“Where are we going?”
“I do not know what will happen now that you have set Francois back on his royal heel, but we had best stick to my original plan. No one is ever getting hands on you again unless it is a certain William Stafford, love. Who knows if your father shall send someone else to your door?”
“But where will we hide? Did you find some place outside the castle? The gates are secured by two armies.”
“Hush, love. Come on.”
He tugged gently at her wrist and she followed him willingly. She would follow him anywhere he led her, though she be half dressed as she was now or even naked. The halls were greatly deserted and Mary was surprised to see no guards at the door to Anne’s rooms as they approached. Instinctively, she tried to draw back from him as he swung open the door.
“Sh,” he said low. “She beds with the king in his chamber and all the guards are there.”
The vast room where Mary had spent so much of the past week listening to Anne’s desperate tirades glowed in a strange half-light. The fire was low, but two large cresset lamps threw their circles of light near the hearth.
“Are you certain she will not return?”
They stood on the flowered light-blue hearth rug when he loosed her wrist. “She has finally taken the plunge to submit her precious body to the king, Mary. I think you would agree she will have enough political wile to stay at least the night no matter what discomforts or terrors befall her in the lion’s den.”
He squinted in the direction of Anne’s huge dark-curtained bed. “This bed will be comfortable enough for us, I assure you, love. We shall remake it carefully when we go at dawn.”
“No, I cannot.”
His strong brown hands slid up her arms. “Cannot what, sweetheart?”
“I will not sleep in her bed. How could you do so?”
“I see. Well, lass, I have no respect for the Lady Anne Boleyn’s bed.”
“I have no respect for it. Only contempt.” She heard her voice break, and he pulled her a step forward into his arms.
“I am sorry, sweet, but I thought it would be the safest harbor for us this night. I take it that this dire plan to seduce the French and Francois was her doing?”
“Yes,” she said muffled into his velvet jerkin.
“She is far more stupid than I thought,” he said against her disheveled hair. “Then we, my lady, shall spend the night right here on this hearth rug, and I shall build the fire up a bit.” He pulled her down gently to sit on the plush rug in the protective crook of his arm and she leaned securely against him. Moments passed. He moved away and threw two logs into the dying flames. She sat on her haunches studying the muscle bulges on his back and the lean angles the firelight etched on his face. He turned to face her three feet away.
“What are you thinking, love,” he asked.
“That I have done with everything except my love for you and that if you still want me for your wife, I will marry you whenever you will have me and go with you to the ends of the earth if you ask.”
His eyes glowed dark and his lower lip trembled as though he would speak. The tiny muscle on his jaw line moved. “Then you will be my wife on the first instant we can manage to escape their snares when we return. And though we may have to travel to the ends of the earth when they find out, I will wager the manor at Wivenhoe will be the place we will live the rest of our days together.”
Their smiles met wordlessly across the tiny firelit space between them and the whole room seemed to recede and drift away as it often did when he gazed upon her rapt that way and her limbs turned to warm water. It was as though they were afloat on this blue, blue rug in a boat of their own making. The waters of time were held in abeyance for only them as when they had drifted on Master Whitman’s tiny pond behind the inn at Banstead. The loomed flowers were the water lilies and the light wool pile the surface on which their little boat sailed. There was nothing that could ever hurt them now and the golden fireflies of night danced in the darkness of his eyes.
PART FOUR
The Bargain
My true love hath my heart, and I have his, By just eschange, one for the other given.
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss; There never was a better bargain driven.
My true love hath my heart, and I have his.
His heart in me keeps me and him in one; My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides.
He loves my heart, for once it was his own; I cherish his because in me it bides.
My true love hath my heart, and I have his.
—Sir Philip Sidney
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
February 22, 1533