She had been glowing with his praise but at that question she looked suddenly afraid, as if she remembered the curses of the fishwives and the shouts of "Wh.o.r.e!" from the market traders. "I want everyone to know it," she said.

"Shall I take you to the king?" George asked pragmatically.

Anne put her hand on his arm and I saw him tense at the turn of her head and her sidelong smile. "Wouldn't you rather take me to your chamber?"

"If I wanted to be beheaded for incest-yes."

She gave her s.e.xy little laugh. "Very well then. To the king. But remember, George, you are my courtier, like all the others."

He bowed and led her from the room. I listened to them cross the presence chamber and then go down the stairs, and I waited till I heard the door at the bottom of the stairs bang shut. I thought that Anne's desire to be first with everyone must be powerful indeed if she would pause to torment her own brother on the very night of her bedding the king.

She came back at daybreak, huddled into her clothes, just as I used to do. George brought her back and together we stripped her and pushed her into bed. She was too weary to speak.

"So it's done," I said as her eyes closed.

"Several times, I should think," he said. "I waited outside the chamber and slept in the chair and a couple of times in the night they woke me with their crying out and panting. Please G.o.d we get an heir from it."

"And no doubt that he'll marry her? He won't tire of her now he has her?"

"Not inside six months. And now she's getting some pleasure for herself and not having to fight him off all the time she might be sweeter to him, and-please G.o.d-sweeter to us."

"If she's much sweeter to you she'll be in your bed as well as the king's."

George stretched and yawned and smiled lazily down at me from his extended height. "She was hot," he said. "And she could take it out on no one else. She was hot and once that wears off then please G.o.d she has a baby in her belly and a ring on her finger and a crown on her head. Vivat Anna Vivat Anna! And grudge who grudges it-it's done."

I left Anne sleeping and thought that I might see William Stafford if I went to my uncle's rooms at this hour in the morning. The castle was stirring, the lanes approaching the kitchen were crowded with the wagons bringing cords of firewood and charcoal from the woods, fruit and vegetables from the market, and meat, milk and cheese from the farms. In my uncle's rooms there was the bustle of a great household setting about the day. The maids had finished sweeping and cleaning in the presence chamber and the scullions were loading the fireplaces with logs and blowing on the embers to make them flame up.

My uncle's gentlemen were housed in half a dozen small rooms off the great hall, his men at arms slept in the guard room. William could be anywhere. I walked through the presence chamber and nodded at a couple of the gentlemen I knew and tried to look as if I were waiting to see my uncle or my mother.

The door to my uncle's privy chamber opened and George came out in a rush.

"Oh good," he said on seeing me. "Is Anne still asleep?"

"She was when I left her."

"Go to her and wake her up. Tell her that the clergy has submitted to the king, or at least enough of them to mean that we have won, but Thomas More has announced that he has resigned his post. The king will learn it during Ma.s.s today when he receives More's letter, but she should be forewarned. The king is bound to take it hard."

"Thomas More?" I repeated. "But I thought he was on our side?"

My brother tutted at my ignorance. "He promised the king never to comment publicly on the dissolution of the marriage. But it's obvious what he thinks, isn't it? He's a lawyer, a logical man, he's hardly likely to be convinced by the twisting of the truth that's been going on in a thousand universities in Europe."

"But I thought he wanted the church reformed?" I asked. Not for the first time I was adrift in the sea of politics which was my family's natural element.

"Reformed, not taken to pieces and headed by the king," my brother said quickly. "Who knows better than Thomas More that the king is not fit to play Pope? He's known him from childhood. He'd never accept Henry as the heir to St Peter." My brother laughed shortly. "It's a ridiculous notion."

"Ridiculous? I thought we supported it."

"Of course we do," he said. "It means that Henry can rule on his own marriage, he can marry Anne. But no one but a fool would think that there was the least justification for it in law, in morality, or in common sense. Look, Mary, don't worry. Anne understands all this. Just go and wake her and tell her that More is resigning and the king will learn of it this morning and she is to be calm. That's what my uncle said. Anne must be calm."

I turned to do as he bid me, and just at that very moment, William Stafford came into the hall, shrugging on his doublet. He paused when he saw me and made me a low bow. "Lady Carey," he said. He bowed to my brother. "Lord Rochford."

"Go," my brother said to me and gave me a little push. He ignored William. "Go and tell her."

There was nothing I could do but hurry from the room without even being able to touch William's hand and say "good morning" to him.

Anne and the king were closeted alone for most of the morning, considering what the resignation of Thomas More might mean to them. My father and uncle were with them, and Cranmer and Secretary Cromwell, all the men attached to Anne's cause, all determined that the king should take the power and the profit of the church in England. Anne and the king came out to dinner in very good harmony and she sat at his right hand as if she were already queen.

After dinner the two of them went to his privy chamber and everyone was sent away. George raised an eyebrow at me with a little smile and whispered: "As long as a little prince comes out of it, eh, Mary?" and then went strolling off to play at cards with Francis Weston and a couple of the others. I went out into the garden to sit in the sunshine and look at the river, and all the time I knew that I was longing for William Stafford.

As if I had summoned him, he was suddenly there before me.

"Were you looking for me this morning?" he asked.

"No," I said, lying as quick as a courtier. "I was looking for my brother."

"Whatever the case, I have come looking for you," he offered. "And glad I am to find you. Very glad, my lady."

I moved a little on the seat and gestured that he might sit beside me. The moment he was within touching distance I felt my heart hammer. There was a scent about him, a warm sweet male scent that lingered about his hair and his soft brown beard. I found that I was leaning toward him and I made myself sit back.

"I am to come with your uncle to Calais," he said. "Perhaps I can be of service to you on the journey."

"Thank you," I said.

There was a brief silence.

"I am sorry about the stable yard," I said. "I was afraid of Anne seeing us together. While she has the guardianship of my son I dare not offend her."

"I understand," William said quickly. "It was just the moment-I had hold of your little riding boot. I didn't want to let go."

"I can't be your lover," I said in a very low voice. "Clearly not."

He nodded. "But were you looking for me this morning?"

"Yes," I whispered, honest at last. "I couldn't go for another minute without seeing you."

"I have been hovering in this garden and outside the marquess's chambers all of the day, hoping to see you," he said. "I've been out here so long that I thought of getting a spade and doing something useful in the time while I was waiting."

"Gardening?" I said with a gurgle of laughter, thinking of Anne's face if I were to announce that I was in love with the man who dug the garden. "That hardly helps."

"No," he said, sharing my amus.e.m.e.nt. "But I was hanging round the ladies' chambers like a pimp so it's the better of the two. Mary, what shall we do? What is your desire?"

"I don't know," I said, speaking nothing but the truth. "I feel as if this is a sort of madness which I am going through and if I had a true friend they would tie me down until it had pa.s.sed."

"You think it will pa.s.s?" he asked, as if it were an interesting viewpoint that he had not considered.

"Oh yes," I said. "It is a fancy, isn't it? It is just that it happened to both of us at once. I have taken a fancy to you and if you had not liked me, I would have mooned around a little and made sheep's eyes at you for a while, and then got over it."

He smiled at that. "I should have liked that. Couldn't you do that anyway?"

"We will laugh at this later."

I expected him to argue. In truth I was counting on him to argue that this was a real love, an undying love, and persuade me that I had to follow my heart whatever the cost.

But he nodded. "A fancy, then? And nothing more?"

"Oh," I said, surprised.

William rose to his feet. "How soon do you expect to recover?" he asked conversationally.

I stood close to him. I was drawn to him as if every bone in my body needed his touch whatever my mouth might say.

"Just think a little," he said to me gently. His mouth was so close to my ear that his breath stirred the tendril of hair which had escaped from my hood. "You could be my love, you could be my wife. We would have Catherine, would we not? They would not take her away from you? And as soon as Anne has her own son she will give you Henry back, our boy."

"He's not our boy," I said, clinging to common sense with difficulty under this low-voiced torrent of persuasion.

"Who bought him his first pony? Who made him his first sailing boat? Who taught him to tell the time by the sun?"

"You," I admitted. "But no one but you and me would consider that."

"He might."

"He's only a little boy, he has no say in anything. And Catherine will never have a say in anything. She'll be just another Boleyn girl who will be sent where they want her."

"Then break the pattern for yourself, and we'll rescue the children too. Don't you be just another Boleyn girl for a day longer. Come and be Mrs. Stafford, the one and only most beloved Mrs. Stafford, who owns her fields outright and her little farmhouse, and is learning to make cheese and skin a chicken."

I laughed and at once he caught at my hand and pressed his thumb against my palm. Despite myself my fingers closed on his hand and we stood for a moment, handclasped in the warm sunshine, and I thought, like a lovesick girl: "This is heaven."

There was a footstep behind us and I dropped his hand as if it had burnt me and whipped around. Thank G.o.d it was George and not that spying wife of his. He looked from my blushing face to William's impa.s.sive expression and raised an eyebrow.

"Sister?"

"William here is just telling me that my hunter has strained her fetlock," I said at random.

"I've poulticed it," William said quickly. "And Lady Carey can borrow one of the king's horses while Jesmond is recovering. Shouldn't be more than a day or two."

"Very good," George said. William bowed and left us.

I let him go. I did not have the courage, even before George whom I would have trusted with any other secret, to call him back. William walked away, his shoulders a little stiff with resentment.

George followed my gaze after him. "A little l.u.s.t stirring in the lovely Lady Carey?" he asked idly.

"A little," I conceded.

"Is this the n.o.body that meant nothing?"

I smiled ruefully. "Yes."

"Don't," he said simply. "Anne has to be immaculate between now and her wedding day, especially now that she is bedding the king. We are all of us on show. If you have a little l.u.s.t for the man, then sit on it, my sister, for until Anne is married we have to be as chaste as angels, and she has to be head seraphim."

"I'm hardly likely to roll in the hay with him," I protested. "My reputation is as good as anyone's. Certainly better than yours."

"Then tell him to stop looking at you as if he wanted to eat you alive," George said. "The man looks completely besotted."

"Does he?" I said eagerly. "Oh George, does he?"

"G.o.d help us," George said. "Coal on the fire. Yes, I'm afraid he does. Tell him to keep it to himself until Anne is married and Queen of England and then you can choose for yourself."

There was an explosive row going on in Anne's privy chamber. George and I, coming in from a ride, froze in the presence chamber and looked around at Henry's gentlemen and Anne's ladies, who were all maintaining a wonderful pretence of not listening while straining to hear every word through the thick door. I heard Anne's scream of rage over Henry's rumble of discontent.

"What use has she of them? What use? Or is she to come back to court at Christmas again? Is she to sit in my place and am I to be thrown down now that you have had me?"

"Anne, for G.o.d's sake!"

"No! If you loved me at all I would not have had to ask! How can I go to France in anything but the queen's jewels? What does it say if you take me to France as a marquess with nothing but a handful of diamonds?"

"They're hardly a handful..."

"They're not the crown jewels!"

"Anne, some of those were bought for her by my father for her first marriage, they are nothing to do with me..."

"They are everything to do with you! They are England's jewels, given to the queen. If I am to be queen then I must have them. If she is queen then she can keep them. Choose!"

We all heard Henry's goaded roar. "For G.o.d's sake, woman, what do I have to do to please you? You have had every honor that a woman could dream of! What d'you want now? The gown off her back? The hood off her head?"

"All that and more!" Anne yelled back at him.

Henry flung open the door, we all began talking with tremendous animation, started upon seeing him, and dropped into our bows.

"I shall see you at dinner," he said icily over his shoulder to Anne.

"You will not," she said very loudly. "For I shall be long gone. I shall take my dinner on the road and my breakfast at Hever. You do not treat me with disdain."