Read The Unfaithful Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Fifth Wife for Free Online Page A

musician, Mark Smeaton, who caused her ruin.”
    “Along with several other men who were not musicians,” I said. “Besides, grandmother always said Anne was not one of us.”
    “Take care you do not prove to be like Anne. Not one of us. And stay away from that whore Joan Bulmer,” Charyn added, her tone as blunt as her words. “She will surely come to grief.”
    But I did not agree. I drew further and further away from Charyn, and was more and more drawn to Joan. Joan and Charyn were very much at odds, their enmity worsening after Charyn told our grandmother the duchess about Joan’s trysts with Father Dawes. The two girls could not have been less alike, the dark-haired Joan with her air of worldly knowledge, her outspokenness and self-confidence, her contempt for more refined, protected, somewhat unsure girls of higher birth and blond Charyn with her cool aristocratic reserve, her condemnation of bed-sharing and wanton behavior, her talebearing and spying on others.
    I thought Joan admirable for her strength and daring, though the truth was I found her to be a little frightening as well. I had the feeling that she would go to any lengths, ignore any warnings and that she might one day, as Charyn warned, come to grief.
    *   *   *
    Slowly Henry Manox reached into the mouth of a silken bag and drew out a comfit. He lifted it to my lips. I could smell the luscious sugary fruity scent.
    “Open,” he whispered.
    We were in Joan’s small chamber, she had lent it to us for an hour.
    “Only an hour,” she had told me. “Then Edward and I will join you.”
    What could happen in an hour, I asked myself. Henry and I could share a great deal of pleasure together in an hour’s time, but I would not yield to him the ultimate prize of my maidenhead. I would remain intact. Unsullied, as Charyn might have said. Only Charyn would never know. I would make sure of that.
    Henry knew of a secret entrance to Joan’s chamber—through the sweets closet, which had a false back that could be opened from a storage room on the other side of the wall. He assured me that he could make his way in and out of the small chamber through the sweets closet without being seen by anyone in the Paradise Chamber. Especially not by Charyn.
    “And besides, I can bring you comfits that I find there,” he said with a smile, dangling the silken bag full of fragrant candies.
    I opened my mouth and closed my eyes and let him put the soft jellylike confection on my tongue, leaving his fingers in my mouth for a moment along with it. As he drew his fingers out I bit down on the sweet, but hardly had I swallowed it when I felt his mouth on mine, tasted his tartness and felt myself melt under his caress.
    As we kissed his hands began moving over my body, more boldly than ever before, and I pulled back slightly from his embrace. I wanted him to go on doing what he was doing, yet I was only too aware that Master Manox was several times my size—he was a tall, hefty man and I, as I have said, was very small. He was far stronger than I was. I could not but feel some degree of alarm at this.
    I freed myself from his probing hands and jumped onto the nearest of the two mattresses in the room. Looking slightly puzzled, Master Manox pursued me, only to meet the barrier of my stiffly outstretched arms. Held back, he snorted.
    “What’s this? Do you mislike me of a sudden?”
    The stirrings of passion turned to playfulness as I jumped on the thin mattress, clumsy in my long skirt, and he tried to follow me, but stumbled.
    “Your skirt is a hindrance, madam,” he said. “Let me unburden you.”
    Obediently I allowed him to unfasten my heavy, wide skirt at the waist and pull it off, revealing my petticoat beneath.
    “Could we not relieve you of this petticoat as well? You will feel so much lighter and freer without it.”
    His words seemed so logical, his actions in undressing me so sensible. Before long I stood in my shift, my hair spilling over my shoulder