The Last Boleyn(133)

“That I have done with everything except my love for you and that if you still want me for your wife, I will marry you whenever you will have me and go with you to the ends of the earth if you ask.”

His eyes glowed dark and his lower lip trembled as though he would speak. The tiny muscle on his jaw line moved. “Then you will be my wife on the first instant we can manage to escape their snares when we return. And though we may have to travel to the ends of the earth when they find out, I will wager the manor at Wivenhoe will be the place we will live the rest of our days together.”

Their smiles met wordlessly across the tiny firelit space between them and the whole room seemed to recede and drift away as it often did when he gazed upon her rapt that way and her limbs turned to warm water. It was as though they were afloat on this blue, blue rug in a boat of their own making. The waters of time were held in abeyance for only them as when they had drifted on Master Whitman’s tiny pond behind the inn at Banstead. The loomed flowers were the water lilies and the light wool pile the surface on which their little boat sailed. There was nothing that could ever hurt them now and the golden fireflies of night danced in the darkness of his eyes.





PART FOUR


The Bargain




My true love hath my heart, and I have his, By just eschange, one for the other given.

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss; There never was a better bargain driven.

My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

His heart in me keeps me and him in one; My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides.

He loves my heart, for once it was his own; I cherish his because in me it bides.

My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

—Sir Philip Sidney





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN


February 22, 1533


Greenwich

The shouts and boisterous laughter of people in the cobbled courtyard caught Mary’s attention only for a moment. She was far too nervous and excited to watch her brother and his cronies, including the once-restrained Weston and Norris, throw snowballs at one another and duck guffawing in white icy breaths behind the glazed marble fountain. She was grateful that the snowfall was only two or three inches deep—enough to keep the courtiers outside for a while but not enough to stop a rider on the roads on an important mission. Her warm breath clouded the pane of glass through which she stared, and she turned back into the hall to continue toward the new queen’s apartments. It had been a chilly, blustery day much like this one, she remembered, that His Grace had wed Anne secretly here at cold Greenwich in the early hours of the morn—wed her hurriedly only two days after he had learned that the Lady Anne was pregnant.

But all that was hardly of consequence to Mary. Finally, there was a glimmer of hope she might escape the treacherous maze of duties and involved relationships and spies—Cromwell’s spies, Staff said. Today the long-treasured plan to leave the court and her family to secretly wed William Stafford and have a few days at Banstead before they must return to duties and the masks of pretense could become reality.

She nodded curtly to the yeoman guards at the double doors to the queen’s suite and they swung them wide. Staff had gone to Wivenhoe three days ago, but now awaited her arrival at a London inn. Everything hinged on her being allowed to leave the palace for a few days. Everything she had lived for these last hard months, even these long, long years since she had loved him, depended on Anne’s letting her go.

Anne sat in her massive curtained bed leaning on satin pillows each embroidered with her new crest. Her hair was loose and long and, though she looked pale, her eyes glowed with confidence and were no longer haunted with the fears of desertion and possession by the Tudor king she now knew to be her devoted servant. Jane Rochford sat in the corner doing nothing in particular and several ladies sewed on standing embroidery frames about the room. The languorous Mark Smeaton perched on the far edge of the bed playing almost pensively on an elaborately gilded and painted lute.

Mary curtseyed slightly and Anne nodded without a smile. Her eyes looked large and luminous framed by her dark brows and lashes. “Are you feeling better this morning, sister?” Mary asked.

“’Sblood, no, Mary. That is why I am not up yet, obviously. I take it that all the shouting is another game of ducks and geese or a snowball fight. Is George out there?”

“Yes, and many others. There is a new dusting of snow on the ground.”

“What a time to have the morning sickness for the babe. I never feel well until nearly noon and His Grace has a fit if he thinks I get up too early. Oh well, it will be well worth it when he is born. And,” she added as a smile lit her face, “it makes the whole court wonder if the queen is indeed with royal child already. I hope the French spies have told Francois and his snobby queen. It amuses me to tease them all, but soon everyone will be able to tell for certain anyway. I have made it clear to my sweet-faced lutenist that if he tells all he knows, I will have him strung up on the ramparts of the Tower.” Her slender foot kicked out in Smeaton’s direction under the covers and she shot him a smile.

“I will tell them nothing, Your Grace, nothing,” he sang back to her in tune with his strumming.

“I am glad you told me this terrible nausea and dizziness when I rise would not outlast a three-month span, Mary. I could not have managed it otherwise. And I can feel my fine slim waistline fast going.” She looked down at her barely rounded belly. “But the son for the throne, he will be worth it.”