I, Jane: In The Court of Henry VIII (25 page)

“Now, now. We’ve had our good bit of fun, Master Wyatt, but ’tis time to surrender all things that do not belong to you and give up the game.”

“Surrender them all to Your Majesty, even if you are not at liberty to fully take them?”

“
You
can surrender them, or
I
can seize them. But either way, Wyatt, your time is at an end.”

Jane thought the tone in his voice was frightening. The voice she heard now was the frosty one the king used with the queen, not the mirth-filled tenor with which he always greeted Anne. There were great murmurs through the group as the king and Wyatt faced each other like two great lions fighting for dominance. But of course, there was no question.

A moment later, Wyatt bowed deeply to the sovereign and took a step back in symbolic surrender. As he did, he handed the chain to Anne, whose flirtatious smile had dimmed as she gazed at the
splashing fountain nearby with a statue of David and Goliath at its center. There was no longer an option. No real comparison between them.

Her choice had been made for her.

“My thanks, Mistress Seymour, for seeing the truth as the rest of us see it, and for being brave enough to declare it. I would not have expected that of you,” the king said crisply, cutting through the tension.

“I serve Your Majesty first and foremost,” she heard herself reply shyly, yet she was unable to force herself to look directly at him as she did.

It was still too much for Jane, as if she were looking at the sun. But as Anne swept past her, the fabric of their skirts touching, the two women exchanged a little glance. Jane was very certain that behind Anne’s smile she saw a flash of something extraordinary. She did not realize it until later, but in that moment, Jane was envied by the most influential woman in all of England.

By January, Thomas Wyatt had been sent from court on a diplomatic mission bound for France. Everyone knew it was because he had lost the competition for Anne Boleyn. Jane could not quite fathom the hold that the strange dark-haired beauty maintained over the king for how malevolent it seemed.

After Wyatt’s departure, Anne and the king became even more inseparable.

Along with George Boleyn; his wife, Jane Parker; Anne Stanhope; and Elizabeth Carew, Jane was regularly called upon now to accompany their newly formed little band. She still hated betraying the queen and did her best to avoid each summons. But in such matters, Edward was absolutely firm. Katherine of Aragon’s star was swiftly
fading as Anne Boleyn’s was shining more brightly by the day. For the good of the family, they must acknowledge that and do what they could to stay near the center of power.

Jane tried not to think of how guilty she felt as she took a stroll with her brother Thomas early one afternoon when the court had settled in to rest and prepare for the evening of revelry ahead. It was that delicious hour of the day when the queen was at her desk or meeting with her Spanish attendants, the Spanish and Venetian ambassadors and the all-important imperial ambassador, Chapuys, who seemed always at her side these days. Anne and the king were likewise closeted, although their agenda on these lazy afternoons did not concern affairs of state. Or so the gossip went.

“I know not how much longer I can endure this,” Jane unburdened herself, murmuring quietly to her brother as they walked along the cool, calming river’s edge beneath another gray day of light English drizzle. “She is a dreadful and demanding harlot who sits pointing and doling out directions as though she were queen.”

“I fear she soon shall be,” Thomas said as they lingered at a little inlet where the grass was tall and a flock of geese passed overhead.

“Bite your tongue, brother. The king will
never
be able to gain an annulment from the queen. What on earth would be the grounds? They have had children together!”

“’Tis all quite complicated, but in listening to Sir Francis with Sir Nicholas Carew, apparently Cardinal Wolsey is nearing a conclusion to the secret negotiations he is carrying on with the pope over that very issue.”

“How could that ever work when the queen’s own nephew is the emperor, who has complete control over the pope?”

“Cardinal Wolsey is a master at negotiation. Carew says he has gone to closet with both of them clandestinely and will do so again.
Sir Francis has asked me to accompany him this time,” he proudly revealed. Jane was stunned.

“A journey designed to run the poor queen through with the final blow? You cannot!”

“I cannot refuse them, Jane. Edward is the one who suggested me in the first place, and he would have my head if I refused now.”

“Better you lose your head than your dignity.”

“You sound awfully haughty for one who dines with the queen and hunts with the whore,” he snapped uncharacteristically at her.

Thomas then stiffened his spine and shot her a defensive scowl. It was that same pursed-mouth expression their mother used when she felt cornered. Jane shuddered; mother and son did look so alike.

“I haven’t any choice.”

“Nor do I. Edward is right, Jane. She will be queen somehow. She is not giving herself up to him and she is driving him mad in the meantime, just to make certain she achieves her goal. Everyone here says they have never seen anything like it with his other mistresses. It is as if she is guided by some powerful dark art.”

“Well, it certainly does not seem light and sunny to me. She has the most evil little extra finger, or at least some sort of growth at the end of her hand, and her voice is so low it sounds like a man’s. But she is really more like a siren, tempting him with an illusion that only he can fully see,” said Jane, unable to stop herself from talking for the first time.

“Well, I may never have seen anything like it either, but in this case I know the evil that it suggests,” Thomas said.

“I just feel such pity for the queen. There is nothing worse, I fear, than loving someone you cannot have. I wish there was something I could do for her.”

“There is nothing any of us can do for her but figure out how to
saddle up and ride along on the journey without falling from the horse, or from grace. Fortunately for you, she is convinced of your favor,” Thomas said.

“Yet I serve her greatest enemy, which makes me no better now than anyone else in this place.”

“We all must do what we can to survive here. We have been taught to prepare for that all of our lives,” he reminded her.

They smiled grimly at each other then, and Jane was glad her favorite sibling was here with her. She was not the same. This place had changed her. Thomas knew it because he knew her. And Jane knew it, too. But no one else but the two of them knew how different they were from those two naive little children at Wolf Hall.

“People assume what they will of the quiet ones,” Thomas said, taking her hand as they began to stroll back toward the palace gate.

“Perhaps they should take better care with their illusions,” Jane said, as a stray image of William whispered through her mind like a sudden Wiltshire fog. Then it dissolved, disappearing just as quickly as he had disappeared from her life.

June 1527

Windsor Castle

T
he Sack of Rome in the summer of 1527 changed much for Henry VIII, the impatient king. With the pope imprisoned by angry, unpaid soldiers on the side of the emperor, the Holy Father’s hands were tied in the ongoing matter of an annulment. No matter what diplomatic skills Cardinal Wolsey utilized at the moment, the issue was at a frustrating political standstill.

Anne Boleyn was not amused.

“Tell me that
not
!” the king raged. “By God Almighty, tell me she did not leave again!”

His guttural cry was loud enough that Jane and the queen’s other ladies in the Royal Chapel could hear it. The crash of furniture and shattering glass from the king’s private study next door followed, and the painted walls seemed to bow with the sound of his anger.

“She would not leave me! ’Twas promised between us!”

As they knelt at Lauds, Jane slid a cautious sideways glance to the queen, whose head remained lowered in prayer, but Jane could see the shudder that had taken over her shoulders, as if she were
physically holding back her own grief at the pleading in her husband’s voice for another woman.

Jane had known that Anne might leave court for Hever Castle again from what she had personally overheard these last days as the hope of an annulment slipped further from her fingers. But to see the repercussions of that meted out to the queen, who had shown Jane such kindness, felt physically painful to her.

Suddenly, the queen shot to her feet and charged with purpose across the open gallery. Jane and the queen’s other ladies followed dutifully behind, barely matching her stride as they approached the open door of the king’s study.

“Go away, woman!” Henry’s growl was like that of a wounded dog as Katherine entered the chamber. Jane and the others paused at the threshold.

“Pray, my lord, let us go to Beaulieu to see Mary. ’Twould be good for us as a family to be away from all of this conflict for a while.”

“Go if you wish, and then you may remain there,” he said rudely.

“I shall not leave you for our daughter, nor for anyone else in all the world, Hal,” Katherine returned so swiftly, and with such compassion, that Henry groaned with frustration.

“’Twould make it so much simpler if you would.”

Jane saw the remark strike the queen—the weapon of words sharper than any dagger’s thrust.

“Leave us!” he cried, realizing then that they had an audience just outside of the door.

“’Tis my wish that they remain,” Katherine declared, but there was a slight tremor to her usually strong voice. “I do not trust myself when the conversation between us is about
her
.”

“Her name is Anne,” he shot back.

“I know perfectly well what her name is. Anne of the Curious Extra Finger,” she countered stingingly.

“You dare to mock her so boldly before me, madam?”

“Is there anything to do but mock when the situation is so entirely absurd?”

They glared at each other then as rival combatants, not as two people who had known great love together and shared a life since they were very young.

“Katherine, we must speak privately,” he said finally, cutting the awkward silence with a surprisingly gentle tone.

“Anything we have to say to each other can be said before these women. They are my companions and my friends.”

“I am your husband and your king!” he said without seeming to think about the words or their implication.

“You
were
my husband. But, then, that is what this is really all about, is it not?”

He sighed deeply and then sank into a cushioned chair. “Would that I could still be the man you wish me to be.”

“For that to happen, you would be required to try.”

“Do you not believe I have tried, Katherine? All of these years, and with every fiber of my body I have tried! How I have tried to be a good and faithful partner to you!”

“One out of two, perhaps, can be claimed without sinning,” she coolly replied.

The cutting way she said it was not lost on Jane.

The awkward silence fell hard again, and Jane felt herself squirm inside. She knew she should not be there in the doorway, nor should any of them, amid this private scene. While it felt as intense as one of
the royal masques, complete with the players and the drama, this was someone’s real life. She did not like the king, and she was no longer in awe of him after all she had seen.

“Please, let us speak privately…Katerina, I bid you,” he said, calling her by her Spanish name in a tone that, to Jane, bore a lethal combination of sincerity and resolve.

His voice went softer then, as Jane and the others idled awkwardly beneath the massive curved, arched doorway dressed with drawn-back drapes and gold cords.

He pulled the queen forward, as if it were natural, and she fell to her knees before him. His voice went even lower then as he took up her hand, and from that distance, Jane thought they could be lovers for the gentle connection that brightened between them.

“We must separate,” he said with the tenderness of a man who had just declared his love.

The queen stiffened again. “I understand you not.”

“I mean to continue on in a life that does not include you as my wife.”

“There is no such life, Hal, since we are legally wed until death should part us.”

“Or the pope ends our marriage.”

“He never shall.”

Henry’s tone began to rise again, and his face colored to a mottled shade of crimson. “Just because your nephew owns him does not mean he can ever purchase the favor of our sovereign God!”

“The truth shall be the victory, my lord, not the pope, not the emperor, and not your whore.”

“I warn you, madam, not to call her that.”

“I am Queen of England. I shall call a spade a spade.”

“And I am king, by Almighty God!” He shot to his feet, a rancorous ramrod of fury. The heavy gold baldric studded with jewels across his chest clanked with the movement. “Call anything what you will, entertain your fantasies as you please, but this will be the end of our union! We shall separate as man and wife for the error of it.”