As the girls with leading roles twirled onto the stage to raucous applause, Jane recognized Anne Boleyn immediately at the center of the group. While she had grown into the enormous coal black eyes that had always dominated her face, the essence of her remained unchanged. She wore her long black hair scandalously full, unbound, and ornamented with only a silk ribbon of sparkling jewels and a great peacock feather at the back. It was not just her dark hair and how she wore it that separated her from the other girls who took the stage with her, who were mostly fair; it was also the size and color of the huge blue and green emeralds and the rubies ornamenting her white gown.
As the allegory progressed, Jane watched in amazement as the king stood and removed the ornamental baldric from his own chest, then his doublet. As he took a burning torch handed to him by a waiting page, his own costume beneath was revealed. To everyone’s surprise, he and his friends meant to be part of the performance. The words “Ardent Desire” embroidered in gold on his chest glittered and flared. As Henry descended the steps from his throne to the stage, everyone could see that William Compton, Thomas Wyatt, Nicholas Carew, William Brereton, and Charles Brandon were joining him now as Amorousness, Loyalty, Pleasure, Gentleness, and Liberty. All of the men gathered around the Chateau Vert on the stage and made a great dramatic show of asking the noble ladies to come down. Anne Boleyn, as Perseverance, boldly spoke her lines, imploring someone to rescue her from imprisonment. With great theatrical projection, Thomas Wyatt, dressed as Pleasure, asked if he might be the one to rescue her. Jane saw the king tense and his jolly smile fade as Anne delivered her lines to the handsome Wyatt to great hollers and rousing calls from the crowd.
Jane caught a glimpse then of the poor, proud queen sitting helplessly alone beside an empty throne. Her husband was clearly focused on a girl whose bold and open solicitation of him was apparent to everyone. It was a fascinating thing to watch, albeit a pitiful one, Jane decided, as the end of the performance brought the crowd of royal guests to their feet with boisterous applause.
As Anne Boleyn took her bow, so did the king, as though they were a great performing duo. Jane cringed for the queen’s silent humiliation. Her gentle expression made it all the more heartbreaking. He certainly was handsome. That much was true. But King Henry did not seem a good or kind man at all to have allowed an injustice like that—whether it was his right as sovereign of the realm or not. She knew that a ruler believed himself and his desires above reproach, but she had not expected such a self-indulgent, hurtful display. For the first time she could recall, Jane was relieved to be plain. The last thing in the world she could ever imagine herself wanting was what Anne Boleyn was so clearly and boldly seeking to capture. Magnificent as he appeared, Henry VIII quite scared Jane Seymour to death.
A few moments later, the king took the willing arm of Anne Boleyn, her face bright with a self-satisfied smile. He then led her, in steps timed to the music, from the Great Hall. The rest of the cast followed into the banquet hall down the vast window-lined corridor. She had not realized until he spoke that Nicholas Carew was partnered beside her for the length of the procession.
“I believe you are new at court.”
“Did the sheer terror in my eyes give it away?” she joked, only then feeling her heart slow enough to cast a crossways glance at the man she had heard several of the other girls whispering about as they strolled in the gardens yesterday.
He was handsome in an almost pretty sort of way, with the desired thick flaxen hair, high cheekbones, and piercing gray eyes. She knew from Edward that his reputation was as notorious as Francis Bryan’s. They played at love and at dice as though they were the same thing, not caring which was which, even though Carew was married to Francis Bryan’s own younger sister, Elizabeth. Jane pitied the poor girl who had been forced to marry him, because she was quite certain she would not know a moment’s peace for the rest of her life as lady to such a handsome lord. Perhaps her own personal challenges explained why Elizabeth had yet to be pleasant or welcoming to Jane.
Carew chuckled affably as he led her to the table. “You did have a bit of that hunted look about you. But it is endearing.”
“Would that were true,” Jane demurred.
“I am Sir Nicholas Carew, the king’s Master of the Horse.”
She forced herself not to say that his reputation preceded him. “Lady Hastings told me everyone here despises innocence,” she said instead.
“Lady Anne Hastings?” He smirked in surprise. “She would be forced to say that for the scandalous way she lives her own life.”
It was clear he had some news of her that Jane did not. Lady Hastings, another of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, seemed perfectly gentle. Feminine. Certainly hewing closer to the ideal than Anne Boleyn did.
A tall, slim, and clean-shaven man, his hair in tight copper curls, came upon them then amid the music and scurrying for seats at the tables nearest the king.
“Must it be every girl here whose heart you steal before the rest of us have a chance?” the man asked with a clever smile as he slung his arm casually over Carew’s velvet-clad shoulder in a friendly gesture.
“That would suppose any of you ever had a chance with them,” Carew laughed. “And speaking of Lady Hastings, Mistress Seymour, may I present Sir William Compton, the king’s Groom of the Stool. One cannot get much more influential than that,” quipped Carew.
“You’re only jealous you haven’t the same access I do,” said Compton.
“You know who I am, my lord?” Jane asked Carew in surprise as the two well-schooled courtiers, each glittering in gold braid and stones and looking a little drunk, stood before her in the glowing torchlight wearing competitive, boyish smiles.
“But of course. ’Tis part of the job and half the fun to know all of the ladies. Each of you is a prize in all our little games of courtly love.”
“You play at love?” Jane asked as she was seated between them and great gleaming trays of food were placed on the long tables by stewards crisply garbed in the customary doublets of green Bruges satin.
“Pray, what else would you do with it?” Carew remarked with a laugh. “By my lord, you would not wish to truly be hit by Cupid’s dart the way our sovereign says he is for Mistress Boleyn. Vulnerability is an unseemly business, to my way of thinking.”
“Yet you are married to Sir Francis’s sister.”
“Not particularly vulnerably so.”
Jane could see him watching his wife across the table as he said it. Elizabeth was stunningly pretty. She had pale skin but color enough in her cheeks to represent youth. Her hair was blond and her eyes were blue in the courtly ideal of beauty.
“But could true love not surprise you and should that not be the goal, as the poets say?” Jane asked, picking up a goblet, not of pewter or silver as she was accustomed to, but of fine Venetian glass that had been delicately stamped with the H and K emblem. The irony of the emblem hit Jane as she glanced at the king’s table at the head of the room, where he sat boldly—and smugly, she thought—between the queen and Anne Boleyn.
“’Tis not the goal at this court, sweeting,” quipped William Compton. “For it is not a place of love matches, rather one of power deals and brokered alliances. For example, poor Carew’s exquisite wife over there, alas, was hoisted on him when the king grew weary of her himself.”
“Tell the king’s sister that all matches here are broken alliances, and she might have a different reply,” Jane countered.
“You truly are an innocent, aren’t you?” Carew laughed boldly and slammed down his goblet. A bit of ruby wine splashed out and stained the white tablecloth. “Do you not believe that my lord of Suffolk made himself essential to the lady for his own gain? You have only to look at his rather checkered past, followed by his swift and powerful rise here, to see that.”
Jane had heard her parents make similar arguments over the years about Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Two previous marriages and a murder scandal dotted his life before
his scandalous love affair with the king’s sister, Mary Tudor. Jane, like the rest of the country, however, had been swept up by the romance of their story, not the likely underlying reality of it. But the longer she was here at court, the more reality there was to pull back the curtain on her girlish fantasy.
As they dined, Jane listened keenly to the repartee between the two rakishly handsome courtiers, and she watched their sly glances, trying at last to become more a student and less a victim of the world into which she had been so swiftly cast. She felt out of balance with it. True, these men had suddenly befriended her, making her feel less a wallflower and more a delicate lily, perhaps, but there was a risk in that, and she knew it.
Suddenly then, taking Jane away from her thoughts, the queen bolted to her feet on the dais, shooting a dagger glare at Anne Boleyn. The lively music from the gallery above ceased, and a deafening silence filled the hall as the two women glowered at each other. A heartbeat later, seeming to sense danger, a little man in bright orange and green jumped between them. The little man said something Jane could not hear from where she sat at a distance, and the king tipped back his head and filled the silence with his boisterous laughter. The moment was as fraught with awkward tension as anything Jane had ever experienced.
“Leave it to Will Somers to defuse any volatile situation with a jest,” Compton murmured.
“I know not how he does it. But better his head at risk than mine. He has a certain power over our sovereign in the same league as Mistress Anne.”
“He sounds quite malleable for a sovereign,” Jane observed.
Carew laughed.
Compton cleared his throat and lifted his goblet in tribute to her.
“Why, Mistress Jane,” said William Compton, “I would not have expected you to be clever. At least not so soon. Perhaps, little mouse, you may surprise us all yet.”
Francis Bryan read the letter again as he stood at a long dark window later that night, his leather-booted foot propped on the casement. Such a plea from young William Dormer was the last thing he expected. Apparently, Dormer had only just uncovered a plot launched against him by an ardent village girl, one of no consequence to him, but one cleverly designed to keep him from his early interest in Jane. It was, the letter said, Dormer’s greatest desire that Jane’s influential cousin might intercede on their behalf to help him in some way right the grievous wrong of years ago. Despite the obvious futility now, still Dormer could not move on with his life without knowing for certain that Mistress Seymour had moved on with hers. Francis gazed out the window onto the pond below, across which two elegant white swans swam. The letter was solicitous to the point of being desperate, and even a hardened courtier like Francis was moved by the romance in it.
But timing was everything. He had just set about installing Jane in the queen’s household, at great risk to his own standing with the rising power of Anne Boleyn, whom he was outwardly forced to support. Since Her Highness had lost so many ladies this past year to the lure of the royal concubine, Francis was trying to juggle both sides. He could not risk drawing attention to himself or his causes. Thus, it must wait, he determined, folding the missive and tucking it into his doublet until he could give a bit more thought to it. Sober thought, at least.
If it were true love, it would survive the test of time.
If not…well, perhaps there was some greater partner out there yet for Jane.
Although, by his life, Francis Bryan could not imagine who that might be.
Feeling strangely pleased with herself, Jane rose the next morning and dressed. Heartened by a feeling of growing confidence, she laced the front stays of her own long plastron and drew on fresh stockings without aid. The May Day joust would be her first at court. In spite of the air of quiet reserve the queen’s attendants were instructed to adopt, the prospect was still enormously exciting. She was to sit with Lady Carew, whom Jane secretly admired in spite of how disparagingly her husband had spoken of her. Jane was learning that no one here was completely as they seemed, so she had no intention of judging Elizabeth Carew based on her husband’s drunken rambling. At least not yet. She would also be with Margaret Shelton and Lady Hastings, the latter of whom was another of the king’s apparent romantic castoffs. They were as plentiful as flies, Jane mused to herself in the rich honey sunlight streaming through the windows.
She had been spared attending the queen this morning at Matins, which for a change gave her a few additional moments with her own appearance. One of the young maids of honor then attached Jane’s stylish new lavender velvet hood and hooked the long gold chain at her waist. It was not an opulent gown on par with some of the others here, but the velvet was rich and the gold braid was crisp. The growing loyalty she felt for the queen had allowed her, in a small way, to feel that she might actually fit somewhere into the complex fabric of court life. God certainly knew, there was nothing left for her in Wiltshire.
“Pray, is that my good cousin Mistress Seymour? You suddenly resemble a quite fashionable court lady,” exclaimed Francis Bryan affably, coming upon her as she neared the lists across the gardens behind the palace. Grand blue, red, and green banners flew above them in the bright blue midday sun. Francis was wearing a partial suit of armor and an easy smile and carrying his gleaming plumed helmet.
“You do me the honor in saying so, sir.”
“Ah, but ’tis true.” His deep brown eyes twinkled in the sunlight against his pale skin and auburn hair, and Jane felt herself blush, feeling almost important as they walked together to the entrance to the lists—the place where the contests were to begin and where they would part.
“You joust today with whom, my lord?”
“Apparently I am to face the king.”
He did not sound particularly daunted, Jane thought. “Shall you let him win?” she asked as the breeze ruffled her full sleeves and the hem of her dress.
“No one lets the King of England win. As you have seen, he is a great bear of a man who takes delight in being able to vanquish us all. Perhaps only Brandon’s size would permit him to be a true challenge.”
“Then I shall pray for you as soon as I see you ride out.”
“By the Lord, I would be honored if you did.” Then he touched the cuirass of his armor near his heart as if he had remembered something. “I have something I must give to you, but it warrants a proper explanation, the time for which I do not now have. But anon. It shall keep ’til then.”
Jane smiled. “Would you like to offer me a hint?”
“’Twill be better if I present it, and the sentiment, fully.”
He took her hand then and casually kissed the back of it in the French manner since he had spent much time this past year in France as one of the king’s ambassadors. She had noticed it was one of his little endearing affectations. Each of the king’s good friends had one. But Jane was enormously grateful to Francis for having brought her away from the embarrassment of spinsterhood at Wolf Hall, so there was little he could have done to displease her.
Certainly nothing he might tell her could endanger that.
“Ride well, good cousin,” she said brightly, to which he then made a great bow.
It was not until she was seated in the stands in the very center of the queen’s ladies, gowns touching like rose petals, that Jane saw the king in the stands in front of her. Once again he was flanked by the queen on one side and Anne Boleyn on the other. As a warm breeze blew, Jane turned to Elizabeth Carew beside her. “I thought your brother was to ride against the king,” she dared to whisper as everyone else around her was chattering and gossiping excitedly. She knew no one would care enough to listen to her.
“That was true, until His Majesty danced the night away with Mistress Boleyn and turned his ankle rather sharply trying to impress her. My husband, who attends him each morning, said his foot is the color of a summer plum and as fat as a tree stump.”
Elizabeth’s tone was harsh, but it made sense if she had been disposed of by the king, as the gossip clai
med. Jane’s sense that Henry VIII was a shallow, selfish man redoubled inside her, and she resolved to keep as well out of his way as possible. Not that she was capable of catching his eye anyway, or that of any man, for that matter. William Dormer had certainly made that clear enough years ago.
“Who shall be Sir Francis’s challenger, then?”
“My husband.” Elizabeth smiled.
“Your husband versus your brother?”
“They are well matched in all things: whoring, drinking, and fighting.”
Jane looked more closely at her then. Skin like ivory, a perfect chin, and a tiny nose, yet such jaded callousness. It changed her a bit in Jane’s eyes. Was that all the king’s doing? she wondered as she tried to imagine what Elizabeth must have been like before.
“Are you not supporting your brother, then?”
Elizabeth looked at her with a perplexed expression as the riders cantered proudly out onto the field to thunderous applause and trumpeted fanfare. “Of course I am. He is my brother. But this is court, little mouse. Is that not what he and my good husband so endearingly call you?”
Jane did not answer as her glance again caught on the king and Anne Boleyn. The spectacle they were making of themselves seemed particularly vulgar. Yet it was also difficult to turn away from. The king barely noticed the pageantry or contest before him as he laughed with Anne and slapped his knee like a young boy. The encounter reminded Jane of a spider casting its web around a big, colorful bug, the bug being entirely unaware it was about to be devoured.
How much better it was, Jane thought again, to be removed, to be merely part of the backdrop to such a spectacle and not a true piece of it.
Down on the field, Francis looked so dashing and lordly in his gleaming silver, the green plume of his helmet fluttering in the breeze, that Jane completely turned her attention to him. She felt a strange burst of familial pride knowing they were cousins, however distant. He was far more kind than her mother’s cousin, the great Duke of Norfolk, who had yet even to acknowledge Jane.