Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (120 page)

Anne was sprawled on the ornate bed, careless of creasing her gown.

‘Good summer?' she asked me idly. ‘Children well?'

‘Yes,' I said shortly. I would never again speak willingly of my son to her. She had forfeited her right to be his aunt when she had laid claim to be his mother.

‘You were watching the archery with Uncle,' she said. ‘What was he talking about?'

I thought back. ‘Nothing. Saying you and the king were happy.'

‘I have told him that I want Wolsey destroyed. He's turned against me. He's supporting the queen.'

‘Anne, he lost the Lord Chancellorship, surely that's enough.'

‘He's been corresponding with the queen. I want him dead.'

‘But he was your friend.'

She shook her head. ‘We both played a part to please the king. Wolsey sent me fish from his trout pond, I sent him little gifts. But I never forgot how he spoke to me about Henry Percy, and he never forgot that I was a Boleyn, an upstart like him. He was jealous of me, and I was jealous of him. We have been enemies from the moment I came home from France. He didn't even see me. He didn't even understand what power I have. He still does not understand me. But at his death, he will. I have his house, I will have his life.'

‘He's an old man. He's lost all his wealth and his titles that were his great pride and joy. He's retiring to his see at York. If you want your revenge, you can leave him to rot. That's revenge enough.'

Anne shook her head. ‘Not yet. Not while the king still loves him.'

‘Is the king to love nobody but you? Not even the man who has guarded him and guided him like a father for years?'

‘Yes. He is to love nobody but me.'

I was surprised. ‘Have you come to desire him?'

She laughed in my face. ‘No. But I would have him see no-one and speak to no-one but me, and those I could trust. And who can I trust?'

I shook my head.

‘You – perhaps. George – always. Father – usually. Mother – sometimes, Uncle Howard – if it suits him. Not my aunt, who has gone over to Katherine. Perhaps the Duke of Suffolk but not his wife Mary Tudor who can't bear to see me rise so high. Anyone else? No. That's it. Perhaps
some men are tender-hearted to me. My cousin Sir Francis Bryan, perhaps Francis Weston from his friendship with George. Sir Thomas Wyatt cares for me still.' She raised one other finger in silence and we both knew that we were thinking of Henry Percy, so far away in Northumberland, determinedly never coming to court, ill with unhappiness, living in the middle of nowhere with the wife he had married under protest. ‘Ten,' she said quietly. ‘Ten people who wish me well against a whole world that would be glad to see me fall.'

‘But the cardinal can do nothing against you now. He has lost all his power.'

‘Then this is the very time when he is ripe to be destroyed. Now that he has lost all his power and he is a defeated old man.'

It was some plot hatched between the Duke of Suffolk and Uncle Howard but it bore Anne's hallmark. My uncle had evidence of a letter from Wolsey to the Pope and Henry, who had been disposed to recall his old friend to high office, turned once more against him and ordered his arrest.

The lord that they sent to arrest him was Anne's choice. It was Anne's final gesture to the man who had called her a foolish girl and an upstart. Henry Percy of Northumberland went to Wolsey at York and said that he was charged with treason and must travel the long road back to London and stay not in his wonderful palace of Hampton Court which now belonged to the king, not in his beautiful London home of York Place which was now renamed Whitehall and belonged to Anne; instead he was to go, like a traitor, to the Tower and await his trial, as others had gone before him and taken the short walk to the scaffold.

Henry Percy must have felt a harsh joy to send to Anne the man who had separated them, now sick with exhaustion and despair. It was no fault of Henry Percy's that Wolsey escaped them all by dying on the road and the only satisfaction that Anne could take was that it was the boy she had loved who told the man that had parted them that her vengeance had come at last.

The queen met the court at Greenwich for Christmas and Anne held her rival Christmas feast in the dead cardinal's old palace. It was an open secret that after the king had dined in state with the queen he would quietly slip out, summon the royal barge and be rowed to the stairs at Whitehall where he would eat another supper with Anne. Sometimes he took some chosen courtiers with him, me among them, and then we had a merry night on the river, wrapped up warm against the biting cold wind, with the stars bright above us as we rowed home and sometimes a huge white moon lighting our way.

I was one of the queen's ladies again and I was shocked to see the change in her. When she raised her head and smiled for Henry she could no longer summon any joy into her eyes. He had knocked it out of her, perhaps forever. She still had the same quiet dignity, she still had the same confidence in herself as a Princess of Spain and Queen of England, but she would never again have the glow of a woman who knows that her husband adores her.

One day we were sitting together at the fireside of her apartment, the altar cloth spread from one side of the hearth to the other. I was working on the blue sky which was still unfinished, and she, unusually for her, had left the blue and moved on to another colour. I thought that she must be weary indeed if she left a task unfinished. Usually she was a woman who would persist, whatever it cost her.

‘Did you see your children this summer?' she asked.

‘Yes, Your Majesty,' I said. ‘Catherine is in long dresses now and is learning French and Latin, and Henry's curls are cut.'

‘Will you send them to the French court?'

I could not conceal the pang of anxiety. ‘Not yet at any rate. They're still so very young.'

She smiled at me. ‘Lady Carey, you know that it is not how young they are, nor how dear. They have to learn their duty. As you did, as I did.'

I bowed my head. ‘I know that you're right,' I said quietly.

‘A woman needs to know her duty so that she may perform it and live in the estate to which God has been pleased to call her,' the queen pronounced. I knew that she was thinking of my sister, who was not in the estate to which God had been pleased to call her, but was instead in some glorious new condition, earned by her beauty and her wit, and maintained now by an inveterate campaign.

There was a knock at the door and one of my uncle's men stood in the doorway.

‘A gift of oranges from the Duchess of Norfolk,' he said. ‘And a note.'

I rose to receive the pretty basket with the oranges arranged in their dark green leaves. There was a letter marked with my uncle's seal laid on the top.

‘Read the note,' the queen said. I put the fruit down on the table and opened the letter. I read aloud: ‘“Your Majesty, having received a fresh barrel of oranges from the country of your birth I take the liberty of sending the pick of them to you with my compliments.”'

‘How very kind,' the queen said calmly. ‘Would you put them in my bedchamber, Mary? And write a reply to your aunt in my name to thank her for her gift.'

I rose and carried the basket into her room. There was a rug in the doorway and I caught my heel in it. As I staggered to regain my footing the oranges tumbled everywhere, rolling over the floor like a schoolboy's marbles. I swore as quietly as I could, and hurriedly started to pile them back into the basket before the queen came in and saw what a mess I had made of a simple task.

Then I saw something that made me freeze. In the bottom of the basket was a tiny twist of paper. I smoothed it out. It was covered in small numbers, there were no words at all. It was in code.

I stayed there, on my knees with the oranges all around me, for a long time. Then I slowly packed them back in their arrangement and put the basket on a low chest. I even stepped back to admire them and alter their position. Then I put the note in my pocket and went back into the room to sit with the woman that I loved more than any other in the world. I sat beside her, and stitched her tapestry, and wondered what smouldering disaster I had in the pocket of my gown and what I should do with it.

I had no choice. From start to finish I had no choice. I was a Boleyn. I was a Howard. If I did not cleave to my family then I was a nobody with no means to support my children, no future, and no protection. I took the note to my uncle's rooms and I laid it before him on the table.

He had the code broken in half a day. It was not a very complicated conspiracy. It was only a message of hope from the Spanish ambassador, whispered to my aunt, and passed on by her to the queen. Not a very effectual conspiracy. It was a plot in a desert. It meant nothing but some comfort to the queen, and now I had been the instrument in taking that comfort from her.

When the news of it all came out with a great quarrel in my uncle's apartments as he shouted at his wife that she was a traitor against the king and against him, and then there was a royal remonstrance from the king himself to my aunt, I went to the queen. She was in her room, looking out of the window at the frozen garden below her. Some people wrapped warm in furs were walking down to the river where the barges were waiting for them, going to visit my sister in her rival court. The queen, standing in silence, alone in her room, watched them go, the Fool capering round them, one of the musicians strumming a lute and singing them on their way.

I dropped to my knees before her.

‘I gave the duchess's note to my uncle,' I confessed baldly. ‘I found it in the oranges. If it had not come to my hand I would never have searched for it. I always seem to betray you, but it is never my intention.'

She glanced at my bowed head as if it did not much matter. ‘I don't know anyone who would have done any different,' she observed. ‘You should be on your knees to your God, not to me, Lady Carey.'

I did not rise. ‘I want to beg your pardon,' I said. ‘It is my destiny to belong to a family whose interests run counter to yours. If I had been your lady in waiting at another time you would never have had to doubt me.'

‘If you had not been tempted you would not have fallen. If it was not in your interests to betray me then you would have been loyal. Go away, Lady Carey, you are no better than your sister who pursues her own ends like a weasel and never glances to one side or the other. Nothing will stop the Boleyns gaining what they want, I know that. Sometimes I think she will stop at nothing, even my death, to do it. And I know that you will help her, however much you love me, however much I loved you
when you were my little maid – you will be behind her every step of her way.'

‘She's my sister,' I said passionately.

‘And I am your queen,' she said, like ice.

My knees ached on the floorboards but I did not want to move.

‘She has my son in her keeping,' I said. ‘And my king at her beck and call.'