Jane Seymour, the Haunted Queen

by Alison Weir

  “Sir Edward.” He gave a slight bow.

  “Master Cromwell. May I present my sister Jane, who is maid-of-honor to the Queen?”

  Cromwell bowed again and gave Jane a charming smile. She smiled back.

  “May I congratulate you, Master Cromwell, on being appointed principal Secretary to the King?” Edward said.

  “I thank you,” Cromwell said. “It is a great honor, and I trust I will repay his Grace’s trust.” He nodded and walked on.

  “There’s no doubt of that,” Edward muttered. “No one has a better grasp of affairs; even Cardinal Wolsey could not match Master Cromwell for genius. He has a finger in every pie. Privy Councillor, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Master of the Jewel House—and now principal Secretary!”

  “He seemed affable,” Jane said.

  “Yes, he’s of good cheer, gracious and generous, and keeps a convivial table. He has a host of admiring friends and clients. But I sense a ruthless pragmatism there; hard steel beneath the charm. They say that Master Cromwell is the King’s ear and mind, and that his Grace entrusts to him the entire government of the kingdom.”

  Jane had heard talk of that. “Surely it is the King who rules?”

  “Ah, but what he decides, Master Cromwell puts into effect. It was the King who decided to break with Rome, but it is Cromwell who is implementing the changes.”

  They descended the steps to the river and continued along the quayside. Further ahead, they saw the King emerge from his barge and enter the palace, with courtiers descending on him like locusts, each with his own petition.

  “Do not underestimate Master Cromwell,” Edward said. “The word is that his spies are everywhere.”

  “The Queen’s ladies do not like him.”

  Edward shrugged. “That does not surprise me. The nobility disdain him for his humble origins, but they envy and fear him too.”

  “The Queen favors him. She calls him her man.”

  “Of course. They support the same causes—the royal supremacy, religious reform, the translation of the Bible.”

  They retraced their steps to the gardens, and Edward left Jane at the door to the Queen’s apartments. “Say nothing of what we have discussed,” he said.

  “As if I needed telling.” She smiled. “After all, there might be a spy hiding in a bush or behind a tapestry!”

  * * *

  —

  The King’s commissioners had gone out to every part of the realm to administer the new oath to all who held public office—and no doubt anyone whose loyalty was in question. Jane saw that the Queen was tense, lest there be reports of disaffection or demonstrations, but for the most part there were no protests.

  Only a few refused to take the oath. It was no surprise that Bishop Fisher was among them, while Sir Thomas More, that good, wise man, had refused it twice. Both were now in the Tower, and there was much anger among the people, and fear too. Anne had been right: the punishment meted out to Fisher and More had silenced tongues that might have spoken in protest at what was happening. No longer did Jane feel she could confide her opinions or her deep-felt concerns to anyone, even her brothers or her friends. The court was a dangerous place, for who knew who might be listening?

  But some were not as feeble as she. Her heart sang when she heard that Katherine had refused the oath—until it dawned on her what this might mean for her beloved former mistress. Every day she prayed that the King would not send Katherine to the Tower. By all reports, the good Queen was in indifferent health, and might not survive imprisonment—but that was what the King wanted, wasn’t it? Had he not already immured her in a damp, unhealthy house?

  After several weeks of worry, Jane began to hope that Katherine would not be punished severely. At the height of summer, the good Queen was sent further away from London, to Kimbolton Castle, which Lady Rutland said was a well-appointed house. Even if she was to live there under house arrest, she would be comfortable. That was something, and God willing, it would be beneficial to her health.

  But the noose was tightening. Anne took the greatest of pleasure in informing her ladies that henceforth, anyone saying or writing anything to the prejudice or derogation of the lawful matrimony between her and the King, or his lawful heirs, would be guilty of high treason. “For which,” she concluded triumphantly, “the penalty is death.”

  Jane kept her eyes downcast. It was folly to betray even by a shift of expression that you did not approve of the King’s marriage or his supremacy. She did not have the courage of Fisher or More or Katherine. Anyway, what difference would the opinion of a country maid—for that was all she was, really—make to these momentous changes that England was being forced to suffer?

  * * *

  —

  Anne was big with child now—and nervous. She spoke often of her conviction that it would be a boy, the living image of his father. The King came often to see her, and fussed over her as if she were made of glass. All his expectations were focused on her bearing him a son.

  One warm July afternoon, Anne stood up and rubbed her back. “I think the Prince is on his way,” she said, and gave her ladies a weak smile. “It’s earlier than I expected. I should have taken to my chamber ere now.”

  “Your Grace should lie down,” advised her old nurse, Mrs. Orchard.

  “I would that my sister were here,” Anne said. Mary Carey had gone home to be with her young children for the summer, and was tardy in returning. “And my mother. Ooh, there it is again!” She winced. “Yes, maybe I should go to bed, although last time the pains were easier to bear standing up. Ladies!”

  All the ladies-in-waiting stood up and followed the Queen to her bedchamber, while Margaret Douglas hurried away to inform the King what was happening.

  Jane and her fellow maids-of-honor stayed where they were. As unmarried women, it was not thought fit that they attend the birth. But they could hear Anne’s cries increasing in volume and urgency as the afternoon wore on. The Lady Margaret sat with them, being unwed herself, and they all looked at each other nervously, knowing that one day, it might be one of them suffering the pangs of travail.

  “The King said he would wait in his privy chamber for news,” Margaret said, for the third time. No man, even a physician, would be allowed near the Queen while she was in labor, and Jane thought it a very wise rule, because what woman would want a man to see her at such a time?

  The cries ceased. They looked at each other again. It had not been two hours! And then they heard a terrible wailing, like a vixen in distress. It was the Queen. Jane froze.

  “Should we send for the King?” Margery asked nervously.

  “I will go,” the Lady Margaret said, and sped away. Still the howling and keening continued. They waited in trepidation, knowing that something dreadful had happened.

  Anne’s cries were subsiding when they heard footsteps approaching. The doors from the antechamber were flung open and an usher announced, “Make way for the King’s Highness!”

  “The King! The King!” cried the ladies within.

  Hurriedly the maids curtseyed as Henry strode in, swept past them and himself opened the door of the bedchamber. There was a silence before it closed behind him.

  Jane crossed herself. The child was lost or deformed, there could be no doubt of it. Detest Anne as she did, she could yet feel a sisterly pity for her. It was tragic for a woman to endure months of the discomforts of pregnancy, only to lose her babe at the end of it. It was so easy for the King—or any man—to demand sons; they did not have to undergo the bearing of them.

  No one spoke, but no one was doing any sewing either. The midwife emerged carrying a little cloth bundle, and hastened away with it. The maids stared after her, horror in their eyes. And then the door opened and the King came out, his face ravaged, his blue eyes brimming with tears.

  “You will not speak of this to anyone,” he com
manded. His voice broke and he sank into the Queen’s empty chair. No one moved. And then Jane, plucking up courage from nowhere, stepped forward and placed her hand on his heaving shoulder. The others gaped; one did not presume to touch the Lord’s Anointed unless he himself invited it. But the King was also a human being, and he was in deep distress.

  “Take comfort, Sir,” she said. “Her Grace bore a healthy princess last time. You are both of meet age. Other children will follow.” She reached into her pocket, drew out her handkerchief and gave it to him, thanking God it was clean. He dabbed his eyes and mastered himself with a visible effort.

  “Thank you, Mistress Jane,” he murmured. “You have a kind heart.”

  With that, he stood up, bowed to them all and departed, taking her handkerchief with him.

  * * *

  —

  Anne emerged from her confinement defeated and sunk in misery. She could take no pleasure in anything, mourning for the boy she had lost, and convinced that she had forfeited the King’s love, for he came only rarely to see her, and when he did, it was with an air of injury. She poured out her heart to her women, over and over again, ranting and weeping, forgetting the dignity a queen ought to observe.

  Her ladies tried to rally her. They exhorted her to make an effort to be her old self, the one who had captured the King’s heart; she should be witty and charming and stimulating company. She tried, when Henry gave her the opportunity, but failed miserably. She was too mired in grief, anger and fear that he might do to her what he had done to Katherine.

  Jane watched and listened with mixed feelings. She was at war with herself. Anne had stolen her mistress’s husband, robbed her of the title of queen and been venomous toward Katherine and Mary; therefore it was to be expected that God would exact vengeance on her, which she fully deserved. And yet Jane could not but be moved by Anne’s distress, her fear and the tragedy that had befallen her.

  With the falling of autumn leaves came whispers that the King had a new mistress, who was said to be very beautiful. Jane wondered who it could be, glancing around the privy chamber at the ladies and maids. Most were beautiful in their way. But then she came upon Harry one day, enjoying his afternoon off in the bowling alley, and he told her it was well known in the privy chamber that it was Joan Ashley, a maid-of-honor who had joined the Queen’s household the previous winter. “This augurs well for the Princess Dowager and the Lady Mary,” he said, keeping his voice low as they stood to one side, watching the courtiers competing. “Mistress Ashley is greatly attached to them. She may influence the King in their favor.”

  “I rejoice to hear it,” Jane whispered, and began to take more notice of Joan Ashley, who was fair-haired, demure, rather vacantly pretty and only seventeen years old—the very last person she could have imagined dallying with the King. But yes, Joan was mysteriously absent on occasion, just as Anne herself had been all those years ago. And soon the other ladies got wise to what was afoot, and gossiped behind the Queen’s back. Jane was convinced that Anne knew what was going on. Certainly she did after the King openly paid attention to Joan at a feast for some French envoys with everyone looking on.

  That was the evening when Anne’s sister, Mary, returned to court with a high belly, with all eyes upon her, some shocked, some malicious, some exultant that the Queen had been publicly discomfited. Anne swept her out of the privy chamber, and the King stomped after them. The next morning, Mary had gone.

  Of course, the court was abuzz with speculation, delighted at this whiff of scandal.

  “Mary has made a most unfortunate marriage,” Lady Rochford sniffed, as the ladies crowded around her the next morning to find out what had been going on, and the maids pricked up their ears to listen. “He has no title, no money and nowhere to live; he is just a soldier in the Calais garrison. But she loves him.” She said the word with scorn. It was no secret that her own marriage to George Boleyn was unhappy, or that they despised each other.

  The gossipmongers were in their element. The talk was all of Mary Carey’s misalliance or Joan Ashley. And then, one evening when Anne was dining with the King, Lady Rochford entered the fray again.

  “I hear that the King’s sweetheart is over-free with her favors and that he has competition!” she said, looking pointedly at Joan. “He won’t be very pleased about that.”

  Joan colored, but said nothing. Among themselves, they were keeping up the pretense that they did not know who the King’s sweetheart was. But Jane still found it hard to believe that Joan was promiscuous.

  Lady Rochford was warming to her theme. “And if the Queen learns of it, of course, there will be trouble. Instant dismissal, I’ll warrant.”

  But it was Lady Rochford who got into trouble, and with the King himself, for making up calumnies about Mistress Ashley. Jane went into the dorter one day and found Joan sitting on her bed hugging herself, all alone. Tears were pouring down her cheeks.

  “I had to come up here to calm myself,” she said. “That vile woman has gone, thank God. She’s been sent home. I think you know it was me she slandered.”

  “We all know,” Jane said, sitting down next to her.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Joan blurted out. “When the King pursued me, who was I to gainsay him?”

  Oh, weak little fool! Jane thought, then pulled herself up, wondering what she would have done had she been in the same situation. It would take great courage and resolve to say no, and this girl was little more than a child.

  “She said some awful things about me,” Joan said. “I don’t know where she got the idea that I was wanton. The King has been my only lover. And now he has ended it!” She burst into fresh weeping.

  Jane could well imagine whence had come the slurs on Joan’s character. Who else would have had a burning desire sufficiently to tarnish her reputation so that the King spurned her? And Lady Rochford, with her love of intrigue, had been the Queen’s willing tool. She comforted the girl as best she could.

  “It is for the best,” she said, “and now everyone will know that you have been unjustly slandered.”

  “But I had so hoped to do something to mitigate the plight of the good Queen and her daughter,” Joan sobbed.

  “Shh! Do not call her by that title here!” Jane hissed, even as she inwardly applauded the girl’s motives. “That would get you into even more serious trouble. You can do no more. Put this behind you and act as if nothing has happened. The scandal will die down, I promise you.”

  * * *

  —

  Jane did her best to conceal her shock when, in November, news came that the Nun of Kent and her followers had been barbarously executed at Tyburn. She shuddered when she heard the women speaking of it; some had husbands or brothers who had been in the crowds that witnessed the savagery of their ends. The Nun herself had been lucky; she had been hanged until dead before being beheaded. But the five men who died with her, four of them priests, had suffered the horrors of a traitor’s death. They had been drawn to their execution on hurdles, traitors being unfit to walk upon the earth, and hanged until they were nearly dead, then revived and stripped for the butchery to come: castration and disemboweling, followed by the drawing of their hearts from their bodies. If they were still conscious—and it was hard to imagine that anyone could survive such agonies and still be sentient—they would have seen their vital parts thrown into a fire before they suffered the merciful release of beheading. Even then, the carnage continued, with their bodies being quartered. The quarters would be displayed in public as a warning of the terrible fate that awaited those who defied the King. The Nun’s head was now on a spike above London Bridge.

  It was not just the cruelty of their deaths that appalled Jane, but the realization that the King had reached the point where he was ready to spill the blood of those who opposed him. It was a terrifying world she inhabited, and suddenly she wanted with all her heart to go home, to a place
that was safe and normal, where the old ways mattered and good people did not suffer for following their consciences, and where you could observe your faith in the time-hallowed ways.

  It was, she knew, a fantasy. Even Wulfhall was no longer such a refuge. They were all bound by the new laws, Father James too. If she had taken the veil at Amesbury, not even the authority of the Prioress could have protected her. Nowhere, least of all this glittering, teeming court seething with intrigue, was safe.

  Chapter 13

  1535

  It snowed in January, and the maids-of-honor enjoyed snowball fights in the Queen’s privy garden, by the light of torches. One evening, Jane spied the King and Queen watching them from a window. Through the latticed panes they appeared to be smiling. When they went indoors, Henry had gone, and Anne was in a thoughtful mood. They were preparing her for bed when she told them what was on her mind.

  “There have been reports of irregularities in the monasteries,” she said, sitting straight-backed in her black satin nightgown as Jane combed her long dark hair. “Master Cromwell is to look into the matter. Naturally, his Grace and I are concerned to root out abuses within the Church.”

  No doubt you will do it thoroughly, Jane said to herself. Nothing is safe from your meddling. But she soon forgot the remark, and it was only much later that she remembered what Anne had said, and its significance. In fact, they were all far more interested in the King’s amours.

  Always there was speculation that he was pursuing one lady or another, but this time, there really were grounds for it. The young lady in question was the Queen’s own cousin Madge Shelton, and Margaret Douglas reckoned that Anne had put her up to it.