Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  Anne gave her small secretive smile. ‘He’s not necessarily a heretic,’ she said. ‘It’s a matter of opinion. I have been reading his books and others who think like he does.’

  ‘You’d better keep it quiet,’ I said. ‘If Father and Mother find you’ve been reading banned books they’ll send you to France again, anywhere to get you out of the way.’

  She shrugged. ‘No-one pays any attention to me, I’m quite eclipsed by your glory. There is only one way to come to the attention of this family and that is to climb into the king’s bed. You have to be a whore to be beloved by this family.’

  I folded my hands over my swollen belly and smiled at her, quite unmoved by her malice. ‘There’s no need to pinch me because my stars have led me here. There was no need for you to set yourself at Henry Percy and onwards to disgrace.’

  For a moment the mask of her beautiful face dropped and I saw the longing in her eyes. ‘Have you heard from him?’

  I shook my head. ‘If he wrote to me they’d not let me have the letter,’ I said. ‘I think he’s still fighting against the Scots.’

  She pressed her lips together to keep back a little moan. ‘Oh God, what if he is hurt or killed?’

  I felt my baby stir and I put my warm hands on my loose stomacher. ‘Anne, he should be nothing to you.’

  Her eyelashes flickered down over the heat in her gaze. ‘He is nothing to me,’ she replied.

  ‘He’s a married man now,’ I said firmly. ‘You will have to forget him if you ever want to get back to court.’

  She pointed at my belly. ‘That is the problem for me,’ she said baldly. ‘All anyone can think of in this family is that you might be carrying the king’s son. I have written to Father half a dozen times and he has had his clerk reply to me once. He doesn’t think about me. He doesn’t care about me. All anyone cares about is you and your fat belly.’

  ‘We’ll know soon enough,’ I said. I was trying to sound serene but I was afraid. If Henry had got a girl on me and she was strong and lovely then he should be happy enough to show the world that he was potent. But this was no ordinary man. He wanted to show the world that he could make a healthy baby. He wanted to show the world that he could make a boy.

  She was a girl. Despite all those months of hoping and whispered prayers and even special Masses said in Hever and Rochford church, she was a girl.

  But she was my little girl. She was an exquisite little bundle with hands so tiny that they were like the palms of a little frog, with eyes so dark a blue that they were like the sky above Hever at midnight. She had a dusting of black hair on the crown of her head, as unlike Henry’s ruddy gold as anything one could imagine. But she had his kissable rosebud mouth. When she yawned she looked like a very king, bored with insufficient praise. When she cried, she squeezed real tears onto her outraged pink cheeks, like a monarch denied his rights. When I fed her, holding her in my arms and marvelling at the insistent powerful sucking on my breast, she swelled like a lamb and slept as if she were a drunkard lolling beside a tankard of mead.

  I held her in my arms constantly. There was a wet nurse to attend her, but I argued that my breasts hurt so much that I must let her suckle, and I cunningly kept her to myself. I fell in love with her. I fell completely and utterly in love with her and I could not for a moment imagine that anything would have been any better if she had been a boy.

  Even Henry melted at the sight of her when he visited me in the shadowy peace of the birthing room. He picked her up from her cradle and marvelled at the tiny perfection of her face, her hands, her little feet under the heavy embroidered gown. ‘We’ll call her Elizabeth,’ he said, rocking her gently.

  ‘May I choose her name?’ I asked, greatly daring.

  ‘You don’t like Elizabeth?’

  ‘I had another name in mind.’

  He shrugged. It was a girl’s name. It did not matter much. ‘As you wish. Call her what you like. She’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she?’

  He brought me a purse of gold and a necklace with diamonds. And he brought me some books, a critique of his own work of theology, some heavy works that Cardinal Wolsey had recommended. I thanked him for them and put them to one side, and thought that I would send them to Anne and ask her to write me a synopsis so that I might bluff my way through a conversation.

  We started his visit formally enough, seated on chairs either side of the fireplace, but he took me to the bed and lay beside me and kissed me gently and sweetly. After a little while he wanted to have me and I had to remind him that I was not yet churched. I was not clean. Timidly I touched at his waistcoat and with a sigh he took my hand and pressed it against his hardness. I wished that someone would tell me what he wanted of me. But then he himself guided my touch, and whispered in my ear what he wanted to do, and then after a little while of his movement and my blundering caresses he gave a sigh and lay still.

  ‘Is it enough for you?’ I asked timidly.

  He turned and gave me his sweet smile. ‘My love, it is a great pleasure for me to have you, even like this, after this long time. When you go to be churched don’t confess it – the sin is all mine. But you would tempt a saint.’

  ‘And you do love her?’ I pressed him.

  He gave an indulgent, lazy chuckle. ‘Why yes. She’s as lovely as her mother.’

  He rose up after a few moments and straightened his clothes. He gave me his delicious roguish grin that still delighted me, though half my mind was on the baby in her cradle, and the other half on the ache in my milk-heavy breasts.

  ‘You shall have rooms nearer to mine when you are churched,’ he promised me. ‘I want you by me all the time.’

  I smiled. It was a delicious moment. The King of England wanted me with him, constantly at his side.

  ‘I want a boy off you,’ he said bluntly.

  My father was angry with me that the baby was a girl – or so my mother said – reporting from an outside world which seemed very remote. My uncle was disappointed but determined not to show it. I nodded as if I cared but I felt only a total delight that she had opened her eyes this morning and looked at me with a sort of bright intensity that made me certain that she had seen me and known me for her mother. Neither my father nor my uncle could be admitted into the birthing room, and the king did not repeat his single visit. There was a sense of this place being a refuge for us, a secret room where men and their plans and their treacheries would not come.

  George came, breaking the conventions with his usual comfortable grace. ‘Nothing too awful going on in here, is there?’ he asked, putting his handsome head around the door.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, welcoming him with a smile and my cheek to kiss. He bent over me and kissed me deeply on the mouth. ‘Oh how delicious, my sister, a young mother, a dozen forbidden pleasures all at once. Kiss me again – kiss me like you kiss Henry.’

  ‘Go away,’ I said, pushing him off. ‘Look at the baby.’

  He peered at her as she lay sleeping in my arms. ‘Nice hair,’ he said. ‘What shall you call her?’

  I glanced at the shut door. I knew I could trust George. ‘I want to call her Catherine.’

  ‘Rather odd.’

  ‘I don’t see why. I am her lady in waiting.’

  ‘But it’s her husband’s baby.’

  I giggled, it was impossible for me not to revel in my sense of joy. ‘Oh George, I know. But I have admired her from the moment I entered her service. And I want to show her that I respect her – whatever else has happened.’

  Still he looked doubtful. ‘D’you think she’ll understand? Won’t she think it’s some kind of mockery?’

  I was so shocked that I gripped Catherine a little. ‘She cannot imagine that I would triumph over her.’

  ‘Here, why are you crying?’ George asked. ‘There’s no reason to cry, Mary. Don’t cry, you’ll curdle the milk or something.’

  ‘I’m not crying,’ I said, ignoring the tears on my cheeks. ‘I’m not meaning to cry.’

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