She took a moment and coughed so that I thought she might not be able to stop. After some minutes she regained her breath.
“Alas, one morning shortly after bringing him to my chamber I awoke to find that he was dead. He was not meant to live in a glass jar, even a beautiful, expensive glass jar. Instead of flying freely about he beat his wings against the jar, and try as he might he could not adapt. Thus trapped, he sickened and died. I think he gave up, because there were holes aplenty to let him breathe.”
I had not taken my eyes off my mother. She now looked full into mine. “Do you understand, Meg?”
I nodded.
“Thomas is a dreamer, and Edmund is your father’s son. But you, dear Meg, you are mine.”
“I will not let you down, Madam. I promise you that.” I leaned over and kissed her wan cheek.
Exhausted with the effort, she fell back in her pillow and I stayed by her till her shallow breathing grew regular. I then took the portrait with me and slipped back into my own chamber.
In the springtime, we buried my lady mother at the priory near Allington. I spent days going through her belongings, folding her linens, reading her letters, dabbing on her scented water, crying silently into her gowns after I folded them and before I laid them away. One afternoon I found Edmund sobbing behind the gatehouse. It reminded me of how, as a boy, he’d held on to my skirts to steady himself, how he and I had sat in the long hallway and rolled balls to one another. As we’d grown older, we’d grown apart. “Edmund,” I said. He looked up, startled to see me and clearly not happy at having been caught at grief.
“I am sorry for, well, for whatever has driven us apart. Mayhap it was my fault as I spent more time with Thomas. I don’t wish us to be distant any longer.”
He brushed his riding gloves across his face and stared at me with not one scrap of warmth. “I have no use of, nor desire for, your affection or interest, now or at any time.”
I looked into his flint-blue eyes. The boy Edmund was gone. The man Edmund was no one I cared to know, dangerous and ugly.
* * *
Some months later I was going over the kitchen accounts with the chamberlain when a messenger arrived from Hever Castle. As the lady of the house now, I took the correspondence and opened it. It was an invitation to a feast being held in the king’s honor a fortnight hence. The whole family was invited, and Sir Thomas took special care to inform my father that my nephew John Rogers would attend along with some of the other fellows from Cambridge in advance of their priestly ordination.
Which other fellows? It had been several years since I had seen Will, and truthfully, he had probably forgotten me. We were, as I’d told Thomas, a long-passed youthful flirtation akin to his affection for Anne.
I brought the invitation to my father, who was home from court as the treasurer of the king’s household for the time being, the better to allow my brother Thomas to become proficient at his job as clerk.
“Sir, this has just arrived from Sir Thomas and Lady Boleyn.” I handed the invitation over to him, fully expecting him to instruct his secretary to write a polite note of refusal, as we were still a household in mourning. Still, I hoped he would allow us to go, as I was eager to see Anne again.
My father read it quickly. Then he turned to his secretary. “Please write Sir Thomas and thank him for the invitation. My sons and my daughter and I will attend, and my grandson John Rogers can return to stay here at Allington, as I know that the king is on progress and the other houses likely to be well occupied. Oh—and please inform Sir Thomas that My Lord Blackston will attend with our family. He will be here anon to complete his marriage with my daughter.”
I swooned, but just slightly.
“That will be all.” My father dismissed his secretary, and I remained for a few moments whilst he instructed me to prepare to be married shortly and return to my husband’s home with him afterward.
I went up to my chamber. Edithe was there, mending one of my gowns. “We will find something for Flora to rework among your mother’s gowns for the dance at Hever Castle,” she said. “Flora may accompany you to Baron Blackston’s, if it be a’right, lady. My Roger is here at the Boleyns’.” I nodded mutely, knowing I’d miss her desperately.
The day before the ball, Baron Blackston’s carriage arrived. I went to meet him, as was expected of me. But when the carriage door opened Simon came out and no one else.
“My Lord…. I am pleased to see you,” I said. “And”—I looked into the open carriage door—“Lord Blackston?”
“Is unwell,” he said shortly. “I am come to talk with Sir Henry on his behalf.”
I wanted to disallow my heart to hope, hope having often been torn out by the roots in my life. But perhaps, I thought, perhaps….
On the night of the feast my father and Simon shared a cart with Edmund, and I rode with my nephew John Rogers.
“A priest,” I said as we bumped along the hardened path to Hever Castle. “Was your father shocked?”
He nodded. “For a time, but I think he always knew I was thus inclined. He will train my brother to take my place in the family.”
“And…. no wife?” I pressed on.
He shook his head. “Not for lack of desire, I assure you. But in spite of the fact that Luther himself has taken a bride whilst serving God completely, I just do not feel able to part my heart thusly.”
“Luther says priests can be married then.” I was exultant.
“Not in England, they can’t,” John corrected me, and my heart fell. “They can’t even read Tyndale’s New Testament translation in England without risk of being burned alive.”
I leaned forward and whispered, though there were only we two in the cart. “Have you read Tyndale’s New Testament, John?”
He grinned at me and said nothing. His face was alight with passion. I envied him. I felt the desire to read the Scriptures in my own language kindle, but I quickly patted it out.
Anne must have had a hand in the seating arrangements as I was neatly placed at dinner next to my nephew, which meant that all of his friends rallied round our table to talk after the meal was complete. Try as I might to force my eyes away from the Ogilvys, I could not. Rose was there with her husband, the flush of new motherhood making her a bit fairer of face and thicker of waist. My own waist, fashionably thin underneath my corset, felt inadequate and unwomanly. Walter Ogilvy was there, coughing disruptively, and his wife was there, too, appreciably heavy with child. I envied her and felt the yearning in my own small waist. And then there was Will. He locked eyes with me each and every time I looked in his direction so I knew he must have been looking at me often.
The king roared his approval at a joke, commanded the musicians, and the dance began. Noticeably absent from his attention was the pregnant Mary Boleyn. I did not envy Mary her second child, certain, like her eldest, Katherine, to be a golden redhead unlike her husband, dark-haired Carey. The king threw nary a glance in her direction and all knew that his affections had, like the court, gone on progress for fresh lodging and novel fare.
“My lady, a dance?” George Boleyn came alongside me.
“Certainly,” I said, and he swept me into his brotherly arms. I leaned forward and whispered, “Does not your new wife expect you to dance with her alone all evening?”