Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (99 page)

I hesitated. The impossibility of confiding in my uncle was very apparent to me. ‘No.'

‘Well, you have to be back in the king's bed by the end of this week, Mary. You do that or you'll never see your children again. D'you understand?'

I gave a little gasp at the cruelty of the bargain and he turned his hawk-face towards me and looked at me with his dark eyes. ‘I'll settle for nothing less.'

‘You cannot forbid me the sight of my children,' I whispered.

‘You'll find that I can.'

‘I have the king's favour.'

His hand slammed the table with a sound like a pistol shot. ‘You do not! That is my very point! You do not have the king's favour, and without it, you do not have mine. Get back into his bed and you can do whatever you like. You can ask him to set up a nursery for you, you can dandle your babies on the throne of England. You can banish me! But outside his bed you are nothing but a silly used whore that no-one cares for.'

There was a dead silence in the room.

‘I understand,' I said stiffly.

‘Good.' He moved away from the fireplace and pulled down his jerkin. ‘You'll thank me for this on your coronation day.'

‘Yes,' I said. I could feel my knees giving way. ‘May I sit?'

‘No,' he said. ‘Learn to stand.'

That night there was dancing in the queen's rooms. The king had brought his musicians to play for her. It was apparent to everyone that though he sat beside her, he was there to enjoy watching her ladies as they danced. Anne was among them. She was wearing a gown of dark blue, a new gown, and she had a matching hood. She was wearing her usual necklace
of pearls with the ‘B' in gold as if she wanted to flaunt her status as a single woman.

‘Dance,' George said to me very quietly, his mouth next to my ear. ‘They're all waiting for you to dance.'

‘George, I dare not. I'm bleeding. I might faint.'

‘You have to get up and dance,' he said. He looked at me with a bright smile on his face. ‘I swear it, Mary. You have to do it or you're lost.' He held out his hand.

‘Hold me tight,' I said. ‘If I start to fall then catch me.'

‘Into the breach. Come on. It has to be done.'

He led me to join the circle of dancers. I saw Anne's quick gaze take in the strength of George's grip under my elbow, and the whiteness of my face. For a moment she turned her back and I knew she would have been happy to see me drop to the floor. But then she saw the gaze of our uncle upon us, and our mother's bright demanding stare, and she gave up her place to me in the set of dancers, summoning her partner Francis Weston away, and George led me down the line towards the king and I looked up and smiled at His Majesty.

I danced that set, and then the next, and then the king himself came towards us and said to George: ‘I'll take your place and dance with your sister, if she's not too tired.'

‘She'd be honoured.'

I smiled radiantly. ‘I could dance all night if Your Majesty was my partner.'

George bowed and stepped back. I saw him take a fold of Anne's dress in his fingers and draw her away to the wall of the room.

The king and I touched hands, turned towards each other, and started the dance. The steps drew us close and then led us apart, his eyes never left me.

Beneath the tight lacing of my stomacher my belly ached as if I were filled with poison. I could feel the sweat trickling down between my tightly strapped breasts. I kept smiling my bright mirthless smile. I thought if I could get Henry alone I might persuade him to let me see my children at Hever when he went hunting this summer. The thought of my baby son made my breasts prickle with pain as the milk tried to flow under the tight strapping. I smiled as if I were filled with joy. I looked across the circle of dancers at the father of my children and I smiled at him as if I could not wait to lie with him for his own sake, and not for what he could do for me and mine.

Anne supervised my washing that evening with a spiteful efficiency which caused her to slap me with a cold washing sheet, and complain of the bloodstained water.

‘Good God, you disgust me,' she said. ‘However will he bear it?'

I wrapped myself in a sheet and combed my own hair before she could fly at me with the lice comb and rip the hairs from my head under the pretext of making me clean.

‘Perhaps he won't send for me,' I said. I was so tired from the dancing and from patiently standing for half an hour while Henry took his formal leave of the queen that I wanted to do nothing more than to tumble into bed.

There was a tap at the door, George's knock. He put his head around the door. ‘Good,' he said, seeing me washed and half-naked. ‘He wants you. You can just put on a robe and come.'

‘He's a brave man then,' Anne said spitefully. ‘Her breasts still leak milk, she's still bleeding, and at the smallest thing she bursts into tears.'

George giggled like a boy. ‘Bless you, Annamaria, you are the sweetest sister. I should think she wakes every day and thanks God she has a bedfellow like you to comfort and cheer her.'

Anne had the grace to look discomfited.

‘And I have something for the bleeding,' he said. He pulled a small piece of wadding from his pocket. I looked at it with suspicion.

‘What is it?'

‘One of the whores told me about it. You push it up your cunny and it stops the bleeding for a while.'

I made a face. ‘Doesn't it get in the way?'

‘She says not. Do it, Marianne. You have to get into his bed tonight.'

‘Look away then,' I said. George turned to the window and I went to the bed and struggled with unskilful fingers to do as he told me.

‘Let me,' Anne said crossly. ‘God knows I do everything else for you.'

She thrust the stuff up inside me and then pushed again. I let out a hoarse gasp of pain and George half-turned. ‘No need to murder the girl,' he said mildly.

‘It's got to go up, hasn't it?' Anne demanded, flushed and cross. ‘She's got to be plugged, hasn't she?'

George offered me a hand. I tumbled off the bed, wincing with pain. ‘Good God, Anne, if you ever leave court you could set up as a witch,' he said pleasantly. ‘You have all the gentleness already.'

She scowled at him.

‘Why are you so sour?' he asked as I tied the gown around me and stepped into my shoes with the high scarlet heels.

‘Nothing,' Anne said.

‘Oho!' he said with sudden understanding. ‘I see it all, little Mistress Anne. They've told you to step back and leave him to Mary. You are to be nothing more than lady in waiting to the old queen while your sister mounts up to the throne.'

She scowled at him, her beauty completely erased by jealousy. ‘I am nineteen years of age,' she said bitterly. ‘Half the court thinks I'm the most beautiful woman in the world. All of them know that I am the wittiest and the most stylish. The king cannot take his eyes off me. Sir Thomas Wyatt has gone to France to escape me. But my sister, a year younger than me, is married and has two children by the king himself. When is it going to be my turn? When am I to be wed? Who is going to be the match for me?'

There was a little silence. George put his hand to her flushed cheek. ‘Oh Annamaria,' he said tenderly. ‘There couldn't be a match for you. Not the King of France himself or the Emperor of Spain. You are a perfect piece, finished in every way. Be patient. When you are sister to the Queen of England we could look anywhere. Better to secure Mary where she might be well-placed to serve you, than throw yourself away on some paltry duke.'

She gave an unwilling chuckle at that and George bent his dark head and brushed her cheek with his lips. ‘You are,' he assured her. ‘You are indeed utterly perfect. We all of us adore you. Keep it up, for God's sake. If anyone ever knows what you are truly like in private we'll all be lost.'

She drew back and would have slapped him but he jerked his head out of the way and laughed at her and snapped his fingers to me. ‘Come on, little queen in the making!' he said. ‘All ready? All prepared?' He turned to Anne. ‘He can get his cock up, yes? You've not packed her too tight, like a ship's keel?'

‘Of course,' she said crossly. ‘But I should think it'll hurt like the devil.'

‘Well, we won't worry about that, will we?' George smiled at her. ‘After all, this is our meal ticket and our fortune that we are sending to his bed, hardly a girl at all. Come, child! You have work to do for us Boleyns, and we are counting on you!'

He kept up a flow of chatter as we went through the great hall and up the shadowy stairs to the king's chambers. When we entered Cardinal Wolsey was sitting with Henry and George drew me to a windowseat and brought me a glass of wine while we waited for the king and his most trusted counsellor to finish their low-voiced talk.

‘Probably counting the scraps from the kitchen,' George whispered to me mischievously.

I smiled. The cardinal's attempts to make the king's court run with
less waste was a source of continual amusement to those courtiers, my family among them, whose comfort and profit came from exploiting its folly and extravagance.

Behind us, the cardinal bowed and nodded to his page to gather up his papers. He nodded to George and to me as George led me forward to sit in his chair by the fireside.

‘I shall bid you goodnight, Your Majesty, madam, sir,' he said and left the room.

‘Will you take a glass of wine with us, George?' the king asked.

I shot a swift glance of appeal to my brother.

‘I thank Your Majesty,' George said and poured wine for the king, for me, and for himself. ‘You are working late, sire?'

Henry waved a dismissive hand. ‘You know how the cardinal is,' he said. ‘Unceasing in his labours.'

‘Deadly dull,' George suggested impertinently.

The king chuckled disloyally. ‘Deadly dull,' he agreed.

He sent George away by eleven o'clock and we were in bed by midnight. He caressed me gently and praised the plumpness of my breasts and the roundness of my belly, and I stored his words up so that when my mother next reproached me for being fat and dull I could claim that the king liked me this way. But it was no joy to me. Somehow, when they had taken my baby away they had stolen away a part of me too. I could not love this man, knowing that he would not listen to me, knowing that I was not allowed even to show him my sadness. He was the father of my children and yet he would have no interest in them until they were old enough for him to use as counters in the game of inheritance. He had been my lover for years and yet it had been my task to make sure that he never knew me. As he lay on me, and moved inside me, I felt as lonely as if I were the ship which bore my name, out all alone at sea.

Henry fell asleep almost as soon as he had done, breathing heavily, half-sprawled across me with his beard hot against my neck, his sour breath in my face. I could have screamed at the weight and the smell of him but I lay very still. I was a Boleyn. I was not some slut of a kitchen maid who could not bear a little discomfort. I lay still and thought of the moon shining on the moat of Hever Castle and wished myself in my own little room in the comfort of my bed. I took care not to think of my children: little Catherine in her bed at Hever, or Henry in his crib at Windsor. I could not risk tears when I was in the king's bed. I must be ready to turn to him with a smile whenever he might wake.