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

  “You still love the king?” Jane was surprised.

  “He is the father of my children.”

  Jane’s smile fell as Mary’s husband excused himself from the table. She was shocked that Mary seemed so free to speak of such private matters. “But he does not acknowledge them as such, as he does the Duke of Richmond?”

  Jane saw the flare of pain in Mary’s eyes, and she regretted saying it immediately.

  “Because I am married, he says acknowledging them would be a messy business and cruel to my husband, whom he fancies. That, of course, was all very convenient, I see now. Even that vapid little Blount tart was smarter than I in her dealings with him. ’Tis a game to him, with honor and virtue the pins to be knocked down by one of his great royal balls,” she said vulgarly.

  “Pray, forgive me, but then is it not too painful to remain here for you now and equally distressing to speak of such things?” she asked as everyone watched the king dance and whispered privately about Mary’s younger, prettier sister, Anne.

  “Mayhap ’tis to be part of my punishment,” Mary said philosophically, though her voice broke with the words. “That, and my father insists I remain here as a show of family support along with our brother, George. There are few around her my sister can trust…as if I am actually one of them.” Mary caught the shocked expression on Jane’s face. “Oh yes, once, I would not have dreamed of speaking such thoughts aloud, but the life I have lived since last we met has made me care far less now what others think of me. I fear it has all come tumbling out now to a friendly face.”

  As they conversed, suddenly from the corner of her eye, Jane could see that the king and Anne’s exchange was becoming heated. They stopped dancing then and were simply standing in the center of the room, openly arguing, his arms outstretched in a pleading gesture, his huge rings glinting in the torchlight. Anne began gesticulating wildly, but the king only shrugged and looked sheepish.

  “My sister does have him by the nose. No other can quite compare.”

  Jane suddenly thought of William Dormer again at the notion of being emotionally bound to someone. It was odd the way he still moved through her thoughts from time to time, the memory rekindling like a fire, then dying out into embers with a sudden distraction. The king had retreated to the dais, where the queen silently watched everything, and Anne stormed off in Mary and Jane’s direction, her beautiful, flawless face red with rage, her lips twisted tightly into a pout.

  “Come away with me this instant, Mary,” Anne said impatiently, ignoring Jane, whom she clearly did not recognize.

  “I should wait for my husband,” Mary said in a surprisingly meek tone.

  “Nonsense. Sir William waits on the king; you wait on me. You shall both serve the same master soon enough.”

  Jane glanced at the dais again, where the king sat now, ramrod straight, his chin up, holding the queen’s hand and gazing out regally at the group of dancers who had assembled in his place, as if his open encounter with Anne had never even occurred. He was playing the game well and had clearly won the round.

  “It seems you might be a bit too ambitious for your own good, sister,” Mary dared to say amid the safety of the music and the crowd milling around them.

  Jane held her breath. She could feel their flaring sibling rivalry.

  “Do not underestimate me, Mary. I learned well by your mistakes. Bessie Blount’s and the queen’s as well,” she said coldly. “Both of you were foolish. You know not how to actually love a man like that. There is no place in this game for surrender.”

  Then, as an afterthought, Anne paused and looked directly at Jane. She tightened her spine, and her small mouth lengthened into a hard line. “Who the devil are you to listen to a conversation between sisters?”

  Jane had no idea what made her do it, but she bobbed a small curtsy then and lowered her head, as if it were completely out of her power to do anything else.

  She despised herself a little for the submissive reaction.

  “Oh, you must be the one they are calling the little mouse,” Anne Boleyn said unkindly before she began to chuckle.

  “I am Jane Seymour,” she heard herself say.

  “ ‘Little mouse’ seems far more appropriate by the look of you. Come along, then, Mary. I need attending. You shall see to my packing tonight since I’ve a sudden desire to bathe.”

  “But where are you going?” Mary asked in surprise.

  “Home to Hever of course, you fool. ’Tis time the king realizes he cannot live without me.”

  “You looked quite smitten with Master Wyatt. Is he not a more realistic alternative?”

  Anne laughed harshly over the music, and the sound that came up from her throat was quite menacing, Jane thought. It certainly turned the skin beneath her heavy gown to gooseflesh.

  “Wyatt is of no more consequence than that pup-eyed singer, Mark Smeaton. He is only meant to stir the king’s jealousy.”

  Jane wanted to say that if tonight’s little drama was any indication, that pot was well stirred indeed; Anne ought to tread carefully lest it boil over and scald her. But she held her tongue.

  Mary leaned toward her sister. “By the look of it tonight, His Majesty would give you nearly anything you desire if you would give him that one thing which he desires.”

  “You truly are a dolt. I do wonder that we share a mother. No matter what you did, I am meant to be a queen, not a whore. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so I need to be absent. For a time, at least. Just until I bring him to his knees.”

  Mary glanced back at the king, still sitting with the queen, laughing and conversing as though Anne did not even exist. Jane followed her gaze.

  At that moment, bringing him to his knees seemed highly unlikely.

  “He eventually grew tired of each of us who tried to challenge the queen. Perhaps, sister, you would do well to remember that.”

  “Like any of you had a chance of challenging her?” Anne declared. Her dark, almond-shaped eyes flared as she said it. “Now, follow me. I am weary and I wish to bathe. In the event His Majesty comes to his senses tonight, I should like to be clean. If not, my lavender perfume shall be a stirring reminder of what he has lost when he passes my empty rooms. Come along, then, Mary, and bring the little mouse with you. Whether she prefers the queen to me or not, she will do to dry my back when I am finished.”

  Lady Mary Carey left for Hever Castle with her sister early the next morning as a heavy fog and light rain swirled around the pathways and the low-lying neatly groomed plants of the king’s knot garden. Jane was sorry to see her go. There was nothing of judgment in her eyes. Jane did not feel the same way about Anne, however.

  Thankfully, with Anne gone, a lightness returned to the queen’s apartments. There were still the constant prayers and the somber hours of quiet sewing, but the queen occasionally smiled, and so everyone in her retinue was allowed to breathe again. While Katherine did not entertain him often, everyone said how the king had changed in Anne’s absence as well. He was calm now, less volatile. He spent most of his days alone, reading or hunting or writing letters and dispatches. He dined regularly with the queen, and only Maria de Salinas was called upon to attend her in case he might have a change of heart about remaining for the night.

  Through the months, Jane only ever saw the king at a distance. The great copper-headed giant was more masculine and taller than anyone else except his friend Charles Brandon, and certainly more elegant. His array of jeweled Florentine velvets and embroidered Burgundian silk doublets seemed as endless as his caps and square-toed shoes. Only the sound of his occasional burst of laughter, that most human of actions, made him seem anything close to a real person in Jane’s mind.

  No matter what, her loyalty was still to the queen, for whom Jane’s pity trumped every other feeling.

  After the court had begun the summer progress at Greenwich Palace, where the wild grass and flowers grew tall and fragrant in the open meadows behind the river, Anne Boleyn returned to their company a
nd the lightness faded. Anne manipulatively drove the king to total distraction. In spite of the hours of counsel he kept with his friend Thomas More, or the holy advice he took from Cardinal Wolsey to ward off temptation, the whole court was made to pay for Henry’s enduring frustrations with Anne. Twice he chased her to Hever Castle; twice she returned with him. Everyone agreed she played the game of courtly love better than anyone had before her. Far better than the king.

  Then, as autumn rain soaked England with a heavy and endless downpour, things changed again. In October, when the court was installed back at Richmond Palace beneath the nose of the queen, Anne Boleyn began to assemble not just her allies but her own full court of ladies.

  She boldly wooed them right from under Katherine.

  Seeing the trend for herself, Jane slipped into the background as much as possible, but the king’s emboldened paramour still made it treacherous for everyone. Courtiers lived in fear of angering one faction or the other, without knowing for certain who would be victorious.

  Jane saw the king more often now. He spent nearly all of his time in the company of Anne or the queen, as if he were weighing the two. It was apparent to all that a decision was finally required of him.

  There was one day when the rain was so relentless that Anne, her ladies, the king, and a few of his friends were forced to entertain themselves by strolling back and forth across the length of the long gallery.

  For the first time, Jane was called upon formally to attend Anne. Jane had been sitting with Elizabeth Carew in the small alcove inside the queen’s presence chamber. She glanced up with surprise at Mary Boleyn, who stood over her with the urgent request upon her lips.

  “Oh pray, I would rather not. I would feel as if I had betrayed the queen, who has been kind to me,” Jane tried her best to demure.

  “Nice as that sentiment is,” Mary whispered to her so as not to be overheard, “survival is the key. My sister’s influence has grown and she knows it. You dare not reject her for what he might do! Believe me, I know well enough when he gets something into his mind; there shall be no stopping him.”

  Jane felt a mounting panic at the prospect of an impossible choice she could no longer avoid. She had no idea how she would defend herself if the increasingly sensitive queen discovered the betrayal. Still, she followed Mary dutifully and clasped the beaded rosary hanging from her waist to give her strength.

  They came upon the king and Anne then, who were pausing in the center of the gallery, where three great maps of the world were hung above a row of terra-cotta busts on black-and-white marble pillars. The king was gesturing to a point on one of the maps but turned when he heard the ladies approach. For the first time, Jane’s and the king’s eyes met, and he smiled at her. She felt her reaction swiftly, as a fire of embarrassment raced to her cheeks, coloring them. She lowered her eyes quickly, but not before Anne rounded upon her sharply. As she did, Anne clutched a bright gold pendant hooked around her neck. She was smiling exactly like a Cheshire cat. She leaned coyly then against the king’s shoulder, making it clear that the locket had been a recent gift from the sovereign.

  “Very well, then, sweetheart, shall we continue our stroll now that you have your reinforcements around you?” the king teased her as rain beat hard against the diamond-shaped windows along the opposite wall of the gallery.

  The men who were gathered with the king were careful to control their reaction to the humor in the comment. Jane’s brother Edward stood beside Francis Bryan, Francis’s handsome face ornamented now by a new dove gray, pearl-studded eye patch. He nodded, acknowledging Jane, while Edward ignored her and said something about the monotony of the rain to William Compton and William Brereton.

  Jane’s indignation suddenly flared. Something was happening inside her, although she was not certain what. In all the months she had been at court, her own brother still treated her as all of the other men but Francis did—as if she were of no consequence at all.

  “Your Majesty has a wife, so I keep my dignity among my companions,” Anne said with insipid sweetness in answer to his little jab.

  “Where do you keep your heart? For that is what I seek.”

  “My heart is around my neck for all to see, Your Majesty,” she said, twirling the gold charm playfully.

  “I suspect I shall pay dearly for the one as I have paid for the other,” the king volleyed, clearly pleased with himself, and his paramour, today.

  “Your pendant is stunning, if I may say, my lady,” Jane heard herself say in a suddenly clear, committed voice, spurred on by her anger at Edward. If she were to be thrown into the mix against her will, at least she would do well with it.

  Anne looked up at her in response. So did the king. How very odd, she thought, but Jane found that she liked his face up close. It was angular and strong, framed by a neat copper beard, his cheeks lightly dusted with the faint traces of adolescent freckles. His green eyes mirrored back something she could not define but still drew her. At first it looked like amusement, but then she saw a flicker of pain cross them before he cleverly concealed it with a wry smile.

  “Indeed,” Anne said, taking the occasion to hold up the pendant in front of everyone and flash the tiny miniature of the king painted at the center. “’Tis a good likeness, I think. Although the eyes are a bit less clever than they should be. Mistress Seymour, pray do not gawk, but have a closer look and tell us how you find it.”

  Jane did not want to be a part of this, but when the king arched his copper brows expectantly at her, she knew she had opened the door herself into a powerful world she had been trying for months to avoid.

  “She is your sister, Edward?” Henry suddenly asked, hearing her name and turning toward Edward, who stood beside Francis Bryan leaning against the window, arms crossed over his chest.

  “She is, sire.” Edward nodded but did not say more.

  “Ah. Well, then.” The king paused as though he had been caught quite unaware of what to say next or how best to say it. “Indeed, then, Mistress Seymour, do tell us all how you find my likeness.”

  Brereton, Compton, and Wyatt all muffled snickers, delighted by the young maiden’s discomfort as she stood in the presence of such a bold and powerful man. As the king looked at her, Jane saw Anne’s gaze slip to Wyatt and the two of them exchange a private smile before Jane replied.

  “Masterfully done, Your Majesty. ’Tis quite a flattering likeness, from what I can see.”

  “What you see is what there is, so be firm in your reply,” he snapped with a sudden note of irritation at her vague flattery. “For example, do you find, as Mistress Boleyn posits, that my eyes are more clever than the portrait reveals?”

  Anne Boleyn was sneering now at her predicament, still holding up the pendant, seeming to delight in the awkwardness of Jane’s sudden moment in the light. Anne had grown only more haughty since they were girls in France, if such a thing were even possible, Jane thought, and she liked her even less. But she was glad Anne still did not seem to recall their encounter because there seemed even more danger and potential ridicule in that.

  “I have not the occasion to know whether Your Majesty is, or is not, more clever than your image, as I have not been graced with an encounter before now.”

  “Well, image is everything, is it not?” As he glanced around, pleased with his own response, his companions chuckled, urging on the banter. “Keep that in mind when you are next in my presence, Mistress Seymour. Modesty quite bores me to tears, especially when I have such clever company beside me.”

  As the king took Anne’s hand and they began to stroll the length of the gallery again, Jane saw her brother’s angry glare before he drew Elizabeth Carew into conversation and strolled away. Francis Bryan came up to Jane a moment later and set out to stroll beside her.

  “Worry not. They are only toying with you. They mustn’t see your dismay or, like hounds to blood, they shall go after you even more next time.”

  “I am glad you are recovered. I have missed your encoura
gement,” she said sincerely. It was then she remembered their brief conversation before the tournament. “Cousin, you never did tell me what you wanted to say that day before the joust. Think you now that it is a good time to reveal it?”

  They fell into a slow strolling step behind the others. “I’m afraid I was hit so violently that I have quite forgotten anything that happened earlier that day.” He looked quizzically at her, twisting his face into a frown, as if trying to remember. “Not to worry, though; if it had been anything important, I am quite certain someone will remind me of it in time.”

  “Quite right,” Jane agreed, thinking it was all just as well, since it was probably a letter from her parents at Wolf Hall voicing their displeasure over the fact that she had been at court all of these months and had elicited no male interest that could further elevate the Seymour family standing. After all, what else could it possibly have been?

  As he dressed for the banquet later that evening, Edward Seymour cringed and tried very hard not to think what a dreadful first impression his meek sister had made before the king. All these months, all the work, the flattery and manipulation, the exorbitant costumes and the subsequent debt accrued just to stay on the same footing as Carew, Bryan, Wyatt, Brereton, and Compton; none of it mattered, for in a single stroke, like the sharp slice of a rapier blade, she had cut her own brother off at the knees with her poor impression on the king.

  Oh, that quiet way of hers, her voice thick like paste, her gaze never quite seizing on a person but drifting modestly down to her toes at the first breath of discomfort. If only she had been blessed with some modicum of beauty, her mousy ways could be overlooked.

  Jane had never seemed to him a true Seymour. She certainly bore no markings of a Wentworth. His sister seemed to him a liability, which was the main reason he had long kept his distance. Her decision-making skills fared no better, especially when she showed an ill-timed loyalty to the queen, of all people, who was in the midst of an obvious downfall.

  Edward had personally heard the king consulting Cardinal Wolsey about the viability of a divorce the last time Mistress Boleyn had run back to Hever Castle. So if it was to be divorce, by God, Edward would not be on the wrong side of that decree! He had worked too long and too hard for what he had.