The flow of words went right through her and she could grasp none of them. The raven-haired Mary dead. Mary who went to France to wed the old king so she could have her beloved Suffolk. Mary frightened when Francois locked her for six weeks in dark Cluny to be certain she was not with child. Mary who looked so radiant on her wedding day to the duke long ago in Paris. Mary, cold and dead.
“Are you going to stand there all day, girl? Your daughter will be back safe tomorrow. Cromwell intends to tell Anne she will have to wear mourning for both her royal sister-in-law as well as the dead baby, so you need not run to her with the news. Go to your room now. You look terrible.”
Mary did not even glance back. Her desire to scream her hatred at him was gone, burned out and wasted in her grief for her friend who first showed her how to love someone the world said she could not have. No, she thought, as she walked woodenly along the corridor with its convoluted carvings and intricate tapestries, the grief is not only for Mary Tudor. She felt grief for the entire family that they were brought to this dangerous and horrible point: Anne, Queen of England, a frightened, bitter shell; George, besotted by his new toys of lands and position; mother, alone as always at Hever; and father.... Her mind would go no further. She shoved open the door to her room. Nancy was not about, but that was well. She needed to be alone now.
She rummaged in her wooden jewelry box under the crimson garnet necklace, the huge Howard pearl drop and the other gifts from Staff’s dead aunt she had stored there which she dared not wear among the gossiping courtiers. Her fingers seized the tiny carved pawn from that chess game in France so long ago. She stared at it unblinking and held it tight in the palm of her hand as she sank down on the floor against the velvet draperies of her bed curtain and began to sob.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
June 9, 1534
Whitehall Palace
As her baby grew and Mary’s waistline swelled, she withdrew more and more from the court around her. That was easy enough lately, for the king and queen had been on a leisurely summer progress through the green midlands of England. His Grace had even cancelled an important diplomatic trip to France to take Anne on the journey. It was commonly known that the queen was with child again and that Henry Tudor had given her one last chance to produce his heir. But now, the king and queen had returned to Whitehall and this happy retirement of Mary’s would soon be over one way or the other. Either her sister would need her enough to keep her about when she knew she was with child and married to a man not of her choosing, or she would be banished or worse.
Staff had been forced to accompany the royal party, for the king favored his attendance in whatever martial or sporting endeavor he undertook. The three weeks had dragged by for Mary. She had spent the time walking, thinking, and talking to Nancy and to the Boleyn cousin Madge Shelton, whom their father had brought to court as one of Anne’s new ladies-in-waiting. The girl was winsome and lovely with a perfect oval face and curly blonde hair almost as light as her own. Madge’s green eyes danced with the excitement of being at the court even though its royal lord and lady had been gone these last weeks. The king had wanted to take the new and charming Mistress Shelton along on the trip, but had given in to his wife’s refusal when he discovered that the queen was beginning another pregnancy.
Mary felt somewhat guilty that she liked the seventeen-year-old girl so much, for the whole truth was that Mistress Shelton had been brought to court by Thomas Boleyn to hold the king’s attentions for his petulant and increasingly nasty Queen Anne. In one fell swoop, as Thomas Boleyn had planned, the green-eyed Madge had become her royal cousin’s maid and the king’s latest mistress. Mary hoped fervently that the three-week sabbatical and the new pregnancy would soothe Anne’s vile torment of the girl. Mary also prayed that the joy over the new child would allow Staff and her to tell Anne of their marriage and ask to be retired to Wivenhoe.
It had been almost a half hour now since the huge royal entourage had clattered into the courtyard of Whitehall, and Mary began to pace in her room, wondering how long it would take Staff to free himself and come to see her. When he saw her waist, he would know the time of secrecy had passed for them, for neither cloaks nor dresses with high waistlines could hide it now. She glanced down at the completed and painstakingly written letter on her table under the sunny window. She began to skim the words, though she knew them by heart and the old haunting feeling returned. It was like guilt, hate and love all mingled together in a crucible of pain.
The door sprang open and she turned, half expecting to see Nancy with another report on the returned travelers since she had heard no footsteps in the hall. But it was Staff, so tall and handsome, grinning, and he had come back to her.