Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  ‘Why would the mad Spanish dog betray us so? Why would he release Francis? Is he mad?’ He turned on the queen. ‘Is he insane, your nephew? Is he playing some costly double game? Is he double-crossing me, as your father would have double-crossed mine? Is there some vile traitorous blood in these Spanish kings? What’s your answer, madam? He writes to you, doesn’t he? What did he write last? That he wants to release our worst enemy? That he is a madman or just a fool?’

  She glanced at the cardinal to see if he would intercede; but Wolsey was no friend of the queen after this turn of events. He stayed dumb and met her sharp look of appeal with diplomatic serenity.

  Isolated, the queen had to face her husband without support. ‘My nephew does not write to me of all his plans. I did not know he was thinking of releasing King Francis.’

  ‘I should hope not!’ Henry yelled, bringing his face very close to hers. ‘For you would be guilty of treason at the very least if you knew that the worst enemy this country has ever seen was to be set free by your nephew.’

  ‘But I did not know,’ she said steadily.

  ‘And Wolsey tells me that he is thinking of jilting Princess Mary? Your own daughter! What d’you say to that?’

  ‘I did not know,’ she said.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Wolsey remarked softly. ‘But I think Her Majesty has forgotten the meeting she had with the Spanish ambassador yesterday. Surely he warned you that the Princess Mary would be rejected.’

  ‘Rejected!’ Henry bounded from his chair, too inflamed to sit still. ‘And you knew, madam?’

  The queen rose, as she must, when her husband was on his feet. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The cardinal is correct. The ambassador did mention that there were doubts over the betrothal of the Princess Mary. I did not speak of it because I would not believe it until I had heard it from my nephew himself. And I have not.’

  ‘I am afraid there is no doubt at all,’ Cardinal Wolsey interpolated.

  The queen turned a steady gaze on him, noting that the cardinal had exposed her to her husband’s rage, and had done it twice, and wilfully. ‘I am sorry that you should think so,’ she said.

  Henry flung himself into his chair, too enraged to speak. The queen remained standing and he did not invite her to sit. The lace at the top of her gown stirred with her steady breath, she merely touched the rosary that hung from her waist with her forefinger. She could not be faulted for dignity or presence.

  Henry turned to her, icily angry. ‘Do you know what we will have to do, if we want to seize this opportunity which God has given to us and which your nephew is about to throw away?’

  She shook her head in silence.

  ‘We will have to raise a huge tax. We will have to muster another army. We will have to mount another expedition to France, and we will have to fight another war. And we will have to do this alone, alone and without support because your nephew, your nephew, madam, fights and wins one of the most lucky victories that could ever come to a king, and then plays ducks and drakes with it, skims it away off the waves as if victory was a pebble on the beach.’

  Even at that, she did not move. But her patience only inflamed him more. He leaped down from his chair again and there was a little gasp as he flung himself towards her. For a moment I even thought he might strike her but it was a pointing finger, not a fist, which she got in the face. ‘And you do not order him to be faithful to me?’

  ‘I do,’ she said through half-closed lips. ‘I commend him to remember our alliance.’

  Behind her, Cardinal Wolsey shook his head in denial.

  ‘You lie!’ Henry yelled at the queen. ‘You are a Spanish princess more than an English queen!’

  ‘God knows that I am a faithful wife and Englishwoman,’ she replied.

  Henry flung himself away and there was a sudden flurry as the court threw themselves out of his path and dropped into curtseys and bows. His gentlemen bowed briskly to the queen and followed his impetuous progress; but he checked at the door. ‘I shall not forget this,’ he shouted back at the queen. ‘I shall neither forgive nor forget your nephew’s insult to me, nor shall I forgive or forget your behaviour, your damned treasonous behaviour.’

  She sank slowly and beautifully into her deep regal curtsey and held it like a dancer until Henry swore and banged out of the door. Only then did she rise up and look thoughtfully around her, at all of us who had witnessed her humiliation and who now looked away from her that she might not claim our service.

  At dinner the next night I saw the king’s eyes on me as I walked demurely into the great hall behind the queen. After dinner, when they cleared a space for dancing, he came over to me, walking past the queen, all but turning his back on her as he stood before me and claimed me for a dance.

  There was a little rustle of attention as he took me out on the dance floor. ‘The volte,’ Henry said over his shoulder and the other dancers, who had been readying to form into a set and dance with us, fell back and formed a circle to watch instead.

  It was a dance like no other, a dance of seduction. Henry did not take his blue eyes off my face, he danced towards me, stamped his foot and clapped his hands as if he would strip me naked then and there before the whole court. I banished the thought of the watching queen from my mind. I kept my head up and my eyes fixed on the king, and I danced towards him, the sly tripping steps, with a sway of my hips and a turn of my head. We faced one another and he snatched me up in the air and held me, there was a ripple of applause, he lowered me gently to my feet and I felt my cheeks burning with a potent combination of self-consciousness, triumph, and desire. We parted to the beat of the tabor and then came back as the dance turned our steps towards each other again. Once again he threw me up in the air and this time slid me down, so that my body was pressed against his. I felt him down every inch of my body: his chest, his hose, his legs. We paused, our faces so close that if he had leaned forward he could have kissed me. I felt his breath on my face and then he said very quietly: ‘My chamber. Come at once.’

  He took me to bed that night, and most of the nights that followed, with a steady desire. I should have been happy. Certainly my mother and my father and my uncle and even George were delighted that I was the king’s first choice once more, and that everyone in the court was once again gravitating towards me. The ladies of the queen’s chamber were as deferential to me as they were to her. Foreign ambassadors bowed to me as deeply as if I were a princess, the gentlemen of the king’s bedchamber wrote sonnets to the gold of my hair and the curl of my lips, Francis Weston wrote a song for me and everywhere I went there were people ready to do me a service, to assist me, to pay court to me, and always, always to whisper to me that if I could mention a little thing to the king they would be greatly obliged to me.

  I followed George’s advice and I always refused to ask the king for anything, even for myself, and so he was comfortable with me in a way that he could never be with anyone else. We made an odd little domestic haven behind the closed door of the privy chamber. We dined alone, after the dinner had been served in the great hall. We had the company only of the musicians and perhaps one or two chosen friends. Thomas More would take Henry up on to the leads and look at the stars and I would go too, looking up at the dark night sky and thinking that the same stars were shining down on Hever, gleaming through the arrow-slit windows to light my baby’s sleeping face.

  I missed my course in May, and in June I missed again. I told George who put his arm around me and pressed me close to him. ‘I’ll tell Father,’ he said. ‘And Uncle Howard. Pray God that it’s a boy this time.’

  I wanted to tell Henry myself but they decided that news so momentous and so rich with the possibility of profit should come from my father to the king, that the Boleyns could garner the full credit for my fertility. My father asked for a private audience; and the king, thinking it was something to do with Wolsey’s long negotiations with France, drew him into a window embrasure, out of the court’s hearing, and invited him to speak. My father s