The Other Boleyn Girl Read online

  “Good God, you want to!” I suddenly understood her impatience. “Do you love him at last?”

  “Oh no!” she exclaimed impatiently, as if it were irrelevant. “But I have kept him at arm’s length so long that he has been driven nearly mad, and me too. Sometimes I have been so aroused by his desire and his pulling and teasing of me that I could have done it with a stable lad. And I have his promise, I can see my way to the throne. I want to do it now. I want to do it tonight.”

  I poured water for her into the ewer and warmed a drying sheet for her while she washed. “What will you wear?”

  “The gown I was wearing to dance,” she said. “And the coronet. I’ll go to him like a queen.”

  “George had better take you.”

  “He’s coming, I already told him.”

  She finished washing and took the sheet from me to pat herself dry. Her body in firelight and candlelight was as beautiful as a wild animal. There was a tap on the door. “Let him in,” she said.

  I hesitated. She was tying her skirt around her waist but apart from that she was naked. “Go on,” she said wilfully.

  I shrugged and opened the door. George recoiled at the sight of his sister, her dark hair tumbled over her naked breasts.

  “You can come in,” she said carelessly. “I’m nearly ready.”

  He threw one shocked interrogative look at me and came into the room and dropped into the chair at the fireside.

  Anne, holding the stomacher across her naked breasts and belly, turned her bare back to George to lace her up. He rose to his feet and threaded the laces through the holes in the crisscross pattern. At every insertion of the thread his hand brushed her skin and I saw her close her eyes in pleasure at the continual caress. George’s face was dark, he was scowling as he did her bidding. “Anything else?” he asked. “Tie your shoes for you? Polish your boots?”

  “Don’t you want to touch me?” she taunted him. “I’m good enough for the king.”

  “You’re good enough for the bagnio,” he said brutally. “Get your cape, if you’re coming.”

  “But I am desirable,” she said, confronting him.

  George hesitated. “Why on earth ask me? Half the court was weak at the knees this evening. What more do you want?”

  “I want everyone,” she said, unsmiling. “I want you to say that I am the best, George. I want you to say it here, in front of Mary.”

  He gave his low chuckle. “Oh the old rivalry,” he said slowly. “Anne, Marquess of Pembroke, you are the most desired and the richest girl in the family. You have eclipsed us both in success. You will shortly eclipse your revered father and uncle in terms of pride and position. What more do you want?”

  She had been glowing with his praise but at that question she looked suddenly afraid, as if she remembered the curses of the fishwives and the shouts of “Whore!” from the market traders. “I want everyone to know it,” she said.

  “Shall I take you to the king?” George asked pragmatically.

  Anne put her hand on his arm and I saw him tense at the turn of her head and her sidelong smile. “Wouldn’t you rather take me to your chamber?”

  “If I wanted to be beheaded for incest—yes.”

  She gave her sexy little laugh. “Very well then. To the king. But remember, George, you are my courtier, like all the others.”

  He bowed and led her from the room. I listened to them cross the presence chamber and then go down the stairs, and I waited till I heard the door at the bottom of the stairs bang shut. I thought that Anne’s desire to be first with everyone must be powerful indeed if she would pause to torment her own brother on the very night of her bedding the king.

  She came back at daybreak, huddled into her clothes, just as I used to do. George brought her back and together we stripped her and pushed her into bed. She was too weary to speak.

  “So it’s done,” I said as her eyes closed.

  “Several times, I should think,” he said. “I waited outside the chamber and slept in the chair and a couple of times in the night they woke me with their crying out and panting. Please God we get an heir from it.”

  “And no doubt that he’ll marry her? He won’t tire of her now he has her?”

  “Not inside six months. And now she’s getting some pleasure for herself and not having to fight him off all the time she might be sweeter to him, and—please God—sweeter to us.”

  “If she’s much sweeter to you she’ll be in your bed as well as the king’s.”

  George stretched and yawned and smiled lazily down at me from his extended height. “She was hot,” he said. “And she could take it out on no one else. She was hot and once that wears off then please God she has a baby in her belly and a ring on her finger and a crown on her head. Vivat Anna! And grudge who grudges it—it’s done.”

  I left Anne sleeping and thought that I might see William Stafford if I went to my uncle’s rooms at this hour in the morning. The castle was stirring, the lanes approaching the kitchen were crowded with the wagons bringing cords of firewood and charcoal from the woods, fruit and vegetables from the market, and meat, milk and cheese from the farms. In my uncle’s rooms there was the bustle of a great household setting about the day. The maids had finished sweeping and cleaning in the presence chamber and the scullions were loading the fireplaces with logs and blowing on the embers to make them flame up.

  My uncle’s gentlemen were housed in half a dozen small rooms off the great hall, his men at arms slept in the guard room. William could be anywhere. I walked through the presence chamber and nodded at a couple of the gentlemen I knew and tried to look as if I were waiting to see my uncle or my mother.

  The door to my uncle’s privy chamber opened and George came out in a rush.

  “Oh good,” he said on seeing me. “Is Anne still asleep?”

  “She was when I left her.”

  “Go to her and wake her up. Tell her that the clergy has submitted to the king, or at least enough of them to mean that we have won, but Thomas More has announced that he has resigned his post. The king will learn it during Mass today when he receives More’s letter, but she should be forewarned. The king is bound to take it hard.”

  “Thomas More?” I repeated. “But I thought he was on our side?”

  My brother tutted at my ignorance. “He promised the king never to comment publicly on the dissolution of the marriage. But it’s obvious what he thinks, isn’t it? He’s a lawyer, a logical man, he’s hardly likely to be convinced by the twisting of the truth that’s been going on in a thousand universities in Europe.”

  “But I thought he wanted the church reformed?” I asked. Not for the first time I was adrift in the sea of politics which was my family’s natural element.

  “Reformed, not taken to pieces and headed by the king,” my brother said quickly. “Who knows better than Thomas More that the king is not fit to play Pope? He’s known him from childhood. He’d never accept Henry as the heir to St Peter.” My brother laughed shortly. “It’s a ridiculous notion.”

  “Ridiculous? I thought we supported it.”

  “Of course we do,” he said. “It means that Henry can rule on his own marriage, he can marry Anne. But no one but a fool would think that there was the least justification for it in law, in morality, or in common sense. Look, Mary, don’t worry. Anne understands all this. Just go and wake her and tell her that More is resigning and the king will learn of it this morning and she is to be calm. That’s what my uncle said. Anne must be calm.”

  I turned to do as he bid me, and just at that very moment, William Stafford came into the hall, shrugging on his doublet. He paused when he saw me and made me a low bow. “Lady Carey,” he said. He bowed to my brother. “Lord Rochford.”

  “Go,” my brother said to me and gave me a little push. He ignored William. “Go and tell her.”

  There was nothing I could do but hurry from the room without even being able to touch William’s hand and say “good morning” to him.

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