Much to my surprise I found Catherine sitting up in her bed, her hair gathered under a cap and a warm blue woolen shawl wrapped around her bony shoulders. She smiled happily at me as I came into the room, and indicated that I should sit at a table beside her. As we broke our fast, helping ourselves generously to plates of warm bread and butter and honey, I could see that she savored the food, her satisfaction was apparent and the lines of pain and worry that had been etched deeply into her forehead the night before were less visible in the daylight.
“Tell me, Jane,” Catherine asked me when she had finished her meal and wiped her mouth on a clean linen napkin, “why is the king going to put away his trollop?”
I thought for a moment.
“They quarrel,” I began. “She is vexing to him. And—”
Catherine leaned forward in her eagerness. “And what?”
I paused once again. How much should I reveal about the king’s marriage to Anne? Then I thought, what harm would it do to tell this dying woman the truth? Though in fact, just at that moment, she did not look like a dying woman, she looked aged, and worn, but there was a vitality in her that I had not seen since the days when I served her as her maid of honor.
What harm would it do, I thought again, to tell her the truth? Unless it would awaken her old sorrows. In the end I went ahead.
“Anne gave birth to a—a very odd, abnormal babe that died.”
Catherine nodded. “The nun’s prophecy. The nun said that Anne’s firstborn son would die.”
“Yes. And the king is certain that she cannot ever bear a healthy male heir to the throne.”
There was silence for a time.
“If he means to be rid of her,” Catherine said matter-of-factly, “then there is one certain way.”
I waited for her to go on, thinking how satisfying it must be to her to contemplate the removal of her rival, the woman who displaced her and brought her to such depths of humiliation and pain. But then, I had to remind myself, Anne was not the cause of Catherine’s downfall, only the instrument of it. It was King Henry who had brought all about—and now he was seeking to repeat what he had done, only with Anne as the victim of his displeasure.
“Before the unfortunate Jane Popyngcort left England,” Catherine said, “she confided to me that she knew of a certainty that Henry had slept with not only Anne’s sister Mary—which all the world knows—but Anne’s mother as well. My advisers told me that under canon law, this incest would make any marriage between Henry and Anne invalid. Jane gave me a written statement swearing to all that she saw and heard, which I have shown to no one but Cardinal Campeggio. It would bear weight if my husband chooses to forswear Anne.”
“And there is something else,” I added. “Something I myself am prepared to swear. Something I have been keeping hidden in my heart for a long time, waiting for the time when Anne would suffer for the evil she has done.”
I told Catherine the story of my love for Galyon, and Anne’s attempt to bribe him to lie with her so that she would appear to be carrying the king’s child. Of how he confided to me everything Anne said and did, how terrified he was. And then—of how he died. Murdered, I felt sure.
We talked on, of the strong rumors that Anne had arranged the death of Jane Popyngcort, and how Anne had connived with a cook to put poison into Henry Fitzroy’s food.
“She is desperate,” Catherine said. “She will go to any lengths to get what she wants. But she is only making her situation worse. Before long she will be caught, trapped in her own web. That is the way I have always seen her, as an alluring but deadly spider, sitting at the center of her web, waiting for her victims to come to her. Now she herself must be entrapped. And this time she will not escape.”
TWENTY-ONE
That summer King Henry, in the best of spirits and feeling better than he had in some time, threw aside his golden walking stick and went on progress with the men closest to him.
Anne was left at home to sulk, and even Madge Shelton—dimpled, plump Madge who was his favorite playmate—did not come along when the king rode and hunted with the eager fervor of a much younger man through the thick forest, returning each evening with fresh game and a lust for more pleasure.
Week after week the royal progress continued, until at Ned’s invitation the king and his companions came to stay at Wulf Hall, our family home, where the hunting was excellent in our park and nearby woods. It was there, one evening, that King Henry surrounded himself with the men closest to him—Charles Brandon and Thomas Cromwell, my brother and Nicholas Carew, Archbishop Cranmer and other churchmen and attorneys who had played prominent roles in the nullity suit and the breach with Rome.
His purpose, apart from enjoying a night of rousing congeniality, was to bring together those best able to help him in his goal of freeing himself from Anne. And partly because Wulf Hall was my home as much as it was Ned’s, and because the king often said that he trusted me and treated me with exceptional fondness, I was among that group gathered in the great hall, though I sat alone and apart from the others, keeping a respectful distance and not thrusting myself forward as Anne would have done, had she been present.
Even the mighty duke of Norfolk was there that night, though the king had always disliked and distrusted him. The duke had made it known that he considered Anne to be a disgrace to her family and that he was displeased with her—indeed with all his Boleyn in-laws. It was this fissure within the duke’s family, Ned told me, that led the king to bring Norfolk into his inner circle.
Dining at an end, the wine flowed freely and the king offered toast after toast.
“To Coeurdelion!” he cried, honoring his favorite mount who had miraculously survived the killing murrain. “And to many a joust to come!” He drank, and the others joined him. “As you can see, my bad leg is healing—”
“And your third leg too!” came a bawdy voice, making the others laugh loudly. “No matter what some may say!” Anne’s taunts about the king’s lack of virility were well known, and had often been heard and repeated.
“Madge would know! Ask Madge! Where is Madge?”
As the guffaws and raucous jokes began to fly around the room I shrank back into my niche off to the side of where the king stood. I was only too conscious of being the only woman present—and only present because the king had asked me to stay. Embarrassed, I worried that the men, who had already drunk quite a lot, might call for women to be brought in for their pleasure, and an orgy might begin. But before that could happen, the king called for quiet and reached into an inner pocket of his doublet.
“I have here,” he said, “a tragedy. A play I am writing. I have never written a play before. It is about my wife. It is called Jezebel. In it my wife carries on with a hundred men.”
Uproarious laughter greeted this remark. Henry had been vilifying Anne to his friends and councilors for months, so the content of his play came as no surprise.
“And now let me tell you my other good news. Crum here”—he indicated the stout, round-faced Cromwell, who grinned—“has brought me a prize!”
Wide double doors opened, and through them came soldiers leading a short, bob-haired man, bound hand and foot and gagged. He struggled against his captors. He was red-faced from terror.
“See what we have here! A Frenchman!”
Whoops of laughter from the men in the room.
“And not just any Frenchman, but a French cook!”
“Is this one of the hundred men?” I heard Charles Brandon ask. He had recently been appointed Great Master of the King’s Household.
“This miserable wretch is a cook my wife brought from the court of King Francis.” Henry advanced menacingly on the trembling man.
“Imagine what this cook told Crum when he was racked, and stretched, and pulled on the wheel until his limbs were near to being torn from their sockets!” The king paused.
“He confessed that my wife paid him to put a vile Italian concoction in my son’s soup! A poison mixture that killed thr
ee poor beggars at the gate after they ate of the soup and could have killed Henry Fitzroy as well if he hadn’t spat out the awful-tasting stuff!”
“Now then, master cook, how say you to dining on your own Italian dish?”
Henry waved his hand and a tureen was brought, steam rising from the hot liquid inside, and while it was held out to him he took a flask from his pocket and poured the contents into the tureen.
The cook’s gag was torn from his mouth, and the bowl held to his lips.
“Here!” King Henry shouted. “Eat! Enjoy!”
The poor man squirmed and struggled, keeping his lips shut tight, trying to turn his head away from the poisoned liquid. He fought so hard I thought his eyes would pop out of his head. I had to look away.
“Well, go on,” the king taunted, “we’re all waiting!”
Finally he struck the man a blow across the face.
“No? You have no appetite for poison? Then I have no choice but to dispatch you by other means.” Now his voice rose to its loudest, most fearsome pitch. “Have this man boiled in oil!” he shouted.
On the king’s command guardsmen came forward to seize the retching, slobbering man and drag him away, while the other men in the room clapped and whistled their approval.
“My wife,” King Henry was murmuring. “My loving, pure, innocent wife! This is what she has done. This and worse things.”
In the aftermath of this drama Cromwell stood once again.
“Let it be understood by all here present,” Cromwell said, “that we can do nothing to bring Queen Anne to justice while the princess dowager still lives. There must be no unwanted objection to His Majesty’s possible remarriage to a suitable partner.”
“But the princess dowager is frail and ill, is she not, Jane?” the king interjected. “When you visited her, she was in failing health, was she not?”
I spoke up. “She was. She is.”
“She cannot live out the year, would you not agree?”
I shook my head. “I cannot wish her swiftly out of this world, Your Majesty. I can only pray for her, that the Lord’s will be done to preserve her life or take her unto Himself.”
The king chuckled and walked over to embrace me fondly. “Spoken like a good daughter of the church, little Jane. Ever loyal and true to your former mistress.”
To the others he said, “Crum is right, we must wait for the princess dowager to leave this earth—which should be soon.”
* * *
But as it happened, Catherine lived on into the winter, and while she yet lived, there took place another startling shift in the expectations of the court.
Changes came tumbling at us quickly, from all sides, as that year of 1535 drew to a close. King Henry, in a sudden reversal that left all his advisers stunned—even my canny brother Ned—made a bargain (a cynical bargain, to be sure) with the emperor and allowed his alliance with the French to fray. Anne trumpeted in triumph that she was pregnant once again. The great oak in Severnake Forest, the tree many said had been planted by William the Norman nearly five hundred years before, fell to earth during a thunderstorm. And most startling of all—Madge Shelton became engaged, not to the king as everyone expected, but to Sir John Everthorpe, an aged man of seventy-one who possessed only a modest estate.
During the Advent season a rumor spread rapidly throughout the court that when King Henry summoned Madge’s father and mother into his presence and told them that he intended to make Madge his next queen, they cautioned him not to. With the greatest respect, they confided to him that marriage to their daughter would only lead to disappointment. They had consulted midwives, they said, and the midwives had concluded that Madge was not fertile. She would never bear an heir to the throne. Shortly after this interview Madge’s betrothal to Sir John was announced. As the elderly Sir John already had five sons and several dozen grandchildren, Madge’s infertility was not an impediment to her future marriage.
“It is all a ruse, to be sure,” Bridget told me. “What really happened was that with all the plotting and intrigue around Anne, Madge decided she had no stomach for becoming the king’s next victim. The way she put it was, if the king could throw away two wives, why not three? Besides, she said, the king stinks of the sores in his leg, and of the medicines he takes. And he wears spiders to bed. So she got her parents to find her another husband.”
All this happened while Anne was boasting that there was a prince in her swelling belly, and Henry was sometimes brooding, sometimes laughing with his fellow conspirators and joking about who the real father of Anne’s child might be—if indeed she was carrying a child at all. I did not know what to think. Was the king the father of Anne’s child, despite his insistence that he was not? Those of us in her household did believe that she was pregnant, but I dreaded that she might give birth to another monstrous child. And I wanted no part in her coming delivery.
To say that that Advent season was an awkward one would be far too restrained; it was like the ominous lull before the great storm, a storm that ultimately broke over the court with a fury nothing could tame.
But during that lull my life changed, and all, it seemed, in the twinkling of an eye.
I was spending Christmastide with my family at Wulf Hall when, within days after learning that Madge Shelton was not fit to become his queen, King Henry came to visit me, bringing me a gift—a long rope of gleaming pearls.
“Dear Jane, how charming you look,” he began as he placed the lovely pearls around my neck. “These bring out the delicate fairness of your skin.” He had never before complimented me on my looks, only on my virtues. And he had never before brought me a gift. I was on my guard at once.
“We have often spoken freely to one another, Jane. I must do so now. Tell me, truthfully, if the royal midwives were to examine you, would they say that you were fertile?”
At first I thought his words must be some sort of outlandish jest. I did not know what to say. I straightened my spine. I straightened my skirt.
“Come, Jane. You must know.”
“I have no reason to think they would not,” I managed to reply, after looking at the king in puzzlement for another minute.
“I need not tell you why I am asking. I must have a son. I imagined Madge as his mother. Now all that has changed. Madge will not be my wife, and I must go in search of another.
“Here is the vision that haunts me,” he continued. “That keeps me wakeful during the long nights. May I share it with you?”
I nodded.
“I die,” he began.
“What?”
“In this vision, I die. I could, you know, suddenly, at any time. My leg—it could swell and make me very ill, so ill I couldn’t breathe. Or I could have an accident while hunting, or I might lead my armies into battle and be killed.
“After I die, Henry Fitzroy reigns,” he went on. “But he is weak, he coughs constantly, and besides, everything seems to frighten him. In my vision, he dies soon after I do. Princess Mary then rules—Elizabeth is far too young—with the imperial army keeping her on the throne. And she overturns everything I have worked for these last ten years. She returns England to popish dominion! She damns my memory! My people hate me!”
“But sire, they hate you now!” I heard myself say, surprised at my own boldness. “Especially those who heeded the prophecies of the Nun of Kent. They whisper that you are the Mouldwarp, the evil bane of England foretold in myth. As long as you and I are speaking freely, then I must tell you, your people still obey you, for the most part, but more and more they are longing for—for a different king.”
“All the more reason why I need a strong son. To give them hope.”
He took my hand in both of his.
“Jane, can you give me a son? Will you?”
Fearful, I quickly took back my hand, and said the first thing that came into my mind—which was that I would need to talk to Ned.
“I can tell you what your brother will say. He will congratulate you on your cleverness in e
ntrapping the king.”
“But I have done nothing to entrap you, Your Majesty. The truth is, I am afraid of you. And I have never thought of marrying except out of love.”
“Don’t you love me a little bit? I find I have become quite fond of you.”
“I have only loved two men in my life, Will Dormer and another who I mourn and who will never return to me. I would be untruthful if I told you I could love you as a husband.”
“Perhaps fondness can be enough then.”
* * *
It took me several hours to begin to regain my composure after my conversation with the king. I had never imagined that I would hear him ask me to become his wife. Me. Jane of Wulf Hall. Sensible Jane. Jane who was not a beauty. Jane who was nearly thirty years old.
Jane who King Henry trusted.
I shook my head, as if trying to restore my reasonableness, my sanity.
And after several hours the idea did not, after all, seem so entirely unreasonable. Assuming I was able to have a healthy child, I might indeed make the king a good wife. I had no noble lineage, but I had no overbearing relatives either. I was not shrill or demanding. I knew the king well and we had never clashed. I would be a quiet, reassuring presence in his life, and unlike Anne, I would be trustworthy.
Yet I wondered, should I do what Madge Shelton had done and find a way to say no to the honor the king was offering me? Was she wiser than I?
So many thoughts rose up to alarm me—memories of King Henry shouting at Catherine, treating her rudely. Denying her comforts in her last illness. He could be so vengeful, so fearsome! Anger seemed to rise in him like a sudden storm, and when angry, he could be cruel. I thought of the ghastly scene I had witnessed, when the king tried to make the wretched French cook drink poison, and then had the man dragged off to be boiled alive. I thought of the executions of monks and friars and other holy men, men of conscience, who had defied the royal will.
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