The Last Boleyn(167)

“Saint Peters-in-Chains, Elizabeth.”

“Yes. At least it sounds somehow appropriate. I pray they will bury their heads with their bodies, so that on resurrection day they will be raised guiltless in His eyes.”

“Guiltless, maybe not, my dear, but innocent of the dreadful crimes of which the king sought to brand them. Kingston promised he would see to that as you asked, madam.”

“Thank you, Thomas. That mattered greatly to me. And the king will not harm Elizabeth?”

“I told you, no. Elizabeth is declared bastard now, but she is his and he knows it. Tudor is written all over her face.”

“But she has her mother’s skin and eyes and slender hands, father,” Mary put in, and he turned to her again.

Thomas Boleyn refused to sit, but he leaned heavily on the carved mantel and put one still-booted foot on the andiron. “The sandy-haired boy by the gate is your new son,” he said suddenly.

“Not so new, father. He will be three this autumn.”

“Yes. Well, he looks to be quite a Howard.”

“He is a Stafford, father. Not a Boleyn, not a Howard, a Stafford.”

He turned his head to one side and looked at her over his arms folded along the mantelpiece. He pivoted his head farther and stared at her husband. “My wife has told me repeatedly over the years, I assure you, Stafford, of your loyalty and kindnesses to her and your care of her these last two months. For that I am grateful.”

“I do not covet your gratitude in any way, my lord. I did it for the love I bear my wife and her mother.”

They faced each other staring over Mary, who stood between them. “I regret, Stafford, that Hever must revert to the crown upon our deaths, now that George is gone. In proper times it would have gone to Mary as the surviving heir or her Uncle James. It is a wonder to me that His Royal Majesty left me Hever even until I die. Sometimes I think he did it for Mary. Do you understand me, Stafford? Hever goes to the crown.”

“Mary values Hever, not I, my lord. Wivenhoe will always be enough for me.”

“I see. Then would you ever choose to do me any service for myself?”

“For the love I bear your daughter who loves you all too well, my lord, yes.”

Thomas Boleyn was the first to break the grip lock of their eyes as he looked toward the door. “Mary has often been foolish, but then so have you, Stafford. No, Elizabeth, I will say this. You had the chance to have much of wealth and lands from the king.”

“I wanted nothing from him but my freedom, Lord Boleyn, even as Mary and I want that from you.”

“Well, maybe you were right not to trust him. Trust no one. Cromwell did one last favor for Anne when he fetched Mary to her and then he turned on us all. I would ask you for one favor before you go to Wivenhoe.”

“My lord, they can well stay in my house as long as they should like to,” Elizabeth Boleyn said, rising from her chair.

“Their home is Wivenhoe, wife. They prefer it. He has said it.”

“We shall go today then, but we may be back to see Lady Elizabeth. And I assume that your grandchildren are welcome here to see their grandmother. If not, she will be asked to come to Wivenhoe in the summers or whenever she would wish.”

“Oh, yes. Of course.” Lord Boleyn pointed toward the solar, and Mary feared he would order them from his home instantly. His hand shook as he pointed. “I would like you, Lord Stafford, to take the king’s portrait down from the wall in my entryway and bury it somewhere in the gardens and do not tell me where. Bury it and slice it to ribbons if you would, for us both, for all of us! I should like to put my fist through it again and again, but, ’sbones, I have not the strength!”

Elizabeth Boleyn went to him and wrapped her thin arms protectively around him as his dry sobs wracked his shaking body. Staff went to the door and then came back to pull Mary after him. He closed the door to the solar gently.

“I have never seen them like that, Staff. She is comforting him,” she whispered in the hall as they stood under the big portrait.

“Maybe it will be a new start for them now in the years they have left, Mary.” He turned and pulled the portrait out from the wall to peer behind it. “Dirt and dust and wretched bugs,” he said. He grasped the heavy frame and lifted the painting high off its hooks. “I almost think,” he said low to her, “that he would have softened if we would have begged him to let us stay here and live with them.” He turned his alert face to hers.

“But he must know we could never do that, my love. Wivenhoe is our home.”

A beautiful smile lit his tired face and his eyes caressed her. “Then we shall do this last task and gather up Nancy, Stephen, and the lad and be on our way home, my wife.”

They went far out past the knot garden and the beds of tightbudded roses to the pond by the willows. “Will you fetch me a gardener with a shovel?” he said to her as he bent over the painting and drew his dagger. She stared down on the rough oil-painted surface at the face she had once known so well. Shadows of the willow boughs flitted across the strong, stern features. The narrow eyes seemed to shift and the huge hands were in shadow.

“When Anne was little, she used to be afraid of this portrait,” Mary thought aloud. “She said once the hands were too big and the eyes were like father’s.” She turned away and hurried to find Michael, the gardener who had always lived about the grounds at Hever. Michael’s face lit when he saw her and he came on the run with his shovel. She sat on the bench near the sundial which would soon be surrounded by the young shoots of mint and dill and watched Michael and then Staff dig. This is where she had been sitting before the labor pains for Harry began, she thought, and Michael was here to help her then. Suddenly reality stabbed at her again. Anne had just drifted off to leave her sitting here alone because she did not feel well enough to tell her how things were going at court. Tears of memory blinded her eyes, for Anne would never laugh and flit about the gardens of Hever again.