Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  ‘At least I will escape her,’ I said. ‘And escape this family’s ambition.’

  Madge looked at me wide-eyed, as worldly as a fawn. ‘But escaped to what?’

  Anne was quick to announce my departure. My father and mother would not even see me before I left court. Only George came down to the stable yard to watch my trunks being loaded onto a cart, and William help me up into the saddle and then mount his own hunter.

  ‘Write to me,’ George said. He was scowling with worry. ‘Are you well enough to travel all that way?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll take care of her,’ William assured him.

  ‘You’ve not done a wonderful job so far,’ George said unpleasantly. ‘She’s ruined, she’s stripped of her pension, and she’s banned from court.’

  I saw William’s hand tighten on the reins and his horse sidled. ‘Not my doing,’ William said levelly. ‘That’s the spite and ambition of the queen and the Boleyn family. In any other family in the land Mary would be allowed to marry a gentleman of her choice.’

  ‘Stop it,’ I said quickly, before George could reply.

  George took a breath and bowed his head. ‘She’s not been best treated,’ he conceded. He looked up at William, seated high on the horse above him, and smiled his rueful, charming Boleyn smile. ‘We had our minds on targets other than her happiness.’

  ‘I know,’ said William. ‘But I do not.’

  George looked wistful. ‘I wish you would tell me the secret of true love,’ he said. ‘Here’s the two of you riding off the very edge of the world and yet you look as if someone has just given you an earldom.’

  I put my hand out to William and he gripped it hard. ‘I just found the man I love,’ I said simply. ‘I could never have had a man who loved me more, nor a more honest man.’

  ‘Go then!’ George said. He pulled off his cap as the wagon lurched forward. ‘Go and be happy together. I’ll do the best I can to get you your place and your pension.’

  ‘Just my children,’ I said. ‘That’s all I want.’

  ‘I’ll speak to the king when I can, and you can write. Write to Cromwell perhaps, and I’ll talk to Anne. It’s not forever. You’ll come back, won’t you? You’ll come back?’

  There was an odd tone to his voice; not at all as if he were promising me my safe return to the centre of the kingdom, more as if he feared being without me. He did not sound like one of the greatest men at a great court, he sounded more like a boy abandoned in a dangerous place.

  ‘Keep yourself safe!’ I said, suddenly shivering. ‘Keep out of bad company, and watch over Anne!’

  I had not been mistaken. The expression on his face was one of fear. ‘I’ll try.’ His voice rang with hollow confidence. ‘I will try!’

  The wagon went out under the archway and William and I rode side by side after it. I looked back at George and he seemed very young and far away. He waved at me and called something, but over the grinding of the wheels on the cobbles and the ringing of the horses’ hooves I could not hear.

  We came out onto the road and William let his horse lengthen his stride so that we overtook the slow-moving wagon and were clear of the dust from its wheels. My hunter would have trotted to keep up, but I steadied her into a walk. I rubbed my face with the back of my glove and William looked sideways at me. ‘No regrets?’ he asked gently.

  ‘I just fear for him,’ I said.

  He nodded. He knew too much about George’s life at court to offer me a glib reassurance. George’s love affair with Sir Francis, their indiscreet circle of friends, their drinking, their gambling, their whoring, was slowly coming to be an open secret. More and more men at court were taking their pleasures more and more wildly, George among them.

  ‘And for her,’ I said, thinking of my sister who had banished me like a beggar and so left herself with only one friend in the world.

  William leaned over and put his hand over mine. ‘Come on,’ he said, and we turned our horses’ heads to the river and rode down to meet the waiting boat.

  We disembarked at Leigh early in the morning. The horses were cold and fretting after the long river journey and we walked them up the lane, north to Rochford. William took us down the little track which led cross-country to his farm. The early morning mist swirled damp and cold over the fields, it was the very worst time of year to come to the country. It would be a long waterlogged icy winter in the little farmhouse, a long way from anywhere. The dampness on my skirts now would hardly dry out for six months.

  William glanced back at me. He smiled. ‘Sit up, sweetheart, and look about you. The sun’s coming out, and we’ll be all right.’

  I managed a smile and I straightened my back and pressed my horse onwards. Ahead of me I could see the thatched roof of his farmhouse, and then, as we came over the rise of a hill, the whole pretty little fifty acres, laid out below us with the river lapping up to the bottom fields and the stable yard and barn as neat and as trim as I remembered it.

  We rode down the lane and William dismounted to open the gate. A small boy emerged from nowhere and looked doubtfully at the two of us. ‘You can’t come in,’ he said firmly. ‘This belongs to Sir William Stafford. A great man at court.’

  ‘Thank you,’ William said. ‘I am Sir William Stafford and you can tell your mother that you are a fine gatekeeper. Tell her that I am come home, and brought my wife, and that we need bread and milk and some bacon and cheese.’

  ‘You are Sir William Stafford, for sure?’ the boy confirmed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then she’ll probably kill a chicken as well,’ he said, and legged it across the fields to the little cottage set half a mile away on the lane.

  I rode Jesmond through the gate and pulled up in the stable yard. William helped me from the saddle and threw the reins over a hitching post while he took me into the house. The door to the kitchen was open, and we stepped over the threshold together.

  ‘Sit down,’ William said, pressing me into a chair by the fireside. ‘I’ll soon get this lit.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘I’m going to be a farmer’s wife, remember. I’ll light the fire and you can see to the horses.’

  He hesitated. ‘D’you know how to light a fire, my little love?’

  ‘Go away!’ I said in mock indignation. ‘Out of my kitchen. I need to set things to rights here.’

  It was like playing at house, like my children might do in a den made of bracken, and at the same time it was a real house, and a real challenge. There was kindling laid in the grate and a tinder box so it did not take me more than about fifteen minutes of patient, painstaking work to get the fire lit and the little flames licking around the wood. The chimney was cold but the wind was in the right quarter so it soon started to draw. William came in from the horses just as the lad returned from the cottage bringing a parcel of food wrapped up in a muslin cloth. We spread the whole thing out on the wooden table and made a little feast of it. William opened a bottle of wine from his cellar under the stairs, and we drank to each other’s healths and to the future.

  The family who had been farming the fields for William while he had been at court had served him well. The hedges were in good trim, the ditches clear, the meadow fields had been cut for hay and the hay was safely in the barn. The older animals of the herd of cows and sheep would be slaughtered through the autumn, and their meat would be salted or smoked. We had chickens in the yard, we had doves in the cote, and a limitless supply of fish from the stream. For a few pence we could go down to the river and buy sea fish from the fishermen. It was a prosperous farm and an easy place to live.

  The urchin’s mother, Megan, came over to the farmhouse every day to help me with the work and to teach me the skills I needed to know. She taught me how to churn butter and how to make cheese. She taught me how to bake bread and to pluck a chicken, a dove, or a game bird. It should have been easy and delightful to learn such important skills. I was absolutely exhausted by it.

  I felt t