The Last Boleyn(81)

“Then I will contact you there when it is safe to return. And, Will,” Thomas Bullen added as he and Norfolk turned at the open door, “do not fear for your precious position. I have the surest feeling that your friend William Stafford will hold it secure for you until your return. And then there is always the child if His Grace does not forgive Anne her foolishness.”

Mary’s head jerked up from her cup. “Father, wait.” Staff reached for her arm, but she was too quick for him as she moved unsteadily toward the two men.

“If Anne is wise and strong enough to stand up to your counseling as I have never been, then I am all for her. That is a battle she must fight for herself But if she will not be your pawn as I have been so faithfully all these lonely years, then I tell you now, sensible little golden Mary will never allow you to use her son to buy favors with the king. Never.”

Thomas Bullen’s dark eyes widened suddenly and then narrowed to slits of blackness in the dim room. “I spare you my anger, Mary, because exile and the loss of those things with which you have been surrounded are hard to accept. Go off to Plashy with Will, think it over and remember to keep your tongue. I want no silly letters to the king. You have been a good soldier, girl, but admit it. Your rewards have been great. Good night, Mary.”

“I may have been a good soldier to you, father, but to me, I have been a damned fool! I hope Anne tells you to go to the devil! You wanted to send her away to Ireland. You stood there while she was ripped apart from Harry Percy. You married George to that treacherous Rochford woman.” Sobs tore at her throat and tears coursed jaggedly down her flushed cheeks.

Staff was the first to reach her as her father grabbed her arms and shook her. He shoved her against Stafford, but his toneless voice addressed Will. “Your wife is drunk, I think, Carey. You had best calm her hysteria before she gets on the subject of her own marriage of which I was hardly the cause. See to her.”

The door slammed behind him. Mary seized Staff’s arms and pushed her wet face against his soiled velvet chest as Will stood silent, watching his impassive friend comfort his sobbing wife.





PART THREE


A Lover’s Vow




Set me whereas the sun doth parch the green, Or where his beams may not dissolve the ice, In temperate heat, where he is felt and seen; With proud people, in presence sad and wise, Set me in base, or yet in high degree; In the long night, or in the shortest day; In clear weather, or where mists thickest be; In lusty youth, or when my hairs be gray; Set me in earth, in heaven, or yet in hell; In hill, in dale, or in the foaming flood; Thrall, or at large, alive whereso I dwell; Sick or in health, in ill fame or in good; Yours will I be, and with that only thought Comfort myself when that my hap is naught.

—Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey





CHAPTER NINETEEN


December 28, 1527


Greenwich

The single narrow window in the bedchamber Mary shared with Will looked over the stretch of lawn to the now-deserted bowling greens and beyond to the gray Thames. She was grateful her friend Mary Tudor had allowed that little Catherine could share the spacious royal nursery with Margaret, the love child from her beloved Duke of Suffolk. Mary turned, leaned against the window ledge and surveyed the irregular, cramped quarters wedged in the far northwest corner of mazelike Greenwich before the kitchen block began. Isolated quarters were a far cry from the fine chambers that were theirs when she had been the king’s mistress. And a far cry from a year ago during the Twelve Days of Christmas at lonely Plashy in Northampton.

Mary sat again at the small drop leaf table and balanced her hand mirror against the wine jug. There was no room here for an elaborate dressing table with its rows of cut glass bottles and polished framed mirror. Father had said that, because of Will’s reinstatement as Esquire to the Body, they would probably be given other quarters later, but she did not really believe it. Except for Mary Tudor and her mother, who was here as companion to Anne, she had seen no one of importance since they had arrived late last night. And tonight at Christmas revels she would have to hold up her head and face them all—proud Anne and the king who forgot everything so easily. And Staff. She bit her lip hard to keep the tears from welling and ruining her newly applied eye color. Surely Staff would be there with some adoring woman on his arm.

She saw it all then—not the small chamber at Greenwich to which they had returned—but the wood-beamed hall of the modest manor house at Plashy only a month after they had fled the king’s wrath. Staff had ridden to Northampton to see them, and she had fought to control the ecstasy she felt to be near him again. He had supped with them so close across the trestle table and told them all the news of how the prideful king had bedded three ladies of the court in quick succession. Then he had turned restive again and had ridden off to Eltham to hunt. But Eltham was only a morning ride from Hever, as well they all knew. His pursuit of a Bullen was on again, but Anne had held her ground firm, against her father’s counseling.

Still, it was hardly the news of her sister or the king she had cherished that sunny day more than a year ago when William Stafford had visited Plashy. It was the sight of his rakish smile and the smell of his leather jerkin when she poured his wine.

But Will was watchful and not to be fooled. He saw her love for Staff on her face and in her eyes when he rode in that second time. He was cold to Staff and bitterly cruel to her. If it had not been for the fact that he knew his friend held his position safe for him in his absence, and had he not trusted Staff’s lack of ambition to advance himself through it, she was not sure what he might have done to her. So through the months she lived at quiet Plashy with an embittered husband and a growing daughter, she guarded her face and hid her aching love deep in her thoughts.