Judge The Best

by G Lawrence

  Many times it was protested in my lifetime that women were weak, and helpless before sin. But if men were completely unable to resist temptation, were they so strong?

  After half a day in her company, I was desperate for escape. I was not alone. As Margery went on and on and on, barely bothering to draw breath, I saw a malevolent flicker in her daughter’s eyes. Jane Seymour was no fonder of her mother than I. I believed she may have been treated poorly by her, for Jane did not live up to the paragon of courtly beauty and grace that her mother had once been. When parents fail to see themselves in their progeny, sometimes they become cruel.

  Not for the first time, I considered how fortunate I was in my family. My father was never to be trusted, but he worked to further our goals. My mother was the wisest and sweetest of all women, and my brother was my best friend. Thinking about this, I thought on Mary. By letters that I had burned, not wanting scandal to touch me, we had become reconciled. I doubted if she would ever be welcomed at court, and certainly not at Hever, but there was hope for the future. I could never truly abandon Mary. I loved her too well. I hoped that at some stage, if this much-postponed meeting with François ever took place, I might have a chance to see Mary and her husband, and meet the daughter who had been named for me.

  I thought about Elizabeth, but thinking on my daughter made my heart ache so greatly I could hardly bear it.

  As I walked into the gardens, I took a deep breath of heavenly air, thanking God that Margery had not wanted to walk that day. My ladies were far behind me, enjoying George’s japes as I strolled ahead. Wulfhall might not be the grandest of houses, but its gardens were stunning. There was a certain wildness, even in the cultivated areas, which calmed me. The skies were blue as the Virgin’s robes, and there was a lightly-scented breeze, carrying floral perfume and the distant, earthy smell of horse dung. I obambulated, lost to the notion of thinking or doing anything useful. I drank in the day, and so was quite unprepared for what I discovered in those gardens.

  Turning a corner, I glimpsed two shapes in an arbour. One, a lady, was sitting upon a stone seat where shimmering ivy crept up the legs. Even at this distance I could see her sallow, pellucid cheeks lit up with fire. Kneeling beside her was a man, his face, too, shining with earnest crimson.

  It was Henry and Jane Seymour.

  I drew back. A willow, its branches thick with long silver-green leaves, dancing and dipping in the wind, concealed me. My heart pounded so loud I thought they might hear it. I glanced back, but the others were far behind. George was reading his poetry to my ladies beside the crumbling ruins of an old building, and my women were sitting, their eyes lost in bliss, for the pleasure of a handsome court gallant extolling words of beauty to them.

  I crept close to the tree. From here, I could just make out the soft words coming from the arbour.

  “Long have I loved you,” said my husband to my waiting woman. “Yet you will not let me near. Do you love me not, Jane?”

  Love… My heart shattered at the word. Henry loved this pale imitation of a person? My lip curled. Just how many women had he professed to love? Sometimes I wondered if Henry fell in love a thousand times a day, with whomsoever he happened to be standing near. I also knew, however, that my brother had protested love to many a woman in the hope of getting her to lift her skirts. That is it, I thought. For he cannot truly love this pallid worm. He wants to bed her, and she will not allow it, so he will dupe her into sin.

  “Your Majesty is so kind to me,” Jane almost whispered. I had to strain to hear her. By God’s Holy Death! Even her voice was dull!

  “You have been so kind, but I am an honest maid. I cannot be a man’s mistress.”

  With those few words, my estimations of the girl doubled. But as she went on, they tumbled once more. “With all the trials you have suffered, Majesty… being ever disappointed of a son by your unpopular wife, and with so many beautiful women about you at court, I am surprised you even noticed me.”

  “I saw you at once,” he said, clearly a lie. Henry had tarried with other women whilst Jane was at court. “But I felt so true and pure a maiden would not welcome my love.”

  “I welcome it,” she said, her cheeks igniting to further flame.

  “Then let me come to you,” he said. “I will show you how things are between us.”

  My heart lurched. He had said the same words to me once, at Hever, when I had refused him. Was anything Henry said original, or had he been spouting the same, tired, shallow, meaningless, vapid words to women for years, and each and every one of us had fallen for his lies? Fools we were, for him.

  Fools indeed, Katherine murmured.

  “I cannot…” Jane said, glancing about. “My brother is here, my mother and father… my lord… I could not. And even if not for them, I could not for my honour.”

  “Then let me be your admirer,” he said. “Let me court you. I shall be your knight, Jane, for I know you have suffered much under the Queen’s hands.”

  “It is true,” she said, bowing her head in sorrow.

  I blinked. What suffering? I barely spoke to Jane, and certainly did not scold or harm her. Was this the suffering of which she spoke? Going unnoticed? If so, then most people at court had harmed her!

  “I think sometimes, my mistress sees your affection for me, and hates me for it,” she said, those pale blue eyes widening. “I think she wants to hurt me, and I have no protection.”

  Oh… I certainly was considering harming her now! Jane was playing a part, I could see that. Suddenly, I doubted in her defence of her virginity, if it even existed. What was the girl playing at? Did she think to secure richer rewards by holding him at bay for a time before she surrendered? I did not believe for a moment she would reject him. Jane had been long ignored by everyone; her family, her parents… only Katherine had been kind to her…

  Katherine… I thought. So that was it. This little strumpet meant to turn Henry against me in revenge for the suffering of her beloved mistress. That was the purpose of those lies. I had never touched Jane, never showed anger, except in passing comment. But she would paint me black as my raven hair, and rejoice to see me ignored or shamed by Henry. And if she supported Katherine, she supported Mary too.

  I was forced to retreat further into the bushes as the pair exchanged some sort of love token, and escaped the arbour by different paths. Jane took one that went directly to the house, but Henry took a trail which led him breathtakingly near to where I was hidden. I pressed myself into the tree, seeking to hide in its voluminous branches. As his golden doublet disappeared about a shade-dappled corner, I breathed out. Glancing back, I saw George and the others were on their way.

  I ducked to the floor, pretending to be engrossed in studying some pretty, pale-violet flowers spread-eagled along the ground. As I dipped, something near me moved. A shape I had not noted shifted in the trees to one side of the garden. I narrowed my eyes, trying to see it clearly, but like Katherine’s ghost in my dreams, he remained in shadow.

  I lifted a hand in greeting, and from the gloom stepped Cromwell. I knew not why, but a shard of ice entered my heart as I realised he, like me, had witnessed Henry adoring Jane Seymour.

  “Majesty,” George cried as he came upon me. “Whatever are you doing down in the dirt? Do you grant your royal blessing to the flowers?”

  “I was just looking at these blooms,” I said, holding one up. “I don’t believe I know them.”

  “Speedwell, Majesty,” said Nan Gainsford, a look of surprise on her face. The flowers were common. There was no reason I should be mystified about their identity.

  “Ah,” I said. “I quite forgot.”

  I glanced back to where Cromwell had stood, but he was gone. Leading the others, we went on through the gardens. I tried to put Jane and Henry from my mind, but they would not leave.

  That night, I handed out rewards of money to Weston and Brereton, for poems they had written for me. I laughed with my brother. I jested with Tom and Norris and played the fine
and happy Queen. But that night, as I waited for Henry to arrive to bless me with his seed, my heart was broken.

  So, I said to myself, you thought you were fine with his betrayals, did you?

  How could any woman be? Katherine’s keening voice cried out. How could any woman in love happily subject herself to such misery? Duty-bound to one man, tied to him by the Church and by God… Fated to watch as he shames us. Forced to stand by him as he betrays us.

  Fate was cruel to women indeed. I sat in bed, trying to hold back tears as I waited. Waited for the man who had broken my heart more times than I could count. Waited for the man who had just that afternoon sworn he adored another. Waited for the man who could bring me security, if he could only hold his nerve long enough to grant me a son.

  Waiting, waiting, waiting. Had I ever done anything else when it came to Henry? I had waited for him to notice me, to leave his wife, to take a stand for us, for England, for the faith…

  Katherine once said that Clement had thrust us all into limbo, but it was Henry, not the Pope, who had done this to me. Since the first moment he had entered my life, I had been floating in this state between beings. I twisted and curled in darkness, never finding a place to rest. In shadow I billowed and wafted, in blackness I danced and I dreamed. I had nothing to cling to, nothing but feeble hope and shattered love. Elizabeth was my only tether, but Henry cut me loose, time and time again.

  Where was my perch? My safe harbour? Where was the security of love? Never had I had these things, and never would I. Henry’s love was not a means of liberty, or freedom, it was a haze that held me fast, struggling against invisible bonds, lost in the knowledge that I adored a man who did not, and perhaps would never love me as I loved him.

  He took me that night, but as I lay there, under him, feeling him grind his feeble member inside me, I knew I was not the one he was thinking of.

  He used my body to make love to Jane Seymour.

  When he left me, I went to my chests and brought out a locket with Elizabeth’s hair in it. Holding it to my breast, I sat on the floor and wept, crying for the time she had been conceived, when I had believed in love.

  I would have done anything to go back to that time. Anything.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Wulfhall

  September 1535

  “Cromwell says my actions are in conflict with the wishes of His Majesty,” Brereton said as we sat together in my apartments.

  “And are they?”

  The old rogue had a merry shine in his eyes. “I swear to you, madam, they are not.”

  I laughed a little, sure somewhere along the line these two purposes did conflict. Cromwell was attempting to impose his order on Wales, but Brereton, who held a great deal of power there, was holding him back.

  “Perhaps Cromwell harbours a grudge,” I said. “He did not like it when you bested him over the Eyton case last year.”

  “With your aid, madam,” said Brereton.

  In the year just passed, one of Brereton’s retainers had been murdered and Brereton had accused a man of Flintshire, John ap Gryffith Eyton, of the crime. Being influential in Flintshire, Brereton had called on rough men who owed him favours, and had carted Eyton to London. Cromwell had leaned on the justice system to acquit, as Eyton was in his debt, but Brereton had had him rearrested, with my help. Eyton had been returned to Wales, where he stood trial and hanged for his crimes. I had intervened as, no matter how questionable Brereton’s methods had been, I had been assured of Eyton’s guilt. Cromwell had not been pleased, and Eyton’s death had cost him dear, as the money owed to Cromwell had gone to the Crown rather than into his pocket. And now Brereton and he were bashing heads again. Brereton had almost a monopoly over Cheshire and North Wales. Henry and Fitzroy had entrusted him with a great many appointments, and Cromwell was finding it hard to sneak his plots for the Welsh Marches and the borders past Brereton. In truth, Brereton understood the lands in question much better than Cromwell. He had a wealth of experience, and was familiar not only with honest merchants, but with the rogues and pirates who operated there. Cromwell should have left those areas to Brereton, as Henry and his bastard son were happy to, but he could not. Master Secretary was becoming greedy. He wanted a hand in all matters.

  “Cromwell despises the influence I have in Wales and the Marches,” said Brereton. “Cromwell wants to be master of all, madam. That others hold power is a condition he wishes to cure England of.”

  I frowned. First George and now Brereton singing the same song. For a moment I wondered if my brother had put Brereton up to this, but dismissed the thought. Cromwell was greedy for power. That was the condition that required curing.

  “Allow Cromwell’s agent in Wales and Cheshire to have better access to that which he requires,” I said. “And be friendly to Cromwell.”

  “I fear he may seek to remove me from my posts for the Duke of Richmond, Majesty.”

  “I will never allow that to happen. Neither will the Duke. Where else would he hear such marvellous tales of piracy and brigands, if not from you?”

  Brereton grinned. “You know all my secrets, my lady.”

  “Probably too many.” I teasingly struck his arm with my hand. My ladies, some of them no doubt thinking old Brereton had become too familiar and I had scolded him, looked our way in disapproval. “This is not the first time I have heard such things about Cromwell,” I murmured, my tone more serious. “And doubt not, it will be investigated.”

  “I place all my trust in you, my lady,” he said, rising and offering a gallant bow.

  As he departed, I stared at the altar cloth I was embroidering, but saw nothing of the glory of its threads of gold. I was thinking about Cromwell. The man was becoming too avaricious, too keen to see off his rivals. Like a gluttonous wolf, Cromwell stalked England. Wolsey had been the same way. His ordinances, which had stripped my brother and others of their positions at court, had been done to separate Henry from his friends and the Cardinal had taken all important or well paid posts for himself. The few remaining he had offered to his friends, or those he knew he could control. Would Cromwell follow the same path?

  There is greed in power. What one has is never enough. It is a sickness that infests the heart and soul, bending the bearer to its will. Slowly it grows in the darkness, taking root, until the day comes when there stands a man with power no more, but power with a man to use.

  It is a monster, which devours its prey from the inside out.

  I had to wonder, if Cromwell wanted Henry separated from his friends, did he also want to remove me? To pluck me from my shell would leave a gaping hole, one which, even then, I was sure Cromwell lusted after. Did he think to drive us apart? I shook my head, lost in angry thoughts. Never, as long as there was blood in my veins, or air in my lungs, would I allow another man to shove me aside.

  *

  “Katherine has been writing to friends again,” said my brother, drawing close and pulling a letter from his pocket.

  “The Emperor and the Pope?” I asked, reaching for it.

  “Not this time,” he said. “Marie de Salinas was the recipient.”

  “And does she have a copy as fine as this?” I mocked with a smile, unravelling the scroll to see my brother’s poor hand. “You should have paid more attention to our tutor, George, your hand is never careful. I would recognise it anywhere.”

  “My hand is no poorer than many at court,” he protested. “Just because yours is so fine, that is no reason to criticise the rest of us.”

  I gazed down at the letter.

  “My special friend,” it read. “You have greatly bound me with the pains that you have taken in speaking with the King, my Lord, concerning the coming of my daughter to visit me. You must await your reward from God, for I have no power to reward what you have done with anything other than my goodwill.

  As touching the answer that has been given to you, that his Highness is content to send her to some place near me, so long as I do not see her, I pray you
to give my great thanks to his Highness for the goodness which he shows to his daughter and myself, and for the comfort that I have received from this.

  As to my seeing her, you must inform his Highness that even if she came within one mile of me, I would not travel to visit her, for I am not able to move around and even if it were possible for me to do so, I do not have the means with which to travel.

  But you must impress on his Highness that what I asked for was that she be sent to where I am and assure him that the comfort and laughter which she would bring to me would undoubtedly be very healthy for her. I have experienced this because I have suffered the same illness of solitude and know how much good can come of being reunited with kin. It was entirely just and reasonable of me to make this request, and it so greatly touched on the honour and conscience of the King, my lord, that I am very surprised that it has been denied to me.

  Do not, for love of me, fail to do this. I have heard here that the King has anxieties about trusting her to me, believing that I would flee from the country with her. I cannot believe that such a fear, which is so far from reason, should come from the royal heart of His Majesty and I cannot believe that he has so little trust in me. I beg you to insist to his Highness that I am, without any hesitation, determined to die in this kingdom and that I here pledge my life as security that, if any such escape should be attempted, the King would do justice to me as the most evil woman who had ever been born.