“Kind sir, I pray you remind the king on my behalf that I am a gentlewoman from a good and honorable family. My own brother here has been much loved and rewarded by him. Yet for me, personally, sir, there are no greater riches than my honor, and I would not harm that for anything.”
Weston looked embarrassed, realizing then that they had an ever-growing audience for what he had expected to be a simple exchange. “Mistress Seymour, please understand I cannot return these to His Majesty. It is, after all, only money, which he prays you shall put to some good use for your own pleasure while the two of you are parted. I am given to understand the letter fully explains his wishes,” he said, lowering his voice, though everyone in the chamber—including the queen—could hear what they were saying.
“Pray, tell our most gracious sovereign that if he still wishes to make me some gift, let it be on the occasion when God sees fit to make for me some honorable match.”
Jane knew she had said the word “honorable” a little too boldly because she could hear Carew groan beneath his breath. The line she walked at that moment could not have been more dangerous.
In the silence that ensued, Jane took the sealed letter. The stares upon her were weighty. With the greatest sincerity, she pressed the vellum to her lips, then gave it back to Weston, unopened.
“But, mistress, I simply cannot—,” Weston began, but his words fell away beneath Anne Boleyn’s cold stare. It appeared that Weston knew he had fallen into an unenviable situation. “Mistress Seymour,” he said, bowing to her before he turned and left the chamber to the echo of gasps and whispers.
The queen clapped in a harsh, discordant manner, interrupting the chatter.
“How very noble of you, Mistress Seymour,” she said bitingly. “My husband has always had an eye for the ladies. Although, in your case, I cannot imagine how you suit his tastes.”
Jane cast her glance downward. She was buying herself time. There was no sincerity in the action.
“Have you nothing to say, Mistress Seymour?”
“I believe my sister’s response to the king speaks for itself, does it not?” Edward intervened then, all of them knowing that his important post in the king’s privy chamber carried enough weight to protect him.
Anne arched an ebony brow. For a moment no one in the room knew where she might next cast her anger, but her posture was as stiff as a bare winter tree. Then her gaze seized on Jane’s pendant.
“What do you wear so boldly around your neck, Mistress Seymour? Pray, do show me, as it looks quite beyond your financial means.”
“It looks just like the one His Majesty gave to you,” George Boleyn observed drily.
Jane reached up and grasped the pendant, but it was too late to conceal it. She watched Anne’s gaze narrow into something quite menacing, and her posture grew more tense, like that of a cat about to strike. Jane struggled to hide her fear, since fear was something seized upon by seasoned courtiers. Right now, she thought, Francis Bryan, her longtime protector, could not return swiftly enough for her liking from his post in France, since she could not be entirely certain yet where the king’s loyalty would end up. His marriage to Anne had been too tumultuous and too lengthy to yet completely trust that.
“’Tis nothing, Your Highness, but a trinket,” Jane tried to say as Anne approached. Steady catlike steps narrowed the charged chasm between them. She could smell Anne’s noxious lilac-water scent as she drew closer.
“Then you will not mind showing it to me,” Anne said as Jane clutched the king’s image more protectively. “The workmanship is too familiar for it to be only a trinket, Mistress Seymour.”
“If you please, Your Highness, it can be of no significance,” Nicholas Carew tried to intercede, but the queen cut him off sharply.
“Silence, traitor! You have nothing of value to say any longer. The company you currently keep has surely poisoned you.”
Jane saw William cross the room toward them then, ready to insert himself into the dangerous mix. She longed to warn him that he must not implicate himself, but she knew she had no more control over William now than she ever had before.
Suddenly, Anne lunged at Jane, snatching the pendant from her chest. Jane gasped and stumbled backward, instinctively pulling the pendant out of harm’s way. In one swift movement, Thomas also lunged into the scuffle. But it was Jane’s own hand that fiercely batted the queen’s fingertips away.
“Why, you brutal little she-devil!” She recoiled and cried out with a wail of pain, then lurched forward again, pulling Jane downward as they tumbled to the wood-plank floor.
The collection of ladies shrieked in horror as skirts flew and arms flailed. One of the queen’s shoes came off as Edward, Nicholas, Thomas, and George Boleyn all dove into the mix in an attempt to stop the skirmish.
“Let me see it!” Anne screeched as her hands and arms batted about, her legs kicking every which way against those who were more powerful and trying to restrain them both.
“Your Highness knows well what it is!” Jane finally blurted out.
Anne disentangled herself from Jane, and George caught his sister by the arms as she rose to her feet. The irony of how history was repeating itself with this pendant had not been lost on any of those present. One star rose while another fell. Just as it had been for Katherine of Aragon before her, so now it was with Anne Boleyn. From the corner of her eye, Jane saw her sister-in-law restrain William, whispering words of caution to him; Thomas, Edward, and Nicholas hunched against the wall, catching their breaths from being kicked in the chests by the furious queen. Jane cautiously stood, alone yet defiant. There was blood on the back of her hand where Anne had scratched her. A deeper scratch wound along the milky white column of her neck.
It seemed as though hours passed before Anne shook off George’s grasp, walked calmly toward Jane, and took the pendant, which bore the image she already knew she would see, in her hand.
“A tolerably favorable likeness, considering His Majesty has grown more fat since the portrait he had painted for me,” Anne said icily. “You were right not to accept his latest gift, since you shall never keep him. You are just like the others. In the door, out the door. Is that not right, Lady Carew?” she shot venomously.
Elizabeth lowered eyes in embarrassment as they quickly filled with tears. Jane noticed Nicholas grimace beside her at the mention of the royal affair, which had been cruelly brought back to light with Anne’s remark.
“Be careful, sister. Perhaps you should take a moment,” George cautioned.
Anne’s desperate expression made her look like a feral animal as she continued to clutch the king’s painted image glittering around another woman’s neck.
“While His Majesty is away, I want you and your jewelry out of my sight,” she said evenly, boring daggers into Jane with her bottomless dark eyes. “Is that clear, Mistress Seymour?”
Jane only nodded, afraid, not of Anne Boleyn, but of what contemptuous slight might issue from her own mouth if she spoke.
“And mark my words, mistress,” Anne further warned as Jane backed away from her properly, as she knew to do, “there shall be no divorce between myself and the king, so you are wasting your time.”
Later that same day, as the sun began to set behind a row of bare-branched lilac trees, poised liked sentinels outside of Cromwell’s tall leaded windows, William could feel himself begin to breathe again. He was relieved that his wife had gone home to their estate in Kent for a few days with her father, because he was not at all certain he could have kept the heartbreak from his eyes.
He did not love Mary, but he had no wish to hurt her.
Across from him, at a large desk littered with papers and folios, an inkwell, and a dish of blotting sand, Cromwell sat frowning, his deep-set eyes casting over some endless communications that he must reply to in His Majesty’s absence. As he silently watched his benefactor, William’s mind wandered back to the events of the day. He had shocked himself at how closely he had come to restraining the queen
in order to defend Jane. William did not truly know what lengths he might have gone to out of love for her…until today.
Cromwell pressed the king’s seal into the soft wax on the folded vellum. He blew on it, then handed it to William across the desk. “See this goes to Ambassador Chapuys. ’Tis for the emperor’s eyes alone,” Cromwell grumbled just as the door opened so suddenly that both of them jumped. William’s back had been to the door, so he did not see her until she was halfway across the room. The queen was about to confront them.
“You knew about this all along, did you not? You could have stopped it! You are as much a traitor to me as Carew and my own uncle Norfolk!” Anne was raging so boldly that her face was mottled crimson, making her seem ugly and old.
“I have no idea what Your Highness is referring to,” Cromwell said with masterful calm as he and William rose, then bowed.
“Pray, look me boldly in the eye, sir, and tell your queen you did not know in advance that you were moving out of your suite to make way for that Seymour clod and his wife! Now there shall be a clear path for the harlot to maintain her precious honor as she dances blithely into her mésalliance, and thus into the king’s bed!”
Cromwell cast down the stamp of the royal seal that was still in his hand, jowls shaking. “My opinion on the matter was not asked nor given, Your Highness.”
“Oh, bollocks!” she swore with most unfeminine verve. “You have cast in your lot with the Seymour girl just like everyone else! Lie to me not!”
“I have cast my lot nowhere, Your Highness,” he calmly defended, knowing, as they all did, that a measured tone was the thing that angered her most of all.
“I thought we had an understanding, Master Cromwell, you and I. How many hours did we closet together and speak of the new religion and of reform?”
“Not so many hours, Your Highness, as I did closet with the king on matters of divorce.”
“You are an imbecile and a fool!” she raged, and William saw hauteur replaced by desperation. “I am Anne Boleyn, Queen of England!”
“Queen Katherine wielded the same power, and where is she now? Where is my mentor, Thomas Wolsey?” he asked with such calm precision that she froze for a moment.
Even William was afraid to breathe in the echo of the question.
“You go too far, sir,” Anne warned. “Perhaps you should take a lesson from your precious mentor on what happens to those who betray the Crown!”
“That is a lesson we all might do well to take, Your Highness,” Cromwell intoned, trying his best to defend himself, but what would happen next was anyone’s guess.
After she had gone, they could still hear the echo of the collective footsteps of the queen and her guards. Cromwell sank heavily back into his chair, letting out a groan as he rubbed his face with one large hand. William lowered himself into his own chair a moment later, seeing his employer’s troubled expression.
“Do you believe she meant to threaten you, my lord?” William asked as Cromwell took a stack of papers and absently straightened them.
“I do not suppose the queen ever says anything she does not mean to.”
“Have you any recourse to protect yourself?”
Cromwell arched a single beetle brow as he straightened another stack of papers in that same passively self-soothing way that had become his custom. “You need not worry about your livelihood, Dormer, if that is what you are after. Your post with me is secure—wherever my rooms shall be.”
“’Tis not my post about which I am concerned, my lord Cromwell, for I am a loyal servant to you for granting me an opportunity at court when no one else did.”
Cromwell studied William discerningly then. “Why, William, I did not know you cared,” he returned with a clever smirk and a slight lift of his brows. “Yet I shall admit to being concerned about Her Highness lately.”
“While I was not at court then, stories of what happened to Wolsey are horrifying to this day. One can hardly imagine the heights from which he fell so swiftly.”
“I suppose all of us are less safe with this new talk of divorce. A cat strikes out most viciously once it is wounded, and Anne is certainly that,” Cromwell observed.
“Might I ask if you believe the rumors could be true that he will divorce her?” William pressed.
“Henry found his way round marriage once. I suppose that somewhere in her heart, assuming she has one, Anne Boleyn knows he might do it again. Thus, the drama.”
“And you, as his most-learned counsel, would be just the man to bring it about, which she knows full well?”
Cromwell’s expression bore no traces of pride in his power but grew more troubled. His brows knit together as he considered the question. “Very well, young Sir William, if you would like to engage me in a bit of folly, what would you have me do about the threat the queen poses to me?”
William felt entirely out of his league with such a weighty question. Even finessing Cromwell into this much of a conversation on the subject seemed just short of miraculous to him, as he was still largely inexperienced in court matters. But he must do this for Jane; he must plant the seed because she had asked him to. Because he loved her, and he owed her that much.
“Well, Master Cromwell, I can say only what my father used to say: in war, a target cannot strike back if it has already been soundly hit. I was never quite certain what that meant until I met our queen.”
Cromwell’s frown lengthened into a cautious smile. “Such a ruthless streak you have. But I fear His Majesty could not put England through the scandal of another divorce without sound cause.”
“Would England not find infidelity sound enough?”
Cromwell fell silent and William felt he had overstepped his bounds. White-hot dread snaked through him as the silence lengthened into what seemed an eternity. Then, to his complete surprise, he realized that Cromwell was actually considering the notion he had cautiously proposed.
“Well, in a purely speculative way, of course, there would need to be an evildoer upon whom one might assign the crime. Have you someone in mind, Dormer?”
The joking tone between them had changed swiftly. Their conversation had shifted, and William knew in that instant that the next words he uttered might have the power to change history.
“I can only ask if you have not seen Her Highness in the company of Master Smeaton. There seems not a reason to falsify something if there is evidence of misconduct before us.” William felt himself choke as he spoke the indictment. But it was not a lie. He had seen for himself these past months the queen’s open flirtation with the handsome young musician. He had also witnessed her hatred toward Jane, which inflamed him. Anne Boleyn was a brazenly selfish, spiteful woman who must be stopped. Even if that meant the end of any hope for a future with Jane.
To William’s complete surprise, Cromwell’s clever smirk returned.
“Well, now. I would have guessed your sights would be set on Sir Henry Norris,” he said with a grin.
The court was rife with rumors that Norris was dragging his heels about marrying Margaret Shelton, to whom he was betrothed, because of his wild and inappropriate obsession with the queen. William had seen it, as well as her flirtation with Mark Smeaton, now that he thought about it. And the queen always seemed most closely attentive to her own brother, Lord Rochford. It was all rather unseemly, the way she appeared to make excuses to whisper to George Boleyn, to take his hand in public and kiss the knuckles slowly, which even by country standards seemed to him slightly incestuous.
“I shall certainly watch for that in these next days and go from there,” Cromwell finally declared, growing suddenly more serious again. “But if His Majesty does seek a divorce, and then finds a way to marry Jane Seymour afterward, mark me, my boy, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that our king has you alone to thank for it.”
Chapter Fifteen
February 1536
Hampton Court
It was another evening of revels and music performed by a troupe of minstrels
from Venice—and dodging the queen’s angry stares and muttered comments to her loyal retinue of ladies. Jane was defensive, weary of the daily stress of waiting upon the very woman she meant to depose. But this evening promised one difference.
Thanks be to God, the court had moved to Greenwich and the king had returned from London.
Jane actually found herself excited to see him and to feel that spark between them once again. It was a spark that might well become a flame…if not for a heart so full of William, in spite of how they had quarreled.
It always seemed so hopeless. It could lead only to someone’s unhappiness. Or worse yet, their doom. Like Cardinal Wolsey. Or Sir Thomas More, both of whom Henry believed had betrayed him. What would he think if he knew of Jane’s abiding love for William?
Henry VIII seemed a very unpredictable character when it came to those for whom he greatly cared. For those unfortunate few who had experienced the extremes of his emotions.
Jane felt a chill even as her heart strangely stirred at the thought of him.
She moved elegantly now, still largely unnoticed by the others, in a gown of amber velvet with a long beaded plastron. It was far different from the one in which she had first been received at court so many years ago. She felt like an entirely different person in it. What set it apart was the traditional gabled English hood, rather than the far more fashionable French hood that most of the court women—the smart younger ones, particularly—donned in deference to the queen.
Anne still preferred all things French, which Jane disliked for her memories of her time there.
And she must do everything she could to set herself apart.
Jane had taken to heart her brothers’ and Nicholas Carew’s counsel, and she had every intention now of carrying through with their instructions. She could not be more beautiful than Anne Boleyn, but she could make certain that she was a great deal more wise.
As was her custom, Jane stood in the background of the collection of brightly clad women, hidden mainly from view by the hoods of Margaret Shelton, Lady Margaret Douglas, and Lady Jane Rochford. She was watching Anne’s open flirtation now with Francis Weston and Henry Norris, and Jane was unable to believe how brazen she was in it. As Henry had spent the afternoon hawking with Charles Brandon, his other courtiers were free to attend to the queen while they waited for the king to grace them with his presence. Anne reveled, as usual, in the attention. Mark Smeaton sat nearby, quietly strumming his lute to entertain them. And, it seemed, to keep a watchful eye on her.