Francis kissed my hand. “Enchanté,” he whispered seductively.
“Let’s dance again!” Anne said suddenly, irritated as I knew she would be by any attention paid to me. At once the musicians struck a chord, and for the rest of the night the court made merry and everyone took a great deal of trouble to ensure that Anne was happy.
That evening concluded the formal visit to France and the following day we spent in packing up the goods for the journey home. The wind was against us and we had to linger in Calais, sending every morning to the master of the ship to ask if he could get out of harbor on this day, or the next. Anne and Henry hunted and entertained themselves as well as if they had been in England. Better, actually, since in France there was no one to catcall when Anne rode down the street or to shout “whore” at her horse’s hooves. And in the delay William and I were free to meet.
We rode out every afternoon on a firm sand beach to the west of the town, which stretched almost as far as the eye could see. Sometimes the horses would strain to gallop on the hard sand at the water’s edge and we let them have their heads and fly away. Then we would ride up into the dunes, and William would lift me down from the saddle, spread his cape on the ground and the two of us would lie together, arms around each other, kissing and whispering until I was near to weeping with desire.
There were many afternoons when I was tempted to untie the laces of his breeches and let him have me, without ceremony, like a country girl under the seductive sun with only the cry of seagulls to distract us. He kissed me till my mouth was sore with kissing, my lips swollen and chapped, and all the long evening when I had to dine with the ladies without him, I could still feel the bruises from his passionate biting when I put my lips to a cool glass to drink. He touched me all over my body, without shame. His hands unlaced my stomacher at the back so that he could slide it down to my hips, and caress my naked breasts. He bent his brown curly head and suckled at me till I cried out with pleasure and thought that I would rise up in more and more pleasure until I could hardly bear another moment of it, and then he would plunge his head into my belly and bite me hard on the navel so I flinched with pain and pushed him away and found that I was screaming and fighting him off instead of sighing.
He would wrap me warmly and lie beside me unmoving for long moments until my hunger for him subsided a little. Then he would turn me over and lie his long lean body against my back, take off my cap and lift a handful of hair, so that he could nibble at the nape of my neck and press himself against me so that I felt his hardness even through my gown and underskirt, and I knew myself to be pressing back like a whore, as if to beg him to do the deed, and do it without permission, for I could not say “Yes.” And God knew that I would not say “No.”
He would thrust against me, pause, and thrust again, and I would press back, knowing and longing for what would happen next, he would go faster and I would find myself rising toward pleasure, and getting to a point where I could not stop whether I would or no—and then, before I had reached my pleasure, before he had so much as touched me skin to skin, he would pause and give a little sigh and lie down beside me again and gather me to him and kiss my eyelids, and hold me till I stopped trembling.
Every day while the wind blew onshore and kept the ships in the harbor we rode out into the sand dunes and made love which was not making love but which was the most passionate of courtships. And every day I hoped, against myself, that today would be the day when I would whisper “Yes” or that he would force me to it. But every day he stopped just a second, just a moment, before my consent, and enfolded me in his arms and soothed me as if I were racked with pain instead of desire—and there were many days when I could not have told the one from the other.
We were walking the horses out of the dunes and back to the beach on the twelfth day when William suddenly paused and looked up. “The wind’s changed.”
“What?” I asked stupidly. I was still dazed with pleasure. I did not know that there was a wind. I was hardly aware of the sand beneath my riding boots, the breakers on the beach, the warmth of the evening sun on my left cheek.
“It’s offshore,” he said. “They’ll be able to sail.”
I rested my arm on my horse’s neck. “Sail?” I repeated.
He turned and saw my dazed expression and laughed at me. “Oh sweetheart, you are far away, aren’t you? Remember we cannot sail for England because we are waiting for a favorable wind? This is it. The wind’s changed. We’ll sail tomorrow.”
The words finally sunk into my understanding. “So what do we do?”
He looped his horse’s reins over his arm and came around to my horse to lift me up into the saddle.
“Set sail, I suppose.” He cupped his hands underneath my boot and tossed me up into the saddle. I recognized the ache in my body as unfulfilled desire, more desire, another day of desire, the twelfth day of unfulfilled desire.
“And then what?” I persisted. “We can’t meet like this at Greenwich.”
“No,” he agreed pleasantly.
“So how shall we meet?”
“You can find me in the stable yard, or I can find you in the garden. We’ve always managed, have we not?” He mounted his own horse, lightly; he was not trembling like me.
I could not find the words. “I don’t want to meet you like that.”
William adjusted his stirrup leather, frowning slightly, then he straightened up and gave me a polite, rather distant smile.
“I could escort you to Hever in the summer,” he offered.
“That’s seven months away!” I exclaimed.
“Yes.”
I rode a little closer to him, I could not believe he was indifferent. “Don’t you want to meet me every afternoon like this?”
“You know I do.”
“Then how is it to be done?”
He gave me a little half-teasing smile. “I don’t think it can be done,” he said gently. “There are too many enemies of the Howards who would be quick to report you for light behavior. There are too many spies in your uncle’s train for me to be undetected for long. We’ve been lucky, we’ve had our twelve days, and they’ve been very sweet. But I don’t think we can have them again in England.”
“Oh.”
I turned my horse’s head and felt the sun warm on my back. The waves washed in gently and my horse, fretting a little, shied as they splashed her fetlocks and knees. I could not hold her steady, I could not command her. I could not command myself.
“I think I shan’t stay in your uncle’s service.” William drew his horse up alongside mine.
“What?”
“I think I’ll go to my farm and try my hand as a farmer. It’s all there waiting for me. I’m tired of court. I’m not suited to the life. I’m too independent a man to serve a master, even a great family like yours.”
I straightened up a little. The Howard pride helped. I put back my shoulders and I lifted my chin. “As you wish,” I said, as cold as he.
He nodded and let his horse drop a little back. We rode toward the walls of the town like a lady and her escort. The entranced lovers of the sand dune were far behind us, we were the Boleyn girl and the Howards’ man returning to court.
The sallyport was still open, it was not yet dusk, and we rode side by side through the cobbled streets up to the castle. The gates were open, the drawbridge down, we rode straight into the stable yard. There were men watering the horses and rubbing them down with wisps of straw. The king and Anne had returned half an hour before and their horses were being walked till they were cool before being fed and watered. There was no chance at all of a private conversation.
William lifted me down from the saddle and at the touch of his hands on my waist, his body against mine, I was filled with a sudden fierce yearning for him, so acute that I gave a little cry of pain.
“Are you all right?” he asked, setting me on my feet.
“No!” I said fiercely. “I am not all right. You know that I am not.”
&
nbsp; For a moment he too was shaken out of calmness. He caught my hand and roughly pulled me back to him. “How you are feeling now is how I have been feeling for months,” he swore in a passionate undertone. “How you are feeling now is how I have been feeling night and day since I first saw you, and I expect to go on feeling like this for the rest of my life. Think about it, Mary. And you send for me. Send for me when you know that you cannot live without me.”
I twisted my hand out of his grip and I pulled myself away. I half-expected him to come after me but he did not. I walked so slowly that if he had as much as whispered my name I would have heard him, and turned. I walked away from him though my feet dragged at every step. I went through the archway to the castle door though every inch of my body was crying out to stay with him.
I wanted to go to my room and weep but as I went through the great hall George rose up out of a chair and said: “I’ve been waiting for you, where’ve you been?”
“Riding,” I said shortly.
“With William Stafford,” he accused me.
I let him see my red eyes and the quiver of my mouth. “Yes. So?”
“Oh God,” George said, brother-like. “Dear God no, you silly whore. Go and wash and get that look off your face, anyone can guess what you’ve been doing.”
“I’ve done nothing!” I exclaimed in sudden passion. “Nothing! And much good it has done me!”
He hesitated. “Just as well. Hurry up.”
I went to my room and splashed water on my eyes and rubbed my face on a drying sheet. When I came into Anne’s presence chamber there were half a dozen ladies playing cards, and George waiting, very sombre, in the window embrasure.
He gave a quick cautious look around the room and then tucked my hand under his arm and led me away to the picture gallery which ran the length of the great hall but was empty at this time of the day.
“You’ve been seen,” he said. “You can’t have thought you’d get away with it.”
“With what?”
He stopped short, and looked at me with a seriousness I had never seen before. “Don’t be pert,” he urged me. “You were seen coming out of the sand dunes with your head on his shoulder and his arm around your waist and your hair all blowing loose in the wind. Don’t you know that Uncle Howard has spies everywhere? Didn’t you think that you would be bound to be caught?”
“What’s going to happen?” I asked fearfully.
“Nothing, if it stops here. That’s why it’s me telling you, and not Uncle or Father. They don’t want to know. As far as you’re concerned, they don’t know. It’s just between you and me and it need go no further.”
“I love him, George,” I said very quietly.
He put his head down and ploughed on down the gallery, dragging me with him by my hand in his arm. “Doesn’t make any difference to people like us. You know that.”
“I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t do anything but think about him. At night I dream of him, all day I wait to see him, and when I do see him my heart turns over and I think I will faint with desire.”
“And he?” George asked, drawn into this despite himself.
I turned my head away so he should not see the sudden pain in my face. “I thought he felt the same. But today, when the wind changed, he said we would sail for England and we would not be able to see each other as we had done in France.”
“Well, he’s right,” George said brutally. “And if Anne had been doing her business then neither you nor half a dozen other of the ladies would have been dawdling around France flirting with men in your train.”
“It’s not like that,” I flared up. “He’s not a man in my train. He’s the man I love.”
“D’you remember Henry Percy?” George suddenly demanded.
“Of course.”
“He was in love. More than that, he was betrothed, more than that: he was married. Did it save him? No. He’s stuck in Northumberland, married to a woman who loathes him, still in love, still heartbroken, still hopeless. You can choose. You can be in love and heartbroken, or you can make the best you can of it.”
“Like you?” I said.
“Like me,” he said grimly. Despite himself he looked down the gallery to where Sir Francis Weston was leaning over Anne’s shoulder, following a music score. Sir Francis felt our gaze on him and looked up. For once he forgot to smile at me, he looked past me at my brother and there was a deep intimacy in the gaze.
“I never follow my desire, I never consult it,” George said grimly. “I have put my family first and it costs me a heartbeat, every day of my life. I do nothing which might cause Anne embarrassment. Love does not come into it for us Howards. We are courtiers first and foremost. Our life is at court. And true love has no place at court.”
Sir Francis gave a distant little smile when George did not acknowledge him, and turned his attention back to the music.
George pinched my cold fingers as they rested on his arm. “You have to stop seeing him,” he said. “You have to promise on your honor.”
“I can’t promise on my honor, for I have no honor,” I said bleakly. “I was married to one man and I cuckolded him with the king. I went back to him and he died, before I had a chance to tell him that I might love him. And now when I find a man that I could love heart and soul, you ask me to promise on my honor not to see him—and I do so promise. On my honor. There is no honor left in us three Boleyns at all.”
“Bravo,” George said. He took me in his arms and kissed me on the mouth. “And heartbreak becomes you. You look delicious.”
We sailed the next day. I looked for William on the deck and when I saw him, carefully not looking at me, I went below with the other ladies and curled up in a nest of cushions and went to sleep. More than anything else I wanted to sleep the next half year away until I could go to Hever and see my children again.
Winter 1532
THE COURT HELD CHRISTMAS AT WESTMINSTER AND ANNE was the hub of every activity. The master of the revels staged masque after masque when she was hailed as Queen of Peace, Queen of Winter, Queen of Christmas. She was called everything but Queen of England, and everyone knew that title would follow very soon. Henry took her to the Tower of London and she had her pick of the treasury of England, as if she were a princess born.
She and Henry now had adjoining apartments. Brazenly, they retired to his room or hers together at night and they emerged together in the morning. He bought her a fur-lined black satin robe to greet the visitors who came into his bedchamber. I was released from my post as chaperone and bedfellow and found myself alone at night for the first time since girlhood. It was a pleasure of sorts to be able to sit by my little fire and know that Anne would not be storming into the room in a temper. But I found I was lonely. I spent long nights daydreaming in front of the fire, and many cold afternoons, looking out of the window at the gray winter rain. The sunshine and the sand dunes of Calais seemed like a million years away. I felt that I was turning to ice, just like the sleet on the tiled roofs.
I looked for William Stafford among my uncle’s men and someone told me that he had gone to his farm to see to the lifting of the turnips and the killing of the old beasts. I thought of him, going about his little farmstead, setting things to rights, dealing with real things while I lingered at court, enmeshed in gossip and scandal and thinking of nothing but the pleasure of two idle selfish people and how to entertain them.
In the middle of the twelve-day Christmas feast Anne came to me and asked what signs would tell a woman that she had conceived. We counted the days of her courses and she was due within the week; she was already determined to be sick in the mornings and unable to eat the fat off the meat, but I told her it was too early to know.
She counted the days. Sometimes I could see her holding herself very still and I knew that she was willing herself to be with child.
The day came when she might have bled, and that night she put her head around the door of my room and said triumphantly: “I am clean. Does that
mean I have a baby?”
“One day proves nothing,” I said ungraciously. “You have to wait a month at least.”
The next day passed, and the next. She did not tell Henry of her hopes but I imagined that he could count like any other man. They both started to have the look of a couple balancing on air like rope dancers at a fair. He did not dare to ask her, but he came to me and asked me if Anne had missed her course.
“Only by a week or two, Your Majesty,” I said respectfully.
“Shall I send for a midwife?” he asked.
“Not yet,” I advised. “Better to wait for the second month.”
He looked anxious. “I should not lie with her.”
“Perhaps just be very gentle,” I advised.
He frowned in his anxiety, and I thought that their desire for this baby would rob all the joy from their mating before they were even wed.
In January it was clear that Anne had missed a month for certain, and she told the king that she thought that she might be with his child.
It was touching to see him. He had been so long married to a barren woman, the thought of a fertile wife was damp plough-land in a dry August to him. They were very quiet together, very strange to each other. They had been passionate quarrellers, passionate lovers, and now they wanted to be friends. Anne wanted to rest quietly, she had a terror of doing anything that might disturb the process which was going on in secret in her body. Henry wanted to sit beside her, as if his presence might continue what he had started. He wanted to hold her and walk beside her, and save her from any exertion at all.
He had seen too many pregnancies end in a mess of crying women and disappointment. He had celebrated some live births and had the joy stolen from him by inexplicable deaths. Now he thought that Anne’s ready fertility vindicated him completely. God had cursed him for marrying his brother’s wife and now God was lifting the curse by making his wife-to-be (his first wife, in Henry’s adaptable conscience) so fertile that she conceived within months of lying with him. He treated her with immense tenderness and respect, and he rushed through a new law, so that they might be legally married, under the new English law, in the new English church.