Surrey regarded his father with hooded eyes. A great man, a very great man, but he lacked subtlety. The son of his father in his inborn arrogance, Surrey was the son of his mother in his finer qualities, such as his abilities as a versifier.
Ostensibly banished to the hinterland for his supposed mismanagement of the king’s son’s funeral, Norfolk and his family were in reality enjoying a respite at their castle of Framlingham, away from the demands of court. The king had wanted his dead son whisked out of London and buried with a minimum of fuss and bother, and Norfolk had complied with the king’s desires in that regard. It was also necessary that Norfolk should be seen to take the blame for burying his son-in-law at obscure Thetford Abbey, with no more ceremony than one would use to bury a hound. He took no issue with being the royal scapegoat. He had despised his son-in-law as a dissolute ne’er-do-well, who despite all the king’s posturing, would never have been seriously considered worthy of the throne if the king failed to produce a legitimate male heir. He had married his daughter to the boy solely with an eye to making her queen of England. Norfolk had had no respect for Fitzroy, and his daughter he dismissed as of no importance at all, except as an avenue to the crown. Now Fitzroy was dead and his grand scheme had come to nothing.
“Yes,” agreed Surrey. “First Wolsey, and now Cromwell. One wonders if perhaps the king may not have just a slight preference for the profane.”
The duke sneered. “And forget not Charles Brandon, our Duke of Suffolk, another base commoner, and the king’s taking of two wives from amongst his own subjects, instead of making royal marriages to the benefit of England! The king does indeed have a taste for the inferior!” Anne Boleyn had been one of the king’s common wives, and all knew that there had been no love lost between the duke and his niece.
At the thought of Anne the duke’s face took on an ugly expression. What a debacle that whole affair had been! He had been perplexed when the king had taken such an unaccountable fancy to his niece. He simply could not see what all the fuss was about. The girl was dark, almost swarthy, in an age that admired a fair skin and yellow hair. She was too tall, and had no bosom. And worst of all, she had a sharp tongue that passed for wit with some, but to him, simply indicated a shrewish nature. However, Norfolk was not above capitalizing on the king’s unaccountable lust for his sister’s child. It was unfortunate that when the king finally got between the girl’s legs, and she had been a past master at saying “no” for six years, he no longer wanted her. By the time the king had finally seen Anne for what she really was, it was too late. He had made her his queen and the only way to rid himself of her had been the block.
And what had the king done then? His next bit of folly was already in the making before the blood was dry on the sword that had separated Anne’s head from the body that the king had turned the world upside down to possess. He had once again married one of his own subjects, eschewing a royal match for the benefit of the realm; a woman who, to Norfolk’s eye, had no appeal whatsoever. She was not royal, let alone noble, and had no political alliance to recommend her. In Norfolk’s opinion, the king’s taste in women was a complete mystery, and bordered on the bizarre. The only way Norfolk would have bedded Jane Seymour was in pitch darkness. And now the common Seymours were in the ascendant, to the chagrin of the semi-royal duke.
“It surpasses my understanding,” said Norfolk, shaking his head in bewilderment.
Surrey snorted his derision. “What surpasses my understanding is the king making Cromwell not only Lord Privy Seal, but raising him to the peerage. A common lawyer, now to be kow-towed to as Baron Cromwell of Wimbledon! One would rather avoid the court altogether than to have to treat such a person as an equal.”
Norfolk sneered. “There is a rumour afoot that Cromwell is plotting to marry his son to the queen’s sister.”
Surrey regarded his father blandly. It was hard to argue with Cromwell’s tactics; such a plan was very much akin to his father’s plot to marry his daughter to the king’s bastard son. Poor Mary! His darling sister, married to that boor! Had the blackguard not died coughing up his own bloody lungs, Surrey would have been tempted to find another way in which to rid his sister of her wearisome husband. Husband! At least he had never actually been that to his beloved sister Mary. He stole a glance at her, sitting with her back straight and her hand shading her eyes as she watched the dogs run towards the water. So delicate…so beautiful! There was no one good enough for her. If only he could have married her himself! He sighed. He had married the wife his father had chosen for him, and she was well enough…she had just given him a son who would one day, God willing, become the Duke of Norfolk. But she roused none of the desire in him that his beautiful sister did. He had no scruple where Mary was concerned. If he thought she would have him, he would have become her lover in a trice. Perhaps such unnatural desires ran in the family. Had not his cousins Anne and George been accused of incest? He wondered if, all unwittingly, Cromwell had happened upon a rather unpalatable truth. Certainly George’s wife had believed the accusation, indeed, had been the one to make it, and surely a wife would know? But it was not to be for him and Mary, and for that he was heartily sorry.
The conversation about Cromwell and the unpleasant memories of Anne had caused Norfolk’s bile to rise. He had waited patiently for years, watching Wolsey, that butcher’s cur, spiral slowly down to ruin for his failure to obtain the king’s divorce from Katharine. He had resented Wolsey’s rise to prominence and power and his position of closeness to the king; that closeness was his own by right of birth. He, too, had royal blood, and he was the premier duke in England. And yet the commoner Wolsey had usurped his place. Like a snake in the grass, Thomas Wolsey had risen through the church to the pinnacle of power, finally attaining the office of cardinal. When Wolsey was disgraced and banished, Norfolk had expected the king to turn to him, but he had not. And whom had he turned to? Cromwell! Unthinkable! And Anne had supported Cromwell because he had been the one to convince Henry to finally break with Rome so that he could marry her. Anne had all but turned on her own family, and had become especially vicious and cruel to him, her uncle. The spiteful bitch! There had been occasions on which she had spoken to him as if he were a dog. This was all the more disconcerting, in that Norfolk had expected to become the man closest to the king once his niece was the queen of England. But it had become evident that this was not to be; Anne gave him no support, in fact, had done quite the opposite. And Norfolk was not one to forgive a slight, or in this case, a grave insult.
And then an idea had begun to work its slow poison in his brain. He would use Cromwell to destroy Anne, and then he would destroy Cromwell. And then there would be no more clever commoners to worm their way into the king’s graces. Then would he obtain the position of first counselor to the king.
Destroying Anne had been all too easy; she had played right into his hands. George was collateral damage, he had nothing against the boy; but George’s own wife had been aching to see him suffer ever since he had turned away from her. Jane Rochford was convinced that Anne’s last child had been her own brother’s. Anne was desperate to conceive and the king had all but deserted her bed. She must have a son to save her life, so she had slept with her brother. Why not? George was the only person she could have trusted with such an awful secret. But Anne had miscarried. The fetus had been deformed and terrible to look upon; he had seen it himself. Was this bloody lump of flesh, so obviously male, the twisted product of an incestuous union? Perhaps. Jane Rochford had certainly thought so. And from there it was child’s play. Cromwell had found the evidence, such as it was, and he himself had presided over Anne’s trial.
Checkmate.
It was Cromwell’s turn next. He might take a little longer to snare, but snare him Norfolk would. Sooner or later, Cromwell would make a mistake, and when he did, Norfolk would be there, waiting.
Just at that moment the dogs reached the mere. Their clamorous barking and their headlong charge into the cattails along the b
ank raised dozens of waterfowl into the clear, turquoise sky. Bitterns, avocets, kestrels, and snipe, all arose in a brownish-grey cloud of singing wings and a cacophony of screeching fear. Gulls made their eerie wailing sound, geese squawked, and mallards and teals flew up in a rainbow of iridescent wings. And then, in the midst of the mêlée, a great grey heron rose ponderously into the blue sky.
“Let fly!” bellowed the duke, and at that signal, the birds were released.
The deadly birds raced into the heavens, and for a moment, Mary lost sight of them all in the sun. She always enjoyed watching the falcons and hawks fly free, up and up, until they were so tiny one could barely make them out. What must the world look like from heaven, she wondered? But that romantic thought was soon usurped by the blood-curdling keening of the lethal birds as they each spotted their prey and began their headlong descent to the earth. It was a sight to make one’s heart skip a beat in its sheer swiftness, grace, awesome beauty, and certain outcome for the hapless prey.
Surrey licked his lips in anticipation of the kill. His gyrfalcon had singled out the heron, a graceful bird twice her size or more, and with deadly accuracy, slammed into it. Grey feathers rained from the sky, and pieces of down floated on the air. As the birds who had been the unfortunate victims of that sortie fell to the ground, the formidable birds of prey obediently returned to their perches. The dogs bounded forward on the hawk master’s command to retrieve the limp, bloody little bodies and deliver them to their human masters. Surrey, his gyrfalcon back on his wrist, waited for his greyhound to drop the heron in front of him from its mouth, in which it had carried the dead thing in a surprisingly gentle manner. The hawk master rewarded the dogs and Norfolk’s falcons and hawk with gobbets of raw venison. But Surrey gently set his gyrfalcon on the ground and allowed her the reward of royalty; Mary shuddered as the gyrfalcon plucked out the heron’s eyes and ate them.
Mary had been careful not to break her fast that morning. She knew that she was required to watch the ceremony, and it always sickened her. There was nothing to throw up and so she was able to disguise the dry heaves of her stomach, as her gorge rose, as so many coughs.
Just then her father turned in his saddle and pointed. “Look there!” he shouted. “They are burning the stubble in the fields. Let us to the farm!” With that he swung in his saddle and galloped off in the direction of the fire as if he were being pursued by the devil. Her brother, gyrfalcon firmly ensconced back on his leather gauntlet and hooded and jessed, followed swiftly, sending up showers of scree and leaving nothing behind but a cloud of dust.
Mary sighed. How she wished she could have turned back to the castle, but she knew that was not wise. Her father would expect her to follow them to the fields. The burning of the fields after the harvest was one of his favorite times. The rabbits that had sheltered in the fields all summer would be forced to flee into the open by the heat of the flames and the acrid smoke of the burning dead corn stalks. The dogs and the birds would kill them mercilessly, tearing them to pieces in their frenzy, leaving the fields strewn with little bloody corpses. Mary had never before known that the cry of a rabbit could sound so almost human…
She sighed again and swung the palfrey’s head around in the direction of the farm. The beauty of the autumn as it began to touch the trees with its many-colored palette was lost to her. All she could think of, with sickening dread, was the cruelty she was about to witness.
Poor little rabbits; she knew exactly how they felt.
Chapter 10
“I pray Christ save father and mother, and this young lady fair, and send her shortly a brother, to be England’s right heir.”
– Anonymous courtier
Dover Castle, August 1536
After weeks of journeying on the customary Royal Progress, this year through the cities of Rochester, Sittingbourne, and Canterbury, the court finally came to rest in the great fortified castle of Dover. Such a progress route had not been haphazardly chosen. At both Rochester and Canterbury, Jane watched appalled as the king cast covetous eyes over the spoils to be had when Cromwell’s Valor Ecclesiasticus laid its greedy finger upon the doors of Rochester Cathedral, the Priory of St. Andrews, and the richest prize in Christendom, the great bejeweled shrine to St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury.
Henry took his religious duties very seriously, or at least he had convinced himself that he did. Jane had known the king most of her life and she knew that he had a rare talent for believing what he wanted to believe, and that he thought nothing but the best of himself. When one came down to it, Henry believed, by virtue of his anointing with the holy chrism, that whatever thought came into his great golden head was inspired by God Himself, and therefore must be right and good. There was no doubt that the king believed himself to be a devout Catholic, but he wanted an English Catholic church, without the interference of a pope, or the long, greedy arm of Rome constantly grasping money that by rights belonged to England. Or, let truth be owned, to the king himself. For it had become obvious to all that only the king and a very few of the highest in the land were to benefit from the amputation of that Roman hand in the till. Henry had no plans to return to the church of Rome, despite, since the death of Anne Boleyn, being constantly wooed to do so. As Supreme Head of the Church in England, all that monastic wealth now belonged to him, to do with as he would. It would be again as it had been when he first became king, when his coffers were full to overflowing from the years of his father’s wisdom. There was no going back now.
Always a paradox of a man, Henry had proved that he wanted the English church to remain Catholic; he was no reformer. And yet he saw no contradiction in his efforts to root out centuries of superstition by abolishing saints’ days, frowning on pilgrimages, destroying sacred relics, and the pulling down of what the very reformers he professed to despise called fake images. True, some genuine abuses had been uncovered; statues rigged to cry blood, and things of that sort. But in his headlong rush to justify the rape of the English church, Henry was, in Jane’s estimation, throwing the baby out with the bath water.
All these thoughts ran in circles through her head as she rode in the golden fall sunshine through the woods that surrounded the castle. Red admiral and peacock butterflies flitted and swooped, the birds sang, and the trees swayed with the caressing breezes that blew in off the glittering waters of the Channel. Up and up they swirled, over the White Cliffs until they sailed over the emerald green caps of the cliffs and into the trees, to search her face and to gently lift the hair from her neck.
The peaceful scene was disturbed by the sudden raucous barking of the king’s hounds, for the first order of business upon their arrival in Dover had been a series of daily hunts. Twenty stags had been killed so far; it was the time of grease for red stag, the season still having two more weeks to go before it gave way to hinds.
But the beauty of the woods was deceptive. The leaves of oak and beech, ash and alder carpeted the ground in all the jeweled tones of autumn, but as Jane carefully proceeded down the trail on her favorite white mare, she saw only the ruby red of fresh blood on the path. She was allowed to shoot as she pleased, but in an effort not to disturb the royal womb, she was forbidden to gallop in the chase. Her role had therefore been reduced to the unenviable one of helping to track the dying animals as they made their last brave, desperate but doomed attempt to escape. Some of the larger stags had staggered on for almost a mile as the lifeblood seeped from their wounds. But the animal would inevitably stumble and fall in its last death throes. Her mare, a dainty thing with a silvery-gold mane and tail, shied as she approached each dead animal, to confront its glassy stare.
The warm, easterly wind was blowing steadily as the hunters returned bone-weary to the castle. The breeze still blew quite stiffly, finding its way into every chamber of the castle through the wind-eyes, and the effect was pleasant. It helped to cool heated brows, and its subtle whisper produced a lulling somnolence that overcame many of the castle’s exhausted inhabitants. The golden afternoo
n began to slip into the cool blue of evening, and the first stars pricked the aquamarine sky.
Jane had arranged to dine alone with Henry after the hunt. He had been uncharacteristically quiet when they returned to the castle, and now he sat staring out of the window, not saying a word, watching the endless, aimless flights of the sea gulls. She would not disturb his musings; she knew better. It was far more prudent to wait until he spoke, and revealed what was in his mind. She had come to the point, after three months of marriage, of realizing that there was infinitely more safety in silence than in making an effort at conversation. The only sound in the room was the sighing of the wind, the intermittent but constant crash of the waves far below, and the muted, lonely keening of the sea gulls.
She had ordered some of his favorite dishes, hoping perhaps to sweeten his lately perpetual sour mood. On the laden table were three of Henry’s most preferred eel dishes; congers, both creamed and smoked, and jellied lampreys. A gilded bowl was piled high with fall apples, red, golden, and green. And she had ordered also a “salet”, a dish of which she knew little, but that the Lady Mary had informed her that the king especially liked.
Henry turned from the window with a sigh and faced Jane across the small table. The look he gave her chilled her to the bone. She knew that his leg pained him terribly and almost constantly now. After a full day in the saddle, his third in a row, she suspected that it was throbbing. But it had become evident over time that there was little anyone could do. The apothecaries bled him and experimented with all manner of exotic remedies; the application of hot poultices that stank abominably, the painful cutting away of the festering flesh, and other evil-sounding therapies of which it made her shudder to think. Nothing seemed to help. His leg was worse rather than better, and at times it seemed that the only thing that alleviated the situation for the king was to lash out at everyone around him until they were as frightened as he was uncomfortable.
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