by Diane Haeger
“Now, you see, that is precisely what you do not want to do when dealing with our sovereign. ’Tis the hunt he favors, and in this case the queen is the one who is hunting Smeaton,” he joked. “She and her brother are so close that Rochford is jealous of the attention she gives to other men, and Rochford’s wife is jealous of him caring more about his sister. It really is all quite comically incendiary.”
“Do you truly think so? I assumed she was only playing at one of those infamous games of courtly love of which everyone speaks.”
“Perhaps it is so. And yet timing is everything, they say, and a husband who seeks a reason to be rid of a beautiful wife usually does not have far to look. Apparently, that is not a lesson this queen has ever learned.”
“You believe the queen is with Master Smeaton?” Jane asked with a little gasp of genuine surprise.
“He would not be the first, and I doubt he will be the last, if she actually manages to keep her crown.”
“You do not believe she will?”
“Is that very question not where you come in?” Carew smiled and turned his attention back to Smeaton, a slim, dark-haired youth with penetrating aqua-colored eyes. His attractiveness was obvious, even to Jane. “The king has asked me to keep an eye on you in his absence, and your brothers have asked me to counsel you in behavior to win the sovereign without the use of outright seduction.”
Edward nodded in agreement. “I believe he will try to bed our sister upon his return from London,” he interjected, leaning forward to stay out of earshot of the queen.
“His Majesty vowed he would not press me,” Jane defended a little tepidly.
“Yes, that would be the likely course of events,” Carew agreed with Edward.
“Some women have done well by it,” Thomas observed, also leaning in to join the conversation. “Mistress Blount is now a countess, after all.”
“And my own charming wife lives in the lap of luxury,” Carew said with self-effacing humor.
“But for every one of those, there are a dozen Mary Boleyns who believed the way to his heart was between his legs,” Edward observed.
Vulgar but true, thought Jane.
As a lively tune was struck, Anne joined Smeaton to sing a duet. George Boleyn appeared at their table then, and Jane was not certain what he might have overheard.
“Enjoying yourselves, are you?” he asked rhetorically, and Jane felt her heart beat a little faster, his acid tone apparent to them all. “I am surprised at you, Carew. You know what happens when you lie down with dogs.”
“I have known you long enough to realize the result is fleas,” Nicholas countered without missing a beat.
“Forgive me.” Boleyn bowed dramatically. “I had forgotten what liberty the king’s Gentleman of the Chamber feels he is afforded with the queen’s brother.”
Anger kindled brightly between the two former friends over the post that George Boleyn had wanted but Carew had won. George leaned nearer to make himself heard over the spirited music and Anne’s off-key singing. “Are you certain you want to cast your lot in with her?” he asked rudely, glancing at Jane. “Nicholas, be reasonable. We were the best of friends. You were there from the beginning. You saw how it was with my sister and the king. He sacrificed everything for her.”
Carew leveled his eyes in a serious way that Jane had never seen from the usually carefree courtier. “It appears to be a decision His Majesty regrets more with each passing day.”
“This little mouse will not supplant my sister!” Boleyn declared angrily. “No matter what the trio of you do to put her forward!” Boleyn’s eyes swiftly darkened in the silence. He steadied himself, then added, “Well, then. I see that our friendship has indeed come to an end. I am sorry about that, Nicholas. And believe me, I am a much more agreeable friend than I am an enemy.”
Anne was flirting even more boldly now with Mark Smeaton, not seeming to care who saw them. Her wounded pride was making her careless, Jane thought. That would never be her. Every single step she took from here forward would be planned and plotted. The best part was that no one expected anything like ambition or skill of the little mouse, and Jane found that she quite liked it that way.
Jane returned to her room late after the banquet. She was exhausted, since it took a great deal more energy to maintain the image of demure innocence now that it did not come naturally to her. Edward’s wife, Anne, had come with her, and she sank onto the bed as Jane drew off her own hood. She went then and opened the carved chest at the foot of the bed where she kept all of her ornamented headdresses. She was preparing to toss it aside with the others when she caught sight of William’s blue kerchief from long ago, hidden beneath the layers of fabric.
Her heart surged in bittersweet remembrance, as it always did when she thought of him or anything that had happened between them. Anne followed her gaze to the chest, and her expression became sympathetic.
“If you are planning to master the art of being unreadable, sister, you have much more to learn.”
Jane tossed her hood on top of everything, burying the kerchief, along with the memories. “Just missing home a little, I suppose,” she lied. “It has been a long day.”
“Edward told me about the boy from Wiltshire. I hear he is at court in the employ of Master Cromwell now, is he not? That must be awkward for you since you were engaged to him for a brief time.”
“My brother would do well to keep quiet about things he does not understand,” she said more harshly than she meant to.
“Forgive me,” Anne replied. “I should not have pried like that. We do not know each other that well yet, after all. I only thought perhaps, because our two families—”
“’Tis you who must forgive me,” Jane said with a sigh. “I am unaccustomed to much of what has happened to me these past few days, and even though I believed I was handling it well, I clearly am not.”
“’Tis that Dormer fellow, isn’t it? The one married to Sir William Sidney’s daughter.” Jane sank wearily onto the floor in front of the open chest without responding. “I have seen more than once the way he looks at you.”
Jane wanted to tell her. She ached to tell someone, especially another woman who might understand the journey her heart had been on with William all these years. Slowly she drew out the kerchief, pressing it to her breast as if she could take in the memories that the touch of that fabric alone brought to her. Then she looked back at Anne. She was pretty, Jane thought, in an elegant, aristocratic way that made true empathy unlikely for someone like her. Yet, still, Jane felt she must tell someone.
“I have never spoken aloud of him to any woman.”
“There is a first time for everything,” Anne said with soft encouragement.
“I am going to need a stout bit of ale to even attempt it. But things have become so complicated here lately.” Jane pressed the kerchief back into the carved chest.
“We’ve got a flagon here of the king’s best wine. Will that do?”
Jane cringed a little at that thought, considering she was about to share the history of her great love for another man while not only drinking the king’s finest, but wearing his image across her heart as well. And yet, no matter what Henry had awakened in her, how she did long for William still! Jane doubted that would ever change, no matter what the future held.
“I cannot find a way to speak about it just now,” she finally said when she knew that the words and the full depth of their meaning would not come to her. “But perhaps one day.”
“I would welcome that, Jane,” said her sister-in-law, the only woman in Anne’s retinue she could even partially trust. “And I will be there if you do. For now we must make certain that the king does not see the exchange of glances between the two of you that I have. The last man who was caught—the poet Thomas Wyatt—was banished from court and has not been back since. I do not suppose things will bode any better for Master Smeaton once word of tonight’s behavior becomes more widely known. We should all be well warned by that.”
Two days later, Thomas Cromwell sat motionless, the royal proclamation hanging from his veined hand. So it had begun in earnest, William thought, as he watched his employer. Both tried to make sense of the king’s order that Cromwell and his staff vacate his hard-won rooms down the all-important connecting corridor from the king’s official apartments. He knew that Cromwell must handle his public reaction with dignity and aplomb, for there would be no changing the command since it involved a woman. He had told William that he had learned this lesson well from his old tutor, Cardinal Wolsey, and feared doing otherwise.
“I have had these rooms as royal secretary for many years,” Cromwell said flatly, turning his haggard expression from William and gazing out the window down onto the king’s knot garden.
“Does it say who is to take them, sir?” William asked cautiously.
“His Majesty’s Chief Gentleman of the Chamber and his wife, apparently.”
“Edward Seymour?”
Cromwell’s tired eyes were full of disappointment. “That surprises you when everyone at court whispers of the king’s growing attraction to Seymour’s plain-faced sister?”
William betrayed nothing of his feelings for Jane. Though he was well apprised of the Seymours’ ambitions, he was shocked that their plans were coming to fruition so rapidly. Suddenly, he was not so certain that he could go along with them.
“The queen shall not be amused by this turn of events,” Cromwell blandly warned.
The consequences of the king’s newest obsession seemed to William like a gathering storm from which none of them could escape.
“Would you excuse me, sir?” William asked suddenly, cutting off the encounter. He knew where he must go, and he must go there now. Before Cromwell could respond, William bowed to him, then turned and very quickly went out of the room.
Jane opened the door and stepped back. His was the last face she expected to see in her private rooms in the daylight hours, and she reacted to his appearance with a little gasp.
“I must speak to you,” William said urgently, threatening to burst through the doorway without invitation. His expression was filled with panic.
“I have company,” Jane managed to respond, backing away so he could see Edward’s wife, Anne, perched on Jane’s bed. She regarded William with a curious smile.
“Well, now, this is awkward,” Anne remarked.
William looked at Anne; then his gaze slid back to Jane.
“I would not come here if it were not important,” he said.
“I can keep a secret.” Anne smiled.
“I trust her,” Jane confirmed. “Have we any other choice?”
He came into the room then, and Jane quickly closed the door. He loomed before her, tall and powerful, full of unspoken desire. Jane blushed at his nearness for what it always awakened inside of her.
“Master Cromwell is being moved from his apartments, and they are doing it this evening in the dead of night to avoid a scandal. Your brother Edward and you, Lady Anne, will be moved in directly afterward.”
Jane felt a jolt of surprise. Henry had told her many things in the times they had spent together, and yet still she had not expected this. At least, not so soon. Jane was not certain she was ready to play on such a grand field, feeling after so much work that this could become her undoing.
“Oh, dear.” Anne covered her mouth to hold back a smile. “A scandal seems unavoidable.”
“He wants you, Jane,” William said desperately.
“And I want him. If it comes to that,” she shot back too quickly. “There is really nothing else for me anyway,” she amended, feeling guilty even as the words left her lips.
William burst forward then and gripped her arms tightly as they hung at her sides. “’Tis not too late. You can stop this!”
“Why would I? You have a wife already.”
He hung his head, obviously stung by her clipped tone and the harsh truth in it. Jane looked at him in silence, wishing he would say something to argue that point, yet knowing there were no words that would make any difference.
“Might we speak privately for a moment?” he asked futilely as Anne arched her brows at him.
“I cannot see how any good would come of that,” she said flatly.
William shot a quick glance at the door; then he looked desperately back at Jane. She could feel the way his heart was torn in two. “What do you want, Jane? Tell me that.”
He was pleading with her. Pleading for something that could never be.
“What I want does not matter. It never has.”
“It always has,” he corrected her sadly. “It always will.”
The energy between them was a charged thing, and Jane felt her heart beating very fast. William reached up tentatively and lightly brushed Jane’s cheek with the back of his hand, in full view of Jane’s sister-in-law. “You have always had the most extraordinary skin. The first time I touched you, I remember thinking it was like gossamer,” he said, his voice tinged with sadness. “Be careful, won’t you?”
“I have my brothers and Master Carew to watch out for me,” she replied haltingly, trying to be optimistic. Yet both of them knew what danger lay in wait for her in the coming days.
“Then be happy. You so richly deserve that.”
“I do intend to try.”
“I will be around as much as I can if you need me.”
“I wish you would not. Seeing you only makes it more difficult.” She had not expected it, but her eyes filled with tears as the words left her lips.
William paused for another moment. “Then I shall do what I can to contribute to your happiness.”
As he left her in the doorway, Jane found herself anxious for the king’s return to Richmond. She certainly felt safer when he was near.
Or was it love?
Early one afternoon, Jane sat in the queen’s presence chamber at a card table of carved oak, along with Edward; his wife, Anne; Thomas; and Nicholas and Elizabeth Carew. As bright winter light streamed in through the diamond-shaped windowpanes, casting jewels against the tapestry-covered walls, they played another game of primero. While Jane was required to be present as a lady-in-waiting, she did her best these days until the king’s return from London to make herself scarce in her duties, particularly as the queen was often in a foul humor, unless Mark Smeaton or her brother, George, was with her.
The king’s most recent mistress, Margaret Shelton, was scheduled to marry Sir Henry Norris in the spring, and Anne seemed to delight in flirting with him right in front of her own attendant as a way to pass the time. She was in an adjoining room now with the two courtiers.
Turnabout, in Anne Boleyn’s world, had always been fair play.
As Carew dealt the next hand of cards, they could hear Anne’s throaty yet girlish giggle through the walls.
“Smeaton and Norris would do well to take care when the king returns,” Thomas observed. “Do neither of them see how the winds of change have been stirred?”
“Do keep your voice down. You sound like a silly child,” Edward snapped in a condescending tone.
“I would prefer childish to arrogant,” Thomas retorted.
“Gentlemen, enough!” Carew intervened. “This is not a game we play against each other.”
There had never been an outright display of sibling rivalry between them before, and it surprised Jane. After all, did they not have the same goal in mind?
“I only meant these are uncertain times, even for the queen,” Thomas explained.
“We know what you meant,” Edward pushed.
“Edward, please,” Anne said, stilling her husband with a gentle hand on his arm. “There is no need for us to fight among ourselves.”
Jane sensed someone enter the room behind her, and she turned to see Cromwell with William Dormer, having come to play cards with the others. Cromwell wore an unadorned black coat over his growing girth; William presented a stark contrast to his mentor in a puff-sleeved doublet and trunk hose of blue and gol
d-striped satin. When Anne glanced at her, Jane quickly lowered her gaze, as was her custom. Edward, however, saw the exchange.
“What is it?”
“It is nothing, my dear, truly,” Anne said.
“Do not tell me that! The greatest care must be taken by all of us now. One false move could spell disaster,” he whispered furiously just as the king’s private page, Francis Weston, who always traveled with Henry, approached the table. Wearing the royal livery of green velvet with a Tudor rose emblazoned on his doublet, Weston bowed to Jane. As he did, the double doors were opened by two guards, and the queen stormed in. Margaret Wyatt and Lady Rochford were with her. Biting back a little smile as she curtsied along with the others, Jane wondered what drama was about to unfold.
Her smile fell quickly when Weston offered to Jane his gloved hand, which contained a letter. The folded vellum was stamped with the king’s seal. In his other hand was a velvet pouch clinking with coins. From the corner of her eye, Jane could see Anne’s approach. She heard Elizabeth Carew’s little intake of breath, and she could sense her brothers’ trepidation.
Jane was at a loss. If she accepted these items, she was making a public statement about her intentions with another woman’s husband. The minute she did, Anne would become the scorned woman, and Jane would become the aggressor. Without Henry here to protect her, the danger was great, especially with Anne’s contingent of supporters surrounding her.
This was about to be the performance of Jane’s life.
“His Gracious Majesty bids me to give you these, mistress, with his compliments, and instructs you to respond to his words after you have read them so that I may return to him at York Place with something to warm his heart,” Weston explained.
Anne and her retinue were only steps away. Neither William nor Cromwell moved. Jane’s heart thumped with dread. It felt as if she were diving off a cliff as she fell dramatically to her knees before Weston.
