A/N: Thanks for the reviews, follows, and favorites-I REALLY appreciate it. I'm glad to know people like my story. :) If anyone is curious where the idea of this came from, I was sitting around thinking and it hit me that Anne's opposite isn't Jane-it's Mary and that will come more apparent as the story unfolds. Hope you enjoy chapter two, which hopefully has less errors than chapter one.
reviewgrl I tried my best to break the paragraphs apart-sometimes I forget not everyone is in my head. So I hope it's easier to read-if not let me know!
JessTheWitch If George is as calculating as Anne then they'll be safe…but the Seymours have Edward so you never know.
Chapter 2. We bid you return
"No! Absolutely not!" I shouted as I finished reading the letter the messenger handed me. How could they possibly think that I would return to court at a time such as this? The only man in the world who had looked at me without thought of ambition was gone and he was never coming back. My poor William had only been dead two weeks; I couldn't believe that my family would ask me to consider coming back to court to help my sister. I loved Anne and had forgiven her everything. All the jealousy, the rage, the cruelty- I had forgiven it all. But I could not go back into that viper's nest of courtiers trying to get ahead of one another by any means necessary. "My family has no right to ask this of me and you can tell them I said so. I will write no reply and don't expect to hear from them again. But send my love to my brother and sister and tell them I will pray for them every night and every day. And I hope that soon my sister will birth a healthy baby boy to long reign over us. God save the king. God save the Howards. God save the Boleyns." Red faced and flushed, the messenger walked out of my house, got on his horse, and rode off into the distance. Shutting the door behind him I turned around to see my Catherine staring at me with the wide eyes of my sister.
"A message from the Queen?" she asked.
"It's from your grandfather", I said handing it to her, studying her as she read the message. She looked so much like my sister; it was hard to be near her and yet so far from Anne. She had grown solemn since the death of her stepfather who had always been like a real father to her. When she and her brother lived at Hever he escorted me to see them and always stayed, if only for a little while, to play with them. Her dark hair and piercing eyes would make her desirable to most men; her bloodline would make her desirable to them all. As she looked up from the letter I could see so many questions in her eyes but she asked only one.
"Is Aunt Anne really in that much danger?"
I stared at her for a moment, unblinking, wondering how best to answer her. I settled for the simplest, truest answer I could think of. "She's a Boleyn. We are all always in that much danger."
I felt so alone. I couldn't believe after everything we worked so hard accomplish my husband was dead. Our poor little Anne would grow up not knowing who her father was. She would never know the man who risked his neck to be with his love. "You speak too highly of me, I'm not perfect. You know as well as I do that I'm a man of many faults, but I will never accept loving you as one of them", he'd always say. One day when she's old enough she will ask me about her father, for there will be talk of a man who reached so high and fell so low. It hurt so much to know my Henry and Catherine were fatherless again. William Carey never cared much for either of them seeing as though they were the king's children and not his. But, God works in mysterious ways, and before I had to suffer too much of his cruelty, he was struck down by the sweat, and sent on to God. After he fell in love with my sister, the king was not a good father to any as his children. The Lady Mary, Catherine, Bessie Blount's Henry, and mine all had to go fatherless because my sister was too selfish and insecure to share him with anyone other than Princess Elizabeth.
It seemed that I would get no sleep tonight so I got on my knees and prayed to God. After an hour on the floor I said one last thing, "If it is your desire that I would attend court to assist my sister in keeping her crown, then I would do your bidding so long as it doesn't affect my children. As long as my children are saf and as long as I do your will. I will do this for my sister and for my family. But if it be not your desire, send me a sign and I will never see, speak, or write to my family again." I got off my knees, checked on my children and finally went to sleep.
It had been three weeks since the messenger had come from court. I was getting worried about the silence from London, but I was more worried about the silence from my farm. Everyday there seemed to be fewer good plants and more weeds. But every day I told myself the same thing. "At court or not, I am a Boleyn and we never surrender…unless it serves us some purpose." One morning after my routine speech, I got up to start the day when there was a knock on the door that startled Anne to tears. Crooning to her I yelled for one of the children to see who was at the door this time of morning. Seeing that she was wet I changed Anne's linen as I tried to make out the muffled voices coming from downstairs.
"Momma! Momma!" Henry called bursting through my door. "You have to come here!" He began pulling on my dress.
Swaddling my baby, I gave into my son's demands and followed him downstairs into our main room. I checked at the bottom of the staircase as I saw my brother and uncle dressed in their finest clothes standing in my house. "Surprised to see us?" I heard my brother laugh.
The house was quiet as the three of us sat, staring at one another. Henry and Catherine were playing with our neighbor's children while Annie slept in my arms. Hoping to get this intrusion over with as soon as possible I addressed them, "What is it that I can do for you today my lords? Was the messenger unclear about my feelings? I thought I had made it all too clear living that life, a life of a courtier, was over for me."
"It would be to your benefit to reconsider", my uncle stated. "
"As well as ours", George finished.
"My family decided that I was no longer needed at court and that I could live my life in the country, alone with my children and alone with my husband. My husband is gone; I have only my children, and I plan to live out the rest of my life in the peace and quiet of the country." My words seemed not to bother my uncle who merely shrugged.
"You have never been free to decide for yourself. Since you were born everything has been decided for you. The only choice you made for yourself was to marry that commoner and look where it got you. Look where you are now. You used to be Mary Boleyn, mistress of the king. You slept in the biggest beds, wore the finest gowns, owned the most luxurious jewelry, and you were beloved of your family. Your shoes alone used to cost more than this whole farm. Now look where you are. Your children have nothing to inherit, you have nothing to give them, you have no husband, and you have no family, save your children. What would become of them if something happened to you? Who would they turn to? They have no other family, save for the Boleyns and the Howards. Would you deny them a good place in life all because you're too stubborn to come back to your family?" I listened to my uncle with bated breath all the time thinking that if only for a little bit, if only for a small part of his argument, he was right. How could I forsake my children's birthright simply because I didn't want to be at court? But as usual, the Boleyn blood I had flowing through my veins would not allow me to surrender without some profit for my family.
."What benefit is there for me? If nothing ever befalls me then my children and I can live off the land. Thanks to my banishment, and the instruction I've had from my husband, I'm no stranger to hard work. We can have a happy and healthy life without the favor of the Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Wiltshire, Lord Rochford, and Queen of England."
Growing impatient, my uncle stood up and walked toward the door, turned to my brother and said, "She's your sister and this is your plan. Make her see sense!" The door slammed shut and I looked down to see if Annie was still asleep. Her rounded mouth and even breathing reassured me as I looked up into the calculating eyes of my brother.
"This was your plan?" I asked him. "Why would you think I would agree to such a plan? You know what happened the last time I was at court. My sister's jealousy allowed her to cast me off as if I was nothing. I have forgiven her that, but I will never forget my last time at court."
"I did not think that you would do this with an open heart; I know how you feel about court. But we can't all be as fortunate as you and marry for love. Some of us had to marry where we were told and could not count on the plague to rid us of them. You are a Boleyn and a Howard. But more than that, you are a woman; a widowed woman of the Howards and Boleyns. You are not free to choose again; just as I am not free and Anne is not free. You want to know what profit comes with going to court. Do you need to be benefited by coming, Mary? What about your family? Not just your children, but your mother, your father, your brother, your sister? What about us? If you think that you know what sort of danger we're in think again. The lack of a son drives the king more mad everyday and so does Anne's temper. None of this would matter so much if the king wasn't infatuated with Jane Seymour and, I don't need to tell you that her family is the Howard's oldest enemies. So think what it means for your sister that our enemies are making a play for the throne...And that she's going about it the exact same way that Anne did." At that I shuddered and George nodded and continued. "We are in more danger than we have ever been and only with you back at court, at Anne's side, can we hope to survive this. You captured the attention of the king when you were little more than a child. You were only a few years older than your daughter is now when the King of England himself was following behind you like a lost child. You gave this family recognition, wealth, and position. You did. It wasn't me, or uncle, or mother, or father, and as much as she likes to claim that it was, it wasn't Anne either. You secured our family Mary. You have always been the cure to the fever that is Anne." I raised my head slightly and fought back a proud smile. "You don't want to come back to court, fine. But you do want to save your family, so do so. Make us pay to have you back at court saving our necks from the axe. This is your moment Mary. Make your demands and ask for what you want because once you come back to court, make no mistakes about it, you will be as you used to be: the quiet and submissive lady in waiting to the Queen of England. Your duty will be to recapture the King as you did in your youth and bring him away from the Seymours and back to the Boleyns. Before you disagree Anne has already been made aware of these plans. As she supplanted you years ago, you will supplant her if needs be. The main goal is to have the king turn his attention away from Jane and have him pick which Boleyn girl he wants at his side. You remember a time when that was you. When he would turn his back on his Spanish Queen to dance with you. When he couldn't spare Anne a glance because he was staring at you. When he forsook all other women because he wanted you in his bed. You can be that girl again Mary and save your family all in the same breath."
He paused in his speech and stared into my ever whitening face. I swore I would never be a mistress again; that I would never forsake my husband for another. But I never planned to be widowed as I was now. Could I betray my sister like that? I knew her well enough that knowledge of the plan didn't mean she had consented to it.
"So it's decision time Lady Stafford. Do you want your family to live or die? Because I can go to court and tell everyone that you refuse to attend, and we can see if Anne's French practices will be enough to save us. And you, far away in the country, will see just how out of favor we really are and sink us completely. Or, you can go to your bed chamber and cry and be angry at whoever you desire to be and accept the fact that the only way the family pushes on is through you, sister; that the only way to get rid of the Seymours is for you to come back to court. In this moment you, the other Boleyn Girl, will decide the fate of your entire family one more time. Can you accept your return and embrace your family with open arms? Or would you rather us take our chances and allow Anne to attempt to capture the king by herself again? The choice is yours." My breathing calmed and my eyes watered as I took in what he said. After a few minutes of staring at each other, my brother spoke one more time. "So, Mary, what is it going to be?"
A/N: FYI I plan to have longer chapters but the first four will be short like these because I want to develop George, Mary, Anne, and Henry better. So bare with me these first few chapters and then we'll delve completely into the lives of the Tudors.