CHAPTER NINETEEN

December 28, 1527

Greenwich

The single narrow window in the bedchamber Mary shared with Will looked over the stretch of lawn to the now-deserted bowling greens and beyond to the gray Thames. She was grateful her friend Mary Tudor had allowed that little Catherine could share the spacious royal nursery with Margaret, the love child from her beloved Duke of Suffolk. Mary turned, leaned against the window ledge and surveyed the irregular, cramped quarters wedged in the far northwest corner of mazelike Greenwich before the kitchen block began. Isolated quarters were a far cry from the fine chambers that were theirs when she had been the king’s mistress. And a far cry from a year ago during the Twelve Days of Christmas at lonely Plashy in Northampton.

Mary sat again at the small drop leaf table and balanced her hand mirror against the wine jug. There was no room here for an elaborate dressing table with its rows of cut glass bottles and polished framed mirror. Father had said that, because of Will’s reinstatement as Esquire to the Body, they would probably be given other quarters later, but she did not really believe it. Except for Mary Tudor and her mother, who was here as companion to Anne, she had seen no one of importance since they had arrived late last night. And tonight at Christmas revels she would have to hold up her head and face them all—proud Anne and the king who forgot everything so easily. And Staff. She bit her lip hard to keep the tears from welling and ruining her newly applied eye color. Surely Staff would be there with some adoring woman on his arm.

She saw it all then—not the small chamber at Greenwich to which they had returned—but the wood-beamed hall of the modest manor house at Plashy only a month after they had fled the king’s wrath. Staff had ridden to Northampton to see them, and she had fought to control the ecstasy she felt to be near him again. He had supped with them so close across the trestle table and told them all the news of how the prideful king had bedded three ladies of the court in quick succession. Then he had turned restive again and had ridden off to Eltham to hunt. But Eltham was only a morning ride from Hever, as well they all knew. His pursuit of a Bullen was on again, but Anne had held her ground firm, against her father’s counseling.

Still, it was hardly the news of her sister or the king she had cherished that sunny day more than a year ago when William Stafford had visited Plashy. It was the sight of his rakish smile and the smell of his leather jerkin when she poured his wine.

But Will was watchful and not to be fooled. He saw her love for Staff on her face and in her eyes when he rode in that second time. He was cold to Staff and bitterly cruel to her. If it had not been for the fact that he knew his friend held his position safe for him in his absence, and had he not trusted Staff’s lack of ambition to advance himself through it, she was not sure what he might have done to her. So through the months she lived at quiet Plashy with an embittered husband and a growing daughter, she guarded her face and hid her aching love deep in her thoughts.

Will had stopped bedding her after that. He moved to another bedroom down the narrow, crooked hall on the other side of baby Catherine’s room and fed his mind’s eye on his frustration for the ruin of the Carey cause. He blamed Mary’s failure to hold the king. He left once for three weeks to visit his beloved sister at her priory, but Staff had given up visiting and she had no way to send for him and no way to guess how long her husband would stay away with the only woman he truly loved and trusted.

So the days without a visit from Staff or word from court had dragged into weeks and months, and her well-tended love turned to doubt, frustration and then anger long after Will had returned and spring and summer had fled. They awaited the word from her father that they could return. She agonized in her lonely bed at night over Staff’s desertion. She dreamed of him kissing Maud Jennings in the rose garden at Hampton, Staff making love to the raven-haired Fitzgerald, Staff laughing with others...and loving others.

“I said, Mary, are you ready? Your sister sent word that we might stop in her rooms before the revels, and I think we should. Your father is there. I expect he will know about our other accommodations and my position. I would at least like to be informed before I have to face His Grace. I have not seen your dear friend Stafford anywhere today, but he assured me the position was mine when I—when we, actually—returned.”

The ever-taut edge was in Will’s voice, but she had given up the inward shudders she felt at his cold stares and indifference. “Yes. I am quite ready, Will.”

“Whatever there is lost between us, Mary, I am pleased to see you still make a fine appearance. You are a little pale and wan, but your fabulous face and body never fail you. Your clever little sister may be quite put out and banish you again if you dazzle her by comparison, you know.”

“I have no fear of that, Will. It is said she has splendid gifts from him, the best suite in the queen’s wing of the palace, notes from him daily at Hever, and his Tudor heart to trample on if it pleases her.”

She swept by him in her sky-blue dress and opened the door to their room herself. Even the archway to the main hall was narrow and she made certain that she carefully gathered her full skirts with their silken ribbon catches and slashes as they passed through. The dress was last year’s fashion, with a tight and low square-cut bodice which came to a point at the waist, but Mary Tudor had assured her that it was still stylish enough to wear. The matching blue silk slippers were slightly soiled from romping galliards long months ago at Whitehall. It was an endurance test for slippers to dance all night with the king, but she figured no one would notice if she danced with Will in a crowd tonight.

Will led her through the weblike corridors of Greenwich to the queen’s wing and to Anne’s spacious suite. The first thing her eyes saw when the painted door swung wide for them was Jane Rochford hovering over Anne and stroking her black tresses with a gilded hairbrush. Anne’s dark eyes caught Mary’s in the huge polished mirror she faced.

“Mary, dearest!” Anne’s face was alight with excitement and her eyes sparkled. “Now the holiday is perfect. You have seen mother this morning, I hear. We are all back together. And what fun the revels will be tonight! I am to be the lady with the Lord of Misrule, and you know who always takes that part!”

They embraced, almost formally, and Anne turned to kiss Will on the side of his cheek. Anne looked wonderful and words spilled from Mary in a rush. “Yes, Anne, I have seen His Grace play that boisterous part many times. Once,” she said almost to herself, “he stumbled and his whole arm flopped in the wassail bowl.”

“I remember that,” Jane Rochford put in, merely nodding to Mary and turning back to finish Anne’s coif.

“Will thought father would be here, Anne.” Mary stood aside and scrutinized Jane’s fussy ministrations over Anne’s headpiece and jewels.

“Oh, he is, somewhere, Mary. He is never far away, as you can imagine.” Anne giggled and her eyes sought Mary’s in the mirror again. “He was livid and fumed for days, sister. He threatened to beat me, but he never did. Not when he saw His Grace still cared, even if I held the cards.”

“And do you hold the cards still, Anne?” Will queried.

“Wait and see for yourself, Master Carey,” Anne teased. She bent to pick up her pomander ball on its velvet ribbon and added, “There are jewels and notes and flowers and great promises and I control father now—wait and see, Mary, if you do not believe me—and still His Grace has my refusal to share his bed and my word that I have only come for Yule festivities. I shall go back to Hever afterward and await my next move, however much father fusses. Wait and see.”

Your next move, Mary thought hollowly. But Anne, she wanted to cry, you are acting and talking exactly like father. She pictured again the tiny green and white chess pawn Mary Tudor had once given her which she still had in her jewel box and had stared at so often in the long afternoons at Plashy while Catherine played in the orchard outside the window.

“Here you are, Mary, Will. You look fine. It is good to have you both back.” Thomas Bullen patted Mary’s shoulder and shook Will’s hand. “Yes, you look well, Mary, as always. A little thinner perhaps.”

“And older, father. And wiser.”

He eyed her face carefully and turned to survey Anne. “Black and red for Yule, Anne? The slashings on the gown are very deep.”

“I am not ready to be seen in Tudor green and white, father. I think the dress looks perfect with my dark hair and eyes and so does Jane.”

“Yes, Jane would.” He spun to Will, and Mary noted the new massive golden crest on the heavy chain her father had draped across his velvet and ermine doublet.

“Will, the position is yours. Fear not about it and, of course, the lands and parklands from His Grace will remain quite untouched. As you know, you have Stafford to thank for holding the appointment and freely returning it to you. The man’s cynicism and lack of court ambition when the king so clearly favors him never ceases to astound me. Anyway, I offered him several hundred pounds a few months ago for holding the position for you—gambling money I told him—but he would take nothing. A rare, but foolish knave and evidently a trusted friend to you.”

“Yes. Evidently,” Will said so ominously that Anne looked up from her mirror. Thomas Bullen narrowed his eyes, and Mary held her breath.

“Let’s be off. We must not keep the Lord of Misrule waiting. Come on, come on.” Thomas Bullen waved his jeweled hand toward the door and shooed them into the now-crowded hall as if they were chicks from the hen yard at Plashy.

Mary marvelled at his calm, expansive mood. She had expected a raving fury. Maybe Anne was taming him and was truly in control of her situation. Yet as Staff had once said, no one controls this king. He himself is the user.

Fifes, lutes, fydels, drums, and sackbuts wailed from both of the musicians’ balconies overhead. People stood about in vibrant colors tapping their feet, but no one dared to dance until the king arrived. Mary wondered if Queen Catherine would appear tonight. Despite His Grace’s constant neglect and his elevation of his bastard son over her dear little daughter, the queen had always come for Yule. Mary caught a small, heart-felt glimpse of her infinite, patient agony as she continued to live in the palaces of a husband who no longer loved her. Then she caught sight of William Stafford across the crowded hall.

She stood frozen and the whole room receded. Music played on distantly but the bustling and restive room packed with courtiers died away to nothingness. Will pulled her arm and her feet moved. Staff stood far across the torch-lit bedecked room with a beautiful woman on either side of him, like silken sentinels. Will propelled her directly toward them. It all flooded back then, the pain after he visited them no more at Plashy. He had not come for five months of endless days, and she knew he must have forgotten her and was teasing and loving someone else.

“I do not know why the handsome devil does not marry, do you, wife? I cannot imagine he would be so foolish to pine away from something he can never have.”

She felt wooden-legged and her feet seemed to drag on the floor. She saw the kind face of the Duchess of Suffolk as they passed and she nodded, but the smile she sought would not come to her lips. She did not care if they were all thinking, here comes the king’s discarded mistress back to court after her shameful exile. Let them envy Anne and pity her. Let them all pity her, for she would never have the only man she had ever truly wanted. Let them all think her crushed that she had lost the eye of their terrible king.

Stafford and Will clapped each other on the shoulders and she stood rooted to her tiny piece of floor. As far as she knew, he had not even glanced her way. The two crimsoned-gowned women smiled and stood at attention, apparently waiting to be introduced. Mary felt lifeless and fought to keep her face calm, to keep from wadding handfuls of her azure gown into her tight fists.

Staff looked absolutely resplendent, and the impact of him so physically close to her after all these months nearly swamped her senses. He wore a deep burgundy velvet doublet with gold lining to match the short cape over his broad shoulders. Decorative slashings across his hard chest revealed more rich, gold material, but the heavy leather belt studded with glinting metallic pieces around his flat stomach allayed any impression that he might be a mere pleasure-loving courtier. He looked bigger than she had remembered him, his cloth-covered thighs stretching the crimson hose, the crimson and gold codpiece mounted between his thighs, a fierce reminder of what she would never have from him.

“Mary,” Staff said finally, and stooped to kiss her cheek, a mere brush of his lips. “She looks as beautiful as ever, Will. And is there no other child to come after the long stay at quiet Plashy?”

“No, and not likely to be,” Will said pointedly. “Two is enough. Let her sister have the children now.”

Staff raised one dark eyebrow. His eyes flitted over Mary’s face and seemed to take her all in. She felt totally naked before him. He always read her perfectly. He would know of her wretched love for him and would probably tease her for it.

He pulled his eyes away and turned to Will again. “His Grace is most willing for you to resume your position. He tried to give it twice lately to George Bullen, thinking it would be another gift to Anne, but she wants George to be the messenger back and forth between Hever and the court. And, as you will soon see, what the Lady Anne wants, she gets.” He lowered his voice to Will, and Mary could barely hear the next words. “The little fool insists she is not here to stay but returns to Hever with her guardian mother soon, and I know for a fact the royal stallion has not had her. The wench’s daring does boggle the mind.”

Staff and Will stood apart now and there was an awkward silence. “Lord and Lady Carey, permit me to present Eleanor and Dorothy Cobham, Lord Sheffield’s fair daughters from Derbyshire fresh come to court to serve Her Grace. Also,” he lowered his voice conspiratorially, “they are appointed through Bishop Rochester and not through the king, though I assure you they have been since duly noted by His Majesty.”

Will laughed, although Mary could see little humor in the remark. He pulled her away with some other whispered words to Staff, and as they traversed the long floor, she dared not look back.

Trumpets sounded and Queen Catherine entered with several ladies. Her women were all in black, as was Catherine. She had not changed. The huge, heavy golden and jeweled crucifix swung across her stiff bosom still. But how her daughter, Mary Tudor, had grown. His Grace must be in an expansive holiday mood indeed to allow his cast-off daughter here at court with her mother. The girl’s hair had gone from reddish hue to quite dark and she was tall, thin, and serious-faced. She held her head erect and proud among all the whispers and her black skirts swished by near Mary. Mary wondered if their drab clothes were a sort of protest, a dark blot in the shifting sea of beautiful, colored silks that clustered around the dance floor. Wait until they see Anne, she thought then, Anne in her shining black silk with her blood-red slashings.

The trumpets sounded again, and her thought was fulfilled. His Grace entered, masked as the Lord of Holiday Misrule with a masked and laughing Anne on his arm and a veritable parade of costumed giants with huge steaming wassail bowls in their arms. Draped mummers with myriad ribbons hanging from their elaborate costumes and spiced cakes on silver trays followed. Eight lovely maidens skimmed by in striped garments holding wicker baskets laden with sprigs of mistletoe which they tossed to the crowd in quick handfuls. All bowed to the queen and princess, who finally managed a smile, and then the mummers circulated through the press of people passing out their cakes and ale and mistletoe.

Mary stared long at Henry Tudor and her sleek and giggling sister. She felt nothing. She could not summon up the tiniest pang of grief or remorse at the loss of her lover of five long years, and who would ever believe her? Maybe Staff would have once, but he hardly cared now. And Anne was making her own way now alone, even without father. Of course, she and Will would have to live at court but, except for being near her friend the Duchess of Suffolk, the thought terrified her.

At least starting tonight as he resumed his duties as Esquire in call of the king’s bedchamber, Will would often be gone from the narrow bed they had been forced to share last night. There was beautiful little Catherine to care for, to love. Above all, to keep her sanity, she must avoid William Stafford and try to forget the women she would see him with as, even now, he stood so close to Dorothy Cobham across the room.

Will had gone in the wake of the king when His Grace departed the hall after hours of dancing and revels, leaving Mary to find their distant chambers in the far reaches of bricked Greenwich by herself. She once thought she knew the palace well, but it was only the royal apartments and larger chambers of the courtiers she had known, not the cramped quarters of this wing, back by the tiltyards and sporting fields. Weary, she found the room after two wrong turns, and pushed the door open to find her faithful Nancy waiting, warming her mistress’s robe over a charcoal brazier, since there was no fireplace in the chilly room.

“I am glad to see your sweet face, my Nance,” she said to the girl. “Tomorrow night I shall have you wait outside the great hall to help lead me back to this hidden den.”

“The lord says surely your rooms are to be moved, Lady Mary. A lord and lady of the king can hardly stay in this cold hovel.” She pulled her woolen shawl closer and hunched up her shoulders. “I left little Catherine about an hour ago. She was so excited she could hardly sleep. I think she misses her little room at Plashy, but she and the Lady Margaret take well to each other. Margaret gave her a wee leather-faced doll and she fell asleep with it in her arms.” She began to unlace Mary’s dress as she spoke.

“She is young and adaptable, I pray, Nance. Maybe that doll can replace the one she dropped from the fishing boat into the pond. She cried three nights over the tattered mite.” Mary stepped quickly out of her chemise and wrapped her furred robe around her body. She was so warm from dancing that she hardly felt the chill. She would be in bed and sound asleep before the icy cold crept into every corner of the room in the long hours until dawn.

“Will you be quite well, lady, since the lord sleeps in call of the king? I could stay.”

“Thank you, Nance, but I will be fine. I am exhausted and really need the time alone after the bustle of the move and the ride over the muddy roads to London. I do depend on you greatly, you know, but I need to be alone.”

“Yes, lady,” Nancy nodded as though she truly understood. “I be in the common hall with my sister Megan if you should need me. I dare say you could catch a linkboy to fetch me.” She opened the door to the dark hall and a noticeable draft swept past her. “If there be any linkboys in such distant reaches of this cold palace,” Mary heard her murmur as she closed the door.

She warmed her hands for a moment near the charcoal embers, then brushed her hair, listening to the crackle of the brush through her long gold tresses. She could feel the chill now. It was creeping into her. Maybe when Anne left to return to Hever those rooms would be available. She laughed aloud at the foolish thought. “Those rooms are in the queen’s wing, silly,” she said, and her own voice in the now-silent room startled her.

At least when they progressed to Whitehall or Richmond or wherever, Will, as Esquire, would be certain to get her a room with at least a fireplace. “This room is as cold and sullen as the look His Grace gave me tonight with his fake ‘welcome back, dear Mary’ speech,” she accused the cold chamber.

When she slid her feet into the icy sheets she wished desperately for a warming pan to dump the charcoal embers into and run between the smooth linens. She lay there curled up stiffly for a moment and got up to don her robe again. It was then she heard the quick knock on her door. Her heart leapt at the sharp sound in the silence of her thoughts.

“Who is there?”

“It is Staff, Mary. I would talk with you.”

She pulled the robe tight around her hips, but her feet would not move.

“Mary.” He pushed the door slowly open and his shoulder and head appeared far higher up the door than where she stared. She had forgotten to shoot the door bolt. She had forgotten he was so tall.

He did not wait for words from her, but took a huge step in and closed the door quietly behind him. “I had to see you, Mary. I am sorry I startled you.”

“At least you still remember my name,” she heard herself say shakily.

A swift grin lit his features. “I remember a good deal more, Mary Bullen.”

She turned away so he would not see the fear on her face, the longing, the bitter anger. “My name, as you well know, William Stafford, is not Bullen nor has it been for a long time. I believe my husband, Lord Carey, is a dear friend of yours.” She looked down at the tiny mirror she had left on the drop leaf table.

“I did it all for you, Mary—for us, holding his position like that.”

“How considerate and noble.” Her voice caught as though she were on the edge of tears. She spun to face him and was terrified to see he had come much closer. “How considerate, just like all the visits you paid us at Plashy the last five months we were there.” She stared at the tiny throbbing pulse at the base of his bronze throat. How was he always so brown in the winter months? He had changed clothes too, and how did he ever find this forsaken room?

“When I saw Will’s bitter suspicions for our feelings,” he went on, “I knew it was foolish to cause you pain when I was there and much worse pain after I left. I knew he would take it out on you, and it was the only way I could protect you, even a little bit. I missed you, too.”

“I did not say I missed you.”

“You did not have to, sweetheart.” He took another step forward and, like a coward, she pressed back against the rough plaster wall next to the window. “I was so happy when I knew His Grace would allow you to come back. And when I saw you with Will tonight, I thought, what for? For the delicious torture of seeing you daily and not being able to touch you, to make love to you?”

“Please, Staff, you have to go.”

“I will. Later. Then I thought, I have to forget you and marry as the king wants....”

“The king wants you to? Whom?”

“One of the Dorset lasses he wants to come to court. I have only seen her once. But then, I realized I cannot forget you because I have desired you ever since I set eyes on you in the dusty old Bastille in Paris and knew that the blonde beauty with the smothered fire in her eyes was for me. And I have loved you almost as long as that, Mary.” He leaned close to her, not touching her tense body but placing his hands carefully on the wall on either side of her tousled head.

She closed her eyes treasuring his words, his soothing voice she had thought she would never hear again and had desired so desperately in the long hours away. She felt tears squeeze through her lashes. He was so close she could smell sweet wine on his breath.

“I kept Will’s position for him, Mary, and I stayed away from his wife, whom I love and he does not, damned fool that he is, and now he owes me. He owes me that I can be near you and I will be, I will be.” He nuzzled her hair and bent to kiss her throat. A little stifled cry escaped her as he leaned gently against her. He raised his head and stared down into her wide eyes. His lips descended upon hers. He was so warm and strong. All the loneliness and pain flowed out of her as she returned his caressing, probing kiss. His kisses deepened and she felt his breath hot against her cheek. She forgot she was pressed to a cold wall in the slums of vast Greenwich and that her husband did not love her and she had fallen far from the good graces of her king. Here was all that mattered.

She lifted her arms to his broad shoulders and pressed him close in return, arching up against him. Her robe fell open but she no longer needed its furry warmth. He moved a half step away, parted it slowly and put his hands to her waist, covered only by the thin chemise. The span of his hands nearly encircled her. His thumbs moved slowly over the tiny swell of her belly. He lifted her, his arms like metal bands around her. The heavy robe dangled straight down from her shoulders to the floor. He laid her in its warm folds on the bed, strode to the door and shot the bolt. His boots thudded on the floor beside the bed and he yanked his doublet and shirt over his head as though they were one garment.

“Staff, we cannot. Will might...”

He silenced her with a hot kiss, and his hands went to her waist again. “Hush, love. Will is thinking of the king and the Carey name. None of that has anything to do with us.”

Her limbs felt like water, and a hot pulse raced low in her stomach. She wanted this so much. She wanted him and had for years. She went limp as his hands crept up to her pointed breasts and his knee rode intimately across her legs.

“I told you once that I was not a very patient man, Mary. I—and we—have waited quite long enough, but if you choose not to submit, I shall take it on myself, and you may blame me in the morning. I want you, sweetheart, to make up for a lot of lonely hours, and countless advice, and worry that your kings and father would totally ruin your life, and for a lot of your own tart words. And for the wasted years. Tonight we are going to begin catching up and it will take a long, long time for us to be even.”

His voice mesmerized her, and the flickering flames, dancing in his dark eyes, entranced her. As she held to him, his hands went everywhere. This was far different from Henry Tudor’s rough caresses or Will’s swift, cold possessiveness. This was madness. How often, how many years in Henry’s vast bed or in Will’s narrow one, had she dreamed that Staff would seize her and love her. And now it was real.

He stripped off his breeches while she smiled deep inside for the pure joy of having him look on her that way. His body hovered over her like a warm, protective roof against the cold world. She reached up and encircled his neck with her arms.

“Your face is always beautiful, my love,” he whispered, “and that is why men desire you. But it is honest, too. Honest and so clearly lovely within. That is why this man has loved you and desired you all this time. Until the late winter dawn I am going to make love to you, and I will watch your face and know you love me too. You are mine, Mary Bullen, from this time on, no matter what befalls.”

Sometime later, minutes or hours or eons, collapsed against her, he raised his disheveled head and looked down into her eyes only inches away. He smiled.

“I would almost have to say that those few minutes were worth seven years of hell, sweetheart.” He reached down and pulled her discarded fur robe over their perspiring bodies. They lay with her head tucked under his chin as he stroked her hair gently. Her free hand rested in the curly hair of his chest.

She sighed. “I have never felt so safe and content. But I am old enough to know that the real world is outside there, outside that door.”

“Yes, my Mary. But there are many doors in His Grace’s palaces, and someday we may have a door of our own.” His voice broke and he hesitated. “Someday.”

She felt incredibly happy. Even if the king, her wide-eyed sister and screaming father beat down the door, she would not care —nor budge—one whit.