Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (117 page)

The tricks Anne learned to play with the king soothed his temper, but made her more irritable than ever. I opened the door to her chamber one day and I heard her voice raised in a breaking storm.

Henry was facing the door as I came in, and the look that he shot me was almost pleading. I stared aghast as Anne railed at him. She had her back to me, she did not even hear the door click, she was in such a rage as to be blind and deaf except to her own loud words.

‘And then to find that she,
she
! is still sewing your shirts, and she mocks me with this, she took them out in front of me and asked me to thread her needle. Asked me before all the ladies to thread the needle as if I were some serving woman.'

‘I never asked her …'

‘Oh? What happens? Does she go to your rooms and steal your shirts away in the night? Does the groom of the bedchamber filch them and pass them on to her? Do you sleepwalk and carry them to her by accident?'

‘Anne, she is my wife. She has sewed my shirts for twenty years. I had no idea that you would object. But I will tell her that I don't want her to do them any more.'

‘You had no idea that I would object? Why don't you go back to her bed and see if I object to that! I sew as well as she does, a good deal better actually, since I am not so old and short-sighted that someone else has to thread my needle for me. But you do not bring your shirts to me. You snub me …' Her voice quavered. ‘Before the whole court you snub me by taking your shirts to her.' She grew stronger with indignation. ‘You might as well say to the world: this is my wife and the woman I trust, and this is my mistress who is for the night and for play.'

‘Before God …' the king started.

‘Before God, you have hurt me with this, Henry!'

At the quaver in her voice he was quite unmanned. He opened his arms to her but she shook her head. ‘No, no, I won't run to you and have you kiss my tears away and make me tell you that it doesn't matter. It does matter, it matters more than anything.'

She put her hand to her eyes and walked past him, she opened the door to her privy chamber and went in without even glancing at him. In the silence that followed we heard her close the door and turn the key in the lock.

The king and I looked at each other.

He looked stunned. ‘Before God, I never meant to hurt her.'

‘About some shirts?'

‘The queen still sews my shirts for me. Anne didn't know. She has taken it badly.'

‘Oh,' I said.

Henry shook his head. ‘I shall tell the queen she shall no longer sew them for me.'

‘I think that would be wise,' I said gently.

‘And when she comes out, will you tell her that I was much grieved to have caused her so much pain? And tell her that the offence will never be repeated?'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘I'll tell her.'

‘I shall send for a goldsmith and have him make her something pretty,' he said, warming to the thought. ‘And when she is happy again she will forget that this quarrel ever took place.'

‘She will be happy by the time she has rested,' I said hopefully. ‘Of course it's hard for her, waiting to be married to you. She loves you so very much.'

For a moment he looked like the boy who had been in love with Katherine. ‘Yes, that's why she calls up such a storm. Because she loves me so much.'

‘Of course,' I reassured him. The last thing I wanted was for Henry to see how disproportionate Anne's anger was to the facts.

He looked tender again. ‘I know. I have to be patient with her. And she's very young, and she knows almost nothing of the world.'

I kept my mouth shut, thinking of the young girl I had been when my family had handed me over to him, and how I had never been allowed a whispered protest, let alone a temper tantrum.

‘I'll get her some rubies,' he said. ‘A virtuous woman, rubies, you know.'

‘She'll like that,' I said with certainty.

Henry gave her rubies, and she rewarded him with more than a smile. She came back to her room very late one night with her gown all dishevelled and her hood in her hand. I had been asleep in bed, I never waited up for her as she used to do for me. She pulled the covers off me to make me wake up and unlace her.

‘I did what you said and he adored it,' she said. ‘And I let him play in my hair and with my breasts.'

‘So you are friends again,' I said. I unlaced her stomacher and pulled the petticoat over her head.

‘And Father is to become an earl,' Anne said with quiet satisfaction. ‘Earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde. I am to be Lady Anne Rochford and George will be Lord Rochford. Father is to go back to Europe to make the peace, and Lord George our brother is to go with him. Lord George
our brother is to become one of the king's most favoured ambassadors.'

I gasped at this tumble of favours. ‘An earldom for Father?'

‘Yes.'

‘And George will be Lord Rochford! How grand for him, he'll love it! And an ambassador!'

‘As he has always wanted.'

‘And me?' I asked. ‘What is there for me?'

Anne fell into bed and let me pull her shoes off her feet and peel down her stockings. ‘You stay as the widow Lady Carey,' she said. ‘Just the other Boleyn girl. I can't do everything, you know.'

The court was to meet at Greenwich, and the queen was to be present. She was to receive every honour and Anne was not to be seen.

‘What now?' I asked George. I sat on his bed while he lounged in the windowseat. His man was packing his trunks for his trip to Rome, and every now and then George would look up and shout at his impassive servant: ‘Not the blue cape, it has the moth.' Or: ‘I hate that hat, give it to Mary for young Henry.'

‘What now?' He repeated my question.

‘I've been summoned to the queen's apartments and I am to live in my old room in her wing of the palace. Anne is to be in her rooms at the tiltyard all on her own. I think Mother is to stay with her, but I, and all the ladies in waiting, are to wait on the queen, not on Anne.'

‘It can't be a bad sign,' George said. ‘He's expecting a lot of people out of the City to watch them dine over the days of Christmas. The last thing he can afford are the merchants and the city traders saying that he is incontinent. He wants everyone to think that he has chosen Anne for the benefit of England, not for lust.'

I glanced a little nervously at the servant.

‘Joss is all right,' George said. ‘Rather deaf, thank God. Aren't you, Joss?'

The man did not turn his head.

‘Oh well, leave us,' George said. Still the man went on, stolidly packing.

‘All the same you should take care,' I said.

George raised his voice. ‘Leave us, Joss. You can finish later.'

The man started, looked round, bowed to George and to me, and went out.

George left the windowseat and sprawled on the bed at my side. I pulled his head down so that it rested in my lap and made myself comfortable against the headboard.

‘D'you think it will ever happen?' I asked idly. ‘It feels as if we have been planning this wedding for a hundred years.'

He had closed his dark eyes but now he opened them and looked up at me. ‘God knows,' he said. ‘God knows what it will have cost when it does come: the happiness of a queen, the safety of the throne, the respect of the people, the sanctity of the church. Sometimes it seems to me as if you and I have spent our lives working for Anne, and I don't even know what we have gained from it.'

‘And you an heir to an earldom? To two earldoms?'

‘I wanted to go on crusade and murder unbelievers,' he said. ‘I wanted to come home to a beautiful woman in a castle who would worship me for my courage.'

‘And I wanted a hop field and an apple orchard and a sheep run,' I said.

‘Fools,' George said, and closed his eyes.

He was asleep in a few minutes. I held him gently, watching his chest rise and fall, and then I leaned my head back against the brocade covering the headboard and closed my eyes and drifted into sleep myself.

Still in my dream I heard the door opening and I lazily opened my eyes. It was not George's servant returning, it was not Anne coming to look for us. It was a stealthy turning of the handle and a sly opening of the door and then Jane, George's wife, now Lady Jane Rochford, put her head into the room and looked around for us.

She did not jump when she saw us on the bed together, and I – still half-asleep and frozen into stillness with a sort of fear at her furtiveness – did not move either. I kept my eyelids half-closed and I watched her through my eyelashes.

She kept very still, she did not enter nor leave, but she took in every inch of us: George's head turned into my lap, the spread of my legs under my gown. My head tipped back, my hood tossed on the windowseat, my hair tumbled about my sleeping face. She took us in as if she were studying us to paint a miniature, as if she were collating evidence. Then, as silently as she had come, she slid out again.

At once I shook George and put my hand over his mouth as he woke.

‘Sssh. Jane was here. She may still be outside the door.'

‘Jane?'

‘For God's sake, Jane! Your wife, Jane!'

‘What did she want?'

‘She said nothing. She just came in and looked at us, asleep together on the bed, she looked all around and then she crept away.'

‘She didn't want to wake me.'

‘Perhaps,' I said uncertainly.

‘What's the matter?'

‘She looked – odd.'

‘She always looks odd,' he said carelessly. ‘On the scent.'

‘Yes, exactly,' I said. ‘But when she looked at us I felt quite …' I broke off, I could not find the words. ‘I felt quite dirty,' I said eventually. ‘As if we were doing something wrong. As if we were …'

‘What?'

‘Too close.'

‘We're brother and sister,' George exclaimed. ‘Of course we're close.'

‘We were on the bed asleep together.'

‘Of course we were asleep!' he exclaimed. ‘What else should we be doing together on the bed? Making love?'

I giggled. ‘She makes me feel like I shouldn't even be in your room.'

‘Well, you should,' he said stoutly. ‘Where else can we talk without half the court as well as her prowling round and listening? She's just jealous. She'd give a king's ransom to be on the bed with me in the afternoon, and I'd as soon put my head into a mantrap as into her lap.'

I smiled. ‘You don't think she matters at all?'

‘Not at all,' he said lazily. ‘She's my wife. I can manage her. And the way the fashion is for marriage, I might just throw her off and marry a pretty one instead.'

Anne absolutely refused to spend the Christmas feast at Greenwich if she were not to be the centre of the attention. Although Henry tried again and again to explain to her that it was for the good of their cause she railed at him for preferring the queen at his side.