by V L Perry
Since the Sorbonne had banned all teaching of the New Learning, Marguerite had turned her court into a center for intellectual exchange. She herself had written a devotional poem, The Mirror of the Sinful Soul, which the university had condemned and the clergy cried out against. The Lady herself had a manuscript of it, and kept it among her most treasured books.
It grew tiresome trying to listen while counting stitches in the weakening winter light, but at least it was better than hearing Scripture, for the Lady always broke off to ask us questions about what she’d just read. I had never heard Scripture read in a woman’s voice before; none of us had, and the effect was more unsettling than soul-strengthening.
Or she might read the king’s letters, the ones he’d written when he began courting her years ago. She kept them in a silver casket, and said they were more precious to her than any jewels, for they were written in his own hand. Some of the maids sighed at such expressions of passion—better than a romance—but for me it was worse than Scripture, all those mine own sweethearts and pretty dukkys and so on about eternal love and devotion. It is even more terrible to think of them now.
It did not matter. All she wanted was an audience. Our duty was to watch her, as if she were one of the animals in the Tower menagerie. And in those days, this was what made her happiest.
She was never alone. On the evenings the king was busy with affairs of state, she threw open her outer chamber to invite the king’s gentlemen, Norris and Carew and Bryan and her brother Lord Rochford, and their many friends, to dance and play cards. Their favorite pastime, though, was arguing into the ungodly hours: about Luther and the Pope, about this book or that, talking of Scripture until the room swam before me and I had to prop my neck discreetly with my hand.
It was on one of these nights that I first met Tom Seymour. “Met” mayhaps not be the word; I did not speak to him then. But I remembered his thick auburn hair, his ice-blue eyes, all the next afternoon as I was polishing the carved jewel-boxes with oil and myrrh. When I looked down at my hands, they did not seem part of me, they trembled so.
The king was there too on many of these nights, of course. I could never seem to take all of him in at once. Instead my impressions were a jumble of parts: an arm in a furred sleeve shaking the dice cup, ruby-buckled shoes, a feathered velvet cap shaking as his great laugh boomed out.
By the end of my first week at court, I was too exhausted to sleep. All day I’d felt dizzy and muffled, as if my head were wrapped in thick cotton. It hadn’t helped that the Lady had poured out wine freely to all that night. Usually we got beer and ale; wine was for banquets. But she’d won a bet with her cousin Wyatt, and insisted we all toast.
“It’s not poison,” she laughed at the face I made. “Drink it down!”
Now the wine sat sourly in my stomach, and my legs trembled ever so slightly as I tried to lie perfectly motionless, my heart beating as I were running. I’d have to be careful not to wake Eliza beside me. Mrs. Stonor slept in the next room, though she usually made rounds back and forth to check there was no whispering or bed-wandering, none of what she called “foul play” under the covers.
I bit my lip and stared up at the timbered ceiling. A crack wandered from one corner to the other, and I tried to look for a shape in its path. I felt myself drifting, taking shorter and quicker breaths.
And suddenly it happened: the world spun away, and the demon was on my chest, choking the breath from me. I couldn’t cry out, but my arms and legs thrashed so wildly that Eliza woke within a minute—a minute that seemed to last until dawn.
“Mrs. Stonor! Oh! Come quickly!”
Faces wavered around me in candlelight, their mouths open with fear and horror. Mary Howard thrust her candle at Madge and leant all her weight on my right arm, and after a moment Ann Saville did the same with my left. Another jammed something in my mouth; it tasted of leather and dust. I needed air, but could not force the words out to tell them. The room spun and faded, replaced by black bursts on a black field.
As quickly as it had come, the cold weight of the demon’s knees digging into my breastbone was gone. I tried to sit up, panting, but fell back weakly. Mary and Ann still held me fast. Strings of spittle hung from my mouth, pooling on the linen mattress covering.
Mistress Gainsford brought a cloth and a cup, removed the soft thing from my mouth—a glove. She wiped my mouth and forehead, and held the cup to my lips.
“That had better be water,” Mary said. “For God’s sake, don’t give her any wine!”
I craved air, hungered and thirsted for it, gulping like a glutton. “I’m all right,” I tried to say, but no words came out. Most of the others stared at me with huge eyes, as if waiting to see whether I would prophesy or burst into flames or simply weep. Had I messed the bed as well? Shame flooded me.
“Was it a fit?” Madge asked.
I nodded. “It happens but rarely,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
It had happened ever since I was a little girl, but had grown worse since the nightmare of Vienna. I’d tried thyme and peony roots, been bled, avoided wine much of the time, prayed and made offerings at the shrine of St. Christopher. Christ had cast out the “mute spirit” from the suffering young man, but had never seen fit to do the same for me, despite my mother’s pleas.
Madge still stared at me, tilting the candle so that wax threatened to spill onto the lace cuffs of her bedgown. I had not thought she’d be so concerned for me, until she said, “Aren’t you going to tell us anything?”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Madge!” Ann Saville hushed her. “Sometimes you really sound like
a pagan. Leave her alone, and all of us get back to bed.”
But of course I knew what she’d meant; Maria had said something similar once, afterward: You could at least give people a prophesy or two; make it worthwhile for yourself, earn a few coins. But I had never seen visions, nor heard any sound but my own feeble choking and the blood pounding in my head. Some called it a sign of witchcraft, demon-possession; others said it was a mark of God’s favor, a gift bestowed only on a precious few. But I had seen beggars roll and foam in the streets, knew the disease struck indiscriminately among the poor and the nobility—even, so it was whispered, the Emperor himself. None of them seemed able to foresee their own futures. If this was how he showed His favor, I wanted none of it.
There would be no calling any of the doctors, or even (after some low, furious argument between Mary and Mrs. Stonor) telling the Lady. I knew how it would be from now on: everything would go on much as before, though there would be whispers and looks, some pitying and some fearful. It always happened that way.
There was one other change: Eliza crowded into bed with Nan Cobham and Mary Howard, making a tight squash that caused some grumbling. Mrs. Stonor arranged for an extra mattress for our sleeping chamber, saying only that more space was needed.
And after that, I slept alone. Until Jane arrived.
One morning, when Eliza Browne fainted at Mass, I knew things were about to change.
In the brittle sunlight streaming through the leaded casement, our breath rose in small clouds of steam. The ancient words and postures were soothing, the room and its furnishings had become familiar, and I could let my mind relax and wander. The sweet smell of incense, the candles on the altar, the tinkling of the bells and the murmured responses seemed to come from far away.
It was always a peaceful hour in our busy days, except for the morning Eliza collapsed, her satin skirt puffing gently out as she sank to her knees and fell over. Two ladies carried her to the inner chamber. But when she also lost the Eucharist she’d taken, spewing it helplessly through her fingers, there was no grace and no absolution.
For days she remained confined to the rear chamber of the dormitory with no food and little water, with Mrs. Stonor and Lady Rochford rotating watch over her, until she broke down and named Henry Somerset, the Earl of Worcester, as the father of her child. The Lady’s anger was swift and terrible; she ordered El
iza to leave within the hour, and sent word to the king of Somerset’s behavior.
The scene was awful: Eliza weeping, Meg and Grace packing her gowns and linens into her trunk in swift silence. None of us dared to murmur a word to her. Her father Sir Anthony Browne was said to have a temper; Mary Boleyn said that he’d once struck a fellow ambassador while on one of her father’s diplomatic missions. We trembled to think what we would do when he returned from France.
Yet more shameful to me was for the thought that rose to my mind like a dead fish on the river: now they would have something else to talk about.
“She’s really a kind mistress,” Mistress Gainsford said while the Lady visited with Lord Rochford in the privy chamber. Our mistress had relented enough to allow us to present Eliza with a wedding gift, and we sat sewing a set of bed hangings. There was to be a quick, quiet ceremony in Somerset’s rooms at court, though there would be no time to post the banns before Advent. Eliza would have to wait until after Epiphany to become an honest wife.
None of them talked directly to me, nor expected me to answer. Since the night of my fit I had become a sort of living ghost, going about my daily tasks without anyone meeting my eyes. I’d seen Grace Parker cross herself when I passed, and Nan of course made sure that even those who hadn’t witnessed the scene heard about it.
In a way it was oddly freeing: at times they almost forgot I was among them, and spoke without regard for what I might hear or repeat.
“Mistress Browne has only gotten what she deserved,” said Lady Exeter. She had the look of a once-thin woman who was beginning to spread. “As long as you obey her rules, you’ll have nothing to fear.”
As Head of the Privy Chamber, Lady Exeter was one of the old dragons who laid out the strict rules of conduct for the maids of honor: she had a sharp eye for licentiousness and graft. Anyone caught selling any of the candles, wood or leftover portions of our food and ale rations was fined, and rewards were paid to those who reported excesses and abuses. (Though it could still be done; you just had to know how. Anyway, what else would I do with a gallon of ale a day?)
The one unaffordable luxury at court was secrecy; the most surprising thing was that Eliza had managed to keep from discovery for as long as she did. Mary Howard said she’d been trying to starve it out.
“Then she’s a fool,” Ann Saville said shortly.
To my surprise it was Bess Holland who spoke aloud what I had been thinking:
“A fool indeed, for trusting a man’s honor. Why must she suffer while the worst her husband receives are sniggers and slaps on the back? He’s even been given more land to supplement the income from his first wife’s dowry. Is it Christian to treat either of them so?” You wouldn’t expect such moralizing from Bess, who was mistress to the Duke of Norfolk, Mary Howard’s father. From the way Bess and Mary sat placidly side by side, I’d assumed they got on well together. Perhaps there was more there than met the eye; certainly Mary looked as though she’d like to drive her needle into Bess’s plump hand.
“If you think I called her so for getting with child, then you’re a greater fool than she,” Ann retorted. “No woman need bear a child she does not want; even a stupid country girl knows better.”
“What you speak of is a grievous sin, Mistress Saville,” Mary Howard admonished her.
Meg pounced, as if she’d been waiting: “Better than leaving the brat at the door of a monastery, to grow up decadent and wicked.”
“Fie, Meg, how can you say monks are wicked?” Madge looked shocked.
“I said nothing of the sort. If one is called to the religious life, he honors his vows and dedicates himself to serving God faithfully. But if he is dumped there like refuse, with no desire and no calling, can we be surprised when he fails to conduct himself as a man of God should?”
“Keep your voice down,” Grace hissed, “or you’ll have Her Ladyship in here quick, and Lord Rochford too.”
To hear them talk of her, which they did whenever she was not in the room, you would not have known they all spoke of the same woman. It seemed she was both a Lutheran Reformer and a devout patroness of the Church, had arranged Cardinal Wolsey’s downfall in revenge for past slights, and celebrated his death with a masque, yet also wept for him and taken his nephew as her ward. She was haughty and proud, but also sweetly kind, especially to those she didn’t need to be. In addition to our regular wages, she was generous with coins, ribbons, pins, even jewels as tips for services that fell to us whenever the pages weren’t available to do them—walking the lapdogs, bringing and sending messages. She spent many hours each week praying, reading Scripture, and doing works for the poor. Yet she was vainglorious, loved spending from the privy purse on gowns and entertainments. Next week there was to be a banquet at Ely Place in Holborn, to mark the beginning of Advent and its four weeks of fasting.
The king would preside over the festivities in one wing of the bishop’s palace, and the queen in another. The Lord Mayor and city aldermen were forced to make a difficult choice, for they could not attend both. The Lady, of course, would attend neither; instead she would host a fête afterwards in her apartments. It would far outshine Queen Katharine’s, whose tastes ran more to the nunnery than the banquet hall.
“Sir Henry Guildford said it showed the Queen’s true royalty,” said Lady Exeter, “and Mistress Anne threatened to strip him of his office once she was queen. Sir Henry instead took off his comptroller’s chain and told her she need not wait so long, and stormed off to the king before she could tattle. His Majesty had much to do to persuade him to forget her foolishness.”
“She plays the great lady when all goes her way and she thinks to be queen before the next harvest,” put in Lady Exeter, “but when the hearing in Rome this month was postponed yet again, she flew into such a rage as her uncle Norfolk had to bear the brunt of.”
Mistress Gainsford tried to steer the conversation back to less troubled waters: the entertainments at the Lady’s banquets were even better than the exquisite French and Burgundian dishes. The privy kitchens belowstairs kept the fires going all night long, so that we would want for nothing. Still, she sighed, it would be lovely to be able to go to Ely; there would be musicians and poets, and jugglers, and trained dogs and bears, jesters and acrobats.
“And an Indian chief!” Madge exclaimed. “A real savage from the New World.” Will Hawkyns had sent the Indian as a gift to the king—leaving one of his own men among the savages as surety. Though she had never seen it, she described the bones set into its nose (“the highest mark of bravery,” Hawkyns said) and the jewel as big as a pea in its nether lip, and the most fearsome painted designs upon its naked body, all in so much that detail I felt no need to see it. Bess said it was not the sort of thing one wanted to see while eating, anyway.
Eliza’s place must be filled before then. Which peer’s daughter or young wife would it be? Lord Lisle had been trying for years to get a place for one of his wife’s daughters, though the Lady insisted they were too young; thirteen was the youngest age for service.
“It’ll be that little Parr chit, Maud’s daughter,” said Ann Saville. “Anyone can see that old Lord Borough’s not long for this world, and her not even twenty. On her last visit, she was casting about at every man in the court while her husband had to watch. At Eastertime, no less!”
“No,” said Mary Boleyn spoke up suddenly. “Not anyone who might be a threat. Whoever she chooses, it’ll be someone she’s sure is safe.”
She even managed to say it without bitterness. What had the Lady to fear from her now, or from any of us, when she had the king’s love even above his own wife?
Afterwards, whenever I remembered that chilly grey afternoon, Mary’s words pressed like a cold finger on my heart.
It was on the afternoon of the Advent banquet that a new maid of honor joined us at dinner in the Great Hall.
One of the hardest things about being new at court was the way everyone treated you as though you were a bumpkin who had never been
indoors before. Add to that the suspicious looks I still got whenever I made a sudden movement, and you may understand how glad I was glad of the chance to make a new acquaintance.
I tried not to judge her immediately by the prim and fussy set of her mouth; the poking and prodding endured by all newcomers was enough to upset anyone, as were the strains of the first few days at court. And every day.
The king and his Lady were both gone hunting, for the king delighted in providing meat for his banquets. Only half a dozen servers passed trays of boiled meat and barley loaves, since most of the kitchen staff had removed to Ely Place to prepare for the evening. The place was less than half full, which made it possible to talk normally.
She sat alone. I moved beside her, and asked how she found court life.
She shrugged. “Well enough, what I’ve seen of it.” She had a flutelike voice that seemed to come down her long nose.
“You are to join our household, then?”
Most people’s looks are improved when they smile. Hers were not. “Yes, I follow where I am commanded to go. As do you, I’m sure.”
What kind of answer was that? No one else was making any effort to be welcoming; Madge and the others were clustered at the end of the table. Had they already poisoned her against me?
She seemed to note my confusion. “Pray pardon me, for I did not mean to be rude. I only meant that my father has high ambitions for our family, and makes decisions that are best for all of us. Your uncle must want the same for you as well. And so here we are.” She knew who I was, then; she must have talked to others already.
“My father is the Earl of Wiltshire, and those there with him are my brothers.” She nodded toward the table where Sir John Seymour sat tearing bread and talking earnestly to his sons. Tom seemed more interested in his beer, though Edward was listening and nodding. He kept clean-shaven, against fashion; a beard would suit him better, hide his weak chin