“What?” he asked, confused.
“When you pour a glass of wine, it comes first to me. When you open my bedroom door you ask me if I want to admit the visitor. I am going to be queen, George, and you must learn to serve me as a queen.”
He did not flare up at her as he had done when he was freshly home from Europe. Even in that short time he had seen that Anne had great power. She did not care if she quarreled with her uncle, or with any of the men at court that could have been her allies. She did not care who hated her, as long as the king was at her beck and call. And she could ruin any man she chose.
George put his glass down on the hearth and crawled up on the bed so that he was on his hands and knees, with his face just inches from hers. “My little queen in waiting,” he purred.
Anne’s face softened at his intimacy.
“My little princess,” he whispered. Gently he kissed her on the nose and then the lips. “Don’t be a shrew with me,” he begged her. “We all know that you are the first lady of the kingdom, but be sweet to me, Anne. We’ll all be so much happier if you are sweet to me.”
Unwillingly, she smiled. “You must show me every respect,” she warned him.
“I will lie beneath your horse’s hooves,” he promised her.
“And never take liberties.”
“I would rather die.”
“Then you can come here and I will be sweet to you,” she said.
He leaned forward and kissed her again. Her eyes closed and her lips smiled and then parted. I watched as he pressed closer, and his finger went to her bare shoulder and stroked her neck. I watched, quite fascinated and quite horrified, as his fingers went into her smooth dark hair and pulled her head back for his kiss. Then she opened her eyes with a little sigh. “Enough.” And she pushed him gently off the bed. George returned to his place at the fireside and we all pretended that it was nothing more than a brotherly kiss.
The next day Jane Parker was as confident as ever. She smiled at me, she curtsied at Anne and handed her cape as Anne was about to go out walking by the river with the king.
“I would have thought you would have been displeased this day, my lady.”
Anne took the cape. “Why?”
“The news,” Jane said.
“What news?” I asked, so that Anne did not appear curious.
Jane answered me, but she watched Anne. “The Countess of Northumberland is divorcing Henry Percy.”
Anne staggered for a moment and went white.
“Oh!” I cried, to draw the attention to me and from Anne. “What a scandal! Why should she divorce him? What an idea! How very wrong of her.”
Anne had recovered, but Jane had watched her. “Why,” Jane said, in a voice like silk. “She says that their marriage was never valid at all. She says that there was a pre-contract. She says that all along he has been married to you, Lady Anne.”
Anne’s head went up and she smiled at Jane. “Lady Rochford, you do bring me the most extraordinary tidings. And you do choose the strangest of times to bring them to me. Last night you were creeping and listening at my door, and now you are as filled with bad news as a dead dog with maggots. If the Countess of Northumberland is unhappy in her marriage then I am sure that we all grieve for her.” There was a little murmur from the ladies, more like avid curiosity than sympathy. “But if she wants to claim that Henry Percy was betrothed to me then it is simply not true. In either case, the king is waiting for me and you are delaying me.”
Anne tied her own cape and swept from the room. Two or three of her ladies followed her, as they should all have done. The rest held back, circling Jane Parker for more scandal.
“Jane, I am sure the king will want to see you attending Lady Anne,” I said spitefully.
At once she had to go, she followed Anne from the room and the others trailed behind her.
I picked up my skirts and ran like a schoolgirl to my uncle’s apartments.
He was at his desk, though it was early in the afternoon. A clerk stood at his elbow, writing memoranda as my uncle dictated. My uncle frowned when I put my head around the door and then motioned me in and gestured that I should wait.
“What is it?” he asked. “I am busy. I’ve just heard that Thomas More is unhappy with the king’s matter against the queen. I didn’t expect him to like it but I was hoping his conscience could swallow it. I’d give a thousand crowns not to have Thomas More openly against us.”
“It’s something else,” I said tersely. “But important.”
My uncle waved the clerk from the room.
“Anne?” he asked.
I nodded. We were a family business now and Anne was our goods for sale. My uncle knew, without me telling him, that if I ran to his rooms first thing in the afternoon, then it was a crisis in our trading.
“Jane just said that the Countess of Northumberland is to petition for divorce against Henry Percy,” I said in a rush. “Jane said that she is arguing he was pre-contracted to Anne.”
“Damnation,” my uncle swore.
“Did you know?”
“Of course I knew she had it in mind. I thought she was going to plead desertion or cruelty or buggery or something. I thought we had moved her away from the pre-contract business.”
“We?”
He scowled at me. “We. Doesn’t matter who, does it?”
“No.”
“And how does Jane know?” he demanded irritably.
“Oh Jane knows everything. She was listening at Anne’s door last night.”
“What could she have heard?” he asked, the spymaster in him always alert.
“Nothing,” I said staunchly. “George was there and we were doing nothing but talking and drinking a glass of wine.”
“No one but George?” he asked sharply.
“Who else could it be?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“You cannot doubt Anne’s chastity.”
“She spends her life spinning her toils around men.”
Even I could not let this injustice go. “She spins her toils around the king, as you ordered.”
“So where is she now?”
“In the garden with the king.”
“Go to her straightaway and tell her to deny everything with Henry Percy. No betrothal of any sort, no pre-contract. Just a boy and a girl in springtime and a green affection. A pageboy making eyes at a lady in waiting. Nothing more than that, and never returned by her. Just him. Have you got that?”
“There are those who know different,” I warned him.
“They’re all bought,” he said. “Except Wolsey, and he’s dead.”
“He might have told the king, back then, before anyone knew that the king would fall in love with Anne.”
“He’s dead,” my uncle said with relish “He can’t repeat it. And everyone else will fall over themselves to assure the king that Anne is as chaste as the Virgin Mary. Henry Percy quicker than anyone. It’s only that damned wife of his who is so desperate to get out of that marriage that she’d risk everything.”
“Why does she hate him so?” I wondered.
He gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Good God, Mary, you are the most delightful fool. Because he was married to Anne, and she knows it. Because he was in love with Anne, and she knows it. And because losing Anne turned his head to melancholy and he has been a man destroyed ever since. No wonder she doesn’t want to be his wife. Now go and find your sister and lie your head off. Open those beautiful eyes of yours and tell lies for us.”
I found the king and Anne at the riverside walk. She was talking earnestly to him and his head was inclined toward her as if he could not risk missing a single word. She glanced up when she saw me coming. “Mary will tell you,” she said. “She was my bedfellow then when I was nothing more than a girl new to court.”
Henry looked up at me and I could see the hurt in his face.
“It’s the Countess of Northumberland,” Anne explained “Spreading slander about me to s
ave herself from a marriage that she has grown tired of.”
“What can she be saying?”
“The old scandal. That Henry Percy was in love with me.”
I smiled at the king with all the warmth and confidence I could muster. “Of course he was, Your Majesty. Don’t you remember what it was like when Anne first came to court? Everyone was in love with her. Henry Percy among them.”
“There was talk of a betrothal,” Henry said.
“With the Earl of Ormonde?” I asked quickly.
“They couldn’t agree the dowry and the title,” Anne said.
“I meant between you and Henry Percy,” he persisted.
“There was nothing,” she said. “A boy and a girl at court, a poem, a few words, nothing at all.”
“He wrote three poems to me,” I said. “He was the most idle page that the cardinal ever had. He was always writing poems to everyone. What a shame that he has married a woman with no sense of humor. But thank God she had no love of poetry or she would have run away even sooner!”
Anne laughed but we could not turn Henry off his course.
“She says there was a pre-contract,” he persisted. “That you and he were betrothed.”
“I have told you we were not.” Anne contradicted him with a little edge to her voice.
“But why should she say it if it is not so?” Henry demanded.
“To rid herself of her husband!” Anne snapped.
“But why choose that lie, rather than another? Why not say he was married to Mary here? If she had his poems too?”
“I expect she will,” I said wildly, hoping to delay the explosion from Anne. But her temper was rising up in her and she could not stop it. She pulled her hand from the crook of his arm.
“What are you suggesting?” she demanded. “What are you saying of me? Are you calling me unchaste? When I stand here and swear to you that I have never, ever looked at another man? And now you—of all people in the world—accuse me of being pre-contracted! You! Who sought me out and courted me with another wife still living? Which of us is the more likely to be a bigamist, think you? A man with a wife tucked away in a beautiful house in Hertfordshire, fawned on by her own court, visited by everyone, a queen in exile, or the girl who once had a poem written to her?”
“My marriage is invalid!” Henry shouted back at her. “As every cardinal in Rome knows!”
“But it took place! As every man, woman and child in London knows. You spent enough money on it, God knows. You were merry enough about it then! But nothing took place for me, no promises were made, no rings were given, nothing nothing nothing! And you torment me with this nothing.”
“Before God!” he swore. “Will you listen to me?”
“No!” she screamed, quite beyond control. “For you are a fool and I am in love with a fool and the more fool me. I will not listen to you but you will listen to every spiteful worm that would spit poison in your ear!”
“Anne!”
“No!” she cried and flung herself away from him.
In two swift strides he was after her and had caught her to him. She lashed out at him and hit him on the padded shoulders of his jacket. Half the court flinched to see the monarch of England assaulted, no one knew what to do. Henry grabbed her hands and slammed them behind her back, holding her so that her face was as close to him as if they were making love, her body pressed to his, his mouth close enough to bite or to kiss. I saw the look of avid lust that spread over him the moment he had her close.
“Anne,” he said again in a quite different voice.
“No,” she repeated, but she was smiling.
“Anne.”
She closed her eyes and tipped back her head and let him kiss her eyes and her lips. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Good God,” George said in my ear. “Is this how she plays him?”
I nodded as she turned in his arms and they walked together, hip to hip, his arm around her shoulders, her arm around his waist. They looked as if they wished they were walking to the bedroom instead of walking by the river. Their faces were alight with desire and satisfaction, as if the quarrel had been a storm like the storm of lovemaking.
“Always the rage and then the making up?”
“Yes,” I said. “It is instead of the rage of making love, don’t you think? They both get to shout and cry and then end up quietly in each other’s arms.”
“He must adore her,” George said. “She flies at him and then she nestles. My God, I’ve never seen it so clearly. She is a passionate whore, isn’t she? I’m her brother and I’d have her now. She could drive a man crazed.”
I nodded. “She always gives in; but always at least two minutes too late. She always pushes it to the very limit and beyond.”
“It’s a damned dangerous game to play with a king who has absolute power.”
“What else can she do?” I asked him. “She has to hold him somehow. She has to be a castle that he besieges over and over again. She has to keep the excitement up somehow.”
George slipped my hand into his arm and we followed the royal couple along the path. “And what of the Countess of Northumberland?” he asked. “She’ll never get her annulment on the grounds that Henry Percy was pre-contracted to Anne?”
“She might as well wait to be widowed,” I said crudely. “We can’t let any slur be attached to Anne. The Countess will be married forever to a man who has always been in love with someone else. She’d have done better to never be a countess at all but to marry a man who loved her.”
“Are you all for love these days?” George asked. “Is this the advice of the nobody?”
I laughed as if I did not care. “The nobody has gone,” I said. “And good riddance. The nobody meant nothing, as I should have foreseen.”
Summer 1532
THE NOBODY, WILLIAM STAFFORD, CAME BACK TO MY UNCLE’S service in June. He came to find me to tell me that he was back at court and that he would escort me to Hever when I was ready to leave.
“I have already asked Sir Richard Brent to ride with me,” I said coldly.
I had the pleasure of seeing him look taken aback. “I thought you might allow me to stay and take the children out riding.”
“How kind of you,” I said icily. “Perhaps next summer.” I turned and walked away from him before he could think of anything to say to keep me. I felt his gaze on my back and felt that I had repaid him in some measure for flirting with me and treating me like a fool while all along he was planning to marry someone else.
Sir Richard stayed only a few days, which was a relief to both of us. He did not like me in the country where I was distracted by my children and interested in my tenants. He preferred me at court where I had nothing to do but flirt. To his half-hidden relief he was summoned back by the king to help to plan for a royal trip to France.
“I am desolated to have to leave you,” he said, waiting for them to lead his horse round from the stables while we stood in the sunshine by the moat. The children dropped twigs into the water on one side of the drawbridge and were waiting for them to float through. I laughed while I watched them.
“That will take forever,” I said. “It’s not a fast-flowing stream.”
“William made us boats with a sail,” Catherine said to me, not taking her eye off her twig. “They went whichever way the wind was blowing.”
I turned my attention back to my desolate lover. “We will miss you, Sir Richard. Please give my regards to my sister.”
“I shall tell her that the country suits you as green velvet wrapped around a diamond,” he said.
“Thank you,” I replied. “Do you know if the whole court is to go to France?”
“The noblemen and the king and the Lady Anne and her ladies in waiting,” he said. “And I have to arrange all the staging posts in England to be ready for such a progress.”
“I’m sure they could trust the work to no more competent gentleman,” I said. “For you brought me here with great comfort.”
“I could take you back again,” he offered.
I put my hand down to feel Henry’s warm cropped head. “I’ll stay here for a little longer,” I said. “I like to be in the country for the summer.”
I had not thought how I should get back to court, I was so happy with the children, so warmed by the sun of Hever, so much at peace in my little castle, under the skies of my home. But at the end of August I received a terse note from my father to tell me that George would come for me the next day.
We had a miserable supper. My children were pale and huge-eyed at the prospect of parting. I kissed them goodnight and then I sat by Catherine’s bed waiting for her to sleep. It took a long time. Catherine forced her eyes open, knowing that once she slept the night would come, and next day I would be gone; but after an hour, not even she could stay awake any longer.
I ordered my maids to pack my gowns and my things and see that they were loaded onto the big wagon. I ordered the steward to pack cider and beer that my father would welcome, and apples and other fruit that would be an elegant gift for the king. Anne had wanted some books and I went to pick them out of the library. One was in Latin and I took a long time puzzling out the title to make sure that I had the right one. The other was a theology book in French. I put them carefully with my little jewel box. Then I went to bed and cried into my pillow because my summer with my children was cut short.
I was mounted and waiting for George with the wagon loaded and ready when I saw the column of men riding down the lane toward the drawbridge. Even at that distance I knew it was not George but him.
“William Stafford,” I said, unsmiling. “I was expecting my brother.”
“I won you,” he said. He swept his hat from his head and beamed at me. “I played him at cards and won the right to come and fetch you back to Windsor Castle.”
“Then my brother is forsworn,” I said disapprovingly. “And I am not a chattel to be put on a gambling table of a common inn.”
“It was a most uncommon inn,” he said, needlessly provocative. “And after he lost you he lost a very handsome diamond and a dance with a pretty girl.”