Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  ‘Good news?’ he asked, reading my bright face.

  ‘I am allowed back to court. Anne is with child again and she wants me there.’

  ‘And your children?’

  ‘I can see them this summer if she will release me.’

  ‘Thank God,’ he said simply, and he turned his head to the cow’s belly and closed his eyes for a moment and I realised, as I had not fully known before, that he had been suffering for me in the loss of my children.

  ‘Any forgiveness for me?’ he asked after a little while.

  I shook my head. ‘You’re forbidden. But I suppose you could just come with me.’

  ‘I’d be sorry to leave the farm again for long.’

  I chuckled. ‘Have you become a rustic, my love?’

  ‘Arr,’ he said. He rose from the milking stool and patted the cow on the rump. I held open the gate for her and she went out into the field where the spring grass was coming through rich and green. ‘I’ll come to court with you, whether they say so or not; and when the summer comes, we’ll come back here.’

  ‘After Hever,’ I stipulated.

  He smiled at me and his warm hand closed on mine as it rested on the top of the gate. ‘After Hever, of course,’ he said. ‘When is the queen’s baby due?’

  ‘In the autumn. But no-one knows.’

  ‘Pray God this time she can carry it.’ He hesitated for a moment and then dipped a ladle into the warm milk. ‘Taste,’ he commanded.

  I did as I was bid and drank a draught of the warm foamy milk.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘D’you want it in the dairy for churning?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d do it myself.’

  ‘I don’t want you getting too tired.’

  I smiled at his concern. ‘I can do it.’

  ‘I’ll carry it in for you,’ he said tenderly. And he led the way into the dairy where our baby, named Anne to please her aunt, wrapped tight in her swaddling, was asleep on the bench.

  The royal barge was sent to bring me back to Hampton Court. William, the wet nurse, and myself embarked at Leigh very grand in our court clothes. Our horses were to follow later. The imposing nature of our send-off was rather spoiled by my husband who kept shouting last-minute instructions to Megan’s husband who would care for the farm while we were away.

  ‘I am sure he would have remembered the shear the sheep,’ I remarked mildly when William finally settled down into his seat and stopped hanging over the rail and bawling like a seaman. ‘When their coats grew very long, he would probably have noticed.’

  He grinned. ‘I am sorry. Did I disgrace you?’

  ‘Well, since you are a member of the royal family, I do think you might find a way to behave which is not quite like a drunk farmer on market day.’

  He was quite unrepentant. ‘Beg your pardon, Lady Stafford,’ he said. ‘I swear, when we get to Hampton Court I shall be discretion itself. Where shall I sleep, for instance? Would a hayloft in your stable be sufficiently humble?’

  ‘I thought we might take a little house in the town. And I’ll come every day for most of the day.’

  ‘And you had better come home to sleep at night,’ he said emphatically. ‘Or I shall come up to the palace and fetch you. You’re my wife now, my acknowledged wife. I expect you to act like one.’

  I smiled and turned my head away so that he should not see the amusement in my face. Pointless to remind my straightforward determined husband, that my previous marriage had been a court marriage and I had all but never slept in my husband’s bed, and no-one had been in the least surprised.

  ‘Makes no difference,’ he said, with his intuitive knowledge of my thoughts. ‘No difference at all how your first marriage was. This is my marriage, and I want my wife in my bed.’

  I laughed aloud and snuggled back into his arms. ‘It’s where I want to be,’ I confessed. ‘Why would I ever want to be anywhere else?’

  The royal barge went smoothly upriver, the rowers keeping to the rhythmic beat of the drum, the tide, rushing inwards, carrying us as fast as a cantering horse. The familiar landmarks came into sight, the great square white tower and the yawning mouth of the watergate at the Tower of London. The bridge was a dark shadow across the river like a doorway opening up to the beauty of the waterside palaces and their gardens and all the bustle and excitement of the central waterway of a great city. The little wherries and ferries and fishing boats criss-crossed the river before us, at Lambeth the great ponderous horse ferry hesitated while we went swiftly by. William pointed to a great grey heron nesting awkwardly in some trees at the water’s edge and a cormorant as it upended and dived, a dark acquisitive shadow under water.

  Many faces turned in the direction of the royal barge but there were few smiles. I remembered riding in the barge with Queen Katherine and how everyone had pulled off their hats as we went by and the women curtsied, and the children kissed their hands and waved. There had been a trust that the king was wise and strong and that the queen was beautiful and good and that nothing could go wrong. But Anne and the Boleyn ambition had opened a great crack in that unity and now everyone could see into the void. They could see now that the king was no better than some paltry little mayor of a fat little town, who wanted nothing more than to feather his own nest, and that he was married to a woman who knew desire, ambition and greed and longed for satisfaction.

  If Anne and Henry had expected the people to forgive them then they must be disappointed. The people would never forgive. Queen Katherine might be all but a prisoner in the cold marshes of Huntingdonshire, but she was not forgotten. Indeed, every day that there was no new christening of a new heir for England, her banishment seemed more and more pointless.

  I lay back against William’s comforting shoulder and dozed. I heard our baby cry after a little while and I woke to see the wet nurse clasping her close and feeding her. My own breasts, firmly bound, ached in longing, and William tightened his grip around my waist and kissed the top of my head. ‘She’s well cared for,’ he said gently. ‘And no-one will ever take her away from you.’

  I nodded. I could order her to be brought to me at any time of the day or night. She was my child in a way that my other two had never been. There was no point in telling him that when I saw her blue intent eyes that I grieved even more for the two I had lost. She could not take their place, she only reminded me that I was a mother of three and that though I might have a warm little bundle in my arms, there were two children of mine somewhere else in the world, and I did not even know where my son lay his head at night.

  It was twilight before we saw the great pier of Hampton Court and the great iron gates behind them. The drummer gave an extra roll of drums and we saw the watermen tumbling along the pier making ready for us to land. There was a brief cursory fanfare to honour the king’s standard, and then the barge was docked and we were landed and William and I were back at court.

  Discreetly, William, our baby and the wet nurse took the tow path down to the village and left me to enter the palace on my own. He squeezed my hand briefly before he turned away. ‘Be brave,’ he said with a smile. ‘Remember, she needs you now. Don’t sell your services too cheap.’

  I nodded, gathered my cloak around me and turned to face the great palace.

  I was shown in as if I were a stranger, up the great stairs to the queen’s apartments. When the guards opened the door and I walked in there was a moment of dead silence and then a storm of female enthusiasm burst about my head. Every woman in the room touched my shoulders, my neck, the sleeves of my gown, the hood over my hair, and remarked how well I was looking, how motherhood became me, how the country air suited me and how delightful it was to see me back at court. Every single woman was my dearest friend, my sweetest cousin, I should have my pick of bedchambers, everyone wanted to share with me. It was so delightful for them to see me back at court that I could only be amazed that they had managed so long without me, not one of them ever writin