To Obey and Serve

by V L Perry

  “Which,” she said, “I shall celebrate with joy.”

  We all had tissue and feathers to cover our faces. I’d hoped to be able to get away on my own in the crush of the banquet hall, but the Queen wanted me to serve her at table. Perhaps she did not notice that standing was difficult for me; none of the others had. But I knew she missed nothing.

  So I stood behind her chair, and held her napkin, while all around swirled gaiety and disguise. There were courtiers dressed as shepherds and great Romans, and sluts dressed as pagan goddesses and virtuous Biblical heroines. There were pasties made in the shape of castles, and eggs cooked to look like fowl, and fowl poached to resemble fish. The smell of food made my stomach want to escape. At least my mask partially blocked the aroma, though it was like trying to breathe through a winding-sheet.

  It went on for hours, the queen rejecting from the high table dishes she knew I preferred and selecting instead ones that turned my stomach; if you’d seen how cheerfully she offered me a prawn, you might have thought me her most beloved servant, and she the kindest of mistresses. She kept up a lively stream of chatter to the Admiral, who looked as if he’d rather be anywhere else.

  The king did not look at her, or at me, or at anyone on our side of the table. Instead he kept up a lively, laughing exchange with the ambassador. From his countenance alone you might never guess the substance of his words, unless you happened to be within earshot:

  “We do not seek to win the Pope, sir,” he declared, reaching for a slice of roast stag. “We will not, in consequence, be less Christian, but more so. For in everything and in every place we desire Jesus Christ to be recognized as the sole patron of Christians, and we will cause the Word to be preached, and not the canons and decrees of the Pope.” He licked his fingers and winked across the table at Eliza, who ducked her head and blushed. She sat sharing a cup with her brother, dressed in matching blue and silver, with her kirtle and his doublet trimmed in fox fur. I had never before noticed how alike they looked.

  It had been Eliza who first asked me, several weeks back, as we found ourselves alone one morning in the inner chamber:

  “Is it true you go to His Majesty’s chambers at night?”

  “Best keep your eyes on your own needle, Lady Worcester,” I answered.

  Of course she took it as an affirmation, and by midday the news had spread. Perhaps she’d had an inkling of her own, or perhaps Lady Exeter had told her, for she had seen me once slipping along the corridor to the secret passage. None of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber or Privy Chamber ever saw me in the full light, for the king took remarkable care to have me hang back until he was finally alone, the smoking Italian lamp providing our only illumination. Norris alone knew for certain, since it was he who had the last task of rolling back and forth across the royal mattress to check for hidden knives or poison, and looking to see all was clear under the bed.

  Norris would not have told her, or likely anyone. The king’s men were remarkable for their discretion. Usually. But the queen’s ladies were another matter.

  Eliza pressed on, her eyes wide: “For if it is so, then perhaps you can speak to His Grace…Somerset has been nominated for the Order of the Garter….” She had neither grace nor guile, and was a stranger to shame. Perhaps her earlier ordeal had purged her of it.

  The requests were what had surprised me the most. At the Austrian court people had been content to let the traffic come and go from the Archduke’s chambers without too much notice, but apparently the king of England was different.

  Ann Saville had tried to press a folded paper into my hand as I walked in the garden, whispering that the king must read it. Even Holbein spoke to me more cheerily than he ever had, reminding me that any commission from the king would take precedence over all his other work. Apparently he still hoped to advance to King’s Painter. A little ways off Kratzer sat quaffing his wine, not noticing me. Whenever I saw him these days, always from a distance, I had a sharp sense that I’d disappointed him. But I was not one of More’s brilliant scholar-daughters; I was simply who I was, and doing my best.

  Even Tom Seymour found a way to sit across from me over roast boar and baked apples in the great hall, and while my heart leaped in my body, happened to mention that his father’s petition about enclosing the ancestral lands in Wiltshire had still gotten no reply; would I be able to drop a hint in His Majesty’s ear?

  Worst of all was Chapuys. While most of the other ambassadors occupied themselves with reporting affairs of state, the Spaniard took an unholy interest in every detail of the king’s person, especially as he could use it against the queen. More important even than Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher being interrogated in the Tower, more vital than the Oath of Succession now being administered to every member of Katharine of Aragon’s household, was the color of the gown I chose or how late the light had burned in the king’s window the night before. I never spoke to him, but he was always there, skulking around the Great Watching Chamber or dogging behind the king in the corridors, his Spanish trousers ridiculously puffed and slashed until there seemed hardly any fabric to them. And he always smiled when he saw me, not a friendly or even courtly smile, but a soft, nasty one, where you could almost smell the garlic coming off him even across the room.

  The life of a royal mistress is the stuff of many people’s fantasies. They think only of the carnal act itself, or of the rewards of the job: jewels, titles, and so forth. The chance for contact with any part of the royal person was a highly competed-for prize, and for awhile at least, I had all of it.

  They little imagine what it was really like. I tell myself that time has jumbled those weeks into a patchwork for me, so that those weeks I shared the king’s bed are little more than a blur. But that is not true. I simply don’t like to remember it.

  Each time seemed to start so fast, and finish so soon. I told you before that I seldom looked directly at him, but took him in part by part. It was the same now, by the light of a single rush, or in warm darkness. Only now there were other parts as well. Other sounds, other smells:

  I remember the bronze lamp in the shape of a crouching lion beside the bed. I remember broad bare shoulders, the sounds he made as he approached the end, the musk-scent between his thighs. I remember the feel and smell of the bandage round the king’s left leg, concealing a secret known only to the royal doctors and, presumably, the queen: a red pus-filled ring, sometimes scabbed over and sometimes oozing, that troubled him so much that he must stay reclining some days and give out that he was fasting or in private meetings with Cromwell. Certainly Norris knew too, for he knew all secrets; did Mary Boleyn? No wonder he took so few mistresses. For a king, weakness was a far greater exposure than nakedness.

  When the ring was dry and healing, he took me as a man usually does a woman (except the French, whose tastes are odd in all things). When the red ring flared up, I had to kneel astride him as if riding a horse, and bring him to his pleasure that way. He preferred it not only because it took the pressure off his leg, but because it lessened the chances of conceiving. It was more dangerous, in a way, for any child begotten in such a way would be a monster, but there are different levels of risk.

  I remember that it was not at all unpleasant, and that I had the curious sensation of watching myself as if from somewhere outside every time. Only once do I remember a moment when he fell asleep before calling for my escort. I lay watching him, the moonlight playing on his beard and chest as it rose and fell with his breathing. It gave the red-gold hairs a silvery cast. Was this what he would look like when he was old?

  The sheets under my bare back were finer than any I had ever lain on, though a bit wet. I shifted over gently so as not to wake him, and took a piece of cheese and a cup of wine from the platter beside the bed. Luxury.

  The queen never came to these apartments; she may never had seen this great oak bed with its elaborate rose-carved posts and canopy, or felt this embroidered silk against her skin. I usually tried not think of her during such ti
mes. Men were not supposed to have connection with their wives during pregnancy anyway, so in a sense I was beneficial to both of them.

  In truth I was a bit bothered by how little my conscience troubled me on the matter. It would have been different if she were still the kind mistress who had sent me for lessons. But we both had changed since then, and those lessons were never for my sake anyway. Anyway, I might be an intruder, but not a usurper.

  Why was I here? I thought that moonlit night, and think now, that it was no more and no less than a desire for my life to take on some shape, for a story to be told that included me. It was a chance for immortality. Not the best of reasons, perhaps, but there were certainly worse. Much worse.

  Jane had been the last to seek me out alone. During my absence she had bedded with Eliza, and the two of them still spent much of their free hours together. I had not exchanged a dozen sentences with her since I’d returned, had even toyed with the notion she was avoiding me.

  “And what can I do for you, Mistress Seymour? Persuade the king to make Edward an Earl? Arrange some advantageous marriage?” I wondered why she hadn’t married that Dormer fellow by now; perhaps there was some impediment.

  “You looking well. The country agrees with you.” A pause. “I was sorry to hear of your mother. Baynton told us.”

  She had beautiful manners, when she wanted to. “Surely that’s not why you’re here.” “Since you ask, there is something.” Of course there was. “It’s Lady Rochford.” She must

  go.”

  That wasn’t what I had expected. “Surely you have noted that I have no influence over the queen’s household. My favor does not extend that far.”

  “You don’t understand. Since you’ve been away, things have changed.” She moved closer and dropped her voice. “She lost it, you know.”

  I knew. I had heard it even far down in Kent, where the villagers had whispered of the queen’s miscarriage that summer as an omen. Everything is an omen to simple folk; it is what keeps them simple.

  “There was no Prince of Wales when I went down to Kent, either.”

  “Aye, but…” she broke off, and her good eye glanced about. “She is with child again. Even the king does not know, for she would fain not build his hopes so early. She is…reluctant to cause another disappointment.”

  He must not know, else he would not have allowed her to go on progress with him late that summer. “What of it?”

  “Lady Rochford must be put out of the way for now,” Jane said with sudden determination. “You weren’t here to see it, but…the miscarriage went very badly. She was raving toward the end, about poison, conspiracy.” She shook her head as she saw the look on my face. “There was nothing in it, nothing; a woman out of her head with pain and anguish will imagine anything. But there is no question Lady Rochford causes upset among the household, and that’s a risk to the child. For now, anyway, she needs to go back to Essex. Just until it’s a bit safer.”

  “And so what shall I do? Speak to the king?” Already his summonses were becoming fewer and fewer; he tired quickly when there was no pursuit.

  “No! No, not that,” she composed herself hastily, “but I’m sure you can think of something else.”

  There was something she wasn’t telling me. “Since when do you suddenly care so much about Her Grace’s well-being, Jane? Since you started sending letters to Nick Carew?” and was absurdly pleased when she started. I guessed that was what she hadn’t wanted me to write for her. There were advantages to having access to the king’s person, as the saying went. One heard things.

  “Is that your business?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s Cromwell’s. He’ll use it against you if it suits him, friend or not. You’re very friendly with all kinds of people these days—Lady Exeter, Francis Bryan--and you used to be so shy. Is this your desire, or theirs?”

  “Do you think me no more than a puppet, do to what others lead me to?” Her voice came close to being shrill. I had never seen her composure so much as shaken. It was startling, yet also—I confess it—satisfying. I kept my tone reassuring as I answered:

  “Jane, I don’t want to see you at Tyburn. Elizabeth Barton had connections to the Exeters too, though Cromwell couldn’t prove it at the time. Now he’s got more evidence, and every day he needs less to be able to do as he pleases.”

  She sighed. “Fine. We can make an agreement. She cannot simply dismiss Lady Rochford. The king would never allow it, especially if he knew how truly the queen detests her.”

  As she now detested me. I remembered how Queen Katharine had once suffered both Boleyn sisters as her maids of honor. She had accepted this because she had loved him. That would have made it easier to bear.

  “Let me see if I understand,” I said. “For some reason which I’m not sure you’ve really told me, you want the queen to stay in her place and Lady Rochford gone. So I get rid of her, and in return, you agree to break off with Exeter and his faction? That hardly seems an equal bargain.”

  “Think of it as removing a threat to your own well-being, then. And hers. And the child,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

  But nothing about her was not thought out, and she watched my reaction closely. “The queen’s future child, of course,” she continued smoothly. “For we will surely never have a healthy prince if the queen continues so despondent.”

  I felt queasy. I’d had nothing to eat that morning, fearful that I’d lose it and be found out. I remembered Eliza Browne retching helplessly in the private garderobe, long ago. I remembered Katharine of Aragon’s bloating and sickness, the hope that had ended in a bloody mess time and again. Lady Rochford’s position might protect her, but a maid of honor had to fight for every day of her survival.

  When the queen did send for me, my stomach churned so that I hoped I would not be sick right there on the polished parquet floor. She’d just had it refinished.

  It was a feeble October day, where the earth and sky outside were sodden black-and-white, and the trees between them like damp purple velvet. When she did speak it was more to the scene outside than to me: “I cannot bear another day of her.”

  I said nothing, had come up with no plan. If only the earth would open beneath me, that might solve everything.

  After a moment she seemed to rouse herself, looked at me. “Tell me what my ladies have planned for this afternoon,” she said, and you would have thought her the serenest of wives, concerned only with the welfare of her household.

  I thought for a moment, and what came out of my mouth was how attractive I’d always found her brother.

  When the queen’s household sat at rounds of bochen later, Lady Rochford (so Jane told me later) was so distracted she missed trumps, forgot to raise bets, and finally skipped a hand altogether to get up and search the apartments for her husband, who had disappeared.

  She finally found us in a corner of the empty banquet chamber, and her rage was magnificent. Everyone knew she was a bit mad when it came to her husband, but she’d never made such a scene before. He scuttled off at first sight of her, though I stayed as the crowd gathered. Right in the middle of her furious harangue she paused for breath and I said sweetly:

  “But Lady Rochford, I have tried to save the honor of your family. There are those who whisper that George has no taste for women, and I have only proven that he does.”

  The blow landed right under my eye, her heavy signet ring cutting my cheek in two places. By that evening it had puffed beautifully and turned different shades of purple and yellow. Autumn colors, I thought sickly.

  When the king saw it, his rage was even greater. So it was Lady Rochford who was forced to pack her trunk and escorted to her husband’s estates in Essex, by royal command.

  The queen secretly told Dr. Butts to give me the best cuts of salted meat for my eye, and gave me a new set of sleeves to replace the one stained with blood from the cut. I suppose it was the least she felt she could do, though it wasn’t as fine as the other that got ruined. Her gratitud
e had its limits.

  That had been over a month ago, and it felt as though this banquet had gone on even longer. Somehow I had been cast into purgatory, and this was punishment for my sins. My feet were numb as wood, and my spine felt as if it might snap from my own weight. The queen chose not to notice my distress, never turning her head in my direction once. The king was nowhere to be seen

  I edged away from my place and along the wall behind the dais, toward the blessed freedom of the kitchen-side door behind the great carved screens. Slipping behind the arrases would probably have been too obvious, but I needed to get out. I caught Kratzer’s eye as I did so, and he turned discreetly away.

  I was almost there when a masked Jupiter stood before me, blocking the way.

  Well, well, I thought. Who could it be at a palace banquet, over six feet tall and dressed as king of the gods? He was many things, but subtle was not one of them.

  “Your Majesty, I pray you to excuse me; I am not well,” I said before he could speak. The words had to be forced from some swamplike place inside me. He seemed disappointed I had recognized him. Everyone played along with Bluff King Hal in those days. And later, too, when they had to.

  “We need your presence here. You deprive us all by departing early.” Words that could be said to anyone, and probably had been. He thought himself discreet, in disguise and whispering in a corner. Unless she were suddenly stricken blind, the queen could not fail to notice this.

  Passivity and silence only urged him on. He reached out one huge, manicured hand—I could see the diamond-pattern of his skin, the tiny hairs on the backs of the fingers—and brushed a tear from my cheek.

  Say something, I implored silently, though I did not know whether I meant him or myself.