by V L Perry
But when I went to his quarters that day, the page informed me that the astronomer had departed late yesterday evening, with no word as to his whereabouts. No, nor to his return, though he’d taken his smallest travelling trunk.
I pondered this as I retraced my way through the corridors of St. James’s. The Lady must not have known, or she would have given me notice not to report today. Maybe. Or perhaps she must keep the appearance of not knowing. No one could travel to or from court without the king’s permission. Was it the king’s business, or the queen’s? Both? Or neither?
I went as slowly as I could, for the atmosphere indoors was almost as oppressive as the weather outdoors. It was one of those late summer days that kept threatening to rain, though it never quite did. The talk that week was all politics – the king nominating Thomas Cranmer, the Lady’s chaplain, to be Archbishop of Canterbury. If for some reason the Pope approved this hare-brained scheme, then the king could bid Cranmer to declare the marriage to Katharine of Aragon invalid. But pet archbishops were known sometimes to turn and bite their masters, as Beckett had. Behind the Lady’s slender back, the court was taking bets on how much longer she’d be able to remain the king’s chaste mistress.
I happened to pass by the king’s chamber on my way back, and happened to find Tom Seymour with a group of lower courtiers; Lord Rochford and the others had gone off without him. We happened to fall into conversation, which continued as we walked and stopped only when we’d reached the tapestry-hung storage chamber off the gallery.
Jane had no reason to come there during her morning duties, so perhaps someone had said something. But they never missed me; more likely her own suspicions led her there. She came in with deliberately noisy footfalls, designed to give us warning.
Strange though it sounds, I have often wondered if there is a part of our minds that leads us to do things we know are not the wisest course. It is as if our worse natures wish to hasten the storm, and so head directly into it.
We could have stayed secreted, and she might not have found us. Instead I stood up as she came round the corner, and so did Tom. I felt him wipe his fingers on the back of my velvet skirt, which happened to be my favorite. Water would ruin it; I’d have to brush the stain out once it dried, without the others noticing.
Jane stood with her hands on her hips, for all the world like Mrs. Stonor when she caught us dallying before Mass. Her anger quivered in her nose and came spilling out in her voice. “Tom, shouldn’t you be elsewhere?”
“No need to scold, dearest sister,” he said. “All business is the king’s business, you know. I’m just on my way back.” And he kissed her hand and strode off without so much as a backwards glance.
We stood looking at each other for a moment. One eye glared at me; the other remained fixed on the woven scene of Susannah and the elders. “I didn’t think you were such a fool,” she said.
“I didn’t think you were such a spy,” I answered. “Not got enough embroidery today, but you must go about pursuing people like the bailiffs?”
“Think what would happen if it had been anyone else who discovered you,” she hissed, and for the first time it crossed my mind that Jane Seymour was not a woman to run afoul of.
“So a sister’s jealousy is worse than a lover’s, I see.”
“Can you see no one for what they are? I’ve tried to protect you, but there’s no point. Ask my brother how many women he’s holed up with in the last week. Ask that astronomer of yours what he left behind him in Vienna, walled up in a convent.”
And while I stood stunned, she turned and left.
All the rest of the day, and for many days after, we avoided each other. When we were scheduled for the same duties, we kept our eyes from meeting and made chatter with the others, or else were silent.
And to make matters worse, there was the wretched trip to France to be gotten through. We would all be thrown on top of each other even more than usual, unable to escape each other day or night. And put a diplomatic countenance over it all.
We set out for Dover on a chill October morning, and I could not help recalling the reverse journey I’d made along this road nearly one year ago. Things had been so different then; not exactly simpler, but at least my fears had had clear, sharp edges. It was much more work to be afraid when fear itself was as vague and blurred as the fog-blanketed shapes before and behind me.
Our party consisted of the king’s gentlemen and household, Fitzroy and his household, six hundred men-at-arms, and the maids of honor and great ladies. Tom rode up ahead with Sir John and Edward, and we did not have a chance to pass words.
People did not gather in the streets to watch our party ride out of the city. The plague still had not loosed its grip here, and large gatherings were forbidden. They either huddled in their houses under quarantine or crept fearfully to the butchers’ and woolners’ stalls and back. The bells of St. Sepulchre’s tolled mournfully as our procession clattered by.
Just outside Aldgate, we were greeted by a grim sight: a long ditch, hastily dug so that it was deep but not wide, filled with a tangle of arms and legs and staring eyes. A priest walked back and forth above its edge, swinging his censer. He looked up at us as we passed, and though he was young, his hair was grey and his eyes showed the strain of his work. Plague was worst on those left behind, for they must see their loved ones, their enemies, neighborhood faces familiar to them since childhood, all consigned together to the same rotting heap. And risk their own lives in doing so.
How far had the plague reached? Would it follow us all the way to the coast, touching every village along the way? Would my mother send servants to fetch things from the market and keep herself safe indoors? Or would she go out to minister to every dying woman and child?
I had not written to her since my arrival at court, and did not quite know why.
The Duke of Richmond coughed, and many of the company were holding perfumed kerchiefs and pomanders to their noses. I was near the end of the procession, and looked back to watch a small boy—no bigger than seven or eight--pulling another loaded dead-cart through the gate to the edge of the ditch. A grim omen for our journey, but we could not afford to stop, even briefly; it would take three days for such a large party to travel less than seventy miles to Dover, covering as much ground between daybreak and nightfall as the king could ride in a single morning. Even death could not stop the king’s mission, equal parts business and pleasure.
Our progress was further slowed as we stopped at each parish to distribute alms and clothing to the poor who huddled at the edges of the road. Some looked at us curiously, though a few spat. Their clawed hands snatched the shirts and smocks we had painstakingly sewn, without even the customary words of thanks and blessings. They would not revere them as they would garments made by Queen Katharine’s hands; they would use them instead to wipe their asses and clean their babies’ puke, all while cursing their benefactress as a whore and heretic.
I had seen poverty before, but never people with eyes this empty, bodies this wracked by disease and hunger and punishment. Their eyes were rheumy and yellow, even the children. Several bore brand-marks on their hands or foreheads, sure signs they’d been punished for begging before. One woman, a withered hunchback, held a baby at her breast. Country folk knew all kind of ways to gull the softhearted. I tried to tell myself that she’d borrowed the baby for greater sympathetic effect, that their filth and bruises would be washed off at the end of the day, while they counted their new coins. But at the sight of an old man with half an ear—the mark of a thief, the top freshly cut off and flies swarming over the bloodied tip—I turned away.
It was easier to understand how these people could believe the Last Judgment was upon them. Perhaps they even needed to believe it, their only comfort that their sufferings would not go on much longer.
We saw no further plague once away from the city, though, and that eased my fears about my own mother. I had little hope she would come out to see the king’s procession as it pa
ssed, for she could have no way of knowing for sure I was among them.
Each morning the mist burned away later and we could enjoy the beauty of the fields in harvest as we moved further south. The air became heavier, with a silvery coolness that salted the throat at each breath. This close to the sea it felt much more like winter than earlier autumn. The return journey, a month from now, would be miserable.
Just outside Canterbury on the third evening, there was a commotion up ahead. I pulled up my horse to avoid running into Mary Howard, who with the others had stopped ahead of me to see what went on.
We heard the king’s voice--“Leave her to speak”--and from a cluster of men-at-arms stepped a black-clad figure I had thought never to see again: Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent. We were close to her home village. And mine.
“I stand before Your Grace as Elijah stood before Ahab.” That same strange, thrilling voice, sweeping back to us on the wind. Her veil blew about behind her, giving her the look of a weird fairy.
I saw the Lady roll her eyes. Not Ahab again; the comparison was tired by now.
“God has mercy enough to warn you again: if Your Grace takes this woman into your bed to be your wife, then count not on the mercy of God’s love! Thus saith the Lord: your life shall be forfeit within a year, and your kingdom fall into dissolution, as did Israel under Jeroboam. I shall punish you for provoking his anger and leading England into sin.”
She turned, and for a moment seemed to look toward me: “And dogs will eat Jezebel in the town ditch of Jezreel.”
I sat frozen, even as the men-at-arms hustled her out of the road. Why should she look at me thus? No one else seemed to notice; Jane was biting her lip thoughtfully, while others tried to control their shifting horses. The Lady, smiling, rode over to say something to the king, who frowned and bent to speak to Cromwell. Apparently he was better at dealing with the Holy Maid of Kent in the comfort of his own palaces.
As they hauled her away, her voice rose to a shout: “I will convey my spirit across the water! I shall be there with you, every moment of your journey, and see all that you do! Think not that you be alone in naked bed together, for I shall see you, and so shall the eyes of God and Christendom! It is no true marriage contracted out of England, as long as Queen Katharine lives!”
“The woman’s mad.” Mary Howard’s words swept back to me, and I had to agree: her warning had been quite unnecessary, certainly not worth the interrogation she would get from Cromwell’s minions. The last person in the world who would want her marriage to take place on foreign soil was the Lady herself.
Our mistress seemed unfazed by the sudden reappearance of her most outspoken enemy. There was nothing supernatural about it, after all: clearly Elizabeth Barton had known where the king’s party was going and why, when they would pass through the place where she could deliver her prophecy to maximum effect. When we got back, no doubt Lady Exeter would answer for it.
The more I thought of it, the more sure I was that the Holy Maid had not looked at me but just behind me, at Mary Howard. And beside her was Richmond, who had pulled up close when the trouble started--to protect her? Or to exchange a signal?
In the meantime, nothing could ruin the Lady’s anticipation of the journey. She kept up extraordinary spirits all the next day to Dover, and aboard the Swallow, where her entire household—Jane included--spent the seven-hour journey across the Narrow Sea wallowing sickly below decks. Meg and I were the only two to stand up top with her, searching for the dark line that was the threshold of the Continent I’d hoped never to see again.
Calais—and France! She lit up as she spoke of it, all but quivered with joy at the thought of seeing Marguerite again. All that she planned to do as queen had been inspired by her service to the King of France’s sister: founding hospitals, reforming religious houses, patronizing universities and scholars, establishing protected circles where the New Learning could burn bright, safe from the cold conservatism gusting across England and Europe.
And to see Marguerite, to talk with her former mentor and receive her blessing on the eve of her own queenship, would be a triumph. It would show the world that she had the support of one of Europe’s mightiest powers, a woman ruler who everyone—even her enemies—admired and respected. She was already planning future invitations and visits where they would sit side by side as allied rulers to discuss the political climate of Rome, treaties and wars, alms distribution for the poor, legal and social reform.
But none of that happened.
The day after we landed, Marguerite sent curt word that she would be unable to receive her former protégée, at court or in private. She made the messenger repeat it three times, each time asking in a shriller tone whether Marguerite had said anything else. “No, madame,” the poor man replied each time, looking as though he’d rather be anywhere else on earth.
It was a blow that stunned us all. There would be no French court for us either, then. So much hoped for, so far traveled, for nothing.
The king could not stay behind with her, and so after much half-apologetic hemming and hawing, comforting words and gifts of jewels, he left her in Calais in our care.
She shut herself in her magnificent apartments at the Exchequer, with their green velvet hangings embroidered with Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and held communication with no one. I only ever saw Anne Boleyn weep but two times. That was one of them.
On a hard, bright January day, the king went to Greenwich to meet with delegates from Rome while the Lady stayed behind at Whitehall.
It seemed that the disastrous visit to France had driven a wedge between them; there had been sharp words, rising into anger, and they spent more time apart. Often she cried herself to sleep. Some thought it a ruse to placate the Pope, to assure him that he had nothing to fear from Cranmer’s application for Archbishop of Canterbury.
Privately I wasn’t so sure. Perhaps the king was finally tiring of her after all; there were two small lines carved on either side of her mouth, like streams that quickly carve deep furrows in sand. She was more and more moody these days, gloomy one hour and determinedly gay the next, and held card parties, music and poetry contests in her apartments even during the day. She had been ill several times during the twelve days of feasting, dancing and late nights, and still seemed pale and snappish.
Today she’d arranged a small archery match on the palace grounds, but did not participate herself. Some of us watched with her from the enclosed viewing tower, but even inside with heated bricks at her feet she was still cold.
She sent me back to her apartments for another fur. She could have sent a page, but I was eager for a few minutes away. Jane watched me go, though I did not gesture for her to slip away with me. Since the Calais trip we’d barely exchanged a dozen words.
The corridors were deserted as I made my way there, amusing myself by watching for my reflection in the eyes of the mounted deer and boar heads along the walls. I opened the door to her outer chamber and saw two figures sitting in the window alcove seat: one was Ann Gainsford, and the other could only be George Zouche.
They did not see me immediately. Her small hands rested in his, and he said something to her. She threw her head back and giggled. The midmorning light spilled across her face, and I thought suddenly: Why, she’s young. I wasn’t sure why she had always seemed much older to me; her firmness and sensibility probably added years, along with her pockmarks and plain dress. I had known George was her betrothed, though I had never connected that with passion or love--one seldom had anything to do with the other. But here, giggling with a man in a chamber corner, her merriment seemed to soften her pocks and sternness, and I saw for the first time how she might be a woman men would desire.
They saw me then, and she stood up an instant before he did. She made an attempt to put on her usual expression. “We had some private business to discuss,” she said, and he voice still tinkled. “We meant to join the company momentarily.”
The Lady was often strictest on those closest t
o her. The outer chamber hardly counted as a private hiding spot, though I could tell Mistress Gainsford was nervous about being discovered. Ever since the return from France, the Lady’s temper had been quicker than usual.
“If you wait until I go back and slip in behind me,” I said, “I’m sure no one will notice.”
And that is what we did. I took so much trouble to tuck the Lady’s robe about her that she upbraided me for my clumsiness, and for being so long bringing it besides. From her seat near the door Mistress Gainsford smiled at me, still radiant. I wished her joy; there seemed little enough of it about these days.
The next day they asked the Lady to petition the king for permission to marry. I wondered at her timing of it, since our mistress’s moods shifted drastically from hour to hour; the ladies of the privy chamber exchanged knowing looks. To my surprise, however, it seemed to be just the news she needed to cheer her.
“And high time, Ann Gainsford! Five years is a long time betrothed.” This summer would be six years since the king first opened his Great Matter. And only they two knew how many years it had gone on before that.
Perhaps this was why the Lady threw herself so completely into plans for this wedding, and insisted on paying for it all. Here at court there were ready supplies of flowers, music, rich food and fabric for dresses. And perhaps she needed a celebration to arrange, to take her mind off her own gloomy prospects.