The Last Boleyn(168)

She went no nearer as the two men took turns digging a hole under the willow tree to bury the king’s head, and her thoughts wandered again. Had sad Meg Roper finally buried her father’s head? she mused. Staff always got on so democratically with servants that it amazed her. Why, it was as though Stephen was his best friend.

And then, as she watched them lift the huge frame into its grave and begin to shovel the soil back in, it came to her that her awful past was surely ready to be buried now too. It was as though, through the grief of losing George and Anne, it had gone with them off her shoulders and from her haunted thoughts. “Wait, Staff,” she called and dashed to them. “Wait, my lord, do not fill it all in yet. There is something I would add.”

She darted through the gardens and into the house past the still closed solar door. She ran up the steps which she had once descended to face the king only to find Staff’s dark eyes awaiting her. She shoved the strands of pearls from dear Anne aside and dug under the garnet necklace Staff had given her so long ago at Whitehall. There it was. She had not dared to look on it since the sad death of its beloved giver two years before. It was just as the fair Tudor Rose had handed it to her over their chess game so long ago.

Staff and Michael awaited her return, and Michael looked on in surprise as Mary showed Staff the green and white gilded chess pawn in her open palm. “’Tis a little thing,” Michael observed.

“No, Michael, it is a big, big thing,” Staff told the puzzled man as Mary dumped the pawn into the freshly turned earth of the grave and Staff covered it.

“I have seen your fine gardens, Michael,” Staff complimented the man after the hole was filled. “I have seen them over the years and admired them. Are you wed, Michael?”

The gangly man smiled guiltily and the gap between his teeth showed as it always had. “No, milord. I never did yet find the lass to love and wed with, an’ I couldna see weddin’ only to raise a passel a young ones.”

“A wise man,” Staff said seriously and patted the glowing Michael on the shoulder. “I will tell you this, Michael, and I want you to remember my words.”

“Oh, yes, milord.”

“When the day should come that Hever must be sold, if you do not wish to stay, buy a horse and come to Wivenhoe near Colchester to Lady Mary’s home there. We will be expanding our meager gardens there over the years, and we shall have need of a sure hand like yours. Even if it never happens for years, you remember to come to Wivenhoe to us.”

“Thankee, milord,” Michael managed, and tears sprang to his green eyes.

“Goodbye for now, Michael. You have always been a true friend to the Bullens,” Mary said and found a smile for him inside her bereft, tired mind.

Staff took her arm and they went slowly toward the painted facade of the house through the gardens. “I did not bury the portrait, Mary,” he said at last as they went under the iron teeth of the drawbridge. “I cut it out and buried only the frame. The portrait should be for Elizabeth. He is her father nevertheless and it will be a heritage from Hever which she may well never see.” He shoved the tightly rolled canvas under his doublet.

“Very well, my Staff,” she said, “but do not hang it in my house in the meanwhile.”

“I shall hide it in the deepest chest in the cellar, I promise,” he said.

As they entered the house, the front door stood ajar to catch the fresh breezes and in a pool of sunlight on the floor, Andrew played with his carved horse and a heavy gold chain. Mary bent over him to examine it. “What do you have, sweetheart?” she inquired and Staff halted on the first step upstairs.

“Staff, it is my father’s chest chain with the king’s seal. But where...”

“I gave it to the lad, Mary. I have no need of it,” her father’s voice came from the door of the solar. “I have another I shall send your Harry if you like. Leave the boy be. He is having a fine time smashing that wooden horse into it, though he looks at me as though I am some sort of gremlin from a nightmare.”

“Thank you for the gift to him, father. He is only a bit shy around, well, strangers. I would be proud to have him know you more over the years.”

“There will not be many years, daughter. I can feel it.” He nodded toward the dusty rectangle on the wall where the sun never went. “I see the portrait is gone.”

“Yes, it is gone,” Staff said.

“Then you and I are even, Stafford. You have Mary and you did me a favor freely.”

Staff nodded silently, the lower half of his body in the same pool of sun in which Andrew played quietly now. Lady Elizabeth came to the open door of the solar and old, crooked Semmonet leaned hard on her cane behind.

“You will stay for a noon supper before you set out,” Elizabeth Boleyn’s voice came to them in the silence of the house.

“Yes, of course, Lady Elizabeth,” Staff said, his eyes still on Thomas Boleyn as though he were waiting for something.

“We—I wish you well, Mary,” her father said then. “And, of all the plans and dreams and the three fine children, he ensnared us all, and only golden Mary survived,” he chanted as though he were in a trance. He looked down jerkily at the boy who played with the shining chain in the sunlight and turned back into the solar.

Mary stared after his back as he disappeared behind the door. For a moment she thought he would come out again young and strong, and ask her what she had overhead, and tell her that she was going to Brussels to the court of the Archduchess. But, no, that was a long dead time ago and there sat her son, hers and Staff’s.