Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  ‘It’s something else,’ I said tersely. ‘But important.’

  My uncle waved the clerk from the room.

  ‘Anne?’ he asked.

  I nodded. We were a family business now and Anne was our goods for sale. My uncle knew, without me telling him, that if I ran to his rooms first thing in the afternoon, then it was a crisis in our trading.

  ‘Jane just said that the Countess of Northumberland is to petition for divorce against Henry Percy,’ I said in a rush. ‘Jane said that she is arguing he was pre-contracted to Anne.’

  ‘Damnation,’ my uncle swore.

  ‘Did you know?’

  ‘Of course I knew she had it in mind. I thought she was going to plead desertion or cruelty or buggery or something. I thought we had moved her away from the pre-contract business.’

  ‘We?’

  He scowled at me. ‘We. Doesn’t matter who, does it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And how does Jane know?’ he demanded irritably.

  ‘Oh Jane knows everything. She was listening at Anne’s door last night.’

  ‘What could she have heard?’ he asked, the spymaster in him always alert.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said staunchly. ‘George was there and we were doing nothing but talking and drinking a glass of wine.’

  ‘No-one but George?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘Who else could it be?’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking you.’

  ‘You cannot doubt Anne’s chastity.’

  ‘She spends her life spinning her toils around men.’

  Even I could not let this injustice go. ‘She spins her toils around the king, as you ordered.’

  ‘So where is she now?’

  ‘In the garden with the king.’

  ‘Go to her straightaway and tell her to deny everything with Henry Percy. No betrothal of any sort, no pre-contract. Just a boy and a girl in springtime and a green affection. A pageboy making eyes at a lady in waiting. Nothing more than that, and never returned by her. Just him. Have you got that?’

  ‘There are those who know different,’ I warned him.

  ‘They’re all bought,’ he said. ‘Except Wolsey, and he’s dead.’

  ‘He might have told the king, back then, before anyone knew that the king would fall in love with Anne.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ my uncle said with relish ‘He can’t repeat it. And everyone else will fall over themselves to assure the king that Anne is as chaste as the Virgin Mary. Henry Percy quicker than anyone. It’s only that damned wife of his who is so desperate to get out of that marriage that she’d risk everything.’

  ‘Why does she hate him so?’ I wondered.

  He gave a sharp bark of laughter. ‘Good God, Mary, you are the most delightful fool. Because he was married to Anne, and she knows it. Because he was in love with Anne, and she knows it. And because losing Anne turned his head to melancholy and he has been a man destroyed ever since. No wonder she doesn’t want to be his wife. Now go and find your sister and lie your head off. Open those beautiful eyes of yours and tell lies for us.’

  I found the king and Anne at the riverside walk. She was talking earnestly to him and his head was inclined towards her as if he could not risk missing a single word. She glanced up when she saw me coming. ‘Mary will tell you,’ she said. ‘She was my bedfellow then when I was nothing more than a girl new to court.’

  Henry looked up at me and I could see the hurt in his face.

  ‘It’s the Countess of Northumberland,’ Anne explained ‘Spreading slander about me to save herself from a marriage that she has grown tired of.’

  ‘What can she be saying?’

  ‘The old scandal. That Henry Percy was in love with me.’

  I smiled at the king with all the warmth and confidence I could muster. ‘Of course he was, Your Majesty. Don’t you remember what it was like when Anne first came to court? Everyone was in love with her. Henry Percy among them.’

  ‘There was talk of a betrothal,’ Henry said.

  ‘With the Earl of Ormonde?’ I asked quickly.

  ‘They couldn’t agree the dowry and the title,’ Anne said.

  ‘I meant between you and Henry Percy,’ he persisted.

  ‘There was nothing,’ she said. ‘A boy and a girl at court, a poem, a few words, nothing at all.’

  ‘He wrote three poems to me,’ I said. ‘He was the most idle page that the cardinal ever had. He was always writing poems to everyone. What a shame that he has married a woman with no sense of humour. But thank God she had no love of poetry or she would have run away even sooner!’

  Anne laughed but we could not turn Henry off his course.

  ‘She says there was a pre-contract,’ he persisted. ‘That you and he were betrothed.’

  ‘I have told you we were not.’ Anne contradicted him with a little edge to her voice.

  ‘But why should she say it if it is not so?’ Henry demanded.

  ‘To rid herself of her husband!’ Anne snapped.

  ‘But why choose that lie, rather than another? Why not say he was married to Mary here? If she had his poems too?’

  ‘I expect she will,’ I said wildly, hoping to delay the explosion from Anne. But her temper was rising up in her and she could not stop it. She pulled her hand from the crook of his arm.

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ she demanded. ‘What are you saying of me? Are you calling me unchaste? When I stand here and swear to you that I have never, ever looked at another man? And now you – of all people in the world – accuse me of being pre-contracted! You! Who sought me out and courted me with another wife still living? Which of us is the more likely to be a bigamist, think you? A man with a wife tucked away in a beautiful house in Hertfordshire, fawned on by her own court, visited by everyone, a queen in exile, or the girl who once had a poem written to her?’

  ‘My marriage is invalid!’ Henry shouted back at her. ‘As every cardinal in Rome knows!’

  ‘But it took place! As every man, woman and child in London knows. You spent enough money on it, God knows. You were merry enough about it then! But nothing took place for me, no promises were made, no rings were given, nothing nothing nothing! And you torment me with this nothing.’

  ‘Before God!’ he swore. ‘Will you listen to me?’

  ‘No!’ she screamed, quite beyond control. ‘For you are a fool and I am in love with a fool and the more fool me. I will not listen to you but you will listen to every spiteful worm that would spit poison in your ear!’

  ‘Anne!’

  ‘No!’ she cried and flung herself away from him.

  In two swift strides he was after her and had caught her to him. She lashed out at him and hit him on the padded shoulders of his jacket. Half the court flinched to see the monarch of England assaulted, no-one knew what to do. Henry grabbed her hands and slammed them behind her back, holding her so that her face was as close to him as if they were making love, her body pressed to his, his mouth close enough to bite or to kiss. I saw the look of avid lust that spread over him the moment he had her close.

  ‘Anne,’ he said again in a quite different voice.

  ‘No,’ she repeated, but she was smiling.

  ‘Anne.’

  She closed her eyes and tipped back her head and let him kiss her eyes and her lips. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘Good God,’ George said in my ear. ‘Is this how she plays him?’

  I nodded as she turned in his arms and they walked together, hip to hip, his arm around her shoulders, her arm around his waist. They looked as if they wished they were walking to the bedroom instead of walking by the river. Their faces were alight with desire and satisfaction, as if the quarrel had been a storm like the storm of lovemaking.

  ‘Always the rage and then the making up?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is instead of the rage of making love, don’t you think? They both get to shout and cry and then end up quietly in each other’s arms.’

  ‘He must adore her,’