Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  ‘Nothing at all,’ he repeated.

  We left her to rest and went out to find the rest of the court who were playing quoits with the king.

  ‘Who spoke of me?’ George demanded.

  ‘William,’ I said honestly. ‘He was not spreading scandal. He knew I would be afraid for you.’

  He laughed carelessly, but I heard the strain in his voice. ‘I love Francis,’ he confessed. ‘I can’t see a finer man in the world, a braver sweeter better man never lived – and I cannot help but desire him.’

  ‘You love him like a woman?’ I asked awkwardly.

  ‘Like a man,’ he corrected me swiftly. ‘A more passionate thing by far.’

  ‘George, this is a dreadful sin, and he will break your heart. This is a disastrous course. If our uncle knew …’

  ‘If anyone knew, I’d be ruined outright.’

  ‘Can you not stop seeing him?’

  He turned to me with a crooked smile. ‘Can you stop seeing William Stafford?’

  ‘It’s not the same!’ I protested. ‘What you’re describing is not the same! Nothing like it. William loves me honourably and truly. And I love him. But this –’

  ‘You’re not without sin, you’re just lucky,’ George said brutally. ‘It is luck to love someone who is free to love you in return. But I don’t. I just desire him, desire him and desire him; and I wait for it to burn out.’

  ‘Will it burn out?’ I asked.

  ‘Bound to,’ he said bitterly. ‘Everything I have ever gained has always turned to ashes after a little while. Why should this be any different?’

  ‘George,’ I said, and put my hand out to him. ‘Oh my brother …’

  He looked at me with those hard hungry Boleyn eyes. ‘What?’

  ‘This will be your undoing,’ I whispered.

  ‘Oh probably,’ he said carelessly. ‘But Anne will save me. Anne and my nephew the king.’

  Summer 1533

  Anne would not release me to go to Hever in the summer when she was expecting her baby in August. The court would not progress around the manor houses of England, nothing would happen as it should. I was in such a bitter rage of disappointment that I could hardly bear to be in the same room as her; but I had to be in the same room as her every day, and listen to her endless, endless speculation of what sort of a king her baby might be. Everyone had to wait on Anne. Everyone had to bow to her. Nothing mattered more than Anne and her belly. She was the focus of everything and she would plan nothing. In such confusion, the court could decide nothing, could go nowhere. Henry could hardly bear to be parted from her, even to go hunting.

  At the start of July George and my uncle were sent to France as emissaries to the French king to tell him that the heir to the English throne was about to be born, and to take him some pledges and promises in case the Spanish emperor moved against England at this fresh insult to his aunt. They would go on to a meeting with the Pope in which the deadlock that held England frozen might be broken. I went to Anne to ask her again if she might spare me too, as soon as she went into her confinement.

  ‘I want to go to Hever,’ I said quietly. ‘I need to see my children.’

  She shook her head. She was lying in the bay of the window of her room on a day bed they had pushed into the embrasure for her. All the windows stood open to catch the breeze as it came up the river, but she was still sweating. Her gown was laced firmly, her breasts, pressed by the stomacher, were swollen and uncomfortable. Her back ached, even supported by cushions embroidered with seed pearls.

  ‘No,’ she said shortly.

  She saw that I was about to argue with her. ‘Oh stop it,’ she said irritably. ‘I can order you as a queen to do what I shouldn’t have to even ask as a sister. You ought to want to be with me. I visited you when you were confined.’

  ‘You stole my lover while I was giving birth to his son!’ I said flatly.

  ‘I was told to. And you would have done the same if our roles had been turned. I need you, Mary. Don’t go wandering off when you’re needed.’

  ‘What d’you need me for?’ I demanded.

  She lost her flushed colour and went waxy white. ‘What if it kills me?’ she whispered. ‘What if it gets stuck and I die of it?’

  ‘Oh Anne …’

  ‘Don’t pet me,’ she said irritably. ‘I don’t want your sympathy. I just want you here to protect me.’

  I hesitated. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘If they can get the baby out by killing me, I wouldn’t give you a groat for my life,’ she said brutally. ‘They’d rather have a live Prince of Wales than a live queen. They can get another queen. But princes are rare in this market.’

  ‘I won’t be able to stop them,’ I said feebly.

  She gleamed at me under her eyelids. ‘I know you’re a broken reed. But at least you could tell George and he would work on the king to make them save me.’

  Her bleak view of the world made me pause. But then I thought of my own children. ‘After your baby is born, and you are well – then I go to Hever,’ I stipulated.

  ‘After the baby is born you can go to hell if you like,’ she said levelly.

  Then there was nothing to do but wait. But in the hot days when it seemed as if nothing was happening, the most appalling news arrived from Rome. The Pope had finally ruled against Henry. Astoundingly: the king was to be excommunicated.

  ‘What?’ Anne demanded.

  Lady Rochford, George’s newly ennobled wife Jane Parker, had brought the news. Like a buzzard to carrion, she was always first. ‘Excommunicated.’ Even she looked stunned. ‘Every Englishman loyal to the Pope should disobey the king,’ she said. ‘Spain can invade. It would be a holy war.’

  Anne was whiter than the pearls at her neck.

  ‘Go out,’ I said suddenly. ‘How dare you come in here and upset the queen?’

  ‘Some will say that she is not the queen.’ Jane went for the door. ‘Won’t the king put her aside now?’

  ‘Go!’ I said fiercely, and ran to Anne. She had her hand on her belly as if she would shield the baby from the disastrous news. I pinched her cheeks, and watched her eyelids flutter.

  ‘He’ll stand by me,’ she whispered. ‘Cranmer himself married us. Crowned me. They can’t say it is all to be put aside.’

  ‘No,’ I said as staunchly as I could, thinking that yes, perhaps they could put it all aside, for who could deny the Pope when he held the keys of heaven in his hand? The king must surrender. And the first thing he would have to surrender would be Anne.

  ‘Oh God, I wish George was here,’ Anne said with a little wail of despair. ‘I wish he was home.’

  Two days later, George came home from France with a brief panicstricken letter from our uncle, demanding to know what should be done next in the negotiations to resolve a crisis which had suddenly become a disaster. The king sent George straight back to France again with orders for my uncle to break off the talks and come home. We would all wait and see what would happen.

  The days grew hotter, they drew up plans for the defence of England against a Spanish invasion, the priests preached calm from the pulpits but wondered which side they should be on. Many churches simply bolted their doors in the crisis and no-one could confess or pray, bury their dead or christen their babies. Uncle Howard begged the king to let him go back to France and implore Francis to persuade the Pope to lift the excommunication. I never before saw him look so terrified. But George, the steadiest of us all, turned all his attention to Anne.

  It was as if he thought that the king’s immortal soul and the future of England were too great for him. The one place where he could be effective was to keep the baby growing in Anne’s belly. ‘This is our guarantee,’ he said quietly to me. ‘Nothing secures our safety more than a boy baby.’

  He spent every morning with Anne, sitting with her on the day bed in the window embrasure. When Henry came into the room George would wander away, but when Henry was gone again, Anne would lean back on the pillows and