“If she’d quit of her harsh chattering I may, but alas, there is no hope for that, so I dutifully make the rounds with my father’s guests,” he said.
“Why hasn’t the queen come?” I was certain that as the host’s son he would know.
“She’s angry because the king is considering naming the Duke of Richmond to the line of succession along with Princess Mary. No one other than a lawfully begot son of the king shall take precedence over Richmond.”
“Ah.” The Duke of Richmond was Henry’s bastard son by Bessie Blount, whereas Princess Mary was the one surviving child of Henry’s union with Katherine of Aragon.
“What is your opinion?” I whispered in his ear. As a courtier, George would have heard the murmurs in the king’s privy council.
“’Twas only one woman ever tried to rule England, the empress Maude, and Henry, as well as all of us, knows how that ended,” he grimly replied. I nodded my agreement. Decades of bloodshed, political unrest, and civil war. “He must not let that happen again. And he knows it.”
The music slowed, indicating a change in song. “And now I shall turn the conversation over to more pleasant matters, and the lady to a most pleasant partner.” And, as if by happenstance but most likely by plan, Will came to claim the next dance.
He took my hand in his and pulled me near. I nearly closed my eyes in delight, but I was aware of Simon’s gaze boring into my back. I dared not show my true feelings.
“You look well, Meg,” Will said, his voice deep and thick with emotion. I allowed myself to look into his eyes briefly and then willed the look he returned imprinted upon my heart and mind.
“You, too, sir. I trust your studies have gone well? My nephew John tells me that you both shall graduate with your MA at Cambridge and are shortly to take your vows.”
He sighed heavily. Well, I couldn’t help it. What other were we to talk of, and in any case, I had never hidden my true heart from Will Ogilvy and I wasn’t about to start now.
“Yes. My brother’s wife will soon have a child and my father feels secure in allowing me to take my vows. I shall do so shortly. Will you attend the ceremony with Alice?”
We parted momentarily but remained partners for the next dance as well, a notable social indiscretion and sure to draw eyes. I held my voice aloof. “I shall be married soon so I shan’t be close enough to attend. I wish you well.”
“Meg, please don’t put this barrier between us. Let us sit awhile and have a cup of wine, as friends, and I shall tell you about what I’ve been studying and where I plan to go.”
The idea of an intelligent discourse that did not include what was remaining in the larder, or how much small beer had spoiled, drew me. And the man did too; I admit it. He put his hand in the hollow of my back and steered me to a table, where a servant delivered two cups of wine. I looked about me and, not seeing Simon, Baron Blackston’s eyes and ears, breathed easier.
Will leaned in toward me in order to be better heard above the musicians. I had no place to look—not his eyes lest I be drawn in, not his lips lest I imagine what could not be. I affixed a firm, friendly, sisterly look to my face and tried to focus on his cheekbones. I’d traced them once and longed to do so again but a verse of Scripture came back to me, unbidden. Touch not God’s anointed. Noli tangere. He was not mine to touch.
“I’m going to Antwerp, to be a chaplain to the cloth merchants. But also…. there is printing going on there. And translating. Tyndale is there. And I have honed my gift for languages. I’m going to see if I can be of some help. Perhaps it was for this that our Lord called me. Imagine it, Meg, hundreds, thousands of people able to read what God says in their own language. German, French, English. Not dependent upon Latin anymore.”
“I’ve done quite well without Latin myself,” I said, wanting to remain aloof in light of his enthusiasm, but I couldn’t. I grinned.
“Still my stubborn girl,” he said, unaware what the words “my girl” meant to me. Or maybe not.
I could see Simon making his way toward me. I drew my shoulders back to appear disinterested. “Be careful in Antwerp,” I said. “I will pray for you.”
“Te somniabo.” He quietly echoed his long-ago words spoken in the gardens just outside. I will dream of you.
“Don’t,” I urged him. “It’s not fair to either of us.”
He nodded but held my gaze. “You’re right. I apologize. I love our Lord with all that I am, but I am still a weak man in at least one area. I…. I will not reach out to you again.”
At precisely that moment Simon arrived. “Meg,” he said overfamiliarly, “a dance? You’ve been sitting here so long.” He shot a look at Will.
“Thank you, yes,” I said. “This is Will Ogilvy, a childhood friend. He’s about to take his priestly vows with my nephew John.”
At that Simon relaxed, but not completely. They made small talk for a few moments and then Simon led me onto the dance floor, holding me, if anything, even tighter than Will had. As we did I thought, Unlike Anne, I could love a man with a weakness, so long as it was the right one.
Will had left his seat and was talking with his sister, Rose, and a demure friend of hers, auburn-haired like me. But I saw his face as I danced with Simon; it was tinted with jealousy.
My brother Edmund danced with Rose Ogilvy’s young friend. Anne sat in a corner, attended by several young men. I joined them and we chattered for a moment. I was about to suggest a walk in the garden when the young men disappeared like ice on a summer pond. Anne—Anne!—grew demure and I looked behind me. It was the king. I quickly dropped to a curtsey, but I needn’t have bothered as it wasn’t me he was looking at.
“Do I know you?” the king asked Anne.
“I am Mistress Anne Boleyn,” Anne said. I found it hard to believe that he did not remember Anne, having been to Hever Castle many times. But Henry was a man with a singular focus and it had been trained on another Boleyn girl for many years. And in the years since she’d left court Anne herself had blossomed from a somewhat cocky, self-sure girl to a young woman in complete command of her alluring repertoire.
“Why are you not at court?” Henry asked. “Surely such a lovely flower should not be hidden away in the countryside to blossom and die unheralded.”
Ah yes, the master of courtly flirtation.
“I had the privilege of serving the queen for some time, sire, but Cardinal Wolsey thought perhaps the fields of Kent were better suited to me than the garden of Your Majesty’s court.” The words themselves were straightforward but Anne, too, had been well trained in court manners and there was a certain lure in her voice that men found irresistible. Henry, it need not be said, was a man.
“The cardinal has made a grievous error, I fear,” Henry said. He bowed slightly, chivalrously. “A dance, mistress?” As if anyone would dare decline!
Although the king had been expected to return to Penshurst Castle that night he chose, instead, to accept Sir Thomas’s offer of hospitality and dwell a little longer at Hever. Anne and I spent the night awake, nearly all night, giggling like young girls in front of her fireplace talking about women and their clothes and their prospects and Will and Simon. And the king, of course.
The next evening Sir Thomas put on another dinner, smaller, of course, but certain to bring him to the edge of bankruptcy, as visits from the king were often the financial ruin of the host. George Boleyn was the king’s cupbearer, and as Anne and George sat idling, talking, the king beckoned to George. “I’m thirsty.” I watched from some feet away as Anne let go of George’s arm so he could assist the king with his wine. And then Henry spoke again, loud enough for all to hear.
“Bring your sister with you.” The king looked directly at Anne, comely in a yellow gown that didn’t fix her dark complexion as sallow so much as sun-kiss it. I wondered if anyone considered that he might have been asking for George’s sister Mary instead. But she was nowhere to be seen.