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

  “Margery, ’tis madness!” her father shouted impotently.

  “Or folly! Either way, a daughter who behaves like our sons shall resemble one of them, at least until she gains a grain of humility! Thanks be to our dear Lord that Elizabeth is nothing like you! You must remember in the future that you are a Seymour and a Wentworth. A small drop of royal blood flows through your veins. Yet it is enough of the honeyed elixir for me to do all that I can to train you up, if not in my image, then at least to revere it!”

  The process lasted only a minute more, but it was a span of seconds that changed Jane’s life. She focused on the tall clock near the library door, willing herself not to weep, nor run from the room until her punishment was complete. Jane could not imagine how spiteful girls like Lucy Hill or Cecily Strathmore would torment her if they knew she was being shorn of that single bit of feminine identity that set a plain little girl apart from her brothers.

  She had never wanted to dislike her mother or to be different from the great beauty that was Margery Wentworth Seymour. A child’s instinct to love her mother did battle with the urge to yell a defiant obscenity. Jane felt the two sensations roiling, fighting, wearing deeply within her as she glanced up then and saw Thomas and Elizabeth at the corner of the doorway, peeking inside. Jane saw their horrified expressions as the last wet clump of Jane’s girlish identity hit the floor beside one of her father’s dogs, who sat now beneath the trestle table watching her and wagging his tail.

  Chapter Two

  September 1514

  Wiltshire, England

  The first bit of good news from Sir Francis Bryan at the court of King Henry VIII came by courier, ushered in on the same warm September wind that blew golden leaves across the courtyard. It was a month since Jane’s incident in Savernake Forest and two days since she had been let out of confinement in her chamber above the granary. Now the liveried messenger stood in the courtyard, his sleek face covered in a sheen of perspiration as the elegant green plume of his hat fluttered in the breeze. He removed his leather riding gloves while John read the newsy missive aloud.

  Details were at last finalized. The king’s younger sister, Mary, was to become the bride of France’s aged sovereign, Louis XII. The match was a coup for England and France against their political enemies. A massive train was being assembled to escort the young beauty to the arms of her brother’s rival-turned-friend, which would formally bond the two countries politically. Members of Henry’s court, his royal guard, ladies-in-waiting, maids of honor, and pages of honor were being named by the dozen—all from the best families, according to Sir Francis. The country was alive with the gossip of who would be chosen. Also in the missive, Francis boasted that he had been selected to help the king’s sister decide on the group who would have closest access to her, as his personal standing with the royal family had risen quite high. Excitement all across England had quickly reached a fever pitch.

  The second bit of news to further improve Margery Seymour’s disposition came later that same day. She and her husband had been invited to a banquet to be given by Sir Robert and Lady Dormer, held at the impressive Idsworth House. It was their first invitation. Guests were coming across rutted roads from as far away as Newbury, they were told, to celebrate the Dormers’ thirteen-year-old son William’s invitation to attend the Princess Mary as a young page of honor in the princess’s train to France.

  The honor for the family was massive, the scale of award beyond measure.

  With envy for his own eldest son rising above his sense of dignity, John Seymour inquired of the Dormer groom if Edward might have the opportunity to reunite with his friend young William at the banquet.

  He knew that pleading would be unseemly. But once the Dormer family returned to their even larger estates in Buckinghamshire, the opportunity would be lost to increase his own family’s standing enough for Sir Francis Bryan to take notice. A friendship with the prominent Dormers was essential, so he had to cleverly seize the moment.

  “Having once met the king myself on the battlefield at Tournai, and having been knighted personally by our previous sovereign,” John said boastfully, rocking back on his heels, “mayhap I could offer young Master Dormer a word of advice on how to impress His Majesty’s favorite sister with this most magnificent opportunity before him.”

  In truth, John Seymour’s only actual meeting with Henry VIII had amounted to his anonymous presence among a battery of bloodied, mud-drenched, and weary soldiers on a sodden field in France. They had all bowed to a very tall, copper-haired man on the back of a great warrior bay riding at the head of a train of a dozen other elegantly armored soldiers. The young king had held up his hand to them in collective thanks as he rode off to the comfort of a massive tent, a hot meal, good French wine, and more than a few pretty girls from the town of Thérouanne as John slept in the mud with the others.

  But those were details of no consequence, as far as he was concerned now, and John Seymour was not above a bit of prevarication to further elevate his family.

  If it was the only way to keep content his Margery—a beautiful woman who might have married so much better—he resolved to do it.

  Jane’s father knew perfectly well the invitation for Edward that miraculously arrived the next day had been extended grudgingly. He had seen the subtly rolled eyes of the groom at the moment of its delivery. It was only slightly worse than the condescending look of the first groom when he had proposed it.

  Unseemly, this second rather arrogant servant’s expression seemed to be saying.

  To the devil with you! John thought in response. I shall see my family rise as you settle for service, if it must be with my final breath.

  Power was an elusive thing. In a time when knights and sheriffs were as plentiful and unimpressive as peddlers, John’s former position as sheriff of Wiltshire never brought him anywhere near court. He had to do what he could to better life for his son. Edward deserved it. The boy was handsome and smart and he would have a brilliant future if John could only create a small foothold for him through their one connection to the court. What Edward did with it after that, by God’s grace, would be up to him.

  But Edward Seymour was the family’s only real hope of advancement.

  “She is quite a haughty woman, you know,” Margery remarked, speaking from what she had heard of Lady Dormer’s reputation. “While she is to be congratulated for her determination, I can only wonder how she managed to get that son of hers to attend the king’s sister in France—and what great strings she had to pull.”

  “I suspect you will be the one to find out,” John Seymour said blandly as he sat beside her in the room where they dressed. His groom, a tottering old man with coarse silver hair and a prominent wart on the tip of his chin, stood behind him, smelling of camphor and combing the master’s hair with a wide-tooth tortoiseshell comb.

  Margery sat beside him as her muffin-capped maid carefully wove a string of blue beads into the silk fall over her hair. He patted her arm with a hint of condescension so that she sniffed at him.

  “Mayhap I shall.”

  “Oh, you shall, my dear. It has been a good many years since I have seen anyone get the better of you.”

  “I want Edward in that train to France.”

  “As do I,” he agreed, both of them at last voicing what they had desired since hearing about the good fortune of Dormer’s son.

  “It could mean the world to the standing of this family if the boy were to go and make an impression.”

  “Agreed. But I cannot simply suggest to Sir Dormer that he find a way to see Edward invited along with his son.”

  “You saw him invited to the Dormers’ banquet this evening. You are certainly resourceful when you put your mind to it.” Margery’s voice was rising and growing thin. It was a predictable precursor to one of her fits of anger. Like a weather instrument before a windstorm, there was that little tremor that meant danger was not far off.

  “A banquet and a royal invitation are two very
different things, sweetheart,” he tried with futility to remind her as she shot to her feet, stiffening her resolve along with her spine.

  “Can you not call upon your cousin to aid us?”

  “Francis Bryan is a distant cousin,” he gently reminded her.

  “Blood is blood. There is loyalty in it. Why else does he so regularly send us letters of what is going on at the court of our king?”

  John rolled his eyes and swatted at the old man behind him to leave before he had a chance to apply the scented oil to his combed hair. “Sir Francis sends those to everyone, Margery. That young buck with whom I share only the faintest bit of blood is a braggart of the first order now that he has become one of the king’s hunting companions. He likes to flaunt his alliances, not offer them up.”

  Undaunted, Margery Seymour, in a beaded mauve-colored dress, swept across the bare floorboards to a table beneath the window that held a looking glass and a large, heavily carved jewelry chest with a brass hinge and latch. The lid of the chest was engraved with the Wentworth family crest. Her own lineage was as impressive as her beauty, and she liked to keep the chest prominently displayed to remind herself, John, and their children that she bore royal blood through her mother’s ancestral connection to King Edward III. It gave Margery the right, she believed, if not the relationships, to advocate for her son.

  After their first child was named John for his father, Margery had insisted on naming her second son, Edward, after that king. It was a boastful reminder to everyone, especially in this provincial setting to which her parents had seen fit to consign her, that she had once, in the full bloom of her flaxen-haired, blue-eyed beauty, been important enough to be a muse for the celebrated poet John Skelton.

  She now used the tale to guide her young daughters in her expectations for them, comparing them, prodding them, nagging them. Even Elizabeth, who had only just turned six, was already a victim of her mother’s ambition.

  It was obvious that even at the tender age of eight, Jane was sorely lacking in the refinement necessary to obtain an important suitor. That was going to change if Margery Seymour had anything to say about it. Her flawless face hid a steel core. She had taught little Jane a lesson last month. And the child’s hair would grow back. Well before she needed it anyway. Jane was clearly meant to be plain, with lovely hair or without it. Poor girl had gotten John’s looks—his receding chin, thick brows, and lifeless blue eyes. Ah, if only her beauty, which had won a master of words like Skelton, had taken Margery to court and not to Wiltshire.

  Skelton’s words flowed through her. Ye be, as I divine, / the pretty primrose, / the goodly columbine.

  With a discreet nod, Margery excused her maid, then prepared to try another tack. She drew near her husband, more handsome now in his dress doublet of green grosgrain and silver braid. He was not a tall man, but he stood very straight, which made him seem impressive. The brawny physicality that had won him a knighthood from Henry VII at the Battle of Blackheath nearly two decades earlier had softened with time. The winning smile that had once charmed his wife now hid beneath sagging jowls, but she did not find his nightly gropings completely objectionable. After so many years, she knew how to seduce him to her purposes, quickly and efficiently.

  With that in mind, Margery ran a hand skillfully down the length of his doublet, across the folds of fabric accented by an ivory hem. As always, her touch aroused him instantly.

  “We haven’t time for that now, sweetheart,” he murmured, his voice threaded with desire.

  “I do not ask you for a great deal, John, you know that. But I must have you to do this for me. Write to Sir Francis on behalf of our son. Find us a way to match the opportunity the Dormers have been given. Edward is already fifteen years old. Their son is two years younger. ’Tis Edward’s time.”

  “And your time as well, my dear?” he asked as she pressed a kiss along the vein that was pulsing wildly now in the thick column of his neck.

  Jane stood in the alcove beneath the staircase as her parents and brother departed for the evening. Jane loved her elder brother more than anyone in the world, she thought, and she admired him for how handsome and self-assured he seemed. Yet he was something of a mythical figure to her and rarely spoke to her. She watched their mother smile up at him now with a light in her eyes that Jane only ever saw when their mother looked at Edward. The three of them were collected closely, speaking in low tones while they waited for the horses and drawn litter to be brought up from the thatch-roofed stables down the long gravel drive near their gate. Jane looked enviously at her mother’s rose-colored satin evening dress with puffed sleeves and embroidered edges and rope of pearls. It was a new dress, ordered for the occasion. The hood had been made to match.

  Jane knew she was nothing like her glamorous mother, nor would she ever be. She reached up and touched the front of her own hair, remembering then. The repercussions from that day in Savernake Forest never left her mind for very long. Defeated, she sank more deeply into the shadows beneath the stairwell, feeling set apart more than usual in a family where everyone else seemed golden and full of promise. Even her six-year-old sister, Elizabeth, held tightly to their mother’s loveliness. Jane tried not to take that out on the little girl, who followed her around Wolf Hall as much as she followed Edward.

  Remembering her hair again, Jane fingered the tendrils at the back where the jagged pieces touched the nape of her neck. It had become a habit this past month as the warm air whispered over her bare skin, which not long ago had been warmed by a full, reassuring mane like that of every other little girl in Wiltshire.

  But she was nothing like any of them, and now there was not the faintest resemblance to hide behind.

  She watched her family leave and waited for the jangle of the horses’ harnesses out in the courtyard before she dared peek around the corner. Finally she cautiously emerged from the stairwell, the scent of her mother’s rose-water perfume still lingering threateningly.

  They were going to Idsworth House. The thought filled her with envy.

  They would see that boy who had tried to help her. William. She had heard her mother say he was going to France to see the Princess Mary become queen there. Everyone in England was talking about the marriage.

  Jane could not quite imagine such a thing herself—a voyage across the Narrow Sea among actual royalty, or being surrounded by such power and elegance. There could not possibly be anything more exciting or unfathomable.

  “’Tis a good thing Mother did not catch you lurking there, or you might well have lost all of your hair.” Thomas stood before Jane wearing a serious expression. His coloring was fair and his hair was light auburn. He was a strikingly beautiful boy with the same brilliant Wentworth eyes as their mother. He was loyal to Jane above all others, and he had actually wept with shock when he first saw what their mother had done in her fit of fury the month before.

  “I would so have liked to go with them tonight,” she wistfully confessed to her brother as they walked together toward the long gallery that faced the timbered inner courtyard of their house. The Seymour children spent hours strolling the gallery along a well-worn path, forward and back again, especially when the weather was poor. The household staff often set up games there to keep them from boredom.

  “We all would have liked that,” Thomas said. “But none of us are Edward.”

  “I met him, you know. Their son, William.”

  “Edward said he is a bit uncertain for someone with such an impressive fortune.”

  “He was quite certain with me,” Jane countered, remembering how he had saved her from Lucy. “I envy him being allowed to attend the king’s sister to France. That cousin of father’s, Sir Bryan, with a place at court, always writes that the princess is very beautiful.”

  “Everyone at court is beautiful…and rich,” Thomas countered, making an astute connection for someone so young as they moved to a carved oak bench beneath a bank of leaded windows.

  “Did it hurt when she cut it off?”
he asked suddenly.

  Jane tipped her head. “It was only hair.”

  “I know. But there was just…so much of it. Are you still angry?”

  “I try not to be. There is really no purpose in it. She is our mother, after all. We must love her.”

  “I don’t always,” Thomas confessed, glancing through the diamond-shaped leaded panes onto a small garden. Two butterflies fluttered over a small fountain surrounded by a neatly trimmed hedge. “Perhaps I would if I were Edward, but I shall never be him.”

  “With John and Henry both dead, you are the second eldest now. You know how determined Mother is about everything. She will see Father make a brilliant life for both of you. She means to find a way to get Edward to court. Perhaps you shall go with him one day.”

  Thomas laughed at the absurdity of her statement, but then as usual his expression fell more serious. His smile faded and his blue eyes dimmed slightly. “I fear there is as much chance of that as of horses flying.”

  As Margery had suspected, Idsworth House, which loomed across a stone bridge and mossy moat, was enormous. It was heavily gabled, wrought of red brick, and ornamented with a great blanket of emerald-colored ivy. Many of the manor’s mullioned windows were filled with colored glass and inset with mottos and the Dormer family coat of arms—a shield with a plumed silver helmet.

  Margery felt her heart quicken at the grandeur as she watched a gathering of other well-dressed guests, none of whom she knew, move confidently toward the entrance. Two servants as still as carved statues dressed in gold and blue livery flanked the door, holding flaming torches. In that moment, in spite of the costly and heavily embroidered fabric she had whined and coaxed her way into obtaining, she felt underdressed. She could not let John know it, however, for the protest she had made to look her best. Insecurity was beneath the dignity of a Wentworth and the small but undeniable bit of royal blood that ran through her veins.