The Last Boleyn

by Karen Harper

  It was then, with a smile still on her face from the warmth of Henry’s compliment and affection, her clear blue eyes locked with the direct stare of William Stafford. The look was so blatant—so intimate, even across the servants holding the quivers and bows—that it nearly made her knees buckle. Confused, angry, she stared back until his impertinent gaze dropped to go over the whole length of her body like a rough, physical caress. Then he turned away, squinted down at his strung arrow and shot. His bow whanged, his arrow thudded, but she pulled her eyes quickly away to select an arrow for herself.

  “That one hit head on, Mary! Did you see it?” the king was saying.

  “Yes, it—yes, it was wonderful, Sire,” she replied, trying to steady her voice and her hand. The king was watching her first shot, probably others were too, even Staff. How marvelous he looked today, in darkest brown to match his hair and piercing eyes. She lifted her bow and pulled back the string. Here, the king had sent Will away and just when she was feeling light-hearted Staff, who had forced himself to be somewhat of a gentleman since the night of the masque, took to staring at her out here where anyone could see.

  She snapped the bow string free from her gloved fingers, remembering to aim slightly higher than her mark as Will and the king had taught her. Damn that Stafford! she cursed silently, as her arrow thwacked the outer ring of the target.

  “My sweet Mary’s face looks like a thundercloud,” the king teased, and she forced a smile. She refused to let Staff ruin this entire day, and she would never, never let him know he could affect her like this. She smiled again up at the king, whose ruddy face watched her, suddenly wary.

  “Your Grace, it has been nearly a week since I have shot and I believe I could use another lesson. Sometimes with so many courtiers all about who shoot so very well, I get a little nervous. And after all, you are such a marvelous shot, and there you are looking at me too—” She let her voice trail off, somewhat ashamed of herself for so obviously trying to manipulate him, but she had seen enough ladies handling men over the last seven years to know how to do it when she needed to. Even father would be proud of her now.

  “You need another lesson from a master,” the king said, and put his big hand over hers where she held her leather-wrapped bow grip. His smile was not intimate but caressing, and far more comforting than the sharp looks Staff shot at her.

  “Yes, a lesson would be lovely, Your Grace, a private lesson without everyone gawking whenever I miss the mark.”

  “Oh, well yes, only everyone just got all dressed for shooting at butts and now we can hardly shoo them all away after ten minutes, can we, my sweet lady?”

  One of his large hands rested firmly on the small of her back as he bent to select an arrow for her bow. He squinted at it, and flipped it over scrutinizing the cut of the feathers. “A king’s arrow,” he said. “This one will shoot true.”

  Reluctantly, she placed it and he helped her sight it, lifting her left elbow slightly as she held the arrow ready. Let them all think her a poor shot, she fumed. Queen Claude’s ladies were never allowed this sort of sport. Let Stafford give her those dark stares of his and the king think he possessed her when no one did. No one! Not Will, not her father, not her past, not even this great king whose bed she had shared almost nightly for a month.

  Holding her breath, she released the string and the arrow pierced the heart of the target while the buoyant Henry Tudor laughed loudly. She laughed, joined by several nearby courtiers who hardly realized how close they had come to being banished from the butts range a few moments ago.

  The day was back on an even keel for Mary. After all, the day was so lovely and her father had never been more proud of her. Cruel Francois had been replaced by this laughing, affectionate king, Will was not about to frown, and Staff had stalked off some-where and left her alone. Alone, yes, caught up in the array of all the activities. Alone inside where no one could ever really possess her heart.

  She laughed, and impudently gave the great Henry a suggestion when he fielded his next shot.

  That night, after feasting and dancing in the great hall of Greenwich, she had bathed, dressed in a flowing golden yellow silk chemise and robe and sat at her mirrored table while her tiring woman, Peg, brushed her long, thick tresses. Mary missed her young maid Nancy, but when Will was away and she slept nightly with the king, she always gave Nancy orders to stay with her sister Megan and used the regular palace servants. And she simply could not stand to have Jane Rochford fussing around her in the evenings to gloat and simper when she left for the king’s rooms. Her hair pulled and crackled now as if alive with some energy of its own in the cool September night as Peg ran the bristles through it.

  Mary sat patiently awaiting the king’s summons so she could slip down the side hall to his suite of rooms, close to this lovely little suite he had given her and Will. She stared at her face and form in the candlelit mirror; oval face, the even, balanced features everyone seemed to admire—aristocratic Howard features, father always boasted. Huge blue eyes with dark, thick lashes despite the fairness of her skin and the light wheat-colored hue of her long hair. A slender neck, full breasts which the tight-bodiced fashions of the day could hardly abide, a flat stomach, rounded hips and long legs. And was it all of this, this outside beauty that made people, men, kings want her? Or, like Anne, was there something within that made them seek her out?

  Mother loved her for herself, her old governess Semmonet too, but after that she was not certain if people just wanted her—or was that love? Oh, what was the use of all this foolish thinking, she scolded herself. It only spun her around in circles. Here, this very note lying right before her, a note from the King of England, said he “loved her desperately and eternally.” And it had come with her lucky bull’s-eye arrow pierced right through a heart drawn on the note and the huge signature “Henry Rex” as if she would not know what Henry had sent it!

  “Are you ready, Lady Carey?” Peg’s voice broke into her reverie. “His Grace’s man be waitin’ outside wi’ two linkboys.”

  Mary rose and, as a last thought, took the arrow-pierced love letter with her. It would not do to leave these lying about. She always destroyed any letters Henry had sent her. She was not sure why—to be careful like father perhaps, or to protect Will from hearing further gossip, or ever seeing such a note. Maybe so that she did not have to believe it was all true.

  Peg wrapped her in the blue velvet cape she always wore in the halls over her nightwear, and Mary followed His Grace’s trusted body servant and one linkboy while the other brought up the rear. When they had begun this affair, Mary had asked the king to please summon her with trusted servants and not any of the courtiers who served him so closely in the treasured court appointments, however trusted they were supposed to be. And His Grace, though evidently amused to think it would ever keep anything secret, humored her by giving her her way.

  At night there were always at least four Esquires to the Body within call of the privy chamber in case the king needed help with his clothes or food or someone to rail at. But she never saw them, of course, and Will was never on duty when she was with the king. The two gendarmes with their long silver poleaxes nodded to her and opened the king’s doors. No way to hide any king’s visitors from them, but then, she could not imagine their ever saying a word.

  To her surprise, the king sat at a table cluttered with missives and rolled parchments. The firelights behind him edged his auburn head and massive red and black robed shoulders with a glowing, shifting outline. He rose immediately and gave her a huge, reassuring bearhug as soon as the doors closed. He wore nothing under his robe, she surmised, because she could see curling, reddish hair down to his navel where the robe split open and his big, powerful legs were bare to his feet thrust in velvet slippers.

  “Mary. ’Sblood, you smell wonderful, but I hope that is not some damned French perfume. Worse and worse relationships with Francois’s minions, it seems. Sit here by the fire a moment. I will play servant and pour us some
wine, my love.”

  She laid her blue velvet cape on the back of a chair facing his huge, carved one across the table. “But I would be happy to serve you, Your Grace. You looked very busy when I came in. I shall get the wine.”

  Like a big, scolded schoolboy, he did as she said, awkwardly covering his bare legs by folding his robe over them. She realized his eyes were on the pile of papers on the table and not her as she poured two goblets of his favorite sweet Osney from Alsace. Their fingers touched when she handed him his goblet, and he smiled up at her. Before she could move to the chair across from him, he pulled her gently toward him, indicating she should sit on his lap. Careful with her wine, she did so.

  “I am afraid the wine is French, Sire, but I promise you my fragrance is not. Pure English dried lavender, lilies-of-the-valley and rose petals. I store my gowns in it.”

  “Ah, is that it? A pity, sweet Mary,” his voice wrapped around her as warm as his hand on her hip, “for we shall have to dispense with this lovely yellow silk thing soon enough.” He nuzzled her silken shoulder and they sat quietly for a moment, content in their physical contact, listening to the warm crackle of the fire in this intimate moment.

  He drained his wine and took her half-finished goblet from her unresisting fingers. “Sweet Mary, so beautiful and yet so untouched,” he said low.

  “Hardly untouched, my lord king,” she chided and poked him playfully in his hard-muscled belly, but she saw then on his earnest face a fleeting mood of seriousness or sadness. She sat still to listen to what else would come.

  “All the roistering about, all the gaming,” he began, evidently searching to express some difficult or new thought. “Well, you know how busy and demanding it is for me, especially now that I am taking over more from Chancellor Wolsey, keeping a closer eye on him and the realm’s business, as it were.”

  She listened carefully, thinking how often her father tried to pry from her anything of import the king might say to her in a trusted or unguarded moment. She nodded to encourage him, but really, she had no idea where this confession would go.

  “I mean to say, I do not know why an anointed king of the earth’s greatest realm has to be so set upon with petitioners and petty papers to read and sign, and tricky foreign realms to watch like Charles’s Spain and Margaret’s Austria and your wily Francois’s damned France!”

  “Forgive me, Your Grace, but neither the French king nor France are ‘mine.’”

  “I did not mean it that way, sweet, really, only it galls me sore to think you were once his .”

  She tried to scoot off his big lap but his hands held her hips against his strong thighs. “Sit, sit, madam. I meant not to rile you. We all make foolish errors, I warrant. Sit still, I say, Mary. I apologize.” He pulled her fiercely to him, his lips moving in her loose hair along her right temple, his hands stroking her silken back and hips.

  “There now,” he crooned. “You are the last one in the world I want to turn argumentative, sweet. It is only that I get pent-up with all this business. I meant not to scold. By the saints, I need your serenity and beauty at the end of a day.”

  She relaxed and shifted against his body, encircling his bull neck with her arms. There were so few quiet moments with this volatile, active man, yet he was telling her he craved them. She cuddled against him, savoring the affectionate caress Will had never given in his quick movements over her body. Peace and serenity, yes, like a little girl in her father’s arms.

  But after she lay with him that night, she watched him move away and bend instantly over his papers. She had never seen this side of him, so distracted, yet filled with fierce concentration. She yawned and stretched luxuriously in the massive bed under the carved and gilded crest of the Tudor kings. She was tired and she could feel herself slipping away. It must be nearly midnight now.

  Through a fog of her thoughts, she heard his quill pen occasionally scratch “Henry Rex” even as he had on that impassioned love letter. Henry Rex of England impassioned, passionate. Then why don’t I feel that way? she wondered, with one foot on the hazy edge of dreamy unreality.

  She was full of his seed now as she was almost every night, and what would become of her if she conceived a child? But she never had all those times with Francois, that one terrible night with Lautrec, and now with Henry.

  Proud, so proud, these kings. Never admitting they could be wrong except in little things, always having to be masterful and in charge. A paper rustled somewhere on the fringe of her thoughts, and a chair scraped back. Maybe he was coming to bed again. He had never before done work in the middle of the night.

  She drifted softly, silently through the sweet-smelling rose gardens of Greenwich, or was it Hever? No, she must be at court, for everyone stood about shooting arrows at one another, laughing cruelly when someone was pierced. The king was laughing too, drawing his strong bow at everyone, and then she saw her father shooting his full brace of arrows from a never-empty quiver.

  Arrows flew at her from everywhere—the air was black with them, and she was afraid. But none hit her.

  Then she saw Staff by the tree, his arrows like his eyes. He raised his bow directly at her; she held up her arms and tried to scream but no sound came. She tried to run, but her feet were as heavy as lead.

  His arrow whirred at her; she saw it coming and to her own amazement, she moved to meet it. It pierced her sweetly, deeply, and a rolling wave of rapture beat in her like coursing blood. Staff’s arrow penetrated her very soul and brought a note she now held in her trembling hands: I love you desperately and eternally. She looked up in amazement, but he had turned and was walking away.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  October 14, 1521

  Whitehall

  A brightly clad bevy of court ladies trailed after Mary as she left her apartment and went out into the crisp autumn sunshine. As at Greenwich, the swards at Whitehall slanted down to the river, though the once-clear vista was now cluttered with tiltyard, archery range, and the close-cropped alley of grass for bowls, and a tall maze nearer the river. The crowd clustered on this clear afternoon at the newly built tennis courts of which the king was so proud. Whitehall was the newest palace given outright as a love gift—a policy gift, Staff called it—by His Grace’s Lord Chancellor, the Cardinal Wolsey, who had moved his busy household upstream to his country palace Hampton Court. Mary favored Richmond and Greenwich of all the palaces, but on a day such as this, who could not love Whitehall?

  “His Grace was anxious for you to come to see him play against my Lord Francis,” Joan Norris said for the second time, hurrying to keep pace with Mary’s strides. Mary had learned to walk and dance faster, much faster, in the year she had been the energetic king’s mistress.

  “Actually, I believe he promised he would beat Sir Francis soundly,” joked Lady Joan, and Mary forced a laugh.

  “Your Lord William is much from court this past week, Mary,” observed Jane Rochford tagging close behind.

  “Yes, Jane, but it is Father sent him this time and not the king. As you know, Jane,” Mary said, turning her head to the girl, “Father asked Will to accompany him to visit the Bullens’ new revenue posts at Essex and Nottinghamshire. They are due back today. Are you quite certain you have enough to occupy your time without George before the wedding?”

  “Of course I do, Mary, now I can be with you everyday. Lord Bullen is pleased, too, and I do so wish to make him happy.”

  “So do we all, Jane,” Mary shot back quickly and then regretted the sharp tone to her voice. No wonder Father and George had had a tremendous row over the Bullen-Rochford betrothal a few months ago. George had evidently been forced to see the wisdom in the marriage, but she could hardly blame him for his impatience with the meddling little Rochford. But George’s sulkiness had worsened since, and he seldom came to court now that Jane was here to attend Mary. Jane Rochford saw Lord Bullen as her protector and deliverer. If only the wench knew the salvation of her coming marriage had nothing to do with herself and all to do w
ith her family title and lands, who knew what she would say or do then.

  Several young men tilted at the quintain on the joust practice grounds trying to learn the timing and placement of the thrust of the lance from a moving horse. The wood and leather mock opponent twirled and spun on its pivot as they made passes at it. They were so confident, so awkward, and Mary remembered George, gangly and skinny at Hever years ago. She favored stopping to watch their serious antics, but she had been summoned to the tennis courts again.

  The archery range where she had shot at target with the king only yesterday was nearly deserted. Her aim was much improved and it annoyed her to have to wear the proper lady’s half-gloves when she shot. Henry was much pleased at her progress since the last contest, but she did not tell him that both Will and Staff had given her lessons while he was in council.

  Despite the brisk river breeze, she felt warm in her fawn-colored pelisse. Still she wanted to wear it over her dress whenever she was in public where someone might notice her slightly expanded waistline. Soon someone would see, then everyone would know, and the king would put her aside as he had Bessie Blount. He pledged eternal love and had been relatively faithful for over a year, but Mary was no country-bred wench who trusted in men anymore. And her greatest fear—the thing that kept her awake nights when His Grace or Will rolled over and went to sleep—was that there would be no way to truly know who had fathered the babe.

  “I am sorry, Jane. What did you say?”

  “I said, the cheering from the courts is so loud that they must have started the match without you.”

  “Well, that is fine. They last a good long time anyway.”

  Jane had taken to brazenly flirting with Mark Gostwick but, except for pitying poor George even more, Mary ignored it. She was relieved when Jane excused herself and went to sit with him on the far side of the court.