by V L Perry
All appearances indicated that things had settled more or less back into a normal pattern, though the queen did appear a bit thinner and more tired, and kept longer hours in her bedchamber of a morning. The king too paid an occasional polite visit, chatting with this lady or that courtier, steadfastly avoiding any glance at me or Jane. A few weeks later, he removed to Whitehall, leaving the queen behind at Greenwich.
The war between Jane and the queen still raged, but our mistress had changed her tactics: she waged it more furtively now, sending messages through others. In those last months, I never again saw her acknowledge Jane directly. It was as if she were determined to turn her rival into a ghost.
“The queen is with child.”
We were sewing by the March afternoon light that struggled to last a few minutes longer each day, Eliza, Nan, Lady Rochford, Jane and I. When Lady Exeter came to the doorway with her announcement, we stared, needles poised in mid-stitch.
“She can’t be,” Nan gasped, the words spilling out before she could check them. “The king said…said he would not…”
“The king has been in these chambers since Her Grace’s unfortunate miscarriage, as you know.” She seemed to be talking to the air, did not look at us. This would put her own son further from the succession than ever before. “They have made up their quarrel, praise God, as they always have before. And they are both mindful of their duty to provide the realm with an heir.”
The king had been in the queen’s bedchamber for all of eight minutes at most, and everyone who had been present at the scene of their last confrontation knew of the cold hatred he’d shown her.
“How do you know?” Eliza demanded.
“Her Grace has missed her courses this month,” Lady Exeter answered, crossing to the outer door. “And I know you rejoice with all of us, Lady Lee. Mind you tell no one, of course, ‘til the quickening.” She left.
“She’s only missed one day,” Lady Rochford said. “It’s too soon. Besides, her courses will be irregular after she lost the last babe.”
“I didn’t know you had become a doctor, Lady Rochford,” I said.
“If she has missed, false hope will hurt her all the more,” Eliza said, throwing a furious look after Lady Exeter. Her own new pregnancy must have sharpened such thoughts in her mind. “Especially after the last two times. It’s too soon to go announcing it to the court. And that’s what that woman wants us to do. You’d think she’d have more of a care for herself, if for no one else.”
It was usually impossible to guess Jane’s thoughts; even I, who then knew her best, could hardly read her. But one look at her white and staring face, and for once I knew exactly what she was thinking. .
Jane took the setback with good grace, if that is the right phrase to describe what she was doing.
The queen had a headache one morning and stayed in her bedchamber with only Meg and Lady Rochford to attend her. The rest of us were given our liberty, and went to shoot butts in the thin, chilly sunshine with the king’s gentlemen.
Carew came riding through Greenwich Park, stopping before Jane. Discretion, it seemed, was no longer one of the king’s virtues.
“I have a letter for you, lady. From His Majesty. And he begs me give you this.” He held out a velvet purse as big as a lady’s fist. It shook with the telltale jingle of coin. So it was no longer even jewels now, but cold cash transactions.
She blinked, and I think her surprise at least was genuine. She took the letter and looked at it a moment, turning it over in her hands. Carew cleared his throat and shifted forward, seeming to want her attention. She turned away from him and kissed the letter, but did not break the wax seal.
“I beg you tell His Majesty that I am a gentlewoman of a good and honorable family, and have nothing in the world except my honor, which I would not harm for a thousand deaths.” She even said it with a straight face. Her voice was clear and carrying, as if she wished the whole world to hear her answer. “If His Majesty wishes to make me a present of money, I pray he may do so on the occasion of my honorable marriage before God.”
Carew nodded, took the purse and letter. His horse kicked up a track of dirt as he rode off.
“How long do you think they rehearsed that little scene?” Eliza asked next to me. In her exasperation she turned and shot her arrow quickly, and as sometimes happens with a lucky shot, hit very near a bull’s eye.
I heard the story over and over again that week, each time with embellishments and added details that had not happened: Jane had fallen to her knees and wept, the king had offered her titles and estates, and so on. I did my best not to listen.
But three nights later, when I sat at dinner with Anne Stanhope, Edward Seymour’s wife, I sat up and paid attention:
“Of course it makes sense,” that lady was saying, “that my husband’s rooms should be near the king’s. His Grace wishes to surround himself with men of gentle birth. Though moving is so troublesome…”
“What?” I spat. Lady Seymour frowned. No doubt she was unaccustomed to lowly chamberlain’s nieces addressing her with so little ceremony in public.
“I was speaking of His Majesty’s wish that my husband and I exchange rooms with Master Secretary Cromwell,” she replied in a haughty tone. “Far better us than a mere clerk, one whose father kept an alehouse, no less.”
“I heard he was a smith,” Elizabeth Seymour said, just to argue. It was clear she liked her sister-in-law no better than anyone else did.
The woman couldn’t be so blind as to think this had anything to do with her or her rank: Cromwell’s rooms were connected to the king’s by a secret windowless corridor. I had been admitted through it half a dozen times myself. Jane would be sure to visit her brother often now, enduring his wife in her quest for a richer prize.
I left my pigeon pie untouched.
Easter. The season of death and rebirth. The Church put greater emphasis on the one, the Reformers on the other. Kratzer had called it a tug-of-war, I remembered. That was the year the Lady had gone to Easter Mass as queen at last, after six long years of waiting. And now less than half that time had passed, and the king was tired of her.
The king and queen attended Mass in the chapel royal with full ceremony, together with their households and courtiers and ambassadors of all ranks. When the time came to receive the Eucharist, the queen rose from her private balcony pew to descend to the altar. We followed in procession. At the bottom of the staircase, she stopped to avoid running into a courtier, who turned out to be none other than Chapuys.
Everyone held his breath; even the candles seemed to pause in their burning. They had not come face-to-face since before her coronation. Each knew the hatred the other bore, the slanders on one side, the determination for vengeance on the other. Only that morning the ambassador had refused the king’s invitation to kiss her hand before proceeding to the chapel.
I was still up on one of the stairs behind her, straining to see over Jane’s shoulder. They were both turned so I could see their profiles, and I had a clear view of the smile that spread across her face. It was not the smile of an enemy; it was her old disarming smile, lighting up her features as gradually as the sun coming over the horizon. She could be very charming when she wished to be. Even though by that time I hated her, it was good in a way to see that she hadn’t lost that too.
And to my astonishment, she gave him a little duck of her head. It was hardly perceptible, her hood changing angles momentarily, but it worked. Almost before he seemed to know it, the sallow-faced Spaniard had returned the gesture, bowing lower than he’d certainly intended to, and doffing his cap out of habit or surprise or both.
Her smile turned even more radiant as she passed through the doorway ahead of him, her velvet-clad back bowing in supplication before the altar. It must have tasted sweeter than any communion, that moment of triumph. It was her victory over him, hard won after all those years of snubs and insults. She had gotten him to acknowledge her as queen at last. It was a deadly blow to Mary’
s cause.
And to Jane’s. For the rest of Mass she stood beside me rigid as a chesspiece. I wondered what her next move would be.
I found out soon enough.
On the last day of April the queen walked in Greenwich Park with her dogs, and those of us not busy with packing attended her. The wind was still unseasonably cool and strong, and the willow branches swayed and hissed like serpents. If the weather got any worse, tomorrow’s May Day festivities would have to be cancelled, to say nothing of the trip to Calais. The dancing and poetry, even the archery tournaments could be moved indoors, but it wouldn’t be the same.
At the south end of the park the queen watched a fight between a mastiff and an enormous wolfhound, though she seemed not to see it. The dogs had been at it for some minutes already, and were smeared with bloody foam; one had lost an eye, and the other breathed in gasping jerks every time it wheeled round. Money changing hands each time one lunged or held for a count of five; some of the crowd beat on boards with sticks or shouted wildly. The noise, together with the hot coppery smells from the pit, were nearly overpowering. We hung back, keeping the lapdogs away from the bloody excitement.
Colored banners were staked around the edge of the pit, some twined with garlands of herbs. This wasn’t any ordinary bloodsport; the fight represented nature’s battle at each turn of the seasons, the triumph of spring over winter. In the Low Countries they called this night Walpurgisnacht, when witches and evil spirits had one last festival before slumbering all the long summer nights. But the English too claimed it as their own. Like most festivals and holy days, it had become another pretext for gambling and drunkenness. Tonight before bed we would have special prayers and hang blessed sprigs in the queen’s apartments. The scene before us, though, felt decidedly pagan; I would rather have been anywhere else.
Carew wagered a pound on the wolfhound, his face alight. Carew was a Knight of the Garter now. It had happened last week, at the St. George’s Day ceremonies. Lord Rochford had offered wooden congratulations, but the dark flush on his cheeks belied his anger at being passed over for the honor. There had been an altogether different look in the eyes of his sister as she stared ahead of her, hard as stone.
The king was not with us; supposedly he had some last-minute Council matters to attend to. No one spoke of him to the queen, or anything else that might upset her. The list of forbidden topics had become quite long. Even the Calais trip was not to be discussed too much, since there had been no reply to the letter she had dictated to Marguerite in full hearing of her women: “Our dearest wish, next to having a son, is to see you again.”
Next to having a son. The French alliance seemed less and less likely, with the Emperor making almost friendly gestures now that Katharine of Aragon was dead, and Mary being readied for the marriage market as a royal princess. A queen without a prince was of no interest to anyone, especially not her king. She would make this baby a boy through sheer force of will.
In spite of—or perhaps because of—her position, she held tight to the few trappings of royalty remaining to her. Today she was rigged out for a stroll through the park almost as grandly as for her coronation, airing her lapdogs in her finest jewels and high-heeled slippers. It was too early for panels in her skirts, but she might well have them put in early, just for effect.
The mastiff snapped the wolfhound’s neck, and the crowd shuffled around, paying bets. Norris handed the queen some coins with a smile that looked forced. Surely he could well afford it. She appeared to jest with him, though the wind was too high for me to hear what they said. I didn’t need to.
She signaled us to turn back to the palace. Enough entertainment for this bleak spring day; I’d no desire to be shut in all the rest of the afternoon with her, but it was not much better outside. May Eve or no, there a shivering grayness to the bare earth and the branches that scraped the empty sky.
“It was on this day that the king’s grandfather King Edward married Queen Elizabeth Woodville,” the Queen remarked. Her words swept back to us on the wind—none too gentle, despite what poets say about England in the spring.
“Aye, Your Grace,” Norris replied. “He married the woman he loved, as his grandson did after him, and nothing in the world could equal their pleasure in one another.”
From anyone else it would have fallen flat, but he had a sincere way of putting her at ease; she even smiled a little.
“The king does not seek his pleasure with me these days,” she said, rubbing her growing belly. “Though if he did, he would get little satisfaction there.”
“Any man who would not take pleasure in Your Grace’s company is a fool,” Norris said, low, and there was an earnestness in his voice that made me think he meant it. Madge was watching apprehensively, though she was hardly in a position to complain. “Such a fool would not deserve your love, either as a queen or as a woman.”
“Really, Norris?” she spat. “Do you look for dead man’s shoes? If aught but good fell to the king, you would look to have me?”
We stared. Even Lady Rochford looked as if she could not believe the queen could be so reckless. Norris was fumbling through some diplomatic answer when she cut him off: “And why not? Why bother with leavings from your master’s table when you could feast there yourself? Pay him back in his own coin, Norris! He tupped your beloved, so you’ll tup his! Not that he loves me!” Her words sounded as if she should be shrieking but what was truly horrifying was the bright calm control with which she spoke them, and the smile on her face the entire time.
“For the love of Christ, Your Grace!” All effort at courtliness was gone now; Norris was pale and sweating, clearly afraid yet straining against his rage. “This is too much! You insult me, my lady Madge and His Majesty. I would my head were off if I should have any such thought.”
Something like composure fell over the queen’s face. “You’re right, of course.” She looked quickly around, as though only just noticing who was near her.
And as always, there was Jane Seymour, walking a pace behind the queen, her head down. The queen’s eyes stayed fixed on her even as she spoke: I pray you Norris, go you to my Lord of Exeter and swear to him that the queen is a good woman.”
Just outside the palace grounds, Princess Elizabeth was playing with Nurse Ashley. From the look of her she’d been on the river; her wild red hair sprang in damp tufts, and her brown damask gown was spotted in places. These days her mother ordered her dressed only in dark colors, so she could romp, spill and tumble with more freedom and slightly less expense.
“Mama!” the child cried, and ran to greet her. The queen stooped, trailing her own finery on the damp ground, and gathered her child into her arms as we proceed through the courtyard. There was the usual flourish of “Make way for the queen!” while dogs barked, carts rumbled and servants hurried to and fro. There seemed to be more running about today than usual; even the visiting council members and their retinue could not account for such a flurry of activity.
“God save Your Majesty!” Norris suddenly called, and whipped off his hat to wave it over his head. Was this some desperate attempt to cover the awkwardness of their last exchange? But then I saw he was looking far above our heads, toward a window that had been opened to let some of the April breeze. It must be the Council chamber; even the smell of the Thames in early April was better than the close air of a chamber filled with fur-clad old men.
A sturdy figure stood in the window, with red-gold hair now starting to thin, a firm-set jaw and small eyes. The king did not return Norris’s wave. Instead he regarded our party with an expression that made me remember the lions in the Tower.
The queen saw him too. She slowed her pace, and with one arm shifted Elizabeth higher, lifted her a bit so she was directly under the king’s gaze. A talisman, a last resort.
His face registered nothing, and he turned away.
I don’t know what made her think it would do any good, that silent plea. Katharine of Aragon had had a daughter too. But then again, that
may have been exactly what she was thinking.
Tom Seymour caught me as I tried to pass him in the inner courtyard. Pulling away would only give him the response he hoped for, and also leave finger-marks in my green velvet skirt. So I waited to hear what he would say.
He just smiled. Not the witty, charming smile; the one he’d worn since the Garter went to Carew. It stretched over his face like a cruel mask, and made his teeth seem too large. “I won’t keep you from your appointment, mistress,” he said. “But why the rush? I have nothing contagious.”
“Indeed, you are always so careful, my lord. Virgins and respectable widows, isn’t that right?”
The smile broadened ever so little, so that an observer—his sister, for instance—might have assumed we were exchanging courtly courtesies. “You were eager enough once. You still are, even if it’s a step down from where you’ve been. If I’m poxed with ambition, it’s clearly infected you too. You stink and itch with it. And it’s eating you alive, and the only remedy is out of your reach. The wages of sin, I suppose.”
He brought his face close to mine, his words tinged faintly with onion. “You might be able to stay at court, once we’re in power,” he said, and it was all to clear who we was. “If you plead your case to the right ear.”
I looked calmly at the square, pale hand still holding in my skirts, and thought again how short he was. His fashionable boots and caps always made him seem taller. I thought of a sword being unsheathed from its scabbard, sticking at first but drawing out long and bright. And sharp. “My sin, Master Seymour, lay in being too weak to punish myself, and having to find someone else to do it for me.” I gently unwrapped my skirt from his grip. “And now your services will no longer be needed.”
That evening Bryan came to tell us that the trip to Calais had been delayed a week.