“I have heard the king say that he wants to fill the royal nursery with boys,” said Mary. She was unaware of the wistful quality her voice held as she said the words, but it was not lost on Jane. She knew what Edward’s birth meant to Mary. But this was how it had to be, how it had always been meant to be. Mary’s dreams of ascendancy and revenge, yes, Jane doubted not, revenge, had never been substantial, and now they had been blown away like a March mist on a spring day. For with the birth of a male heir, Mary was supplanted now by even her staunchest English supporters. As much as Jane disliked the thought of it, Edward was the child of reform; and even though the king was outspoken against reform, and claimed to be a good Catholic in spite of the break with Rome, the king could not live forever. And when Edward became king, the reformers believed they would come into their own. There was no room in that for Mary.
And then a thought struck her. What would her future really be like if her role was to fill a nursery with boys? She would be perpetually pregnant, and then she would have to endure time and time again the torture of the child bed. She shuddered.
“You are cold,” said Mary. “You must rest, Jane. You are not yet recovered. We must be careful of you, and get you well.”
Despite the gaiety of the surroundings, despite the thoughts Jane had entertained of triumph, of victory, the full horror of it all descended upon her. It would never be over. How many more could she survive? And there was nothing to be done. As soon as she was recovered it would all start again and she would be trapped.
And then Jane remembered something that she had heard several of her ladies discussing as they whiled away the afternoons sewing or strolling in the garden. Women were often beset by dark thoughts just after childbirth. It was natural. She must not succumb to anxiety. All was well, was it not? Was she not the much-loved queen of a doting king? Was she not the mother of a healthy, beautiful prince, and beloved of the entire realm for her gift to them of an heir?
Jane smiled and took Mary’s hand. “I am all right, Mary. I just need to rest and recover. All will soon be well.”
# # #
“Well?” asked Henry impatiently, as he paced the length of the queen’s presence chamber. “What is taking so long? Where is the queen? Why is she not dressed?”
Lady Rochford looked from Mary to Dr. Butts; she was not going to be the one to tell him.
Dr. Butts hesitated. “Your Grace,” he said, “the queen is suffering from a common malady associated with childbed. She…”
“Is it the white-leg? That is not so serious, is it? And why was I not told that the queen was ailing?” The king fired his staccato questions so fast that Dr. Butts was at a loss as to which to answer first. Anne had suffered from white-leg after the birth of Elizabeth; many had said that she could not possibly have slept with her paramours on some of the alleged dates put forth at her trial due to her malaise. No matter. If not on those dates, it had happened on others. He had not been present during Anne’s illness; such things disgusted him. He had waited to see her until she was herself again. And now Jane…! Was there no end to this?
“Your Grace, the queen does not have the white-leg,” said Dr. Butts carefully, “I am afraid that her condition may be more serious. I fear me that Her Grace suffers from the child-bed fever, Sire.”
Child-bed fever! Many did not recover from that ailment. “Why was I not told of this before?” Henry had assumed his dreaded posture of hands on hips and legs spread wide. He was dressed for the ceremony which was to take place that evening which would raise the prince’s uncle, Edward Seymour, even higher in the peerage of the realm; he was to be created Earl of Hertford. Jane was to have been there to witness this great gift to her family; now it seemed that she would not be present at the ceremony after all.
Dr. Butts replied, “Sire, we were not certain of what ailed the queen until just this morning. There are so many complaints associated with child-bearing, Your Grace. And I felt it prudent to consult with Dr. Augustine, and Dr. de la Sa also gave his opinion. We agree that it appears that the queen is in a fever.”
“Is she well enough to attend the ceremony? What is being done for her?”
Dr. Butts shook his head. “Oh, no, Your Grace, the queen must not leave her bed. I doubt if she could. We are administering a decoction of yarrow and agrimony to reduce the fever, and chamomile and willow bark for the pain. Do you wish to see her?”
“N-no,” said Henry. “If she is so ill, best let her be. Though I am sorry for it.”
# # #
Days passed and the queen’s health did not improve; rather, or so it seemed to Mary, she got worse and worse. Jane burned with fever, her hands and face were hot and dry to the touch, and she could eat nothing. The nostrums administered by the royal apothecaries did not stay down long enough to have any effect. Jane moaned and thrashed in her bed, and all that could be done was to apply cool cloths to her fevered brow and hold her hand. Mary refused to leave her bedside until Dr. Butts demanded that she go to her own apartments to rest. Dr. de la Sa added his admonitions to Dr. Butts’, and finally, exhausted from her vigil, Mary departed.
As she entered her rooms, which were empty as she had not been expected to return until much later, a small voice broke the silence. “Will she die?”
Mary started, and turning, saw Elizabeth sitting in a chair by the window. The glare was to her back and Mary, fatigued and lost in her own thoughts, had not seen her when she entered the room.
For a moment, Mary did not know what to say, but like herself, she somehow knew that Elizabeth wanted the truth, not pretty, reassuring lies. She shook her head, “I do not know,” she replied. “I do not think any of us know what will happen. We can only hope that the fever passes.”
Windsor Castle, November 1537
Every time one of her horse’s iron-shod hooves hit the cold, hard ground, Mary experienced the exquisite agony of a pounding toothache. It was quite unfair, she reasoned, in that the tooth, after causing her unspeakable pain, had been drawn before the funeral cortège had departed Hampton Court Palace for Windsor Castle.
After Jane’s death, she had been beset by a numbing grief; the regular, pulsating throb of her tooth had been the only thing that convinced her, during those dark days just after Jane’s life had ebbed away, that she herself still lived.
Jane had died screaming in agony. One could not be witness to such anguish and not believe that those screams would not haunt one’s dreams forever. Certainly they had done so in the days just after Jane slipped away, blessedly unconscious for a few moments just at the last.
Only five days after her brothers had been exalted, Edward promoted to Earl of Hertford and Thomas knighted, Jane had fallen very ill indeed. But even after the physicians and apothecaries had lost all hope, Jane seemed to rally. Some blamed the surfeit of quails for the queen’s malady, some the exhausting rituals following too close upon a difficult delivery; but all agreed that it was unlikely that the queen would survive.
Mary had stayed by her side, holding her hand. She had come to like Jane very much in the short time since her rehabilitation; she was not unmindful that, whatever her motive, Jane had been one of her strongest supporters in the days when Henry had wavered over what to do with her. What Mary had not fully realized until that moment was that she had come to love Jane, and loving her, could not bear the thought of losing her.
What was most puzzling to Mary during this time was Lady Seymour’s behavior to her daughter. Lady Seymour had always seemed a somewhat distant and aloof personage; but her treatment of Jane during her illness Mary simply could not understand.
Jane’s father had passed away just before Christmas last, and Henry, fearing for Jane's health, and not wishing to have his own Christmas revels spoilt by the queen’s absence, had forbidden Jane to return to Wiltshire for the funeral. Was it possible that Lady Seymour held this against Jane? After all, she was the queen; she could do what she liked. Couldn’t she? Mary knew better; there was no will at the cou
rt of Henry Tudor except the king’s, and he had had his say. Jane would stay at court for the duration of her father’s obsequies. It was the only reason that Mary could think of for the cruel manner in which her mother had treated Jane as she lay dying.
During one of Jane’s increasingly rare lucid intervals, Lady Seymour had stood over the bed and looked coldly down upon her daughter and said, “Your dear father knew that this, or something like it, would happen. It was inevitable. I am sorry that he did not live to see his prophecy come true. You stood by, my girl, and let innocent people die so that you could be queen. And now look at you! You will die. It is surely the Lord’s revenge upon you for your perfidy. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; I shall repay’. God is paying you now, in like coin, as the wages of this great sin. Your father knew this, and he told me. He said nothing good would come of your marriage to the king because it was rooted in blood and steeped in injustice. And he was right, Daughter. God is not mocked, Jane. It is an eye for eye. You will die.”
Mary winced at Lady Seymour’s spiteful words. Jane seemed not to hear them, but one never knew. And then once when Lady Seymour had departed the sick room to take her ease, Jane had looked at Mary with eyes bright with fever and said, “You must forgive her, Mary. She is a reformer, you know. I and my sister are the only ones of my family who still cling to the old faith. My mother has read the bible. So she knows. I am doomed.” At which confession Jane began to sob, the tears streaming down her face.
“Jane, Jane, you must calm yourself,” said Mary, taking her hand and enclosing it in both her own. “There was nothing you could have done. You and I both know that, even if your mother does not. The king would have his own way.”
Through her tears Jane said, “But how can she say that nothing good has come of it? We have our little Edward, do we not? Does he not thrive? Is all not well with him?” Suddenly Jane’s eyes went wide and had her throat not been so sore, she would have shouted; but in a rasping voice she begged Mary to tell her the truth. Had her son died? Had he left the world, and were all afraid to tell her, lest she die of grief?
“No, Jane, no, I swear it!” Mary replied. She stroked Jane’s hot, dry forehead. “I swear by all that I hold holy, Jane, Edward is alive and well. And growing stronger with every passing day.”
These words seemed to comfort her and she sank back into her pillows, from which, weak as she was, she had tried to rise, as if to go to Edward’s nursery and see for herself. “All is well, then,” she sighed, and then she seemed to sleep. It was the last time that Jane said anything sensible; from that moment on she had slipped in and out of consciousness, and when conscious, had raved in delirium.
On the twenty-fourth of October, barely twelve days after giving birth to the heir to England, Jane’s confessor was called for and extreme unction prepared. She passed away just before midnight. It had fallen to Mary to inform her father of the queen’s death, as everyone else, high and low, from Cranmer, Cromwell, and even Brandon, down to Will Somers, the king’s fool, shrank from the task of telling Henry that the mother of his long-awaited heir was dead.
Upon being informed of Jane’s death, the king had uttered a choked cry and then had literally run from the room. He did not stop running until he reached Windsor, leaving a grief-stricken Mary to make all the funeral arrangements. Mary was to be chief mourner, and must see to everything. At first the enormous task of arranging the royal obsequies had sufficiently distracted her attention from her sorrow, but after several days, she found that she was unable to sleep; nightmare scenes of Jane’s last hours haunted her slumber. And then the toothache had set in. The final details of Jane’s embalming, the making of the exquisite effigy that would sit atop her bier on the doleful trip from Hampton Court to Windsor, and all the other myriad particulars to be seen to Mary had managed through a mist of blinding, throbbing pain. Finally, hearing of her dire situation, the king had sent his surgeon to draw the tooth.
Mary raised her head and looked about her. The day was gray and gloomy, with lowering dark clouds that threatened rain. Pray God they arrived at Windsor before it started or the road would be a quagmire. They had set out from Hampton Court in the early hours of the morning. The journey seemed interminable; they should arrive before darkness fell, but the days were short and drawing in, and perhaps Sir Nicholas had miscalculated, and they would be traveling in the dark. Mary slipped from her reticule one of the cloves that Juan de Soto had plied her with as the party had gathered in the forecourt at Hampton Court before setting off. The relief they provided was temporary, and placing the clove in the hollow where her tooth had been was painful. She winced and bit down. Soon the numbing effect manifested itself and she was able to think clearly, and not through a haze of throbbing pain.
As the funeral cortège slowly wended its way the fifteen miles from Hampton Court to Windsor, the only sounds to be heard were the soft clip-clop of horses’ hooves and the jingling of silver bridles, added to which was the mournful cawing of distant crows. Grieving people lined the roads, some throwing wreaths of holly and ivy as the bier with its effigy of the dead queen passed them by, some tossing sprigs of rosemary, the symbol of remembrance, all that was to be found at that time of year; all were solemn-faced and tearful. They stared in fascinated awe at Jane’s effigy, dressed in royal finery and bedecked with jewels, as the queen had always been. Mary could not bear to look at it; instead she looked to left and right. The trees were all bare and stark, and black against the gray of the sky. The trees resembled so many reaching hands, hands reaching up as if from out of the grave. She shuddered.
As Chief Mourner, Mary rode just behind the bier that held the coffin, atop which the ornate effigy sat in Jane’s favorite green brocade chair. To her right rode Lord Montague, Reginald’s older brother, and to her left, Lord Clifford sat his restive bay. The horse’s antics were making Mary’s mare uneasy.
“My lords,” said Mary. “I shall ride with Lady Margaret and Lady Frances for a while.” Lord Clifford nodded and closed ranks with Lord Montagu. Mary dropped back, patting her horse’s neck to calm her.
“How now, cousin,” said Lady Margaret. All three ladies were dressed in somber black velvet, which made them all look ghost-like in the uncertain light of the waning day, but Margaret’s pallor was almost translucent. Her lover, Lord Thomas Howard, had died of a fever in the Tower just after Jane passed away, and the king had taken pity on Margaret and finally released her from her confinement.
“I was glad to hear that you had been released from Syon,” said Mary.
Frances snorted. “A grave mistake,” she said. “She will only get into trouble again.”
Margaret bristled. “Pray, Cousin, I’ll thank you not to speak of me as if I were not here.”
“Nor will you be, if you persist in your follies,” retorted Frances.
Mary’s tooth had begun to throb again; she stayed silent, not wishing to enter the fray with her two fiery cousins. But in her heart, she agreed with Frances. Margaret seemed born to trouble, and resembled her mother, the queen mother of Scotland, in more than just looks.
At a bend in the road the village of Windsor came into view. It was dusk, and the road was lined with mourners, holding torches or shielding candles in the twilight. The wind had risen with the setting of the sun and the hair of the effigy lifted intermittently in the breeze, giving the eerie impression that it was a real person who sat atop the funeral wagon. Mary reflected that this was a stark contrast to that sunny, bright Trinity Sunday in the spring when Jane, so happy and hopeful, had ridden to church to celebrate her quickening. Now all was silent and glum.
At the castle gates, the procession halted and Mary rose in her stirrups to address the crowd. She loathed speaking in public; she had not her father’s easy charm and spontaneous wit. But none was called for at this unhappy moment.
“Good people,” she said, her deep, almost man-like voice carrying on the wind, “We thank you for greeting Queen Jane on this, her last journey in
this world. The king heartily desires you all to pray for Her Grace.” With that, the royal party began the climb up the hill to the castle, and the people said goodbye to their beloved queen forever.
Chapter 13
“It was folly to think that they would marry her out of England, or even in England, for she would be, while her father lived, only the Lady Mary, the most unhappy lady in Christendom.”
- Mary Tudor
Greenwich Palace, January 1538
Mary sat upon the queen’s throne next to her father looking out at the colorful spectacle of the Christmas court and its sea of faces. The view from this vantage point was slightly disconcerting. Although she had been close to it all of her life, the throne had always seemed something of an abstract to her. As princess, being heir to the throne… would she ever ascend the throne….being supplanted by Edward as heir to the throne…Katharine’s, her mother’s, throne…Anne’s (hateful thought!) throne…Jane’s throne…
The New Year’s gifts were being formally presented, and Sir Brian Tuke, one of the king’s secretaries, was recording each gift and its giver on a scroll. There was a golden cup for the king from the Marquis and Marchioness of Exeter, presented by their steward; then it was Mary’s turn, and she was presented with a quince pie from Lady Hertford. The pie was as large as a wheel of cheese, and the lattice-work strips of the crust were each as wide as her hand. Then there were a dozen jars of honey from Dame Agnes, the abbess of Syon.
Although the king occasionally asked after the giver as his or her agent stood before him, it was still possible to smile, to thank, to nod, whilst carrying on a conversation between Mary and himself. Suddenly, apropos of nothing, the king blurted out, “I am in negotiations with your cousin Charles for a marriage pact. You,” he said, “with the seemingly mythical Dom Luis; myself with any Hapsburg princess the emperor cares to name. Although the Duchess Christina of Milan is reputed to be a beauty. She is a widow, and only sixteen.” Mary’s stomach gave a heave as she noticed her father lick his lips. “And there would also be alliances of marriage for Elizabeth, the Duchess of Richmond, Edward, of course, and for Lady Margaret, too, if we can keep her out of trouble long enough to seal the marriage bond. That will tweak François’s long, ugly nose, I trow!”
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