Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  The words finally sunk into my understanding. ‘So what do we do?’

  He looped his horse’s reins over his arm and came around to my horse to lift me up into the saddle.

  ‘Set sail, I suppose.’ He cupped his hands underneath my boot and tossed me up into the saddle. I recognised the ache in my body as unfulfilled desire, more desire, another day of desire, the twelfth day of unfulfilled desire.

  ‘And then what?’ I persisted. ‘We can’t meet like this at Greenwich.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed pleasantly.

  ‘So how shall we meet?’

  ‘You can find me in the stable yard, or I can find you in the garden. We’ve always managed, have we not?’ He mounted his own horse, lightly; he was not trembling like me.

  I could not find the words. ‘I don’t want to meet you like that.’

  William adjusted his stirrup leather, frowning slightly, then he straightened up and gave me a polite, rather distant smile.

  ‘I could escort you to Hever in the summer,’ he offered.

  ‘That’s seven months away!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Yes.’

  I rode a little closer to him, I could not believe he was indifferent. ‘Don’t you want to meet me every afternoon like this?’

  ‘You know I do.’

  ‘Then how is it to be done?’

  He gave me a little half-teasing smile. ‘I don’t think it can be done,’ he said gently. ‘There are too many enemies of the Howards who would be quick to report you for light behaviour. There are too many spies in your uncle’s train for me to be undetected for long. We’ve been lucky, we’ve had our twelve days, and they’ve been very sweet. But I don’t think we can have them again in England.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I turned my horse’s head and felt the sun warm on my back. The waves washed in gently and my horse, fretting a little, shied as they splashed her fetlocks and knees. I could not hold her steady, I could not command her. I could not command myself.

  ‘I think I shan’t stay in your uncle’s service.’ William drew his horse up alongside mine.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think I’ll go to my farm and try my hand as a farmer. It’s all there waiting for me. I’m tired of court. I’m not suited to the life. I’m too independent a man to serve a master, even a great family like yours.’

  I straightened up a little. The Howard pride helped. I put back my shoulders and I lifted my chin. ‘As you wish,’ I said, as cold as he.

  He nodded and let his horse drop a little back. We rode towards the walls of the town like a lady and her escort. The entranced lovers of the sand dune were far behind us, we were the Boleyn girl and the Howards’ man returning to court.

  The sallyport was still open, it was not yet dusk, and we rode side by side through the cobbled streets up to the castle. The gates were open, the drawbridge down, we rode straight into the stable yard. There were men watering the horses and rubbing them down with wisps of straw. The king and Anne had returned half an hour before and their horses were being walked till they were cool before being fed and watered. There was no chance at all of a private conversation.

  William lifted me down from the saddle and at the touch of his hands on my waist, his body against mine, I was filled with a sudden fierce yearning for him, so acute that I gave a little cry of pain.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, setting me on my feet.

  ‘No!’ I said fiercely. ‘I am not all right. You know that I am not.’

  For a moment he too was shaken out of calmness. He caught my hand and roughly pulled me back to him. ‘How you are feeling now is how I have been feeling for months,’ he swore in a passionate undertone. ‘How you are feeling now is how I have been feeling night and day since I first saw you, and I expect to go on feeling like this for the rest of my life. Think about it, Mary. And you send for me. Send for me when you know that you cannot live without me.’

  I twisted my hand out of his grip and I pulled myself away. I half-expected him to come after me but he did not. I walked so slowly that if he had as much as whispered my name I would have heard him, and turned. I walked away from him though my feet dragged at every step. I went through the archway to the castle door though every inch of my body was crying out to stay with him.

  I wanted to go to my room and weep but as I went through the great hall George rose up out of a chair and said: ‘I’ve been waiting for you, where’ve you been?’

  ‘Riding,’ I said shortly.

  ‘With William Stafford,’ he accused me.

  I let him see my red eyes and the quiver of my mouth. ‘Yes. So?’

  ‘Oh God,’ George said, brother-like. ‘Dear God no, you silly whore. Go and wash and get that look off your face, anyone can guess what you’ve been doing.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing!’ I exclaimed in sudden passion. ‘Nothing! And much good it has done me!’

  He hesitated. ‘Just as well. Hurry up.’

  I went to my room and splashed water on my eyes and rubbed my face on a drying sheet. When I came into Anne’s presence chamber there were half a dozen ladies playing cards, and George waiting, very sombre, in the window embrasure.

  He gave a quick cautious look around the room and then tucked my hand under his arm and led me away to the picture gallery which ran the length of the great hall but was empty at this time of the day.

  ‘You’ve been seen,’ he said. ‘You can’t have thought you’d get away with it.’

  ‘With what?’

  He stopped short, and looked at me with a seriousness I had never seen before. ‘Don’t be pert,’ he urged me. ‘You were seen coming out of the sand dunes with your head on his shoulder and his arm around your waist and your hair all blowing loose in the wind. Don’t you know that Uncle Howard has spies everywhere? Didn’t you think that you would be bound to be caught?’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’ I asked fearfully.

  ‘Nothing, if it stops here. That’s why it’s me telling you, and not Uncle or Father. They don’t want to know. As far as you’re concerned, they don’t know. It’s just between you and me and it need go no further.’

  ‘I love him, George,’ I said very quietly.

  He put his head down and ploughed on down the gallery, dragging me with him by my hand in his arm. ‘Doesn’t make any difference to people like us. You know that.’

  ‘I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t do anything but think about him. At night I dream of him, all day I wait to see him, and when I do see him my heart turns over and I think I will faint with desire.’

  ‘And he?’ George asked, drawn into this despite himself.

  I turned my head away so he should not see the sudden pain in my face. ‘I thought he felt the same. But today, when the wind changed, he said we would sail for England and we would not be able to see each other as we had done in France.’

  ‘Well, he’s right,’ George said brutally. ‘And if Anne had been doing her business then neither you nor half a dozen other of the ladies would have been dawdling around France flirting with men in your train.’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ I flared up. ‘He’s not a man in my train. He’s the man I love.’

  ‘D’you remember Henry Percy?’ George suddenly demanded.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘He was in love. More than that, he was betrothed, more than that: he was married. Did it save him? No. He’s stuck in Northumberland, married to a woman who loathes him, still in love, still heartbroken, still hopeless. You can choose. You can be in love and heartbroken, or you can make the best you can of it.’

  ‘Like you?’ I said.

  ‘Like me,’ he said grimly. Despite himself he looked down the gallery to where Sir Francis Weston was leaning over Anne’s shoulder, following a music score. Sir Francis felt our gaze on him and looked up. For once he forgot to smile at me, he looked past me at my brother and there was a deep intimacy in the gaze.

  ‘I never follow my desire, I never consu