I, Jane: In The Court of Henry VIII Page 20

  “However, Your Highness is here, and she is not,” Jane said.

  She felt a choking sensation beginning to close over her throat the moment the words left her lips. She had not meant to speak.

  She certainly had not meant to say that!

  Yet the presumptuous declaration had come anyway, and on a burst of confidence because she so respected the queen.

  “Pray, do forgive me, Your Highness. Humbly, I bid you,” Jane said meekly as tears of embarrassment pricked the back of her eyes, threatening to fall.

  Katherine wrapped a motherly arm across Jane’s shoulders. “There, there, my dear, what is this? Tears for honesty? Remember, you did not deign; I asked you. You are such a small, unassuming thing, but there is something bright behind those eyes of yours. You remind me of myself when I first came here all those years ago. Timid. Uncertain. But, oh, what was hidden beneath my own timid gaze! A gaze made compliant by my duenna back home, not by the fire in my soul!”

  She chuckled at herself then, and Jane realized it was the first time she had ever heard the queen sound happy.

  “It is an honor to have Your Highness understand a heart like mine.”

  As the words crawled haltingly from her lips, Jane heard the collective, condescending groan behind her. The women of King Henry’s court did not like any form of competition, no matter how small. Jane now knew that well enough. Still, it had not stopped her from finally speaking out in a way only time and experience could have taught her to do. She had grown, and as awkward as it was, she liked how it felt.

  “I am going to give you something,” the queen said suddenly. “Come with me.”

  She moved with purpose out of the chamber into a small study, in which Jane had never been. The room was book lined and had a chair and writing table with heavily carved and painted legs at its center. On the wall was a portrait of the king. Jane lingered in the doorway as the queen went to a cabinet below an oak shelf filled with leather-bound books and drew something from it.

  “Look at this coin. Do you see the face stamped on it?”

  Jane saw that it was emblazoned with the image and name of Ferdinand II. “I do, Your Highness.”

  “My father was a bold yet patient man. He taught me many things about how to exist at a court like this one, how to have the courage of my convictions. Take the coin, Mistress Seymour, and carry it close to your heart. It shall give you strength, especially when you feel you can trust no one. That is something I have come to understand only too well.”

  The queen made a little motion then that Jane should put the coin next to her heart beneath the plastron of her dress. As she did so with a humble nod of thanks, Jane felt it settle in right beside the letter she had placed there from the king to Anne Boleyn.

  . . .

  My mistress and friend: I and my heart put ourselves in your hands, begging you to have them as suitors for your good favor, and that your affection for them should not grow less through absence. For it would be a great pity to increase their sorrow since absence does it sufficiently, and more than ever I could have thought possible reminding us of a point in astronomy, which is that the longer the days are, the farther off is the sun, and yet the more fierce. So it is the same with our love, for by absence we are parted, yet nevertheless it keeps its fervor, at least on my side, and I hope on yours also….

  Jane cringed, unwilling to read on as she folded the letter again, feeling a bit like a voyeur. She had been asked to intrude on a private scene and she felt gooseflesh from it. The king was unexpectedly poetic, she thought, as the words rang in her head after she hid it away once again.

  He was clearly beyond besotted. No matter what gown she wore, poor Queen Katherine stood no chance against that. Jane wondered with the perspective of time now if she had ever actually stood a chance with William, when he clearly must have found someone else more appealing by now.

  That he had never written to explain his change of heart still stung, even with time and distance, which should have brought her perspective.

  When the messenger came, she used the French word parfait to describe the king’s love letter because the impassioned words Henry had written truly were perfect.

  Four days after receiving the king’s missive, haughtier than ever and more demanding, Anne Boleyn returned to the court, which had moved back to Greenwich. She now boldly wore the king’s pendant, with a miniature of his portrait, over the front of her dress.

  “Would you like to see the likeness of His Majesty?” Anne asked Lady Bryan yet again, doing it only because she knew the queen was nearby and would overhear her. The king had just bought two new rare monkeys for the Royal Zoo, and when the queen had asked him to show them to her, he had escorted his wife in the company of his friends Charles Brandon, Nicholas Carew, William Compton, William Brereton—and Anne Boleyn. She seemed always to turn up, like a bad penny, and Jane, along with everyone else, had to struggle not to roll her eyes.

  Anne’s new wardrobe of dresses were all designed to highlight the single piece of jewelry she wore—the pendant bearing the king’s image. Conversely, while waiting for the pope’s decision on what was now being called “the Great Matter,” the queen wore her bold Spanish silver cross on a rope of sparkling white pearls. Its presence, to those who quietly gossiped, seemed to say that Anne might have the king’s favor, but Katherine bore the will of Almighty God, and in that there could never be any real contest.

  “’Tis an exquisite piece, my lady,” Francis’s silver-haired mother remarked evenly. Then she nodded deferentially to Anne because the king was present.

  “But have you truly looked at the craftsmanship and noted the painter’s skill, Lady Bryan?”

  Jane, who stood directly between the queen and Anne, along with Lady Carew and Mary Boleyn, felt like a buffer for the queen’s anger.

  She saw Katherine stiffen and her lips go very flat and straight as she gazed into the monkey cage and tried her best not to appear as though she could hear the exchange. Jane watched her clutch the cross at her chest, draw in a breath, then exhale deeply as Anne chattered mercilessly.

  “Do you not agree, Mistress Seymour? Mistress Seymour! Mistress Seymour! You have been spoken to!”

  Anne’s suddenly hostile tone drowned out Jane’s thoughts and brought her abruptly back to the moment.

  “Forgive me, mistress, I—,” she stammered, having no idea what had been asked of her because her mind had wandered.

  “Oh, never mind, little mouse. ’Tis not as if any man would ever give you something so exquisite anyway,” she murmured cruelly as she clutched the pendant proudly. A disturbingly sincere smile brightened her expression as she turned toward the king and wrapped her other arm through his, clutching him tightly. “Amusing little creatures,” she said of the monkeys who skittered up and down a tree branch at the center of the cage. “Not unlike Cardinal Wolsey about the ears, and with the positively hunted expression of our Mistress Seymour,” Anne observed drily.

  Everyone, including the king, laughed. The moment stunned her.

  Jane had begun her life as the butt of cruel jokes, and today she was reminded, yet again, that no matter how long she was at court or how thick her skin became, nothing had changed in that regard. Nor had her secret, mounting anger toward those—toward one person in particular—who mocked her.

  Chapter Ten

  June 1528

  Greenwich Palace

  The year that had passed was another of great waiting and frustration for the king concerning the Great Matter, and everyone at court was made to feel the rumble of his discontent. Henry seemed particularly undone by the wait, and by the summer he began to suffer a series of odd ailments that tormented him. There were recurrent headaches and fevers that began after a particularly bad jousting accident, but the most troublesome ailment was a strange ulcer that had appeared on his leg and could not be healed. None of his doctors could fully diagnose or cure it. That, most of all, set him into an ill humor as he continued to try
to seduce Mistress Boleyn.

  As the years had worn on, the issue of the king’s desired divorce fully polarized the court, and everyone was called upon to take sides. After a plague-riddled spring, when the sweating sickness had taken several of the king’s most intimate companions, including William Compton and Mary Boleyn’s husband, William Carey, the king’s circle became much more defined.

  The divided court spurred on Francis Bryan’s and Edward Seymour’s ambitions, and both put their lot in fully with Anne Boleyn rather than the queen. There was a growing sense in the fly-infested corridors of the palace that siding with the king’s paramour could exact fury from God, but Francis and Edward boasted that they were accomplished gamblers, and both were willing to take the risk.

  Not only did the dissension create tension, but most days the palace corridors echoed with the uproar of the king and Anne’s furious battles and their tumultuous reconciliations as well.

  “I will not have it! I desire these rooms, and I mean to have them!” Anne screeched at Henry.

  It was the day before the midsummer celebrations, and everyone had assembled at game tables set up in the great gallery that separated the king’s apartments from the queen’s rooms. They were installed at Greenwich, and in spite of her protestations against being separated from the king, Henry had left the queen in the early morning hours alone at Richmond and had come away with Anne and her ladies for the festivities.

  “They are the queen’s rooms, sweetheart; I cannot simply remove her.”

  “If you want me in your bed, you shall!”

  “She is at Richmond now, and we have Greenwich here. Let us keep it as such. A swift cut is the cleanest; is that not what you always say when we go hunting?”

  Thomas Seymour laid down his hand of cards. “I am telling you, no matter what our brother thinks, the marriage is at an end,” he said quietly.

  Thomas’s glance met that of Anne Stanhope, who sat on the other side of the table. Then he returned his gaze to his own hand of cards. “By the sound of things, I would be a bit more careful if I were you with whom you cast your lot in this, Jane.”

  Along with Anne Stanhope; Thomas Wyatt’s sister, Margaret; and Elizabeth Carew, Jane had been brought away to Greenwich. Anne, for some mysterious reason, continued to request Jane’s presence. Most likely to flaunt her superiority over Jane.

  “I still cannot abandon her, Thomas, no matter how the tide appears to be turning,” Jane whispered, wanting to return as hastily as possible to the queen’s somber rooms.

  “You may soon have no other choice, or you could lose your place altogether. Is that what you want, simply to return to Wolf Hall? Lord knows there is nothing waiting for you there but Mother’s disappointment,” Thomas warned in the same whispered tone.

  Jane knew that much to be true. To be sent home, unmarried, not even betrothed, was a failure in every sense. It was also a horrifying prospect. And still Jane could not quite wrap her mind, or her conscience, around betraying the beleaguered queen in the bold and sure way most of the rest of the court had.

  The king came thundering down the adjoining corridor just then with tears in his eyes and Anne nipping at his heels like a lapdog. “Keep her at Richmond or bring her here, but I want her out of these rooms either way, or by my troth, Hal, you shall never see your way in!”

  “God’s blood, Nan, your vulgarity wounds me,” he groaned and slapped his forehead as everyone bolted to their feet. There was a collective skittering and the screech of chairs scraping across the wood floor at his sudden entrance before they slipped into compulsory bows and curtsies.

  Henry and Anne both ignored their courtiers.

  “In truth, I think that if Katherine does not soon agree to end this travesty of waiting on the impotent pope for an annulment and simply agree to a divorce, then she ought to be made miserable enough to see the wisdom in it! The More in Hertfordshire seems the perfect place to do that.”

  Murmurs of surprise snaked through the vaulted gallery.

  “You want me to imprison the queen in that remote and dreadful place?”

  “Has she not done the very same thing to you, Hal, isolating me by indulging her fantasy of a union that never existed between you?”

  Jane dared to glance up at the king just then, following the line up the thick bandage bulging on his calf, across his broad chest, to his tear-brightened eyes. To her surprise, for the first time, he did not seem to her a majestic, unreachable ruler at all, but rather a fallible, mortal man like any other. A cautious curiosity about this complex man had begun to blossom within her. She felt not the old antipathy, but more frequent bursts of compassion for him.

  “What shall you give me if I keep her away?” Henry suddenly asked Anne, unconcerned with his audience, who silently hung on every word between them.

  “What is the thing you desire most?”

  She murmured the reply in a seductive mewl meant only for him, but Jane was near enough to hear it.

  “Very well. The More it is. For now.” The king’s reply came tenderly as he stroked her small face with the back of his large hand.

  “And Princess Mary, shall we not send her alone to Wales to better drive home the point to her mother?”

  “If it brings this all to a close soon, then it is for the best,” Henry grudgingly agreed.

  Jane found Anne’s dark-eyed victorious smile a little menacing.

  “Splendid. Now I must attend to the refitting of my rooms to suit my taste, since it shall take an eternity to find the proper French designs to make me comfortable. If it pleases you, my lord, I shall assemble a little collection of these women to occupy and advise me as I embark on the task.”

  “As you wish.” The king nodded and kissed her cheek, happy, it seemed to Jane, to be out of the fire for now.

  “Lady Wyatt, Lady Carew, and Mistress Stanhope, you shall join me anon in the presence chamber. And Mistress Seymour, I shall have you as well. I should find favor with my cousin about me,” Anne added perfunctorily as she spun on her heel and strode toward the door. She did not see Jane’s grim nod as her own black mane of hair swung like a horse’s tail.

  And so to Jane the choice had come. Swiftly and surely.

  Light versus dark. The end versus the beginning. She simply must do as her heart urged. She would go against her brothers and Francis Bryan in this. Jane would go into exile with the queen, if the great Katherine of Aragon would still have her. And she would face whatever fate awaited her there. Jane did not know a great deal, but she did know that she could not live a life in service to a she-devil like Anne Boleyn, reminded every day of all the things she was not and would never want to be. Even a desolate and windswept place with a reputation like the More must be better than that. It was also better than having to return to Wolf Hall, a failure and a spinster with no hope of a future.

  There seemed to Jane no other choice but those two.

  Thus, it was not really any choice at all.

  PART III

  Jane and Francis

  Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake, in little things;

  and thence proceed to greater.

  —Epictetus

  Have no friends not equal to yourself.

  —Confucius

  Chapter Eleven

  December 1531

  the More, Hertfordshire

  Three months’ time passed at the More, a dank and shadowy prison set in the most desolate, windswept area imaginable. Against the fervent advice of both of her brothers, Jane and a few women elected to go with the banished queen. Once there, however, she quickly began to feel as if she were as much a prisoner of Anne Boleyn as the queen herself was.

  The ladies collected at the More passed the time quietly sewing or praying and waiting, full of fear for news of the negotiations with Rome about the annulment. They knew what it would mean for their beloved queen. While Katherine’s nephew, Emperor Charles V, assured her that he would make certain the pope did not surrender, part of Jane began
secretly to hope that he would. An annulment would certainly put an end to what everyone privately believed was going to happen anyway. That way, perhaps the poor besieged queen and her daughter, Princess Mary, could retire to a more fitting palace and find some bit of peace.

  But that did not happen.

  In the end, Henry, her husband of twenty-two years, circumvented the pope. He gave up on annulment or divorce and simply broke with Rome altogether. He created his own church and his own rules.

  Suddenly, Anne Boleyn was his wife—his pregnant wife.

  And she was called Queen of England.

  As Katherine’s loyal staff stood somberly behind her, with tears in their eyes, Jane helplessly watched the proud, defiant Katherine brought to her knees. Anne’s uncle, the powerful Duke of Norfolk, haughtily declared, “Since you are no longer queen, my lady, you shall no longer keep a queen’s household at the king’s expense or his pleasure.”

  “Et tu, Brute?” she said softly, not prepared for his betrayal.

  “’Tis a matter of survival, my lady, only that,” Norfolk replied icily.

  The man beside Norfolk, Charles Brandon, had been her dear friend for decades. But like Norfolk, he, too, looked at her as if she were no longer of any consequence.

  Brandon had always seemed arrogant to Jane, but never so bad as he had become after the death of his wife, Mary, the king’s own sister. Some part of him seemed to have died with her, and now it was as if he was simply out to gain for himself what he could.

  “Nothing the concubine does can ever make her queen in my place,” Katherine declared, racked with trembling. Her body was fleshy now and worn with the trials of recent years. Her face had swiftly drained of its color from the shock of this cruel encounter.