The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

  He was watching me, he was always watching me for the moment when we could slip away together. One discreet tilt of his head, one secret smile and we were gone into the shadows for a kiss and a hidden touch and sometimes, when it was dark and when we could not resist each other, we would take our pleasure, hidden in the darkness by the river with the sound of faraway music to disguise my moan of pleasure.

  I was a clandestine lover and it was that which made me alert for George. He too would take part in the first half-dozen dances and establish his presence at the center of things. Then he too would step back, back, back from the circle of light into the obscurity of the garden. Then I would see that Sir Francis was missing too and know that he had taken my brother off somewhere, perhaps to his room, perhaps to the stews of the City for some wild doings, perhaps gambling, or riding in the moonlight, or for some rough embracing. George might reappear in five minutes, or he might be gone all night. Anne, who thought he was roistering as he always had done, accused him of flirting with the maids around the court and George laughed and disclaimed as he always had done. Only I knew that a more powerful and more dangerous desire had my brother in its grasp.

  In August Anne announced that she would retire for her confinement and when Henry came to visit her in the morning, after hearing Mass, he found that the rooms were in chaos with furniture being moved in and out, and all the ladies in a great toil of activity.

  Anne sat on a chair among all the confusion and ordered what she wanted. When she saw Henry come in she inclined her head but did not rise to curtsy to him. He did not care, he was besotted with his pregnant queen, he dropped like a boy to kneel beside her, to put his hands on her great round belly and look up into her face.

  “We need a christening gown for our son,” she said without preamble. “Does she have it?”

  “She” meant only one thing in the royal vocabulary. “She” was always the queen that had disappeared, the queen that no one ever mentioned, the queen that everyone tried not to remember, sitting in that chair, preparing for her own confinement in that room, and forever turning to Henry with her sweet deferential smile.

  “It’s her own,” he said. “Brought from Spain.”

  “Was Mary christened in it?” Anne demanded, already knowing the answer.

  Henry frowned at the effort of recovering a memory. “Oh yes, a great long white gown, richly embroidered. But it was Katherine’s own.”

  “Does she have it still?”

  “We can order a new gown,” Henry said pacifically. “You could draw it yourself, and the nuns could sew it for you.”

  A toss of Anne’s head indicated that this would not do. “My baby is to have the royal gown,” she said. “I want him christened in the gown that all the princes have worn.”

  “We don’t have a royal gown…” he said hesitantly.

  “I’ll warrant!” she snapped. “Because she has it.”

  Henry knew when he was beaten. He bent his head and kissed her hand, clenched on the arm of the chair. “Don’t distress yourself,” he urged her. “Not so near your time. I’ll send to her for it. I swear I will. Our little Edward Henry shall have everything you might want.”

  She nodded, she found her sweet smile, she touched the nape of his neck with her fingertips as he bowed to her.

  The midwife came to them and swept a curtsy. “Your room is ready now,” she said.

  Anne turned to Henry. “You’ll visit me every day,” she said. It sounded more like an order than a request.

  “Twice a day,” he promised. “The time will pass, sweetheart, and you must rest for the coming of our son.”

  He kissed her hand again and left her, and I drew close as the two of us went to the threshold of her bedchamber. Her great bed had been moved in, and the walls hung with thick tapestries to exclude any noise or sunshine or fresh air. They had put rushes down on the floor with rosemary for scent, and lavender for relief. They had moved all the other furniture out of the room except for one chair and table for the midwife. Anne was expected to stay in bed for one whole month. They had lit a fire although it was midsummer and the room was stifling. They had lit candles so that she could read or sew, and they had put the cradle ready at the foot of the bed.

  Anne recoiled on the threshold of the darkened stuffy room. “I can’t go in there, it’s like a prison.”

  “It’s only for a month,” I said. “Perhaps less.”

  “I’ll suffocate.”

  “You’ll be fine. I had to do it.”

  “But I’m the queen.”

  “All the more reason.”

  The midwife came up behind me and said: “Is it all to your liking, Your Majesty?”

  Anne’s face was white. “It’s like a prison.”

  The midwife laughed and ushered her into the room. “They all say that. But you’ll be glad of the rest.”

  “Tell George I’ll want to see him later,” Anne said over her shoulder to me. “And tell him to bring someone entertaining. I’m not going to be all alone in here. I might as well be imprisoned in the Tower.”

  “We’ll dine with you,” I promised. “If you rest now.”

  With Anne withdrawn from court the king returned to his normal pattern of hunting every morning from six till ten and then coming in for his dinner. In the afternoon he would visit Anne and then there would be entertainments laid on for him in the evening.

  “Who does he dance with?” Anne demanded, as sharp as ever though she lay hot and tired and heavy in the darkened room.

  “No one in particular,” I said. Madge Shelton had taken his eye and the Seymour girl, Jane. Lady Margaret Steyne was peacocking about in half a dozen new gowns. But none of this would matter if Anne had a boy.

  “And who hunts with him?”

  “Just his gentlemen,” I lied. Sir John Seymour had bought his daughter a most handsome gray hunter. She had a dark blue gown to ride in and she looked well in the saddle.

  Anne looked suspiciously at me. “You’re not chasing after him yourself, are you?” she asked nastily.

  I shook my head. “I’ve no desire to alter my station in life,” I said honestly enough. Carefully, I kept my thoughts from William. If I let myself think of the set of his shoulders or the way he stretched when he was naked in the morning light, then I knew that my desire would show in my face. Anyone could read it. I was too much his woman.

  “And you watch the king for me?” Anne insisted. “You do watch him, Mary?”

  “He’s waiting for the birth of his son, like the rest of the court,” I said. “If you have a boy then nothing can touch you. You know that.”

  She nodded and closed her eyes and leaned back on the pillows. “God, I wish it was over,” she said pettishly.

  “Amen,” I said.

  Without my sister’s keen eyes on me I was free to spend time with William. Madge Shelton was frequently missing from my bedroom and she and I had developed an informal arrangement of always knocking at the door, and turning away from it immediately if it was locked from the inside. Madge was only a young girl but she had grown up quickly at court. She knew that her chances of a good marriage depended on the careful balance of catching a man’s desire without letting a shadow fall on her own reputation. And it was a wilder harder-living court than the one I had come to as a girl.

  George’s deceits worked as well. He and Sir Francis with William Brereton and Henry Norris were at a loose end without the queen in her court. They went hunting with Henry in the morning and sometimes they would be summoned to his council in the afternoon but mostly they were idle. They flirted with the queen’s ladies, they slipped up the river to the City, and they disappeared for unexplained nights. I caught him once in the early morning. I had been watching the sunshine on the river when a rowboat tied up to the palace landing stage and George paid off the boatman and came quietly up the garden path.

  “George,” I said, stepping out from my seat in the roses.

  He gave a start. “Mary!” At on