Part 17 (1/2)

I kept my silence, and my eyes down. When I looked up he was smiling at me, his ironical half-sad crooked smile. ”Ah, little wife,” he said gently. ”We did not have much time together, did we? We did not bed very well nor very often. We did not learn tenderness or even desire. We only had a little time.”

”I am sorry for that too,” I said softly.

”Sorry that we did not bed?”

”My lord?” I said, genuinely confused by the sudden sharpness in his tone.

”It has been suggested, very politely by your kinsmen, that perhaps I had dreamed it all and we did not bed at all. Is that your wish? That I deny ever having had you?”

I was startled. ”No! You know it is not my wishes that are consulted in these matters.”

”And they have not told you to tell the king that I was impotent on our wedding night and every night thereafter?”

I shook my head. ”Why would I say such a thing?”

He smiled. ”To get our marriage set aside,” he suggested. ”So that you are an unmarried woman. And the next baby is Fitzroy and perhaps Henry can be prevailed on to make him legitimate, the son and heir to the throne. Then you are the mother of the next King of England.”

There was a silence. I found I was staring blankly at him. ”They never want me to do that?” I whispered.

”Oh you Boleyns,” he said gently. ”What happens to you, Mary, if they have our marriage set aside and push you forward? It overthrows the state of marriage and it names you, without contradiction, as a wh.o.r.e, a pretty little wh.o.r.e.”

I felt my cheeks blaze but I kept my mouth shut. He looked at me for a moment and I saw the anger drain from his face and be replaced with a sort of weary compa.s.sion. ”Say what you have to say,” he recommended me. ”Whatever they order you. If they press you to say that on our bedding night I juggled with silver pomanders all night and never lay between your legs, you can say that, swear it if you have to-and you will have to. You are going to face the enmity of Queen Katherine herself, and the hatred of all of Spain. I shall spare you mine. Poor silly little girl. If it had been a boy in that cradle I think they would have pushed you into perjury the moment you were churched, to get rid of me, and to lure Henry on.”

We looked at each other very steadily for a moment. ”Then, you and I must be the only people in the whole world who are not sorry it is a girl,” I whispered. ”Because I don't want more than I have now.”

He smiled his bitter courtier smile. ”But next time?”

The court went on its midsummer progress, down the dusty lanes to Suss.e.x and on to Winchester and thence to the New Forest so that the king could hunt deer every day from dawn till twilight and then feast on venison every night. My husband went with his king, close at his side, boys together, no thought of jealousy when the court was on the move and the hounds were running ahead of the horses and yelping, and the hawks were coming behind in their special cart with their trainers riding alongside and singing to them to keep them calm. My brother went too, riding alongside Francis Weston, astride a new black hunter, a big strong beast which the king had given him from the royal stables, as a further token of his affection for me and mine. My father was in Europe, as part of the unending negotiations between England, France and Spain, trying to rein in the ambitions of three greedy bright young monarchs all jockeying for the t.i.tle of the greatest king in Europe. My mother went with the court, with her own little train of servants. My uncle went, with his own men in Howard livery and with a wary eye always for the ambitions and pretensions of the Seymour family. The Percy family were there, Charles Brandon and Queen Mary, the London goldsmiths, the foreign diplomats: all the great men of England abandoned their fields, their farms, their s.h.i.+ps, their mining, their trading, and their city houses to go hunting with the king, and not one dared to lag behind in case there was money being granted or land being dispensed, or favors to be had, or the king's dancing eyes might turn on a pretty daughter or a wife and a position might be gained.

I, thank G.o.d, was spared it this year, and I was glad to be away, riding slowly down the lanes to Kent. Anne met me in the neat courtyard of Hever Castle, her face as dark as a midsummer storm. ”You must be mad,” she said in greeting. ”What are you doing here?”

”I want to be here with my baby this summer. I need to rest.”

”You don't look like you need a rest.” She scrutinized my face. ”You look beautiful,” she conceded grudgingly.

”But look at her.” I pulled the white lace shawl back from Catherine's little face. She had slept for most of the journey, rocked by the jolting of the litter.

Anne politely glanced. ”Sweet,” she said, without much conviction. ”But why didn't you send her down with the wet nurse?”

I sighed at the impossibility of convincing Anne that there was anywhere better to be than the court. I led the way into the hall and let the wet nurse take Catherine from my arms to change her swaddling clothes.

”And then bring her back to me,” I stipulated.

I sat on one of the carved chairs at the great hall table and smiled at Anne as she stood before me, as impatient as an interrogator.

”I'm not really interested in the court,” I said flatly. ”It's having a baby; you wouldn't understand. It's as if I suddenly know what the purpose of life is. It's not to rise in the king's favor nor to make one's way at court. Nor even to raise one's family a little higher. There are things that matter more. I want her to be happy. I don't want her to be sent away as soon as she is old enough to walk. I want to be tender with her, I want her to be schooled under my eye. I want her to grow up here and know the river and the fields and the willows in the watermeadows. I don't want her to be a stranger in her own country.”

Anne looked rather blank. ”It's just a baby,” she said flatly. ”And chances are she'll die. You'll have dozens more. Are you going to be like this over all of them?”

I flinched at the thought of it, but she didn't even see. ”I don't know. I didn't know I'd feel like this over her. But I do, Anne. She's the most precious thing in the world. Much more important to me than anything else. I can't think about anything but caring for her and seeing that she is well and happy. When she cries it's like a knife in my heart, I can't bear the thought of her crying at all. And I want to see her grow. I won't be parted from her.”

”What does the king say?” Anne demanded, going to the one central point for a Boleyn.

”I haven't told him this,” I said. ”He was happy enough that I should go away for the summer and rest. He wanted to get off hunting. He was in a fever to go this year. He didn't mind too much.”

”Didn't mind too much?” she repeated incredulously.

”He didn't mind at all,” I corrected myself.

Anne nodded, nibbling her fingers. I could almost see the calculations of her brain as she picked over what I was saying. ”Very well then,” she said. ”If they don't insist that you go to court I don't see why I should worry. It's more amusing for me to have you here, G.o.d knows. You can chatter to that merciless old woman at least and spare me her unending talk.”

I smiled. ”You really are very disrespectful, Anne.”

”Oh yes, yes, yes,” she said impatiently, drawing up a stool. ”But now tell me all the news. Tell me about the queen, and I want to know what Thomas More has said about the new tract from Germany. And what are the plans for the French? Is it to be war again?”

”I am sorry.” I shook my head. ”Someone was talking about it the other night but I wasn't listening.”

She made a little noise and leaped to her feet. ”Oh very well then,” she said irritably. ”Talk to me about the baby. That's all you're interested in, isn't it? You sit with your head half-c.o.c.ked listening for her all the time, don't you? You look ridiculous. For heaven's sake sit up straight. The nurse won't bring her back any quicker for you looking like a hound on point.”

I laughed at the accuracy of her description. ”It's like being in love. I want to see her all the time.”

”You're always in love,” Anne said crossly. ”You're like a big b.u.t.ter ball, always oozing love for someone or other. Once it was the king and we did very well out of that. Now it's his baby, which will do us no good at all. But you don't care. It's always seep seep seep with you: pa.s.sion and feeling and desire. It makes me furious.”

I smiled at her. ”Because you are all ambition,” I said.

Her eyes gleamed. ”Of course. What else is there?”

Henry Percy hovered between us, tangible as a ghost. ”Don't you want to know if I have seen him?” I asked. It was a cruel question and I asked it hoping to see pain in her eyes, but I got nothing for my malice. Her face was cold and hard, she looked as if she had finished weeping for him and as if she would never weep for a man again.

”No,” she said. ”So you can tell them when they ask that I never mentioned his name. He gave up, didn't he? He married another woman.”

”He thought you'd abandoned him,” I protested.

She turned her head away. ”If he'd been a proper man he'd have gone on loving me,” she said, her voice harsh. ”If it had been the other way round I'd never have married while my lover was free. He gave in, he let me go. I'll never forgive him. He's dead for me. I can be dead for him. All I want to do is to get out of this grave and get back to court. All that there is left for me is ambition.”

Anne, Grandmother Boleyn, Baby Catherine and I settled down to spend the summer together in enforced companions.h.i.+p. As I grew stronger and the pain in my privates eased, I got back on my horse and started to ride out in the afternoons. I rode all around our valley and up to the hills of the Weald. I watched the hay meadows turn green again after their first cut, and the sheep grow white and fluffy with new wool. I wished the reapers joy at the harvest when they went into the wheatfields to sickle the first of the crop and saw them load the grain into great carts and take it to the granary and the mill. We ate hare one night after the reapers had sent in the dogs after the animals trapped in the last stand of wheat. I saw the cows separated from their calves for weaning and felt my own b.r.e.a.s.t.s ache with sympathy when I saw them crowding around the gate and trying to break through the thick-set hedges, barging and tossing their heads and bellowing for their babies.

”They'll forget, Lady Carey,” the cowman said to me consolingly. ”They won't cry for more than a few days.”

I smiled at him. ”I wish we could leave them a little longer.”

”It's a hard world for man and beast,” he said firmly. ”They have to go, or how will you get your b.u.t.ter and your cheese?”