“Yes, father,” she replied, but he was gone. She sat stock-still and watched one blood-red pane of glass change from dull to crimson. The rainclouds did threaten the day. She cared not if the whole retinue drowned on their merry jaunt from Eltham. She felt it again, the slow, growing panic, the anger. She had tried to reason it out, to examine her feelings, but really, she had none. Her thoughts never got her anywhere.
She bounded up and raced to her room for her straw hat and riding gloves. She jammed her feet into boots and rushed to the door. She would clear her mind by riding Donette before they came. She could at least decide that for herself. She nearly collided with her mother as she darted from her bedroom. Elizabeth Bullen looked worried and distracted.
“Mary, you are not...you cannot be going riding!”
“Yes, mother, only for a little while. I must.” She stood nervously facing the lovely, fragile-looking woman whose azure eyes and high cheekbones she had so clearly inherited.
“I have so much to do. Your father wants to make certain you will wear a particular dress. He told you the one?”
“Yes, mother, he told me. I shall wear it to please him.” She hesitated. “I will wear it if I may ride Donette just for a little while, mother. They will not arrive until high noon. Father said so.”
Her mother’s slender fingers stroked her arm briefly. “I do understand your desire to get out of the house, Mary, but it will not sit well if you are not here when His Grace comes. That is the way it is, Mary. We must accept.”
“I will be here, dearest mother, and in the chosen dress.”
Elizabeth Bullen nodded her silvered blonde head. “Then take care on the horse, my Mary.”
We must accept. The words echoed through Mary’s brain in rhythm to her steps as she hurried toward the stable block. We must accept—we must accept. We must—we must.
How clearly now she remembered the forbidden knowledge she had stored up all these years, that her own lovely mother had turned down this very king’s invitation—the honor of being his mistress. How angry father had been, but she had weathered his anger somehow. Now she, Mary, was perhaps her father’s last chance, for Anne was but thirteen, off at the French court and likely to remain there for years. She felt it clearly, coldly. She was father’s golden opportunity and she dare not fail him. Even mother now counseled that she must accept. We must accept.
Donette was unusually nervous and jumpy but Mary turned her head toward the river across the meadows. She wanted to ride away from the north road, the direction from which the king would come.
The chestnut bay broke into a sweat sooner than usual, for the air was muggy. Mary would rest her by the Eden in the shade of the leafy poplars. She did not look back at gemlike Hever with its painted facade set in its lilied moat. She wanted to go on forever.
The breeze had picked up and the poplar leaves rattled noisily against each other as she dismounted. Low rumblings seemed to come from the very roots of the massive trees.
“Thunder. Perhaps it will rain now, Donette,” she comforted the stamping mare with her soothing voice.
Lightning etched the graying sky over the forest, and Mary counted slowly until she heard the resulting thunder. Her Uncle James had taught them the sailor’s trick of counting between the lightning and thunder to judge the distance of the storm. “At least seven miles yet. Good horse. Good Donette.”
How marvelous the breeze felt flapping her full skirts stiffly about her legs. She should never have worn this color of dress riding, but she had been in such a hurry. Well, the washmaids would get it clean.
My precious gold and white dress on a day like this, she mused. It is because father knows it impressed Francois that he asks me to wear it for Henry Tudor. “He hopes it will work its magic again, Donette,” she shouted over the windy rustle, and Donette whinnied in return.
But that dress would always bring to mind old Master da Vinci and not Francois, she vowed. How little she had known the old man; yet it was as though she had known him always. He had asked her once how an English landscape looked. He would not like to see this scene, nature-whipped and blurred. He preferred the tranquil and the balanced.
Several drops hit her face and pelted Donette’s smooth brown flanks. Mary sighed and, as she mounted, a tremendous crash of lightning splintered a tall poplar nearby. She could even smell the acrid, charred wood.
Donette reared and Mary clung to her arched neck. The reins slipped for an instant and the mare started for home at a swift gallop, cutting through the trees.
“Whoa, girl! No, Donette, no. Whoa!” Mary knew better than to be in a forest in a storm. Even if they were soaked, the grassy valley was the safest place to be. Suddenly, King Henry’s face sprang before her mind’s eye in his finery, as she had seen him last. She grabbed for her horse’s reins and missed. Did this storm seize him as he approached? Was his reddish-blond hair sticking wet to his forehead?