Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (160 page)

She never wavered in her sweetness to Henry. They must have reared her on a diet of sugar beet in Wiltshire. She was utterly unendingly pleasant to Henry whether he was in a sour mood because of the pain in
his leg, or whether he was exultant as a boy crowing in triumph because he had brought down a deer. She was always very calm, she was always very pious – he often found her on her knees before her little prie dieu with her hands clasped on her rosary, and her head uplifted – and she was always unendingly modest.

She set aside the French hood, the stylish half-moon-shaped headdress which Anne had introduced when she first came back to England. Instead, Jane wore a gable hood, like Queen Katherine had done, which only a year ago marked the wearer as someone impossibly dowdy and dull. Henry himself had sworn that he hated Spanish dress, but its very sternness suited Jane's cool beauty as a foil. She wore it like a nun might wear a coif – to demonstrate her disdain for worldly show. But she wore it in palest blue, in softest green, in butter yellow: all clean light colours as if her very palette was mild.

I knew that she was halfway to my sister's place when Madge Shelton, bawdy, flirtatious, loose-living little Madge Shelton, appeared at dinner in a gable hood in pale blue with a high-necked gown to match and her French sleeves remodelled to an English cut. Within days every woman in the court wore a gable hood and walked with her eyes downcast.

Anne joined us in February, riding into court with the greatest show: the royal standard rippling over her head, the Boleyn standard coming along behind her, and a great train of liveried serving men and gentlemen on horseback. George and I were waiting for her on the steps with the great doors open wide behind us, and Henry noticeable by his absence.

‘Shall you tell her about Jane's rooms?' George asked me.

‘Not I,' I said. ‘You can.'

‘Francis says to tell her in public. She'll rule her temper in front of the court.'

‘You discuss the queen with Francis?'

‘You talk with William.'

‘He is my husband.'

George nodded, looking towards the first men in Anne's train as they approached the door.

‘You trust William?'

‘Of course.'

‘I feel the same about Francis.'

‘It's not the same.'

‘How would you know what his love is like to me?'

‘I know that it can't be as a man loves a woman.'

‘No. I love him as a man loves a man.'

‘It's against holy writ.'

He took my hands and smiled his irresistible Boleyn smile. ‘Mary, have done. These are dangerous times and the only comfort to me is Francis's love. Let me have that. Because as God is my witness I have few other joys, and I think we are in the greatest of danger.'

Anne's train of escorts rode past and she pulled up her horse beside us with a radiant smile. She was wearing a riding habit in darkest red and a dark red hat set back on her head with a long feather pinned on the brim with a great ruby brooch.

‘
Vivat Anna
!' my brother called, responding to her emphatic style.

She looked past us, into the shadows of the great hall, expecting to see the king waiting for her. Her expression did not change when she saw that he was missing.

‘Are you well?' I asked, coming forward.

‘Of course,' she said brightly. ‘Why should I not be?'

I shook my head. ‘No reason,' I said cautiously. Clearly, we were to say nothing about this dead baby as we had always said nothing about the others.

‘Where is the king?'

‘Hunting,' George said.

Anne strode into the palace, servants running before her to throw open the doors.

‘He knew I was coming?' she threw over her shoulder.

‘Yes,' George replied.

She nodded and waited until we were in her rooms with the doors shut. ‘And where are my ladies?'

‘Some of them are hunting with the king,' I said. ‘Some of them are …' I found I did not know how to end the sentence. ‘Some of them are not,' I said hopelessly.

She looked past me and raised a dark eyebrow at George. ‘Will you tell me what my sister means?' she asked. ‘I knew her French and Latin were incomprehensible but now English seems to be beyond her too.'

‘Your ladies are flocking to Jane Seymour,' he said flatly. ‘The king has given her Thomas Cromwell's apartments, he dines with her every day. She has a little court over there.'

She gasped for a moment and looked from our brother to me. ‘Is this true?'

‘Yes,' I said.

‘He has given her Thomas Cromwell's rooms? He can go straight to her rooms without anyone even knowing?'

‘Yes.'

‘Are they lovers?'

I looked at George.

‘No way of knowing,' he said. ‘My wager is not.'

‘Not?'

‘She seems to be refusing to take the addresses of a married man,' he said. ‘She is playing on her virtue.'

Anne went to the window, walking slowly, as if she would puzzle out this change in her world. ‘What does she hope for?' she asked. ‘If she is calling him on and holding him off at the same time?'

Neither of us answered her. Who would know better than us?

Anne turned, her eyes as sharp as a cat's. ‘She thinks to put me aside? Is she mad?'

We neither of us answered.

‘And Cromwell was ordered out for this shower of Seymours?'

I shook my head. ‘Cromwell offered his rooms.'

She nodded slowly. ‘So Cromwell is openly against me now.'

She looked to George for comfort, an odd look, as if she were not sure of him. But George had never failed her. Tentatively, he went closer to her and put his hand on her shoulder, brother-like. Instead of turning to him for a hug, she stepped back until he was standing behind her and then she rested her head back against his chest. He gave a sigh and wrapped his arms around her and rocked her gently as they stood, looking out of the window where the Thames sparkled in the wintry sunshine.

‘I thought you might be afraid to touch me,' she said softly.

He shook his head. ‘Oh, Anne. According to the laws of the land and the church I am anathemetised ten times over before breakfast.'

I shuddered at that; but she giggled like a girl.

‘And whatever we have done, it was done for love,' he said gently.

She turned in his arms and looked up at him, scrutinising his face. I realised that I had never in my life seen her look at anyone like that before. She looked at him as if she cared what he felt. He was not just a step on the stair of her ambition. He was her beloved. ‘Even when the outcome was monstrous?' she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I don't pretend to know the theology. But my mare has dropped a foal with one leg joined to the other and I didn't dip her for a witch. These things happen in nature, they can't always mean something. You were unlucky, nothing more.'

‘I won't let it frighten me,' she said staunchly. ‘I've seen saint's blood made from the blood of pigs, and holy water scooped up from a stream. Half of this church's teaching is to lead you on, half to frighten you into
your place. I won't be bribed onwards, and I won't be frightened. Not by anything. I took a decision to build my own road and I will do it.'

If George had been listening he would have heard the sharp nervous edge in her voice. But he was watching her bright determined face. ‘Onwards and upwards, Anna Regina!' he said.

She beamed at him. ‘Onwards and upwards. And the next will be a boy.'

She turned in his arms and put her hands on his shoulders and looked up at him, as if he were a trusted lover. ‘So what am I to do?'

‘You have to get him back,' he said earnestly. ‘Don't rail at him, don't let him see your fear. Call him back to you with every trick you know. Enchant him again.'

She hesitated and then she smiled and told him the truth behind the bright face. ‘George, I'm ten years older than when I courted him first. I am nearing thirty. He's had only one live child off me, and now he knows that I gave birth to a monster. I will repel him.'

George tightened his grip on her waist. ‘You can't repel him,' he said simply. ‘Or we all fall. You have to draw him back to you.'

‘But it was me who taught him to follow his desires. Worse than that, I filled his stupid head with the new learning. Now he thinks that his desires are God's manifestations. He only has to want something to think that it is God's will. He doesn't have to confirm it with priest, bishop, or Pope. His whims are holy. How can anyone make such a man return to his wife?'

George looked over her head to me for help. I came a little closer. ‘He likes comfort,' I said. ‘A little soothing. Pet him, tell him he is wonderful, praise him, and be kind to him.'

She looked as blankly at me as if I were speaking Hebrew. ‘I am his lover, not his mother,' she said flatly.

‘He wants a mother now,' George said. ‘He's hurt and he feels old and battered. He fears old age, he fears death. The wound on his leg stinks. He is in terror of dying before he has made a prince for England. What he wants is a woman to be tender to him until he feels better again. Jane Seymour is all sweetness. You have to out-sweeten her.'

She was silent. We all knew that it was not possible to be sweeter than Jane Seymour when she had the crown in her sights. Not even Anne, that most consummate seductress, could out-sweeten Jane Seymour. The brightness had died from her face and for a moment in her thin pallor I saw the hard face of our own mother.

‘By God I hope it kills her,' she suddenly swore vindictively. ‘If she gets her hand on my crown and her arse on my throne I hope it is the
death of her. I hope she dies young. I hope she dies in childbed in the very act of giving him a boy. And I hope the boy dies too.'

George stiffened. He could see from the window the return of the hunting party to court.

‘Run downstairs, Mary, and tell the king I am come,' Anne said, not moving from George's embrace.

I ran downstairs as the king was dismounting from his horse. I saw him wince as he stepped to the ground and his weight went onto his injured leg. Jane was riding beside him, a phalanx of Seymours around them. I looked around for my father, for my mother, for my uncle. They were thrust to the back, eclipsed.

‘Your Majesty,' I said, sweeping him a curtsey. ‘My sister the queen has arrived and bids me to give Your Majesty her compliments.'

Henry looked at me, he was wearing his sulky face, his forehead grooved with pain, his mouth pursed. ‘Tell her I am wearied from my riding, I will see her at dinner,' he said shortly.

He went past me with a heavy tread, walking unevenly, favouring his hurt leg. Sir John Seymour helped his daughter from her horse. I noted the new riding gown, the new horse, the diamond winking on her gloved hand. I longed so much to spit some venom at her that I had to bite the tip of my tongue, to make myself smile sweetly at her, and step back as her father and her brother escorted her through the great doors to her apartments – the apartments of the king's favourite.

My father and my mother followed the Seymours, in their train. I waited for them to ask me how Anne was, but they passed me with no more than a nod. ‘Anne is well,' I volunteered, as my mother went by.

‘Good,' she said coolly.

‘Will you not come to wait on her?'

Her face was as blank as a barren woman. It was as if none of us had ever been born to her. ‘I will visit her when the king goes to her rooms,' she said.

I knew then that Anne and George and I were on our own.

The ladies returned to Anne's room like a flock of buzzards, uncertain where the best pickings were to be had. I noted, with bitter amusement, the crisis in headgear which Anne's confident return had caused. Some of them went back to French hoods which Anne continued to wear. Some of them stayed in the heavy gable hoods which Jane favoured. All of them were desperate to know whether they should be in the queen's beautiful apartment or over the way with the Seymours. Where might the king
come next? Where might he prefer? Madge Shelton wore a gable hood and was trying to wheedle her way into Jane Seymour's circle. Madge for one thought that Anne was in decline.