Heart of Gold (39 page)

She stood silently.

“I wanted to bring you back,” he continued. “But I wanted you back for the wrong reasons. I sent people after you. I had them search everywhere. I sent men to Paris, to the households of every friend and acquaintance you ever had. I even went as far as to set a bounty.”

She stared at her father. This was more the man she had known.

“Aye, I wanted to get you back. To teach you a lesson. Nothing would have made me happier than to drag you to Henry and show the king how he mattered more to me than my own child.”

The silence in the hall was deadly.

“But you couldn’t find me,” she stated.

“Nay, daughter. I couldn’t find you.” Sir Thomas took a deep breath before continuing. “But I know now that this was the Lord’s will. He wanted me to wait and to learn. Some of life’s lessons are long and hard in coming.”

“And you think you have learned some lesson?”

He smiled bitterly. “Aye, I have, Elizabeth. I’ve learned from my children.”

“You mean from the only one left to you. From Anne.”

“Nay. From all of three of you. Daughters that I looked down upon for most of my life. Daughters that I simply considered to be trifles, at best merchandise to barter with. To trade away for my own prosperity, to improve my own position. Nay, Elizabeth. It isn’t just Anne whom I’ve learned from. I’ve learned my lessons from all of you.”

She sat down before the fire, watching his faraway gaze.

“You were the first, Elizabeth. You, my strong and high spirited girl. You, who combined your mother Catherine’s goodness and her beauty with my stubbornness and drive. You were clearly the best of your mother and me, joined in one person. And I hated you for it. I couldn’t stand you. From the time you were a small child, I could see your mother in you...and I could see myself. Aye, the better part of me. The good and gentle Thomas Boleyn who existed once, long ago. The man who wouldn’t leave his true love for all the gold in the world. But you were even stronger than I. You were smarter. You had a belief in something greater, as well. Something that I never had.”

“And you still hate me. The person that I was. The person that I am.”

“Nay, nay, nay. A thousand times I’ve cried out in my sleep for forgiveness. It’s true. You see, each night, your mother is with me. She haunts me, Elizabeth. In my sleep. And in my waking hours, as well. Oh, I know I can never be absolved of the sins I have committed. Sins against her. Sins against you, our only child. But still I beg her to let you forgive me.”

She looked down. The burning coals of sorrow showed in his eyes. She didn’t want to see that look. She could not afford to pity him. Not now.

“What could you have learned from me?” she asked.

“You have an undeniable strength in you. Conviction. You are like fire itself—pure and uncompromising. I tried to compromise...nay, make you throw off your principles. But you stood against me. You stood against your king. I believe you have never feared any man, no matter what power or position they hold.” He shook his head in admiration. “You are the strongest woman I have ever known. You were willing to surrender your innocence to a Scot rather than give an inch. Aye, you taught me a valuable lesson, Elizabeth, about the power of the human spirit. After you left me that night with your face marked and bloody, I knew that not even a sword to your throat or a dagger to your heart could sway you to do wrong against your will.”

Elizabeth remembered that horrible night as if it were yesterday.

“You showed strength like none I’d ever seen. In man or woman.” The old man’s voice was barely a whisper. “Strength that I have never had.”

Sir Thomas leaned down and rested his head in his hands.

“And then there was Mary. My pitifully young and inexperienced Mary. She was merely a child, always a child, pampered and cared for. She was forever what I couldn’t force you to become. Young, naive, malleable. If you are like fire, Elizabeth, then she was like the clay of the earth. So easy to mold to my own greedy ambitions. I never loved Mary’s and Anne’s mother. She was nothing more to me than a stepping stone into a better class of society. I admit that with only disgust for myself. And true to my character, I manipulated Mary for my own purposes. Just a pretty face to use and send to Henry’s bed. And she went willingly. To some extent for the excitement of it, I suppose. But also because her father commanded her to go. She never questioned me. Never.”

“You rejected her, Father. You didn’t believe her when she came back to you with the news that she was carrying Henry’s child.”

“I knew she was telling the truth. But once again I allowed myself to be swayed by your cousin, Sarah Exton. Her and her conniving ways. Like a fool, I let her convince me that I would have more power over the king if I were to send Mary back to Kent, to keep her tucked away until the baby came. I always knew that was Henry’s child. We just couldn’t let her throw away a chance for real wealth. One thing I never expected, though, was that she would run away.”

“You didn’t know she was with me?”

“Aye, we did figure as much. After we found no trace of her in the tent. Nor any sign of her, alive or dead. Then we figured that was the way of it. We knew Mary was not strong enough to do anything, or go anywhere, on her own. And later, when I received her letter months afterward, we knew for sure.”

“A letter?”

“Aye, the letter she sent me after losing the king’s son in childbirth.”

Elizabeth kept her gaze steady, fighting down the surge of feelings that coursed through her. She still remembered the days after Mary gave birth to Jaime. How Mary rejected the child since she wasn’t a boy. It certainly fit. Sending a letter to their father would have been Mary’s way of punishing him for making her run the way he did.

“I have had moments, Elizabeth. Dark and awful moments. When I would think of the terrible dangers, the misery that you two must have faced. Alone. With no kin to help you through the childbearing. To think that she bore a son of royal blood, the son that Henry so much desired. And then to lose the child. And my fault. No one’s but mine.”

The anguish in his voice was but a reflection of the ghastly despair that Elizabeth could see in his eyes.

“She taught me a lesson,” he continued. “Her dealing with her fate the way she did. I saw Mary as easy and weak, but I see now I was wrong.” He looked at Elizabeth with softness in his expression. “She grew strong, I suppose, by watching you. No longer the clay of the earth, but the earth herself.”

“Mary learned from her own sorrows, Father.”

“Aye. I reckon we all learn in just that way.” The stone face turned again to the smoldering fire, but Elizabeth could see the redness of his eyelid. “I mourned her son. And no longer for what the child could bring me. I mourned losing my only grandchild. And all the while I never knew about your Jaime.”

“Jaime.” The words withered on her lips, and she dared utter no others.

“Until today, I didn’t know of Jaime. I never suspected that you and Mary each left the Field of Cloth of Gold carrying a child.”

Elizabeth steadily returned her father’s gaze.

“The Scot’s child.”

Elizabeth nodded slowly.

“How typical of my life, daughter. What a mess I have made of it all. Because of my own selfish greed and ambition. All the while I mourned the death of one, I missed celebrating the birth of another.”

Elizabeth remained silent. Mary had chosen this course of action. Up to the final moments of her life, the young woman had wanted her daughter to be kept safely away from the unfeeling malevolence of their father and his scheming ambition. Now, hearing of the letter Mary had sent earlier, Elizabeth was even more certain of the appropriateness of the decision. This was the way Mary wanted it. No matter what her father said to her now, this was the way it would be.

“Aye, Mary taught me a lesson.” The older man shook his head. “Her letter was full of hate, full of anger. She blamed me only for the loss of her child. I know she was right. I knew it then. I know it now. This was the same daughter who had respected me, followed my orders, and...perhaps even loved me in her childlike way. I brought it all on myself. I drove Mary to hate me. She had every reason. You have every reason.”

Elizabeth watched his body seem to shrivel even further as he leaned back in the deep cushions of the chair. It was all so strange. These confessions, the pouring out of a soul in torment. The young woman had never dreamed that this moment would ever come to pass. It was certainly not something she would ever have asked of her father. But yet, here he was. Of his own free will. Seeking her out.

“You two were gone, and I felt the tearing in my heart that I knew I might never repair, a rending ache that I knew I deserve to suffer. But I’m only human, Elizabeth. So I turned to Anne. She was my only chance, the only one left for me after Sarah Exton’s death.”

“Madame Exton is dead?” Elizabeth repeated. The news of the woman’s death, a woman she’d feared and hated for so long, did not bring her any joy. It all seemed so long ago, as if Madame Exton and Elizabeth’s childhood belonged to some other life, to some distant past, somehow disconnected from the present. From Jaime. From Ambrose.

“Aye. She died a horrible death. A crippling pain that ate away at her. She died curled up in a corner of her room, fighting us off like a crazy woman. Screaming that we were devils come to take her soul.”

Elizabeth shivered in spite of herself.

“And then, after she died,” Sir Thomas continued, “I went to Anne. She was still a child. I thought perhaps I could undo what harm I had already done. I thought I had learned enough from the two of you, from the mistakes I’d made. I thought I had the answer.”

“She must have wept to see you changed.”

Her father stood and walked stiffly to the hearth. The smoldering fire was still giving off heat, but he hardly felt it. He shook his head without turning.

“Nay, daughter. I was too late.”

“Too late for what? Is she ill?”

His laugh was short, devoid of any mirth. “Anne’s ailment is not of the body, Elizabeth. It is her mind. Her very soul.”

Elizabeth stared at her father as he turned and looked at her. Anne was only a child. It couldn’t be that she, too, had contracted the pox. It couldn’t be.

“You look horrified, daughter.”

“Does she have the same sickness as Mary?” she asked at last.

“The pox?” Sir Thomas shook his head. “Nay. Well, not yet, anyway. Her ailment is that she is too much like me. Her mind is infected, poisoned with dreams of power and how she will wield it. Even at such a tender age, Anne has already planned her hard route carefully. She knows what she wants, and she has laid the groundwork to get it. Anne long ago planted the foul seeds of her desires. She is tending her weeds even now.”

“I find it odd to hear you, of all people, speak so harshly of your daughter’s desire for a place in society, Father. Who are you to find fault in anything she does?”

Their gazes locked, and Sir Thomas looked at his daughter. And then he nodded.

“Aye, you are right. I am no one. And true, daughter, I’ve made mistakes. Many mistakes.” He sighed deeply and shuffled back to the chair. Sitting down heavily, the old diplomat clutched the carved arms of the chair and stared into the fire. “Here I am, an old man. While others my age bask in the warm love of their families, contented in the happiness of their children and their grandchildren, here I sit, Thomas Boleyn, Viscount Rochfort, Earl of Ormonde, and member of the king’s council, in another man’s chair, in a savage and hostile land, begging my daughter for forgiveness.”

Elizabeth could see plainly the anguish of this man’s soul, etched in every line of his face.

“I must live the life that I have carved out for myself, I know. I am lonely and unwanted, and that is perhaps only just. But I see Anne asking for the same, and I must act. I turned my back on one woman I loved, married for power, and then turned again on the children who might have cared for me. Who might have loved me. Anne’s future promises the same sad fate. She has watched me and her soul is corrupt, Elizabeth. God help me, I have helped her create the beginnings of her own ruin.”

Elizabeth turned her face toward the small windows of the hall. She didn’t want to know these things. Anne’s life was her own business. The youngest sister had never been one to ask for help, even as a child. Elizabeth knew her little sister was smart. She always had shown a cleverness that far exceeded Mary’s. But even if it were true that Anne had grown in the image of their father, perhaps that was a good thing. Perhaps a bit of that hardness was necessary to survive in the world of the English court.

“Elizabeth,” Sir Thomas said, drawing her attention back to himself. “Anne has set her mind to marry King Henry.”

“Marry? But she is only a child.”

“She is nearly seventeen,” he replied.

Elizabeth’s thoughts turned back to the events four years earlier. Mary had been seventeen when the English king first bedded her. Even though she was a child, Anne could see the pain that Mary had gone through. And what of marriage? she wondered. What of the future? Elizabeth shook her head slowly in disbelief.

“But the king has a wife already,” she argued.

“Anne has set her mind to change that.”

“Why?” she cried. “Doesn’t she know what he did to Mary? Doesn’t she know of his sickness and just how little he values the women he beds?”

“The king’s physicians say his pox is cured.”

A lie. That’s all Elizabeth could bring herself to think. A lie. “Why is Anne doing this? Is she taken so with a man more than twice her age? Does she love him?”

“Love?” Sir Thomas laughed. A bitter laugh. “I once was fortunate enough to love. Aye, to be loved, as well. But I threw it away. Anne hasn’t even had that. She cares for no one but herself. Nay, daughter. Anne doesn’t love Henry. She wants to be queen and nothing else. It is power, Elizabeth, that your sister longs for.”

Elizabeth stared in amazement at her father. “But you don’t seriously think she could become queen, do you? M’lord, you are close enough to the king to know. Is there even the remotest possibility that Anne could succeed?”