The Last Boleyn(143)
“Then that leaves the other option of luring the king away from the girl,” Mary said calmly, but she knew her eyes and trembling upper lip betrayed her nervousness.
“Yes, Mary, exactly.” He ceased his pacing and stood facing her, leaning hard on his cluttered table.
“This reminds me rather of chess, father, and I have never been good at the game, though I do know well enough the role of pawns.”
“What? Look, Mary, everything hinges on His Grace’s good will, and you know well how to deal with that.”
“Do I? His ill will, rather, since I have long outlived my usefulness to him and to you, father. I will be going now before you say something that will cause a permanent rift between us.”
“Sit, Mary! You will do this for Anne, and George, and your mother and me.”
“Do not dare to bring mother’s name into this, or Anne’s either, for that matter! Let us go to Anne’s chambers and discuss this with her if you believe it is for Anne you act like a brothel owner—like a pimp!”
She saw him clench his jaw muscles, and his eyes glared at her. Still he held his temper and his voice came low. “Anne is distraught and cannot see things clearly of late. We must do this for her without her knowledge.”
“The mood she is in these last days, she would put us all on the block at The Tower, family or not.”
“Anne’s power goes to her head sometimes, but she will do as she is told if it comes down to it.”
“The answer is no, father, absolutely no. I will not help you or abet your nefarious plans.”
“Do you still fancy you love Stafford? You will comply or I will have him sent away or married off. Cromwell is my ally, and he is just now ready to assign your little Harry to some abbey or house to finish his education. Would you really like that place to be clear to the Welsh border, madam?”
Mary stood but leaned the backs of her knees on the chairseat from which she had risen. “Try any of that and I shall tell the queen, father. Cromwell is the king’s ally first and foremost as I have heard you yourself say. And little Harry is Anne’s legal ward until his majority. Besides, if you really sent him far away, he would not be so available to have you pour your poison of his false heritage in his ears. You will raise no rumors or rebellion behind my son, father, or the king will hear of your secret visits to Hatfield all these years.”
She nearly ran to the door and turned back as she reached it. “Do what you have to do, father, but keep me well out of it and leave my children untouched.”
He sat calmly at his desk as though he had not heard her outburst. His voice came coldly at her back as she put her hand to the door latch. “I really ought to give you to Cromwell to tame, Mary. He has wanted to possess you for some years now and I am starting to think you deserve him. You misuse your beauty and that lush body on that renegade Stafford when you could have the king or some duke at least at your beck and call. How I have wished over the years that you had half the cleverness and brains of your sister. You have never even learned to hide the fear or love you feel when it is of dire necessity to do so.”
“And if I have not learned to hide my revulsion of you, my utter contempt of you, father, I am so sorry!”
She yanked the door open. “By the way, daughter, your dear friend Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, died yesterday at Westhorpe, so perhaps we could arrange a match for you with the duke. The duke, of course, is most grieved, but I warrant he will be rewed within the year. So much for true love.”
She stood in shock with the door half open. Her beautiful friend dead. So young and the little laughing Margaret without her mother, and Catherine there in that house of death.
“Cromwell plans to send for your daughter with an escort. His Grace will no doubt be in mourning for a month so, hopefully, that will put a damper on his amorous activities for a while. He loved his sister overwell to forgive her two foolish indiscretions. He only last month sent word by Suffolk that he forgave her for her stubborn stand for the Spanish princess he was duped into marrying when he was only a boy.”
The flow of words went right through her and she could grasp none of them. The raven-haired Mary dead. Mary who went to France to wed the old king so she could have her beloved Suffolk. Mary frightened when Francois locked her for six weeks in dark Cluny to be certain she was not with child. Mary who looked so radiant on her wedding day to the duke long ago in Paris. Mary, cold and dead.
“Are you going to stand there all day, girl? Your daughter will be back safe tomorrow. Cromwell intends to tell Anne she will have to wear mourning for both her royal sister-in-law as well as the dead baby, so you need not run to her with the news. Go to your room now. You look terrible.”
Mary did not even glance back. Her desire to scream her hatred at him was gone, burned out and wasted in her grief for her friend who first showed her how to love someone the world said she could not have. No, she thought, as she walked woodenly along the corridor with its convoluted carvings and intricate tapestries, the grief is not only for Mary Tudor. She felt grief for the entire family that they were brought to this dangerous and horrible point: Anne, Queen of England, a frightened, bitter shell; George, besotted by his new toys of lands and position; mother, alone as always at Hever; and father.... Her mind would go no further. She shoved open the door to her room. Nancy was not about, but that was well. She needed to be alone now.