Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  I woke to the warmth of his touch, his head nuzzling my crotch, rubbing against my thighs, his hands exploring inside my cape, stroking my arms, my waist, my neck, my breasts. As I sleepily opened my eyes to this flood of sensation, he lifted his head and kissed my bare neck, my cheek, my eyelids, and then finally, passionately, my mouth. His mouth was warm and sweet and lingering, his tongue slid between my lips and stirred me. I wanted to eat him, I wanted to drink him, I wanted him to kiss me and then bear me down onto the holystoned boards of the deck and to have me, then and there, and never let me go.

  When he loosened his grip on me and would have released me it was me who put my hands behind his head and pulled his mouth towards me again, it was my desire which drove us onwards, not his.

  ‘Is there a cabin? A bunk? Anywhere we can go?’ he asked me breathlessly.

  ‘The ladies have all the accommodation, and I gave my bunk away.’

  He gave a little groan of frustrated desire and then ran his hands through his hair and laughed at himself. ‘Good God, I am like a cunt-struck page!’ he said. ‘I am shaking with desire.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Oh God, me too.’

  William got to his feet. ‘Wait here,’ he ordered me, and disappeared down into the body of the ship. He came back with a cup of small ale which he offered to me first, and then took a long draught himself.

  ‘Mary, we must marry,’ he said. ‘Or you must take full responsibility for me going insane.’

  I laughed weakly. ‘Oh my love.’

  ‘Yes I am,’ he said fervently.

  ‘You are what?’

  ‘I am your love. Say it again.’

  For a moment I thought I might refuse and then I knew I was weary of denying the truth. ‘My love.’

  He smiled at that, as if for the moment it was enough for him. ‘Come here,’ he said, opening his cape like a wing and summoning me to the rail of the ship. Obediently, I went and stood beside him and he put his arm and his warm riding cape around my shoulders and held me close to him. Under the shelter of the cape I slid my hand around his waist, and unseen by any but seagulls, I rested my head on his shoulder and we stood there, swaying hip to hip with the motion of the ship for a long peaceful time.

  ‘And there’s France,’ he said finally.

  I looked ahead and could see the dark shape of the land and then gradually the quayside and the masts of the boats and the walls and the castle of the English fortress of Calais.

  Reluctantly, he released me. ‘I shall come and find you as soon as we are settled.’

  ‘I shall look for you.’

  We stood apart, there were people coming up on deck, marvelling at the smoothness of the crossing and looking over the narrowing strait of water to Calais.

  ‘Do you feel all right now?’ I asked, out of arm’s reach, feeling the habitual coldness of my life take the place of that passionate intimacy.

  For one moment William had the grace to look confused. ‘Oh, my seasickness, I had forgotten it.’

  I suddenly realised I had been tricked. ‘Were you ever ill at all? No! You never were! It was all a scheme to get me to sit beside you and to wrap you up and to hold you while you slept.’

  He was delightfully shamefaced, he dropped his head like a scolded boy and then I saw the gleam of his smile. ‘But you tell me, my Lady Carey,’ he challenged me. ‘Did you have the happiest six hours of your life, just now? Or did you not?’

  I bit my tongue. I paused and thought. There must have been in my life a dozen happy moments. I had been the beloved of a king, I had been reclaimed by a loving husband, and I had been the more successful sister for many years. But the happiest six hours?

  ‘Yes,’ I said simply, conceding him everything. ‘Those were the happiest six hours of my life.’

  We docked the ship in a bustle of noise and activity and the harbourmaster and the sailors and dockers all came down to the quayside to watch the king and Anne disembark and cheer them as they touched English soil in France. Then we all went up to hear Mass in the chapel of St Nicholas with the governor of Calais, who made a great fuss, treating Anne with the same courtesy as if she were a crowned queen. But whatever the governor might say and do to appease her in her anxious hunt for reassurance, the King of France was not so amenable and Henry had to leave Anne behind in Calais while he rode out to meet Francis.

  ‘He’s such a fool,’ Anne muttered to herself, looking out of the window of Calais Castle as Henry rode out at the head of his men at arms, his hat off his head to bow in acknowledgement to the crowd, and then turning in the saddle to wave up to the castle in the hope that she would be watching him.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He must have known that the Queen of France wouldn’t meet with me, she’s a Spanish princess like Katherine. And then he let the Queen of Navarre refuse to meet me as well. She should never have been asked but it gave her the chance to say that she would not.’

  ‘Did she say why not? She was always so kind to us when we were little.’

  ‘She said my behaviour was a scandal,’ Anne said shortly. ‘Good God, how these women do put on airs when they are married and safe. You would think none of them ever struggled to catch a husband.’

  ‘So will we not see King Francis at all?’

  ‘We cannot meet him officially,’ Anne said. ‘There’s no lady to meet me.’ She drummed her fingers on the windowsill. ‘Katherine was greeted by the Queen of France herself and everyone says now how friendly they were.’

  ‘Well, you’re not queen yet, you know,’ I said injudiciously.

  The look she turned on me was like ice. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know that. I have observed that over the last six years. I have had a little while to become aware of that, thank you. But I will be. And when I next come to France as queen I shall make her sorry for this insult to me, and when Margaret of Navarre seeks to marry her children to my sons I will not forget that she called me a scandal.’ She looked hard at me. ‘And I shall not forget that you are always very quick to point out that I am not yet queen.’

  ‘Anne, I was only saying …’

  ‘Then you should be silent and try thinking before you speak for once,’ she snapped.

  Henry invited King Francis of France back to the English fort of Calais and for two days we ladies in waiting, with Anne at our head, had to content ourselves with peeping from the castle window at the French king, and seeing nothing more of his fabled good looks than the top of his head. I expected Anne to be in a state of absolute fury at being excluded but she was smiling and secretive, and when Henry came to her room every night after dinner he was welcomed with such pleasant humour that I was certain that she had something planned.

  She set us to rehearsing a special dance which was to be led in by her and then to include the seated diners, who would be summoned to dance with us. It was obvious that she was planning to enter the king’s banquet with the King of France and dance with him.

  Some of the younger ladies wondered how she dared run against the conventions, but I knew that she would have had her plan approved by Henry. His surprise when she entered would be as counterfeit as all the amazement that Queen Katherine had learned to show when her husband had entered her rooms so many times in his disguises. It made me feel old and world-weary to think that we had pretended for years not to recognise the king, and now Anne would play the same games, and the court would still have to admire them.

  Despite the demands of riding with Anne in the morning and dancing with her and the ladies in the afternoon I found time every noon to stroll in the streets of Calais where, at a little alehouse, I would always find William Stafford waiting for me. He would draw me inside, away from the prying eyes of the street, and set a mug of small ale before me.

  ‘All well, my love?’ he would ask me.

  I would smile at him. ‘Yes. And with you?’

  He nodded. ‘I am to ride out with your uncle tomorrow, I have news of some horses he might like. But the prices are absu