The Favored Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Third Wife Read online

  He fairly spat out the words, his sharp, assaultive tone far more bruising than the words themselves. Catherine continued to look at him mildly. He began to pace, scattering the women in the room as he neared them, swerving back and forth. I could see that he was sweating.

  “I bring physicians to examine you,” he was saying, “apothecaries to give you drugs to make you fertile, we pray together, you go to every shrine in Christendom—and this is the result! Another dead boy! How many is it now? Ten? Twenty?”

  The king paused in his diatribe, and seeing my opportunity, I slowly moved toward the door. The others too began filing slowly out of the room.

  Catherine reached out toward me.

  “Stay, Jane,” she said quietly.

  “Go!” the king shouted. I knew I had to do as he asked, and I quickly and quietly exited. But once I was in the corridor beyond the queen’s bedchamber I stopped, and listened to the quarrel that erupted—a quarrel far more venomous than any I had ever heard, either in the palace or outside of it.

  I was not the only one listening. The queen’s Spanish ladies lingered there in the corridor, as I did, as did Jane Popyngcort and Bridget Wiltshire and Anne Boleyn and a few of the ladies in waiting. The Spanish ladies crossed themselves from time to time, and exclaimed to one another in their own tongue. I was feeling worried. What would the king do to Catherine? Clearly she had foreseen how angry he would be, that was why she had asked Maria de Salinas to delay sending word to him of the stillborn child. How extreme could his anger become?

  “Enough!” the king kept saying, this one word trumpeting out again and again amid the torrent of his harsh words.

  “Enough indeed,” I heard Anne say to Bridget. “All this is just wearisome. What does he expect, married to an old woman like that, with a dried-up womb—” Only Anne didn’t say “womb,” she used a much more rude and disrespectful word.

  “Hush!” I heard myself say. “Have you no sense of duty to your mistress? Surely the poor queen deserves civility, after all she has been through!”

  Anne turned toward me and looked at me, a frosty look.

  “And who are you, Mistress Seymour, to tell me how to act? Your father is a landed knight, I believe, while my uncle Norfolk is the greatest noble in England!”

  I stood my ground. Anne might be among the most attractive of the maids of honor (though far less attractive than the beautiful Lavinia Terling), with an allure that was difficult to define but unmistakable—I could see the lust in the men’s eyes when they looked at her—but that did not excuse her rudeness.

  “I have often heard the queen say that charity and kindness have no regard for birth or rank. Our Lord and exemplar was not a nobleman, if I remember my gospels correctly.” I knew my words sounded sanctimonious, yet I went on, keeping my voice low.

  “I believe your father is no more exalted than my own, despite his wife’s family connections,” I began. “And how is it that you are not yet wed, though you must be at least twenty-five?”

  I could tell that my question stung. Anne’s black eyes grew narrower, and before she turned away she said to Bridget, “Listen to the stunted little nobody! I’ve heard—” But what she had heard, and was confiding in Bridget’s ear, was drowned out by the king’s voice rising to a new level of vengeful accusation.

  “Enough!” he was saying yet again. “There will be no more dead sons—or dead daughters either! You may enjoy your bed in peace—and solitude! I will announce this afternoon that my son Henry Fitzroy will be named Duke of Richmond. Once he receives that title he will be the highest-ranking noble in the land. Higher than your daughter, madam, higher even than the pompous Norfolk! Henry Fitzroy will be the next King of England, and there’s an end to it!”

  And hearing the king’s footsteps approaching, those of us in the corridor scattered, like sheep before the wolf, and sought the shelter of less troubled quarters.

  TWO

  “Will! Oh Will! The baby was born dead. The poor little thing! I’m afraid they gave her opium and it killed the baby! And the king is angry and shouted at her!”

  Amid the quiet and solitude of the privy garden, behind the dovecote and to the right of the ale house, I poured out my heart to Will, who opened his arms and enfolded me in them. Strong arms. Arms that had always been there to comfort me, ever since we were children and I fell and scratched my leg or I had a fight with Ned or one of my cousins or my father ordered me to be locked in my room without food for a day and a night.

  Will, laughing, good-natured, blond, blue-eyed Will Dormer, who I would soon marry. Who would be the father of our children when we moved to the country, far from the sorrows and turmoil of the court. To some rural oasis with sheltering copses and a narrow rippling stream running down to a wide flowing river. Where deer came to feed and rabbits and hares chased one another through the underbrush and where, in the spring, a carpet of bluebells—no, an ocean of bluebells—would spread themselves out beneath old oaks and pale birches. Where there were no dead babies, and no tears.

  “Jane! Dear!”

  Will was trying to bring me out of my reverie, but I resisted. I clung to him. I had had very little sleep in the past two days and the queen’s trauma, and her terrible quarrel with the king, had unnerved me.

  I took pride in my ability to retain my composure, and as a rule, I did. It was one of the reasons the queen liked to keep me near her. I was sympathetic, but I did not allow my feelings to overwhelm me. She once told me, in what I knew was meant to be a high compliment, that I was blessed with gravity, and was almost as self-possessed as a Spaniard.

  But now, worn down and alarmed, I felt no gravity at all. I felt only the need for comfort.

  “You should have seen her, Will, with the little coffin for the baby. A tiny little thing all covered in purple cloth … it was so pathetic. She buries all the stillborn babies they say, though the king takes no notice of their small graves and never visits them—”

  “Jane! You must listen!”

  Unwillingly, I unwound myself from him and pulled back.

  “I know you are distressed about the queen but I must talk to you about another matter—even more urgent—and I have not much time. I am ordered to the Maidens’ Bower and Master Woodshaw is angry when I am late.”

  At the mention of Edward Woodshaw I bristled. Will had served in the king’s household for two years, but his most recent court appointment was deeply distasteful to me.

  “I hate that you have Edward Woodshaw as your master! The master of bawdry, I call him. The king’s procurer!”

  “The post was not of my choosing, as you know, Jane. I make the best of it.”

  “But the Maidens’ Bower! The shame of the court.”

  The notorious Maidens’ Bower was the king’s most private chamber, where the young women he kept for his secret amusement were housed. Secret—yet not secret, for the entire court was aware that the royal den of pleasure existed and that Edward Woodshaw presided over it.

  Because my Will was a handsome young man, barely twenty-one, with strong muscles and broad shoulders and a great deal of charm, he had been taken from his original post in the stables—where he had enjoyed being a groom, he loved horses—and placed among the king’s chamber gentlemen, where he served in the Maidens’ Bower under the tutelage of Master Woodshaw.

  The new post was considered a sign that Will was looked on with favor by the senior officials of the court; if he acquitted himself well, he could expect to be given a higher office soon, and more responsibility.

  “You should be proud of Will,” my brother Ned told me. Ned, despite his youth (he was four years older than I was), had been taken into the household of the great and powerful Cardinal Wolsey, and was advancing, though never rapidly enough to satisfy himself, for he was very ambitious, and very able—and, it had to be admitted, more than a little ruthless.

  “When you and Will marry, you will both be highly placed at court.”

  “I hope we will marry very
soon,” I had told Ned. “I hope the wedding will be within a few months.” I did not add that I looked forward to my marriage and my departure from the court, not my advancement. I was eager to escape the tense atmosphere in the queen’s apartments; although I felt a great deal of sympathy for Queen Catherine, and was honored that she singled me out as a favorite and liked having me near her, in truth I did not like being needed so much, or called on so often to give her companionship. I could not help absorbing her sadness, and felt a sense of desolation, being near her; I admired her bravery and envied her faith, but I yearned for lighter company and happier hours. Hours I planned to spend with Will.

  And I was eager to escape the constant irritant of the queen’s Spanish gentlewomen, whose needling and prodding vexed me. As I had tried to tell Will, women can convey a lot without using words; the Spaniards said a great deal with their eyes, their inadvertent shoves that were really quite intentional, their murmured barbed remarks to one another. They knew how to show disrespect in a thousand hidden ways. I had no doubt they wanted me gone—

  “Jane!” It was Will’s voice again, more insistent this time. “You must listen, you really must.”

  I looked at him, and saw the dismay that clouded his usually clear blue eyes.

  “Jane, I have some unhappy news.”

  “What is it?”

  “I went to my parents, as we agreed I would. I told them you and I had plans to marry soon, and that we asked for their blessings.”

  “And?”

  “They told me to forget any plans we might have made. That a marriage between us would be impossible.”

  For a moment I was too surprised to speak. I had been warmly welcomed into the Dormer household since childhood, indeed the Dormers had smiled on me and embraced me as if I were one of their own. That Will and I would marry one day was understood. Or so I had always thought.

  “But they love me!” I said at length. “I’m sure they do.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why?”

  Will looked very uncomfortable.

  “At first they said, ‘We have always hoped that you would marry well, and you have a chance now to marry into the Sidney family. That is the future we intend for you.’

  “I said I didn’t care about that. That I wanted to marry you, Jane, and no one but you.

  “We quarreled. They accused me of not caring about the family honor, the family fortunes. I said that your family was every bit as honorable as the Sidneys—which we all know isn’t true, the Sidneys are more exalted in rank, I was merely speaking out of loyalty—but it was no use. They were not angry, merely firm. They said I had to marry the Sidney heiress. But then—”

  “Yes?”

  “This is the terrible part, Jane. Are you certain you want to hear it?”

  “Of course. I must know why they are suddenly so opposed to me, after all their years of kindness and welcome.”

  Will hung his head.

  “Your father and my sister Margery—” he said, his voice low.

  “Yes?”

  “My father surprised them. They were—your father was—”

  I knew what he meant at once, but could barely say the words, much less believe them. I stared at Will, confused and dumbfounded.

  “Are you telling me,” I managed to say at length, “that my father and your sister were in bed together? Naked? Acting—as if they were man and wife?”

  “It was a storage room,” Will blurted out, “and they were standing up, my father says—and they were only half naked.”

  “No! It can’t be true!”

  Will put his head in his hands, then ran his hands through his hair.

  “My father would not lie about such a shameful, sinful thing,” he said. “I believe him. And if I ever see your father anywhere near my sister, I’ll thrash him. If it weren’t for you, and my love for you, I would gladly kill him.”

  I sat still, stunned.

  “I must go, Jane. We can talk later.” He kissed me swiftly on the cheek and strode off.

  * * *

  Half an hour later I was still sitting in the same place, still in a state of disbelief. My father, John Seymour, was fifty years old, Will’s sister Margery was barely fourteen. The weight of shame—assuming what I had heard was true—was too heavy to be measured. How would I ever be able to comprehend it, let alone overcome it?

  And yet, what Will had told me brought back a shadowy memory. A most unwelcome memory, one that I had never allowed myself to think about very much or try to understand.

  When I was a child, there had been a serving girl at our family estate, Wulf Hall. A very young girl, dark-haired and smiling, agreeable and eager to please. I had liked her, and had often gone down into the kitchens to find her because she gave me drippings from the joints of meat that turned on the spits and bits of crust from the freshly baked loaves as they sat cooling in their baskets. Even when she was very busy with her assigned tasks she stopped to greet me and hand me a tidbit.

  One day I was startled by a sudden outburst of shouting. The household was in turmoil, the steward flustered, the serving girl in tears. I felt sorry for her distress, and started to go toward her, but then I saw my father, an odd look on his face, his fists clenched at his sides. I stopped where I was. The girl ran swiftly out of the house and did not return. My mother was in tears for days, and would not speak to my father or even look at him.

  I had been far too young to understand what had happened at the time, but now—was it possible that my father had seduced other young girls? Or had it not been seduction, but mutual passion? Passion gone wrong, ending in tears and banishment from the house?

  A serving girl was one thing, Will Dormer’s sister quite another.

  I wanted to know the truth—yet part of me held back. Questions arose, I could not help them. Had Margery been a willing partner? And if not, why hadn’t she screamed for help? A dreadful thought: would she become pregnant? The highborn men of the court were prone to taking mistresses—just as the king had—and having children by them. Not only King Henry, but the Duke of Norfolk and lesser nobles. They were brazen in their adulteries. They brought their mistresses to court at times. They flaunted them. The king’s close friend and brother-in-law Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, though married to the king’s beautiful sister, Princess Mary, with whom he had at one time been deeply in love, had taken a young girl as his mistress. And not just any pretty young girl, but one related to Queen Catherine’s lady in waiting. Or so it was said in the royal apartments.

  It would seem that my father was allowing himself to imitate the example set by others. It was a curse of our times. A canker spreading through the court. And it had shattered my dream of love and ruined my hopes.

  THREE

  The only sound in the spacious, wide-aisled, torchlit hall at Bridewell Palace, with its high hammerbeam ceiling and its tapestry-covered walls, was the sound of a small boy’s coughing.

  All the chief notables of the court had been summoned to the hall to witness a solemn and significant event: the creation of the king’s natural son as Duke of Richmond and Somerset, Lord High Admiral of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Lord of Ardres, Guines and Calais (though the French king Francis would dispute these claims), Lord of the Marches, Seneschal of Gascony and Garter Knight.

  On this day the boy, Henry Fitzroy, would be exalted above every other noble at the court, though he was only in his sixth year and was not, it had to be admitted, in the best of health.

  His coughing continued, a small sound in the large room, and the longer it went on, I noticed, the more the king tried in vain to hide his irritation. King Henry stood, a tall, broad-shouldered, massive figure splendidly arrayed in robes of cloth of gold, at one end of the long room, watching his son’s approach and looking more and more dissatisfied.

  It was not just that little Fitzroy was ill, it was that he was so very small for a boy nearly six years old, and pale, and that he did not stand erect but slumped
; his legs in their silken hose were thin and crooked, and when he reached out for the hand of Charles Brandon, who stood at his left, and looked up at the tall, strongly built Brandon there was a touching look of entreaty on his pallid features.

  Brandon, who I always thought of as warm-hearted and helpful, seized the small white hand in his much larger, sun-reddened one and smiled encouragingly. The sour, hawk-faced man who stood at the boy’s right, the Duke of Norfolk, considerably shorter than Brandon and lacking Brandon’s lithe, muscular athleticism, did not offer his hand and looked away.

  Now there were two dukes beginning to walk down the length of the room, toward the king. Soon there would be three, though I found it hard to imagine little Fitzroy as a great nobleman—indeed the greatest nobleman in the realm. I knew, however, that his future was already being mapped out; the estates where he would live, his newly appointed household of a hundred and thirty-two servants, his tutors and riding master and chaplains, even his future wife. It was said that he would soon be betrothed to Mary Howard, Norfolk’s daughter, and that in time the blood of the Tudors and the blood of the Howards would run in the veins of a new line of kings.

  From where I sat, with the other maids of honor, I was well positioned to view the ceremony, and also the others who were present. At the king’s insistence, Queen Catherine was there, composed and dignified, her black lace mantilla draped over her English-style hood in a way that shielded her face from observation. Her daughter Princess Mary, a pretty blond girl of nine, with a delicate frame but a clumsiness of movement that marred her regal standing, sat upright and looked offended. She ignored Henry Fitzroy, and fixed her gaze instead on her father.

  Mary understood full well that the elevation of Henry Fitzroy made it plain that he was the king’s choice to be the next ruler of the realm. Mary was being shunted aside, dishonored, her place taken by the boy of illegitimate birth. And not only that: it was said she had been abandoned by the Emperor Charles, the young ruler of the vast Hapsburg lands, who was to have been her husband. Her betrothal had been broken off not long before, leaving her with neither the prospect of the throne nor of marriage. It was no wonder, I thought, that she did not look at little Henry Fitzroy as he made his way slowly down the room.