Lucy shook her head. “She ain’t easy, is she?” she said to Nancy.
“Aye, she really is easy, but all she thinks about is Friarsgate. It consumes her like the court consumes your mistress. It ain’t natural, I’m thinking.” She rose from the table where she had been seated. “I’d best go up or she’ll be jamming her gowns in the trunks in her hurry to leave here.” Nancy followed in her mistress’s wake.
And while the two young women busily packed, Thomas Bolton found Philippa preparing to play tennis with a friend. He drew her aside. “Your sister has managed to get the king to allow her to leave as soon as possible,” he said. “The house is yours until the court departs for Richmond again. And you know the London house is at your disposal as well. Come and have supper with us tonight. If I know Elizabeth, she will have us on the road for home by sunrise tomorrow.” He chuckled.
Philippa shook her auburn head. “I am so sorry, Uncle, that I have failed the family,” she told him.
“You have not failed, nor have I,” he told her. “What we sought to accomplish was a herculean task, dear girl. Elizabeth is not you, with your sophistication, or even Banon, who is content to be a wife and a mother. She is the heiress to Friarsgate, and she takes that responsibility most seriously. It will take a very special man to husband her.”
Philippa sighed, knowing he was right. “I wish you good fortune in your quest, dear Uncle.” Then she giggled, reminding him very much of the younger Philippa he had once known. “It is a bit like seeking the Holy Grail, isn’t it?”
“Do not say it, dear girl!” he exclaimed. “Remember, the Grail was never found.”
Philippa now laughed aloud. “I shall miss you,” she said, hugging him. “And I will come home early so we may all have a final meal together.”
“Excellent! Now I must go and bid adieu to our most noble monarch,” Lord Cambridge said, and he hurried from the tennis court. He found the king preparing to leave Mistress Boleyn’s apartments for the midday meal. Thomas Bolton bowed with élan. “Majesty!” he said.
“By God, Tom,” the king exclaimed, “no one can execute a bow like you! You are the most elegant fellow. You have come to bid us farewell, I assume.”
“I have, majesty. As much as I regret my niece’s eagerness to return north so quickly, I must accompany her. Rosamund would not approve of her traveling alone.”
“And when will you return to us?” the king wanted to know.
“That, your majesty, is a moot point. I am sixty years of age now, and find that travel does not hold the same charms for me that it has in the past. I have become, I fear, like a large tabby who prefers his own hearth,” Lord Cambridge admitted with a wry smile and a tilt of his head.
“We will miss your style and your wit,” the king replied, “but we understand. Go then with our permission, Tom, and I hope to see you again one day.” The king held out his big, beringed hand, and Lord Cambridge kissed it.
When the hand had been withdrawn Thomas Bolton turned his attention to Mistress Boleyn. He kissed her elegant little hand, noting the tiny sixth finger she possessed. Leaning forward, he murmured something into her ear.
Anne smiled broadly, a rare sight indeed, and kissed his smooth cheek. “Thank you, my lord,” she said. “It is the perfect solution. Why I did not think of it myself I do not know.”
“Sometimes, dear lady, the most obvious answer is the most elusive,” Lord Cambridge told her. “I wish you good fortune,” he said, and then, bowing a final time, moved away.
“What did he say to you?” the king wanted to know as they moved toward the hall where the midday meal was to be served them.
“He suggested I wear my sleeves a bit longer to disguise the finger on my left hand,” Anne Boleyn replied. “His instinct for fashion is most amazing, Hal.” She was pleased, for that tiny extra appendage was a source of embarrassment to her.
Thomas Bolton hurried from the palace, almost as relieved as he suspected Elizabeth had been. He would not see this place again, he sensed. When he returned home he would spend the rest of his life in Cumbria. And was it not time? He was no longer a young man, and he was beginning to feel his years. Especially in his knees, he considered with a grin. Entering the house and going to his apartments, he discovered Garr, his valet, and Will already packing. He chuckled. Had none of them enjoyed this visit to court that they were all so eager to depart?
Philippa arrived for the evening meal to discover the traveling cart already fully loaded. She shook her head and laughed to herself. She and Elizabeth were only four years apart in age, yet they were a hundred years apart in attitude. She was a modern woman who understood the ways for her sons to get ahead in society. Elizabeth was content to be a responsible landowner. Neither of them was going to change, but Philippa did want her youngest sister to be happily wed.
“You will be retiring early,” she teased Elizabeth and Thomas Bolton as she entered the riverside hall to join them.
“And you will eat and hurry back for the evening’s entertainments at the palace,” Elizabeth teased back.
“Nay,” Philippa surprised her by saying. “Tonight I shall remain with you and our uncle. If you retire early then so shall I. Your travels tomorrow will only take you back to the London house. It will not be a strenuous day, for you will lounge in Uncle’s comfortable barge the entire way. ’Tis the day after you will remember where your bottom is after you have ridden for many hours,” she teased.
Lord Cambridge winced. “One day there will be a far more comfortable way of traveling,” he said. “If I could but live to see it.”
“You could travel in one of those newer traveling carts that I have seen,” Philippa suggested. “But only a few possess them.”
“Thank you, no!” Thomas Bolton said. “They are primitive conveyances, I fear. I shall continue to ride if I must ever travel again, which I shall certainly attempt to avoid. Otterly to Friarsgate and no farther, my dear, darling girls. I swear it!”
The sisters laughed at his declaration, and Elizabeth remarked, “In a few years, dear Uncle, you will grow bored, and the itch to visit court will need to be scratched. Besides, with Banon’s five little daughters you may need to come south again, and they shall be far easier to find husbands for than I have proven.”
He chortled. “I have not given up on you yet, dear girl,” he told her.
William Smythe joined them, and they spent a pleasant evening together eating a good supper, and then the sisters sang together as they had in the days when they were children. Will and Lord Cambridge played a game of chess, while the sisters spoke at length for what would be a final time until they met again.
