“Then you had not heard the latest family scandal, Mary,” George pursued. “Father told Anne and me, and I thought he would have told you.”
“I almost never see him, brother, though I know he is as much about Whitehall these days as he is Westminster. He is avoiding me, I think, since I intend to ask him for some financial support and he knows it. I can hardly send to mother. She has only money for household items, and I will not have her pawning jewels for me. Since Will died and His Grace saw fit to give the Carey lands, benefits and the raising of the Carey heir away, I am quite destitute. You might tell him that when you see him, though I warrant he knows it well enough already.”
“Mary, I am sorry, truly I am. Anne is too. If I get some extra money dicing, you shall have it.” When she did not answer as he had expected, he plunged on, “But you look magnificent tonight, sister, absolutely beautiful as always. The golden net in your hair is fine and the necklace looks new.”
“Thank you, George,” she said, refusing to give in to his gentle hint for an explanation of her net and garnets.
“I did hear, though,” she said to change the subject, “that the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk are arguing over the situation also. The duke, of course, sides with his friend the king, but I cannot fathom my dear friend the Princess Mary taking Her Grace’s part. She has always been a promoter of love matches and she will ruin her happy marriage if she persists in this. I hope this will not mean that little Catherine must be taken from her daughter’s nursery.”
“Yes, as you say, she will ruin her precious love match. But that marriage was a freak anyway, admit it, Mary. The both of them far gone in mutual love and the lady picks the man she marries! Ha! A rare miracle and not to be believed. And the king’s sister and his best friend at that! Most marriages about the royal court are made in hell, not heaven. I can attest well enough to that. Well, I see we are almost there. I had best get back to escorting Anne as His Grace sent me to do, or she will be put out. See you later, Mary.”
“Yes, dearest George,” she whispered to herself. Poor George, trapped with a woman he detested who would never bear him children, while Margot Wyatt played wife to some strange landowner in the north. And poor, bitter Anne still haunted by ghosts she could not exorcise. Mary was certain of it now, for Anne had leapt at the chance to help Eleanor Carey become Prioress of Wilton when she had seized on the thought that it would discomfort Wolsey if the king refused his candidate. To be so eaten by hatred of Wolsey after all these years without her Percy lad. If only Anne truly loved the king now, all this would be so much easier to accept.
Mary rose and walked steadily across the width of the still-rocking barge and from the little party awaiting them, Henry Norris gave her his hand. He looked well, she thought, for a man whose wife had died in childbirth only a few months ago. Anne strode off far ahead toward the palace, her gauzy silver jeweled headpiece floating across her black tresses and winking in the torchlight on the landing. She walked between George and father, the only Boleyns who really mattered anymore. Staff was right. She and mother would never be anything but Bullens despite the royal rain of titles on them. Bullens from Hever and proud of it, thought Mary as she lifted her head and smiled up at Norris.
Mary did as Staff had bid her when she sighted him with the beautifully gowned Cobham wench across the room. She kept a smile on her lips and chatted with her cousin Francis Bryan as the court assembled for dinner. After all, she had Staff’s gift around her bare throat and she could feel its metal weight along the swell of her breasts. And tonight he would be in her bed, not in flirty Dorothy Cobham’s.
“It is in the wind that there will be another Tudor visit to the court of Francois du Roi now that the sticky situation with France improves somewhat,” Francis was saying. “I have a wager on that the king will take Anne with him. Personally, I think it might be His Grace’s plan to test the waters to see if he can get support for the marriage elsewhere in case he does not get aid from Pope Clement.”
“Really, Francis,” Mary said low as her eyes went over his shoulder to her father, who was in earnest conversation with Anne and George on the royal dais, awaiting the king’s entry. “I think we had better forget the divorce if His Holiness does not grant it. It may mean Wolsey’s utter ruin, but the king can hardly circumvent the pope.”
Francis’s eyebrows raised in unfeigned surprise. “Then you are less in the council of Anne and your father than I had imagined.”
“What do you mean?”
“The king has a new advisor now to whose dark, sly voice he harkens well. See the short, square man in black by the dais—the one who entered with your father?”
“Yes, I see him. Who is it?”