Shadow of Persephone

by G Lawrence

  Enemies of the match were no doubt behind it.

  “Noble bearing and royal blood marks those who are higher from those who are lower,” I said, my temper rising swiftly, more because Thomas loved Bess than for her comment. “His Majesty will see the Queen for the fine, noble woman she is. And what lady of royal blood is not beautiful? All royal portraits show beautiful faces, do they not?”

  I was fool enough to believe that this was truth rather than the flattery of painters desperate to impress rich clients.

  The others nodded, shuffling to exclude Bess from the circle for speaking badly of our mistress. Bess looked downcast and left. When I thought that I had brought about a punishment akin to that which Jane Boleyn was often offered I felt bad, but I did not seek to make friends with Bess. I could not. She had stolen my dreams.

  From Lady Lisle’s letter we learned the Queen had been met at Antwerp by fifty English merchants in a torch-lit procession. Her house had been thrown open to the public, with Englishmen and foreigners coming to pay homage. Her greeting at Calais had been even more magnificent. Met by Anne’s stepfather, Lord Lisle, at Gravelines she had been escorted to the town in a huge procession, with trumpets blaring and men cheering her name. A mile from the gates of Calais, the Admiral had come to greet her, clad in purple cloth and gold. My uncle William was there, along with Sir Francis Bryan, the wild cousin of the Boleyns, and four hundred gentlemen, Culpepper amongst them. The Seymours were also there. Two hundred yeomen of England had saluted her as she rode past, their coats resplendent in blue and red with the royal arms of England stitched upon them. As she rode through the gate, cannon fired, announcing the Queen of England had come to English soil.

  When she entered, she was handed a solid gold C by the town mayor, and had met noble ladies of Calais, led by Anne’s mother. I wondered for a moment if Alice and Antony were there, for they were stationed in Calais and married now.

  In unyielding wind and lashing rain, the Queen had insisted that her tour of the King’s ships go ahead, and had not complained once about the storms tearing at her clothes and soaking her to the skin.

  “My mother says the Admiral was most impressed,” Anne said. “He thinks the Queen lovely, and so obviously pleased with all things English she will settle in, in no time. He was unsure about the match, but now has decided she will make a wonderful Queen.”

  “She sounds delightful,” I said. “So agreeable and charming. I cannot wait to meet her.”

  No one could. We all thought she would be with us within days, but Christmas Eve came and there was no news. The King distracted himself by planning the marriage of Lady Mary, his daughter, to Phillip of Bavaria who had come to London for the negotiations. Lady Mary was refusing to countenance the match, saying she would rather die than marry a heretic, for Phillip was Lutheran, but her father insisted she meet him. There had been whispers of plots to put Mary on the throne, and knowing this she submitted to her father for fear he might hear them and arrest her.

  “She has taken to her bed,” Mary Norris told me later that night as we undressed. “Lady Mary heard that Duke Phillip is eager to marry her, so she is pretending to be sick and has retired from court. Some say she will flee to Spain if the King insists.”

  “Poor lady,” I said, helping Mary with the pins holding her dress in place. We each wore a few hundred in our gowns, more in hair and hoods. Taking them out each night was not something to do alone or you would be there until morning. There were maids who could help us. Each of us had an attendant, but we liked to do this for each other. In some ways it was practice for the Queen. “To be forced to marry where she loves not, that is a sad fate.”

  “That is the fate of most people,” said Mary. “My father did not love my mother. He loved us, his children, but not her. They were friends, and that was enough.”

  “Would you not want to marry for love?” I asked, taking out the last pin and sticking it into the cushion beside our bed.

  “Of course,” she said, turning, her gown coming from her shoulders into her hands. She stepped out of it, and turned so I could help with her kirtle. “But I think it unlikely. Our husbands will be older than us, probably with a wife already waiting for them in Heaven and a child or two our own age at court. If we marry young men, we will be lucky. If we find love, it will be extraordinary.” She twisted her neck as I crouched, taking pins from her blue kirtle. “Most people learn to tolerate each other,” she continued. “That, sadly, is the most we should expect.”

  “I would like more.”

  “Expect little and you will not be disappointed,” she said. “Then, if something remarkable happens it is all the more miraculous. Expect much, and you are sure to be let down.”

  “Cynical old shrew,” I teased.

  “Naive youth,” she accused.

  I laughed. She was only a year older than me, but it was true I was often a fool when it came to love and reality.

  My head snapped up as wind shrieked past the window. It sounded as though there were a wolf scratching the panes, and I shuddered.

  “It will be wilder still, at the coast,” said Mary, stepping out of her kirtle and folding it. She came to help me with my gown and I turned obediently. “I hate to think what the Queen is thinking as she rests in Calais, with the seas churning and storms screaming. She must think England a feral place, with this first impression.”

  “She is from the north of the world,” I said, one ear and eye bent upon the howling gloom outside the window. “The farther north one goes, the colder and wilder the weather, so says my uncle William.”

  The Queen was so close, yet could not reach us. Everyone was on tenterhooks, the King not least of all.

  “He slapped Cromwell about the chops this afternoon,” Anne told us, pausing from combing the hair of one of the younger Howards. “Shouted that it was his fault the Queen was not here, for he should have sent sturdier ships to bring her to England.”

  “He treats him like a dog,” I said, stepping out of my outer gown and shivering in the cold. I shifted closer to the warm fire, Mary following me with muffled protests coming from her pin-filled mouth as she tried to hold on to my kirtle and grab the pin cushion at the same time. “Do you think Cromwell resents it?”

  It was common for servants to be hit or slapped by masters, but the frequency with which Cromwell was punished by the King seemed to be increasing.

  “It is all he deserves,” Mary said in a very quiet voice. She turned away, going to our bed as though to fetch something, and I saw her eyes fill with tears.

  “Her father,” Anne mouthed at me and I nodded.

  Mary did not come back. Anne helped me out of my kirtle instead, and rather than stay up talking with the other girls, I went to Mary.

  That night I put my arms about Mary in bed, and she cried into my shoulder. She said nothing about why, and I did not ask. I had no need to. Some things were safer left unsaid.

  *

  On Christmas Day we woke to fresh skies, no more troubled with grey iron. The weather had broken. The Queen could come!

  That made the day all the more joyous. In Mass there were shining faces, expectant with glee for all the festival that was to come when the Queen reached court.

  Three days after the feast on Christmas Day, we had word. The Queen was in England.

  “She landed yesterday, in the evening,” Anne said, gasping to catch her breath after racing up the backstairs to our chamber upon hearing the news from one of the King’s men. “The Duke and Duchess of Suffolk met her amidst a storm of hail and wind, but she is with them. She is to go to Canterbury tomorrow, despite the weather, where Cranmer will meet her.”

  Anne doubled over, clutching a stitch in her side, and refused to answer more questions until she had claimed her breath back.

  “All who meet her say she is fair, with the manners of a princess and the gentle bearing of a lamb,” Anne eventually told us. “The King is overjoyed, for all reports are favourable, and he is apparentl
y striding about his chamber unable to keep still for a moment.”

  Keen he was, for in a few days Anne had another snippet of news; a romantic tale which would, unfortunately, not turn out as expected.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Greenwich Palace

  New Year’s Eve 1539 - January 1540

  “This King is gone,” Anne giggled, pulling me away from the furs I had been inspecting.

  In anticipation of the Queen’s imminent arrival the royal household had roared into life. Everything had to be checked. Everything had to be perfect. We knew we were not only doing this for the Queen, but also for the King. If anything was amiss, causing an instant of suffering for his wonderful, perfect woman, we were sure we would end up on the block.

  “Gone?” I asked. “Where? Is he not supposed to receive gifts from us tomorrow?” I had prepared a pair of fine, embroidered cuffs which I had been working on for weeks. They would be presented with all the other gifts from the maids, but I had thought with pride about my needlework adorning the King’s wrists. It was some of my best work.

  “Presents will wait, the King cannot,” Anne said. “He is gone to meet the Queen.” She giggled again. “He will surprise her… like a gallant in a tale of chivalry. He went with only a few companions, and the King’s men tell me he will go to her in disguise, dressed like Robin Hood.”

  “Will she know that story?”

  “She is a lady of noble birth,” Anne replied. “Even if she knows not that specific tale, she will recognise the game of courtly love. It is played in all courts, after all. The King used to do the same with Katherine of Aragon, and… others.”

  “It is all most romantic,” I said, wishing Thomas would play such games with me, then feeling sad. His games were now for Bess alone.

  We talked of the King’s adventure all day as we scurried from task to task like busy squirrels gathering nuts. How the King would arrive, she would pretend not to know him and sorrow her husband to be was not there so he might meet this handsome, cultured stranger. Then he would show himself and she would affect astonishment, a glimmer of amusement in her eye so he would know all along she had recognised him. We all knew of the game, everyone did. It had been played a thousand times or more.

  “Except…” Mary whispered later. “…the King is not really the handsome young gallant anymore, is he?”

  “Hush,” I told her. “The Queen will know him. Surely she has seen his portrait?”

  “None was sent,” said Mary.

  We latched on to all news that came our way, and there was plenty. Over the past few days the Queen had been making her way through England. From Dover Castle she had ridden to Canterbury, unperturbed when ill weather resumed. Cranmer had greeted her, along with three hundred gentlemen and the Bishop of Ely. She had gone to the monastery of St Augustine, past crowds who had gathered in an ill tempest to cheer her, and had rested in the gatehouse, but although the weather was terrible, pouring rain and driving wind, she urged them to allow her to continue on to London, as she was greatly desirous of meeting the King.

  “She is not easily daunted,” Katherine Carey said with approval. We all looked to the window. The grounds were dim shadows obscured by hammering rain. The skies seemed low, ominous, even cruel. In the far distance roaming shapes told us deer were seeking somewhere dry to sit. They would search in vain.

  At St Augustine, the Queen had met many great ladies of her chambers, dispatched from Greenwich to meet her, including Mistress Stoner. We, not as important as they, had not been sent for. Waiting at Greenwich as everyone else in the world, or so it seemed to us, was in Kent, was torture.

  With the absence of the ladies of the Queen’s chambers, we maids were in charge, and that was our one consolation. As we plumped cushions and ordered chamberers about, we made sure the royal apartments were clean, tidy and beautiful, so our Queen would not be downcast when she arrived. And all the time we talked.

  She had gone on from Canterbury on the 30th of December, to Sittingbourne, and stayed there a night. On New Year’s Day, she was at Rochester where Norfolk, along with a hundred horsemen dressed in velvet coats and golden chains had met her, escorting her to the Bishop’s Palace in the city. And it was there the King caught up with his new wife.

  We heard nothing of what happened that day until later. From all we heard, the King had met the Queen and they had conversed gently. Some said they loved each other already. It was only when the third day of January came and we were to greet the Queen at the foot of Shooter’s Hill, near the palace gates, when I learned what had happened.

  That day was a buzzing whirl of activity. For two days, men had been constructing a sea of tents in the grounds, so the Queen would be dazzled before she even reached the palace. A forest of green, white, red and purple canvas was erected, as though the court were on progress, or going to war. At the centre of this ocean of colour was a tent of cloth of gold, shimmering like a mighty battleship. Hundreds of fires had been lit along the path leading to the palace, with braziers burning sweet incense beside them. Smoke plumed into the air, dancing in blue and grey swirls in the wind. The air was musky and rich with incense, blocking out ranker smells coming from the river, and London. Thankfully, it was not raining, but we glanced up warily as we emerged from the palace in our best gowns. The skies were grim.

  The grounds and route to the palace had been cleared of old branches and debris; hard toil after all the storms we had had. Trees uprooted from the earth had to be chopped into bits and dragged away by men and oxen, thigh muscles straining as they toiled through rivers of mud. Carts carrying smaller branches, twigs, and heaps of rotten, sodden leaves struggled on the wet ground. But the procession way was magnificent, a trail of bonfires roaring valiantly against the cold air, incense holders pouring wonderful scents into the wind, the ocean of brightly coloured tents, and the hundreds of people already milling about, drinking steaming cups of spiced wine.

  Merchants, aldermen, councillors, officers, esquires, knights and palace servants were all in place, dressed in their finest, to cheer her along to the palace. We maids were loaded into a cart to keep our dresses clean, which trundled down to the tents. Wind nipped us, trying to snatch carefully arranged silk veils and hoods from our heads. I stared out across the park. Everything far away was grey. Despite the wind, a low mist was attempting to creep from the trees. As it slunk from the bushes, it was caught by the gusting wind and swept into the air to join the smoke and incense. But here, in the midst of colour and noise, the world seemed like spring.

  We huddled in one of the tents, trying to keep our gowns free of mud and our hair and hoods in place. Inside it was warm, with a good fire glowing in the brazier, and we had hot wine to drink which kept our frozen fingers from falling off. I was glad of my thick wool undergarments, for the air was gnawing cold. There was an iron tang on the wind, as though snow might come. Nervously we glanced at the skies, some of us foretelling woe and others happier outcomes, but all hoping our mistress would get to us before another tempest arose. Huddled about the fire, telling the other girls all would be well, I was. And it was there Lady Rochford found me.

  Some ladies of the Queen’s train had been sent back to ensure all was taken care of, and Jane, along with the ladies Douglas and Howard, was one. As we rose from curtseying, she complimented us on the way we had kept the Queen’s chambers. “Keep warm,” she said. “For you must all be ready to curtsey deep, and frozen limbs will make you graceless.”

  We all crept closer to the charcoal brazier, terrified we would disgrace ourselves, but as I went to take a step, she took my arm. “If you and Mistress Bassett would come with me, Mistress Howard. I must impart further instructions to you in private, as the chief ladies amongst the maids.”

  Anne bobbed a curtsey, as did I, and we followed Jane to the edge of the tent. “You need to know what we know,” she whispered. “But you are to say nothing of it to the others, do you understand? This is for your ears alone, so if you hear aught
of it you can tell the speaker to desist for their own good.”

  More than a little alarmed, we nodded. “Good,” she said. “Now each of you smile as though I am telling you something wonderful.” A smile appeared on her face and we obeyed, mimicking like obedient apes. “And keep smiling,” she said. “Do not look horrified, no matter what I say.”

  She let out a little laugh, and we smiled wider as though she had made a jest. I could hear fear, thumping in Anne’s heart as loud as mine. With fixed smiles on our faces, we listened.

  “The first meeting between the King and Queen did not go as planned,” Jane said, her court smile bright and eyes dancing. “The King and his men arrived in disguise, wearing cloaks of many colours so they looked like vagabonds, but no one had warned us. Had they, we might have prepared the Queen.” She paused. Anne let out a giggle, more from nerves than anything, and was rewarded with a nod from Jane. “The Queen, you see,” Jane said. “She speaks only a few words of English and knows little of our customs. We have been guiding her as best we can, through her translator, and she has done well in public, but this was a surprise for which we were not prepared.”