Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (126 page)

‘A nobody,' I said. ‘I would tell no-one but you, George – so keep it as a secret.'

‘I swear,' he said, taking both my hands and drawing me closer. ‘A secret, on my honour. Are you in love?'

‘Oh no,' I said, drawing back at the very thought of it. ‘Of course not. But he pays me a little attention and it's nice to have a man make a fuss of you.'

‘I'd have thought the court was full of men making a fuss of you.'

‘Oh they write poetry and they swear they will die of love. But he … he is a little more … real.'

‘Who is he?'

‘A nobody,' I said again. ‘So I don't think about him.'

‘Pity you can't just have him,' George said with brotherly candour.

I did not reply. I was thinking of William Stafford's engaging intimate smile. ‘Yes,' I said very quietly. ‘A pity, but I can't.'

George, ignorant of the change of the temper of the people, invited Anne and me to ride out with him, down the river, to dine at the little ale house and come home again. I waited for Anne to refuse, to tell him that it was no longer safe for her to ride out alone; but she said nothing. She dressed in an unusually dark gown, she wore her riding hat pulled down over her face, and she laid aside her distinctive necklace with the golden ‘B'.

Pleased to be back in England riding out with his sisters, George did not notice Anne's discreet behaviour and dress. But when we stopped at the ale house the slatternly old woman who should have been serving us took a sideways glance at Anne and then went away. Moments later the master of the house came out, wiping his hands on an apron of hessian, and announced that the bread and cheese he had been going to set before us had spoiled, there was nothing in his house we could eat.

George would have flared up, but Anne put a hand on his sleeve and said that it was no matter, we should go to the monastery nearby and eat there. He let himself be guided by her, and we ate well enough. The king was an object of terror now in every abbey and monastery in the land. Only the servants, less politically astute than the monks, glanced askance at Anne and at me, and speculated in whispers as to which was the old whore and which was the new.

Riding home, the cold sun on our backs, George spurred his horse forward and rode beside me. ‘Everyone knows then,' he said flatly.

‘From London to far out into the country,' I said. ‘I don't know how far the news has gone.'

‘And I don't see anyone throwing his hat in the air and shouting huzzah?'

‘No, you won't see that.'

‘I'd have thought a pretty English girl would have pleased people? She's
pretty enough, isn't she? Waves her hand as she goes by, gives out alms, all the rest of it?'

‘She does all that,' I said. ‘But the women have a stubborn liking for the old queen. They say that if the King of England puts a loyal honest wife aside because he fancies a change, then no woman is safe.'

George was silent for a moment. ‘Do they do more than mutter?'

‘We were caught in a riot in London. And the king says it's not safe for her to go into the City at all. She is hated, George, and they say all sorts of things about her.'

‘Things?'

‘That she is a witch and has enchanted the king by sorcery. That she is a murderess and would poison the queen if she could. That she has made him impotent with all other women so he has to marry her. That she blasted the children in the queen's womb and put barrenness on the throne of England.'

George went a little pale and his hand on the rein clenched into the old sign against witchcraft – thumb between the two first fingers to make the sign of the cross. ‘They say this publicly? Might the king hear of it?'

‘The worst of it is kept from him, but someone is bound to tell him sooner or later.'

‘He wouldn't believe a word of it, would he?'

‘He says some of it himself. He says he is a man possessed. He says that she has enchanted him and that he can't think about another woman. It's love talk when he says it, but when it gets out – it's dangerous.'

George nodded. ‘She should do more good works and not be so damned …' He broke off, searching for the word. ‘Sensual.'

I looked ahead. Even on horseback, even when she was riding with no-one but her family, Anne swayed in the saddle in a way that made you want to take her by the waist.

‘She's a Boleyn and a Howard,' I said frankly. ‘Underneath the great name, we're all bitches on heat.'

William Stafford, waiting at the gateway to Greenwich Palace when we rode in, tipped his hat to me and caught my secret smile. When we had dismounted and Anne had led the way in, he was at the doorway and he drew me to one side.

‘I was waiting for you,' he said, without further greeting.

‘I saw.'

‘I don't like you riding without me, the country's not safe for the Boleyn girls.'

‘My brother took care of us. It was good to be out without a great retinue.'

‘Oh, I can offer you that. Simplicity I can offer in abundance.'

I laughed. ‘I thank you.'

He kept his hand on my sleeve to keep me by him. ‘When the king and your sister marry then you will be married to a man of their choosing.'

I looked into his square, tanned face. ‘And so?'

‘And so, if you wanted to marry a man with a pretty little manor and a few fields around it you should make haste to do so before your sister's wedding. The later that you leave it the harder it will be.'

I hesitated. I moved away from the touch of his hand and I turned away. I smiled at him, sideways under my eyelashes. ‘But no-one has asked me,' I sweetly explained. ‘I shall have to reconcile myself to being a widow all my days. No-one has asked me to marry him at all.'

For once he was lost for words. ‘But I thought …' he began. A delighted laugh escaped me. I swept him a deep curtsey, and turned for the palace. As I climbed the stairs I glanced back to see him fling his hat to the ground and kick it, and I knew the joy that every woman knows, when she has got a handsome man on the run.

I did not see him again for a week though I dawdled in the stable yard, and in the garden, and at the river where he might have found me. When my uncle's train went by one day I watched them but I could not pick him out from the two hundred men in matching Howard livery. I knew I was behaving like a fool; but I thought that there was no harm in looking for a handsome man and teasing him.

I did not see him for a week, and then not for another week. My uncle and I were watching the king and Anne playing at bowls one warm April morning and I said casually: ‘Do you still have that man – William Stafford – in your service?'

‘Oh yes,' my uncle said. ‘But I have given him leave for a month.'

‘Gone from court?'

‘He has a fancy to marry, he tells me. He has gone to speak to his father and to buy a place for his new wife.'

I felt the ground shift. ‘I thought he was married already,' I said, choosing the safest thing to say.

‘Oh no, a terrible philanderer,' my uncle said, his mind half on the king and Anne. ‘One of the ladies of the court was quite besotted with him, thought she would marry him and give up the life of court to live with him and a flock of hens. Can you imagine it!'

‘Foolish.' My mouth was dry. I swallowed a little.

‘And all the time he's betrothed to some country girl, I don't doubt,' my uncle said. ‘Waiting for her to come of age, I expect. He's off to marry this month and then he'll come back to me. He's a good man, very reliable. He took you to Hever, didn't he?'

‘Twice,' I said. ‘And he found me the children's ponies.'

‘He's good at things like that,' my uncle said. ‘He should go far. I might raise him up to run my stables, be my master of horse.' He paused, and suddenly turned his dark gaze on me like a bright lantern. ‘Didn't flirt with you, did he?'

The look I returned to him was one of absolute indifference. ‘A man in your service? Of course not.'

‘Good,' my uncle said, unimpressed. ‘He's a rogue given half a chance.'

‘He won't have a chance with me,' I said.

Anne and I were ready for bed, dressed in our night shifts, the maids dismissed, when there was the familiar tap at the door. ‘Could only be George,' Anne said. ‘Come in.'

Our handsome brother lounged at the door with a pitcher of wine in one hand and three glasses in the other. ‘I come to worship at the shrine of beauty.' He was quite drunk.

‘You can come in,' I said. ‘We are wonderfully beautiful.'

He kicked the door shut behind him. ‘Much better by candlelight,' he said, surveying the two of us. ‘Good God, Henry must go mad to think that he had the one of you and wants the other and can have neither.'

Anne was never pleased to be reminded that the king had been my lover. ‘He is always attentive to me.'

George rolled his eyes at me. ‘Drink?'

We all took a glass and George threw another log on the fire. There was a whisper of sound from the other side of the door. George, suddenly lithe and quick, was up at the door and tore it open. Jane Parker stood there, just straightening up from where she had been bending to put her eye to the keyhole.

‘My dear wife!' George said with a voice like honey. ‘If you want me in your bed you don't have to crawl around my sister's rooms, you can just ask.'

She flushed to the roots of her hair and peered past him to Anne, in bed, her gown slipping from her naked shoulder, and me in my nightdress at the fireside. There was something about the way she looked at the three of us that made me flinch. She always made me feel ashamed, as if I had
been doing something wrong. But it was as if she would collude with us. She looked as if she wanted to know dirty secrets, and share them.

‘I was passing the door and I heard voices,' she said awkwardly. ‘I was afraid that someone was disturbing Lady Anne. I was just about to knock to make sure that her ladyship was all right.'

‘You were going to knock with your ear?' George asked, puzzled. ‘With your nose?'

‘Oh leave it, George,' I said suddenly. ‘There is nothing wrong, Jane. George came to have a drink with us and say goodnight. He'll come to your room in a moment.'

She looked very far from grateful for my intervention. ‘He can come or not as he likes,' she said. ‘He can stay here all night if that is his pleasure.'

‘Leave me,' Anne said simply. She spoke as if she would not descend to brawl with Jane.

George bowed in obedience and smartly shut the door in Jane's face. He turned and put his back to it and, without caring that she would certainly hear, laughed aloud. ‘What a little snake!' he cried. ‘Oh Mary, you shouldn't rise to her. Follow Anne's lead: “Leave me.” Good God! It was tremendous: “Leave me.”'

He came back to the fireside and poured us all wine. He handed the first glass to me and the second to Anne and then he held up his own to toast us both.