Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  ‘It’s dead then,’ someone said. ‘What is wrong with her that she cannot give him a son?’

  ‘Come on,’ William said to George. ‘Let’s get out of here. The more you say, the worse it will get.’

  With my husband and my brother on either side of me we pushed out through the court and down the stair to Uncle Howard’s chambers. His dark-liveried servant let us in without a word. My uncle was at the big table, some papers spread out before him, a candle throwing a yellow glow all around the room.

  When we entered he nodded to the servant to stir the fire and light another branch of candles.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked.

  ‘Anne went into labour and gave birth to a dead baby,’ I said flatly.

  He nodded, his grave face showing no emotion.

  ‘There were things wrong with it,’ I said.

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Its back was flayed open, and its head was big,’ I said. I could feel my throat tightening in disgust and I gripped William’s hand a little tighter. ‘It was a monster.’

  Again he nodded as if I were telling him news of a most ordinary and distant nature. But it was George who gave a small strangled exclamation in his throat and felt for the back of a chair to support him. My uncle seemed to pay no attention, but he saw everything.

  ‘I tried to stop the midwife taking it out.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She said that she was already hired by the king.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And when I offered her money to stay or to leave the baby she said that it was her duty to the Virgin Mary to take the baby because she was a …’

  ‘A …?’

  ‘A witch-taker,’ I whispered.

  I felt the odd sensation of the floor floating underneath my feet and all the sounds of the room coming from far away. Then William pressed me into a chair and held a glass of wine to my lips. George did not touch me, he was clinging to the back of the chair and his face was as white as mine.

  My uncle was unmoved.

  ‘The king hired a witch-taker to spy on Anne?’

  I took another sip of wine and nodded.

  ‘Then she is in very great danger,’ he remarked.

  There was another long silence.

  ‘Danger?’ George whispered, pushing himself upright.

  My uncle nodded. ‘A suspicious husband is always a danger. A suspicious king even more so.’

  ‘She’s done nothing,’ George said stoutly. I stole a curious sideways glance at him, hearing him repeat the litany Anne had sworn when she had seen the monster that her body had made.

  ‘Perhaps,’ my uncle conceded. ‘But the king thinks she has done something, and that is enough to destroy her.’

  ‘And what will you do to protect her?’ George asked cautiously.

  ‘You know, George,’ my uncle said slowly, ‘the last time I had the pleasure of a private conversation with her she said that I might leave the court and be damned to me, she said that she had got where she was by her own efforts and that she owed me nothing, and she threatened me with imprisonment.’

  ‘She’s a Howard,’ I said, putting the wine aside.

  He bowed. ‘She was.’

  ‘This is Anne!’ I exclaimed. ‘We all spent our lives to get her here.’

  My uncle nodded. ‘And has she repaid us with great thanks? You were exiled from court, as I remember. You’d still be there if she had not needed your service. She has done nothing to recommend me to the king, on the contrary. And George, she favours you, but are you one shilling the richer than when she came to the throne? Did you not do as well when she was his mistress?’

  ‘This is not a matter of favour but a matter of life and death,’ George said hotly.

  ‘As soon as she bears a son her position is secure.’

  ‘But he can’t make a son!’ George shouted. ‘He couldn’t make a son on Katherine, he cannot make one on her. He is all but impotent! That’s why she has been going mad with fear …’

  There was a deadly silence. ‘God forgive you for putting all of us in such danger,’ my uncle said coldly. ‘It’s treason to say such a thing. I did not hear it. You did not say it. Now go.’

  William helped me to my feet and the three of us went slowly from the room. On the threshold George spun around, about to complain, but the door silently closed in his face before he could speak.

  Anne did not wake until the middle of the morning and then she had a raging temperature. I went to find the king. The court was packing to move to Greenwich Palace and he was away from the noise and the bustle, playing bowls in the garden, surrounded by his favourites, the Seymours very prominent among them. I was glad to see George at his side, looking confident and smiling, and my uncle among the watchers. My father offered the king a wager at good odds and the king took the bet. I waited till the last ball had been rolled and my father, laughing, handed over twenty gold pieces, before I stepped forward and made my curtsey.

  The king scowled to see me. I saw at once that neither Boleyn girl was in favour. ‘Lady Mary,’ he said coolly.

  ‘Your Majesty, I am come from my sister, the queen.’

  He nodded.

  ‘She asks that the court delay the move to Greenwich for a week until she has perfectly recovered her health.’

  ‘It’s too late,’ he said. ‘She can join us there when she is well.’

  ‘They have hardly started packing yet.’

  ‘It’s too late for her,’ he corrected me. There was an instantly suppressed little mutter around the bowling green. ‘It is too late for her to ask favours of me. I know what I know.’

  I hesitated. A very strong part of me wanted to take him by the collar of his jacket and shake the fat selfishness out of him. I had left my sister sick after a nightmarish childbirth and here was her husband, taking his ease, playing bowls in the sunshine and warning the court that she was far from his favour.

  ‘Then you must know that she, and I, and all we Howards have never swerved for a moment from our love and loyalty to you,’ I said. I saw my uncle’s scowl at the claim of kinship.

  ‘Let us hope you are not all tested,’ the king said unpleasantly. Then he turned from me and beckoned to Jane Seymour. Modestly, eyes downcast, she tiptoed forward from the queen’s ladies.

  ‘Walk with me?’ he asked in a very different voice.

  She curtsied as if it were too much of an honour for her even to speak, and then laid her little hand on his bejewelled sleeve and they walked off together, the court falling into line at a discreet distance behind them.

  The court was buzzing with rumours which George and I, working alone, could not deny. Once it had been a hanging offence to say one word against Anne. Now there were songs and jokes about her flirtatious court circle, and scandalous insinuations about her inability to carry a child.

  ‘Why doesn’t Henry silence them?’ I asked of William. ‘God knows he has the power of the law to do so.’

  He shook his head. ‘He is allowing them to say anything,’ he said. ‘They say she has done everything but sell her soul to the devil.’

  ‘Fools!’ I stormed.

  Gently he took my hands and unfolded the clenched fingers. ‘But Mary. How else would she have made a monstrous child but from a monstrous union? She must have lain in sin.’

  ‘With whom, for God’s sake? Do you think she has made a contract with the devil?’

  ‘Don’t you think she would do so, if it got her a son?’ he demanded.

  That stopped me. Unhappily, I looked up into his brown eyes. ‘Hush,’ I said, afraid of the very words. ‘I don’t want to think it.’

  ‘What if she did perform some witchcraft, and it gave her a monster child?’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Then he would be right to put her aside.’

  For a moment I tried to laugh. ‘This is a sorry jest at this sorry time, William.’

  ‘No jest, wife.’

  ‘I can’t see it!’ I cried in su