Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (155 page)

She nodded but she stayed, leaning on my shoulder, looking out at the road. ‘There's Uncle Howard.'

His standard before him, a small party of his men with him, our uncle rode up the track to the palace, and into the stable yard.

Anne resumed her seat. In a little while we heard the palace door bang and heard his feet and those of his men loud on the stairs. Anne raised her head, looked inquiringly as he came into her room. He bowed. There was something in that bow, lower than he usually offered to her, which warned me. Anne rose to her feet, her sewing tumbling off her lap to
the floor, her hand to her mouth, her other hand on her loosely laced stomacher.

‘Uncle?'

‘I regret to inform you that His Majesty has fallen from his horse.'

‘He's hurt?'

‘Gravely hurt.'

Anne blanched white, and swayed on her feet.

‘We need to prepare,' my uncle said firmly.

I thrust Anne into a chair and looked up at him. ‘Prepare for what?'

‘If he is dead then we need to secure London and the North. Anne must write. She'll have to be Regent until we can establish a council. I shall represent her.'

‘Dead?' Anne repeated.

‘If he is dead then we have to hold the country together,' my uncle repeated. ‘It's a long time until that baby in your belly is a man. We have to make plans. We have to be ready to defend the country. If Henry is dead …'

‘Dead?' she asked again.

Uncle Howard looked at me. ‘Your sister will tell you. There's no time to lose. We have to secure the kingdom.'

Anne's face was blank with shock, as insensate as her husband. She could not imagine a world without him. She was quite incapable of doing my uncle's bidding, or securing the kingdom without the king to rule it.

‘I'll do it,' I said quickly. ‘I'll draw it up and sign it. You can't ask her, Uncle Howard. She shouldn't be worried, she has the baby to keep safe. Our handwriting is alike, we've passed for each other before. I can write for her, and sign for her too.'

He brightened at that. One Boleyn girl was always much the same as another to him. He pulled a stool over to the writing desk. ‘Start,' he said tersely. ‘“Be ye well assured …”'

Anne lay back in her chair, her hand on her belly, the other at her mouth, staring out of the window. The longer she had to wait, the worse the king must be. A man jolted by a fall is brought quickly home. A man near death is carried more carefully. As Anne waited, looking down to the entrance to the stable yard, I realised that all our safety, all our security was falling apart. If the king died we were all ruined. The country could be pulled apart by every one of the lords fighting on his own account. It would be as it was before Henry's father had pulled it all together: York against Lancaster, and every man for his own. It would be a wild country with every county owning its own master, and no-one able to kneel to the true king.

Anne looked back into the room and saw my aghast face, bent over her claim to the regency for the duration of the youth of her child, Elizabeth.

‘Dead?' she asked me.

I rose from the table and took her cold hands in my own.

‘Please God, no,' I said.

They brought him in, walking so slowly that the litter might have been a bier. George at his head, William and the rest of the gaily dressed jousting party straggling along behind, in frightened silence.

Anne let out a moan and slid to the floor, her gown billowing around her. One of the maids caught her, and we carried her into her bedroom, laid her on the bed and sent a page running for hippocras wine and a physician. I unlaced her and felt her belly, whispering a silent prayer that the baby was still safe inside.

My mother arrived with the wine and took one look as Anne, white-faced, was struggling to sit up.

‘Lie quietly,' she said sharply. ‘D'you want to spoil everything?'

‘Henry?' Anne said.

‘He's awake,' my mother lied. ‘He took a bad fall but he's all right.'

From the corner of my eye I saw my uncle cross himself and whisper a word of prayer. I had never before seen that stern man call on anyone's help but his own. My daughter Catherine peeped around the door and was waved into the room and given the cup of wine to hold to Anne's lips.

‘Come and finish the regency letter,' my uncle said in an undertone. ‘That's more important than anything else.'

I took a lingering look at Anne and then went back out to the presence chamber and took up the pen again. We wrote three letters, to the City, to the North, and to parliament, and I signed all three as Anne, Queen of England, while the physician arrived and then a couple of apothecaries. Keeping my head down, in a world falling apart, I was tempting fate to sign myself Queen of England.

The door opened and George came in, looking stunned. ‘How is Anne?' he asked.

‘Faint,' I said. ‘The king?'

‘Wandering,' he whispered. ‘He doesn't know where he is. He's asking for Katherine.'

‘Katherine?' my uncle repeated as quickly as a swordsman draws a blade. ‘He's asking for her?'

‘He doesn't know where he is. He thinks he's just been unhorsed at a joust years ago.'

‘You both go to him,' my uncle said to me. ‘And keep him quiet. He's not to mention her name. We can't have him calling for her on his deathbed, he'll dethrone Elizabeth for Princess Mary if this gets out.'

George nodded and led me to the great hall. They had not carried the king upstairs, they were afraid that they would stumble with him. He was a great weight, and he would not lie still. They had laid the litter on two of the tables pushed together, and he was tossing and turning on it, moving restlessly around. George led me through the circle of frightened men and the king saw me. His blue eyes slowly narrowed as he recognised my face.

‘I took a fall, Mary.' His voice was pitiful, like a young boy's.

‘Poor boy.' I drew close to him and took his hand and held it to my heart. ‘Does it hurt?'

‘All over,' he said, closing his eyes.

The physician came behind me and whispered. ‘Ask him if he can move his feet and his fingers, if he can feel all his parts.'

‘Can you move your feet, Henry?'

We all saw his boots twitch. ‘Yes.'

‘And all your fingers?'

I felt his hand grip mine more strongly.

‘Aye.'

‘Does it hurt inside you, my love? Does your belly hurt?'

He shook his head. ‘It hurts all over.'

I looked at the physician.

‘He should be leeched.'

‘When you don't even know where he is hurt?'

‘He could be bleeding inside.'

‘Let me sleep,' Henry said quietly. ‘Stay with me, Mary.'

I turned away from the doctor to look down into the king's face. He looked so much younger, lying quietly and drowsily, that I could almost believe that he had been the young prince that I had adored. The fatness of his cheeks fell away as he lay on his back, the beautiful line of his brow was unchanged. This man was the only one who could hold the country together. Without him we would all be ruined: not just the Howard family, not just us Boleyns, but every man and woman and child in every parish in the country. No-one else would stop the lords snapping at the crown. There were four heirs with good claims to the throne: Princess Mary, my niece Elizabeth, my son Henry, and the bastard Henry Fitzroy. The church was in uproar already, the Spanish emperor or the French
king would take a mandate from the Pope to come to restore order and then we would never be rid of them.

‘Will you get better if you sleep?' I asked him.

He opened his blue eyes and smiled at me. ‘Oh yes,' he said in his little voice.

‘Will you lie still if we carry you upstairs to your bed?'

He nodded. ‘Hold my hand.'

I turned to the physician. ‘Should we do that? Get him to bed and let him rest?'

He looked terrified. The future of England was in his hands ‘I think so,' he said uncertainly.

‘Well, he can't sleep here,' I pointed out.

George stepped forward and picked out half a dozen of the strongest-looking men, and ranged them around the litter. ‘You keep hold of his hand, Mary, and keep him still. The rest of you lift when I say the word and go to the stairs. We'll take a rest on the first landing and then go again. One, two, three, now: lift.'

They strained to lift him and to hold the litter level. I went alongside, my hand gripped in the king's. They got into a shuffling stride which kept them all together and we made it up the stairs to the king's apartments. Someone ran on ahead and threw open the double doors into his presence chamber and then beyond, into the privy chamber. They laid the litter on the bed, the king was badly jolted as they put it down, he groaned in bewildered pain. Then we had the task of getting him off the litter and onto his bed. There was nothing for it but for the men to climb on the bed and take him by his shoulders and feet and heave him up, while the others dragged the litter out from underneath him.

I saw the physician's expression at this rough treatment and I realised that if the king was bleeding inside, then we had probably just killed him. He groaned in pain and for a moment I thought it was the death rattle and that we would all be blamed for this. But then he opened his eyes and looked at me.

‘Katherine?' he asked.

There was a superstitious hiss from all the men around me. I looked to George. ‘Out,' he said shortly. ‘Everyone out.'

Sir Francis Weston came towards him and whispered quietly in his ear. George listened attentively and touched Sir Francis's arm in thanks.

‘It is the queen's orders that His Majesty be left with the physicians and with his dear sister-in-law, Mary, and with me,' George announced. ‘The rest of you can wait outside.'

Reluctantly, they left the room. Outside I heard my uncle stating very
loudly that if the king were incapacitated then the queen would be Regent for the Princess Elizabeth, and that no-one should need reminding that they had all, individually, sworn their loyalty to the Princess Elizabeth, his only chosen and legitimate heir.

‘Katherine?' Henry asked again, looking up at me.

‘No, it's me, Mary,' I said gently. ‘Mary Boleyn as was. Mary Stafford now.'

Shakily he took my hand and raised it to his lips. ‘My love,' he said softly, and none of us knew which of his many loves he was addressing: the queen who had died still loving him, the queen who was sick with fear in the same palace, or me, the girl he had once loved.

‘D'you want to sleep?' I asked anxiously.

His blue gaze was hazy, he looked like a drunkard. ‘Sleep. Yes,' he mumbled.

‘I'll sit beside you.' George pulled up a chair for me and I sat down without drawing my hand away from the king.

‘Pray to God he wakes up,' George said, looking down at Henry's waxy face and his fluttering eyelids.

‘Amen,' I said. ‘Amen.'

We sat with him till the middle of the afternoon, the physicians at the foot of the bed, George and I at the head, my mother and father forever coming in and out, my uncle away somewhere, plotting.

Henry was sweating and one of the physicians went to ease the covers back from him, but suddenly checked. On his fat calf where he had been injured jousting long ago was a dark ugly stain of blood and pus. His wound, which had never properly healed, had opened up again.

‘He should be leeched,' the man said. ‘Get the leeches onto that and let them suck out the poison.'

‘I can't look,' I confessed shakily to George.

‘Go and sit in the window, and don't you dare faint,' he said roughly. ‘I'll call you when they've got them on and you can come back to the bedside.'

I stayed in the windowseat, resolutely not looking back, trying not to hear the clink of the jars as they put the black slugs on the king's legs and left them to suck away at the torn flesh. Then George called, ‘Come back and sit beside him, you needn't see anything.' And I returned to my place at the head of the bed, only going away when the leeches had sucked themselves into little sated balls of black slime and could be taken off the wound.