1530
Mary has never before realized how quickly she could finish a meal.
It is not that she is usually a picky or a slow eater; she left those vices long ago in childhood, that distant idyllic haze when the greatest sin she could commit was to disobey her governess's orders. Now, her very existence is a sin, the byproduct of a supposedly cursed union that now hangs in the balance.
But until now, Mary has always taken the better part of an hour to finish eating when she was eating privately with her parents. She always had so much to say to them, so many questions to ask and so many inside jokes that the three of them shared. And naturally, there would be prolonged intervals where her fork fell to the plate as she regaled them with some animated tale or another. They would both listen with rapt attention, until she paused for breath, and a server tactfully swept in with the next course, and she glanced down at her still half-full plate in embarrassment. Her parents would share looks of amusement mixed with mild disapproval, and the servants would all chuckle, but no one ever truly reprimanded her for it.
Now she does not speak at all during their private meals together, and not out of fear of offending someone with her garrulity. Rather, that garrulity seems to vanish altogether when she, her mother, and her father are all in the same room. There is no pretense of warmth between them, now that Mary is old enough to understand the inner workings of the Great Matter. In public, her royal father is still respectful and considerate of her mother, but once they are away from the eyes of the court, he drops the act and avoids his queen as best he can, instead preferring to spend time with his not-mistress. Even now, Mary suspects he is in the same room as her mother only because she has come back from Ludlow.
In happier times, the first meal they shared after Mary came to visit court was always a rapturous affair, but there is little about this meal that invites her to speak. The frosty look on her father's face of repressed irritation, the carefully composed mask her mother wears to conceal her pain and worry brimming underneath; there is something about it that withers Mary's heart, that compels her to simply concentrate on eating her food.
With no words spilling out between spoonfuls, she finishes her meal alarmingly fast, before either of her parents. Her father is still eating voraciously with almost single-minded intent, while her mother has consumed only half her meal and seems to be eating only enough to keep her strength. Mary takes her leave of them as soon as she finishes; a gesture of some impertinence, but one that neither her mother nor her father seem to notice. Mary is glad of it, glad to escape to her own private chambers and the company of her servants, away from the stifled hostility of that dining room.
She imagines her father rising up and striding out of the room as soon as his daughter is gone and the familial charade serves no more purpose, without even taking leave of his lady wife. She imagines her mother sitting at the table, disoriented and yet somehow not surprised, as the servants avert their eyes. She imagines Mistress Boleyn sitting in her richly appointed chamber, waiting for her Kingly not-lover, counting down the seconds until he appears. Mary would like to believe that her father is not quite so blatant in his disdain for her mother. All the same, she still shudders at the image, and is glad her hasty dinner has allowed her to escape into the relative sanctuary of her apartments, and away from such palpable acrimony.