Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (105 page)

There was a joust at the end of January, and the king refused to ride. George was chosen to carry the royal standard instead. He won for the king, and got a new pair of leather gloves by way of thanks.

That night I found the king in a sombre mood, wrapped in a thick gown before the fire of his chamber, with a bottle of wine half-empty beside him and another empty bottle lolling in the white ash of the fireplace and draining its lees into a red puddle.

‘Are you well, Your Majesty?' I asked cautiously.

He looked up and I saw that his blue eyes were bloodshot, his face slack.

‘No,' he said quietly.

‘What's the matter?' I spoke to him as tenderly and easily as I might speak to George. He did not seem like a king of terror tonight. He was a boy, a sad boy.

‘I didn't ride in the joust today.'

‘I know.'

‘And I won't ride again.'

‘Ever?'

‘Perhaps never.'

‘Oh, Henry, why not?'

He paused. ‘I was afraid. Isn't that shameful? When they started to strap me into my armour I realised that I was afraid.'

I didn't know what to say.

‘It's a dangerous business, jousting,' he said resentfully. ‘You women in the stands with your favours and your wagers, listening to the heralds sound the trumpets, you don't realise. It's life or death if you're down in the joust. It's not play down there.'

I waited.

‘What if I die?' he asked blankly. ‘What if I die? What happens then?'

For one dreadful moment I thought that he was asking me about his immortal soul. ‘No-one knows for certain,' I said hesitantly.

‘Not that.' He waved it away. ‘What becomes of the throne? What
becomes of my father's crown? He put this country together after years of fighting, no-one thought that he could do it. No-one but him could have done it. But he did it. And he had two sons. Two sons, Mary! So when Arthur died there was still me to inherit. He made the kingdom safe by his work on the battlefield and his work in bed. I inherited a kingdom as safe as it could be: secure borders, obedient lords, a treasury filled with gold, and I have no-one to hand it on to.'

His tone was so bitter that there was nothing I could say. I bowed my head.

‘This business of a son is wearing me down. I walk every day in unholy terror that I will die before I can get a son to put on the throne. I cannot joust, I cannot even hunt with a light heart. I see a fence before me and instead of throwing my heart over and trusting to my horse to jump clean I have this flash before my eyes and I see myself dead of a broken neck in a ditch and the crown of England hanging on a thorn bush for anyone to pick up. And who could do it? Who would do it?'

The agony in his face and in his voice was too much for me. I reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. ‘There's time,' I said, thinking how my uncle would like me to say such a thing. ‘We know that you are fertile with me. Our son Henry is the very picture of you.'

He huddled his cape around him a little closer. ‘You can go,' he said. ‘Will George be waiting to take you back to your room?'

‘He always waits,' I said, startled. ‘Don't you want me to stay?'

‘I am too dark in my heart tonight,' he said frankly. ‘I have had to face the prospect of my own death and it does not make me feel like playing between the sheets with you.'

I curtsied. At the doorway I paused and looked back at the room. He had not seen me go. He was still hunched in his chair, wrapped in his cloak, staring at the embers as if he would see his future in the red ashes.

‘You could marry me,' I said quietly. ‘And we have two children already, and one of them a boy.'

‘What?' He looked up at me, his blue eyes hazy with his own despair.

I knew that my uncle would have wanted me to press forward. But I was never a woman who could press forward like that.

‘Goodnight,' I said gently. ‘Goodnight, sweet prince,' and I left him with his own darkness.

The queen's fall from power became more and more visible. In February the court entertained envoys from France. They were not delayed while their papers were scrutinised, they were welcomed with feastings and banquets and all sorts of parties, and it soon became clear that they were in England to arrange for the marriage of Princess Mary to either King Francis of France or to his son. Princess Mary was summoned from the quiet retreat of Ludlow Castle and presented to the envoys, encouraged to dance and to play and to sing and to eat. My God! How they made that child eat! As if she might swell in size before their very eyes in time to be of a marriageable girth within the months of the negotiations. My father, home from France in their train, was everywhere – advising the king, translating for the envoys, in secret conference with the cardinal as to how they should re-draw the alliances of Europe, and finally, plotting with my uncle how the family could be advanced through these turbulent times.

They decided between the two of them that Anne should be returned to court. People were starting to wonder why she had gone away. My father wanted the French envoys to see her. My uncle stopped me on the stair on my way to the queen's rooms to tell me that Anne would be returning.

‘Why?' I asked, as close to rudeness as I dared. ‘Henry was speaking to me of his desire for a son only the other night. If she comes back she'll spoil everything.'

‘Did he speak of your son?' he asked me bluntly, and at my silence he shook his head. ‘No. You make no progress with the king, Mary. Anne was right. We move forward not at all.'

I turned my head and looked out of the window. I knew I looked sullen. ‘And where d'you think Anne will take you?' I burst out. ‘She
won't work for the good of the family, she won't do as she is bid. She'll go for her own profits and her own lands and her own titles.'

He nodded, stroking the side of his nose. ‘Aye, she's a self-seeking woman. But he keeps asking for her, he's hot for her in a way he never was for you.'

‘He has two children by me!'

My uncle's dark eyebrows shot up at my raised voice. At once I dropped my head again. ‘I am sorry. But what more can I do? What can Anne do that I have not done? I have loved him and bedded him and borne him two strong children. No woman could do more. Not even Anne, though she's so precious to everyone.'

‘Perhaps she can do more,' he said, ignoring my irrelevant spite. ‘If she were to conceive a child by him right now, he might marry her. He's so desperate for her he might do that. He's desperate for her, he's desperate for a child, the two desires might come together.'

‘And what about me?' I cried.

He shrugged. ‘You can go back to William,' he said as if it did not matter at all.

A few days later, Anne returned to court as discreetly as she had left and within the day was the centre of everyone's attention. I had my bedfellow and my companion again, and I found myself tying the laces of her dresses when we woke in the morning and combing her hair at night. She commanded my service just as once she had been forced to give me hers.

‘Didn't you fear I would have won him back?' I asked curiously as I was brushing her hair before we went to bed.

‘You don't matter,' she said confidently. ‘Not for a moment. This is my spring, this will be my summer. I will have him dancing at the end of my string. Nothing will set him free of my spell. It doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter what any woman does. He is besotted. He is mine for the taking.'

‘Just for the spring and the summer?' I asked.

Anne looked thoughtful. ‘Oh, who can hold a man for long? He's on the very crest of the wave of his desire, I can hold him there; but at the end of it, the wave has to break. No-one stays in love forever.'

‘If you want to marry him you'll have to hold him for a lot longer than a couple of seasons. D'you think you can hold him for a year? For two?'

I could have laughed aloud to see the confidence drain from her face.

‘By the time he gets free to wed,
if
he ever gets free to wed, he won't be hot for you any more anyway. You'll be on the wane, Anne. You'll be
half-forgotten. A woman who has had her best years, has reached her mid-twenties, and still unmarried.'

She thumped down in the bed and slapped the pillow. ‘Don't you ill-wish me,' she said crossly. ‘My God, sometimes you sound like an Edenbridge crone. Anything could happen for me, I can make anything happen for me. It is you who'll be on the wane, because it is you who is too lazy to make your own destiny. But I wake every day with an utter determination to have my own way. Anything could happen for me.'

By May the business with the French envoys was all but finished. Princess Mary was to marry either the French king or his second son as soon as she was a woman. They held a great tennis tournament to celebrate and Anne was made mistress of the order of the players and made great work of a chart listing all the men of the court with their names on little flags. The king found her poring over it with one little flag absent-mindedly pressed to her heart.

‘What have you there, Mistress Boleyn?'

‘The order of the tennis tournament,' she said. ‘I have to match each gentleman fairly so that all can play and we are certain of a true winner.'

‘I meant what have you there, in your hand?'

Anne started. ‘I forgot I was holding it,' she said quickly. ‘Just one of the names. I am placing the names in the order of play.'

‘And who is the gentleman that you hold so close?'

She managed to blush. ‘I don't know, I had not looked at the name.'

‘May I?' He held out his hand.

She did not give him the little flag. ‘It means nothing. It was just the flag that was in my hand as I was puzzling. Let me put it where it should be on the board and we'll consider the order of play together, Your Majesty.'

He was alert. ‘You seem ashamed, Mistress Boleyn.'

She flared up a little. ‘I am ashamed of nothing. I just don't want to seem foolish.'

‘Foolish?'

Anne turned her head. ‘Please let me put this name down and you can advise me on the order of play.'

He put out his hand. ‘I want to know the name on the flag.'

For an awful moment I thought that she was not play-acting with him. For an awful moment I thought he was about to discover that she was cheating so that our brother George had the best place in the draw. She was so completely confused and distressed by his pressing to know the
name that even I thought that she had been caught out. The king was like one of his best pointer dogs on the scent. He knew that something was being hidden and he was racked by his curiosity and his desire.

‘I command it,' he said quietly.

With tremendous reluctance Anne put the little flag into his outstretched hand, swept a curtsey and walked away from him. She did not look back; but once she was out of sight we all heard her heels patter and her dress swish as she ran away from the tennis court back up the stone-flagged path to the castle.

Henry opened his hand and looked at the name on the flag that she had been holding to her breast. It was his own name.

Anne's tennis tournament took two days to complete and she was everywhere, laughing, ordering, umpiring and scoring. At the end there were four matches left to play: the king against our brother George, my husband William Carey against Francis Weston, Thomas Wyatt, newly returned from France, against William Brereton, and a match between a couple of nobodies which would take place while the rest of us were dining.

‘You had best make sure that the king doesn't play Thomas Wyatt,' I said to Anne in an undertone as our brother George and the king went onto the court together.

‘Oh why?' she asked innocently.

‘Because there's too much riding on this. The king wants to win in front of the French envoys and Thomas Wyatt wants to win in front of you. The king won't take kindly to being beaten in public by Thomas Wyatt.'