The Last Boleyn (32 page)

“But you
are
a woman, Mary, and had never been so abused before. I would not expect you to act differently. You are hardly trained to wield a sword. Besides, you were a tremendous help to me afterward. Is there anything else?”

“Yes. I want you to know I appreciate—I treasure—our hours and our talks at Banstead. And, well, thank you for being so restrained.”

“You are welcome. Do not thank me too much. I doubt if I could ever do it again—the restraint I mean.”

She expected him to grin at her but he was serious. Her heart leapt and began to beat the quickened rhythm he could always arouse. Their eyes held. She was trying to summon her courage to give in to the magnetic pull she felt to sit on the bed and kiss him when Anne glided in humming.

“Good morning, Lord Stafford. You look a great deal stronger but a shave would help, you know.”

“Yes, Lady Anne. Indeed I know.” He flicked his thumbnail across the stubble. “Mary and I were just discussing it.”

“Oh. Well, do you feel strong enough to tell me how things truly were at Eltham when you dashed off? Father's missives are so political and His Grace's notes are of far another sort.” Her dark eyes danced over him in some sort of challenge, and he returned her gaze steadily.

“I would be pleased to tell you whatever you would choose to know, Lady Anne, but right now I am famished. I intend to try to move around a bit this afternoon, so perhaps at supper this evening there will be time.”

Anne lifted her sleek head to stare at Mary. “Well, of course, I know you have been unwell. It is only that I am dying to hear someone tell me the way it truly is, you see. George is kept much away these days. Perhaps at dinner.” She raised her slender right hand to Mary and was gone.

“Why did you tell her that, Staff? You are hardly famished after that stew and biscuits.”

“Maybe I want to be alone with only you, Mary, and she
did
interrupt us. And then, maybe it gives me perverse pleasure to put her off since everyone falls all over her these days, and it is likely to be worse when she returns to him this autumn. The time will not be long when it will be completely unwise and unsafe to put off the Lady Anne.”

“You predict she will become his mistress? She says she will never do that.”

“I am afraid I am starting to believe her. I think His Grace is stirring his pluck to send Queen Catherine away from court for good, and then we shall see the Lady Anne's next move. She must be a hell of a chess player, as much as you must be a bad one, love.”

“I hardly think you need to bring me into this. I...”

“Rest assured, I prefer a poor player at that game, Mary. One I can teach and beat if I have to. The other thing is,” he went on, “His Grace is not truly content with having the Fitzroy boy his heir. Bessie Blount's son is no match—nor is the queen's slender, serious daughter—for a legitimate son.”

“Catherine is healthy enough, although she will bear him no more children,” Mary argued quietly. “He is far from being a widower.”

“That is what I mean about the next Bullen chess move, Mary. We shall have to wait and see. And I do want to sit in the gardens and perhaps stroll about to get my riding strength back. I had best have that shave since we are talking only of unimportant things and not of our future. I have to be able to ride. I do not intend to be here when your father returns to claim Anne or if His Grace should suddenly appear.”

She stood to fetch the boy to shave him. “I refuse to be afraid of either of them anymore,” she said bravely.

“Not afraid, perhaps, sweetheart, but always careful.”

She gave his good arm a playful caress as she left the room. He made a grab for her but missed. She laughed.

“Teases always get what they deserve, Mary,” he called after her. She laughed again at having him sound like his old self again.

In the afternoon she and Catherine walked with Staff to the stableblock to visit Sanctuary. Mary had assured him more than once that Ian was tending the horse lovingly, but he had to see for himself. Staff walked in slow steps and she knew he still had a headache and was weak as a babe. But she was so glad to see him up! Little Catherine walked between them, holding on to both of their hands. The child had always favored Staff and remembered him from her earliest days when he would visit her parents in their chambers and tease her and make her laugh. Mother had told her that her father was dead now and that meant he had gone away forever. At least now her tall friend Staff was here with them. It would make her very happy if he would decide to stay here with mother, grandmother and Aunt Anne. She was certain it would make mother very happy too.

And now he was taking them to see his big horse. She and mother had seen him ride it in a joust one day. The king was there too. That was when she sat with her friend Margaret to watch. Margaret's uncle was the king.

“Will Santry remember me, do you think, my lord?” the little girl's sweet voice asked him.

Staff and Mary smiled at her attempt to say the difficult word. “I am certain he would never forget a beautiful lady like you, Mistress Catherine,” Staff said seriously.

“Did he get hurt when you and mother did?”

“Just a little cut. It is much better now they tell me. Just as I am.”

“I do not think you need to overestimate your strength, whatever vows of full recovery you have made to Catherine or me or Sanctuary, Staff,” Mary warned.

“Yes, nurse,” he mocked gently. “I am willing to do anything you say.”

“Then hush and do not tease,” she threw at him and looked down to see Catherine staring intently at them.

Sanctuary stamped and snorted in his stall to smell and hear his master. Staff patted his neck and flanks with his good hand and talked low to him. Mary hoisted Catherine up on the rails of the stall so she could see and pat the huge animal.

“He is much bigger than Eden or Donette, mother.”

“He has to be much bigger than my horses, my angel. Staff is much bigger than I am.”

“Staff is much bigger than father, too,” the child said as she stroked the sleek chestnut hair of the steed.

Mary glanced at Staff, her unspoken thoughts on her face. The child did not really understand. She had never lost anything but her beloved rag doll and that had been replaced soon enough.

“If I begin to ride Sanctuary tomorrow as I plan, Catherine, I shall take you for a ride around the moat,” Staff was saying. “Would you like that?”

“Yes, of course! Can we do it in the afternoon? I think I have to sew with grandmother and Semmonet in the morning. But you always sleep late anyway.”

“I have been lately, my moppet, but not anymore, since I am fast healing.”

“I hope you will stay here with us, my lord. Mother is much happier now that you are better.”

Staff grinned at Mary over Catherine's curly golden head and she guiltily returned his smile.

“I warrant the lass could give you lessons on how to see things clearly, Mary. Come, sweet Catherine. Run back to your grandmother in the garden. I will see you later.” He lifted her down with his uninjured arm.

“You will not ride him now, without me?” she questioned.

“Not without you, lass. Tomorrow I said.”

She ran several bounding steps and turned back to them. “Where did you get Santry's funny name, my lord? What does it mean?”

“It is a long story I will tell you later, miss, when I take you riding—tomorrow.”

She grinned at him and darted off waving to them from near the door.

It was cool and dim in the stables and it smelled like fresh oats and straw. Ian was a very careful groom and blacksmith. Staff put a booted foot on the lowest rail of Sanctuary's stall, blocking Mary when she made a move to follow her daughter's departure.

“That child will break hearts—like her mother,” he said low. “She is a miniature of you for certain.”

“Unlike I, Catherine will be raised without a father to totally control her life. I pray she will be the happier for that.”

“Do not hate your father too much, sweetheart. Hatred would get in the way of your dealing with him firmly enough to handle him. And why must the lass be raised without a father? Her mother is still fair, young and desirable, I assure you.”

“Thank you, my lord, but her mother is twenty-four and sometimes feels a good deal older than that. Catherine will be raised without a father. Her father is dead.”

“At least you are being more realistic than you were at first,” he said, changing the dangerous path on which he had considered treading. He stroked Sanctuary's neck and spoke gentle words of comfort much as he had to Mary when he had first arrived from Eltham at Hampton Court.

“Why does the horse have that name, Staff? Such a serious, strange name.”

“I never did quite tell you the whole story of my family's unfortunate past, Mary.”

“Only that your uncle was hanged for rebellion against His Grace's sovereign father and that your father was pardoned since he was so young. Is Sanctuary named for something in your past, then?”

“Yes. Right, Sanctuary? In 1486, after he had won the country by force of arms in the civil war, King Henry VII was riding on a progress to solidify the north. Humphrey and Thomas Stafford—my uncle and my father—raised a band at Colchester and tried to take Worchester back for the York cause. The king immediately raised an army headed by the Duke of Northumberland and rode south to put the rebellion down. The Staffords took sanctuary at Culham near Oxford—holy, inviolate sanctuary at the altar of a church, Mary—but the king's forces battered down the door and arrested them for high treason, claiming that such guilt could not be morally sanctuaried.”

He turned slowly and leaned his back against the horse's stall. “Some say the king later suffered grief for such an impious act, rebellion or not, but by then Humphrey Stafford of Grafton had been hanged at Tyburn and twelve-year-old Thomas sent home to an aunt at Wivenhoe near Colchester where the trouble had all begun. But the king never forgot to mistrust the Staffords after that, and took Lord Thomas's firstborn son to raise at court.”

“And that son is you?”

“Yes. Our present king simply inherited me and the continual duty of keeping an eye on my potential waywardness.”

“But you would never do such a thing—raise a rebel army!”

“No, of course not, and His Grace knows it well enough. The problem is, he really likes me, though I think he is a little afraid of me too. He cannot grasp the fact that I neither hate him nor worship him for his favors as do the others who swarm around him. He can never understand there is another world out there that I have always cherished.”

“Your family lands at Wivenhoe that your great aunt left you when she died?”

“Wivenhoe, yes, but more what it represents—freedom from the snares of politics and court intrigue. True ‘sanctuary,' Mary.”

“Like your friend John Whitman has found for himself in his little inn off the beaten path and far from the cruel master of the
Mary Rose,
” she mused half aloud.

“Exactly. Like Hever is to you, I guess. And like you are to me, Mary Bullen.” He gave her arm a little pull and she stepped toward him, carefully turning her cheek against his good shoulder. He stroked her hair and Sanctuary snorted and pawed in his stall.

“Sanctuary needs to be free too. He needs a skillful rider who cares for him, and he will respond beautifully. I am planning for things to be the same for us,” he said.

Her arms went around his waist and they did not move. “Now I understand that Sanctuary is a good name, Staff. Has His Grace ever heard it? I would think it would take the wind from his sails if he understood.”

“He has heard it. I have made certain of that. Now the only thing that has been puzzling me is how I am going to explain to your golden-haired moppet what ‘Santry' means.”

She began to laugh but he lifted her chin with his hand and covered her mouth with his. The kiss was neither passionate nor gentle, but determined, both giving and demanding. He finally raised his head and stared down into her half-closed azure eyes. “We had best join your mother in the garden as we promised, before it is too late. I am certain they would notice the straw in our clothes and hair, and anyway, your sister would probably come poking about to ask how things ‘truly are at court.' I would much rather tell her than show her. Come on.”

Her laughter floated to Sanctuary's alert ears as they left the stables. It is so wonderful, Mary realized, to have Staff here at Hever.

Lady Elizabeth Bullen had spent an hour each morning and each afternoon in the room where William Stafford was recuperating since he had ridden to Hever with Mary. The first days she had talked low to Mary while he slept, and the last two she had talked to them both. She took Staff's hand each time she entered or left the room. And Mary, who could never recall similar actions from her mother with any other visitor, was puzzled. She had decided it was because he had saved her daughter from rape or death at the hands of the brigands in the forest. But now she was coming to believe it must be more. Perhaps it was like an instinctive trust, whereas she herself had disliked him when she had first known him and trust had come later.

Mary watched them through her lashes as they spoke low to each other on the bench in the rose garden. Catherine threw a leather ball back and forth to Semmonet on the other side of the hedge, and Anne dared to sit and read the bawdy
Heptameron,
authored by no one less that Marguerite du Alencon, sister to King Francois of France. It was even rumored that now the king's poor Queen Claude had been dead three years, he showed more open affection to his sister than he had before, and that some of the heated passion in the text of the book was flamed by that love. Mary was not sure she even cared to read it if some of Francois du Roi's passions were laid out for all to see. But Anne, clever, witty Anne, loved French things.