Royal Mistress

by Anne Easter Smith

  “And now you may push, Mistress Jane,” she directed as she slowly withdrew her hand, “and as much as you like.”

  With relieved groans, Jane did as she was told, her strength at its lowest point, and she, too, prayed to the patron saint of childbirth to end the ordeal. Suddenly, a broad grin wreathed the midwife’s wrinkled face and the baby was expelled in a gush of blood and birthing fluids.

  “You have a daughter, mistress,” Goody Long declared, pleased with herself.

  Ankarette took the child as the midwife tied off and cut the cord, and holding the infant upside down, she gave it a couple of smacks on the long, thin back. The resulting cry made Jane’s eyes fly open and a tired smile greeted her child. After rubbing the protesting babe with salt to clean off the birthing fluid, Ankarette wrapped her in a clean cloth and proudly presented her to Jane, as though she herself were the grandmother.

  “Your work is well done, mistress,” Goody Long praised Jane, after dealing efficiently with the afterbirth, as the first rays of dawn were filtering through the cracks of the shutters. “There will be more blood, but unless it is bright red and does not stop, ’tis to be expected.” She plunged her hands into the basin of hot water and looked around at the others. “God was kind to us today. A backward-seated babe can kill a mother, but this little lass wants to know her ma,” she said cheerfully as Amy burst into tears. “This is only the third time I have had success with this kind of birth in all my years. She is a beauty,” she said proudly, watching with the others as Jane held the little girl to her breast.

  “Her name is Julyan,” Jane told them, enjoying the sound of it. “Perhaps someone would be kind enough to let Thomas know he has a daughter.”

  Amy volunteered and left the room.

  “I thank you with all my heart, Goody Long. Your skill is unmatched,” Jane said, praising the beaming midwife. “What is your given name?”

  “Mary, Mistress,” she replied.

  “Then my child shall be Julyan Mary,” Jane told the woman. “I shall tell her that she came into this world with the same helping hands that brought me here. ’Tis a miracle.”

  Wiping away a happy tear, Mary Long reached out and stroked the blond fuzz on top of the infant’s head. “And you, sweet babe, gave your mother a cartload of trouble today. I’ve no doubt she will forgive you and will soon have forgotten every last pain. The red mark will disappear as she grows, mistress,” she said, indicating the slight bruise where her strong thumb had gripped the tiny head. “It will serve to remind you how fortune smiled upon you this day.”

  Julyan waved her arms and kicked her legs in protest when Thomas gentled her away from her mother. Weary, Jane watched with delight as the baby settled down at once in the haven of her father’s strong arms and broad chest.

  “She likes you,” Jane rejoiced. “She had no wish to be held by her grandmother. It was a trifle embarrassing. Now that you have your wish, Thomas, are you sure there are no regrets she was not a boy?”

  “Not a one, my dearest Jane,” her husband replied happily. “She is already my poppet, and I cannot wait to smother her with love.”

  Jane gave him a baleful look. “You will not forget your wife, will you, and especially now, with my hair scrambled, my eyes swollen, my cheeks reddened, and my body stretched like cloth on a tenter?”

  Thomas sat down carefully on the bed and smiled. “No wife will ever be as loved as you, sweetheart. You are more beautiful to me now than you have ever been. No matter how you think on the king, I have thanked God daily in my prayers that his grace sent me to the Ludgate that day in June last year. I never knew a man could know such joy in his life as I have since then.”

  Jane did not have the fortitude to hold back her happy tears, and she sniffled and laughed at the same time. “The same is true for me, dearest Thomas,” she said, and she smiled at the baby, who seemed to be contemplating her father’s cleft chin with great seriousness. “See how already she hangs on your every word. Aye, she knows her father, in truth.”

  A soft knock on the door interrupted an awkwardly managed kiss between husband and wife, and Thomas pulled away guiltily, making them both laugh.

  “Come in,” he called, rising and carrying the baby with him.

  “May we?” Amy called, and clicked open the door. “Jane’s father wants to greet his granddaughter.”

  Jane’s contentment was complete when she watched her husband gingerly transfer little Julyan to John’s more experienced arms. “You must always hold the head thus,” John explained earnestly as Amy winked at Jane. “Praise be to God, she is a marvel,” he enthused, “and so quiet for one born of such a clatterer.” He turned and beamed at Jane. “I am proud of you, daughter. It has taken you a long time to find your way, but I believe God has guided you home at last. Come, let me kiss you.”

  Amy bit her lip to stop from weeping. Indeed, God must be smiling on them, for such a scene would have seemed impossible a year ago.

  Placing the now whimpering Julyan in her mother’s waiting arms, he planted a kiss on Jane’s forehead and stepped back, declaring: “So pleased, so pleased, my dear.”

  “Thank you, Father,” Jane said.

  John was puzzled. “For what, Jane?”

  “For forgiving your prodigal daughter,” she replied. “She was lost and now is found.”

  When Thomas arrived home from his work at Westminster during Advent, he found Jane rocking the baby in her cradle and singing.

  “Lully, mine liking, my dear one, mine sweeting

  Lullay, my dear heart, mine own dear darling.”

  He kissed her upturned face, touched the sleeping Julyan, and pulled up his heavy oak chair. Kneeling, Jane pulled off his long, leather boots and wrinkled her nose at his damp, smelly feet.

  “Aye, I should have worn my pattens, in truth. It came on to rain on my way home and I fear ’twill turn to snow in the night.” He stretched his long legs toward the fire and gave a weary groan.

  “Was it a difficult day, my dear?”

  Thomas took a deep breath and nodded. “Each time I come face-to-face with Queen Anne, I see a change. It grieves me to say that she looks not long for this world.”

  Jane stared into the flames and said nothing, but she was thinking first it was Richard’s child and now his wife. How much can one man stand? ’Twas no wonder Richard looked so careworn. He had aged greatly since being crowned, she thought, and though much of it must be due to the constant concerns of kingship, she was convinced the crumbling of his little family must hurt him more surely in the heart. Ever generous, Jane felt sorry for him and tried to imagine her heartache should she ever lose Thomas and her precious child.

  “Is it certain she will die?”

  “The doctors tell his grace that she is afflicted with the same wasting sickness that took her sister all those years ago. The king is advised to eschew her bed now, and it pains me to see my lord so melancholy these days. He is determined to make this yuletide the merriest possible, and with the late king’s daughters in attendance on the queen, it will be. They were so long in sanctuary, and they deserve some cheer. The shame of it is that comparisons will be made between the beautiful, healthy Grey girls and frail Anne Neville.”

  Jane clucked her tongue. “An unfair comparison, in truth.” Julyan had awakened and was beginning to fuss, so Jane changed the subject. “There is cold duck and half a rabbit pie awaiting you downstairs, if you are hungry. I must feed the child and will join you anon.” She slipped Thomas’s velvet slippers on his feet and tilting his chin, kissed him full on the lips. “Perhaps later, I can help you forget your long day, husband,” she hinted, smiling seductively, and he pulled her back down onto his lap and kissed her again more passionately.

  “Aye, perhaps you can,” he murmured, “but not on a empty stomach.”

  When he had left, Jane unlaced her bodice and picked up the mewling baby, who was making little sucking noises that always melted Jane’s heart and gave her a prickling sensation in her
breasts.

  “All in good time, sweeting,” she soothed. “Let me get comfortable.”

  Feeling the hungry mouth nuzzle for her teat and then latch on with enthusiasm, Jane knew she would never tire of the blissful bond between her and the child. She closed her eyes and rocked her body slowly back and forth as Julyan kneaded her mother’s breast with her tiny hand as she suckled. Jane’s dream of motherhood had finally been realized, and it was proving to be the most powerful of the many ways she had loved.

  First she had wanted her father’s love and then transferred it to her brother. She smiled when she thought of William, now a prim priest in a parish that suited him well. And how strange that only after loving many men in different ways, her father’s love was at last hers.

  Her mind went back to those first tantalizing trysts with Tom Grey. How she had romanticized him, her maturer self now saw. She had clung so foolishly to her youthful fancy. And how thoughtlessly Tom had betrayed her trust, her adoration, and her virtue.

  And then there was Edward. Magnificent, strapping, life-loving Edward. How they had reveled in their passionate, uninhibited lovemaking. It was Edward who had aroused her sensuality and taught her how to please a man. When she had been with him, she selfishly thought only of her own and his pleasure. She knew she had sinned with Edward against the queen and against the church, yet she would not have given up her position as his mistress for all the gold in the treasury. Now she opened her eyes and smiled at the thought of Edward, for he had surprised everyone by truly loving her.

  She could not remember Edward without thinking of Will. She recalled the time after Edward’s death when he had admitted he had had designs upon her that first day she was seated in her father’s shop window. Will’s love had astonished Jane by its intensity and depth; she had thought of it as a friendship—a deep friendship and perhaps paternal on her side—but she had come to cherish him even more than Edward in those few weeks before his execution. She screwed up her eyes to shut out the vision she had often had of his bloodied head toppling to the ground, and she inadvertently squeezed her infant hard, who came noisily off the nipple, annoyed.

  “Hush, greedy one,” Jane cooed, smiling and helping her daughter to suckle again, “or your father will be up here in a trice to protect his poppet.”

  Thomas. How she loved him! He had shown her it was possible to have romance as well as deep friendship in a marriage. Had something about him reminded her of Will? Perhaps. What turn of the wheel of fortune had caused him to be thrown in her path at the very moment when she thought all hope was gone? Had St. Jude intervened? Thomas had fallen in love with her in that first meeting when she was at her worst. She had been a prisoner, accused of harlotry, dirty, unkempt, and rude, and now she smiled at the thought. “Poor, poor Mistress Shore,” she chanted to herself. How had the ditty gone that she had conjured on the spot when she had first heard his wonderful, infectious laugh? Ah, yes, now she remembered:

  The king’s whore

  She is no more,

  For she hath fallen far.

  On silken sheets she used to lay

  but now her bed it is of hay,

  And her fate is in the stars.

  Poor, poor Mistress Shore,

  Once King Edward’s whore.

  She laughed out loud, and Julyan turned unfocused eyes in the direction of her mother’s voice while never losing concentration on her hungry task.

  “Let us amend the ending, daughter,” Jane suggested, pleased with herself.

  “ . . . And her fate is in the stars.

  A concubine she is no more,

  Forget poor Mistress Shore.”

  While she fervently prayed no one would remember her by that name, the once royal mistress hoped she would not entirely be forgotten.

  EPILOGUE

  Her lover was a king, she flesh and blood,

  And since she has dearly paid the sinful score,

  Be kind at last, and pity poor Jane Shore.

  Nicholas Rowe, The Tragedy of Jane Shore, 1714

  LONDON, 1519

  The candle guttered on Sir Thomas More’s desk, telling King Henry’s favorite councilor that either someone had opened a door somewhere or the wick was faulty. He had lost track of time as he put down on parchment the event that had much moved him that day, his goose quill’s busy scratching music to his ears. The words were flowing this night, he thought with satisfaction.

  What an extraordinary encounter, he mused, nibbling at the tip of the pen. It was an appropriate addendum to the book he was attempting to write about the last Plantagenet king, Richard III. He doubted the document would ever see the light of day, as some of it was as exaggerated as it was truthful, and the eloquent study about power and corruption of a monarch might be perceived as a criticism of all kings and lose him his favored station with young Henry.

  Sir Thomas had been only five when Richard of Gloucester was crowned, yet the story of how the late King Edward’s brother came to wear the crown and the disappearance of the princes in the Tower had fascinated him ever since he first heard it as a page from his master John Morton. The wily former bishop of Ely had been rewarded by Henry Tudor with the chancellorship and archbishopric of Canterbury for conspiring to overthrow Richard and place Henry on the throne. Before his death in 1500, Morton had filled Thomas’s young ears with venom whenever he talked of King Richard. No one would ever know what really happened to those sons of Edward, Sir Thomas had thought after digesting the information. They had simply disappeared, although Morton had been very convincing in his grisly tale of two little boys murdered on orders of the king and buried at the foot of the White Tower steps. Aye, he had been adamant, Sir Thomas remembered.

  Thus Sir Thomas was determined to put down what he recalled being told about the dead king, although some of the details were fuzzy now. Ah, well, if he made up a few myths to create a monster in the process, so much more entertaining the book. Surely no one would believe his statement that Richard had remained in his mother’s womb for two years and been born with a mouthful of teeth and headful of long hair? Although, gullible readers did abound, Sir Thomas chuckled to himself. Besides, he had made up his mind not to publish it. He would simply amuse himself, his family, and the king, and so other than adding this intriguing tidbit, he doubted he would even finish it. The former royal mistress had, however, provided him with material to enhance a scanty passage halfway through the manuscript. He could not believe his good fortune when he encountered her that day.

  He had already described the involvement of Mistress Elizabeth Shore, known in her heyday as Jane Shore, in the business of Hastings’s execution and her penance, but until now, he had had no knowledge of this woman’s life other than that she had earned the nickname the Rose of London, presumably for her beauty.

  But then a silkwoman, and friend of his daughter, named Janneke had told him the story of the rise and fall of King Edward’s mistress, and his sense of justice forced him to include it in his book.

  This woman was born in London, worshipfully friended, honestly brought up, and very well married . . . Proper she was and fair; nothing in her body that you would have changed but if you would have wished her somewhat higher.I

  Sir Thomas smiled to himself when he recalled having to bend down to hear what the old woman was saying. Aye, she was diminutive, he thought. He continued writing.

  Yet delighted not men so much in her beauty as in her pleasant behaviour. For a proper wit had she, and could both read well and write, merry of company, ready and quick of answer, neither mute nor full of babble, sometimes taunting without displeasure and not without disport. The king would say that he had three concubines . . . one the merriest, another the wiliest, the third the holiest harlot in his realm . . . But the merriest was this Shore’s wife, in whom the king therefore took pleasure. For many he had, but her he loved, whose favour to say truth . . . she never abused to any man’s hurt.

  Where the king took displeasure, she would mitigate
and appease his mind; where men were out of favour, she would bring them in his grace. For many that had highly offended she obtained pardon; of great forfeitures she got men remission; and, finally, in many weighty suits she stood many men in great stead, either for none or very small rewards, and those rather gay than rich either for that she was content with the deed itself well done, or for that she delighted to be sued until and to show what she was able to do with the king, or for (to know) that wanton women and wealthy be not alway covetous.II

  As a child, Janneke had known Jane and related to Sir Thomas that after many happy years married to one Lawyer Lyneham, her husband had died. During Henry VII’s reign his fortunes declined, and it was whispered he had left many debts, and Jane had been forced to write begging letters to old friends. Sadly, she was often seen near the palace at Westminster, hoping for alms from kindly passersby or in the hope of encountering someone who would recognize her and give her aid.

  It was, therefore, with great curiosity that morning that Sir Thomas had approached the old woman loitering near the palace gate, her clothes worn through, and her white hair straggling from a simple tied-up kerchief. Was this the once-beautiful concubine of King Edward? The words that came to mind as he observed her were old, thin, withered, and dried up. Nothing left but skin and bone. And yet, he thought, even so, one could recognize that she had been fair. She had smiled at him, and a light suddenly shone from her green-gray eyes. “Sir Thomas More?” she had said, her voice younger than her looks. “I am Mistress Lyneham. I give you God’s greeting, sir. ’Tis a fine day for a walk for rich and poor alike.” Thomas had bowed and acknowledged the fine day.

  “Would you be so kind as to give this letter to my lord Dorset?” she pleaded. “His father, the first marquess, was in my debt and I thought perhaps—” She broke off, her smile fading. Sir Thomas guessed it was not the first missive she had tried to slip to the young marquess, but he took it and promised to see it delivered. Then he drew a rose noble from his purse and pressed it into her hand. “God be with you, Jane Shore,” he said, and seeing the anxiety in her face, he assured her, “your identity is safe with me.”