To Obey and Serve

by V L Perry

  Pious old hypocrite. He’d done his bit of rejoicing in front of Chapuys, about being freed from the threat of war with the Emperor. But it seemed he truly had forgotten – might even have forgotten, in fact, which wife was dead and which one quailed before him now.

  I could have told her: in Spain yellow was not worn for mourning, but shame and heresy. On the Archduke’s visit to Toledo, I had seen those condemned to be burned by the Inquisition led to the stake in their dirty yellow gowns the color of decay. Only a sheltered country girl could have fallen for such a trick.

  Whoever had passed that information to Jane had probably also provided her with the black velvet gown she wore that day, for I never saw it on her before or since. And when the king paused a moment to look at her before he stormed out, she kept her witch’s eyes down.

  From that day forward, the king made a habit of keeping company with Jane. He made no visits to the queen’s chambers, and his gentlemen of the bedchamber reported that the silk sheets they stripped from his great feather-mattress each morning were dry. But surely King Henry VIII, who’d had virgins, queens an courtesans, French and Spanish and English beauty ranging from prim young Princess Katharine to plump Bessie Blount, the wild Mary Boleyn and her dark sister—surely he could not find anything in Mistress Seymour anything to raise his manhood to what it once had been.

  It was terrible whenever she was not among us. But it could be far worse when she was.

  I did not talk to her about it. Since our last conversation we had avoided each other, and I had convinced myself that silence was a kind of loyalty after all. But even I could not help noticing the gold filigreed locket clasped round her white throat. Everyone did. She made sure of that.

  She never wore jewelry, so it was odd enough on its own. But this locket was engraved with the king’s arms, and could only have come from His Majesty himself. A royal token, traded in exchange for…what?

  We sat with the rest of the queen’s ladies in the walnut-paneled inner chamber on that clear winter afternoon, the sky so blue and sharp that it hurt to look at it directly. The light played on our silver embroidery thread, spilled like milk across the white velvet-damask. This time it would be a boy, and such a prince must have a christening robe unrivalled by his younger half-sisters’. She would not fail again.

  Jane normally sewed the neatest of any of us, her stitches smooth and fast. But each time she came to the end of a thread, she paused to open the locket, gaze at it, and shut it again with a sigh. Each time she did it was another hit to the queen’s nerves, each sound a message I could almost hear clearly:

  Click. I have your husband’s affections.

  Snap. And in time I will turn them to love.

  Click. Do you see what he has given me?

  Snap. How long is it since he has given you anything?

  Click. Perhaps it is a question of what you can give him.

  Snap. Or of what I can.

  I could not believe, though I saw it with my own eyes, that she was capable of this.

  The queen stood it longer than anyone thought she would. Then she was on her feet, crossing the chamber in one swift motion. She reached out one slender hand—she had such elegant fingers, really magnificent—and seized the locket, tearing it from Jane’s neck with such force that a sharp red line sprang up on the pale flesh. Blood welled from a cut on one of the long white fingers and oozed between the gold links of the chain they clutched.

  Only Madge cried out. The queen and Jane both remained silent, their eyes locked for a long minute.

  That wasn’t the beginning, of course. The war had been going on for some time, since the opening salvo of Will Dormer, and stepped up with the visit to Wulfhall. But at least now it was out in the open. In a way it was almost a relief.

  Like most wars, this one played out very much like a game of strategy. Now there was the tense waiting to see what the next move would be.

  There was a joust several weeks later, to celebrate the new peace between the king and the Emperor. Of course we did not go, but were shut in her privy chamber, working on fine baby garments and wrappings, where she could keep an eye on us.

  The cold was not the only thing that kept us indoors. The swelling in her legs and feet never seemed to go down completely, and she complained of pain in her back. The doctors said it happened sometimes when pregnancies came too close together. They did not, of course, advise her to stop.

  Chapuys had reported that the queen had danced at a ball in celebration of Queen Katharine’s death, not knowing or caring that the queen’s dancing days were well and truly over. Chapuys could have written that she ate live rats and flew about the countryside on a broom, and there would have been those ready to believe it. He did, however, report the king’s anger at the yellow gown nearly word for word.

  “He doesn’t come here,” she growled to Meg, though really it was directed at the rest of us. “He’s not permitted near my door. What he doesn’t know, he invents, but how does he come to know so much to invent with? Do you know, Meg?” It was not so much an accusation as a warning. Warnings without power behind them are worse than useless. They showed her fear.

  On that endless iron-colored afternoon, we had a reading from Christine de Pisan’s The Treasure of the City of Ladies for close to two solid hours. My brain was soon as numb as my fingers pushing the needle into and out of the cloth in my lap. The queen had ordered Jane to read aloud. Subtlety was a luxury she could no longer afford:

  The ladies, maidens, and women of the court who behave in this way act wrongly to a very serious degree and commit a much greater sin than if they slandered each other or people other than their mistress. There are five principle reasons for this.

  The first: the greater a lady she is, the more is her honor or dishonor celebrated throughout the country than that of an ordinary woman. For this reason, she who defames her does worse, because this slander spreads into many regions.

  The second, because they betray the one to whom they are outwardly pleasant and obedient.

  Third, they act against their oath, which was to the effect that they would guard her well-being and her honor.

  Fourth, they render evil for good to those by whom they are maintained and nourished and to whom they owe their position.

  And fifth, they judge another, which is contrary to the commandment of God, who says “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.”

  Jane’s normally flutelike voice was by now grown harsh as a crow’s. Yet she did not pause this contest of wills for rest or a drink of wine. It might as well have been poetry, as far as she was concerned, or Scripture, or any other words empty of meaning for her.

  We sat in a half-circle, the pale January light spilling cross-paned shadows over our sewing in exactly the wrong places. Even the braziers merely added the smell of coals to the chamber; the warmth vanished quickly into the chill air.

  “You are lax, lady,” the queen noticed my slackened pace.

  “Yes, Your Grace.” I kept working at exactly the same speed.

  The clamoring in the gallery outside cut short our thoughts. Lady Rochford turned to the door like a hawk spotting prey, her eyes alight. Even as the Duke of Norfolk burst in, she lilted, “My lord, what news?”

  “Your Grace, the king is fallen in the lists.” Why must he shout it so? “He is thought to be injured unto death. Even now he may be dying.”

  The queen made no move. “What happened to him, Norfolk?” cried Madge.

  The Duke frowned. It was the right question, but from the wrong person. “His Majesty’s lance shattered, and he was thrown from his horse. We brought him unconscious to his chamber. His physician is there now.”

  “To prophesy the king’s death, my lord, is treason,” the queen replied. She picked up her needle again, keeping her eyes on the garment in her bulging lap. “We thank you. You should go to him now.”

  Norfolk looked like a dog whose meal had been taken from him half-eaten. He opened his mouth again, and this t
ime Lady Zouche cut him off with, “My lord, have you forgotten the Queen is breeding? We must take care not to upset her.”

  And Meg snapped, “What good do you do the king to thunder in here and frighten the Queen, who carries his prince? If you had any sense, Norfolk, you’d be trying to ensure the succession, not endanger it.” Her eyes widened as she spoke, and when her mouth clamped shut I thought she might cry.

  “Damn me, but I thought the dying of our lord the king might stir even this coldhearted bitch,” Norfolk said through clenched teeth. “I see I was wrong. It will be duly reported.” His spurs clanked as he stalked out.

  We all remained frozen. If not for the Duke’s mud-tracks on the polished floor, the whole thing might never have happened. They were brown and wet, but would harden to a dusty grey.

  “He can’t think His Majesty so terribly injured,” Meg broke the silence, “if he plans to go tattling to him the minute he wakes up.”

  “He didn’t say he’d tell the king,” Mary Howard said in a small voice like a sob. Did it tear her to see her father and cousin tear at each other so, or did she love neither of them?

  “Who else would he tell?” asked Grace Parker.

  “Queen Mary,” murmured the queen, so low it sounded like a moan. .

  “What did you say, Your Grace?” Madge asked. Not for the first time, I wished Madge Shelton at the bottom of a well.

  The queen laughed the laugh I hated most, like a live capon boiled in a pot with the lid on. When Meg went to put her arms around her, she slid to the ground in a dead faint.

  She lay ill all day, all night, all the next day. We went in and out, bringing possets, herbs, cloths. Too many things and too many people to count.

  What if she died? What if he died? Lady Exeter’s witchcraft must be powerful indeed; would her handsome son now take the throne? Would Fitzroy challenge him for the title? Would the Duke of Suffolk’s little sons become figureheads, pawns, like Edward IV’s vanished princes? In my exhausted dreams I heard the mutterings of a rebellious crowd, swelling to a roar as they marched through the countryside toward the city, burning and laying waste to everything in their path, their numbers growing every hour…

  “Wake up.” Lady Zouche shook me in my bed, where I had gone for a few hours’ refuge. “Her Majesty needs someone to attend her. Grace is ill; you must go in her stead.”

  So you must understand that I was still partly asleep when I entered the queen’s lying-in chamber, and was not prepared for what I saw.

  What I saw was this:

  The queen lay in her rumpled bed of purple satin, her long dark hair stringy with sweat. The purple-and-gold curtains were tied back, and I could see her thin, bulging form, her head rocking from side to side while her eyes stayed shut. And over her, half-straightened in surprise at my entry, was Jane Seymour.

  I had never seen Jane minister to the queen. These days she stayed out of her way as much as possible. There was something else about her; I tried to think what it was, but my mind was stuck like a fly in sap.

  In one hand she held a chased silver cup. From the way she lowered her arm I could see the cup was empty. She came away, not hurrying, and looked into my face:

  “I have given Her Grace a cordial that will help ease her sleep. Lady Zouche asked me to give it her, and I have.”

  I hadn’t asked her what she was doing.

  The queen was already sunk back into sleep, though one hand grasped the bedcurtains in a weak bunch and she made a small, kittenlike sound. Jane was gone.

  I sat down heavily on a velvet stool beside her. Sometimes when I came out of fits, it took me a moment to recollect where I was or what had happened. But this feeling was worse: it went on and on, and I could not make my mind obey. I tried to remember something, anything: my uncle’s face, the name of the house Jane came from: Wulfhall, it was. In Wiltshire. Her father was a lustful, ambitious man.

  Lady Zouche came bustling in. “Is she resting better?”

  I didn’t answer. “You’d better take some rest, too.” Her voice was firm, though her hands were gentle. “There’s been enough worry today. No use in having any of us laid up sick as well. I’ll stay with her.”

  Lord Rochford rushed up to me in the gallery, his eyes wild and hair in all directions—from running his hands though it, I guessed.

  “Is she all right?” he cried.

  Of course she wasn’t. Were any of us?

  Hours later, on the dawn of Katharine of Aragon’s first day in her grave, the queen lost her five-months prince.

  The next few days were like shattered glass. Everyone walked quietly. There had been silence in the Queen’s apartments ever since the king—fully recovered, not nearly so badly wounded as Norfolk had claimed--had bellowed as far as the outer chamber that she would get no more boys by him.

  Cranmer came to baptize the dead prince, who had not been given a name, though he dared not do more to comfort the woman who had helped raise him to his position. Lord Rochford went about with anger and worry clenched in his jaws and throat, and his wife looked oddly blank. Perhaps he’d finally beaten her.

  Those half-dozen rooms now felt more cramped than ever. And Jane seemed to be everywhere. People looked at her curiously, and I saw the Venetian ambassador sweep his hat off to her one day. Everyone knew it had been something to do with her. Even exhausted with grief, bleeding out the last of her hopes for an heir, the queen had found strength to shriek back at him about her enemies, poison, and “that wench, Jane Seymour.”

  “I hope that little bauble was worth what it cost him,” Lady Zouche said, and shut her mouth into a tight line lest she risk more.

  The queen had not been upset enough about the locket to cost her the child. Besides, that was two days ago. I could have said this, but I did not.

  In fact, there were a great many things I did not say to her.

  I could have asked, for instance, “Why did you send Jane, of all people, to give the queen medicine?” If indeed she had.

  I could have asked Grace what illness she’d had that prevented her from waiting on the queen. She was pink with health now, never far from Nan Cobham’s side. I recalled that her husband was Lady Rochford’s brother, close with Norfolk, and so I said nothing to her.

  Again and again I asked myself: what had I seen? No matter how many times I called it up in my mind, I recalled the scene clearly first one way, then another.

  I could have asked Jane what was in the cup.

  But I did not. I didn’t have to. What good would it do? It was no proof of any crime, not one I could put a sure name to. No worse than Norfolk’s, at any rate; I saw now what he’d been trying to do, bursting in on her like that.

  Of one thing I was certain: neither Tom nor Edward Seymour was behind this. They would not have risked their sister or, more to the point, themselves; any midwife or serving-maid could be bribed, blackmailed or duped. To conceive such a plan might be within the abilities of a dozen or so hardy courtiers willing to gamble, but to actually carry it out with a cool hand was something else again. Part of me marveled at what it would take.

  The king changed.

  He smiled less, rubbed his brow more. He had always thundered when in a temper—at de Dinteville, at Cromwell, at anyone unlucky enough to be nearby when he was displeased, with the single exception of Norris. But now the quiet way he studied people as they spoke was more disconcerting. Sometimes he seemed not to recognize them for a split-second, looking blankly as they addressed him, responding with an answer that might or might not have anything to do with what they’d just said. No one could tell whether it was a new strategy to hide his thoughts, or something more sinister. More and more often he’d simply cut in on whoever was speaking, or jerk himself back into the moment after an empty stretch of silence while everyone tried not to look awkward as they waited for him to reply. Some thought that the queen’s witchcraft was finally losing its hold over him, others that she was casting spells to rob him of his virility and good humor.<
br />
  Some thought it was watching Fitzroy waste away before his eyes, as his father and brother had. It was terrible to see such fragile spun-gold beauty bent double with terrible racking coughs like an old man. Mary Howard aged as well, lined with worry, for oddly she loved her husband. Half the time they stayed at Pontrefact Castle “for his health.”

  Some thought the king’s conscience had begun to trouble him over sending More and Fisher to the block. No one ever mentioned Elizabeth Barton or her champions. A few noted that the king had become alienated from nearly every person he had once loved—sister, daughter, wives, friends and councilors. And perhaps, as some men are with wine, the more the king tasted of rancor the more accustomed to it he grew, finally needing a steady supply of it.

  I wondered if I were the first to notice the slight heaviness as he sat, as though he could not control his weight all the way down into a chair but seemed to fall into it at the very last instant. Or the thickening around the waist that had begun when he could no longer take daily exercise after his fall in the lists, or the swelling about his eyes that had never quite receded. I thought about asking Madge whether she noted it too, but did not.

  Now they talk about her fall, as if she had brought her injuries on herself, like a naughty child climbing a cowshed. Each day she walked about with her feet on the ground, looking level at people and speaking pleasantly enough of clothes, of public news, of plans for the trip to Calais in May. At banquets they sat regally side by side, and touched the tips of their fingers together as they danced, as if to show the world that together they were still a force stronger than Rome, stronger than any printing press or faction. Last summer the king had put the lie to rumors of their growing estrangement by planting trees for his queen in the gardens at Hampton and naming the place for her. Now, nearly a year later, all of the Queen’s Bower was in bud and would soon blossom and bear fruit; we would see them in splendor in a few weeks when we moved there.