The Other Boleyn Girl Part 50

"Some bread," he said. "A couple of mugs of small ale. Some fruit if you have it, for the lady. A couple of eggs, boiled, a little ham perhaps? A cheese? Anything nice."

"This is my first batch of the day," the man grumbled. "I have hardly broken my own fast. Never mind running around slicing ham for the gentry."

A little c.h.i.n.k and the gleam of a silver coin changed everything.

"I have some excellent ham in my larder and a cheese just up from the country that my own cousin made," the baker said persuasively. "And my wife shall rise and pour you the small ale herself. She's a good brewer, there's not a better taste in all of London."

"Thank you," William said gracefully as he sat down beside me and winked, and rested his arm comfortably around my waist.

"Newly wed?" the man asked, shoveling loaves out of the oven and seeing William's gaze on my face.

"Yes," I said.

"Long may it last," he said doubtfully, and turned the loaves onto the wooden counter.

"Amen to that," William said quietly, and drew me to him and kissed me on the lips and whispered privately in my ear: "I am going to love you like this forever."

William saw me into the little wicket gate to the Tower before going down to the river, hiring a river boatman and entering through the watergate. Madge Shelton was in our room when I got in, but too absorbed in brushing her hair and changing her gown to wonder where I had been so early in the morning. Half the court seemed to be waking up in the wrong beds. The triumph of Anne, the mistress who had become a wife, was an inspiration to every loose girl in the country.

I washed my face and hands and dressed ready to go with Anne and the other ladies to matins. Anne, in her first day of queenship, was dressed very richly in a dark gown with a jeweled hood and a long string of pearls twisted twice around her neck. She still wore her golden "B" for Boleyn, and carried a prayerbook encased in gold leaf. She nodded when she saw me and I dropped into a deep curtsy and followed the hem of her gown as if I was honored to do so.

After Ma.s.s and after breakfast with the king, Anne started to reorganize her household. Many of Queen Katherine's servants had transferred their loyalty without much inconvenience, like the rest of us they would rather be attached to a rising star than to the lost queen. My eye was caught by the name Seymour.

"Are you having a Seymour girl as your lady in waiting?" I asked curiously.

"Which one?" George asked idly, pulling the list toward him. "That Agnes is said to be a terrible wh.o.r.e."

"Jane," Anne said. "But I shall have Aunt Elizabeth, and Cousin Mary. I should think we have enough Howards to outweigh the influence of one Seymour."

"Who asked for her place?" George inquired.

"They're all asking for places," Anne said wearily. "All of them, all of the time. I thought one or two women from other families would be a sop. The Howards can't have everything."

George laughed. "Oh, why not?"

Anne pushed her chair back from the table and rested her hand on her belly and sighed. George was alert.

"Tired?" he asked.

"A little gripe." She looked at me. "It doesn't matter, does it? Little nips of pain? They don't mean anything?"

"I had quite bad pains with Catherine, and she went full term, and then an easy birth."

"They don't mean that it'll be a girl though, do they?" George said anxiously.

I looked at the two of them, the matching long Boleyn noses and long faces and those eager eyes. They were the same features that had looked back at me from my own mirror for all of my life, except that now I had lost that hungry expression.

"Be at peace," I said gently to George. "There's no reason in the world why she should not have the most beautiful son. And worrying is the worst thing she can do."

"As well tell me not to breathe," Anne snapped. "It's like carrying the whole future of England in my belly. And the queen miscarried over and over again."

"Because she was not his proper wife," George said soothingly. "Because their marriage was never valid. Of course G.o.d will give you a son."

Silently, she stretched her hand across the table. George gripped it tight. I looked at both of them, at the absolute desperation of their ambition, still riding them as hard as when they were the children of a small lord on the rise. I looked at them and knew the relief of my escape.

I waited for a moment and then I said, "George, I have heard some gossip about you which is not to your credit."

He looked up with his merry, wicked smile. "Surely not!"

"It is serious," I said.

"Who have you been listening to?" he returned.

"Court whispers," I said. "They say that Sir Francis Weston is part of a wild circle, you among them."

He glanced quickly at Anne, as if to see what she knew.

She looked inquiringly at me. She was clearly ignorant of what was being said. "Sir Francis is a loyal friend."

"The queen has spoken." George tried to make a joke.

"Because she doesn't know the half of it, and you do," I snapped back.

Anne was alerted by that. "I have to be all but perfect," she said. "I can't let them have anything that they could whisper to the king against me."

George patted her hand. "It's nothing," he soothed her again. "Don't fret. A couple of wild nights and a little too much to drink. A couple of bad women and some high gambling. I'd never be a discredit to you, Anne, I promise."

"It's more than that," I said flatly. "They say that Sir Francis is George's lover."

Anne's eyes widened, she reached for George at once. "George, no?"

"Absolutely not." He took her hand in a comforting clasp.

She turned a cold face to me. "Don't come to me with your nasty stories, Mary," she said. "You're as bad as Jane Parker."

"You had better take care," I warned George. "Any mud thrown at you sticks to us all."

"There's no mud," he replied, but his eyes were on Anne's face. "Nothing at all."

"You had better be sure," she said.

"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 pa.s.sionate 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 honorably 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. 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, 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 color 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 h.e.l.l 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 enn.o.bled 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 G.o.d, 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 panic-stricken 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 defense 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.