“I expect my letter when I return home,” I said. “Or I’ll tell your intended about this innocent poem.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Thomas looked at me, shocked, and then relaxed when he saw my smile.
“Don’t test me,” I teased. Then I pressed my heels into my mount and we headed toward Hever Castle.
When I arrived, the castle was already in an uproar. They’d just been told to expect the king at the next day’s celebration and Sir Thomas, Anne’s father, was unsure if the entertainment, the wine, or the food was of high enough quality. Lady Boleyn supervised the servants, one of whom let me in. I went upstairs to the girls’ annex and found Anne with her hands on Mary’s shoulders as Mary wept. Anne caught my eye in the mirror to let me know she’d be with me shortly and I withdrew to her chamber to wait.
Momentarily, she joined me. “Meg! I’m so glad to see you.”
“Is Mary all right?” I asked.
She nodded. “You know Mary—always emotional, and on this day, when anyone would be emotional, she’s more like overwrought. She didn’t want to marry Sir William, though he’s a nice enough man. She’d fallen in love with a man in France, at Francis’s court, and won’t put him out of her mind. She just asked me how he fared. I told her he was to be married.”
“Oh dear,” I said, my heart tender for Mary. “It’s an awful thing to face a lifetime of being married to a man you don’t want. But she can’t chase a man she can’t have,” I pointed out. “It could be worse. At least Carey is handsome.” I paused. “Is Will coming this night?”
Anne grinned. “Yes, I’ve not heard otherwise. I’m glad for you.” She reached out, took my hand, and squeezed it as old friends do. But there was something more substantive, raised higher, a certain je ne sais quoi about her. She seemed sophisticated, and, well, French.
“I’d best get back to assisting Mary,” she said. “We’ll have a full week to talk and enjoy one another afore I must return to France to serve the good Queen Claude.”
I hugged her quickly and pulled away. “I’m eager to hear all of your news.”
“And there is news…,” she added tantalizingly.
“There’s always news with you,” I said, grinning. “Oh—I almost forgot. From Thomas.” I pulled the scroll out of the sleeve I’d used to smuggle it in.
“Oh, Meg, he’s still sending poems.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve told him he must let you go.”
“And so he must. He’s a dear friend to me…. but naught else.”
“I know,” I said. “Dance with him once at Mary’s wedding feast and then tell him he must move on.”
I took my leave and rode back home quickly with my manservant to beat the darkness. Once home I handed my wraps to my maid, Edithe, and then went upstairs to check on my mother.
Her chamber was darkened, as it almost always was these days. I’d spent a good amount of time with my sister, Alice, in the past year or two, staying at her household for months at a time and then returning to Allington to help my mother manage the household and her affairs, which I didn’t mind at all, for her sake. But she’d purposefully placed more and more of the daily concerns into the hands of her trusted lady servant, who had been with my mother since she was a child.
I didn’t know if it was her pain or her mood that made her desire the darkness. “Shall I open your tapestries a bit to let in the last light of the day, my lady?” I asked softly as I came into the room. She nodded weakly and I pulled them back. The effort released dust, and the motes floated to the ground in a gentle downward drift, symbolic of my mother’s state of being. It was clear she was not going to make it to dine this evening.
“Tomorrow is Mary Boleyn’s wedding celebration.” The ceremony itself had been some months past but Sir Thomas wanted to show off his fine gardens while they were in bloom. I sat on the edge of her bed and stroked the hair by her temple. I waved to her lady servant, dismissing her to rest for a time. “And the king is coming!”
“I fear I shall not be able to attend,” my mother answered. “This day I am too weak to sit aright in bed, much less dress to be seen.”
I tried not to show my alarm. My sister was in London, her ninth baby due to arrive any day. Thomas would escort his intended, and if my mother didn’t go, my father wouldn’t, either.
Which would leave me at home with the loathsome Edmund, who would amuse himself, I was sure, by lowering his boot on live insects to hear them crunch and then see them squirm and die.
“Are you certain?” I looked into her face, which, over the past months, had gone from mothlike white to a slowly hardening mask of wax gray.
“I am certain,” she said. “But I will ask your father if he will allow Thomas and his wife to escort you to the wedding. I know you want to see your friends.” She reached out and took my hand in hers; it was papery and dry, the skin pulling into folds that did not recover to smoothness. “I have a gift for you, Meg. Call Flora.”
I kissed her hand before letting go of it and then rang the bell to indicate that we required a servant. When her servant came my mother sent her for the seamstress, who soon returned with a large dress box.
“Bring it here,” my mother whispered, and then indicated for me to lift the lid. I did, and pulled out the most amazing gown of russet silk, the perfect color to set off my hair and eyes. It was trimmed in cord that I knew to be copper but glinted dangerously close to the gold only allowed to royalty. The kirtle underneath was ivory, as were the ruffs. It was cut in a French style but not a copy of one of Anne’s.
“Oh, Madam!” I said. “This is too beautiful for me, for a simple country celebration. Thank you, thank you.” I reached forward and hugged her, her skeletal frame somewhat cushioned by the layers of bedclothes.
“’Tis no simple country affair when the king will attend,” my mother replied, smiling. The first real joy I’d seen in her eyes for quite some time then dimmed. “I fear I shall not be here to see you wed and have that dress made.” She coughed and I saw the brown phlegm though she tried to quickly fold the kerchief in half to hide it.
“Father wants me to marry soon.”
“It will take time to arrange, but he will find someone highly placed and who owns vast properties,” my mother said. “And who knows? Your husband may end up being kind.”
“But Father is not!” I said, keeping a care not to let my voice rise too much but not tempering my frustration, either. “He beats me senseless and then, when I’m of some profit use to him, he marries me off to the highest bidder.”
My mother flinched at that most impolite word, “profit.” “Do you know why your father suffers so?”
We never discussed my father—any of us. “I’m unsure.”
“As a young man, your father joined in a revolt against that pretender and murderer King Richard. They captured your father and put him in the Tower and tortured him, night and day, for two years. When Henry Tudor, father of our good king, came to the throne, he released your father and rewarded him with lands and titles for his loyalty. But the demons beat into your father never left.”
I said nothing. I was sorry for his torture but failed to see how that left him free to beat me. If it were me, I’d have shied away from torture for having suffered it. Just then I caught the sound of my brother Edmund idling in the hallway, waiting to wish our rarely awake mother, whom he worshipped, a good eve.
It occurred to me that Edmund, like my father, responded to his torment by tormenting others. Only whereas my father’s fits of anger seemed like an ill-restrained impulse, Edmund’s seemed a well-rehearsed pleasure.
My mother’s feeble grasp on my wrist grew weaker. “Mayhap your father wants to marry you quickly for your own good.”