Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  I was expecting to see his joy but I saw something else; a shadow crossed his face. It was how George looked when he had done something bad. It was George’s guilty look. It flashed through his eyes so fast that I was hardly certain that I had seen it, but for a moment I knew with absolute certainty that his conscience was not clear, and I guessed that Anne had taken him as her companion on her journey to the gates of hell to conceive this child for England.

  ‘Oh God, what is it? What have you two done?’

  At once he smiled his shallow courtier’s smile. ‘Nothing! Nothing. How happy they will be! What a couple of days this has been! Katherine dead and the new prince quickened in the womb. Vivat Boleyns!’

  William smiled at him. ‘Your family always impresses me by its ability to see everything in the light of its own interests,’ he said politely.

  ‘You mean rejoicing that the queen is dead?’

  ‘Princess Dowager.’ William and I spoke together.

  George grinned. ‘Aye. Her. Of course we celebrate it. Your trouble, William, is that you have no ambition. You don’t see that there is in life only ever one goal.’

  ‘And what is that?’ William asked.

  ‘More,’ George said simply. ‘Just more of anything. More of everything.’

  All through the cold dark days of January, Anne and I sat together, read together, played cards together and listened to her musicians. George was forever with Anne, as attentive as a devoted husband, forever fetching her drinks and cushions for her back, and she bloomed under his attention. She took a fancy to Catherine and would have her with us too, and I watched Catherine carefully copying the manners of the ladies of the court until she could deal a card pack, or pick up a lute, with the same grace.

  ‘She’ll be a true Boleyn girl,’ Anne said approvingly of her. ‘Thank God she has my nose and not yours.’

  ‘I do thank God for it every night,’ I said, though sarcasm was always lost on Anne.

  ‘We could look for a good match for her,’ Anne said. ‘As my niece she should do very well. The king himself will take an interest.’

  ‘I don’t want her married yet, nor against her choice,’ I said.

  Anne laughed. ‘She’s a Boleyn girl, she has to marry to suit the family.’

  ‘She’s my girl,’ I said. ‘And I won’t have her sold off to the highest bidder. You can get Elizabeth betrothed in the cradle, that’s your right. She’ll be a princess some day. But my children can be children before they are wed.’

  Anne nodded, letting it go. ‘Your son is still mine though,’ she said, evening the score.

  I gritted my teeth. ‘I never forget it,’ I said quietly.

  The weather held very fair. Every morning there was a white ground frost and the scent of the deer was strong for the hounds as they streamed across the park and out into the countryside. The going was hard for the horses. Henry changed his mount two or three times a day, steaming with the heat of his thick winter cape, waiting impatiently for the groom to come running up with the strong big hunter dancing at the end of the reins. He rode like a young man because he felt like a young man again, one who could sire a son on a pretty wife. Katherine was dead and he could forget that she had ever been. Anne was carrying his child and it restored his faith in himself. God was smiling on Henry, as he trusted that God must do. The country was at peace and there was no threat of a Spanish invasion now that the queen was dead. The proof of the decision was in the outcome. Since the country was at peace and Anne with child then God must have agreed with Henry and cast His lot against the Pope and the Spanish emperor. Secure in the knowledge that he and God were of the same mind in this, as in every matter, Henry was a happy man.

  Anne was contented. Never before had she felt the world coming to her fingertips. Katherine had been her rival, the shadow queen who had always darkened her own steps to the throne, and now Katherine was dead. Katherine’s daughter had threatened the right of Anne’s children to rule and now Katherine’s daughter had been forced to concede that she would take second place, and Anne’s daughter Elizabeth was promised the loyalty of every man, woman and child in the country – and those that refused to promise were either in the Tower or dead on the block. And best of all, Anne had a baby strong and growing inside her.

  Henry announced that there was to be a jousting tournament and every man who called himself a man should take his armour and his horse and enter the lists. Henry himself would be riding, his renewed sense of youth and confidence prompted him to take a challenge again. William, complaining mightily of the expense, borrowed his armour from another impoverished knight and rode, taking immense care of his horse, on the first day of the tournament. He kept his seat but the other man was easily declared victor.

  ‘God help me, I have married a coward,’ I said when he came to find me in the ladies’ tent, Anne seated at the front under the awning and the rest of us, well-wrapped in furs, were standing behind her.

  ‘God bless you, that you have,’ he said. ‘I brought my hunter out of it without a scratch on him, and I’d rather have that than any reputation for heroism.’

  ‘You are a commoner,’ I said, smiling at him.

  He slid his arm around my waist and drew me to him for a quick hidden kiss. ‘I have the most vulgar of tastes,’ he whispered to me. ‘For I love my wife, and I love a bit of peace and quiet, and I love my farm and no dinner is better for me than a slice of bacon and a bite of bread.’

  I nestled closer to him. ‘D’you want to go home?’

  ‘When you can come too,’ he said peaceably. ‘When her baby is born and she lets us go.’

  Henry rode on the first day of the tournament and won through to the second day. Anne would have been there to watch him but she was sickly in the morning and said that she would come down at noon. She ordered me to sit with her and many of her ladies. The others rode out to the lists, all dressed in their brightest colours, and the gentlemen, some already in armour, riding with them.

  ‘George will take care of the Seymour thing,’ Anne said, watching from the window.

  ‘And the king will be thinking of nothing but the joust,’ I said reassuringly. ‘He loves to win more than anything else.’

  We spent the morning at peace in her room. She had her altar cloth spread out for sewing again, and I was tackling one large boring patch of grass while she was doing the cloak of Our Lady at the other end. Between us was a long stretch of revelations: saints going to heaven and devils tumbling down to hell. Then I heard a sudden noise outside the window. A rider, galloping swiftly into court.

  ‘What is it?’ Anne lifted her head from her sewing.

  I kneeled up on the windowseat to look down. ‘Someone riding like a madman into the stable yard. I wonder what …’

  I bit the next words out of my mouth. Racing out of the stable yard was the royal litter drawn by two stout horses.

  ‘What is it?’ Anne asked behind me.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, thinking of her baby. ‘Nothing.’

  She rose from her chair and looked over my shoulder, but already the royal litter was out of sight.

  ‘Someone riding into the stables,’ I said. ‘Perhaps the king’s horse has cast a shoe. You know how he hates to be unhorsed, even for a moment.’

  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 Maj