Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  He tipped his hat to me and took the letter. ‘Make sure it gets to Mistress Anne,’ I said. ‘It is important.’

  We had dinner in the great hall. William was urbane as ever, the perfect courtier, keeping up a stream of news and gossip about the court. Grandmother Boleyn could not be comforted. She was resentful, but she did not dare openly to complain. Who could tell a man that he might not take his wife and children to his home?

  As soon as they brought the candles in she heaved herself to her feet.

  ‘I’m for my bed,’ she said sulkily. William rose to his feet and bowed to her as she left the room.

  Before he sat he reached inside his doublet and took out a letter. I recognised my writing at once. It was my letter to Anne. He tossed it down on the table before me.

  ‘Not very loyal,’ he remarked.

  I picked it up. ‘Not very polite to stop my servants and read my letters.’

  He smiled at me. ‘My servants and my letters,’ he said. ‘You are my wife. Everything that is yours is mine. Everything that is mine I keep. Including the children and the woman who carries my name.’

  I sat opposite him and I put my hands flat on the table. I drew a breath to steady myself. I reminded myself that although I was a woman of only nineteen years, for four and a half of those years I had been the mistress of the King of England, and I had been born and bred a Howard.

  ‘Now hear this, husband,’ I said steadily. ‘What is past, is past. You were happy enough to get your title and your lands and your wealth and the favour of the king, and we all know why those came to you. I have no shame in it, you have no shame in it. Anyone in our position would have been glad of it, and both you and I know that it is no sinecure earning and keeping the king’s favour.’

  William looked taken aback at my sudden frankness.

  ‘The Howards will not fall over this mischance of Wolsey’s. It is Wolsey’s miscalculation, not ours. The game is far from over yet, and if you knew my Uncle Howard as well as I do you would be in no hurry to assume that he is defeated.’

  William nodded.

  ‘I am very sure that our enemies are at our heels, that the Seymours are ready to take our place at a moment’s notice, that already some Seymour girl somewhere in England is being primed to take the king’s eye. That’s always true. There’s always a rival. But right now, whether or not he is free to marry her, Anne’s star is in the ascendancy, and all of us Howards – and you too, husband – serve our own interests best if we support her rise.’

  ‘She looks like she is skating on melting ice,’ he said abruptly. ‘She is trying too hard. She is sweating to keep her place at his side, she never lets up for a moment. Anyone watching carefully could see it.’

  ‘What does it matter who sees it, as long as he does not?’

  William laughed. ‘Because she can’t keep it up. She is dancing him at her fingertip ends, she can’t do that forever. She might have held him till the autumn but no woman can do it forever. No man can be held the way she will have to hold him. She could hold him for weeks; but now Wolsey has failed it might be months. It could be years.’

  I was checked for a moment at the thought of Anne getting old while making merry. ‘But what else can she do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said with a wolfish grin. ‘But you and I can go to my house and start to live as a married couple. I want a son who looks like me, not a little blond Tudor. I want a daughter with my dark eyes. And you are going to give them to me.’

  I bowed my head. ‘I won’t be reproached.’

  He shrugged. ‘You will bear whatever treatment I give you. You are my wife, are you not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Unless you too would like an annulment, since marriage seems to be out of fashion? You could be enclosed in a nunnery if you wish?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then go to my bed,’ he said simply. ‘I shall be up in a minute.’

  I froze at that. I had not thought of it. He looked at me over the top of his cup of wine. ‘What?’

  ‘Can we wait till we get to Norfolk?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  I undressed slowly, wondering at my own reluctance. I had bedded with the king a dozen times when I felt no desire at all but merely followed his wishes and satisfied him. Every time in this last year when I knew that he desired Anne, I had forced myself to hold him and whisper ‘sweetheart’ and known myself to be a whore – and the man a fool not to know the false coin from the real.

  So I was no thirteen-year-old virgin as I had been when I had first been put to bed with this man to consummate the marriage. But I was not yet a woman of such cynicism that I could prepare without dread for bed with a man who seemed half-enemy. William had a score to settle with me, and I was afraid of him.

  He took his time. I climbed slowly into bed and feigned sleep when the door opened and he came in. I heard him moving around the room, stripping naked and getting into bed beside me. I felt the weight of the covers lift as he pulled them up around his bare shoulders.

  ‘Not asleep then?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted.

  In the darkness his hands came out for me and found my face, stroked my neck to my shoulders, and thence to my waist. I was wearing my linen shift but I could feel the coldness of his hands through the fine cloth. I heard his breathing come a little faster. He pulled me towards him and I yielded, and spread myself ready for him as I always did for Henry. For a moment I checked, thinking that I did not know what to do for any man but Henry.

  ‘You’re not willing?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course I am willing. I am your wife,’ I said levelly.

  I feared he might trap me into a refusal which would allow him to put me aside; but his little sigh of disappointment showed me that he was genuinely hoping for a warmer response. ‘We’ll sleep then.’

  I was so relieved that I dared not say a word in case he changed his mind. I lay perfectly still until he turned his back on me, pulled the covers up over his shoulders, thumped his head down on the pillows and was quiet. Then, and only then, did I let my belly unknot and wiped the insincere Howard smile from my face. I let myself drift into sleep. I had survived another night, I was still at Hever, the Howards had everything to play for. Anything might happen tomorrow.

  We were woken by a knocking on the door. I was up and out of bed before William could wake and catch my hand. I opened the door and said sharply: ‘Hush. My lord is sleeping,’ as if that were my only concern and not that I was determined to get out of his bed as quickly as possible.

  ‘Urgent message from Mistress Anne,’ the servant said and offered me a letter.

  I dearly wanted to throw on a cloak and read it far away from William but he was awake and sitting up. ‘Our dear sister,’ he said with a mocking smile. ‘And what does she say?’

  I had no choice but to open the letter before him and hope to God that Anne was thinking of someone else for once in her selfish life.

  Sister,

  The king and I bid you and your husband come to meet us at Richmond where we will all be merry.

  Anne

  William held out his hand for the letter. I handed it over.

  ‘She guessed I was coming for you when I left court,’ he observed. I said nothing. ‘And so hip-hop, with one bound you are free of me,’ he said bitterly. ‘And we are back where we were.’

  He had spoken my very thought but behind the hardness of his tone I saw his hurt. Cuckold’s horns are not a comfortable headdress and he had been wearing them now for five years. Slowly I went to the bed. I put out my hand to him. ‘I am your wedded wife,’ I said gently. ‘And I never forgot it, though our lives took us far apart. If we ever have to be married in very truth, William, you will find me a good wife to you.’

  He looked up at me. ‘Is this a Howard speaking who fears the turning of the tide and thinks that life as Lady Carey would be a safer bet than being the other Boleyn girl when the first Boleyn girl is ruined?’

  His g