Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (138 page)

Anne laughed shortly. ‘Anyone would think that you had an aversion to men.'

The ladies laughed at the note of malice.

‘Just a disinclination.'

‘You never had a reputation for being disinclined,' Anne said cattily.

I smiled back at her. ‘You never had a reputation for being willing. But now, see, we are both happy.'

She bit her lip at that retort, and I saw her think of snubs which she could make in reply, and reject half of them for being too bawdy, or too near to the truth of her own status as a royal mistress no better than I had been.

‘Praise God for it,' she said piously and bent her head to her work.

‘Amen,' I returned, as sweet as she.

They were long days for me at Westminster in Anne's court. I could see William only by chance during the day. As a gentleman usher he was required to be in close attendance to the king. Henry took a liking to him, consulted him about horses and often rode with him at his side. I
thought it ironic that my William, a man completely unsuited to the life of court, should find himself so favoured. But Henry liked straightforward speech as long as it agreed with him.

Only at night could William and I be alone together. He had hired some rooms just across the road from the great palace of Westminster, an attic in the very rafters of an old building. When we lay awake after making love I could hear the sleepy birds settling in their nests in the thatch. We had a little pallet bed, a table and two stools, a fireplace where we warmed up our dinner from the palace, and nothing more. We wanted nothing more.

I woke at dawn every morning to his touch, the delight of his warmth and the heady smell of his skin. I had never before lain with a man who had loved me completely, for myself, and it was a dizzy experience. I had never lain with a man whose touch I adored without any need to hide my adoration, or exaggerate it, or adjust it at all. I simply loved him as if he were my one and only lover, and he loved me too with the same simplicity of appetite and desire which made me wonder what I thought I had been doing all those years when I had been dealing in the false coin of vanity and lust. I had not known then that all along there had been this other currency of pure gold.

Anne's coronation was overshadowed by a violent quarrel with our uncle. I was in her room when he raged at her, swearing that she had become so great in her own mind that she forgot who put her there. Anne, infuriatingly smug, put her hand on her swelling belly and told him that she was great in her body, and that she was very well aware who had put it there.

‘By God, Anne, you will remember your family,' he swore.

‘How should I forget them? They are around me like wasps around a honeypot. Every time I step, I trip over one of you, asking for another favour.'

‘I don't ask,' he snapped. ‘I have rights.'

She turned her head at that. ‘Not over me! You are speaking to your queen.'

‘I am speaking to my niece who would have been banished from the court in disgrace for bedding Henry Percy if it were not for me,' he spat at her.

She leaped to her feet as if she would fly at him.

‘Anne!' I cried out. ‘Sit! Be still!' I looked at my uncle. ‘She
must
not be upset! The baby!'

He looked murderously at her, then he got his temper under control. ‘Of course,' he said with stilted politeness. ‘Sit, Anne. Be calm.'

She sank down into her seat again. ‘Never speak of that,' she hissed at him. ‘I swear it, uncle or no uncle, if you raise that old slander against me I will have you out of court.'

‘I am Earl Marshal,' he said through his teeth. ‘I was one of the greatest men in England when you were still in the nursery.'

‘And before Bosworth your father was a traitor in the Tower,' she said triumphantly. ‘Remember, as I do, that we are Howards together. If you are not on my side, I am not on yours. You could see the inside of the Tower again at one word from me.'

‘Say it,' he spat at her and stalked from the room without a bow. She stared after him. ‘I hate him,' she said very quietly. ‘I will see him broken to a nobody.'

‘Don't think that,' I said hastily. ‘You need him.'

‘I need no-one,' she said flatly. ‘The king is wholly mine. I have his heart, I have his desire, and I am carrying his son. I need no-one.'

The quarrel with Uncle Howard was still not mended when he arrived to escort Anne to her coronation in the City. It was to be, as George had predicted, the finest coronation that anyone had ever seen. Anne had ordered them to burn away the pomegranate crest on Queen Katherine's barge as if Katherine had been a usurper, instead of rightful queen. In their place was Anne's own coat of arms and her initials entwined with Henry's. People mocked even that – saying that they read HA HA! and the last laugh was on poor England. Anne's new motto was everywhere: ‘the most happy'. Even George had snorted when he first heard it. ‘Anne, happy?' he said. ‘When she is Queen of Heaven and has pulled down the Virgin Mary herself.'

We went by barges to the Tower of London, flying flags of gold and white and silver, and the king was waiting for us at the great watergate. They held our barge steady as Anne disembarked, and I watched her, almost as if she was a stranger to me. She rose off her throne and glided down the gangplank as if she had been a queen born and bred. She was wonderfully gowned in silver and gold with a fur cape around her shoulders. She did not look like my sister, she did not look like any mortal woman at all. She carried herself as if she were the greatest queen that had ever been born.

We spent two nights in the Tower and on the first there was a great dinner and entertainment at which Henry gave out honours to celebrate
the day. He made eighteen Knights of the Bath and gave out a dozen knighthoods, three of them to his favourite gentlemen ushers, including my husband. William came to find me, after the king had tapped him on the shoulder with his sword and given him the kiss of fealty. He led me out for a dance where we could mingle with the court and hope that no-one would notice the queen's sister dancing with a gentleman usher.

‘Well then, my Lady Stafford,' he said softly. ‘How is this for ambition?'

‘Vaulting,' I said. ‘You will be as high as a Howard, I know it.'

‘Actually I am glad of it,' he said, reverting to a low confidential whisper as we watched the pair of dancers in the middle of the circle. ‘I did not want you to be lowered by marrying me.'

‘I would have married you if you had been a peasant,' I said firmly.

He chuckled at that. ‘My love, I saw how upset you were about the fleabites. I don't think you would have married me if I had been a peasant at all.'

I turned to laugh at him and then I caught a furious glance from George who was paired to dance with Madge Shelton. At once I steadied myself. ‘George is watching us.'

William nodded. ‘He'd do better to take care of himself.'

‘Oh why?'

It was our turn to dance. William took me to the centre of the circle and we danced together, three steps one way, three steps the other. It was a courtship dance, it was hard to perform without drawing close and locking our gaze. I kept reminding myself not to let my face show my delight in him. William was less discreet than me. Every time I stole a glance at him his eyes were on me as if he would eat me up. I was relieved when we danced around the line of the circle and out under an arch of arms, and the dance became general again.

‘What about George?'

‘Bad company,' William said shortly.

I laughed out loud. ‘He's a Howard, and a friend of the king,' I said. ‘He's supposed to be in bad company.'

I saw him change tack. ‘Oh, it's nothing, I suppose.'

The musicians reached the end and played a final chord. I drew William to the side of the hall.

‘Now tell me truly what you mean.'

‘Sir Francis Weston is forever with him,' William said, driven to speak. ‘And he has a bad reputation.'

At once I was on my guard. ‘You'll have heard of nothing but a young man's wildness.'

‘More,' William said shortly.

‘What more?'

William looked about him as if he wanted to escape this inquisition. ‘I've heard they're lovers.'

I took a little breath.

‘You knew?'

I nodded, saying nothing.

‘My God, Mary.' William took a step away from me, and then came back to my side. ‘You did not tell me? Your own brother deep in sin and you didn't tell me?'

‘Of course not,' I exclaimed. ‘I don't hold him up to shame. He is my brother. And he might change.'

‘You give him loyalty before me?'

‘As well as you,' I said swiftly. ‘William, this is my brother. We are the three Boleyns, we all three need each other. We all three know a dozen things, a score of things which are the greatest of secrets. I am not yet wholly Lady Stafford.'

‘Your brother is a sodomite!' he hissed at me.

‘And still my brother!' I grabbed his arm, careless of who might see us, and dragged him to an alcove. ‘He is a sodomite, and my sister is a whore, and perhaps a poisoner, and I am a whore. My uncle has been the falsest of friends, my father a time-server, my mother – God knows – some even say she had the king before the two of us! All of this you knew or you could have deduced. Now tell me, am I good enough for you? For I knew that you were a nobody and I came to find you all the same. If you want to rise to be a somebody in this court you will get blood or shit on your hands. I have had to learn this through a hard apprenticeship since I was a little girl. You can learn it now if you have the stomach.'

William gasped at my vehemence and stepped back to take me in. ‘I didn't mean to distress you.'

‘He is my brother. She is my sister. Come what will, they are my kin.'

‘They could be our enemies both,' he warned.

‘They could be my enemies till death and they would still be my brother and sister,' I said.

We paused.

‘Kin and enemies all at once?'

‘Perhaps,' I said. ‘It depends on how this great gamble goes.'

William nodded.

‘So what do they say about him?' I asked more steadily. ‘What did you hear?'

‘It's not widely known, thank God, but they say there is a secret court within a court, they circle your sister, they are her closest friends, but at the same time they are lovers among themselves. Sir Francis is one, Sir William Brereton another. Hard gamblers, great horse-riders, men who will do anything for a dare, anything that brings them pleasure or excitement – and George is among them. They're always around the queen, it's her rooms where they meet and flirt and play. So Anne is compromised too.'

I looked across the hall at my brother. He was leaning over the back of Anne's throne and whispering in her ear. I saw her tilt her head to his intimate whisper and giggle.

‘This life would corrupt a saint, never mind a young man.'