Jane Seymour, the Haunted Queen

by Alison Weir

  He regarded her fiercely. “Jane, what happened with the Dormers brought home to us the need to remove you from the Queen’s service. We have our pride, and I will not have you rejected again when another suitable match presents itself. The Lady Anne has been told that you came home of your own free will—”

  “I did not!” Jane interrupted. Father raised a finger.

  “It is best that she thinks you did. Even with Sir Francis’s recommendation, she could hardly be expected to accept someone who is overtly sympathetic to Queen Katherine. I am ambitious for my children, Jane. Lizzie has married a man high in royal favor and done well for herself. Edward and Thomas are making a success of their lives and look set for advancement. Placed in the Lady Anne’s household, you will have every opportunity of making a good marriage. Be pragmatic, girl. Think of your family.”

  Jane bit her tongue. She was wondering how she was going to be civil to the Lady Anne, let alone bring glory on her own family. There had been no conflict of loyalties in Queen Katherine’s household, only a sense that she was doing the right thing.

  “You will go to court, and that’s an end to it,” Father decreed, and she knew herself defeated.

  * * *

  —

  Mother shook her head as she inspected Jane’s gowns, holding them up one by one and frowning. “These have seen service for some years and need replacing,” she decreed. “Look how that silk has rubbed. The Lady Anne is a leader of fashion, and you must be provided for accordingly.” The tailor and the mercer were summoned, and Jane stood impatiently while Mother hummed and hawed, finally choosing several bolts of material and ordering ribbons, braid, pins and Holland cloth for shifts.

  “These hoods could be refurbished,” she pronounced. “No, they are too worn. Shall we order you French ones?”

  The Lady Anne favored French hoods. Jane briefly imagined herself wearing the halo-shaped headdress that daringly exposed the hair. She did not want to be identified in any way with Anne.

  “I prefer English hoods,” she said, picking up a gable-shaped example in black velvet and admiring it.

  “Very well, we’ll have two of each,” Mother told the tailor.

  Jane looked on, too weary to protest. The last week had been deeply distressing. She missed Queen Katherine and the other maids-of-honor, who had been her close companions for years, and she was worried about what the future held for the Queen. Going to serve the woman who was determined to supplant her made Jane feel that she was contributing to Katherine’s misfortunes.

  The weariness persisted. One day she fell asleep as she sat with Mother and Dorothy stitching the body linen she would take to court. Mother shook her awake and felt her brow. She frowned.

  “You’re burning up, child! You had best get to bed. I’ll bring you a hot posset with some feverfew. Help her, Dorothy.”

  Jane was grateful to slide between the sheets and sleep. When she awoke, she had a rasping sore throat, she ached all over and there was a strange pain in her eyes.

  Mother was sitting beside her. “You’ve slept for six hours,” she said. She rested her hand on Jane’s forehead. “Still hot. I’ve sent for the physician.”

  He came that evening with his leeches and bled Jane from her arm—“To remove the bad blood and balance the humors,” he said to Mother. He gazed at her urine for a long time, then examined her throat and neck. “Her glands are swollen,” he said. “You must reduce the fever. Keep her warm, but not too warm. Continue with the herbal essences and give plenty to drink. I will return in a week to see how she does.”

  Lady Seymour went into action. When Jane was not asleep or wandering in her mind, which she was for much of the time, she was aware of Mother moving silently around the bedchamber, stoking up the fire, sponging her down, lifting her up to sip drinks, spooning down honey to ease her throat, or just sitting watchfully beside her. Sometimes Dorothy took over, so that Mother could get some rest, and one evening Father sat with Jane and read to her from an old bestiary she had loved as a child. It soothed her to hear once more the old legends about lions, unicorns, gryphons and panthers. It took her back to a world that was less complicated, in which there were no impossible moral choices.

  Father told her she must not worry; he had written to inform the Lady Anne of her illness, and received a gracious response telling him that Jane was to come to court only when she was fit enough to do so. Jane prayed that would not be for some time—and it seemed that God heard her, because although the fever and the sore throat abated within three weeks, she could not shake off the debilitating fatigue, and had to keep to her bed. Mother sought to build her up with heartening food and her own special cordials, but Jane’s recovery was slow.

  In the spring, there was momentous news. Father heard it proclaimed by the King’s own heralds in the marketplace at Amesbury, and came cantering home to tell them. Archbishop Cranmer had ruled that the King’s marriage to the Lady Katherine was null and void. The King had married the Lady Anne, and that marriage was good and valid. The Lady Anne was now queen of England.

  Jane wept into her pillow, crying for Katherine, to whom this would be heavy tidings indeed, and for herself, for in serving Anne as queen, her betrayal of Katherine would be the greater. She was appalled that the King had gone ahead and done all this without the Pope’s sanction. It was sheer wickedness. Surely his Holiness would speak now!

  But Father was jubilant. “It will be a much greater honor to serve Queen Anne now than it would have been before,” he exulted, ignoring Jane’s wan disapproval, and hastened away to write again to the new Queen to assure her that her maid-of-honor was on the mend and eager to attend her.

  * * *

  —

  “It’s wrong, and I don’t want any part in it!” Jane said weakly.

  “Hush, child.” Mother was sitting beside her. “These are weighty matters, beyond the understanding of us women.”

  “Oh, I think Anne Boleyn understands them very well. Certainly the good Queen does.” Jane’s heart was pounding sluggishly. This was not doing her any good.

  Mother patted her hand. “Just leave the arguments to those who are qualified to judge, and keep your private thoughts to yourself. You must think of your father’s position.”

  Normally, when Mother spoke thus, it was enough to quieten her children, but Jane had to say what was on her mind. “Mother, forgive me, but I cannot forget my loyalty to the true Queen, who was a kind mistress to me, and is patient and good. I can never accept Anne Boleyn in her place. I may be a woman, but I know God’s law, which is that a man may have but one wife at a time.”

  “Enough!” Mother chided her. “I’m sure we all share your sentiments, but it is folly nowadays to speak thus. None of us has the power to change things. Keep your true allegiance in your heart, and utter no word of it. That’s wise advice I’m giving you.”

  Jane subsided and closed her eyes. Mother was right; and the way she felt now, she needed no more heavy matters to cope with.

  * * *

  —

  Lizzie wrote from Jersey, whither she had traveled while Jane was in the depths of her delirium. She had been safely delivered of a son and named him Henry, in honor of the King. He had been born in the castle at Mont Orgeuil, where Lizzie was settling in happily, in great state, as wife of the Governor. Mother and Father were thrilled to be grandparents again, and Mother immediately set to work to make some garments for the baby’s layette, for dispatch to Jersey.

  There was good news from Harry, too. On the recommendation of Bishop Gardiner, he had secured a post at court, having been appointed sewer extraordinary in the King’s Privy Chamber, where his brothers were serving.

  “What’s a sewer?” Dorothy asked, when Mother and Father came, rejoicing, to Jane’s chamber to impart these glad tidings.

  “A gentleman who waits at the King’s table,” Father said proud
ly.

  But the news was not all good. Soon afterward, Edward wrote to say that Queen Katherine—or the Princess Dowager of Wales, as she was henceforth to be called—had refused to accept Archbishop Cranmer’s ruling, or to relinquish her title.

  “She still maintains that she is the King’s true wife, and will abide by no decision save that of the Pope,” Jane read, after Mother had brought her the letter. She lay there trembling. How could she ever bring herself to call Katherine “Princess Dowager”? To Jane, she would always be the true Queen. Her soul seethed in anger against the upstart who had taken her place.

  By June, when Edward and Thomas sent home enthusiastic accounts of Anne Boleyn’s coronation, Jane was well enough to sit up in a chair for short periods. She was shocked to read that the new Queen, six months pregnant, had brazenly gone to her crowning in a white gown that symbolized virginity. She must have been with child already when the King married her, or maybe they had married in January, as gossip had hinted. Even then, she must have conceived before…

  Father had done the arithmetic, but he took a more pragmatic view. “The King desperately needs an heir,” he said, taking his seat by the bed. “That’s what this Great Matter is all about—getting a son. Maybe his Grace wanted to be sure she could breed before marrying her, after all the to-do.”

  “But to go to her crowning all dressed in white—for shame!”

  “Jane,” Father exhorted, “you must understand that, in a queen, white symbolizes moral purity, as does loose hair. Edward says Queen Anne sat on hers, it is so long.”

  “Forgive me,” Jane could not help herself, “but I cannot associate Anne Boleyn with moral purity.”

  “Enough!” Father said. “That’s treason, and I will not have it spoken in my house. I fear your illness has crazed you.”

  Jane lay back on the pillows and closed her eyes. “It seems to me it is the rest of the world that is crazed,” she murmured.

  “Hush,” he reprimanded, more gently. “We must all make the best of things.”

  * * *

  —

  Only when summer was at its height did Jane start to feel stronger and begin to put back on the weight she had lost. She spent a lot of time sitting in My Young Lady’s Garden, enjoying the fresh air that Mother deemed so healthful. She reread the romances she loved, practiced on her lute and did some embroidery. There was no need to work on her court attire: Mother had it all finished and stacked away in a traveling chest, ready for Jane’s departure.

  By September, Jane was fully restored to health, but by then Queen Anne had gone into confinement at Greenwich, and all England was poised to hear news of the birth of a prince. A Mrs. Marshall, Mistress of the Maids, wrote to Jane to say that she should come to court after her Grace had been churched and returned to public life.

  The King had commanded that prayers be offered up throughout the land for the Queen’s safe delivery. On her knees in the family chapel, Jane joined in through gritted teeth, although she could not wish ill on an innocent babe. She suspected that Father James, old and creaking in the joints now, felt the same, but he dissembled well. Father, however, was hearty in his supplications to the Almighty.

  And then God spoke and made His displeasure at the King’s marriage clear. The child was a princess.

  * * *

  —

  Jane’s departure for the court could be delayed no longer. In vain did she protest that she was still suffering from fatigue. Sir John, knowing her to be recovered, refused to listen. On a chilly morning in early October, Sir Francis Bryan arrived at Wulfhall, having offered to escort Jane himself to Greenwich. Reluctantly, she bade farewell to her family, and soon they were on the road toward London.

  Bryan had changed. There was a new gravitas about him that rode well with the lines that had appeared on his weather-beaten face. His one eye was as sardonic as ever, but he was more serious now than he had been wont. As they rode together along lanes bordered by trees aflame with autumnal glory, he asked Jane if she was looking forward to serving the Queen.

  She paused too long before she opened her mouth to answer.

  “I can guess what you would like to say,” he said. “In truth, she is not popular, neither with the people, nor at court. Oh, they all fall over themselves to fawn upon her and seek her favor, but they do not like her. Some would declare their allegiance to the old Queen, if they dared, but they have been silenced for the most part.” He glanced behind him, ensuring that their two grooms and Jane’s maid were out of earshot.

  “And what do you think of Queen Anne?” Jane asked, feeling distaste at calling the woman by that title.

  “I was one of her earliest supporters, as you know,” he said. “I was also one of her chief favorites. But I cannot say I have much love for her now. She is become a shrew, with her overweening pride, and she knows not how to behave like a queen. People are drawing unflattering comparisons behind her back. I think even the King has his concerns, but he is still determined to do everything for her. He’s gone so far, he cannot lose face.”

  This was news indeed. “But he turned the world upside down to marry her!”

  “And he has since found out that all cats are gray in the dark,” Bryan said grimly. “He was unfaithful while she was pregnant, and when she upbraided him for it, he told her she must shut her eyes and endure as more worthy persons had done.”

  Jane’s eyes widened at that. She should have guessed that it would be only a matter of time before the King compared his second wife to his first, and found Anne wanting.

  “Sometimes I think he is still in thrall to her,” Bryan continued. “At others, I wonder. If she gives him a son, her position will be assured; if not…” His voice tailed off. “His Grace put on a brave front when the Princess Elizabeth was born, but in private he showed himself deeply disappointed and frustrated. I, for one, would not be saddened if Madam Anne were to fall.”

  “Nor I,” Jane murmured. “My dearest wish is to see the Queen restored.”

  Bryan shook his head. “That will never happen, I promise you.”

  * * *

  —

  Jane walked through the Queen’s apartments at Greenwich looking around her in astonishment. They were so altered—and so much more magnificent than in Katherine’s day. Gold leaf gleamed from ceilings and woodwork. Fabulous tapestries lined the walls. The hearths were laid with costly Seville tiles, and the rich furnishings were in the antique style. Henry had been lavish. Servants wearing Queen Anne’s livery of blue and purple, their doublets embroidered with her motto, “The Most Happy,” were going importantly about their business, and one ushered Jane and Sir Francis to her privy chamber. As they crossed her empty chamber of presence, with its rich chair and canopy of estate bearing the arms of England on a dais at the far end, they caught up with a small procession of women.

  “My lady mother!” Bryan exclaimed, and the lady at its head turned around. In her arms she cradled a tiny swaddled baby wrapped in a rich robe, and wearing a bonnet banded with cloth of gold. Bryan bowed. “Jane, this is the Princess Elizabeth.” At his urgent nod, Jane dipped in a hasty curtsey. “Mother, may I present Mistress Jane Seymour, who has come to serve the Queen?” Jane bobbed again. “My mother is the Princess’s lady mistress, Jane, and governs her nursery.”

  Lady Bryan smiled graciously. She had a fine-boned face with twinkling eyes and an air of serenity about her, and when she greeted Jane, her diction bespoke breeding. It was easy to see why the King had appointed her. Jane remembered that she had once been lady mistress to the young Princess Mary.

  She peered at the infant. It looked much like any other baby, with its chubby cheeks and dimpled mouth, its blue eyes and fair lashes. It was hard to believe that the King had put the souls of all his subjects in peril for this tiny scrap of humanity.

  “Her little Grace is going to visit her lady mother.” Lad
y Bryan smiled as the doors to the privy chamber opened for her.

  Jane and Bryan followed her in and waited to be announced. The privy chamber was sumptuous: the ceiling was decorated with gilded bosses between a lattice of white battens; costly tiles had been laid in the fireplaces and alcoves, and everywhere there was ornate gilded furniture and vast tapestries graced the walls.

  Jane saw Anne Boleyn seated amid her ladies and a great gathering of courtiers. Lady Bryan was placing the babe in her arms, and she bent to kiss its head. Her attendants and courtiers crowded around, cooing at the child and praising it to the skies. Then Anne saw that Jane and Bryan were waiting, and ordered that the babe be laid on a large cushion at her feet. She nodded for them to come forward.

  In the two years since Jane had last seen her, Anne had grown hard-faced and her eyes—once her chief claim to beauty—were now shadowed and watchful. Her sumptuous crimson gown, rich furs and satin French hood could not compensate for the loss of her youth and the lines of discontent around her mouth. And yet the men flocked around her.

  Anne smiled as Jane curtseyed and Bryan bowed, but the smile did not reach her eyes. “Francis, welcome.” She inclined her head regally. “And Jane Seymour—I remember you from the days when we both served the Princess Dowager. Welcome back to court.” She held out a beringed hand. Jane bent her lips to it, hoping that Anne could not perceive the hostility she had aroused by giving Katherine that hateful title. She rose, keeping her eyes demurely downcast.

  “My chamberlain will administer your oath of allegiance when he returns this evening,” Anne told her. Her manner was friendly, but there was a brittleness about her, and no wonder, for after all that had passed, she had not borne the hoped-for prince. “This is a godly household and a religious one,” she said. “While you are in my service, you will show a virtuous example, and eschew infamous and lewd persons, on pain of instant dismissal.”