Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  This is not how I am to be treated and I shall teach him so. I shall not wait for him again, I shall not even agree to meet him next time he asks me. He will have to ask me more than once, I swear it. I shall give up flirtation for Lent and it will serve him right. Indeed, perhaps I shall grow thoughtful and serious and never flirt with anyone again.

  Lady Rochford asks me why I am in such a temper when we go in to dine and I swear to her that I am as happy as the day is long.

  ‘Mind your smiles then,’ she says as if she doesn’t believe me for a moment. ‘For my lord duke is back from France and he will be looking for you.’

  I lift my chin at once and I smile at her quite dazzlingly, as if she has just said something very witty. I even give a little laugh, my court laugh, ‘ha ha ha’, very light and elegant, as I have heard the other ladies do. She gives a little nod.

  ‘That’s better,’ she says.

  ‘What was the duke doing in France, anyway?’ I ask.

  ‘You are taking an interest in affairs of the world?’ she asks quizzically.

  ‘I am not a complete fool,’ I say.

  ‘Your uncle is a great man in the favour of the king. He went to France to secure the friendship of the French king so that our country is not faced with the danger of the Holy Fa –, I mean the Pope, the emperor and the King of France all in alliance against us.’

  I smile that Jane Boleyn herself should nearly say ‘Holy Father’, which we can’t say any more. ‘Oh, I know about that,’ I say cleverly. ‘Because they want to put Cardinal Pole on our own throne, out of wickedness.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Don’t speak of it,’ she warns me.

  ‘They do,’ I insist. ‘And that is why his poor old mother and all the Poles are in the Tower. For the Cardinal would call on the Papists of England to come against the king, just as they did before.’

  ‘They won’t come against the king any more,’ she says dryly.

  ‘Because they know they are wrong now?’

  ‘Because most of them are dead,’ she says shortly. ‘And that was your uncle’s doing too.’

  Anne, Hampton Court, March 1540

  I was told the court would observe the period of Lent with great solemnity. I was assured that we would eat no red meat at all. I was expecting to dine on fish for the whole of the forty days but I discover, the very first night at dinner, that English consciences are easy. The king is tender to his own needs. Despite the fast of Lent there is an enormous range of dishes marching into the hall held high above the heads of the servers, and they come first to the royal table and the king and I take a little from each, as is the custom, and send them out to our friends and favourites around the hall. I make sure I send them to my ladies’ table and to the great ladies of court. I make no mistake about this and I never send my favourite dish to any man. This is no empty politeness, the king watches me. Every word I speak at dinner, everything I do, his bright little eyes almost hidden by his fat cheeks follow everything, as if he would like to catch me out.

  To my surprise there is chicken, in pies and fricassees, roasted with mouth-watering herbs, carved from the bone; but in this season of Lent it is not called meat. For the purposes of the Lenten fast, the king has ruled that chicken counts as fish. There are all the game birds (also not meat, according to God and the king) beautifully presented, enfolded one within another for the flavour and tenderness. There are rich dishes of eggs (which are not meat), and there is indeed fish: trout from the ponds and wonderful fish dishes from the Thames and deep sea fish, brought by the fishermen who go far out to sea to feed this greedy court. There are freshwater crayfish and stargazy pies with little tasty whitebait heads all peeping out through a thick pastry crust. And there are great dishes of spring vegetables which are rarely served at court, and I am glad to have them on my plate in this season. I shall eat lightly now, and anything that I especially enjoy will be brought to me again for a private dinner in my chamber later. I have never been fed so richly or so well in my life, my Cleves maid has had to let out the stomacher of my gown and there was much arch comment about me growing and blooming, as if to suggest that it is a baby making me fatter. I cannot contradict them without exposing myself, and the king my husband, to even worse comment, so I had to smile and listen to them tease me as if I were a wife wedded and bedded and hoping to be with child; and not a virgin untouched by her husband.

  Little Katherine Howard came in and said that they were all ridiculous and that the good butter of England had made me gain a little weight and they were blind if they did not see how well it suits me. I was so grateful to her for that. She is a foolish, frivolous little thing but she has the cleverness of a stupid girl, since, like any stupid girl, she only thinks about one thing, and so she has become very expert in that. And the one thing that she thinks about? All the time, every moment of every day, Kitty Howard thinks about Kitty Howard.

  We surrender other pleasures for the time of Lent. There are no court entertainments of the merry kind, though there are readings of holy texts after dinner, and the singing of psalms. There are no masquings nor mumming and no jousts of course. I am greatly relieved by this because, best of all, it means that there is no possibility of the king coming in disguised. The memory of our first disastrous meeting still lingers with me, and I fear it stays with him too. It was not that I did not recognise him that was so offensive; it was the blatant fact that at first sight I was utterly repelled by him. Never since that day, by word, deed, or even look, have I let him know that I find him so unpleasant: fat, very old, and the stink of him turns my stomach. But however much I hold my breath and smile, it is too late to make amends. My face, when he tried to kiss me, told him everything in that moment. The way I pushed him off me, the way I spat the taste of him from my mouth! I still bow my head and flush hot at the terrible embarrassment. All this has left an impression with him that no later good manners can erase. He saw the truth of my view of him in that one swift glimpse, and – what is worse – he saw himself through my eyes: fat, old, disgusting. Sometimes I fear his vanity will never recover from this blow. And since his vanity is damaged I think his potency has gone with it. I am certain that his manhood was destroyed by my spit on the floor, and there is nothing I can do to recall it.

  And that is another thing we give up for Lent. Thank God. I shall look forward to this time every year. For various blessed feast days and forty wonderful days every year of my married life, there will be forty nights when the king will not come to my chamber, when I will not smile at his entrance, and try to arrange myself in such a way that it is easy for him to lever his great bulk above me, and try to show my willingness but not wantonness in a bed that stinks of the festering wound of his leg, in half-darkness, with a man who cannot do the task.

  The burden of this insulting misery night after night is utterly defeating me, it is humbling me to dust. I wake every morning in despair; I feel humiliated, though the failure is all his. I lie awake in the night and hear him fart and groan with the pain of his swollen belly and I wish myself away, almost anywhere rather than in his bed. I shall be so glad to be spared, for these forty days, the terrible ordeal of his attempt and his failing and my lying awake and knowing that tomorrow night he will try again, but still he will not be able to do it, and that each time he fails he blames me a little more and likes me even less.

  At least we can have this time when we are allowed a little peace. I need not worry how I should help him. He need not work above me like a great heaving boar. He will not come to my room, I can sleep in sheets that smell of lavender instead of pus.

  But I know that this time will end. Easter will come with the celebrations; my coronation which was planned for February and put off for our grand entrance into London, will now take place in May. I must take this time as a welcome rest from the presence of my husband, but I must use this time to make sure that when he comes back to my chamber we can deal better together. I must find a way to help him to come to my bed, and for