Mary rose and, as a last thought, took the arrow-pierced love letter with her. It would not do to leave these lying about. She always destroyed any letters Henry had sent her. She was not sure why—to be careful like father perhaps, or to protect Will from hearing further gossip, or ever seeing such a note. Maybe so that she did not have to believe it was all true.
Peg wrapped her in the blue velvet cape she always wore in the halls over her nightwear, and Mary followed His Grace’s trusted body servant and one linkboy while the other brought up the rear. When they had begun this affair, Mary had asked the king to please summon her with trusted servants and not any of the courtiers who served him so closely in the treasured court appointments, however trusted they were supposed to be. And His Grace, though evidently amused to think it would ever keep anything secret, humored her by giving her her way.
At night there were always at least four Esquires to the Body within call of the privy chamber in case the king needed help with his clothes or food or someone to rail at. But she never saw them, of course, and Will was never on duty when she was with the king. The two gendarmes with their long silver poleaxes nodded to her and opened the king’s doors. No way to hide any king’s visitors from them, but then, she could not imagine their ever saying a word.
To her surprise, the king sat at a table cluttered with missives and rolled parchments. The firelights behind him edged his auburn head and massive red and black robed shoulders with a glowing, shifting outline. He rose immediately and gave her a huge, reassuring bearhug as soon as the doors closed. He wore nothing under his robe, she surmised, because she could see curling, reddish hair down to his navel where the robe split open and his big, powerful legs were bare to his feet thrust in velvet slippers.
“Mary. ’Sblood, you smell wonderful, but I hope that is not some damned French perfume. Worse and worse relationships with Francois’s minions, it seems. Sit here by the fire a moment. I will play servant and pour us some wine, my love.”
She laid her blue velvet cape on the back of a chair facing his huge, carved one across the table. “But I would be happy to serve you, Your Grace. You looked very busy when I came in. I shall get the wine.”
Like a big, scolded schoolboy, he did as she said, awkwardly covering his bare legs by folding his robe over them. She realized his eyes were on the pile of papers on the table and not her as she poured two goblets of his favorite sweet Osney from Alsace. Their fingers touched when she handed him his goblet, and he smiled up at her. Before she could move to the chair across from him, he pulled her gently toward him, indicating she should sit on his lap. Careful with her wine, she did so.
“I am afraid the wine is French, Sire, but I promise you my fragrance is not. Pure English dried lavender, lilies-of-the-valley and rose petals. I store my gowns in it.”
“Ah, is that it? A pity, sweet Mary,” his voice wrapped around her as warm as his hand on her hip, “for we shall have to dispense with this lovely yellow silk thing soon enough.” He nuzzled her silken shoulder and they sat quietly for a moment, content in their physical contact, listening to the warm crackle of the fire in this intimate moment.
He drained his wine and took her half-finished goblet from her unresisting fingers. “Sweet Mary, so beautiful and yet so untouched,” he said low.
“Hardly untouched, my lord king,” she chided and poked him playfully in his hard-muscled belly, but she saw then on his earnest face a fleeting mood of seriousness or sadness. She sat still to listen to what else would come.
“All the roistering about, all the gaming,” he began, evidently searching to express some difficult or new thought. “Well, you know how busy and demanding it is for me, especially now that I am taking over more from Chancellor Wolsey, keeping a closer eye on him and the realm’s business, as it were.”
She listened carefully, thinking how often her father tried to pry from her anything of import the king might say to her in a trusted or unguarded moment. She nodded to encourage him, but really, she had no idea where this confession would go.
“I mean to say, I do not know why an anointed king of the earth’s greatest realm has to be so set upon with petitioners and petty papers to read and sign, and tricky foreign realms to watch like Charles’s Spain and Margaret’s Austria and your wily Francois’s damned France!”
“Forgive me, Your Grace, but neither the French king nor France are ‘mine.’”
“I did not mean it that way, sweet, really, only it galls me sore to think you were once his .”
She tried to scoot off his big lap but his hands held her hips against his strong thighs. “Sit, sit, madam. I meant not to rile you. We all make foolish errors, I warrant. Sit still, I say, Mary. I apologize.” He pulled her fiercely to him, his lips moving in her loose hair along her right temple, his hands stroking her silken back and hips.