“Does George know?” she demanded.
“No. I told you he does not. I only came to you. Only you can help me.”
“Never,” she swore. “You have married a poor man for love, you can eat love, you can drink it. You can live off it. Go to his little farm in Rochford and rot there, and when Father or George or I come down to Rochford Hall make very sure that you are nowhere in our sight. You are banished from court, Mary. You have ruined yourself and I will set a seal on it. You are gone. I have no sister.”
“Anne!” I cried, utterly aghast.
She turned a furious face to me. “Shall I call the guards and have you thrown out of the gates?” she demanded. “For I swear I will do so.”
I fell to my knees. “My son,” was all I could say.
“My son,” she said vindictively. “I will tell him that his mother is dead and that he is to call me mother. You have lost everything for love, Mary. I hope it brings you joy.”
There was nothing I could say. I rose awkwardly to my feet, my heavy belly making it hard for me to rise. She watched me struggle as if she would sooner push me down than help me. I turned to the door and hesitated with my hand on the handle in case she should change her mind. “My son…”
“Go,” she said. “You are dead to me. And don’t approach the king or I shall tell him what a whore you have been.”
I slipped out of the door and went to my bedroom.
Madge Shelton was changing her dress before the looking glass. She turned when she heard me come in, a bright smile on her young face. She took one look at my grim expression and I saw her eyes widen. That one look said everything that was different between our ages, between our positions, between our places in the Howard family. She was a young girl with everything to sell and I was a woman twice married who would have three children at twenty-seven, cast out by my family and nothing to turn to but one man on a little farm. I was a woman who had her chance and botched it.
“Are you sick?” she asked.
“Ruined,” I said shortly.
“Oh,” she said with all the doltishness of vain youth. “Sorry.”
I found a grim little laugh. “That’s all right,” I said dourly. “It’s a bed of my own making.”
I threw my riding cloak on the bed and she saw the broad lacing of my stomacher. She gave a little gasp of horror.
“Aye,” I said. “I’m carrying a baby, and I am married, if you want to know.”
“The queen?” she asked in a half-whisper, knowing, as we all knew, that the one thing this queen hated was fertile women.
“Not best pleased,” I said.
“Your husband?”
“William Stafford.”
A gleam in her dark eyes told me that she had noticed more than she had said. “I’m so pleased for you,” she said. “He’s a handsome man and a good man. I thought you liked him. So all these nights…?”
“Yes,” I said shortly.
“What happens now?”
“We’ll have to make our own way in the world,” I said. “We’ll go to Rochford. He has a little farm there. We might do nicely.”
“On a little farm?” Madge asked incredulously.
“Yes,” I said with sudden energy. “Why not? There are other places to live than in palaces and castles. There are other tunes to dance to other than the court’s music. We don’t always have to wait on a king and queen. I have spent all my life at court, wasted my girlhood and womanhood here. I am sorry that I shall be poor but I am damned if I will miss the life here.”
“And your children?” she asked.
The question knocked the wind out of me like a blow to the belly. My knees buckled and I sank to the floor, holding myself tight, as if my heart would break out of me. “Oh, my children,” I said in a whisper.
“Does the queen keep them?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. She keeps my son.” I could have said more, and that very bitter. I could have said that she kept my son because she could have none of her own. That she had taken from me everything that she ever could take, she would always take everything from me. That she and I were sisters and deadly rivals and nothing would ever stop us from endlessly eyeing the other’s plate and fearing that the other had the biggest portion. Anne wanted to punish me for refusing to dance in her shadow. And she knew that she had chosen the one forfeit in the world that I could not bear to pay.
“At least I will escape her,” I said. “And escape this family’s ambition.”
Madge looked at me wide-eyed, as worldly as a fawn. “But escaped to what?”
Anne was quick to announce my departure. My father and mother would not even see me before I left court. Only George came down to the stable yard to watch my trunks being loaded onto a cart, and William help me up into the saddle and then mount his own hunter.
“Write to me,” George said. He was scowling with worry. “Are you well enough to travel all that way?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I’ll take care of her,” William assured him.
“You’ve not done a wonderful job so far,” George said unpleasantly. “She’s ruined, she’s stripped of her pension, and she’s banned from court.”
I saw William’s hand tighten on the reins and his horse sidled. “Not my doing,” William said levelly. “That’s the spite and ambition of the queen and the Boleyn family. In any other family in the land Mary would be allowed to marry a gentleman of her choice.”
“Stop it,” I said quickly, before George could reply.
George took a breath and bowed his head. “She’s not been best treated,” he conceded. He looked up at William, seated high on the horse above him, and smiled his rueful, charming Boleyn smile. “We had our minds on targets other than her happiness.”
“I know,” said William. “But I do not.”
George looked wistful. “I wish you would tell me the secret of true love,” he said. “Here’s the two of you riding off the very edge of the world and yet you look as if someone has just given you an earldom.”
I put my hand out to William and he gripped it hard. “I just found the man I love,” I said simply. “I could never have had a man who loved me more, nor a more honest man.”
“Go then!” George said. He pulled off his cap as the wagon lurched forward. “Go and be happy together. I’ll do the best I can to get you your place and your pension.”
“Just my children,” I said. “That’s all I want.”
“I’ll speak to the king when I can, and you can write. Write to Cromwell perhaps, and I’ll talk to Anne. It’s not forever. You’ll come back, won’t you? You’ll come back?”
There was an odd tone to his voice; not at all as if he were promising me my safe return to the center of the kingdom, more as if he feared being without me. He did not sound like one of the greatest men at a great court, he sounded more like a boy abandoned in a dangerous place.
“Keep yourself safe!” I said, suddenly shivering. “Keep out of bad company, and watch over Anne!”
I had not been mistaken. The expression on his face was one of fear. “I’ll try.” His voice rang with hollow confidence. “I will try!”
The wagon went out under the archway and William and I rode side by side after it. I looked back at George and he seemed very young and far away. He waved at me and called something, but over the grinding of the wheels on the cobbles and the ringing of the horses’ hooves I could not hear.
We came out onto the road and William let his horse lengthen his stride so that we overtook the slow-moving wagon and were clear of the dust from its wheels. My hunter would have trotted to keep up, but I steadied her into a walk. I rubbed my face with the back of my glove and William looked sideways at me. “No regrets?” he asked gently.
“I just fear for him,” I said.
He nodded. He knew too much about George’s life at court to offer me a glib reassurance. George’s love affair with Sir Francis, their indiscreet circle of friends, their drinking,
their gambling, their whoring, was slowly coming to be an open secret. More and more men at court were taking their pleasures more and more wildly, George among them.
“And for her,” I said, thinking of my sister who had banished me like a beggar and so left herself with only one friend in the world.
William leaned over and put his hand over mine. “Come on,” he said, and we turned our horses’ heads to the river and rode down to meet the waiting boat.
We disembarked at Leigh early in the morning. The horses were cold and fretting after the long river journey and we walked them up the lane, north to Rochford. William took us down the little track which led cross-country to his farm. The early morning mist swirled damp and cold over the fields, it was the very worst time of year to come to the country. It would be a long waterlogged icy winter in the little farmhouse, a long way from anywhere. The dampness on my skirts now would hardly dry out for six months.
William glanced back at me. He smiled. “Sit up, sweetheart, and look about you. The sun’s coming out, and we’ll be all right.”
I managed a smile and I straightened my back and pressed my horse onward. Ahead of me I could see the thatched roof of his farmhouse, and then, as we came over the rise of a hill, the whole pretty little fifty acres, laid out below us with the river lapping up to the bottom fields and the stable yard and barn as neat and as trim as I remembered it.
We rode down the lane and William dismounted to open the gate. A small boy emerged from nowhere and looked doubtfully at the two of us. “You can’t come in,” he said firmly. “This belongs to Sir William Stafford. A great man at court.”
“Thank you,” William said. “I am Sir William Stafford and you can tell your mother that you are a fine gatekeeper. Tell her that I am come home, and brought my wife, and that we need bread and milk and some bacon and cheese.”
“You are Sir William Stafford, for sure?” the boy confirmed.
“Yes.”
“Then she’ll probably kill a chicken as well,” he said, and legged it across the fields to the little cottage set half a mile away on the lane.
I rode Jesmond through the gate and pulled up in the stable yard. William helped me from the saddle and threw the reins over a hitching post while he took me into the house. The door to the kitchen was open, and we stepped over the threshold together.
“Sit down,” William said, pressing me into a chair by the fireside. “I’ll soon get this lit.”
“Not at all,” I said. “I’m going to be a farmer’s wife, remember. I’ll light the fire and you can see to the horses.”
He hesitated. “D’you know how to light a fire, my little love?”
“Go away!” I said in mock indignation. “Out of my kitchen. I need to set things to rights here.”
It was like playing at house, like my children might do in a den made of bracken, and at the same time it was a real house, and a real challenge. There was kindling laid in the grate and a tinder box so it did not take me more than about fifteen minutes of patient, painstaking work to get the fire lit and the little flames licking around the wood. The chimney was cold but the wind was in the right quarter so it soon started to draw. William came in from the horses just as the lad returned from the cottage bringing a parcel of food wrapped up in a muslin cloth. We spread the whole thing out on the wooden table and made a little feast of it. William opened a bottle of wine from his cellar under the stairs, and we drank to each other’s healths and to the future.
The family who had been farming the fields for William while he had been at court had served him well. The hedges were in good trim, the ditches clear, the meadow fields had been cut for hay and the hay was safely in the barn. The older animals of the herd of cows and sheep would be slaughtered through the autumn, and their meat would be salted or smoked. We had chickens in the yard, we had doves in the cote, and a limitless supply of fish from the stream. For a few pence we could go down to the river and buy sea fish from the fishermen. It was a prosperous farm and an easy place to live.
The urchin’s mother, Megan, came over to the farmhouse every day to help me with the work and to teach me the skills I needed to know. She taught me how to churn butter and how to make cheese. She taught me how to bake bread and to pluck a chicken, a dove, or a game bird. It should have been easy and delightful to learn such important skills. I was absolutely exhausted by it.
I felt the skin on my hands grow dry and hard and saw, in the small sliver of looking glass, my face slowly color with the sun and the wind. I fell into my bed at the end of every day and I slept without dreaming: the sleep of a woman on the edge of exhaustion. But though I was tired at the end of each day I felt I had achieved something, however small. I liked the work since it put food on our table or pence in our savings jar. I liked the feeling that we were building a place together, claiming the land as our own. I liked learning the skills that a poor woman was taught from childhood and when Megan asked me did I not miss my fine clothes and fancy gowns at court, I remembered the endless drudgery of dancing with men I did not like, and flirting with men I did not desire, playing cards and losing a small fortune, and forever trying to please everyone around me. Here there was just William and I, and we lived as easily and as joyfully as two birds in a hedge—just as he had promised.
My only sorrow was the loss of my children. I wrote to them every week and once a month I wrote to George or to Anne, wishing them well. I wrote to Secretary Thomas Cromwell asking him to intervene with my sister and ask her if we might come back to court. But I would not in any way apologize for the choice I had made. I would not sweeten my request with an apology. The words froze on my pen, I could not say that I regretted loving William, for every day I loved him more. In a world where women were bought and sold as horses I had found a man I loved; and married for love. I would never suggest that this was a mistake.
Winter 1535
AT CHRISTMAS I HAD A LETTER FROM MY BROTHER, GEORGE.
Dear Sister,
I send you greetings of the season and hope that it finds you as well in your farmhouse as I am at court. Perhaps better.
Matters here are gone a little sour for our sister. The king has been riding and dancing with a Seymour girl—you remember Jane? The one who always looks down: so sweetly; and upward: so surprised? The king has been seeking her right under the nose of our sister and she is not best pleased. She has rung a few storms over his head but she does not move him to tears as she once did. He can tolerate her displeasure, he just goes away from her. You can imagine what this does to her temper.
Our uncle, taking warning from the king’s straying, has been putting Madge Shelton in his way, and His Majesty is torn between the two of them. Since they are both ladies in waiting the queen’s rooms are in continual uproar and the king finds it safer to go hunting a good deal and leave the ladies to cry and scream and scratch each other’s faces undisturbed.
Anne is sick with fear and I cannot tell what will be the outcome. She never thought when she overthrew a queen that thereafter all queens would be unsteady. She has no friend at court but me. Father, Mother and Uncle are all in favor of putting Madge forward, to keep the king’s eye from the Seymour girl. This leaves a very sour taste with Anne, who accuses the family of seeking to supplant her with a new Howard girl. She misses you, but she will not say it.
I speak of you but there is nothing I can tell her which would reconcile her to your marriage. If you had married a prince and been unhappy she would have stood your dearest friend. What breaks her heart is thinking of you finding love, while she is in the greatest court of Europe, frightened and unhappy.
I get richer every day and my wife is a curse to me and my friend is my delight and my torment. This court would corrupt a saint and neither Anne nor I were saints to begin with. She is desperately lonely and frightened and I long for what I cannot have and am forced to keep my desires hidden. I am weary and angry and this Christmas season seems to offer little to us Boleyns unless Anne can get herself
with child again. Write to me to tell me of your news. I hope you are as happy as I imagine you to be.
Your brother
George.
William and I celebrated the Christmas feast with a great haunch of venison. I took care not to ask where the beast had been killed. My family’s parkland at Rochford Hall was well-stocked and ill-guarded, and there was little doubt in my mind that I had just bought my own deer. But since neither Father nor Mother sent me greetings I thought that I might award myself a gift from their wealth, and I bought the deer at a knockdown price, and a brace of pheasants too. The work of the farm did not stop for the twelve days but we found time to go to Christmas Mass, to see the mummers at Rochford, to drink a wassail cup with our neighbors, and to walk alone beside the river while the seagulls cried over our heads and a cold wind blew up the estuary.
In the iron days of February I prepared for my lying in. This time I would not be a grand lady at court, I would not have to take to my room for a month. I might do as I pleased. William was more apprehensive than I, he insisted that we send for a midwife to stay at the house with us from the last days of the month, to make sure that there was no danger of the baby coming while we were cut off by snow. I laughed at his anxiety but I did as he wished and an old woman, more like a witch than a midwife, came and stayed with us from the first days of March, and watched over me.
I was glad that William had been so careful when I woke one morning and found the room filled with a brilliant white light. It had snowed in the night and it was still snowing, thick white flakes which blew soundlessly out of a gray sky, and swirled around the yard. The world was transformed into a place of utter silence and magic. The hens hid inside their coop, only their three-toed tracks in the yard showed that they had ventured out looking for food. The sheep huddled at the gate, brown and dirty against the whiter field. The cows crowded into the barn and their field was bleached lawn. I sat at the window, feeling my belly churn as the baby moved inside me, and watched the drifts swell and curve along the hedge. It looked as if not a flake was landing, as if they were just swirling and blowing around the house, but every hour the peaks and troughs of the snowdrifts grew higher and more exotically sculpted. When I looked down from the window, the flakes were white as duck feathers, but when I craned my neck and looked up, they were like scraps of gray lace, dirty against a dull sky.