Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  ‘Helped you! We bloody well pushed you!’

  ‘But now I am here I will be queen. And you will be my subjects and in my service. I will be the queen and mother to the next King of England. So you had better remember that, George, for I won’t tell you again.’

  Anne rose up from the floor and swept towards the door. She stood before it, waiting for someone to open it for her, and when neither of us sprang up she flung it open herself. She turned on the threshold. ‘And don’t call me Annamaria any more,’ she said. ‘And don’t call her Marianne. She is Mary, the other Boleyn girl. And I am Anne, Queen Anne to be. There is a world of difference between us two. We don’t share a name. She is next to nobody and I will be queen.’

  She stalked out, not troubling to close the door behind her. We could hear her footsteps going to her bedroom. We sat in silence while we heard her chamber door slam.

  ‘Good God,’ George said, heartfelt. ‘What a witch.’ He got up and closed the door against the cold draught. ‘How long has she been like this?’

  ‘Her power has grown steadily. She thinks she is untouchable.’

  ‘And is she?’

  ‘He’s deeply in love. I should think she is safe, yes.’

  ‘And he still hasn’t had her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good God, what do they do?’

  ‘Everything, but the deed. She daren’t allow it.’

  ‘Must be driving him crazy,’ George said with grim satisfaction.

  ‘Her too,’ I said. ‘Almost every night he is kissing her and touching her and she is all over him with her hair and her mouth.’

  ‘Does she speak to everyone like this? Like she spoke to me?’

  ‘Far worse. And it is costing her friends. Charles Brandon is against her now, Uncle Howard is sick of her; they have quarrelled outright, at least a couple of times since Christmas. She thinks she is so safe in the king’s love that she needs no other protection.’

  ‘I won’t tolerate it,’ George said. ‘I’ll tell her.’

  I maintained my look of sisterly concern, but my heart leaped at the thought of a gulf opening up between Anne and George. If I could get George on my side, I would have a real advantage in any fight to regain the ownership of my son.

  ‘And truly, is there no-one that has caught your eye?’ he asked.

  ‘A nobody,’ I said. ‘I would tell no-one but you, George – so keep it as a secret.’

  ‘I swear,’ he said, taking both my hands and drawing me closer. ‘A secret, on my honour. Are you in love?’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said, drawing back at the very thought of it. ‘Of course not. But he pays me a little attention and it’s nice to have a man make a fuss of you.’

  ‘I’d have thought the court was full of men making a fuss of you.’

  ‘Oh they write poetry and they swear they will die of love. But he … he is a little more … real.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘A nobody,’ I said again. ‘So I don’t think about him.’

  ‘Pity you can’t just have him,’ George said with brotherly candour.

  I did not reply. I was thinking of William Stafford’s engaging intimate smile. ‘Yes,’ I said very quietly. ‘A pity, but I can’t.’

  Spring 1532

  George, ignorant of the change of the temper of the people, invited Anne and me to ride out with him, down the river, to dine at the little ale house and come home again. I waited for Anne to refuse, to tell him that it was no longer safe for her to ride out alone; but she said nothing. She dressed in an unusually dark gown, she wore her riding hat pulled down over her face, and she laid aside her distinctive necklace with the golden ‘B’.

  Pleased to be back in England riding out with his sisters, George did not notice Anne’s discreet behaviour and dress. But when we stopped at the ale house the slatternly old woman who should have been serving us took a sideways glance at Anne and then went away. Moments later the master of the house came out, wiping his hands on an apron of hessian, and announced that the bread and cheese he had been going to set before us had spoiled, there was nothing in his house we could eat.

  George would have flared up, but Anne put a hand on his sleeve and said that it was no matter, we should go to the monastery nearby and eat there. He let himself be guided by her, and we ate well enough. The king was an object of terror now in every abbey and monastery in the land. Only the servants, less politically astute than the monks, glanced askance at Anne and at me, and speculated in whispers as to which was the old whore and which was the new.

  Riding home, the cold sun on our backs, George spurred his horse forward and rode beside me. ‘Everyone knows then,’ he said flatly.

  ‘From London to far out into the country,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how far the news has gone.’

  ‘And I don’t see anyone throwing his hat in the air and shouting huzzah?’

  ‘No, you won’t see that.’

  ‘I’d have thought a pretty English girl would have pleased people? She’s pretty enough, isn’t she? Waves her hand as she goes by, gives out alms, all the rest of it?’

  ‘She does all that,’ I said. ‘But the women have a stubborn liking for the old queen. They say that if the King of England puts a loyal honest wife aside because he fancies a change, then no woman is safe.’

  George was silent for a moment. ‘Do they do more than mutter?’

  ‘We were caught in a riot in London. And the king says it’s not safe for her to go into the City at all. She is hated, George, and they say all sorts of things about her.’

  ‘Things?’

  ‘That she is a witch and has enchanted the king by sorcery. That she is a murderess and would poison the queen if she could. That she has made him impotent with all other women so he has to marry her. That she blasted the children in the queen’s womb and put barrenness on the throne of England.’

  George went a little pale and his hand on the rein clenched into the old sign against witchcraft – thumb between the two first fingers to make the sign of the cross. ‘They say this publicly? Might the king hear of it?’

  ‘The worst of it is kept from him, but someone is bound to tell him sooner or later.’

  ‘He wouldn’t believe a word of it, would he?’

  ‘He says some of it himself. He says he is a man possessed. He says that she has enchanted him and that he can’t think about another woman. It’s love talk when he says it, but when it gets out – it’s dangerous.’

  George nodded. ‘She should do more good works and not be so damned …’ He broke off, searching for the word. ‘Sensual.’

  I looked ahead. Even on horseback, even when she was riding with no-one but her family, Anne swayed in the saddle in a way that made you want to take her by the waist.

  ‘She’s a Boleyn and a Howard,’ I said frankly. ‘Underneath the great name, we’re all bitches on heat.’

  William Stafford, waiting at the gateway to Greenwich Palace when we rode in, tipped his hat to me and caught my secret smile. When we had dismounted and Anne had led the way in, he was at the doorway and he drew me to one side.

  ‘I was waiting for you,’ he said, without further greeting.

  ‘I saw.’

  ‘I don’t like you riding without me, the country’s not safe for the Boleyn girls.’

  ‘My brother took care of us. It was good to be out without a great retinue.’

  ‘Oh, I can offer you that. Simplicity I can offer in abundance.’

  I laughed. ‘I thank you.’

  He kept his hand on my sleeve to keep me by him. ‘When the king and your sister marry then you will be married to a man of their choosing.’

  I looked into his square, tanned face. ‘And so?’

  ‘And so, if you wanted to marry a man with a pretty little manor and a few fields around it you should make haste to do so before your sister’s wedding. The later that you leave it the harder it will be.’

  I hesitated. I moved away from the touch of his