After all this long journey, I found I had nothing to say. My whole sense of purpose and determination scattered the moment I saw him.
“William,” was all that I managed, and I held out the little twig of mistletoe with the white buds as if it was a tribute.
“What?” he asked unhelpfully. He still made no move toward me.
I pulled off my hood and shook out my hair. I was suddenly, overwhelmingly conscious that he had never seen me anything but washed and perfumed. And here I was, in the same gown I had worn for three days, flea-bitten, lousy, dusty and smelling of horse and sweat, and hopelessly, helplessly inarticulate.
“What?” he repeated.
“I’ve come to marry you, if you still want me.” There seemed to be no way to mitigate the baldness of the words.
His expression gave nothing away. He looked at the road behind me. “Who brought you?”
I shook my head. “I came alone.”
“What’s gone wrong at court?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s never been better. They’re married and she’s with child. The Howards never had fairer prospects. I will be aunt to the King of England.”
William gave a short barking laugh at that, and I looked down at my filthy boots and the dust on my riding habit and laughed too. When I looked back up his eyes were very warm.
“I have nothing,” he warned me. “I am a nobody, as you rightly said.”
“I have nothing but a hundred pounds a year,” I said. “I’ll lose that when they know where I have gone. And I am nobody without you.”
He made a quick gesture with his hand as if he would draw me to him, but still he held back. “I won’t be the cause of your ruin,” he said. “I won’t have you become the poorer for loving me.”
I felt myself tremble at his nearness, at my desire for him to hold me. “It doesn’t matter,” I said urgently. “I swear to you that it doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
He opened his arms to me at that, and I stepped and half-fell forward. He snatched me up and crushed me against him, his mouth on mine, his demanding kisses all over my dirty face, on my eyelids and cheeks and lips and then finally plunging into my open longing mouth. Then he lifted me up into his arms and carried me across the threshold of his house, and up the stairs into the bedroom, into the clean linen sheets of his duckdown bed, and into joy.
Much later he laughed at the fleabites, and he brought me a great wooden bath which he filled with water and set before the big fire in the kitchen, and combed my hair for lice while I lolled my head back and soaked in the hot sweet-smelling water. He put my stomacher and skirt and linen to one side for washing and insisted that I dress in his shirt and a pair of his trousers which I kilted in around my waist and rolled up the legs like a sailor on deck. He turned out my horse into the meadow where she rolled with pleasure at being rid of the saddle, and cantered around with William’s hunter, bucking and kicking like a filly. Then he cooked me a big bowl of porridge with yellow honey, and cut me a slice of wheaten bread with creamy butter, and a slab of thick soft Essex cheese. He laughed at my travels with Jimmy and scolded me for setting off without an escort, and then he took me back to bed and we made love all the afternoon till the sky darkened and we were hungry again.
We ate dinner by candlelight in the kitchen. In my honor, William killed an old chicken and spit-roasted it. I was armed with a pair of his gauntlets and delegated to turn the spit while he sliced bread and drew the small ale, and went to the cool pantry for butter and cheese.
When we had eaten we drew up our stools to the fire and drank to each other, and then sat in a rather surprised silence.
“I can’t believe this,” I said after a little while. “I thought no further than getting to you. I didn’t think about your home. I didn’t think what we would do next.”
“And what d’you think now?”
“I still don’t know what to think,” I confessed. “I suppose I will become accustomed. I shall be a farmer’s wife.”
He leaned forward and tossed a slab of peat on the fire. It settled with the others and started to glow red. “And your family?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“Did you leave a note?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
He cracked a laugh. “Oh my love, what were you thinking of?”
“I was thinking of you,” I said simply. “I just suddenly realized how much I loved you. All I could think of was that I should come to you.”
William reached across and stroked my hair. “You’re a good girl,” he said approvingly.
I gave a little gurgle of laughter. “A good girl?”
“Yes,” he said, unabashed. “Very.”
I leaned back against his caress and his hand strayed from my head to the nape of my neck. He took it in a firm grasp and shook me gently, like a mother cat might hold a kitten. I closed my eyes and melted into his touch.
“You can’t stay here,” he said softly.
I opened my eyes in surprise. “No?”
“No.” He lifted his hand to forestall me. “Not because I don’t love you, because I do. And we must be married. But we have to get the most we can from this.”
“D’you mean money?” I asked, a little dismayed.
He shook his head. “I mean your children. If you come to me without a word of warning, without the support of anyone, you’ll never get your children. You’ll never even see them again.”
I pressed my lips together against the pain. “Anne can take them from me at any moment, anyway.”
“Or return them,” he reminded me. “You said she was breeding?”
“Yes. But—”
“If she has a son she’ll have no need of yours. We need to be ready to pick him up when she drops him.”
“D’you think I might get him back?”
“I don’t know. But you have to be at court to play for him.” His hand was warm on my shoulders through the linen of the shirt. “I’ll come back with you,” he said. “I can leave a man to run the farm for a season or two. The king will give me a place. And we can be together until we see which way the wind is blowing. We’ll get the children if we can, and then we’ll get clear and come back here.” He hesitated for a moment and I saw a shadow cross his face. He looked uncomfortable. “Is it good enough for them here?” he asked shyly. “They’re used to Hever, and there’s your family’s own great house just up the lane. They’re gentry born and bred. This is only a little place.”
“They’ll be with us,” I said simply. “And we’ll love them. They’ll have a new family, a sort of family that no nobleman has ever had before. A father and a mother who married for love, who chose each other despite wealth and position. It should be better for them, not worse.”
“And you?” he asked. “It’s not Kent.”
“It’s not Westminster Palace either,” I said. “I took my decision when I realized that nothing would compensate me for not being with you. I realized then that I need you. Whatever else it costs, I want to be with you.”
The grip on my shoulders tightened and he drew me off my stool and onto his lap. “Say it again,” he whispered. “I think that I am dreaming this.”
“I need you,” I whispered, my eyes searching his intent face. “Whatever else it costs, I want to be with you.”
“Will you marry me?” he asked.
I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the warm column of his neck. “Oh yes,” I said. “Oh yes.”
We were married as soon as my gown and my linen were washed and dried since I refused absolutely to go to the church in his breeches. The priest knew William, and opened the church for us the very next day and performed the service with absentminded speed. I didn’t mind. I had been married first at the royal chapel in Greenwich Palace with the king in attendance and the marriage had been a cover for a love affair within a few years, and had ended in death. This wedding, so simple and easy, would take me to a quite different future: a house of my own wit
h a man that I loved.
We walked back to the farmhouse hand in hand and we had a wedding feast of freshly baked bread and a ham which William had smoked in his chimney.
“I shall have to learn how to do all of this,” I said uneasily, looking up to the rafters where the three remaining legs of William’s last pig were hanging.
He laughed. “It’s easy enough,” he said. “And we’ll get a girl in to help you. We’ll need a couple of women working here when the babies come.”
“The babies?” I asked, thinking of Catherine and Henry.
He smiled. “Our babies,” he said. “I want a house filled with little Staffords. Don’t you?”
We set off back to Westminster the next day. I had already sent a note upriver to George, imploring him to tell Anne and my uncle that I had been taken ill. I said that I had been so afraid that it was the sweat that I left court without seeing them, and had gone to Hever until I recovered. It was a lie too late, and too unlikely to convince anyone who thought about it, but I was gambling on the fact that with Anne married to the king and pregnant with his child, no one would be thinking or caring very much what I did at all.
We went back to London by barge, with the two horses loaded with us. I was reluctant to go. I had meant to leave court and live with William in the country, not to disrupt his plans and take him away from his farm. But William was determined. “You’ll never settle without your children,” he predicted. “And I don’t want your unhappiness on my conscience.”
“So it’s not an act of generosity at all,” I said with spirit.
“Last thing I want is a miserable wife,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve tried to ride with you from Hever to London, remember. I know what a sad little drab you can be.”
We caught an incoming tide and an onshore wind and we made good time upriver. We landed at Westminster stairs and I walked up while William went round to the jetty to unload the horses. I promised to meet him on the stairs to the great hall within the hour; by that time I should have discovered how the land lay.
I went straight to George’s rooms. Oddly, his door was locked and so I tapped on it, the Boleyn knock, and waited for his response. I heard a scuffling and then the door swung open. “Oh it’s you,” George said.
Sir Francis Weston was with him, straightening his doublet as I came into the room.
“Oh,” I said, stepping back.
“Francis took a fall from his horse,” George said. “Can you walk all right now, Francis?”
“Yes, but I’ll go and rest,” he said. He bowed low over my hand and did not comment on the state of my gown and cape which bore all the signs of hard wear and home washing.
As soon as the door was shut behind him I turned to George. “George, I’m so sorry, but I had to go. Did you manage to lie for me?”
“William Stafford?” he asked.
I nodded.
“I thought as much,” he said. “God, what fools we both are.”
“Both of us?” I asked, warily.
“In our different ways,” he said. “Went to him and had him, did you?”
“Yes,” I said shortly. I did not dare trust even George with the explosive news that we were married. “And he’s come back to court with me. Will you get him a place with the king? He can’t serve Uncle again.”
“I can get him something,” George said doubtfully. “Howard stock is very high at the moment. But what d’you want with him at court? You’re bound to be found out.”
“George, please,” I said. “I’ve asked for nothing. Everyone has had places or land or money from Anne’s rise, but I have asked for nothing except my children, and she has taken my son. This is the first thing I’ve ever asked for.”
“You’ll get caught,” George warned. “And then disgraced.”
“We all have secrets,” I said. “Even Anne herself. I’ve protected Anne’s secrets, I’d protect you, I want you to do the same for me.”
“Oh very well,” he said unwillingly. “But you must be discreet. No more riding out together alone. For God’s sake don’t get yourself in pup. And if Uncle finds a husband for you, you’ll have to marry. Love or no.”
“I’ll deal with that when it happens,” I said. “And you’ll get him a place?”
“He can be a gentleman usher to the king. But make very sure that he knows it is my favor that has bought it for him, and that he keeps his ears and eyes open in my interest. He’s my man now.”
“No he’s not,” I said with a sly smile. “He’s very much mine.”
“Good God, what a whore,” my brother laughed, and pulled me into his arms.
“And am I safe? Did they all believe I went to Hever?”
“Yes,” he said. “Nobody noticed you gone at all for a day. They asked me if I had taken you to Hever without permission and it seemed the safest thing to say yes, until I knew what the devil you were doing. I said you feared that the children were ill. When I got your note the lie was already told, and so I’ve stuck to it. Everyone thinks that you dashed off to Hever and I took you. It’s not a bad lie and it should hold.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’d better go and change my gown before anyone sees me like this.”
“You’d better throw it away. You’re a mad romp, you know, Marianne. I never thought you had it in you. It was always Anne who insisted on going her own way. I thought you would do as you are told.”
“Not this time,” I said, blew him a kiss, and left him.
I met William as I had promised; but it was odd and uncomfortable to have to stand at arm’s distance and speak like strangers when I wanted his arms around me and his kisses in my hair.
“George lied for me already, so I am safe. And he says he can get you the post of gentleman usher to the king.”
“How I rise in the world!” William said sardonically. “I knew that marriage to you would benefit me. Farmer to gentleman usher in one day.”
“The block the next day if you don’t mind your tongue,” I warned him.
He laughed and took my hand and kissed it. “I’ll go and find some lodgings just outside the walls and we can spend every night together even if we have to spend our days apart like this.”
“Yes,” I said. “I want that.”
He smiled at me. “You’re my wife,” he said gently. “I’m not going to let you go now.”
I found Anne in the queen’s chambers, starting work with her ladies on an enormous altar cloth. The sight was so reminiscent of Queen Katherine that for a moment I blinked, and then I saw the crucial differences. Anne’s ladies were all Howard family members or our chosen favorites. Prettiest of the girls was undoubtedly our cousin Madge Shelton, the new Howard girl at court, wealthiest and most influential was Jane Parker, George’s wife. The very air of the room was different: Queen Katherine often had one of us reading to her, from the Bible or from some book of sermons. Anne had music, there were four musicians playing as I came in, and one of the ladies lifted her head and sang as she worked.
And there were gentlemen in the room. Queen Katherine, brought up in the strict seclusion of the Spanish royal court, was always formal—even after years in England. The gentlemen visited with the king, they were always made welcome and always royally entertained—but in general the courtiers did not linger in the queen’s rooms. What flirtations there were took place in the unsupervised freedom of the gardens or out hunting.
The state kept by Anne was far more merry. There were half a dozen men in the room; Sir William Brereton was there, helping Madge to sort the embroidery silks into colors, Sir Thomas Wyatt was in the windowseat listening to the music, Sir Francis Weston was looking over Anne’s shoulder and praising her sewing, and in a corner of the room Jane Parker was in whispered talk with James Wyville.
Anne barely glanced up when I came in, in a clean green gown. “Oh you’re back,” she said indifferently. “Are the children well again?”
“Yes,” I said. “It was only a rheum.”
“It m
ust be lovely at Hever,” Sir Thomas Wyatt remarked from the windowseat. “Are the daffodils out by the river?”
“Yes,” I lied quickly. “In bud,” I corrected myself.
“But the fairest flower of Hever is here,” Sir Thomas said, looking over at Anne.
She glanced up from her sewing. “And also in bud,” she said provocatively, and the ladies laughed with her.
I looked from Sir Thomas to Anne. I had not thought that she would have even hinted at her pregnancy, especially before gentlemen.
“Would that I were the little bee that played in the petals,” Sir Thomas said, continuing the bawdy jest.
“You would find the flower closed quite tight against you,” Anne said.
Jane Parker’s bright eyes turned from one player to the other as if she were watching tennis. The whole game suddenly seemed to me a waste of the time that I could have been spending with William, yet another masque in the unending make-believe of the court. I was hungry for real love now.
“When do we move?” I asked, breaking into the flirtation. “When do we go on progress?”
“Next week,” Anne said indifferently, snipping a thread. “We go to Greenwich, I believe. Why?”
“I’m tired of the City.”
“How restless you are,” Anne complained. “Only just back from Hever and you want to be off again. You need a man to tie you down, sister. You’ve been a widow for too long.”
At once I subsided into the windowseat beside Sir Thomas. “No indeed,” I said. “See, I am as quiet as any sleeping cat.”
Anne laughed shortly. “Anyone would think that you had an aversion to men.”
The ladies laughed at the note of malice.
“Just a disinclination.”
“You never had a reputation for being disinclined,” Anne said cattily.
I smiled back at her. “You never had a reputation for being willing. But now, see, we are both happy.”
She bit her lip at that retort, and I saw her think of snubs which she could make in reply, and reject half of them for being too bawdy, or too near to the truth of her own status as a royal mistress no better than I had been.