The Baker's Daughter Volume 1

by Bonny G Smith

  “What I mean is this; Jane wants peace for king and court, therefore the better to shift attention…and the associated rewards if she is successful…to providing England with an heir. Vital to this is the king’s reconciliation with you, and your restoration to the succession. Nothing less will satisfy the people, in any case. But Jane needs you as insurance should she fail. So Jane works for your rehabilitation, and that is a good thing. And she must work to bring down Anne for her own sake. You are benefactress of these needs, and the actions that result from them. I do not mean to say that Jane is not sincere in her espousal of your cause. But one must own that the lady stands to profit from the display of such an attitude in terms of popularity.”

  Mary had her own share of self-interest, but this focus was at least equal to, if not exceeded by, her zeal for the Roman Catholic faith. Had not her father renounced…yes, that is what it is, let us call it by its true name…renounced the pope as the bishop of Rome only, and not Christ’s vicar on earth, perhaps this zeal might never have manifested itself. She would have lived her life taking her devotion to God and the church as if it were mother’s milk, and thought nothing more of it. But here was a challenge to all that she held holy, all that she stood for…she could not just sit back with folded hands and watch it slip through her fingers. The benefit was not hers, she did not take such a stand for her own salvation, nor for self-aggrandizement; it was for the uncounted souls that she might help to save from grievous error, to their everlasting damnation. She, Mary, was in no danger of such a fate; nothing would ever, could ever, shake her faith.

  “So Jane hopes to convince the king to return to Rome?” Mary shook her head. “This is going to be at odds with the beliefs of her brothers. Are they not reformers?”

  “They are,” Chapuys nodded. “But let us fight one battle at a time.”

  “Being at odds with her brothers is one thing,” Mary said. “Being at odds with Secretary Cromwell is quite another thing altogether.”

  Chapuys looked sharply at Mary. Astute, just as her mother was. He only hoped that Mary would someday come to the throne. But whenever he had this thought, another would come, stealthily, to sit on its shoulder. If she can keep her heart in check. Mary epitomized many of the reasons why men wanted none of women’s rule. Women could not keep their emotions in check. Temper and emotion were not the same thing. Temper was the manifestation of an impatient attitude. But emotion was a primary driver when decisions had to be made, and to rule successfully, one must be able to weigh the desire of the heart against the judgment of the head. With Mary, even if she developed the clear sight needed by a monarch to look at things from both vantage points, she would always, in the end, do what her heart told her to do. And she would always find a way to justify that with perhaps that most powerful of forces, her conscience.

  “Cromwell,” repeated Chapuys. “Yes, but Cromwell is a master chess player. He knows the value of sacrificing a pawn to gain the advantage in the next move, or indeed, many moves forward. Or to win the game. He will not balk at Jane’s feeble efforts, for feeble they will be. The king blinds himself with thoughts of love, but the truth is, the king wants a son, and Jane had better produce one. No…how do you say it…no shilly-shallying. Cromwell will gladly countenance Jane’s kittenish mewing about Saint’s days and weeping Madonnas, for it will matter nothing. The king may delude himself that he is in love, but he looks on Jane as a brood mare and nothing more. Her words on any subject might as well be the bleating of a sheep for all the notice he takes of them.” Chapuys was silent for a moment, and then he said, “Have you ever wondered why the king chose Jane?”

  Mary smiled. “Yes, I must own that I have. She is neither golden enchantress nor dusky rose.”

  “It is because of the number of brothers she has, and the number of boys produced by them.”

  Mary tugged at the reins and halted her horse, turning to look Chapuys full in the face. “I don’t care a straw if my father has sons with Jane,” Mary said. “My reasons for this are my own. But all hope is vanity, Chapuys…in the end, it will all be as God wills.”

  It was not like Mary to be secretive, but Chapuys thought he knew her well enough to guess what her secret reasons were; he believed that Mary thought that because Henry and Jane would not be married in the Catholic Church, that their marriage, in the eyes of God, would not be legal. A frail point on which to hang one’s hopes, and a thought, an idea, so dangerous, that one dared hardly think it, let alone give it substance by saying it aloud. Because if their marriage was not legal, then neither would their issue be.

  “And what thinks my cousin Charles about the king marrying Mistress Seymour?” asked Mary.

  “The Emperor is pleased, on so many points,” said Chapuys. He held up his thumb and said, “First, I have been assured by Cromwell that there will be no French princess for the king when he puts away the Great Whore. That leads to,” he put up his index finger, “the fact that I have received official instructions from the emperor to begin negotiating the points of a new alliance with England. His Imperial Highness feels,” said Chapuys carefully, “that an alliance is much the best way to ease Your Grace’s lot.” He shrugged. “Your Grace will agree, I have no doubt, that it makes no sense to take steps to intervene directly.” His blue-grey eyes regarded her candidly. “With your gracious mother gone…”

  “Yes, yes,” said Mary. “I never could have agreed to your plans,” said Mary carefully.

  Another thing that must not be put into words. Had the emperor provided the support for such a thing, Chapuys would gladly have raised an insurrection in England on Katharine’s behalf. But Katharine herself would not sanction any plan that would almost certainly have resulted in violence and bloodshed, and she had made Mary promise not to do so, either. He was lucky that Henry and Charles needed each other so badly; it had inspired them both to look past Chapuys’ intrigues. Charles wanted peace to promote trade.

  “In addition,” a third finger went up, “the king’s fancy for Jane has made possible the removal of the last obstacle preventing His Imperial Highness from pursuing an English alliance; Anne herself.”

  “Yes,” said Mary wryly. “I suppose even with my mother gone, it is still awkward having Anne sitting on his aunt’s throne.”

  “She stands solidly in the way of a rapprochement,” said Chapuys. “She has to go. The only question is how Cromwell will see fit to accomplish it. He is willing to put up with the Seymours to get rid of Anne. In fact, I begin to think that he cares for none of them; Howards, Boleyns, Seymours…they are all one to him. He is a king’s man. And lastly, the English people support an alliance with the Empire, simply because they loathe the idea of a French one. What an unpopular political alliance that has been! The English want no more of France and François. All this will be good for trade and profits, but does not augur well for The Concubine.”

  “And as my father said when he heard of my mother’s death, we are at last now free from all suspicion of war.”

  Chapuys wondered who had been cruel enough to repeat that bit of gossip to Mary; but then he knew. Lady Shelton would have much to answer for on Judgment Day.

  “Yes,” agreed Chapuys. “That is what it means. As a diplomat, I often have to appear to ascribe to unpalatable truths. If Your Grace is one day to rule this land, you must learn to take such barbs with an inscrutable countenance.”

  Mary brightened. Chapuys’ seeming assumption that such was a foregone conclusion served to give her great heart. It was possible; it could happen. Much stood in the way, but God’s ways were mysterious. She must have faith, and all would be well.

  “Come,” she said. “Share our meal. We have packed enough food for all, I trow. Elizabeth has quite an appetite.”

  “You dote upon the child of your enemy?” asked Chapuys.

  “Yes,” Mary replied. She smiled, and her eyes sought Elizabeth’s little red head amongst the knot of riders behind them. “I fear me that I do. She is so precocious and smar
t. And she is my sister.”

  “Yes,” said Chapuys. “No matter what else she is, she is that.”

  Greenwich Palace, April 1536

  “That is the last of it, my lord,” said the carter, wiping the sweat from his broad, brown brow with a dirty clout.

  Cromwell placed a coin in the man’s hand and sent him off. He did not mind at all being ousted from his rooms in the palace. He much preferred the small house that he had leased for his wife, and to which he rarely was able to repair. He was looking forward to at least a few cozy nights by the fire, a hot brick at his aching back and a footstool under his weary, slippered feet.

  The king was as besotted with Jane as he had been with Anne, and spent every moment he could with her. To that end, the lady had been installed in Cromwell’s own apartments in Greenwich Palace. These connected directly with the king’s. Jane’s brother, Edward Seymour, was the titular occupier of these rooms, along with his formidable wife, Anne Stanhope, and together, they acted as chaperone. And so the king could slip over to see his little love whenever the fancy took him. A pleasing arrangement for all concerned; himself included.

  Using his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, as his example, Cromwell tried very hard not to be self-congratulatory or complacent. But he could not help allowing himself just a modicum of self-satisfaction. Things were fast coming to a head; the timing of certain occurrences could not have been better had he been able to plan and control them. He had planned; he had schemed; but he could only control so much. The king had tasked him with a most dangerous undertaking. It was not immediately clear to him how he was to accomplish it all. And then events had occurred that had served to drop almost certain success into his lap. And, God willing, his luck would hold; he needed just one more facet of the vast web he was weaving for Anne’s destruction to come to fruition. And it would. He knew it would. He was a patient man; he had only to wait, and hope that he could persuade the king, who was not so patient, that his desires would soon all be fulfilled.

  His first bit of luck had come when Chapuys paid him a visit. The king had asked Cromwell to put feelers out to Charles for a détente between their two realms, now that Katharine was no more. And now here was Chapuys come to him on the same errand. Cromwell was entirely unsentimental, but it still crossed his mind that Charles must indeed be a hardened politician to desert Katharine’s memory so quickly. Still, this made his task easier by leaps and bounds; the king would be pleased. Being the recipient of the first request for such a rapprochement gave one the opportunity to dictate terms.

  And what would the imperial terms be, he wondered? No doubt, a restoral of the Lady Mary’s rank, and possibly her title, as well as her place in the succession, whatever it might please the king to call that. It was to be expected that even were she restored to the succession, any legitimate son of Jane’s would take precedence, and possibly others besides. And there was always the inevitable talk of Fitzroy. And he had no doubt that the king fully intended to restore Mary anyway, as soon as his daughter came to her senses about certain things. It was obvious that Charles did not view Mary’s rights in the same wise he had done Katharine’s, or there would be no possibility of any agreement.

  The providential coincidence of the breakout of war between Spain and France was his next bit of manna from Heaven. It was like throwing fat onto the fire. Now getting rid of the queen was not only desirable, it was essential. Charles needed English help in keeping François in check. And François still had his eyes on Northern Italy. Best to keep François and Charles busy on the continent, expending their resources by fighting each other. In return for his support for another royal divorce, all the emperor Charles required was a few quid and a troop of archers. All in all, a great deal of credit should be given him by the king, for an issue that would cost England little.

  Chapuys went away a happy man, well prepared for his audience with Henry, where the intent to ally would be made known, along with the terms of the rapprochement.

  And then, incredibly, another piece of unexpected good fortune came his way. He was a lawyer, and a good one; very little got past his sharp brain and uncanny ability to think far enough ahead to always have the advantage. But there again, he must watch his pride. It simply would not do to congratulate oneself; the way to maintain one’s edge was to be ever vigilant. So call it good fortune, but whatever one called it, there it was. A vital strand in the silk web he was weaving to catch a black widow was legal grounds to annul the marriage. Anne must not only be deposed, it must be made so that she was never queen in the first place. Henry wanted not only to be rid of Anne; he wanted to wreak his royal vengeance upon her. Her real crimes were not punishable by death, so he, Cromwell, must invent some that were. It was all the same to him; surely someone like Anne was guilty of something. The solution to the issue of the annulment had come to him in the night and awakened him from a deep sleep. All of sudden, he sat up, and into his brain dropped the idea that since the king’s dispensation to marry Anne because he had slept with her sister had been a papal dispensation, and the king was now Supreme head of the Church in England, that dispensation was no longer valid, and so neither was the marriage.

  He had favored a charge of adultery from the first, but the law was not at all clear on adultery as treason where royalty was concerned. So he, Cromwell, had pulled Chancellor Audley’s strings in the name of the king and set the wheels in motion to appoint a commission to enquire into all types of treason. To define more clearly those types of treason that were vague in the law...for instance, royal adultery…

  So the stage was set; all that was needful now was something with which to substantiate a charge. But he was a patient man…

  # # #

  The Queen’s apartments at Greenwich Palace rang with laughter. If it weren’t for the underlying sense of unease that constantly beset her nowadays, Anne could almost have been happy. It was true that in official dispatches Henry still referred to her as “His most entirely beloved queen”, but that was just an act and she knew it. Henry excelled at acting, at playing a part. Sometimes he was so good at it that he became confused and convinced himself that what he was trying so hard to persuade others to believe was actually real. But not this time. Something was afoot, something bad, something evil. If only she knew what it was! Anne put aside her lute, on which she had been strumming absent-mindedly, plucking out a new tune.

  “And where is our court musician this fine day?” asked George. Although he despised Smeaton as a base-born non-entity, nothing more than a farmhand jumped up in silk, he did enjoy listening to the man sing.

  “Off sulking, I suppose,” replied Anne. “We had words earlier.”

  “Did you?” asked George, surprised. “I have seldom heard him put two words together at one time, unless it be in song.” George retrieved the discarded lute and began to play.

  Anne tossed her head, sending her glossy black hair back over her shoulder. “I had to put him in his place. He acts like a spoilt child sometimes. He even cries if I don’t pay enough attention to him. I told him he was an inferior person and that he should not look to me to treat him in any other wise.”

  “Well,” said George. “He does have a most irritating habit of making sheep’s eyes at you.”

  “What can one expect?” asked Margaret, Lady Lee. “Anne has the most extraordinary effect on men. There is no use denying it, Cousin,” she said smilingly to Anne.

  Anne sipped wine delicately from a fragile glass goblet. “Oh, go on,” she laughed.

  “No, it is true,” said Margaret. “See here, we will have an experiment. Sir Francis!”

  Sir Francis Weston and Sir Henry Norris had been dicing in the corner, and came at Margaret’s call. Lady Worcester and Nan Cobham looked up from their cards as the gentlemen came to stand in front of Margaret and Anne.

  The men bowed to Anne. “My lady?” said Norris.

  Lady Lee addressed herself to Weston. “My lord, it has come to my attention that you spend far too much t
ime here in the queen’s apartments, to the neglect of your wife. You must cease your suit to Mistress Shelton; after all, she is betrothed to Sir Henry.”

  Weston, who had had an affaire with Madge Shelton just after the king had tired of her, took the rebuke seriously, colored beet red, and addressing himself to Norris, exclaimed, “My lord, that is untrue. I do not come to the queen’s rooms to woo Madge. You must believe me.”

  Anne, smirking wickedly, said, “Then why do you come to the queen’s apartments, sir?”

  “There is one I love above all others, Your Grace, and that is yourself,” said Weston with a deep bow. It was a courtier’s answer; Weston excelled at court etiquette.

  “Ah,” said Anne. “So the truth will out, I see. Margaret, it seems that you were right after all. Then that explains also, I trow, why Norris has been so long engaged to Madge, but has not yet married her.”

  It was Norris’ turn to sputter. “Begging Your Grace’s pardon, but that is not true. Any delay in the marriage between myself and Mistress Shelton lies with the lady herself.”

  Anne, holding a delicate white hand to her breast, pretended shock and dismay. “Then am I correct in assuming that you do not love your queen?”

  Norris reddened. “Of course, Madam, I love my queen. But that in no wise has to do with my marriage to Mistress Shelton.”

  “So,” said Anne. “The gentleman comes to the queen’s apartments not to see the queen, but to see Mistress Shelton only.”

  “No, no, of course I come to see Your Grace, and to offer what amusement I can.” Norris, not realizing the joke, was nonplussed.

  “So you do not love your queen above all others, as does our dear Sir Francis?” asked Anne. “Margaret, we should have wagered. I would have won after all.”