The Favored Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Third Wife

by Carolly Erickson

  I was too stunned to speak. Will had found a way out of our dilemma!

  Or had he? Questions arose in my mind.

  “Is this cousin of Bridget’s a man who can be trusted?” I asked Will.

  “She assures me that he is. He has gone on many ventures, and returned enriched.”

  “Pirates get rich.”

  “I don’t believe this venturer is a pirate, Jane.”

  “How sturdy is his ship?” was my next question.

  “She is called the Eglantine. She has weathered several voyages.”

  I knew nothing whatever about ships, nor did Will. I did not even know what questions to ask. However, Will convinced me that he had already thought of everything that might go wrong, and had satisfied himself that we would be in safe, trustworthy hands on our journey. The Eglantine would leave us in the Spice Islands, take on a precious cargo of cloves and cinnamon and then return to England, to sell the spices at a large profit.

  “I have arranged to pay our way by becoming an investor in the coming voyage,” he explained.

  “And how much will it cost?” I wanted to know, imagining that Will would have to pay a great deal for his share in the venture.

  “The cost is small,” he said after a moment’s pause, “compared to the likely gain.” He sounded more mature, in that moment, than I had ever heard him sound before.

  “And besides, we will have each other,” he added, taking me in his arms and giving me a lingering kiss.

  “Tell no one about our plans, Jane,” he cautioned me as we parted. “No one at all. Gather your things in secret and pack them in a small trunk. We sail in six days’ time. Be ready!”

  I nodded eagerly, my thoughts racing. How could I fit all that was precious to me into one small trunk? How could I leave my family and friends without saying goodbye? I loved Will, of that I was certain. Perhaps that was all that mattered. Perhaps one day, when Will and I had been married for years and living on our faraway island, when we had children and wanted them to know their relations, we might return.

  Careful not to reveal the enormous change in my future plans, and hiding the smile that crept over my lips every time I thought about sailing away and leaving all my cares and worries behind, I got on with the secret task of packing and preparing for our departure.

  From the storerooms at Baynard’s Castle I unearthed a trunk so long unused that the gilt initials MP beneath the old lock were nearly worn away. Into it I placed the missal I had had since childhood, a miniature of my mother and another of my grandmother, my sturdiest cloak, petticoats and riding boots, some blankets for the babies I hoped to have—one of the blankets had warmed me in my cradle—and a small pouch of silver coins, all the money I had in the world. Though in truth I wondered what use silver coins might be in a place so far away it had no name. I entrusted the trunk to a Thames waterman who promised to take it to the Eglantine the night before she sailed.

  Then I tried to settle myself to wait for the six days to pass. It was hard to sleep, I was so eager. When, after a long night of wakefulness, I did manage to lose myself in dreams, I dreamed of the ocean, blue and deep and benign, and of Will saying “we will have each other” in his reassuring voice.

  On the fourth day of my vigil a letter came. It took me by surprise, for it was brought to the queen’s apartments by a servant from the convent of St. Agnes’s, a house of nuns not far from the capital. I wanted to read it when I was alone, so I put it in the pocket of my skirt and waited until the end of the day to open it.

  “Jane, please help me!” I read, the letters formed with a shaky hand, and in a downward-slanting slope. I recognized the writing. The letter was from my sister-in-law Cat, brother Ned’s wife. “Everyone in the family has turned against me,” she wrote. “Come to St. Agnes’s as soon as you can and I will tell you all. Your sister, Catherine Fillol Seymour.”

  I did not know what to make of the brief letter but could not ignore it. Ned’s wife was so much older than I was—by some seven years—that we had never really been friends, though always on terms of family warmth and welcome. Ned’s marriage to Cat had been arranged between the two families, he did not choose her. She was a tall, plain woman whose posture and manner made it clear that she saw herself for what she was, and was only too aware that she lacked beauty and charm. She dressed in gowns of costly cloth but in dark, drab colors; she took no pains to find a dressmaker with the skill to flatter her spare figure or suggest more becoming shades. I mentioned Mr. Skut to her more than once, and offered to send him to her, but she had no interest in employing him, though she thanked me for thinking of her and wanting to help.

  In truth Cat held herself to be of low worth as a woman, I suspected. In her mind, all her worth lay in the value of her inheritance, which was large and growing larger under Ned’s skillful management. Without that inheritance, Ned would never have married Cat, for he certainly felt no love for her. But then, I had never known Ned to love any woman. Love, he said, was a snare and a hindrance to good judgment. It passed swiftly and usually left bitterness behind. Whenever I heard him say this I felt very sorry for Cat. Yet I imagined she understood that as an heiress she would be desired for her wealth. It was accepted by all at court that marriage was in most cases a matter of money, lands, and the influence and high standing that went with them. To believe otherwise was to be naive—or a dreamer.

  As I read Cat’s urgent, worrying plea for help, with its dreadful assertion that everyone in the family had turned against her, I felt regret that I had not spent more time with her in the past, or gotten to know her better. I rarely saw her; she stayed in the country on Ned’s estate most of the time while Ned devoted himself to his duties at court. She lived a quiet, retired life. One that suited her, or so I had always supposed.

  I did not hesitate to respond to Cat’s cry for help. I rode to the convent and arrived just as the nuns were singing compline, and found Cat waiting for me inside the convent gates. She was under guard. Her two small sons, Henry and John, were asleep on a pile of blankets in one corner of the sparely furnished, candlelit room.

  Cat fairly ran toward me, eager to tell me all about her difficulties. I had never seen her in such distress.

  “What is it? Why are you here?” I asked. “Let me take you home.”

  “I can’t go home!” she burst out. “Ned won’t let me. He sent me here and paid the nuns to promise to shut me away and never let me out while I live.”

  “But what could have possessed him to do something so cruel?”

  “He believes that I have destroyed the honor of the Seymours—that I am the devil’s pathway, as he put it.”

  I shook my head in disbelief.

  “Jane, I beg you, listen to the truth! God strike me dead if I am lying! Your father has made me his mistress—against my will, I swear. He threatened to take my boys and never let me see them again unless I agreed to bed him. I had to agree. I assure you I had no will to do so!”

  I felt something obdurate growing within me, a force as hard as granite. I wanted with all my strength to resist what my father was doing—preying on young women. First Will’s sister, and now my sister-in-law. How many others had there been? How many would there be, unless he was stopped?

  “Ned found us out,” Cat was saying. “He was furious. Your father lied to him and told him I was no better than a tavern wench, offering myself to any man who would take me. He said I was not worthy to be Ned’s wife or to be the mother of our sons.”

  I looked over at the sleeping boys, my nephews, so very young and vulnerable.

  Cat had begun to cry. “Ned says the boys are not his. Now that he knows the truth about me, he has no idea who their father is. But he’s wrong, Jane. Our sons were born long before your father made his demands on me. And I have always been a faithful wife.”

  “I will talk to Ned,” I said.

  Cat hung her head. “He won’t listen.”

  “I will do what I can.”

  “Jane,
don’t let anything happen to my children. I love them more than anything in the world.”

  “I know you do. You are the best of mothers.”

  She walked over to the low pile of blankets where the boys lay, and put out her hand to softly stroke their hair.

  “They are disowned by their father—yet they are Seymours. I swear it.”

  “Can they stay here with you?”

  Cat shook her head. “Only for a few more days.”

  My plans with Will, my hopes for marriage had begun to dissolve before my eyes. Unless I could persuade Ned to soften his harsh attitude, or find someone else in the family to take the children in, I would have to become the protector of my young nephews. I sighed.

  “I will take care of them, Cat,” I said. “No matter what.”

  * * *

  “I cannot spare the time to talk to you now, Jane,” Ned said sharply as soon as he saw me enter his study and approach his vast desk strewn with documents and books, bits of paper and inkpots. He did not look at me but busied himself with examining the documents and writing on a large scroll held down with heavy seals. I knew he meant to warn me off. But he would not succeed.

  “I have been to see Cat,” I began. “What you are doing to her is unloving and unjust. I believe her to be the victim of our father’s lust, and nothing more. She deserves pity and mercy, not punishment!”

  “Oh? And what would you know of lust, my virgin sister?”

  “I know that our father seduced Will Dormer’s sister.”

  “The Dormers are trying to convince the world of that, so that they can hide the truth about the girl—that she is a Jezebel of lust herself.”

  “Ned! She was only fourteen years old! And our father is fifty!”

  I saw his eyebrows rise slightly. Evidently he did not know how young Margery Dormer was. But he said nothing.

  A messenger hurried into the room, handed a sealed document to Ned, saying “For the cardinal,” and left. Ned broke the seal and perused the document—or pretended to. He frowned in concentration, reading the words before him, his lips moving. I waited for him to finish, but after a moment or two I realized he was not going to finish. He was going to keep reading, keep concentrating on the document he held in his shaking hand, until I left him in peace.

  But I had no intention of leaving him in peace.

  “Does mother know that you have ordered your wife shut up at St. Agnes’s?” I persisted.

  I could tell by the set of Ned’s jaw that I had asked an awkward question.

  “Not now, Jane.” As he spoke, another man entered the room. Ned gave him instructions and sent him out again.

  “I must know. What am I to say to mother when I see her?”

  “I said, not now.” For the first time Ned looked at me—or rather, glared at me—and I could tell that his irritation was turning to anger.

  “Can’t you see that we are much preoccupied with the King’s Great Matter? Have you no understanding at all?”

  “My understanding is as ripe as yours, Ned, as well you know. And this is no trifling thing we are discussing. This is your wife. Your family. Your sons.”

  Ned threw down the document he was holding.

  “They are not my sons! No one knows who their father—or fathers—are.”

  “You cannot disown your own children! You must not!”

  “I cannot,” Ned said between clenched teeth, “be responsible for my wife’s transgressions.”

  “Henry and John are not transgressions, they are little boys. They resemble you—not in temperament, I hope, but certainly in looks. They are Seymours. And if you intend to abandon them, I do not.”

  “My wife’s bastards are never to be brought within my sight again. Now I must take these papers to the cardinal.”

  With that Ned swept out of the room, his stride purposeful, his jaw firmly set against the onslaughts of reason, the claims of fatherhood, and the disillusionments of marriage. All I could do was watch him go, and curse his harshness. The fate of little Henry and John was in my hands.

  * * *

  I retrieved my trunk from the Thames waterman and prepared myself to disappoint Will by telling him I could not, after all, go through with the plans we had made. But as it turned out, there was no need. Will came to me, downcast and full of disappointment, on the night before we were to leave.

  “We can’t make our escape, Jane,” he told me sadly. “The Eglantine was not as sound as I was told she was. She foundered off Shoebury Ness two days ago, in rough waters. She went down, and no one has seen so much as a timber of her since.”

  FIVE

  Overnight, it seemed, Anne Boleyn became the talk of the court.

  A rumor went around that the king’s chief huntsman had told his grooms and his fewterers that while staying at a country house, King Henry had sent Anne a buck that he had killed that day. And with it he sent what the messenger said (in whispers of course) was a love letter.

  Hardly had this news been spread than another rumor came to everyone’s ears: the king had sent Anne more gifts, it was said, and more messages, and she had sent gifts and letters to him in return.

  Soon it was being whispered that they met in secret, at a well guarded house, hidden in the forest, and that they exchanged kisses there—and more.

  To these stories—confided in the greatest excitement—were added others: that King Henry was meeting with his legal advisers and requesting that the pope declare his marriage to Queen Catherine no marriage at all. That he be declared a bachelor, free to marry any woman he chose.

  This was the King’s Great Matter, as I had heard my brother Ned call it. The greatest and most important issue at court.

  There was only one conclusion to be drawn from all that we were hearing. Anne Boleyn was to be the king’s new wife, once Queen Catherine was put aside. And all eyes were turned to Anne.

  No one I knew had ever called her a beauty. Lavinia Terling, Bessie Blount, the king’s sister Mary: these were the beauties of the palace. Nor was Anne pretty, like her soft-eyed, round-figured, gentle sister Mary or the voluptuous Bess Holland or Margaret Aylesford, who at one time had been Cardinal Wolsey’s mistress and who lived at court, as her brother was one of Queen Catherine’s confessors.

  Fair-skinned, blue-eyed blondes were what men admired, fair women with sweet voices and retiring dispositions; Anne was as dark as a gypsy, with eyes like coals and thick black hair and the temperament (when angry, which was often) of a snarling vixen. What was more, she was said to be deformed, her swarthy complexion marred by moles. One of her fingers was cleft at the tip, so that it appeared to be two fingers and not one.

  “The mark of the devil,” said Maria de Salinas and the queen’s other ladies nodded in agreement.

  I remembered what Bridget had told me about Anne, especially about her rivalry with her sister. Mary Boleyn Carey had been the king’s mistress for a number of years. Was Anne trying to seduce the king in order to compete with Mary? According to Bridget, she was brazen enough. Was she attractive enough? She was still unmarried at nearly twenty-five years old. (Uncharitable critics said she was older.) Why? Had her uncle, the powerful Duke of Norfolk, been planning for her to marry the king all along, just as he had planned for Henry Fitzroy to marry his daughter Mary? Had the duke assumed that Queen Catherine would die before long, her body worn out by her many childbirths, and that when she died, Anne would become the king’s wife?

  There was endless speculation, endless appraisals and reappraisals of Anne were made—many of them begrudging—and Anne herself, very conscious of all the attention she was receiving, became noticeably more aloof and superior. She wore a gold bracelet that the king had given her, engraved with two hearts entwined and a bow and arrow. She waved it around a good deal, making sure it was seen by everyone. When asked about it she said nothing, she merely smirked, her black eyes sparkling, then tossed her head and flounced off.

  All the talk in those days was of Anne, but I continued to
nurse my wounds and think of myself. I was in pain. I had lost Will. I was deeply disappointed and convinced that I had no future. More and more I felt aggrieved. I blamed my father. He was the one whose wanton passions, and lack of morality or restraint, had brought shame on our family and left me with only the bleakest of prospects.

  I had never loved him, he had been too harsh and punitive a parent to nurture love. Now I hated him, as I had never before in my life hated anyone. Even to be in the same room with him was galling beyond measure. To see him—he was, I admit, a handsome man, though gruff and coarse—to hear his loud, strident voice, to accidentally brush past him aroused my fury, especially when he was shouting and laughing and throwing back his great head with its mane of grey-white hair. Everything about him revulsed me and filled me (God forgive me!) with murderous thoughts.

  My grievances were many. My father’s lust had prevented my marriage and blighted Ned’s life and the lives of his children as well. His lies had ruined the reputations of at least two women—not to mention at least one servant girl, and I suspected there had been others. I believed in Cat’s innocence and was much inclined to believe Will’s sister innocent too; I thought her a victim of my father’s demands.

  My only consolation was that he was in constant pain from the gout, and that the pain was becoming worse. His cries of agony and his shouts of complaint were growing louder.

  “Can you die from gout?” I asked his physician.

  He hemmed and hawed. “I have never heard of it happening,” he said at length, “but it is not impossible.”

  “Not impossible” was not at all a satisfactory answer. At least, I thought, if his gout is excruciating enough, he will be prevented from seducing any more women, or from forcing himself on them through threats.

  When my mother came to court, which she rarely did, I could hardly bear to look at her. What did she know, or suspect, of my father’s doings? No doubt he had lied to her, just as he had to Ned, and she had wanted to believe him. Yet I knew she had been fond of Cat, and was very fond indeed of her two young grandsons. She must miss them, I thought.