Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (127 page)

“Clearly love does not go with marriage, marriage is quite another thing. For a start it is three beats as opposed to one. And for another it has no music to it.”

“My marriage has music,” Anne said.

Sir Thomas bowed his head. “Everything that you do has music,” he pointed out. “But still the word does not rhyme with anything helpful.”

“The prize goes to you, Sir Thomas,” Anne said. “You need not flatter me as well as make poetry.”

“It is no flattery to tell the truth,” he said, kneeling before her. Anne gave him a little gold chain from her belt and he kissed it and tucked it away in the pocket of his doublet.

“Now,” Anne said. “I shall go and change my gown before the king comes home from his hunting wanting his dinner.” She rose to her feet and looked around at her ladies. “Where is Madge Shelton?”

The silence which greeted her told her everything. “Where is she?”

“Hunting with the king, Your Majesty,” one of the ladies volunteered.

Anne raised an eyebrow and glanced at me, the only member of her court who knew that Madge had been appointed as
the king’s mistress by our uncle but only for the duration of Anne’s confinement. Now it seemed that Madge was making progress on her own account.

“Where’s George?” I asked her.

She nodded, it was a key question. “With the king,” she said. We knew that George could be trusted to protect Anne’s interests.

Anne nodded and turned to the palace. The lightness of the afternoon had faded at the first mention of the king with another woman. Anne’s shoulders were set, her face grim. I walked at her side as we went up to her rooms. As I had hoped, she gestured that the ladies in waiting should wait in the presence chamber and she and I went into her privy chamber alone. As soon as the door was closed I said: “Anne, I have something to tell you. I need your help.”

“What now?” she said. She seated herself before a golden mirror and pulled her hood from her head. Her dark hair, as lovely and lustrous as ever, tumbled down over her shoulders. “Brush my hair,” she said.

I took a brush and swept it through the dark locks, hoping to soothe her. “I have married a man,” I said simply. “And I am carrying his child.”

She was so still that for a moment I thought she had not heard me, and in that moment I hoped to God that she had not. Then she turned around on the stool and her face was like thunder. “You have done what?” She spat out the question.

“Married,” I said.

“Without my permission?”

“Yes, Anne. I’m very sorry.”

Her head came up, her eyes met mine in the mirror. “Who?”

“Sir William Stafford.”

“William Stafford? The king’s usher?”

“Yes,” I said. “He has a small farm near Rochford.”

“He is nothing,” she said. I could hear her temper rising in her voice.

“The king knighted him,” I said. “He is Sir William.”

“Sir William Nothing!” she said again. “And you are with child?”

I knew it was that she would hate the most. “Yes,” I said humbly.

She leaped to her feet and dragged the cloak away so that she could see the broad spread of my stomacher. “You whore!” she swore at me. Her hand came back, I froze, ready to take the blow, but when it came I felt my neck snap back with the force of it. It threw me backward against the bed, and she stood over me like a fighter. “How long has this been going on? When will this next bastard of yours be born?”

“In March,” I said. “And he is no bastard.”

“D’you think to mock me, coming into my court with a belly on you like a fat brood mare? What d’you mean to do? You mean to tell the world that
you
are the fertile Boleyn girl and I am all but barren?”

“Anne . . .”

Nothing would stop her.

“Showing the world that you are in pup again! You insult me by even being here. You insult our family.”

“I married him,” I said, I could hear my voice shake a little at her anger. “I married him for love, Anne. Please, please don’t be like this. I love him. I can go from court, but please let me see . . .”

She did not even let me finish. “Aye, you’ll go from court!” she cried. “To hell for all I care. You’ll go from court and never come back to it.”

“My children,” I finished breathlessly.

“You can say good-bye to them. I’ll not have my nephew brought up by a woman who has no pride in her family and no knowledge of the world. A fool who is dragged through life by her lust. Why marry William Stafford? Why not a lad from the stable? Why not the miller at Hever mill? If all you want is a good thumping why stop at one of the king’s men? A soldier in the ranks would do as well.”

“Anne, I warn you.” The anger was creeping into my own voice even as my cheek still throbbed with the heat from her blow. “I will not take this. I married a good man for love, I did no more than the Princess Mary Tudor did when she married the Duke of Suffolk. I married once to oblige my family, I did as they bid me when the king looked my way, and now I want to please myself. Anne—only you can defend me against our uncle and father.”

“Does George know?” she demanded.

“No. I told you he does not. I only came to you. Only you can help me.”

“Never,” she swore. “You have married a poor man for love, you can eat love, you can drink it. You can live off it. Go to his little farm in Rochford and rot there, and when Father or George or I come down to Rochford Hall make very sure that you are nowhere in our sight. You are banished from court, Mary. You have ruined yourself and I will set a seal on it. You are gone. I have no sister.”

“Anne!” I cried, utterly aghast.

She turned a furious face to me. “Shall I call the guards and have you thrown out of the gates?” she demanded. “For I swear I will do so.”

I fell to my knees. “My son,” was all I could say.

“
My
son,” she said vindictively. “I will tell him that his
mother is dead and that he is to call me mother. You have lost everything for love, Mary. I hope it brings you joy.”

There was nothing I could say. I rose awkwardly to my feet, my heavy belly making it hard for me to rise. She watched me struggle as if she would sooner push me down than help me. I turned to the door and hesitated with my hand on the handle in case she should change her mind. “My son . . .”

“Go,” she said. “You are dead to me. And don’t approach the king or I shall tell him what a whore you have been.”

I slipped out of the door and went to my bedroom.

♦   ♦   ♦

Madge Shelton was changing her dress before the looking glass. She turned when she heard me come in, a bright smile on her young face. She took one look at my grim expression and I saw her eyes widen. That one look said everything that was different between our ages, between our positions, between our places in the Howard family. She was a young girl with everything to sell and I was a woman twice married who would have three children at twenty-seven, cast out by my family and nothing to turn to but one man on a little farm. I was a woman who had her chance and botched it.

“Are you sick?” she asked.

“Ruined,” I said shortly.

“Oh,” she said with all the doltishness of vain youth. “Sorry.”

I found a grim little laugh. “That’s all right,” I said dourly. “It’s a bed of my own making.”

I threw my riding cloak on the bed and she saw the broad lacing of my stomacher. She gave a little gasp of horror.

“Aye,” I said. “I’m carrying a baby, and I am married, if you want to know.”

“The queen?” she asked in a half-whisper, knowing, as we all
knew, that the one thing this queen hated was fertile women.

“Not best pleased,” I said.

“Your husband?”

“William Stafford.”

A gleam in her dark eyes told me that she had noticed more than she had said. “I’m so pleased for you,” she said. “He’s a handsome man and a good man. I thought you liked him. So all these nights . . . ?”

“Yes,” I said shortly.

“What happens now?”

“We’ll have to make our own way in the world,” I said. “We’ll go to Rochford. He has a little farm there. We might do nicely.”

“On a little farm?” Madge asked incredulously.

“Yes,” I said with sudden energy. “Why not? There are other places to live than in palaces and castles. There are other tunes to dance to other than the court’s music. We don’t always have to wait on a king and queen. I have spent all my life at court, wasted my girlhood and womanhood here. I am sorry that I shall be poor but I am damned if I will miss the life here.”

“And your children?” she asked.

The question knocked the wind out of me like a blow to the belly. My knees buckled and I sank to the floor, holding myself tight, as if my heart would break out of me. “Oh, my children,” I said in a whisper.

“Does the queen keep them?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes. She keeps my son.” I could have said more, and that very bitter. I could have said that she kept my son because she could have none of her own. That she had taken from me everything that she ever could take, she would always take everything from me. That she and I were sisters and deadly rivals and nothing would ever stop us from endlessly eyeing the other’s plate and fearing that the other had the biggest portion.
Anne wanted to punish me for refusing to dance in her shadow. And she knew that she had chosen the one forfeit in the world that I could not bear to pay.

“At least I will escape her,” I said. “And escape this family’s ambition.”

Madge looked at me wide-eyed, as worldly as a fawn. “But escape to what?”

♦   ♦   ♦

Anne was quick to announce my departure. My father and mother would not even see me before I left court. Only George came down to the stable yard to watch my trunks being loaded onto a cart, and William help me up into the saddle and then mount his own hunter.

“Write to me,” George said. He was scowling with worry. “Are you well enough to travel all that way?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’ll take care of her,” William assured him.

“You’ve not done a wonderful job so far,” George said unpleasantly. “She’s ruined, she’s stripped of her pension, and she’s banned from court.”

I saw William’s hand tighten on the reins and his horse sidled. “Not my doing,” William said levelly. “That’s the spite and ambition of the queen and the Boleyn family. In any other family in the land Mary would be allowed to marry a gentleman of her choice.”

“Stop it,” I said quickly, before George could reply.

George took a breath and bowed his head. “She’s not been best treated,” he conceded. He looked up at William, seated high on the horse above him, and smiled his rueful, charming Boleyn smile. “We had our minds on targets other than her happiness.”

“I know,” said William. “But I do not.”

George looked wistful. “I wish you would tell me the secret of true love,” he said. “Here’s the two of you riding off the very edge of the world and yet you look as if someone has just given you an earldom.”

I put my hand out to William and he gripped it hard. “I just found the man I love,” I said simply. “I could never have had a man who loved me more, nor a more honest man.”

“Go then!” George said. He pulled off his cap as the wagon lurched forward. “Go and be happy together. I’ll do the best I can to get you your place and your pension.”

“Just my children,” I said. “That’s all I want.”

“I’ll speak to the king when I can, and you can write. Write to Cromwell perhaps, and I’ll talk to Anne. It’s not forever. You’ll come back, won’t you? You’ll come back?”

There was an odd tone to his voice; not at all as if he were promising me my safe return to the center of the kingdom, more as if he feared being without me. He did not sound like one of the greatest men at a great court, he sounded more like a boy abandoned in a dangerous place.

“Keep yourself safe!” I said, suddenly shivering. “Keep out of bad company, and watch over Anne!”

I had not been mistaken. The expression on his face was one of fear. “I’ll try.” His voice rang with hollow confidence. “I will try!”

The wagon went out under the archway and William and I rode side by side after it. I looked back at George and he seemed very young and far away. He waved at me and called something, but over the grinding of the wheels on the cobbles and the ringing of the horses’ hooves I could not hear.

We came out onto the road and William let his horse lengthen his stride so that we overtook the slow-moving wagon and were clear of the dust from its wheels. My hunter would
have trotted to keep up, but I steadied her into a walk. I rubbed my face with the back of my glove and William looked sideways at me. “No regrets?” he asked gently.

“I just fear for him,” I said.

He nodded. He knew too much about George’s life at court to offer me a glib reassurance. George’s love affair with Sir Francis, their indiscreet circle of friends, their drinking, their gambling, their whoring, was slowly coming to be an open secret. More and more men at court were taking their pleasures more and more wildly, George among them.

“And for her,” I said, thinking of my sister who had banished me like a beggar and so left herself with only one friend in the world.

William leaned over and put his hand over mine. “Come on,” he said, and we turned our horses’ heads to the river and rode down to meet the waiting boat.

♦   ♦   ♦

We disembarked at Leigh early in the morning. The horses were cold and fretting after the long river journey and we walked them up the lane, north to Rochford. William took us down the little track which led cross-country to his farm. The early morning mist swirled damp and cold over the fields, it was the very worst time of year to come to the country. It would be a long waterlogged icy winter in the little farmhouse, a long way from anywhere. The dampness on my skirts now would hardly dry out for six months.

William glanced back at me. He smiled. “Sit up, sweetheart, and look about you. The sun’s coming out, and we’ll be all right.”

I managed a smile and I straightened my back and pressed my horse onward. Ahead of me I could see the thatched roof of his farmhouse, and then, as we came over the rise of a hill, the
whole pretty little fifty acres, laid out below us with the river lapping up to the bottom fields and the stable yard and barn as neat and as trim as I remembered it.