The Last Boleyn(115)

“Yes, as you say, she will ruin her precious love match. But that marriage was a freak anyway, admit it, Mary. The both of them far gone in mutual love and the lady picks the man she marries! Ha! A rare miracle and not to be believed. And the king’s sister and his best friend at that! Most marriages about the royal court are made in hell, not heaven. I can attest well enough to that. Well, I see we are almost there. I had best get back to escorting Anne as His Grace sent me to do, or she will be put out. See you later, Mary.”

“Yes, dearest George,” she whispered to herself. Poor George, trapped with a woman he detested who would never bear him children, while Margot Wyatt played wife to some strange landowner in the north. And poor, bitter Anne still haunted by ghosts she could not exorcise. Mary was certain of it now, for Anne had leapt at the chance to help Eleanor Carey become Prioress of Wilton when she had seized on the thought that it would discomfort Wolsey if the king refused his candidate. To be so eaten by hatred of Wolsey after all these years without her Percy lad. If only Anne truly loved the king now, all this would be so much easier to accept.

Mary rose and walked steadily across the width of the still-rocking barge and from the little party awaiting them, Henry Norris gave her his hand. He looked well, she thought, for a man whose wife had died in childbirth only a few months ago. Anne strode off far ahead toward the palace, her gauzy silver jeweled headpiece floating across her black tresses and winking in the torchlight on the landing. She walked between George and father, the only Boleyns who really mattered anymore. Staff was right. She and mother would never be anything but Bullens despite the royal rain of titles on them. Bullens from Hever and proud of it, thought Mary as she lifted her head and smiled up at Norris.



Mary did as Staff had bid her when she sighted him with the beautifully gowned Cobham wench across the room. She kept a smile on her lips and chatted with her cousin Francis Bryan as the court assembled for dinner. After all, she had Staff’s gift around her bare throat and she could feel its metal weight along the swell of her breasts. And tonight he would be in her bed, not in flirty Dorothy Cobham’s.

“It is in the wind that there will be another Tudor visit to the court of Francois du Roi now that the sticky situation with France improves somewhat,” Francis was saying. “I have a wager on that the king will take Anne with him. Personally, I think it might be His Grace’s plan to test the waters to see if he can get support for the marriage elsewhere in case he does not get aid from Pope Clement.”

“Really, Francis,” Mary said low as her eyes went over his shoulder to her father, who was in earnest conversation with Anne and George on the royal dais, awaiting the king’s entry. “I think we had better forget the divorce if His Holiness does not grant it. It may mean Wolsey’s utter ruin, but the king can hardly circumvent the pope.”

Francis’s eyebrows raised in unfeigned surprise. “Then you are less in the council of Anne and your father than I had imagined.”

“What do you mean?”

“The king has a new advisor now to whose dark, sly voice he harkens well. See the short, square man in black by the dais—the one who entered with your father?”

“Yes, I see him. Who is it?”

“Thomas Cromwell, once a clerk, now a wily lawyer. And he will be more—much more. He has been Wolsey’s henchman and now he reports directly and only to the king.”

“So that is Master Cromwell. The king gave him the manor at Plashy, the Carey manor, you know. But I have never seen him about the king socially. Come, Francis. Do not coddle me. I have been through enough to handle whatever you have to say about the king’s Cromwell.”

“I know that, sweet Mary. Cromwell counsels that His Grace can have his divorce without the Holy Father’s word. All the king has to do, you see,” his hand swept through the space between them as if he were brushing a pesky fly away, “is become the head of the English Church in place of the pope, and do whatever he damn pleases about the divorce.”

“So that is what he meant to imply about Anne and His Grace ruining Wilton,” she breathed, remembering Staff’s warning of this afternoon.

“Who implied? And who mentioned Wilton?”

“Someone I used to know, dear Francis. Here comes the king.”

“Hail to our next pope,” Francis whispered, chuckling close to her ear.

Before the blare of trumpets had even died away in the crowded room, the king had cut a straight course toward the radiant Anne and was slapping George and Thomas Boleyn on their backs in some huge private jest. Then he and Anne began to circulate slowly through the crowd with George and the Duke of Suffolk on either side like stone bulwarks against the press of people.

“I wonder where the duchess is tonight?” Mary observed. “I had hoped she would go up with me to the nursery to see the children.”

“Weston told me they are not speaking over the ‘King’s Great Matter.’ They are always such turtledoves, I would not believe it of them, but they may not even be bedding together. This mess has certainly divided the court and is likely to get worse unless Wolsey can pull off some sort of miracle. It is nice to be related to the Bullens—ah, the Boleyns—in these days, for no one ever asks me how I feel or what I think about it. They assume they already know.”

“And do they, my lord Francis?” she inquired sweetly.