by V L Perry
It is the queen herself who bears the ancient privilege of officially announcing the birth, and she loses no time, sitting up long enough to scratch out a missive on the new inlaid lap-desk carved with her badge and the king’s arms. We be delivered and brought in childbed of a prince, conceived in most lawful matrimony between my lord the king's majesty and us. Her strokes are labored, even after all this time; she has been out of practice. Yet she signs it with a flourish, as I know she has practiced: Jane the Quene.
The christening lasts forever.
Only once before in this reign has there been a prince christened. That was with the Spanish Queen; little Prince Henry lived only a few months. The party assembled here today is quite different than it would’ve been twenty-seven years ago. But then, so is England. Useless to pray for the infant Prince Edward’s life, I remind myself, for God does not listen. Not even here in the magnificent high chapel at Hampton, where the maids of honor had once prayed on St. Agnes’s Eve to make good marriages. Silly girls with foolish superstitions. Queen Jane does not allow it now.
It is Lady Exeter who carries the prince to his silver font. It must feel more like a funeral to her: the burial of all her hopes for her own son’s succession. She does not bend her head to attend to the babe, but stares ahead. Looking at her holding the green-and-silver bundle, I feel a murderous prayer rise in me: Listen, You, if aught comes to harm him, I will destroy you myself.
Russell, Carew, Browne and one-eyed Bryan guard the font, as loyal a Seymour faction as you could wish. And who’s this standing among their ranks, a towel round his neck like the rest of them? Why none other than Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire, and orphan-father to two murdered children. Is it pride and thanksgiving at England’s secure future that glitters in his eyes, or is it merely the light from the wax taper he holds?
The king’s daughter Mary is godmother, another instance of Queen Jane’s kindness; a gesture which costs her nothing, now. Even Mary cannot object to little Edward’s place as rightful heir. How differently both her life and mine have gone from what was once planned for us. Seventeen years since I glimpsed her from afar that day; was this pinch-faced and awkward creature once the tiny, laughing girl playing by her mother’s side? She looks at everything with squinting, suspicious eyes, softening only when she lays her hand upon the prince’s little head. Her movements in her stiff new purple gown are those of an old woman. But she is only twenty-one years old!
Little Elizabeth bears the chrysom, herself borne by Edward Seymour, for at four she cannot carry the heavy robe the length of the chapel by herself. This is not the coveted robe that the king’s second queen once sought to wrest from Katharine of Aragon, mind you: the new prince who will usher in a new era must have his own new-made. It took us weeks. Her fluff of red hair rests tiredly on her step-uncle’s shoulder, her hawk-black eyes closed in sleep. Strange child, witch-child, if the whispers are to be believed: she has never once cried for her mother.
This is not mere ceremony for her: she is being shown the future. All ambitions dashed at four years old. She’ll be lucky to end up married to some minor nobleman and spend the rest of her days on a manor in Cornwall, or some such remote place.
Edward Seymour’s wife is also here, having dragged herself pale and no doubt still bleeding from childbed, leaving her own little newborn Edward behind in the care of his nurses. Ambition must needs take precedence over care.
It goes on and on. Uncover the basins, cover them again. The elaborate ceremony of handing the towels, lighting the candles, singing the Te Deum. Elizabeth Seymour to my right, Anne Basset to my left, all of us squeezing each other’s hands at the moment Cranmer pours out water from the golden ampulla onto the baby’s soft head.
"God, in his Almighty and infinite grace, grant good life and long to the right high, right excellent, and noble prince Edward, Duke of Cornwall and Earl of Chester, most dear and entirely-beloved son of our most dread and gracious lord Henry VII."
Queen Jane reclines in her damask-draped litter, her cheeks more flushed than I’ve ever seen them, her eyes glittering in the torchlight. Her honey-colored hair flows loose over a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, every inch a queen at last. How much she has risked to be here tonight, what dangers she has navigated, what sins she carries on her conscience, she alone knows. Though I have some idea. A fortunate accident of her womb, a miracle ordained by God, what difference? This her moment of triumph.
But it does not last long.
When Queen Jane’s fever sets in, we change her bedding and bed hangings to red, put red curtains at the windows. It’s a good color for fever, confuses it, fights it off. She lies surrounded by red, like a child in a womb.
I look for the laughing girl I once saw dancing with Will Dormer, and cannot find her in the woman on the bed. Her hair, her one glory, is soaked to her head with sweat. The weak moans she cannot help, smaller even than the feeble mewlings of her babe. I sponge her face and change her linens, but do not touch her skin.
Toward the evening of the third day, she opens her eyes. One of them sees me. “You think this is my punishment,” she murmurs.
“No, Madam.”
“You blame me.”
“I am not your confessor, Madam, nor in any position to pass judgment.”
“That’s right,” she says. “You’re not.”
A thin string of saliva runs from her mouth to her pillow. I wipe it away with my cuff.
She tries to speak, swallows, tries again. “My brother,” she manages to say. “My brother….”
After all this time, is she going to berate me about Tom again? “It was long ago, Your Grace. And you were right; it need not matter now.”
“Not Tom,” she hisses slowly. “Edward.”
Edward? All these years I have hardly thought of him; he keeps to the background, the sort of man who draws no more attention to himself than the furniture. The very opposite of his brother. As his sister had once been.
She is still struggling to form words. “I can keep him in check, but if I am…gone, I fear for my son. I would not have him grow up a heretic. The king…” she drops her voice, and I can see that at least some of her delirium is feigned, she can claim to have been out of her head, remember nothing. “The king does not see. He lets some too near him, is blind to their true nature. Someone must protect my son, and England.”
“Why tell me this?” What power can a maid of honor, a cast-off royal mistress at that, have over England’s fate? These days my responsibilities go as far as arranging the royal combs and napkins. What am I supposed to do?
“You know the king,” she says simply. “He will look for another pretty wife. If he does….”
Her words trail off as a cold shudder of horror clenches my vitals. The sight before my eyes is one that would turn the strongest of stomachs away from ambition. Queen of England is not a role one that anyone will be eager to pursue again.
All this effort has cost her. She sinks back into refuge from the pain. I could wish for her sake she would stay there. What sort of dreams is she having?
She will live. We both know that, of the two of us, she is the stronger.
Stubborn as ever, Queen Jane rallies. Her sister-in-law congratulates her on making such good recovery.
“Yes,” the queen replies. “I am sure you are relieved, Lady Beauchamp, that the task of raising England’s heir does not fall to you and your husband. What a terrible thing that would be for you.”
I have never before seen Anne Stanhope, Viscountess Beauchamp and Countess of Hertford, speechless. It’s almost worth it.
The king is old. The queen is young. With a healthy boy in her arms, she could rule as Dowager Queen after his death. Another she-wolf on the throne, like Isabella of France, only this time a home-grown English one.
Yet a newborn babe’s life is fragile as sugarplate, as easily broken and gobbled up. No matter how clean his surroundings, how wholesome his wet nurse’s milk, nothing will guarantee li
ttle Prince Edward’s survival. A dead prince will not count to her credit. She must begin again as soon as she can.
Her appetites are sharpened now, her hunger insatiable. We bring her fritters in almond cream, and thickened meat soups, fried goose liver, veal, partridge, jellied eels, whatever she asks for. These are not just the whims of a sick woman; she’s feeling her power at last, coming into it after finally proving her worth.
The doctors have warned us not to give into her fancies, but doctors are fools. What harm can there be in bringing her this little dish of pears in wine?
SEPTEMBER 1533
Many said later that was the beginning of her downfall, that the queen never had a restful moment after the birth of her unwelcome girl, that for the next three years she remained only one bare leap ahead of the hounds at court that ultimately brought her down. They said that her spell over the king was broken at last, that she had shown herself to be not the fey enchantress after all, but weak and fallible. They said she was done for. They placed bets. They were a pack of fools.
For the king came more often to her chambers than ever before, and seemed determined to make up for the time lost. She welcomed him each time, sending us away while she remained closeted with him for an hour. The midwives advised against it, but she paid them no mind.
She did not love him. There may have been a time once when she did, but it was over now. The thought snapped through me one day when the king was announced, and I saw her face in the instant before she could compose it into that smooth mask. It was as if I had witnesses her giving birth, or using the privy; I looked away, flushed with guilt.
She was ill for many weeks after the birth, though she sat up in bed and smiled and chattered as brightly as a girl. Nan and Lady Exeter were sure it was a show; somehow, word got round the court of her swollen legs. We were the only ones—besides the king and Dr. Linacre, the king’s own physician—who knew of the monstrous, sickly white legs beneath her richly jeweled gowns. She could sit beside the king at small suppers in her privy chamber, as before, but she could not fit her small slippers over her feet, as big as if she had gout. Dr. Linacre bled her to release the bad humors, assured her it would go away in time, provided she rested as much as possible. So the king led Madge and Mary Howard and in pavans and galliards around the dance floor, purely out of gallantry, and the rumors flew.
More disturbing were her changes in humor. She lay staring at the gilded ceiling, or out at Greenwich Park, alternating long silences with manic fits of talking that lasted for hours. She talked to Meg of their early girlhood at Hever and Allington, and of queens who ruled alone without a king over them or beside them: the legendary queens of the ancient tribes of England, who ruled in their own right and chose their male consorts. Queen Guinevere must have been one, for was she not Queen of the Summer Country? Of course most women were weak, frail creatures, but a strong woman—one born of a royal line--could overcome the weakness of her sex by her princely blood.
Had not Katharine of Aragon’s own mother Isabella had led her troops on horseback into battle while pregnant? (There were many glances exchanged at that.) There was Eleanor of Aquitaine, who controlled the reigns of not one but two of her sons. In her own native Norfolk there were still tales of the Icenians who lived there long ago, a fierce tribe whose fierce queen had led her troops against the Romans and burned London itself to avenge the plunder of her village, the rape of her daughters, her own lashing at the hands of the soldiers. We listened, spellbound; as far as we’d known, there were no legends about women who avenged women.
“That was when it meant something, to be a queen,” she murmured once, more to the glazed window than to Mary Howard, who told us later.
Of course she talked too of her girlhood in France serving Marguerite, always a favorite subject. But now her stories took on a melancholy cast, remembering Marguerite’s rejection on the visit to Calais last year. When she spoke of the intellectual circles among the women at the French court, it was as if we stood accused, or were being measured in some way and found lacking. She looked at us almost sadly, as if it was nothing we could help. Like being born with a clubfoot, or a drooping eye. That was how she looked at us now.
One thing only did she love, and that was little Elizabeth.
For all they had expected her to collapse or rage at being denied her prince, her love for her daughter was real. Only in the brief half-hours when she held the babe in her own arms did the dark humors leave her, and she’d have nursed her like a country woman if the king had not forbidden it.
Elizabeth changed the queen forever; in some ways she brought out a new tenderness, but that tenderness was directed only toward the child herself. Surrounded by jackals that threatened her daughter’s position, she had no choice but to become a lioness.
Gone was her wistful regret at the treatment of Queen Katharine and Princess Mary; now she urged the king to put a bill to Parliament stripping them of their titles. And when she heard that Elizabeth Barton had publicly proclaimed the newborn princess a bastard, proof of God’s judgment against the false marriage, she all but shrieked for Cromwell to arrest her.
Elizabeth Barton was taken to Lambeth and examined by a panel of three Privy Councilors: Archbishop Cranmer, Cromwell, and Hugh Latimer. Again and again they waked her in the middle of the night, kept her standing throughout the day, hoping to break her. She led them a merry chase, first recanting her visions, then claiming an angel in another vision had told her to recant. A letter she claimed to have received from Mary Magdalene in heaven was found to have been written at St. Augustine’s abbey in Kent. A priest called Edward Thwaites had written a collection of her prophecies and oracles, A Marvelous Work of Late Done at Court-of-Street. These were collected and burned in heaps, Cromwell’s agents scouring the countryside to find them hidden in saddlebags and under paving-stones. She was found to have been corresponding with Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher, among others. The shadow of treason now lengthened over all of them.
By November she and her priests were sentenced to do public penance at Paul’s Cross, renouncing her previous oracles. She was then confined to the Tower under Cromwell’s direct authority, and there she had no more visions.
Christmas that year was merry, the last such we were to have. Jane spent much of her time with Will Dormer, though on Twelfth Night I found a package wrapped up on my side of the bed. Inside the length of velvet was the grey goose quill from London Bridge, long and perfect, and sharp. I held it in my hand, and seemed to feel it quiver. It had much to say; I could feel it.
Try as I might, I could not understand Jane, then or ever. She was a strange, superstitious creature, afraid of all the wrong things and not afraid enough of the real dangers. But the pen in my hand was proof of her faith, even then, that the future would come after all.
In January, shortly after Epiphany, there appeared in the queen’s privy chamber a carved wooded stand hung with rich cloth, and on it a green leather box. But as I examined closer it I saw it was a book, a thick volume as heavy as a silver candlestick, beautifully bound and edged in gilt, stamped with the queen’s name and personal badge.
Meg saw my reluctance to handle it. “It’s a New Year’s Gift,” she explained. “Cromwell gave it to Her Grace. But she keeps it out, for all of us.”
Tyndale’s Bible, it must be. In any other place but this room, the very presence of this book would be high treason. There was a standing order for Tyndale’s arrest, and he was rumored to be hiding somewhere in Antwerp. Both Cromwell and the queen constantly encouraged the king to allow smuggled copies of Tyndale’s works to circulate in England—in spite of the fact that his Practice of Prelates made it clear that the king’s marriage to the queen was an abomination. She’d had us read bits of out aloud, to discuss and refute.
This great brick of a book must have cost Cromwell a quarter’s salary; perhaps it was meant to represent his faith in her. Or perhaps he’d confiscated it from elsewhere.
“What are
we to do with it?” I thought perhaps it might be kept for oaths. There had been a different one used when we swore to faithfully serve her and obey her lawful commands as queen, and she in turn swore fealty and courtesy to us. I have reflected many times since on how different the world would be if everyone heeded the taking of an oath.
“Why, read it, of course.” Meg frowned at my stupidity.
My hands shook ever so slightly as they touched the pebbled green cover, opened the smooth vellum pages (with their faint, delightful whiff of beef) to a beautiful illumination of blue and crimson and gold:
The hill of Sion is a fair place, and the joy of the whole earth upon the north side lieth the city of the great king, god is well known in her palaces, as a sure refuge.
Sion. The royal residence where the Princess Elizabeth had been packed off, with Blanche Parry in attendance. Where the Lady Mary, formerly a princess, now a bastard, was forced to wait upon the infant.
I learned a great deal from that Bible. One of the first passages I looked up—many did--was the one in Leviticus prohibiting marriage between a man and his brother’s wife. It was the king’s whole basis for annulling his marriage to Queen Katharine. Then I looked at Deuteronomy, which urged a man to marry his brother’s widow. This was what came of studying Scripture: endless confusion, debates, quarrels, sometimes ending in clash of arms.
In all the time the great Bible remained in the queen’s chambers, I never saw Jane look in it once.
There were more changes with Elizabeth’s birth:
A bill was in Parliament to settle the succession on the infant princess, cutting Mary out of line forever. More than this, it stated that the king was now Supreme Head of the Church in England, that his marriage to Katharine of Aragon had never been valid, and that his children by his new queen would be his only legitimate heirs: Ye shall swear to bear faith, truth, and obedience alonely to the king's majesty, and to his heirs of his body of his most dear and entirely beloved lawful wife Queen Anne, begotten and to be begotten…