she whispered.

He only shook his head. “We will talk later.”

“As you wish.”

She was glad of it when it came time for the bride and groom to be carried off to their nuptial chamber. The festivities would be over soon. She could take her own husband off to bed and insist that he tell her why, after all this time, he was suddenly showing signs of renewed jealousy toward Will Compton.

In the meantime, she could not seem to rid herself of the other man. Will even held back when all the other courtiers escorted young Carey away to strip him of his wedding finery. That George also remained behind did not seem to inhibit him.

“Shall I tell you a secret?” He did not wait for a reply. “There’s to be no consummation. Mary Boleyn’s been married off for one reason and one reason only—she’s the king’s new mistress and he does not wish to risk getting another unmarried damsel with child.”

It was no secret at court that King Henry’s longtime mistress, Bessie Blount, had given birth to a son before she was married off to Lord Talboys’s heir. The king had acknowledged the boy as his and decreed that he be known as Henry Fitzroy.

“I suppose you would know about such things, Will,” George drawled, “being the one the king sends to escort innocent victims into the secret lodgings.”

“Hardly innocent,” Will said with a laugh. “I have it on good authority that Mistress Mary allowed herself to be tupped by the King of France before her father removed her from Queen Claude’s service and brought her back to England.”

“That is a terrible thing to say!” Anne protested.

Mary had been a mere girl when she first went to France with the
king’s sister. She’d stayed on to serve the new French queen because her father, Tom Boleyn, was King Henry’s ambassador to the French court. The other Boleyn girl, Nan, was still in Queen Claude’s service, which made it seem all the more unlikely to Anne that Mary should have become entangled with King Francis.

“The French king is said to have slept with every woman at his court,” Will informed her.

“Just as King Henry is said to have slept with every woman at his?” George asked.

Will laughed. Anne did not. It was impossible not to see the similarities between the king’s interest in Mary Boleyn and his desire, ten years before, to bed George Hastings’s young wife. Anne did not wish to remember that time, nor did she wish her husband to be reminded of it.

The bedding ceremony went forward, and perforce Anne and George and Will joined all the other wedding guests to witness the removal of Mary’s garter and the throwing of the stockings. As soon as she could, Anne fled to her own lodgings. She poured herself a cup of Xeres sack and, thus fortified, braced for George’s arrival. It alarmed her that he’d become so heated over Will’s remarks. It had been years since their rivalry over her had flared up that way. Something had changed, and she was determined to discover what it was.

George looked weary when he came into the room. He accepted the cup of sack she offered him and watched her over the brim as he sipped. “I owe you an apology, my love.”

More relieved than words could express, Anne went up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. Her hand came to rest on his chest, where she could feel the reassuringly steady beat of his heart beneath her palm. “What is it that troubled you, George? What made you so angry?”

“Not what. Who. The cardinal, as ever, sowing discord.”

“What did he say?” She kept her gaze locked on his, willing him to tell her everything.

“He has implied, on more than one occasion of late, that you and Compton are lovers. I tell him every time that it is not so, but he insists that the rumors persist.”

“He is lying. Trying to cause trouble for some convoluted reason of his own. You must believe me, George—it has been years since there was even the hint of anything more than casual flirtation in my dealings with Will Compton. And you know already how little basis there was for scandal before my brother involved himself.”

She felt a twinge of guilt at directing George’s thoughts to the time before her incarceration in Littlemore Priory. She wished to pretend, even to herself, that what had happened at The Vyne and for months afterward had never taken place. George meant too much to her to risk confessing the true circumstances of her adultery. Anne meant to take that secret with her to the grave.

S
ix months after the incident involving William Bulmer, the Duke of Buckingham appeared to have regained the king’s favor. There had been no more accusations of illegal retaining and the duke had made no further mention of regicide, nor had he spoken of the monk at Hinton in his mistress’s presence. Madge had begun to hope her fears were groundless.

After a morning visiting London shops, she returned to the Manor of the Rose to find the duke walking in his gallery with Charles Knyvett. There was nothing particularly unusual in that, but for some reason the cadence of their lowered voices alarmed her. She set aside her basket, then hesitated. Knowing that the duke would not welcome an intrusion, she crept into the gallery by a back way and stood listening in the concealment of a convenient wall hanging.

“I have heard some of the general talk in London,” the duke was saying as their steps brought them nearer the place where Madge was hidden, “but I would know what men think about the king’s plan to travel to Calais.”

He spoke of the king’s coming visit, accompanied by most of the English court, to the King of France. It was to be a grand celebration, some two weeks of jousts and tourneys and revels. Duchess Eleanor was
due in London any day now to accompany the queen. Madge was to go, too, as one of the duchess’s four gentlewomen. But Edward had been railing against the expense of the enterprise for months. The cost for clothing and to caparison the horses and transport the whole, with provisions, across the Narrow Seas was enormous, especially since Edward had taken pains to make sure his entourage would be the most ostentatious in the company.

“Many have fears about the voyage,” Knyvett answered. “They think the French mean some deceit.”

“That is very likely,” the duke said.

As they were moving away again, Madge missed their next exchange. She peeked around the side of the hanging, but all she had time to notice was how Knyvett’s thinning hair stood up in wisps, disarrayed when he’d removed his cap. Then they were circling back and she was obliged to duck out of sight.

“Do you know something more of the matter?” Knyvett asked. “Have you agents in France?”

“I know what the future holds,” Buckingham stated. Hearing the smirk in the duke’s voice, Madge’s insides clenched with dread.

“How?” Knyvett demanded.

Madge wanted to interrupt, to warn Edward not to trust his cousin, but she knew how useless it would be. She’d only provoke her lover’s anger. He would not listen to advice from a mere woman.

She tried to convince herself that she had no real reason to be suspicious of Knyvett. He had never mentioned Edward’s outburst in East Greenwich, not even to her. If he could keep secret the duke’s threat to kill the king, then perhaps he
was
still loyal to his master, in spite of his irritation over Edward’s seizure of his sister’s possessions after Bess Knyvett’s death.

“There is a certain holy monk in a certain charterhouse who has communicated with me diverse times,” the duke said. “By the power of Almighty God, he has knowledge of the future. He has told me that neither the king nor his heirs shall prosper, and advised me that I should endeavor, to the best of my power, to obtain the love of the
community of England because I and my blood
will
prosper and will one day have the rule of England.”

Madge heard Knyvett’s sharply indrawn breath and then a hesitant “My lord. . .”

“Speak freely, cousin,” the duke commanded.

They had been standing still for some moments, making it easy for Madge to overhear. She held her breath, waiting for Knyvett’s reply.

“Have you considered,” he asked, “that this monk might be deluded by the devil? I have always been taught that it is evil to meddle in prophecy.”

Sounding much offended, the duke rushed to the monk’s defense. “His predictions can do
me
no harm. And only think how much I can accomplish when his words prove true.” He gave a gleeful little chuckle. “I tell you true, had the king not recovered from his last illness, I would already sit on the throne of England. And you may be sure I would cheerfully have cut off the head of my lord cardinal by now, and others, too.”

“What you say is treason, my lord,” Knyvett whispered in an agitated voice. “You spoke once before to me of your fear of being sent to the Tower. To give credence to this monk’s claims is a sure way to end there.”

“I would rather die than continue to be ordered about as I have been of late. Why must I make this journey to meet with the French king? He is our enemy! And the whole is a wasteful expense! There will not be such extravagant spending when I am king.”

When the two men resumed their perambulations, Madge slipped away. She had prayed nightly that Edward would abandon his grandiose dreams. What he had said and done already was dangerous enough, but until now only she and Gilbert and Delacourt knew about the monk’s predictions. The duke’s chaplain and chancellor were the men he trusted most. They would not betray him any more than Madge would. But now that Charles Knyvett knew. . .

She must, she decided, find a way to make Edward listen to common sense. He must not confide in anyone else. And he must give up the
notion that he would ever succeed King Henry. Little Princess Mary was thriving. She would rule one day. Or else the king would legitimize his bastard son by Bess Blount, Henry Fitzroy, and Fitzroy would be king. It was even possible that the queen would have another child, the much-desired male heir.

Halfway down the stairway, one hand on the rail, Madge froze. What made her think that Edward would ever take
her
advice? Now that she thought about it, she realized that it had been weeks since Edward had talked to her of anything but the most mundane domestic matters. He did not even couple with her as often as he once had. More and more often, they simply slept together in the big ducal bed.