Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  William was unendingly patient with them. He made sure that every day they learned a little more, and I suspected that he also made sure that they did not learn too fast. He wanted them to ride on their own by the end of the summer, but not before.

  ‘D’you have no home of your own to go to?’ I asked unkindly as we walked back to the castle one evening, each of us leading a pony. The sun was sinking behind the turrets and it looked like a little fairytale palace with the windows winking with rosy light and the sky all pale and cloud-striped behind it.

  ‘My father lives in Northampton.’

  ‘Are you his only son?’ I asked.

  He smiled at that key question. ‘No, I am a second son: good for nothing, milady. But I am going to buy a little farm if I can, in Essex. I have a mind to be a landowner of a small farm.’

  ‘Where will you find the money?’ I asked curiously. ‘You can’t do very well from my uncle’s service.’

  ‘I served on a ship and took a little prize money a few years ago. I have enough to start. And then I shall find a woman who would like to live in a pretty house amid her own fields and know that nothing – not the power of princes nor the malice of queens – can touch her.’

  ‘Queens and princes can always touch you,’ I said. ‘Else they would not be queens and princes.’

  ‘Yes, but you can be so small as to be of no interest to them,’ he said. ‘Our danger would be your son. While they see him as the heir to the throne then we would never be out of their sights.’

  ‘If Anne has a boy of her own she’ll give mine up,’ I said. Without realising it I had followed the train of his thoughts just as I had fallen into step beside him.

  Cunningly he said nothing to alert me. ‘Better than that, she’ll want him away from the court. He could be with us and we could bring him up as a little country squire. It’s not a bad life for a man. Perhaps the best life there is. I don’t like the court. And these last few years you never know where you are.’

  We reached the drawbridge and in accord helped the children from their saddles. Catherine and Henry ran ahead into the house as William and I led their ponies round to the stable yard. A couple of lads came out to take them from us.

  ‘Coming to dinner?’ I asked casually.

  ‘Of course,’ he said and threw me a little bow and was gone.

  It was only in my room, as I kneeled and prayed that night and found my mind wandering, as it always does, that I realised that I had let him talk to me as if I would be the woman who would want a pretty house amid my own fields, and William Stafford in my married bed.

  Dear Mary,

  We are to come to Richmond for autumn and then Greenwich for winter. The queen will not be under the same roof as the king, ever again. She is to go to Wolsey’s old house, The More in Hertfordshire, and the king is to give her a court of her own there, so she need not complain of being ill-treated.

  You are no longer to be in her service, you will serve me alone.

  The king and I are confident that the Pope is in terror of what the king might do to the church in England. We are certain that he will rule in our favour as soon as the courts reconvene in the autumn. I am preparing myself for an autumn wedding and a coronation soon after. It is all but complete – grudge who will grudge it!

  Uncle has been very cold towards me and the Duke of Suffolk has quite turned against me. Henry sent him away from us this summer and I was glad to have him taught a lesson. There are too many people envying me and watching me. I want you at Richmond when I arrive, Mary. You may not go to the que – to Katherine of Aragon at The More. And you may not stay at Hever. I am doing this for your son as much as for myself and you will help me.

  Anne.

  Autumn 1531

  That autumn when I returned to court I realised that the queen was finally thrown down. Anne had convinced Henry that there was no longer any point in keeping up the appearance of being a good husband. They might as well show their brazen faces to the world and defy anyone to come against them.

  Henry was generous. Katherine of Aragon lived in great state at The More and she entertained visiting ambassadors as if she were still a beloved and honoured queen. She had a household of more than two hundred people, fifty of them maids in waiting. They were not the best of the young women: those all flocked to the king’s court and found themselves attached to Anne’s household. Anne and I had a merry day in allocating young women that we disliked to the queen’s court, we got rid of half a dozen Seymours that way, and laughed at the thought of Sir John Seymour’s face when he found out.

  ‘I wish we could send George’s wife to wait on the queen,’ I said. ‘He would be happier if he came home and found her gone.’

  ‘I’d rather have her here where I can see her than send her to somewhere that she might cause more trouble. I want no-one around the queen but nonentities.’

  ‘You can’t still fear her. You have all but destroyed her.’

  Anne shook her head. ‘I’ll not be safe until she is dead,’ she said. ‘Just as she will not be safe until I am dead. It is not just a matter now of a man or a throne, it is as if I am her shadow and she is mine. We are locked together till death. One of us has to win outright and neither of us can be sure that we have won or lost until the other is dead and in the ground.’

  ‘How could she win?’ I demanded. ‘He won’t even see her.’

  ‘You don’t know how much people hate me,’ Anne whispered, I had to lean close to hear. ‘When we are on our progress we go from house to house now, and never stop in the villages. People have heard the rumours from London and they no longer see me as a pretty girl who rides beside the king, they see me as the woman who destroyed the happiness of the queen. If we linger in a village then people shout against me.’

  ‘No!’

  She nodded. ‘And when the queen came into the City and gave a banquet there was a mob outside Ely Palace and they were all calling out blessings on her and promising her that they would never bow the knee to me.’

  ‘A handful of sulky servants.’

  ‘What if it’s more than that?’ Anne asked bleakly. ‘What if the whole country hates me? What d’you think the king feels when he hears them booing and cursing me? D’you think a man like Henry can bear to be cursed when he rides out? A man like Henry, who has been used to praise ever since he was a child?’

  ‘They’ll get accustomed,’ I said. ‘The priests will preach in the churches that you are his wife, when you give them a son they’ll turn round in a moment, you’ll be the saviour of the country.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It all hangs on that, doesn’t it? A son.’

  Anne was right to fear the mob. Just before Christmas we went up the river from Greenwich to dinner with the Trevelyans. It was not an outing of the court. Nobody knew that we were going. The king was dining in private with a couple of ambassadors from France and Anne took a fancy to go into the City. I went with her, with a couple of the king’s gentlemen and a couple of the other ladies. It was cold on the river and we were wrapped up warmly in furs. No-one on the banks could even have seen our faces as the boat stopped at the Trevelyans’ stairs and we disembarked.

  But somebody saw us, and somebody recognised Anne, and before we had even started eating there was a servant running into the hall and whispering to Lord Trevelyan that there was a mob coming towards the house. His quick glance at Anne told us all who they were coming for. She rose at once from the table, her face as white as her pearls.

  ‘You’d better go,’ his lordship said ungallantly. ‘I cannot promise your safety here.’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘You can close your gates.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, there are thousands of them!’ His voice was sharp with fear. Now we were all on our feet. ‘This isn’t a gang of apprentice lads, it’s a mob coming, they are swearing to hang you from the rafters. You had better get to your boat and go back to Greenwich, Lady Anne.’

  She hesitated for a moment, he