by Diane Haeger
The folds of Edward’s velvet cape fluttered against Thomas’s knees as they walked at a clip that was near a run. Edward cast open the door with great force, and Jane whirled around, startled enough that the paper in her hand fluttered onto the Turkish carpet beneath her slippered feet.
“Here to enjoy one last moment in these rooms, are you, before we are all cast from court?” Edward petulantly asked.
“Edward,” Thomas cautioned.
“You have had one task all your life, only one, and you could not fulfill even that, Jane.”
“I really think that is enough, Edward,” Thomas tried again, facing fraternal ire that was decades old and deep.
“You had it all in your mousy little fingers: a new life, riches, and the king at your feet, and you handed him back to his wife on a platter!”
“I cannot keep that which belongs to another, and I did not intend to be a plaything,” Jane replied defensively.
“And where would the queen be if she had adopted that passive stance? She fought for him!” Edward raged.
“I am nothing like Anne Boleyn,” Jane countered in a tone that was firm enough to surprise both of her elder brothers. Thomas could tell Edward was taken aback because he went silent for a moment, which was not at all his custom when he was angry.
“You well could have used what you had a bit more boldly,” he finally said angrily. “Certainly better than you did. Now we are all at a loss. We Seymours made a strong stand against the Boleyns, and now they will want to completely vanquish us!”
“Not if we vanquish them first,” Jane returned, which shocked Thomas. He had never heard that confident tone in Jane’s normally meek voice. But there was something more, something in her eyes, as she motioned with her gaze to the letter lying at her feet. Thomas bent down to pick it up as Edward went to a table set with crystal and silver wine decanters and a collection of goblets. He filled one with ruby liquid for himself and took a sip, steeling himself.
“We shall need to make a plan. Salvage what we can of our dignity, at least. Humility will be the key. Especially with that woman, the queen…,” Edward muttered.
As Thomas scanned the letter, he felt the blood drain from his face. It was the last thing he expected to read.
“Edward, perhaps you should have a look at this,” Thomas offered, extending the letter between them.
“We cannot be bothered with our sister’s drivel just now, with our family’s welfare on the line.”
Jane and Thomas remained silent until Edward finally took the missive from his brother’s hand. After a cursory glance at the words, Edward’s expression turned incredulous.
“Is this…recent?” Edward asked her in a breathless tone.
“’Twas waiting for me today.” She held out the signet ring, wrought of Spanish silver and enamel work, then. There could be no clearer signal of Henry’s intentions. A king’s signet ring was his most personal effect.
“Is this the token of which he speaks in the letter?” Edward asked, taking the jewel from her to examine it.
“It is.”
“This changes everything.”
Thomas watched a flame of ambition reignite in Edward’s blue eyes. “Thomas, you retain your connection with that gentleman from home who now serves Master Cromwell, do you not?” Thomas knew Edward meant William Dormer, and he exchanged a little glance with Jane. “Cromwell must know of this, and of the king’s renewed intentions with our dear sister.”
Dear sister. Thomas could not stop himself from rolling his eyes.
“That lad is certain to help our Jane become queen, since you shall remind him of the reward attached for him if he does, do you not think?” Edward asked.
His face was bright now, his expression entirely changed. “Dearest Jane, I do heartily commend you,” he said, making a light, somewhat comic bow of contrition to her. “I entirely underestimated you, it seems.”
“Indeed you did,” Thomas agreed.
“I would prefer we not involve Dormer,” Jane suddenly said, breaking the jovial atmosphere.
“Why on earth not? You have known each other since you were children. I recall there was once talk of an engagement, but is that not ancient history, particularly now that he has a wife?”
Thomas watched Jane’s face carefully, and Edward caught a quick glance between the two. “Dormer has a wife and you have the king’s signet ring. You will be Queen Jane, and Dormer will help you. Is that clear?” Edward’s obstinate tone, so much like their mother’s, sent a snaking chill down Thomas’s spine. Edward was ambitious and self-serving. It infuriated Thomas. Someday Edward would regret the disregard with which he treated his younger brother. He may say little and argue even less for now, but Thomas Seymour took everything in and learned from it all. In that way, he was just like Jane. For the unassuming younger Seymour siblings, the future was becoming limitless.
In the end, the decision of whether to marry William was made for her. If the king still wanted her, she would push away any remnants of fantasy and go to him with her head held high—and her love for another man hidden deeply beneath years of self-denial. She thought about writing William a letter of explanation, but Jane knew she would only weaken by pointing out to herself, and to him, all that he meant to her. Whatever Thomas said when he went to William seeking Cromwell’s support would be enough, at least to clarify, she prayed.
Jane looked down at the king’s heavy signet ring on her left hand, feeling the importance of it and its weight. She knew what lay ahead for her. The ring divided her life. One path led to the love of her life, one that she knew she could never take. The other led her far from that love directly toward the queen’s crown.
Chapter Seventeen
April 29, 1536
Greenwich Palace
It was a very different Anne Boleyn who returned a few days later, as she clearly no longer carried the support of the court or the king. The day before her arrival, Chapuys himself had come to Edward’s apartments, deferring to Jane with a gracious bow as if she were already queen, once he saw the signet ring on her finger.
The imperial ambassador informed her that not only did Jane possess the full support of Katherine’s daughter, Mary, but now the powerful Master Cromwell supported her as well.
Chapuys was matter-of-fact as he explained to Edward, Anne, Thomas, and Jane that while the queen and Cromwell had once enjoyed a friendship, something had tipped the scales regarding his loyalty recently. He had pulled away from the Boleyns, and he was now firmly entrenched in the growing Seymour faction, which also included the influential duo Nicholas Carew and Francis Bryan.
“But what of the child she carries?” Anne dared to ask in a low, cautious tone.
“If she carries a child,” Edward responded without looking at his wife.
“I thought we were all to take it as fact when they went away together,” said Thomas.
“I do not suppose we can take anything as pure fact when it involves such a conniving and heartless woman,” Chapuys put in. “The king has, at last, discovered what the rest of us have long known. I know I was partial to the true queen, Katerina, but I say, as the emperor himself does, that a divorce and a sound royal marriage are long overdue and highly desirable for the king.” Chapuys looked directly at Jane then. “Now that you have Princess Mary’s blessing, it seems there is nothing left to stop you.”
“Our dear little sister, Queen of England.” Edward boastfully twirled the tip of his beard with two fingers.
“Will he fully pursue a divorce now?” Jane dared ask. “And what if she is with child?”
“Dear sister, you worry too much,” Edward said.
“Trust me,” Chapuys put in. “Cromwell is, as we speak, preparing to present his evidence against the queen to the king, so it shall not matter either way.”
Jane felt an odd sense of foreboding begin to rise, not fully grasping what it meant and yet afraid to consider it further. “But the child, especially a son, would still be his h
eir.”
“If it were his son. I have it on rather sound authority that her ladies are giving evidence to the contrary at this very moment,” Chapuys said smoothly, with a slightly menacing smile. “Just to lower her resistance to the notion of divorce, you understand.”
As long as no real harm came to her, Jane reasoned, Anne Boleyn had earned the same fate that had befallen poor Katherine of Aragon. She twirled the loose and heavy signet ring around on her index finger, realizing that she had gotten to this place only because her own heart had hardened. She did not care about Anne Boleyn’s fate, and she completely understood Henry’s calculated plan to divorce her. It was whispered that Anne had begun to understand it as well.
That evening, as Jane walked along the courtyard path to the banquet hall with Elizabeth Carew and Anne Seymour, she spotted Queen Anne at the large picture window above them, which faced the lush courtyard. To Jane’s surprise, Anne was clearly sobbing as she held her squirming three-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, in her arms. Henry stood behind her, like a great auburn shadow. His hands were out in a pleading gesture, and it was clear that husband and wife were arguing. So it is done, thought Jane, as she looked away. He had informed Anne of the divorce. I, Jane, Queen of England… The thought floated across her conscious mind so suddenly that it shocked her.
To Jane’s surprise, she liked the feel of the thought. Yes…I, Jane, Queen.
In that moment—in that bold realization of things to come—the hurts and disappointments, the anger and embarrassments of the past, gave way to all the possibilities that lay before her. She stifled a victorious smile as they passed beneath the window. Elizabeth and Anne continued to gossip without pause.
It seemed an ominous sign that the commencement of the May Day celebrations, culminating tomorrow in a joust, was not to be attended by the queen’s uncle, the Duke of Norfork, or by Thomas Cromwell. Such a thing would have been unthinkable even a month ago, with everyone in such bold support of the second queen. Yet Jane was relieved that William would not be there, since she was certain she would weaken at the mere sight of him. She had been avoiding him for the last month.
“Divorce is a sticky business, particularly after the last time,” Edward Seymour intoned. “I am certain Master Cromwell, with his great legal mind and years of experience, simply wishes to make certain there is no room for error.”
When the three Seymour siblings entered the crowded banquet hall, enlivened by rousing music, they could see George Boleyn already seated in an elegant costume of velvet with great puffed sleeves, ornamented by jewels. But his normal hauteur seemed diminished.
Jane smoothed down the rich brocade fabric of her own gown as she sank securely into an armchair. She sat between her two brothers and directly opposite Lord Rochford and his father, the Earl of Wiltshire, whose glum expression was as marked as his son’s. Jane realized that his wife’s chair was empty. The May Day banquet was an annual event, and like Cromwell and Norfolk, Lady Rochford never missed it. Jane tried to shake the foreboding feeling creeping like a cloud over the festivities. Something dark and powerful was stirring.
She took a swallow of rich Spanish wine, remembering proud Queen Katherine. When she was sent away, Anne Boleyn would be provided with better accommodations than the poor Spanish queen after she was toppled. Knowing Henry’s soft spot, he might even give her Greenwich, the cozy palace she favored the most.
When Anne entered the hall a few moments later, the queen quite literally looked like a different woman from the one Jane had known and feared since childhood. Dressed in dove gray, her hair swept back severely and covered by a matching gray hood, she was accompanied by a group of younger ladies who rarely attended the queen. Her principal ladies, Lady Rochford and Lady Margaret Douglas, were nowhere to be seen. Anne’s normally confident expression was gone, and there were dark circles beneath her eyes, which matched the sober look of her gown. Jane was struck by the change, but still, she was hard-pressed to conjure real sympathy. Anne Boleyn was a ruthless woman who surely would land on her feet and live a quiet, luxurious life, probably in her beloved France, once this was all over.
Jane’s brothers leaned together in conference behind her back and whispered to each other as the queen took her seat on the dais.
“No Master Smeaton this evening?” Thomas sniped.
“Perhaps the king has grown weary of his tune,” Edward said with a slight smile.
“Ah, but the king is not here either,” Francis Bryan remarked as he sat down beside Thomas and entered the debate. None of them wanted to guess just what that actually signaled.
Before the end of the banquet, Jane received a message through the king’s page, Sir Francis Weston, instructing her not to return to her own bedchamber but to accompany Edward and Anne Seymour to their withdrawing room. She knew Henry meant to again use the private corridor between their two apartments to reunite with her, and for the first time she was excited by the daring prospect. A great many things excited her now that she knew the King of England meant to make little Jane Seymour from Wolf Hall his queen.
Her sister-in-law daubed fresh flowers of lavender scent on the column of Jane’s neck and on her wrists, pinched her pale cheeks, and straightened the silk pearl-lined fall behind her hood as they waited. Everything must be perfect. She must be perfect. She had risked far too much these past months, and she could not afford to risk more.
Henry stalked broodingly into the room a moment later, and Anne Seymour dipped into a deep, slightly clumsy curtsy.
“Leave us,” he barked at Anne, who backed out of the room as swiftly as she could without tripping on the hem of her gown.
The desperation with which he then drew Jane against his broad, slightly pillowy, medal-covered chest took away her sense of reason.
“No matter what you hear,” he murmured hotly against her cheek, “know that I am not a bad man!”
“I do know that,” Jane replied, trying to cheer him although she did not understand what was wrong. She pressed him back and gently cupped his copper-bearded face between her two hands. “What has happened?”
It was a moment before Henry replied. “I have only just found out some disturbing information tonight—a deed that changes everything—and I need to feel something good and kind to stop the madness from taking me over completely.”
“How may I help?” Jane softly asked.
“Only by becoming my wife,” he said as he drew from his doublet a large, glittering ruby ring set in gold. He held the jewel like a child offers up a trinket of his own creation, eager for approval.
“But you still have your wife,” she gently reminded him as the gem sparkled in his hand between them.
“That is over, Jane. She has offended me for the final time. Cromwell is seeing to the last details as we speak.”
The kisses that fell upon her lips then were rough and full of demand. He must have sensed her uncertainty, Jane thought, because in the next moment, Henry led her from the drawing room and to her bedchamber beyond a closed set of paneled doors, which he closed behind them as he continued to devour her mouth and neck with what felt more like desperation than passion. Jane could not have stopped this progression even if she had wanted to. He had made her the promise, given her the token of that promise, and now he meant to seal the pact that they were making.
As she lay on her canopy bed with Henry arched over her and a silvery beam of moonlight streaming through the long window, Jane was quickly overpowered by his passion. She felt a strange, unexpected sensation, knowing at this moment that she was beyond the point of objecting. She need not bother with protestations about her virtue or with waiting until he was a free man, because the King of England had made his intentions clear this very night. He was about to endure another cataclysmic scandal for her sake; thus, submission was her duty. So much of Jane’s life had been about duty and rationalizing it that she felt no shame as Henry unlaced her gown and drew it over her head, moving them closer to something from which they c
ould never turn back.
The king was naked a moment later, a burly mass of flesh, muscle, and thick copper coils of chest hair. He arched over her and entered her with an unrestrained grunt, not taking care to be gentle with her. There was something primal between them as he opened the door to forbidden pleasure, thrusting himself over and over forcefully into that most intimate place as he tangled his fingers in her hair. He came down hard on her mouth then and groaned as he moved. She tasted it, her mind reeling with the forbidden carnal sensations she was not supposed to enjoy. Thinking that only added to the building ecstasy as he drove into her small, pliant body, his own suddenly awash in perspiration. His rough, red beard scratched her mouth as he drove his tongue between her lips, mirroring the frantic pulsing movement of his body until, abruptly, she felt him tense, then slacken against her.
Afterward, he lay docile and smiling as he trailed a path from one bare nipple to the other. Only then, when it was over, did thoughts of William creep relentlessly back from the dark corners of her mind past the barrier of finality Jane had so cautiously erected. Almost as if he had known he needed to take possession of her body in order to win her mind and her heart, Henry had forced this intimacy between them. Any tiny glimmer of hope that William’s pleading might lead the way to a happy ending between them was over now.
William Dormer belonged to Mary Sidney. Jane said it to herself over and over again now. And she was the possession of King Henry VIII, no matter how either of them wished it were different. Perhaps that was why Jane had not fought Henry harder. She had allowed the king to make the final decision she was simply unable to make for herself.
