Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  We went by barges to the Tower of London, flying flags of gold and white and silver, and the king was waiting for us at the great watergate. They held our barge steady as Anne disembarked, and I watched her, almost as if she was a stranger to me. She rose off her throne and glided down the gangplank as if she had been a queen born and bred. She was wonderfully gowned in silver and gold with a fur cape around her shoulders. She did not look like my sister, she did not look like any mortal woman at all. She carried herself as if she were the greatest queen that had ever been born.

  We spent two nights in the Tower and on the first there was a great dinner and entertainment at which Henry gave out honours to celebrate the day. He made eighteen Knights of the Bath and gave out a dozen knighthoods, three of them to his favourite gentlemen ushers, including my husband. William came to find me, after the king had tapped him on the shoulder with his sword and given him the kiss of fealty. He led me out for a dance where we could mingle with the court and hope that no-one would notice the queen’s sister dancing with a gentleman usher.

  ‘Well then, my Lady Stafford,’ he said softly. ‘How is this for ambition?’

  ‘Vaulting,’ I said. ‘You will be as high as a Howard, I know it.’

  ‘Actually I am glad of it,’ he said, reverting to a low confidential whisper as we watched the pair of dancers in the middle of the circle. ‘I did not want you to be lowered by marrying me.’

  ‘I would have married you if you had been a peasant,’ I said firmly.

  He chuckled at that. ‘My love, I saw how upset you were about the fleabites. I don’t think you would have married me if I had been a peasant at all.’

  I turned to laugh at him and then I caught a furious glance from George who was paired to dance with Madge Shelton. At once I steadied myself. ‘George is watching us.’

  William nodded. ‘He’d do better to take care of himself.’

  ‘Oh why?’

  It was our turn to dance. William took me to the centre of the circle and we danced together, three steps one way, three steps the other. It was a courtship dance, it was hard to perform without drawing close and locking our gaze. I kept reminding myself not to let my face show my delight in him. William was less discreet than me. Every time I stole a glance at him his eyes were on me as if he would eat me up. I was relieved when we danced around the line of the circle and out under an arch of arms, and the dance became general again.

  ‘What about George?’

  ‘Bad company,’ William said shortly.

  I laughed out loud. ‘He’s a Howard, and a friend of the king,’ I said. ‘He’s supposed to be in bad company.’

  I saw him change tack. ‘Oh, it’s nothing, I suppose.’

  The musicians reached the end and played a final chord. I drew William to the side of the hall.

  ‘Now tell me truly what you mean.’

  ‘Sir Francis Weston is forever with him,’ William said, driven to speak. ‘And he has a bad reputation.’

  At once I was on my guard. ‘You’ll have heard of nothing but a young man’s wildness.’

  ‘More,’ William said shortly.

  ‘What more?’

  William looked about him as if he wanted to escape this inquisition. ‘I’ve heard they’re lovers.’

  I took a little breath.

  ‘You knew?’

  I nodded, saying nothing.

  ‘My God, Mary.’ William took a step away from me, and then came back to my side. ‘You did not tell me? Your own brother deep in sin and you didn’t tell me?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I exclaimed. ‘I don’t hold him up to shame. He is my brother. And he might change.’

  ‘You give him loyalty before me?’

  ‘As well as you,’ I said swiftly. ‘William, this is my brother. We are the three Boleyns, we all three need each other. We all three know a dozen things, a score of things which are the greatest of secrets. I am not yet wholly Lady Stafford.’

  ‘Your brother is a sodomite!’ he hissed at me.

  ‘And still my brother!’ I grabbed his arm, careless of who might see us, and dragged him to an alcove. ‘He is a sodomite, and my sister is a whore, and perhaps a poisoner, and I am a whore. My uncle has been the falsest of friends, my father a time-server, my mother – God knows – some even say she had the king before the two of us! All of this you knew or you could have deduced. Now tell me, am I good enough for you? For I knew that you were a nobody and I came to find you all the same. If you want to rise to be a somebody in this court you will get blood or shit on your hands. I have had to learn this through a hard apprenticeship since I was a little girl. You can learn it now if you have the stomach.’

  William gasped at my vehemence and stepped back to take me in. ‘I didn’t mean to distress you.’

  ‘He is my brother. She is my sister. Come what will, they are my kin.’

  ‘They could be our enemies both,’ he warned.

  ‘They could be my enemies till death and they would still be my brother and sister,’ I said.

  We paused.

  ‘Kin and enemies all at once?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘It depends on how this great gamble goes.’

  William nodded.

  ‘So what do they say about him?’ I asked more steadily. ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘It’s not widely known, thank God, but they say there is a secret court within a court, they circle your sister, they are her closest friends, but at the same time they are lovers among themselves. Sir Francis is one, Sir William Brereton another. Hard gamblers, great horse-riders, men who will do anything for a dare, anything that brings them pleasure or excitement – and George is among them. They’re always around the queen, it’s her rooms where they meet and flirt and play. So Anne is compromised too.’

  I looked across the hall at my brother. He was leaning over the back of Anne’s throne and whispering in her ear. I saw her tilt her head to his intimate whisper and giggle.

  ‘This life would corrupt a saint, never mind a young man.’

  ‘He wanted to be a soldier,’ I said sadly. ‘A great crusader, a knight with a white shield riding out against the infidel.’

  William shook his head. ‘We’ll save the boy Henry from this if we can,’ he said.

  ‘My son?’

  He nodded. ‘Our son. We’ll try to give him a life of some purpose, not idleness and pleasure-seeking. And you had better warn your brother and your sister that their circle of friends are the subject of whispers, and he the worst.’

  Anne entered the City the following day, I helped her to dress in her white gown with a white surcoat and a mantle of white ermine. She wore her dark hair loose about her shoulders with a golden veil and circlet of gold. She rode into London on a litter pulled by two white ponies with the Barons of the Cinque Ports holding a canopy of cloth of gold over her head, and the whole court, dressed in their finest, following on foot behind her. There were triumphal arches, there were fountains pouring wine, there were loyal poems at every stopping point, but the whole procession wound through a city of terrible silence.

  Madge Shelton was beside me as we walked behind Anne’s litter in the silence which grew increasingly ominous as we went down the narrow streets to the cathedral. ‘Good God, this is dreadful,’ she muttered.

  London was sulking, the people were out in their thousands but they did not wave flags or call blessings or shout Anne’s name. They stared at her with a dreadful hungry curiosity as if they would see the woman who had wrought such a change in England, such a change in the king, and who had finally cut the very mantle of queenship into her own gown.

  If her entrance to the City was bleak, her coronation on the second day of silent celebrations was no better. This time she wore crimson velvet trimmed with the softest whitest fur of ermine with a mantle of purple, and a face like thunder.

  ‘Aren’t you happy now, Anne?’ I asked as I twitched her train straight.

  She showed a smile which was more a gri