Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  She turned and smiled at me. ‘Ah, the Queen of the Day,’ she said mockingly.

  I made a little grimace. ‘Don’t tease me, Anne. I have had enough from George.’

  Henry Percy stepped forward and took my hand and kissed it. As I looked down at the back of his blond head I realised how high my star was rising. This was Henry Percy, son and heir to the Duke of Northumberland. There was no other man in the kingdom who had fairer prospects or a greater fortune. He was the son of the richest man in England, second only to the king, and he was bowing his head to me and kissing my hand.

  ‘She shall not tease you,’ he promised me, coming up smiling. ‘For I shall take you in to dine. I’m told that the cooks from Greenwich were out here at dawn to get everything ready. The king is going in, shall we follow?’

  I hesitated but the queen, who always created a sense of formality, was left behind at Greenwich, lying in a darkened room with a pain in her belly and fear in her heart. There was no-one at the dockside but the feckless idle men and women of the court. No-one cared about precedence, except in the sense that winners must come first. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Why not?’

  Lord Henry Percy offered his other arm to Anne. ‘Shall I have two sisters?’

  ‘I think you would find the Bible forbids it,’ Anne said provocatively. ‘The Bible orders a man to choose between sisters and to stay with his first choice. Anything else is a cardinal sin.’

  Lord Henry Percy laughed. ‘I’m sure I could get an indulgence,’ he said. ‘The Pope would surely grant me a dispensation. With two sisters like this, what man could be made to choose?’

  We did not ride home until it was twilight and the stars were starting to come out in the pale grey sky of spring. I rode beside the king, my hand in his, and we let the horses amble along the riverside tow track. We rode under the archway of the palace and up to the opening front door. Then he pulled up his horse and he lifted me down from the saddle and whispered in my ear: ‘I wish you were queen for all the days, and not just for one day in a pavilion by the river, my love.’

  ‘He said what?’ my uncle asked.

  I stood before him, like a prisoner under question before the court. Behind the table in the Howard rooms were seated Uncle Howard, Duke of Surrey, and my father and George. At the back of the room, behind me, Anne was sitting beside my mother. I, alone before the table, stood like a disgraced child before my elders.

  ‘He said that he wished I was queen for all the days,’ I said in a small voice, hating Anne for betraying my confidence, hating my father and my uncle for their cold-hearted dissection of lovers’ whispers.

  ‘What d’you think he meant?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said sulkily. ‘It’s just love talk.’

  ‘We need to see some repayment for all these loans,’ my uncle said irritably. ‘Has he said anything about giving you land? Or something for George? Or us?’

  ‘Can’t you hint him into it?’ my father suggested. ‘Remind him that George is to be married.’

  I looked to George in mute appeal.

  ‘The thing is that he’s very alert for that sort of thing,’ George pointed out. ‘Everyone does it to him all the time. When he walks from his privy chamber to Mass every morning, his way is lined with people just waiting to ask him for a favour. I should think what he likes about Mary here is that she’s not like that. I don’t think she’s ever asked for anything.’

  ‘She has diamonds worth a fortune in her ears,’ my mother put in sharply from behind me. Anne nodded.

  ‘But she didn’t ask for them. He gave them freely. He likes to be generous when it’s unexpected. I think we have to let Mary play this her own way. She has a talent for loving him.’

  I bit my lip on that, to stop myself saying a word. I did have a talent for loving him. It was perhaps the only talent I had. And this family, this powerful network of men, were using my talent to love the king as they used George’s talents at swordplay, or my father’s talent for languages, to further the interests of our family.

  ‘Court moves to London next week,’ my father remarked. ‘The king will see the Spanish ambassador. There’s little chance of him making any greater move towards Mary while he needs the Spanish alliance to fight the French.’

  ‘Better work for peace then,’ my uncle recommended wolfishly.

  ‘I do. I am a peacemaker,’ my father replied. ‘Blessed, aren’t I?’

  The court in progress was always a mighty sight, part-way between a country fair, a market day, and a joust. It was all arranged by Cardinal Wolsey, everything in the court or the country was done by his command. He had been at the king’s side at the Battle of the Spurs in France, he had been almoner then to the English army and the men had never lain so dry at night nor eaten so well. He had a grasp of detail that made him attentive to how the court would get from one place to another, a grasp of politics that prompted him as to where we should stop and which lord should be honoured with a visit when the king was on his summer progress, and he was wily enough to trouble Henry with none of these things so the young king went from pleasure to pleasure as if the sky itself rained down supplies and servants and organisation.

  It was the cardinal who ruled the precedence of the court on the move. Ahead of us went the pages carrying the standards with the pennants of all the lords in the train fluttering above their heads. Next there was a gap to let the dust settle and then came the king, riding his best hunter with his embossed saddle of red leather and all the trappings of kingship. Above his head flew his own personal standard, and at his side were his friends chosen to ride with him that day: my husband William Carey, Cardinal Wolsey, my father, and then trailing along behind them came the rest of the king’s companions, changing their places in the train as they desired, lagging back or spurring forward. Around them, in a loose formation, came the king’s personal guards mounted on horses and holding their lances at the salute. They hardly served to protect him – who would dream of hurting such a king? – but they kept back the press of people who gathered to cheer and gawp whenever we rode through a little town or a village.

  Then there was another break before the queen’s train. She was riding the steady old palfrey which she always used. She sat straight in the saddle, her gown awkwardly disposed in great folds of thick fabric, her hat skewered on her head, her eyes squinting against the bright sunshine. She was feeling ill. I knew because I had been at her side when she had mounted her horse in the morning and I had heard the tiny repressed grunt of pain as she settled into the saddle.

  Behind the queen’s court came the other members of the household, some of them riding, some of them seated in carts, some of them singing or drinking ale to keep the dust from the road out of their throats. All of us shared a careless sense of a high day and a holiday as the court left Greenwich and headed for London with a new season of parties and entertainments ahead of us, and who knew what might happen in this year?

  The queen’s rooms at York Place were small and neat and we took only a few days to get unpacked and have everything to rights. The king visited every morning, as usual, and his court came with him, Lord Henry Percy among them. His lordship and Anne took to sitting in the windowseat together, their heads very close, as they worked on one of Lord Henry’s poems. He swore that he would become a great poet under Anne’s tuition and she swore that he would never learn anything, but that it was all a ruse to waste her time and her learning on such a dolt.

  I thought that it was something for a Boleyn girl from a little castle in Kent and a handful of fields in Essex to call the Duke of Northumberland’s son a dolt, but Henry Percy laughed and claimed that she was too stern a teacher and talent, great talent, would out, whatever she might say.

  ‘The cardinal is asking for you,’ I said to Lord Henry. He rose up, in no particular hurry, kissed Anne’s hand in farewell, and went to find Cardinal Wolsey. Anne gathered up the papers they had been working on and locked them in her writing box.

  ‘Does