I, Jane: In The Court of Henry VIII Read online

  Back in the stands, she noticed her brother Edward a few rows closer to the king. Like Norfolk, Edward acted as if he and Jane were virtual strangers, as if speaking to someone so ordinary would ruin his reputation. His fortunes and his status had increased greatly this past year, which seemed at the heart of the matter.

  Jane was happy to spot her other brother, Thomas, standing on the corner of the field in the green and white uniform that marked him as Sir Francis Bryan’s attendant. They had recently been in France together, and Jane could hardly wait to embrace him heartily and badger him for gossip and news from the French court.

  She was so distracted by her thoughts and the lively group of courtiers that she did not see it happen. But she heard the great thud, then the snap of wood. A great collective gasp from the crowd and the clattering of armor brought Jane and the other ladies quickly to their feet. Francis was on the ground, writhing in agony, and Nicholas Carew was off his mount and at his side in a matter of moments. Both long jousting poles lay on the ground, and Thomas was sprinting toward the courtiers.

  “God in his mercy!” Jane heard herself cry out as a hush fell upon the crowd, which had fallen swiftly into fearful silence.

  “What has happened to him?”

  “Sir Francis was flirting so boldly with Lady Hastings that he neglected to close his visor before he began,” Elizabeth Carew murmured, both hands on her mouth in shock at the blood that now seemed to blanket everything.

  “At least he is moving, so he is not dead,” Margaret Shelton exclaimed with a hand to her lips.

  “But look at all that blood,” Anne Stanhope cried.

  Grooms, guards, equerries, and physicians dashed onto the field then. Yes, by the Lord, at least he was not dead! Jane thought, stricken with fear for him and unable to stop trembling as they knelt around him, drew off his plumed helmet, and began to cover his blood-soaked face with cloths.

  A litter was swiftly brought to carry him off the field.

  “Should you not go to your brother?” Jane asked Elizabeth. Francis had no wife, and Jane knew that their mother was not at court, but attending Princess Mary at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, where she had been consigned by the king.

  “I am not at all good at these sorts of things,” Elizabeth replied desperately and began to weep as Jane took her hand and gently squeezed it in support. Elizabeth Carew, whom she had not known long, held fast to her.

  “Would you like me to go with you?” Jane asked.

  “Would you do that?” Elizabeth sniffled.

  Jane did not answer but in response led the way down the steps of the stands and back toward the palace, feeling suddenly that they could almost be friends. It was an odd thing to feel under the circumstances, Jane thought, but she still really had no idea what it felt like to have a true friend.

  Then she thought of Lucy Hill and how they were very nearly friends. Yes, nearly.

  “He’s lost his eye, I’m afraid.”

  Thomas Seymour reluctantly made the announcement, then took his sister into a tender embrace. “Thank heavens you’re here,” she murmured to him in the shadow-drenched corridor outside of Sir Francis Bryan’s apartments, where the king’s physicians were still attending him. Hearing the news, Elizabeth collapsed against the lime-wash corridor wall and folded in on herself, her face blanched, as she pressed her hands over her mouth.

  “His beautiful eyes…,” she wept. “He was always so proud of his eyes.”

  Jane went to Elizabeth then and sat on the floor against the wall beside her with an arm wrapped tightly around her shoulder in support. “An eye patch will make him terribly distinguished looking.” She tried to offer up a smile for Elizabeth’s sake, but it was a struggle when the situation seemed so grave, and when she loved him so dearly for how good and honest he had been with her.

  “Could you ever care for a man with such a blighted visage, Jane?”

  “By my troth, I could care for a man with a tender heart and devotion enough to overlook my own shortcomings,” she replied truthfully.

  Elizabeth looked at her through tear-brightened eyes. “I am grateful for your words, Jane.” She then turned to Thomas, who stood over them. “How is his condition otherwise, Master Seymour?” Elizabeth asked as she glanced up at Jane’s brother, who remained standing over them.

  “Your husband is still with his friend, and he gave me leave, my lady, to tell you that the doctors do not fear for his life. Your brother is strong and healthy and he shall recover from this.”

  “Yet without an eye.”

  “Surely it is preferable to dying,”

  “I am not so certain since, at this court, nothing is prized so highly as beauty.”

  “From what I have seen, my lady, wit and charm do beauty a fair battle, and there are few so witty or charming as your brother,” said Thomas.

  “Except perhaps the king.” Elizabeth sniffled, trying to rein in her tears.

  “I have not yet had the honor of being able to agree or disagree, since I have yet to actually meet His Majesty,” Thomas replied, gazing down with a helpless expression at the two women still sitting on the cold tile floor.

  “Pray, do not be too anxious for that experience, Master Seymour,” Elizabeth countered in her trembling voice, which held a kind of warning. “Being impressed with our good sovereign can have a whole host of disadvantages and complications, the range of which, I fear, would quite surprise you.”

  That evening, Jane sat by firelight in the queen’s company, along with Maria de Salinas; their friend the Spanish ambassador, Don Luis Caroz; the imperial ambassador, Eustase Chapuys; the queen’s confessor, the Bishop of Rochester; and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. They each took turns reading to the queen from the Book of Common Prayer, and the mood was somber.

  “Mistress Seymour, tell us, how fares your good cousin?” the queen suddenly asked, her question full of true compassion.

  Chapuys, a small man with a receding hairline and dark, hollow eyes, stopped reading midsentence and looked up at Jane with the others.

  “I am told he shall recover, Your Highness. Praise be to God,” Jane answered shyly. It was rare that she was called to speak aloud before so many assembled nobles, including the cardinal in his forbidding crimson. She heard her own voice break.

  “Indeed a blessing. You take strength from your faith, Mistress Seymour,” said the queen. “I like that.”

  “I do, Your Highness. You are a model for us all in that regard.” Jane could hear her own voice quiver still, and she struggled in vain against it.

  “Am I?” She arched her dark brows appraisingly, and her heavy chin doubled.

  “Certainly.”

  “Well, as long as I stand in stark contrast to Mistress Boleyn, who follows another woman’s husband about with open lust in those coal black eyes of hers, may God forgive me.” Katherine made the sign of the cross piously then. “As you might suppose, I have little more patience for infidelity than I do faithlessness. I do pray daily for forbearance in all things. Should not we all do that?” The queen asked the question rhetorically and did so as she cast a censuring glance on lovely Lady Anne Stafford, who for some time had been having an affair with the king’s married Groom of the Stool, Sir William Compton. And, as everyone knew, the king himself before that. But everyone at court was so intricately woven together, bound tightly by family, or loyalty, or lust—sometimes all three. Certainly much was tolerated or overlooked. It was like a strange, grand, flawed family, Jane had decided, and she continued to be glad she was only an observer of it all, since she had no earthly idea how she might cope if she were ever pulled into the midst of any of it.

  “Mistress Seymour, would you be the one to next read to us for a while?” the queen then asked.

  In response, the fat-faced Cardinal Wolsey glowered at her, his wet lower lip jutting out as his brows merged. Or perhaps she was imagining it. He did not seem to Jane a kind man. Rather he appeared a porcine opportunist who sat and laughed with Anne Boleyn with
as much sincerity as he brought to his counseling of the queen.

  Reading aloud before this important group now went well beyond Jane’s area of comfort, since she had yet to learn what to do and what to avoid in their presence. She felt her stomach twist into a hard knot at the prospect. Her heart was racing and she knew what little color she had had certainly gone out of her face. Speak, you must speak!

  “It would be an honor, Your Highness. Where shall I begin?” she forced herself to ask as she began to leaf through her own small volume of the book at hand.

  “Ah, we’ve had enough of this for now. My Lord Bishop of Rochester here has spoken with your brother, and he tells me you are well versed in The Imitation of Christ.”

  “Verily, ’tis my favorite work, Your Highness, particularly the fourth book translated by the king’s mother.”

  Katherine smiled and cast a glance at the black-and-white-garbed Rochester. The queen’s approval was a rare thing these days, and Jane felt her racing heart slow by one small degree. “Most here have no use for such pious work. How lovely to see that I have company in my appreciation of it.”

  Jane lowered her eyes, suddenly feeling the weight from the envious stares around her. They apparently favored her position in the background as much as she did.

  “I have only ever read silently, however, so I dare not vouch for how I would sound aloud to your learned royal ear.”

  There were muffled chuckles in response to her awkward flattery, and Jane felt her cheeks burn with embarrassment at their reaction.

  “Oh nonsense, Mistress Seymour. Surely you were taught to recite aloud by your tutor. In Wiltshire, was it?”

  “We had not a proper tutor, Your Highness, only our priest, who taught us our lessons.”

  The chuckles deepened then to rude outright laughter, and if Jane could have crawled beneath the covered table, she would have. The sensation of ridicule stirred old wounds, and she instantly felt thrown. Her throat had gone miserably dry and she knew her voice would crack if she spoke aloud again now.

  It was the most curious thing in the world that she thought of William Dormer at that precise moment. He came into her mind almost like a phantom. But the ghost did not speak; it only shimmered there before her supportively, and after a moment, she felt an odd strength from it.

  Jane’s father used to tell her when she was a little girl that sometimes after people died an image of them came back to those who had loved them. She desperately hoped William had not died. In that moment, her anger and disappointment in him ceased completely. Right now, William and Wolf Hall felt very far away.

  Chapter Eight

  June 1526

  Eltham Palace

  It was as much common knowledge in the royal galleries as in the servants’ quarters below that the king meant not just to court Mistress Boleyn, but to win her completely. Yet competition loomed. The court poet, Thomas Wyatt, had begun a bold flirtation with the raven-haired beauty, whose skill at tying the king into romantic knots seemed unparalleled.

  Jane knew about it mainly because the queen’s friends delighted in seeing His Highness’s pained fits of jealousy over such a handsome and talented young competitor. Since Wyatt had been commissioned to read one or two of his own poems during the last banquet, everyone was abuzz with the possibility of an impending clash between the rivals.

  The banquet hall was decorated lavishly for the occasion and in a way to which Jane was certain she would never grow accustomed. The vast, vaulted chamber with its brightly painted beams was ablaze with torches and candles when she arrived in the queen’s train. She was walking beside Elizabeth Carew in front of Margaret Shelton and Anne Stanhope and behind the queen and Ambassador Chapuys. In her dark dress, plain collar, and prominent crucifix, Queen Katherine made a poor comparison to the woman who emerged through the opposite archway, flanked by her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and Cardinal Wolsey, who had only just been in the queen’s company the evening before. Anne strode regally, like a queen herself, brilliant in a dazzling gown of gold cloth that was ornamented with sparkling precious stones. As usual, courtiers and ladies began gossiping and whispering beneath the strains of music sung by Mark Smeaton, another handsome young courtier, who was standing in the gallery above.

  Just then the familiar trumpet blare sounded the king’s arrival as he entered the hall, along with his jester, Will Somers, and his entourage, Charles Brandon, Thomas Wyatt, William Compton, William Brereton, and Nicholas Carew. Francis Bryan was with them, now sporting a jaunty black eye patch bordered with tiny glittering jewels above a matching and luxurious velvet doublet encrusted with the same stones.

  Jane smiled as she looked at him, her heart bursting with silent admiration. Ah, what a survivor he did seem! Adversity had not torn Francis down, only strengthened him, she thought, as the king draped an arm familiarly across his shoulder and leaned in as if they were sharing a great private joke. It was only a moment until she saw that they were both staring at Thomas Wyatt as they laughed. It was like three great factions coming together in one place. The king’s, the queen’s, and Anne’s. The atmosphere was certainly charged. It made Jane shiver as she watched all three powers converge on the head table beneath a ceremonial drape stamped with the Tudor rose. Beside the two thrones, a third heavily carved chair had been placed. She watched Mistress Boleyn bob a careless little curtsy to the queen and then nod to the king himself before she sank into the out-of-place third chair.

  While the court had steadily grown accustomed these past months to Anne’s presence near the sovereign, her position and strength seemed to be increasing by the day. The king was obsessed with her. Fueling his passion was her open flirtation with Sir Thomas Wyatt. The king, after all, was married, Anne had blithely told Elizabeth Carew one afternoon at cards, so she had no intention of not proceeding with her own amours, unless, and until, those circumstances changed.

  “This should be quite a performance,” John Fischer, the Bishop of Rochester, remarked to Maria de Salinas, both near enough for Jane to hear.

  “Sir Thomas is a brilliant poet, his flowery verse well captured in cogent couplets,” Chapuys concurred.

  “Oh, I meant not that. Only that Master Wyatt would do well to take care. As should Mistress Anne. The king is accustomed to winning what he desires, from the likes of Lady Hastings, Lady Carew, Mistress Blount—even Mistress Anne’s own sister. This is a train of victory never interrupted by failure. And if I know our sovereign, he does not plan to begin now,” the sage bishop observed.

  After Will Somers dutifully brought the king to tears of laughter by ridiculing each of the men closest around them with pithy little barbs, the spindly court fool bowed to the king and made way for Thomas Wyatt to enter the center of the arranged banquet tables for his turn at the entertainment.

  With the intensity of a student, Jane watched each of the players. She glanced at Anne, whose blithe expression had changed swiftly to one of coy flirtation with the handsome poet, who was now opening his book of verse. In the midst of this charged atmosphere, the poor queen sat like a quail on its nest, attempting to protect the fruits of her tenuous life.

  The queen was to be pitied, Jane thought. She had thought that over and over, perhaps never so much as now. Quietly, her blood boiled like the contents of one of the great iron kettles bubbling in the hot royal kitchens directly beneath their feet—and this false amusement.

  If it were Anne against me, Jane thought, I would be more wise, more cunning. More quiet and clever like my brother Tom. Because no one ever suspects the plain-faced, quiet ones. Even a little country mouse like Jane could see that well enough.

  As Wyatt began to read with a boastful tenor full of flourishes, boldly directing his words and gaze upon Anne, Jane caught a glimpse of Mary Boleyn, newly returned to court from her new husband’s family home in Hertfordshire in a show of family support for her sister. Mary was seated only a few chairs away at the same table. It was a surprise to see her here. She had grown stout in adu
lthood from childbirth. But on her face, as on her sister’s, that graceful Boleyn essence was unchanged. Mary’s discomfort as she watched her former lover and her own sister together on the dais was a palpable thing to Jane. It was obvious that it had not been her idea to return here.

  There were crystal-bright tears in Mary’s eyes to make the point clearer. Her appointed husband, William Carey, took her hand atop the table, but Jane saw that Mary’s body went rigid at his touch. It seemed a move for show. As Wyatt and Anne gazed at each other and Wyatt droned on, Mary’s and Jane’s eyes met across the table and Mary’s face brightened with recognition. Mary nodded to her and smiled grimly in acknowledgment. When the reading was at an end and the dancing began, Mary came and embraced her.

  “What a long time it has been, Jane. I had heard you were at court now. ’Tis a good thing to see a friendly face here.”

  “I am heartened you remember me, Lady Carey. We were very young and our time together in France was so brief.”

  “You must still call me Mary, and I was not so young then as to not remember you,” Mary replied.

  Jane had heard the gossip from Thomas several years ago that Mary Boleyn had been pressured by her family to give herself not only to the King of France, but to two of his companions in hopes of advancing the family. She later heard about Mary and the English king, and that children had likely resulted from their union. Children he did not acknowledge, in spite of his acceptance of Bess Blount’s son, Henry Fitzroy.

  The music from the gallery changed suddenly to a more somber pavane, and the king led Anne past the tables to the center of the other dancers. Wyatt had been dismissed while Jane and Mary spoke, and the king was not smiling as he held Anne’s hand through the dance steps.

  “Ah, if only I had been as clever as my sister, I might still be there with him,” Mary said with a sigh, watching them dance more stiffly with each other than usual.