But as Lady Rochford stood looking down at Jane, she realized just how anxious she was about her own position and power. She did not want to have to face the king if he was once again thwarted of his desire. She thanked St. Michael and all his angels that the king had sent for the Lady Mary to come to attend her stepmother. Even illegitimate, Mary was still the king’s daughter and a higher authority. Let Mary be blamed for the queen’s ill health. She dropped the gossamer cloth and backed quietly away from the bed, wishing fervently that Mary would come.
# # #
Mary regarded Lady Rochford warily as she poured two henaps of a pinkish wine. She neither liked nor trusted her. But Lady Rochford had been Anne’s enemy, and it was said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. She would leave it at that.
“What ails Her Grace?” asked Mary, surprised at how glibly, and convincingly, she was able to refer to her mother’s former handmaiden as her own superior. Surely God must have some higher purpose in mind; it was best to let such small things go.
Lady Rochford frowned, sipping her wine. “She is bilious most of the time, which is strange, considering she had little sickness in the first three months. And she is constantly worried.”
Mary laid aside her cup. “Take me to her.”
Lady Jane hesitated. “I thought it best to prepare you.”
Mary did not reply and Lady Rochford said nothing as they walked from room to beautiful room towards the Queen’s Apartments. Wolsey was another in the long line of people who had disappointed her and broken her heart. But he had been a master at accumulating wealth, and unlike some, knew also how to spend it. Hampton Court was new and was, to Mary’s eye, by far the grandest of the royal palaces.
The halberdiers outside the queen’s chamber looked neither to left nor right as they silently withdrew their weapons so that the ladies could pass.
Mary raised her pomander to her nose as she entered the room. She had had no clear picture of what to expect, but it certainly was not of a noisome, stuffy, dimly lit chamber.
Mary climbed the steps to the bed and said tentatively, “Your Grace?”
She felt, rather than saw, a shadowy figure move. “Mary?”
Mary lifted the silk and gauze and that which she beheld appalled her. Gone was the sleek, pink-cheeked woman who, barely two months earlier, had been so happily triumphant. Instead of the languid complacency of the gravid female in her seventh month of pregnancy, at a time when a dreamy lassitude should have been descending upon her, Jane looked decidedly unhealthy, and the little round bulge seemed almost obscene in the setting of the thin body. Jane’s eyes were dull and sunk in dark, shadowy rings. Her hair, usually honey-colored, was lank and dark with sweat, and her linens and gown were damp with perspiration. Jane’s pallor was so pronounced that she looked almost green in the uncertain light of the room, and her cheeks, which the last time Mary saw her had been plump, now seemed hollowed out.
Forgetting herself completely, Mary cried, “Holy Mother of God, Jane!” And at that, the queen’s eyes filled with tears. Without waiting for further conversation, Mary said, “Lady Rochford, those shutters, they must be opened at once.” She swung around and scanned the group of concerned, upturned faces. “Frideswide, I want the queen’s robe.”
Frideswide Knight had attended Mary along with Lady Kempe and Susan Clarencius on the journey to Hampton Court from Windsor. She bobbed a quick curtsey and said, “Yes, my lady.”
Mary turned to Jane and said, “We are going outside for a walk,” and to Jane’s mewed protest, replied, “You must get some exercise, Your Grace.”
Lady Rochford, who had hesitated over the order to throw open the shutters, said, “But my lady, the plague…”
“There isn’t a case a plague within ten miles of here,” retorted Mary impatiently. “Do as I say. And have some cinnamon and cloves burned, the stench in here is all but unbearable. Frideswide.”
Mistress Knight replayed her curtsey and said, “Yes, my lady?”
“Please see that a bath is prepared, and that fresh linen is put on the bed. Susan!”
Susan Clarencius inclined her head and Mary said, “Send to the stables. You can drive a dog cart? Yes, I thought so. Find something suitable and come to the back. Lady Kempe, I want a platter of fruit and a stiff syllabub made with some good red wine and fresh cream. Ah, the robe,” she said, as one of the queen’s bed clamberers approached and opened the garment wide.
Lady Rochford wrung her hands and said, “But my lady, Her Grace cannot go out unsuitably dressed.”
“No one is about, Lady Jane,” said Mary, “but if you would be so kind, send a page into the garden and tell him to clear the walkways of gardeners on both paths to the water steps.”
She turned to face Jane. “And now, Your Grace, please take my arm.” Jane’s arm felt surprisingly strong on her own, and she stepped out with determination.
“I had feared me to move from my bed,” Jane said sheepishly.
And her women had indulged her fears, thought Mary. God send my own women would tell me what was for my own good! “We will be perfectly on our own,” said Mary. “We can stop and rest along the way to the river, and if you tire, Mistress Clarencius will have the dog cart.”
Jane stopped only twice on the short walk to the river’s edge. Mary sent a page to tell the boatman to cast off and wait a half mile downriver, but to return before the tide flooded.
Finally, they reached the end of the path and Mary sat Jane down on a bench that was flanked by frothy pink meadowsweet. Jane picked a sprig and held it to her nose.
“We shall have the floors of your rooms strewn with it, if you like,” said Mary. “It has a lovely fragrance, does it not?” She glanced over at Jane just as the tears that had filled her eyes spilled over. “What is troubling you, Jane?” asked Mary softly.
Jane drew a ragged breath, and trying to conquer her tremulous voice said with a rasp, “I am so afraid!”
“Of what are you afraid?”
Jane turned haunted eyes to her. “The king has abandoned me,” she said pitifully. The pale gray eyes swam, making them appear over-large in the small oval face. “He cannot bear to be near me.”
Mary shook her head. “I do not believe that to be true. It is well-known that the king dismissed the court and repaired to Esher to protect you. I did not intend to be flip concerning the plague…it is raging elsewhere. Middlesex has been fortunate…so far. The fewer people you are exposed to the less the risk. Do you not agree?”
Jane nodded wordlessly, and Mary wondered how often she had given just that very nod to the king. Meaningless.
“Jane, I am serious. The separation was for the best. The king must govern the realm, after all. He is just doing it from Esher, that is all.”
“You don’t understand, Mary.” Jane shuddered and Mary reached out and pulled the ends of the robe closer about her. “It was frightening. I would be sewing or eating and I would look up and catch him staring at me. He would try to stop doing it once I became aware of him, but his eyes would always stray to my belly. Once it seemed as if he might…”
Mary had closed her eyes and was feeling more than hearing Jane’s words, and when her speech stopped Mary was suddenly jerked out of a pleasant heat-induced somnolence. “What?” she asked. “Might what?”
Jane closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sun. “The king is desperate for a boy, Mary. He wants to know. They all want to know. My brothers have been haranguing me mercilessly. Does it move? Has it stopped? Does it kick? Does it feel high up in the womb? A boy! Low? A girl…I could not take it anymore. Then the plague got worse and he used it as an excuse to get away. Mary, what if there are others?” Jane looked truly miserable, but Mary was not certain if her misery was rooted in love for the king, fear for her life, or perhaps, a little of both.
The riverbank was alive with the sounds of birds and insects. The water was brown and sluggish, but this far upriver, had not the stench that it manifested closer to the cit
y. Every now and then one heard a splash and caught, out of the corner of the eye, a glimmer of silver. But by the time one turned one’s head to look, all that was left was a few diamond drops falling gently back down to the surface. There were also the ever-present hovering dragonflies. Their movements were erratic, as if some invisible entity were yanking a silken cord every few seconds. Their metallic green wings vibrated, reflecting the late afternoon sun.
“Jane, you and I have been too long at court to have any illusions. But one thing I do know, and so do you.” Mary placed her hand over Jane’s small, pale one. It felt very cold, despite the heat of the day. “If there were others, we would know it. Such secrets cannot be kept, and people like to gossip. We would know.”
Jane used the balls of her hands to dislodge the tears from her eyes. “You would tell me if you knew?”
Mary ran a hand over Jane’s forehead, smoothing back her damp hair. “If you asked me, yes, I would. But I believe there are none. I believe that the king truly loves you, Jane.”
Jane shrugged. “Perhaps you are right. Yes, I’m sure you are right. Especially now. But…” Her eyes welled up again, and she placed her hands on her knees and began to rock back and forth. “Mary, what will he do if it isn’t a boy? What will he do to me? Will he kill me?”
Mary would have given much in that moment to display a sincere reaction of incredulity to such a suggestion. But Jane was right. The incalculable damage that the king had already wrought to bring them to this day stood as proof that Jane’s fears were real enough.
Mary felt a sudden chill and shivered; but the cold came from deep within, not without. Still she must do her best to dispel Jane’s fears. “That is absurd, Jane. He would be upset, even enraged perhaps, but he would not turn that rage on you. You would simply try again.”
Jane blinked. “Think you so?”
Mary looked Jane straight in the eye and said, “It would be the best solution. To do otherwise would be complicated and time-consuming, and the king is running out of time. At least, he thinks so.”
“You comfort me marvelous much,” said Jane dryly.
Mary smiled. “But you know I am right.” She was surprised that Jane did not smile back; instead, she threw her head back and the tears began streaming down her cheeks, her mouth open in a soundless cry.
“Jane, what is it?”
Jane dropped her head, held an elbow in each hand, resumed her rocking and said in a whisper, “I f-fear the ordeal, Mary.” She hiccoughed and drew another shallow breath. “The pain is very great, I hear. And so many die! And what if the child should die? Oh, Mary, I fear me so greatly!”
“I cannot attest to it personally, but Jane, it is the lot of women,” Mary said. “And you have the best to care for you.”
“Cromwell and Cranmer have grumbled to the king,” said Jane, wiping her eyes on her sleeve and unconsciously sliding a slender finger under her nose. It was such a childish gesture that it momentarily smote Mary’s heart.
“On what grounds?”
“I pray God to help me in all things, but in the old way,” said Jane. “It vexes them. They are reformers. They ask how the people can be expected to accept the new ways when even the queen will not.”
Mary was silent.
“Mary, what if…”
“Sh-sh,” said Mary gently. “Jane, this must stop. You have already made yourself ill. This must go no further. Do you want to harm the child?”
Jane’s face contorted into a paroxysm of misery. “Of course I do not!”
“Then you must trust me and do as I bid you. Firstly, what are you eating?”
Tears in various stages of drying reflected muted sunlight off of Jane’s pale face. But her attention diverted, she began to recite. “Mutton; it is late for lamb. Venison, when we can get it. Deer are scarce right now and we have few servants here. Goose, teal, doves…” She paused in thought, unconsciously ticking off each item against a slender white finger. “Partridge, pheasant, peacock, swan, and of course, the quails.”
Mary seemed puzzled for a moment and then she said, “There is naught on such a list but meat, surely? No wonder you are bilious! You are eating nothing else? Why?”
Jane’s posture slumped and she bowed her head. “One of the serving wenches…” She shrugged. “One of the wenches said that boys need meat. Perhaps if…”
“I have never heard such nonsense!” exclaimed Mary. Boys…the idea of them had haunted her for years as her father sought a male heir; and the reality of them had lately disturbed her dreams, children hung by their necks in the north and left to rot, their grief-stricken mothers refused permission even to bury them…
Such thoughts inevitably brought Aske to mind, and the horrors of the bloodbath that her father and Norfolk between them had wrought on the unhappy rebels. All had expected, even the man himself, that he would be executed on Tower Green, or if the king were not merciful, hanged at Tyburn. Sir Francis Bigod, despite his station, had been hanged at Tyburn. Sir John Constable had been hung in a gibbet and left to die at the gates of Hull. And then an order had been sent to the Tower to arrange for Aske to be taken back to York. He was paraded in disgrace through the streets of the towns in which he had lately held great sway. But why send him back to the North? What did it mean?
He had not long to wonder. When the party reached York, Aske was hung in chains from a scaffold in front of Clifford’s Tower at York Castle. Like Jesus, it had taken him three days to die. Was that a blasphemous thought, she wondered? Just then the sun dipped behind the castle and the breeze, for a moment, blew cool. She shuddered. Poor Aske. She could do nothing for him, then or now, but she must do her best to help Jane.
“Jane, it must stop. To be a boy, this child must first be born. Besides, methinks that if you eat any more birds the babe will be born with wings!”
Despite themselves, they laughed.
“Let us go back,” said Mary. “Your syllabub will be waiting, and you will eat some fruit.”
Jane waddled purposefully as she leaned on Mary’s arm. It was almost dusk, and the sedge warblers were coming to roost in the shrubs at the water’s edge, their collective cries creating a cacophony of noise. The tops of the trees were bathed in golden light, but below, all was now in shadow.
As they walked in silence down a path lined with pollarded willows, Mary pondered how precious life was. Any life. “Come, Jane, she said. “We must get you well.”
Esher Place, October 1537
The moon was low on the horizon, and so full that it seemed as if a huge, golden platter hung in the sky. The night sky was dark and studded with stars, and clear except for a wisp of gray cloud that every now and then scudded across the great yellow disk. The moon shed a golden light so bright that Henry could see the entire landscape before him. But as the miles melted away, the moon rose and the light became pallid and colorless, making all appear black and white, despite the fact that he knew it masked all the vibrant colors of autumn. He could not make out the green and russet of the grass, nor the fall leaves in all the colors of an artist’s palette. God send it was not an ill omen, this pale, dead light.
He had not been at Esher when the queen’s messenger arrived; he had sneaked off days before, like a truant schoolboy, to Woodstock. He had never promised to stay at Esher. He had, in fact, promised not to go more than sixty miles from Hampton Court during the queen’s confinement. Such a promise was easily given, and was supposed to ease Jane’s mind, as well as placate his anxious Privy Council. There must be nothing, at least nothing that was under their control, which might disturb the queen’s peace of mind at this critical time. One could not, for instance, control the plague; but one could mitigate the risk, and that he had done, by dismissing the court and removing his most trusted advisors from the queen’s presence to Esher.
He himself was strangely calm. He had no doubt whatsoever that Jane would deliver the male heir that everyone expected, that the country needed, that he so desperately desired. He had don
e everything that was asked of him, by God and man. He had admitted Edward Seymour to the Privy Council to please Jane; and up and down the land, all summer long, the people had offered prayers for the queen’s safe delivery. This time God must answer his prayers. So confident was he that he had even ordered a garter stall to be made for his son at St. George’s chapel at Windsor.
So now he was riding, with a small escort, as fast as the night would allow, to Hampton Court, where Jane’s pains had begun that afternoon. There were only a few miles between Esher and Hampton Court; but it was sixty miles between Esher and Woodstock. But he could not help himself. He had stolen away and gone hunting. And now he had been caught out and must needs get himself to Hampton Court by hook or by crook before the child was born. Would he be in time? Would his absence grieve Jane, or would she even be aware of it? He spurred his mount to a gallop, but prudently reined back again. It would do no good to break his own neck getting there.
There had already been two births so far, and the month was young; his niece Frances had given birth to a girl just a few days before, named Jane for the queen, and Catherine, Duchess of Suffolk, had presented another lusty son to Brandon. Now it was Jane’s turn. Her motto was “Bound to Obey and Serve”; he had great hopes that she was about to do just that. She must. There must be no difficulties this time.
Hampton Court Palace, October 1537
It was dawn when the king arrived. The sun, breaking the horizon, turned the black and white and gray of the moonlit night into a golden and white morning. The dew had frozen and all was encased in a pearly rime. But as the sun rose, the rime melted away as if by magic, and the world once again burst forth in all the colors of autumn.
The Baker's Daughter Volume 1 Page 38
