by Diane Haeger
In response, Francis, Edward, and Nicholas all joined him in a ribald laugh. George Boleyn alone shot Francis an evil glare.
William Dormer sat with his new wife, Mary, her father, Sir William, and his new benefactor, Thomas Cromwell, just behind the king at the May Day celebrations. Cromwell was an influential man. He exuded power from every part of his tall, slightly hunched frame, which was always swathed in velvet robes. Since Wolsey’s death after falling ill on a journey, Master Cromwell was entrenched as the king’s key adviser, and he needed a smart, ambitious aide.
William had willingly accepted the post in order to put his past heartbreak with Jane finally behind him. Yet hearing her name suggested by Francis Bryan as a possible courtier jarred him. It was of no help that Mary clung so tightly to his arm that it had begun to go numb.
He was stunned, and he tried to take the notion in fully, but his skin smarted under the pinch of his wife’s desperate fingers. Desperation had always been unappealing to him.
Jane had never been like that. He had marveled at her independent streak, even on that first day in Savernake Forest. His mind had retained every moment of that first encounter, certainly glamorizing it through the prism of passing years. Ah, how he longed for the bittersweet innocence of childhood, when he had not understood what would be expected of him or of Jane.
Jane…
He squeezed his eyes to press away the thoughts, since they always came back to how he had hurt her. William had wanted to be different for her, and with her. Yet in the end he knew he, like the rest of the world, had played a part in hardening her once achingly gentle heart.
That Jane might now return to court, where he would be forced to see her, filled William with almost as much dread as excitement, and a battery of questions assaulted his mind.
Did she hate him for marrying Mary Sidney when it was he who had pursued her in the first place, then failed not once but twice to win her? He shook his head, knowing the answer. He was a wretched man who deserved the heartache he felt.
“My dear, are you unwell?”
William’s wife studied him with a face full of concern. For a moment he was uncertain what to say since he knew he would never be truly well again.
Mary was not without appeal. Like Jane, she was small, demure, and obedient. Her eyes were large and brown, her lips full, and her heart open. As a man, he could be tempted by the novelty he saw in her. Mary’s hair was also fair enough that in the dark of night, beneath the tapestry canopy of their bed, he could almost convince himself that it was Jane with him beneath the covers. God help him and his fantasies, but he wanted to see her again. He hoped to see her; he longed for it. Even in all of their years of separation, it was she who was his last prayer every night and his every fantasy after that. But what would happen when she saw him again, William could not even begin to imagine.
PART IV
Jane and William
Where desire doth bear the sway,
the heart must rule, the head obey.
—ANONYMOUS
Chapter Thirteen
January 1536
Richmond Palace
It was another endlessly wet and gray day when the Seymours’ drawn litter pulled up the wide pathway through the massive golden gateway of Richmond Palace. Jane could see the golden-domed turrets, brightly painted brickwork, and colorful flying pinions. Though nothing had changed about the palace, she was changed from the girl who had left. She was a woman of no illusions this time, and only a sense of family duty to lead her.
With the sad announcement of the death of Katherine of Aragon, the past had been fully left behind them at last. Feeling magnanimous, Queen Anne had agreed, through her chamberlain, to put aside any bad feelings and accept Jane as a lady-in-waiting due to the high placement not only of her brothers, but of Sir Francis Bryan as well. Jane ruefully remembered her father’s pronouncement in the Wolf Hall dining hall that she was to return to court. There was no choice in the matter. She would help her brothers gauge how the wind was blowing as they navigated the increasingly choppy waters of the swiftly failing royal marriage.
Jane liked Richmond Palace precisely because Queen Katherine had favored it and Queen Anne did not. It was too provincial for Anne, lacking elegance, yet sporting all of the wonderful details of an Arthurian castle straight from the pages of Sir Thomas Malory.
In a gown of amber velvet, she stepped from the closed litter and into a swirl of activity. Horses were taken by grooms to and from the stables, and ox-drawn carts brimming with vegetables rolled past. Another cart, laden with dead geese, drew toward the kitchens as the daily task of feeding a mammoth-sized court began once again. There was so much going on that Jane’s arrival was barely an event, but the two opulently dressed Seymour brothers were there to greet her nonetheless.
“You are looking elegant.” Thomas beamed as he kissed her cheek.
“Father did not hesitate to remind me of the cost of this elegance,” Jane said, remembering her father’s words before she had left.
“This style of living takes money, and plenty of it,” Edward put in as both brothers appraised her.
Since they had last seen each other, Thomas had grown into his looks. Now he was tall and trim. Any traces of boyhood in his face had given way to a perfectly elegant nose, square jaw ornamented by a neat, light mustache and beard, and azure eyes that could only be described as piercing. He and Edward both carried their mother’s features, but Thomas had clearly inherited better versions of them.
As the trio made their way toward a wide, carved entrance door to the east wing of the palace, Thomas linked his arm through Jane’s. Edward did so with the other arm in a futile attempt to keep up with their sibling bond.
“Now that you see her again, do you suppose there is any hope of it at all?” Thomas asked Edward as they passed the threshold and entered the first long, tiled gallery.
“There is always hope,” Edward countered sagely. “The king grows more restless by the day, and I told you how softened to her he was at Wolf Hall.”
“Was that not only the vulnerability of his ill health?”
“We shall put it to the test these next days, shan’t we? When the queen is pregnant and his duty is done, the king feels perfectly free to indulge himself. It has been the same song since the earliest days with the last queen. Our timing in this is impeccable.”
Jane stopped dead in her tracks at the base of a wide wooden staircase and reached out to clutch the wooden banister. “You two could not possibly be talking about me, could you?” she asked.
Edward began to lead her by the elbow up the flight of stairs. “We are indeed.”
“Edward, Sir Francis, and I think the king may well be ready for someone new; someone patient and kind, rather than the tempestuous partner he has done battle with these last years.”
“Impossible,” Jane scoffed as they briskly walked together. “I have been in His Majesty’s presence dozens of times, and he has never shown the slightest interest in me!”
“Much has changed since you have been away, sister. His Majesty’s health has continued to decline and he has been made vulnerable by it. At first, Queen Anne took advantage of that weakness, raging her demands and pressing her power. But now, like a wounded bear, he has begun to resist, and even lashed back at her boldly. It has made for some interesting encounters to witness,” Edward said.
“As you know,” added Thomas, “upon the death of Sir William Carey, Francis took over his position in the privy chamber, which has brought him quite close to the royal center of things. And in those most private hours, a man talks to his gentleman servant.”
“I thought our cousin was loyal to his more prominent relation, the queen.”
“Francis may be a profligate, but he is a wise one. If the queen does not give Henry a son, the marriage will come to an end,” Edward put in.
“Is that what he speaks of?” Jane asked skeptically as they made their way down a second, tapestry-lined gallery de
picting scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
“That, and of uncomplicated days with gentle, loyal friends like Wolsey, though he speaks guardedly of the dead cardinal.”
“A bit late for nostalgia, as poor Queen Katherine grows cold upon her bier and the cardinal is six feet under at Leicester Abbey!” she exclaimed angrily.
Her sister-in-law, Anne Stanhope, had written to her that in the queen’s final hours, her most faithful, lifelong friend, Maria de Salinas, had broken all protocol and risked everything to be at her bedside.
The poor queen had died three days before in the arms of her dearest Spanish friend.
“Yet he believed he loved Queen Anne,” Thomas put in. “Surely you understand how blinding love can be.”
Jane shot her brother a sharp look, feeling the sting of the reference to William. She could not help herself. The next words crossed her lips even as she tried to stop them.
“Have you met William’s wife?” she asked.
The brothers exchanged a glance. “She is a pleasant enough sort. So is her father. The Sidneys know nothing of your history with her husband, Jane. I bid you to keep that in mind as you begin here.”
Her heart squeezed and she felt the old pain as if it were new. This was not a beginning. It was the same performance with a predictable cast of players. Only she had been changed by the years. “I have seen with my own eyes the sort of beauty the king chooses,” Jane said defensively. “You two are whistling in the wind with this,” she warned callously as they reached the queen’s apartments. It was a very different place from that over which Katherine of Aragon had presided. Jane saw that the first moment she stepped beneath the gilded arched doorway and into richly redecorated rooms dripping with gold cloth, heavy silver tassels, and large tapestries woven with seductive images. The one that first caught Jane’s eye depicted Bathsheba with King David. Above the fireplace hearth was Anne’s own emblem—a white falcon sitting atop a bare tree stump. In its claw were red and white roses. Jane knew that the tree stump was a symbol of domination over the king’s previous failure to sire a male heir. Clearly the emblem had been constructed well before her less-than-successful attempts to bear a son, Jane thought as they advanced. It was strange to be back. She had changed. Nothing else had.
George Boleyn, now Lord Rochford, clothed in a sweep of silver-studded velvet, met Jane and her brothers at the door to the queen’s privy chamber. His dark hair was more oiled than she remembered, and bore a streak of silver.
“Welcome back, Mistress Seymour,” he said with his customary note of arrogance. Jane had not known him well before, but even from a distance he had always frightened her. Along with their father, Thomas Boleyn, and Mary, they were a tightly knit family obsessed with having complete control over their standing. “Sir Francis has done commendably well for you with this placement, considering his own growing distance from the queen,” Boleyn coolly remarked.
“I am grateful to Her Majesty,” Jane said as softly and sweetly as she could manage as she curtsied.
“See that you remember that, and your place. Your brothers and your cousin may be pressing their way forward with our good king, but none of you has done so admirably with me, or with the queen.”
“So noted,” Edward interceded, sparing Jane a reply.
When she was at last shown into the queen’s privy chamber, Jane found Anne standing before a full-length mirror, half gone with a new pregnancy and looking like a garish bird in a shimmering gown of bright yellow silk with long, fur-lined bell sleeves. Her sister-in-law, Lady Rochford, was placing a gold-and-diamond-studded circlet on her head and arranging her long black hair beneath it. As Jane advanced, Anne looked her over, sniffed at her, then turned back to her own reflection without acknowledging her for several awkward minutes. Finally, without looking back, Anne coolly spoke.
“There is only one reason you are returned to court, despite what anyone may tell you, Mistress Seymour. My husband, the king, spoke up for you, obviously at Sir Francis Bryan’s prompting. Personally, I would not have someone about me who had once chosen allegiance to my rival, but His Majesty seems to have a short memory these days, and an even shorter fuse. I’ll not risk challenging him on something so trivial as attendants.”
Jane was surprised by her acid tone, but with the king’s record of amours, and her own inability to produce a male heir, it seemed likely that Anne was suspicious of everyone now.
It was at that moment that something very grand shifted inside of Jane.
The girl who had intentionally tripped her all those years ago in the presence of the French queen was vulnerable now. Her powerful hold over Jane was diminished, and she no longer had the upper hand. Jane had never forgotten that moment, like so many others in her life that had come to define her, even though the incident was long forgotten by Anne. Realizing that, she straightened her back and tipped up her chin. Anne did not even notice.
“It is an honor to be in Your Majesty’s service,” Jane finally said, feigning sincerity so well that she almost believed her own lie.
“I would work on your tone of voice, Mistress Seymour,” said George Boleyn. “My sister will not abide simpering.”
She curtsied deeply then so that neither would see the wild rebellion newly kindled in her eyes. She was here for only one reason: to help Thomas and Edward. Only family was worth suffering a jade like Anne. Yield not to every impulse, but consider things carefully and patiently in the light of God’s will. She believed entirely in the tenets of The Imitation of Christ, the book that had defined her girlhood.
That night, Jane stood on the fringes of the banquet hall for her first true state occasion. The evening was in honor of Anne de Montmorency, Admiral of France, and no expense had been spared. The ceiling beams had been freshly painted in bright colors, and the molding was painted a shimmering gold, which the light of the candles and lamps cast in a flattering glow. After her audience with the garishly dressed queen, Jane herself had gone to change into a new gown of stamped blue velvet with gold-embroidered sleeves, provided on her departure from Wolf Hall by her parents. It was a costly creation, intricately beaded, and she felt almost pretty in it as she watched the rest of the court make their showy entrances. There were neatly plumed caps and diamond-studded headdresses bobbing everywhere as the guests began to mingle and everyone waited for the entrance of the king and queen.
It was beyond Jane to be impressed by any of it. Queen Katherine’s funeral Mass had been said earlier that day. Frivolity like this seemed vulgar in light of that. But to Jane, nothing could be more vulgar than Anne Boleyn. Especially now, as she strode into the hall with her noticeable belly protruding to the peal of trumpets beside the king, who wore the same garish, bright yellow silk fabric as the queen. It was the color of treachery, Jane thought, as he nodded and smiled to the assembled masses as if neither he nor his wife had a care in the world.
Poor Queen Katherine. It is better that you are no longer of this world to witness any of this…
As they were shown to their tables by a large assemblage of liveried pages, Charles Brandon approached her. He, like the others, had aged in her absence from court. But by his steady gaze, she would know him anywhere, and she disliked him even more.
“If it isn’t the little mouse returned to our big, happy family,” he said pleasantly, taking up Jane’s hand after she had curtsied to him. He led her away from the queen’s other ladies and to a table quite close to the king.
The queen was already seated and speaking to the French ambassador, who was with the guest of honor. She could hear their rapid Gallic conversation even over the music and laughter.
“His Majesty is correct; you are quite a different creature, are you not? Grown into someone quite pleasing,” Brandon remarked flirtatiously.
“My thanks, Your Grace.” Jane nodded to him as he glanced at the sea of far more elegant and beautiful ladies.
“If I may say, Mistress Seymour, I found what you did regarding the queen—or, r
ather, the other queen—to have been quite noble. I was always fond of Katherine because she was dear to my departed wife,” Charles declared sadly, yet his voice lacked real sincerity as he continued to appraise the queen’s most attractive new ladies, Mary Scrope, Elizabeth Browne, and Nan Cobham.
Jane did not know, under the circumstances, whether to believe Brandon. Like so many others, he had publicly thrown his lot in with Anne Boleyn early on. Now that the tide was slowly turning again, it seemed an odd opportunity for revelation to the contrary.
“Your Grace’s words are high praise,” Jane skillfully replied with a ladylike smile.
“Who have we here?” the king asked with a wide and welcoming smile as he came upon them suddenly, looking like a stout, red-faced canary in his yellow finery amid the happy tune his musicians played from the gallery above.
They were both still like boys, she thought, grown men with their adolescent smiles and competitive nudges.
“Ah, but, Mistress Jane,” the king said affably. “How do you fare now that you have returned to our little court? It must be something of a change from the last time you were here.”
“I fare well indeed, sire, thank you,” she softly replied, lowering her eyes shyly. It felt like the polar opposite in tone of any response Anne Boleyn would have given, which brought her greater confidence.
At the precise moment that she looked up again, she saw him. Him.
Everything shifted as it always did, as it always would.
William, newly knighted, was standing with Master Cromwell and a pretty young woman in a pink dress. The new Lady Dormer. She knew it. Her heart seized at the sight of them together. Just seeing William touched her so deeply that she could not move, but now the emotions it brought were rejection and pain.
“The last time we saw each other, I was not at my best. Pray, tell me I appear a bit different on this occasion,” the king said, ignorant of her distraction. Jane’s gaze returned to the king’s garishly bright, yellow, jewel-studded costume.