Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  She looked at my hugely rounded belly with unsympathetic curiosity. ‘You are gross. He should have named a barge after you, not a warship.’

  I looked at her bright animated face and the exquisite hood which drew her hair back from her smooth complexion. ‘When they launch snakes you shall have your namesake,’ I promised her. ‘Go away, Anne. I’m too tired to quarrel with you.’

  She rose at once and went to the door. ‘If he desires me instead of you, then you will have to help me as I have helped you,’ she warned me.

  I closed my eyes. ‘If he desires you then I shall take my new baby, God willing, and go to Hever and you can have the king, and the court, and day after day of envy and spite and gossip with my blessing. But I don’t think he is a man who will bring his woman much joy.’

  ‘Oh I shan’t be his woman,’ she said disdainfully. ‘You don’t think I’d be a whore like you, do you?’

  ‘He’ll never marry you,’ I predicted. ‘And even if he would, you should think twice. You look at the queen before you aim for her chair. You look at the suffering in that woman’s face and ask yourself if marriage to her husband is likely to bring you joy.’

  Anne paused before opening the door. ‘You don’t marry a king for joy.’

  I had one more visitor in February. My husband William Carey came to see me early one morning, while I was breaking my fast on bread and ham and ale.

  ‘I did not mean to interrupt you as you ate,’ he said politely, hovering in the doorway.

  I waved my hand at my maid. ‘Take it away.’ I felt at a disadvantage, so fat and heavy against his sleek handsomeness.

  ‘I came to bring you the king’s good wishes. He asked me to tell you that he has kindly given me some stewardships. I am in your debt, once again, madam.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘I understand from this generosity that I am to give your child my name?’

  I shifted a little awkwardly in the bed. ‘He has not told me what he wants. But I would have thought …’

  ‘Another Carey. What a family we are making!’

  ‘Yes.’

  He took my hand and kissed it as if he suddenly repented of teasing me. ‘You are pale and you look weary. Is it not so easy, this time?’

  I felt tears prickling under my eyelids at his unexpected kindness. ‘No. It is not so easy this time.’

  ‘Not afraid?’

  I put my hand on my swelling belly. ‘A little.’

  ‘You’ll have the best midwives in the kingdom,’ he reminded me.

  I nodded. There was no point in saying that I had been attended by the best midwives before and they had spent three nights standing around the bed telling the most evil tales any woman ever had to hear about the deaths of babies.

  William turned to the door. ‘I will tell His Majesty that you are looking bonny and blithe.’

  I smiled a shallow smile. ‘Please do, and give him my obedient duty.’

  ‘He’s much engaged with your sister,’ William remarked.

  ‘She’s a very engaging woman.’

  ‘You’re not afraid she might take your place?’

  I gestured at the dark chamber and the heavy hangings on the bed, the hot fire and my own lumpish body. ‘My God, husband, any woman in the world could take my place with my blessing if she would do it this morning.’

  He laughed out loud at that, swung his hat to me in his bow, and went out through the door. I lay for a while in silence, watching the hangings of the bed move slowly in the still air. It was February, my baby was not due until the middle of the month. It felt like a lifetime.

  Thank God he came early. And thank God he was a boy. My little baby boy was born on the fourth day of February. A boy: the king’s acknowledged healthy boy; and the Boleyns had everything to play for.

  Summer 1526

  But they could not play me.

  ‘What in God’s name is wrong with you?’ my mother demanded. ‘It has been three months since the birth, and you are as white as if you were sickening for the plague. Are you ill?’

  ‘I cannot stop bleeding.’ I looked into her face for some sympathy. She was blank and impatient. ‘I am afraid I will bleed to death.’

  ‘What do the midwives say?’

  ‘They say that it will stop in time.’

  She tutted at that. ‘You’re so fat,’ she complained. ‘And you’re so … you’re so dull, Mary.’

  I looked up at her and felt my eyes fill with tears. ‘I know,’ I said humbly. ‘I feel dull.’

  ‘You have given the king a son.’ My mother was trying to be encouraging but I could hear her impatience. ‘Any woman in the world would give her right hand to do what you have done. Any woman in the world would be up and out of her bed and at his side, laughing at his jests and singing his songs, and riding out with him.’

  ‘Where is my son?’ I asked flatly.

  She hesitated for a moment, confused. ‘You know where. At Windsor.’

  ‘D’you know when I last saw him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Two months ago. I came back from churching and he was gone.’

  She was completely blank. ‘But of course he was taken away,’ she said. ‘Of course we made arrangements that he should be cared for.’

  ‘By other women.’

  ‘Why should that matter?’ My mother was genuinely uncomprehending. ‘He is well cared for, and named Henry for the king.’ She could not keep the exultation from her voice. ‘With everything before him!’

  ‘But I miss him.’

  For a moment it was as if I were speaking another language altogether, something incomprehensible: Russian or Arabic.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I miss him and I miss Catherine.’

  ‘And this is why you are so dull?’

  ‘I am not dull,’ I said flatly. ‘I am sad. I am so sad that I want to do nothing but lie on my bed and put my face into my pillows and weep and weep.’

  ‘Because you miss your child?’ My mother had to have confirmation, the thought was so strange to her.

  ‘Did you never miss me?’ I cried out. ‘Or if not me, then Anne? We were taken away from you when we were little more than babies and sent to France. Did you not miss us then? Someone else taught us to read and write, someone else picked us up when we fell, someone else taught us to ride on our ponies. Did you never think that you would have liked to have seen your children?’

  ‘No,’ she said simply. ‘I could not have found you a better place than the royal court of France. I would have been a poor mother if I had kept you at home.’

  I turned away. I could feel my tears very wet on my cheeks.

  ‘If you could see your baby would you be happy again?’ my mother asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I breathed. ‘Oh yes, Mother, yes. I would be happy if I could see him again. And Catherine.’

  ‘Well, I will tell your uncle,’ she said grudgingly. ‘But you must be really happy: smiling, laughing, dancing blithe, pleasing to the eye. You must win the king back to your side.’

  ‘Oh, has he strayed so very far?’ I asked acidly.

  She did not look ashamed, not for a moment. ‘Thank God Anne has him in her toils,’ she said. ‘She plays with him like you might tease the queen’s dog. She has him on a thread.’

  ‘Why not use her then?’ I demanded spitefully. ‘Why bother with me at all?’

  The swiftness of her answer warned me that this had already been decided at a family council.

  ‘Because you have the king’s son,’ she said simply. ‘Bessie Blount’s bastard is made Duke of Richmond, our Baby Henry has as good a claim. It is nothing to annul your marriage to Carey, and next to nothing to annul the marriage to the queen. We are looking to have him marry you. Anne was our decoy while you were in childbed. But we are placing our fortunes with you.’

  She was silent for a moment as if she expected me to respond with joy. When I said nothing she spoke again, a little more sharply. ‘So get up now, and get the maid