Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (109 page)

I stepped outside the door and sat in a windowseat and waited like
the spy I was until I saw him come out, tucking the letter into his jerkin, and then wearily I went to find Uncle Howard and tell him everything.

Señor Felipez left court next day and my uncle found me walking up the twisting path to the summit of Windsor Castle.

‘You can go to Hever,' he said briefly. ‘You've done your work.'

‘Uncle?'

‘We'll pick up Señor Felipez as he sets sail from Dover for France,' he said. ‘Far enough from the court for no word of it to get back to the queen. We'll have her letter to her nephew and that will be her ruin. It'll be proof of treason. Wolsey's at Rome, the queen will have to agree to a divorce to save her own skin. The king will be free to remarry. This summer.'

I thought of the queen's belief that if she could only hold on till autumn, she would be safe.

‘Betrothal this summer, public wedding and coronation when we all return to London in the autumn.'

I swallowed. The icy knowledge that my sister would be Queen of England and I would be the king's discarded whore froze me inside. ‘And I?'

‘You can go to Hever. When Anne is queen you can come back to court and serve as her lady in waiting, she'll need her family around her then. But for now your work is done.'

‘Can I go today?' was all I asked.

‘If you can find someone to take you.'

‘Can I ask George?'

‘Yes.'

I curtsied to him and turned to walk up the hill, my pace quicker.

‘You did well with Felipez,' my uncle said as I hurried away. ‘It's bought us the time that we needed. The queen thinks that help is on its way but she is all alone.'

‘I am glad to serve the Howards,' I said shortly. It was better that no-one ever knew that I would have buried the Howards, every one of them, except George, in the great family vault and never thought that there was a loss.

George had been riding with the king and was not willing to get back into the saddle again. ‘I have a thick head. I was drinking and gambling
last night. And Francis is impossible …' He broke off. ‘I won't set out for Hever today, Mary, I can't stand it.'

I took his hands in mine and made him look me in the face. I knew there were tears in my eyes and I did nothing to stop them flowing down my cheeks. ‘George, please,' I said. ‘What if Uncle changes his mind? Please help me. Please take me to my children. Please take me to Hever.'

‘Oh, don't,' he said. ‘Don't cry. You know I hate it. I'll take you. Of course I'll take you. Send someone down to the stables and tell them to saddle our horses and we'll start at once.'

Anne was in our room when I burst in to pack a few things in a bag and to see the chest corded up to send on after me in a wagon.

‘Where are you going?'

‘Hever. Uncle Howard says I can.'

‘But what about me?' she demanded.

At the desperate tone in her voice I looked at her more closely. ‘What about you? You have everything. What in God's name do you want more?'

She dropped to the stool before the little looking glass, rested her head on her hands and stared at herself. ‘He's in love with me,' she said. ‘He's mad for me. I spend all my time bringing him close and holding him off. When he dances with me I can feel his hardness like a codpiece. He's desperate to have me.'

‘So?'

‘I have to keep him like that, like a sauce pot on a charcoal burner. I have to keep him at the simmer. If he boils over what would become of me? I'd be scalded to death. If he cools off and goes and dips his wick somewhere else then I have a rival. That's why I need you here.'

‘To dip his wick?' I repeated her crude image.

‘Yes.'

‘You'll have to manage without,' I said. ‘You have only a few weeks. Uncle says that you'll be betrothed this summer and married this autumn. I've played my part, and I can go.'

She did not even ask me what part I had played. Anne always had a vision like a lantern with the shutters down. She only ever shone in one direction. It was always Anne and then the Boleyns and then the Howards. She would never have needed the catechism that George shouted at me to remind me of my loyalties. She always knew where her interests lay.

‘I can do it for a few weeks more,' she said. ‘And then I shall have it all.'

After George left me at Hever I heard nothing from either him or Anne as the court made its progress through the English countryside in the sunny days of that perfect summer. I did not care. I had my children and my home to myself and no-one watched me to see if I looked pale or jealous. No-one whispered to another behind a shielding hand that I was in better or worse looks than my sister. I was free of the constant observation of the court, I was free of the constant struggle between the king and the queen. Best of all, I was free from my own constant jealous tally between Anne and myself.

My children were of an age where the whole day could fly by in a set of tiny activities. We fished in the moat with pieces of bacon on strings. We saddled up my hunter and each child took a turn in sitting on her for a walk. We went on expeditions across the castle drawbridge and into the garden to pick flowers or into the orchard for fruit. We ordered a cart lined with hay and I took the reins myself and drove us out of the park all the way to Edenbridge and drank small ale in the house there. I watched them kneel for Mass, their eyes round at the raising of the Host. I watched them as they fell asleep at the end of the day, their skin flushed with sunshine, their long eyelashes sweeping their plump cheeks. I forgot that there was such a thing as court and king and favourite.

Then, in August, I had a letter from Anne. It was brought to me by her most trusted groom, Tom Stevens, who had been born and bred in Tonbridge. ‘From my mistress, to be given to your own hands,' he said reverently on his knee before me in the dining hall.

‘Thank you, Tom.'

‘And none but you has seen it,' he said.

‘Very good.'

‘And none but you will see it for I shall stand guard over you while
you read it and then put it in the fire for you and we shall watch it burn, my lady.'

I smiled but I began to feel uneasy. ‘Is my sister well?'

‘As a young lamb in the meadow.'

I broke the seal and spread the papers.

                
Be glad for me for it is done and my fate is sealed. I have it. I am to be Queen of England. He asked me to marry him this very night and promised that he will be free within the month, when Wolsey is acting Pope. I had Uncle and Father join us at once, saying that I wanted to share my joy with my family, and so there are witnesses and he cannot withdraw. I have a ring from him which I am to keep hid for the meantime but it is a betrothal ring and he is sworn to be mine. I have done the impossible. I have caught the king and sealed the fate of the queen. I have overturned the order. Nothing will ever be the same for any woman in this country again
.

                
We are to be married as soon as Wolsey sends word that he has annulled their marriage. The queen will know of it on our wedding day, and not before. She is to go to a nunnery in Spain. I don't want her in my country
.

                
You can be happy for me and for our kin. I shall not forget that you helped me to this and you will find that you have a true friend and sister in Anne, Queen of England
.

I rested the letter on my lap and looked at the embers of the fire. Tom stepped forward.

‘Shall I burn it now?'

‘Let me read it once more,' I said.

He stepped back but I did not look at the excited scrawl of black ink again. I did not need to remind myself what she had written. Her triumph was in every line. The end of my life as the favourite of the English court was complete. Anne had won and I had lost and a new life would start for her, she would be, as she already signed herself: Anne, Queen of England. And I would be next to nothing.

‘So, at last,' I whispered to myself.

I handed Tom the letter and watched him push it to the very centre of the red embers. It twisted in the heat and browned and then blackened. I could still read the words:
I have overturned the order. Nothing will ever be the same for any woman in this country again
.

I did not need to keep the letter to remember the tone. Anna triumphant. And she was right. Nothing would be the same for any woman in
this country again. From this time onwards no wife, however obedient, however loving, would be safe. For everyone would know that if a wife such as Queen Katherine of England could be put aside for no reason, then any wife could be put aside.

The letter burst suddenly into bright yellow flame, I watched it burn to soft white ash. Tom put a poker into the fire and mashed it into dust.

‘Thank you,' I said. ‘If you go to the kitchen they will give you food.' I drew a silver coin from my pocket and gave it to him. He bowed and left me looking at the little specks of white ash floating on the smoke up the chimney and out to the night sky, which I could see through the great arch of brick and soot.

‘Queen Anne,' I said, listening to the words. ‘Queen Anne of England.'

I was watching over the children having their morning nap when I saw a horseman with grooms, from the high window. I hurried down, expecting George. But the horse that came clattering into the courtyard belonged to my husband, William. He smiled at my surprise.

‘Don't blame me for being the harbinger of gloom.'

‘Anne?' I asked.

He nodded. ‘Outflanked.'

I led him into the great hall and seated him in my grandmother's chair nearest the fire.

‘Now,' I said, when I checked that the door was shut and the room empty. ‘Tell me.'

‘You remember Francisco Felipez, the queen's servant?'

I nodded, admitting nothing.

‘He requested safe conduct from Dover to Spain but it was a feint. He had a letter from the queen to her nephew and he tricked the king. He went by specially hired ship out of London that very morning and by sea to Spain. By the time they realised they'd lost him he'd gone. He's got the queen's letter to Charles of Spain; and all hell has broken loose.'

I found my heart was pounding. I put my hand to my throat as if I would still it. ‘What sort of hell?'

‘Wolsey's still in Europe but the Pope is forewarned and won't have him as deputy. None of the cardinals will support him and even the peace deal has fallen through. We're back at war with Spain. Henry's sent his secretary flying off to Orvieto, straight to the Pope's prison, to ask him to annul the marriage himself, and allow Henry to marry any woman he pleases,
even
one whose sister he has had,
even
one he has had. Either a whore herself or a whore's sister.'

I gasped. ‘He's getting permission to marry a woman he's had? Dear God, not me?'