Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  The queen hid her surprise. ‘Where will we meet her?’

  ‘I said I will meet her,’ Henry said coldly. ‘And she will come to wherever I command.’

  She did not flinch. ‘I should like to see my daughter,’ she persisted. ‘It is many months since I was last with her.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Henry said, ‘she can come to you. Wherever you are.’

  The queen nodded, noting, as every member of the court strained to hear, that she was not to travel with the king this summer.

  ‘Thank you,’ the queen said with simple dignity. ‘You are very good. She writes to me that she is making much progress in her Greek and Latin. I hope you will find that she is an accomplished princess.’

  ‘Greek and Latin will be of little help to her in the making of sons and heirs,’ the king said shortly. ‘She had better not be growing into a stooped scholar. It is a princess’s first duty to be the mother of a king. As you know, madam.’

  The daughter of Isabella of Spain, one of the most intelligent and educated women in Europe, folded her hands in her lap and looked down at the rich rings on her thin fingers. ‘I know it indeed.’

  Henry sprang to his feet and clapped his hands. The musicians broke off at once and waited to know his command. ‘Play a country dance!’ he said. ‘Let’s dance before dinner!’

  At once they started a bright infectious jig and the courtiers turned to take their places. Henry came towards me, I rose up to dance with him but he only smiled at me, and held out his hand to Anne. Eyes downcast, she went past me without a glance. Dismissively, her gown brushed my knees as if I should have drawn further back, out of her way, as if everyone should always step back to let Anne through. Then she was gone and as I looked up I met the queen’s eyes. She looked blankly at me as I might look at a rivalry of birds fluttering in the dovecote. It was not as if it mattered. They would all be eaten in time.

  I was in a fever for the court to set off on its summer progress so that I might go to Hever to my children, but we were delayed as Cardinal Wolsey and the king could not agree where the court should go first. The cardinal, deep in negotiations with England’s new allies of France, Venice and the Pope, against the Spanish, wanted the court to stay close to London, so that he might reach the king easily if matters came to war.

  But there was plague in the city and plague in all the port towns, and Henry was terrified of illness. He wanted to go far out into the countryside where the water was sweet and where the crowds of supplicants and beggars would not follow him from the city stews. The cardinal argued as best he could, but Henry, running from sickness and death, was unstoppable. He would go as far as Wales itself to see the Princess Mary, but he would not stay near London.

  I was allowed to go nowhere without the king’s express permission and George’s escort. I found them both playing at tennis in the hot sunshine of the enclosed court. As I watched, a good hit from George bounced on the overhanging roof with a crack and rolled into the court but Henry was already there and struck it powerfully into the corner.

  George acknowledged the shot with a hand thrown up like a swordsman and served again. Anne was sitting at the side of the court, in the shade with a few other ladies in waiting, as posed and as cool as little statues in a fountain, all exquisitely dressed, all awaiting favour. I gritted my teeth against my instant desire to sit beside her, to outshine her, and instead I stood at the back, waiting for the king to finish the game.

  He won, of course. George took him to the final point and then lost convincingly. All the ladies clapped and the king turned, flushed and smiling, and saw me.

  ‘I hope you did not stake your brother.’

  ‘I would never gamble against Your Majesty at any game of skill,’ I said. ‘I am too careful of my little fortune.’

  He smiled at that, and took a napkin from his page to mop his rosy face.

  ‘I am here to ask a favour,’ I said quickly before anyone could interrupt us. ‘I want to see our son, and our daughter, before the court leaves on its travels.’

  ‘God knows where we are to go,’ Henry said, a frown puckering his face. ‘Wolsey keeps saying …’

  ‘If I might go today I could be back within the week,’ I said quietly. ‘And then travel with you, wherever you decide to go.’

  He did not want me to leave him. His mouth lost its smile. I shot a quick look at George, prompting him to help me.

  ‘And you can come back and tell us how the baby is faring!’ George said. ‘And if he is as handsome and strong as his father. Does the nurse say that he is fair?’

  ‘As golden as a Tudor,’ I said quickly. ‘But no-one can tell me that he is more handsome than his father.’

  We had caught Henry on the cusp of his mood before he fell into ill humour. The smile returned. ‘Ah, you are a flatterer, Mary.’

  ‘I should so like to see him well cared for before I go away with you, Your Majesty,’ I said.

  ‘Oh very well,’ he said negligently. His eyes went past me to Anne. ‘I shall find something to do.’

  All the other ladies around her smiled when they saw him look in their direction. The more daring tossed their heads and turned their shoulders and coquetted like trained ponies in a ring. Only Anne glanced at him, and then looked away, as if his attention were a matter of indifference. She looked away and smiled at Francis, and the turn of her head was as inviting as any other woman’s whispered promise. Francis was at her side in a moment and her hand was taken, and carried to his mouth for a kiss.

  I saw the king’s face darken, and I marvelled at Anne’s recklessness. The king put the napkin around his neck and opened the door of the tennis court. At once the ladies, all surprised, rose to their feet and sank into their curtseys. Anne glanced around, leisurely reclaimed her hand from Sir Francis’s caress, and swept a little curtsey of her own.

  ‘Did you see any of the game at all?’ the king asked her abruptly.

  Anne rose up from the curtsey and smiled into his face as if his disfavour meant nothing. ‘I watched about half,’ she said negligently.

  His face darkened. ‘Half, madam?’

  ‘Why would I watch your opponent, Your Majesty? When you are on the court?’

  There was a second of silence and then he laughed aloud and the court sycophantically laughed with him, as if they had not been holding their breath at her impertinence just a second before. Anne smiled her dazzling mountebank smile.

  ‘The game would make no sense to you then,’ Henry said. ‘Since you see only half the play.’

  ‘I see all the sun and none of the shadow,’ she riposted. ‘All the day and none of the night.’

  ‘You call me the sun?’ he asked.

  She smiled at him. ‘Dazzling,’ she whispered and the word was the most intimate of blandishments. ‘Dazzling.’

  ‘You call me dazzling?’ he asked.

  She opened her eyes wide as if his misunderstanding surprised her. ‘The sun, Your Majesty. The sun is dazzling today.’

  Hever was a small grey turretted island among the green lushness of the fields of Kent. We entered the park through a gate carelessly left open at the east end and rode towards the castle as the sun set behind it. The jumbled red-tiled roofs glowed in the golden light, the grey stone of the walls was reflected in the still waters of the moat so it looked like two castles, one floating on another, like a dream world of my home. There were a pair of wild swans on the moat, nebs nibbling against each other, making a heart shape with their arched necks. Their mirrored reflection made four swans, the reflected castle flickering in the water around them.

  ‘Pretty,’ George said shortly. ‘Makes you wish we could be here all the time.’

  We skirted the moat and crossed the flat planked bridge where the track went over the river. A brace of snipe darted up from the reeds and made my tired horse flinch at their clatter. They had cut the hay in the meadows on either side of the river and the sweet green smell hung on the evening air. Then we heard a shout and a