“Can you move your feet, Henry?”
We all saw his boots twitch. “Yes.”
“And all your fingers?”
I felt his hand grip mine more strongly.
“Aye.”
“Does it hurt inside you, my love? Does your belly hurt?”
He shook his head. “It hurts all over.”
I looked at the physician.
“He should be leeched.”
“When you don’t even know where he is hurt?”
“He could be bleeding inside.”
“Let me sleep,” Henry said quietly. “Stay with me, Mary.”
I turned away from the doctor to look down into the king’s face. He looked so much younger, lying quietly and drowsily, that I could almost believe that he had been the young prince that I had adored. The fatness of his cheeks fell away as he lay on his back, the beautiful line of his brow was unchanged. This man was the only one who could hold the country together. Without him we would all be ruined: not just the Howard family, not just us Boleyns, but every man and woman and child in every parish in the country. No one else would stop the lords snapping at the crown. There were four heirs with good claims to the throne: Princess Mary, my niece Elizabeth, my son Henry, and the bastard Henry Fitzroy. The church was in uproar already, the Spanish emperor or the French king would take a mandate from the Pope to come to restore order and then we would never be rid of them.
“Will you get better if you sleep?” I asked him.
He opened his blue eyes and smiled at me. “Oh yes,” he said in his little voice.
“Will you lie still if we carry you upstairs to your bed?”
He nodded. “Hold my hand.”
I turned to the physician. “Should we do that? Get him to bed and let him rest?”
He looked terrified. The future of England was in his hands. “I think so,” he said uncertainly.
“Well, he can’t sleep here,” I pointed out.
George stepped forward and picked out half a dozen of the strongest-looking men, and ranged them around the litter. “You keep hold of his hand, Mary, and keep him still. The rest of you lift when I say the word and go to the stairs. We’ll take a rest on the first landing and then go again. One, two, three, now: lift.”
They strained to lift him and to hold the litter level. I went alongside, my hand gripped in the king’s. They got into a shuffling stride which kept them all together and we made it up the stairs to the king’s apartments. Someone ran on ahead and threw open the double doors into his presence chamber and then beyond, into the privy chamber. They laid the litter on the bed, the king was badly jolted as they put it down, he groaned in bewildered pain. Then we had the task of getting him off the litter and onto his bed. There was nothing for it but for the men to climb on the bed and take him by his shoulders and feet and heave him up, while the others dragged the litter out from underneath him.
I saw the physician’s expression at this rough treatment and I realized that if the king was bleeding inside, then we had probably just killed him. He groaned in pain and for a moment I thought it was the death rattle and that we would all be blamed for this. But then he opened his eyes and looked at me.
“Katherine?” he asked.
There was a superstitious hiss from all the men around me. I looked to George. “Out,” he said shortly. “Everyone out.”
Sir Francis Weston came toward him and whispered quietly in his ear. George listened attentively and touched Sir Francis’s arm in thanks.
“It is the queen’s orders that His Majesty be left with the physicians and with his dear sister-in-law, Mary, and with me,” George announced. “The rest of you can wait outside.”
Reluctantly, they left the room. Outside I heard my uncle stating very loudly that if the king were incapacitated then the queen would be Regent for the Princess Elizabeth, and that no one should need reminding that they had all, individually, sworn their loyalty to the Princess Elizabeth, his only chosen and legitimate heir.
“Katherine?” Henry asked again, looking up at me.
“No, it’s me, Mary,” I said gently. “Mary Boleyn as was. Mary Stafford now.”
Shakily he took my hand and raised it to his lips. “My love,” he said softly, and none of us knew which of his many loves he was addressing: the queen who had died still loving him, the queen who was sick with fear in the same palace, or me, the girl he had once loved.
“D’you want to sleep?” I asked anxiously.
His blue gaze was hazy, he looked like a drunkard. “Sleep. Yes,” he mumbled.
“I’ll sit beside you.” George pulled up a chair for me and I sat down without drawing my hand away from the king.
“Pray to God he wakes up,” George said, looking down at Henry’s waxy face and his fluttering eyelids.
“Amen,” I said. “Amen.”
We sat with him till the middle of the afternoon, the physicians at the foot of the bed, George and I at the head, my mother and father forever coming in and out, my uncle away somewhere, plotting.
Henry was sweating and one of the physicians went to ease the covers back from him, but suddenly checked. On his fat calf where he had been injured jousting long ago was a dark ugly stain of blood and pus. His wound, which had never properly healed, had opened up again.
“He should be leeched,” the man said. “Get the leeches onto that and let them suck out the poison.”
“I can’t look,” I confessed shakily to George.
“Go and sit in the window, and don’t you dare faint,” he said roughly. “I’ll call you when they’ve got them on and you can come back to the bedside.”
I stayed in the window seat, resolutely not looking back, trying not to hear the clink of the jars as they put the black slugs on the king’s legs and left them to suck away at the torn flesh. Then George called, “Come back and sit beside him, you needn’t see anything.” And I returned to my place at the head of the bed, only going away when the leeches had sucked themselves into little sated balls of black slime and could be taken off the wound.
In the mid-afternoon, I was holding the king’s hand and stroking it, like one might gentle a sick dog, when he suddenly gripped me, his eyes opened and his gaze was clear. “God’s blood,” he said. “I ache all over.”
“You had a fall from your horse,” I said, trying to judge if he knew where he was.
“I remember,” he said. “I don’t remember coming back to the palace.”
“We carried you in.” George came forward from the windowseat. “Brought you upstairs. You wanted Mary at your side.”
Henry gave me a mildly surprised smile. “I did?”
“You weren’t yourself,” I said. “You were wandering. Praise God you’re well again.”
“I’ll get a message to the queen.” George ordered one of the guards to tell her that the king was awake and well again.
Henry chuckled. “You must all have been sweating.” He went to move in the bed but he suddenly grimaced with pain. “God’s death! My leg.”
“Your old wound has opened up,” I said. “They put leeches on it.”
“Leeches. It needs a poultice. Katherine knows how to make it, ask her…” He bit his lip. “Someone should know how to treat it,” he said. “For God’s sake. Someone should know the recipe.” He was silent for a moment. “Give me wine.”
A page came running with a cup and George held it to the king’s lips. Henry drained it. His color came back and his attention returned to me. “So who moved first?” he asked curiously. “Seymour or Howard or Percy? Who was going to keep my throne warm for my daughter and call himself Regent for the whole of her minority?”
George knew Henry too well to be led into a laughing confession. “The whole court has been on its knees,” he said. “No one thought of anything but your health.”
Henry nodded, believing nothing.
“I’ll go and tell the court,” George said. “They will hold a thanksgiving Mass. We were most afraid.”
“Get me some more wine,” Henry said sulkily. “I ache as if every bone in my body was broken.”
“Shall I leave you?” I asked.
“Stay,” he said carelessly. “But lift these pillows behind my back. I can feel my back seizing up as I lie here. What idiot laid me so flat?”
I thought of the moment when we shunted him from the litter to the bed. “We were afraid to move you.”
“Chickens in the farmyard,” he said with mild satisfaction, “when the cock is taken away.”
“Thank God you were not taken away.”
“Yes,” he said with ungenerous relish. “It would go hard for the Howards and the Boleyns if I died today. You’ve made many enemies on your upward climb who would be happy to see you tumble down again.”
“My thoughts were only for Your Highness,” I said carefully.
“And would they have followed my wishes and put Elizabeth on my throne?” he asked with sudden sharpness. “I suppose you Howards would have got behind one of your own? But what about the others?”
I met his gaze. “I don’t know.”
“If I were not here with no prince to follow after me those oaths might not stick. D’you think they would have been true to the princess?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I couldn’t say. I wasn’t even with the court, I spent all the time in here, watching over you.”
“You would cleave to Elizabeth,” he said. “Regency to Anne with your uncle behind her, I suppose. A Howard ruling England in all but name. And then a woman to follow a woman, again ruled by a Howard.” He shook his head, his face darkening. “She must give me a son.” A vein throbbed at his temple and he put his hand to his head as if to press away the pain with his fingertips. “I’ll lie down again,” he said. “Take these damned pillows away. I can hardly see with the pain behind my eyes. A Howard girl as Regent and a Howard girl to follow her. A promise of nothing but disaster. She must give me a son this time.”
The door opened and Anne came in. She was still very white. She went slowly to Henry’s bed and took his hand. His eyes, screwed up with pain, scrutinized her pale face.
“I thought you would die,” she said flatly.
“And what would you have done?”
“I should have done my best as Queen of England,” she returned. She had her hand on her belly as she spoke.
He put his own bigger hand to cover hers. “You had better have a son in there, madam,” he said coldly. “I think your best as Queen of England would not be enough. I need a boy to hold this country together, the Princess Elizabeth and your scheming uncle is not what I want to leave behind when I die.”
“I want you to swear you’ll never ride in the joust again,” she said passionately.
He turned his head away from her. “Let me rest,” he said. “You with your swearing and your promises. God help me, I thought when I put the queen aside that I was getting something better than this.”
It was the bleakest of moments that I had ever seen between them. Anne did not even argue. Her face was as white as his. The two of them looked like ghosts, half-dead of their own fear. What might have been a loving reunion had served only to remind them both how slight was their hold on the country. Anne curtsied to the heavy body on the bed and went out of the room. She walked slowly as if she were carrying a weighty burden and she paused at the door for a moment.
As I watched her, she transformed herself. Her head went back, her lips curved up in a smile. Her shoulders straightened and she rose up, just a little, like a dancer when the music starts. Then she nodded at the guard on the door and he flung it open, and she went out to the buzz of noise of the court, with a face filled with thanksgiving to tell them that the king was well, that he had jested with her about falling from his horse, that he would ride in the joust again as soon as ever he could, and that they were merry.
Henry was quiet and thoughtful as he recovered from his fall. The aches in his body gave him a premonition of old age. The wound in his leg wept a mixture of blood and yellow pus, he had to have a thick bandage on it all the time, and when he sat, he propped it up on a footstool. He was humiliated by the sight of it, he who had always been so proud of his strong legs and his dogged stance. Now he limped when he walked and the line of his calf was destroyed by the bulky dressings. Worse than that, he smelled like a dirty hen coop. Henry, who had been the golden Prince of England, acknowledged as the most handsome man in Europe, could see old age coming toward him when he would be lame and in constant pain and stinking like a dirty monk.
Anne was quite incapable of understanding. “For God’s sake, husband, be happy!” she snapped at him. “You were spared, what else is there?”
“We were both spared,” he said. “For what would become of you if I were not here?”
“I should do well enough.”
“I think you all do well enough. If I were to die, you and yours would be in my seat while it was still warm.”
She could have held her tongue, but she was in the habit of flaring up at him. “D’you mean to insult me?” she demanded. “D’you accuse my family of anything other than complete loyalty?”
The court, waiting for dinner in the great hall, talked a little quieter, straining to hear.
“Howards are loyal firstly to themselves, secondly to their king,” Henry retorted.
I saw Sir John Seymour’s head come up and his little secret smile.
“My family have laid down their lives in your service,” Anne snapped.
“You and your sister certainly laid down,” Henry’s Fool interjected, as quick as a whip, and there was a roar of laughter. I blushed scarlet and I caught William’s eye. I saw his hand go to where his sword would be, but it was pointless to rail against a Fool, especially if the king was laughing.
Henry reached over and jovially patted Anne’s belly. “To good purpose,” he said. Irritably, she pushed his hand away. He froze, his good temper dying away in a moment.
“I’m not a horse,” she said sharply. “I don’t like to be patted like one.”
“No,” he said coldly. “If I had a horse as bad-tempered as you I would feed it to the dogs.”
“You’d do better to ride such a mare and tame her,” she challenged.
We waited for his usual hot response. There was a silence, it stretched into a minute. Anne’s smile grew strained.
“Some mares are hardly worth the breaking,” he said quietly.
Only a few people nearest to the high table could have heard him. Anne blanched white and then in an instant turned her head and laughed, a high rippling laugh, as if the king had said something irresistibly funny. Most people kept their heads down and pretended to be talking to their neighbors. Her eyes flicked past me to George and he looked back at her, holding her gaze for a moment, as palpable as a steadying hand.
“More wine, husband?” Anne asked without a quaver in her voice and the gentleman stepped forward and poured for the king and queen, and the dinner began.
Henry was sulky throughout dinner. Not even the dancing and the music lifted his spirits, though he drank and ate even more than usual. He rose to his feet and limped painfully among the court, saying a word here, listening to a gentleman who bowed to him and asked for a favor. He came to our table, where the queen’s ladies sat together, and he paused between me and Jane Seymour. We both rose to our feet, neck and neck, and he looked at Jane’s downcast smile as she curtsied to him.
“I am weary, Mistress Seymour,” he said. “I wish we were at Wulfhall and you could make a posset for me, from your herb garden.”
She rose up from her curtsy with the sweetest of smiles. “I so wish it too,” she said. “I would do anything to see Your Majesty rested, and eased of his pain.”
The Henry I knew would have said: “Anything?” for the pleasure of a bawdy jest. But this new Henry pulled out a stool for himself from the table and gestured that we should sit on either side of him. “You can cure bruises and bumps but not o
ld age,” he said. “I am forty-five and I never felt my age before.”
“It’s just the fall,” Jane said, her voice as sweet and as reassuring as milk dripping into the pail. “Of course you are hurt and tired, and you must be exhausted by your work for the safety of the kingdom. Night and day I know you think of it.”
“A fine legacy, if I had a son to leave it to,” he said mournfully. They both looked toward the queen. Anne, sparkling with irritation, looked back at them.
“Pray God that the queen has a son this time,” Jane said sweetly.
“Do you truly pray for me, Jane?” he asked very quietly.
She smiled. “It is my duty to pray for my king.”
“Will you pray for me tonight?” he said, quieter yet. “When I am sleepless and aching in every bone in my body, and fearful, I should like to think that you are praying for me.”
“I shall,” she said simply. “It will be as if I were in the room with you, resting my hand on your head, helping you to sleep.”
I bit my lip. At the next table I saw my daughter Catherine, round-eyed, trying to understand this novel form of flirtation done in tones of honeyed piety. The king rose to his feet with a little grunt of pain.
“An arm,” he said over his shoulder. Half a dozen men moved forward for the honor of helping His Majesty back to his throne on the dais. He brushed aside my brother George and chose instead Jane’s brother. Anne, George and I watched in silence, as a Seymour helped the king back to his throne.
“I’ll kill her,” Anne said grimly.
I was stretched out on her bed, idly leaning on one arm. George sprawled at the fireside, Anne was seated before her mirror, the maid combing her hair.
“I’ll do it for you,” I said. “Setting up to be a saint.”
“She’s very good,” George remarked judicially, as one commending an expert dancer. “Very different from you two. She’s sorry for him all the time. I think that’s tremendously seductive.”
“Pissy little mistress,” Anne said through her teeth. She took the comb from her maid. “And you can go.”
George poured us all another glass of wine.