The Favored Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Third Wife Page 6

  But she might, we maids whispered to one another, be fertile. Indeed, we whispered after glancing at Anne’s waist, she might at that moment be carrying the king’s son.

  Bridget, who had become Lady Wingfield and was no longer a maid of honor but a higher-ranking lady in waiting, remained Anne’s friend—her closest friend at court. She appeared to have forgiven Anne’s treachery in attempting to seduce Lord Wingfield, and of all of us, she was the one most likely to be told Anne’s secrets. Yet she claimed that Anne had told her nothing at all about her intimacy with the king or her expectations for the future.

  This puzzled us. Anne was boastful, not secretive. She sought attention.

  “The king must have told her to be silent,” we said to each other. “It must have been a royal command.”

  Anne was silent, but her behavior spoke loudly. She treated Queen Catherine with increasing disdain, she smirked and snickered, she looked down on the rest of us as if from a lofty height—the height of a throne, perhaps, I was thinking.

  She appeared laden with pearls the size of pigeon’s eggs and rubies larger than I had ever seen any woman wear—rubies that could only have come from the royal treasure stored in the Tower. Diamonds sparkled in Anne’s thick black hair, and at her neck, and were sprinkled over the bodices of her gowns. Diamonds from the king, gifts made to the woman he meant to marry.

  Yet Catherine was still our royal mistress, and most of us were still loyal to her. When Anne was disdainful toward the queen we sneezed—our private signal of disapproval and disgust—and when she flaunted her beautiful jewels we bumped against her and made her spill her wine on the skirts of her gowns. We were petty. We were mean. We told tales, and whispered together and laughed while looking directly at Anne, leaving no doubt that we were laughing at her expense. We staged wounding little collisions, banging into her or tripping the servants so that they fell across her path. We made certain this happened so often that she was covered in bruises, just as I had been when I first came to court and Queen Catherine’s Spanish ladies had pushed and shoved and jostled me. We let the queen’s lapdogs track their muddy feet across the embroidered counterpanes on Anne’s bed, and attract the fleas from the rushes and leave them behind in the soiled satin folds.

  Anne swore at us, and sulked, and complained, but we were too sly for her. We escaped punishment, for the most part. But we were all waiting, most impatiently, for the news we expected to hear any day, news that the king had found a way to put his wife aside and marry Anne Boleyn.

  Then one day I noticed that Jane Popyngcort, the Belgian noblewoman among us rumored to have been the king’s mistress in the long-ago days when he was a young man making war in France and feasting in Flanders, appeared wearing a startling ornament: a heavy gold pendant with a large ruby and garnet. A piece of jewelry to rival the costly gems Anne wore.

  “You don’t suppose he’s gone back to her,” Anne Cavecant said to me as Jane entered the room. “Or perhaps he has two mistresses now, a young one and an old one, Anne and Jane.” She giggled.

  Jane sat down among us and took up her embroidery. I looked around for Anne, to watch her reaction, but she was nowhere nearby. I felt very curious about Jane and her fine piece of jewelry, and became even more curious when, the following day, Jane once again appeared lavishly adorned. This time she was wearing a large ornate gold cross on a thick gold chain—another rich gift, we all supposed.

  “Are you to be married then, Jane?” Anne Cavecant asked. “Are your lovely ornaments gifts from your future husband? And is he in the lowlands across the sea, or here in England?”

  “I am returning home,” was all she said, her English distorted by her thick accent. “After I arrive, I do not know.”

  “You must have some plan in mind,” Lavinia Terling put in. “Your parents, your family, must have a match arranged for you. And a large dowry perhaps?”

  “I do not know. It is possible.” She would not look at any of us when we questioned her. She was secretive, suspicious of our questions. Yet as the time for her departure drew nearer, she displayed more costly adornments. Gifts from a man who was already married? we asked one another, exchanging knowing glances. Or a sudden inheritance, perhaps?

  Jane’s newfound riches intrigued us, and her silence about them intrigued us even more. It was a mystery, a diversion from the endless talk and rumor and guesses about the king and Anne.

  Before long the mystery deepened. Jane Popyngcort departed for the Flemish court, saying little to any of us but spending the final hour before her departure closeted with the queen. At the end of that hour I saw Ned come for Jane, with an escort of liveried grooms, to escort her to the river stairs where a wherry waited to take her to her ship.

  My interest aroused, I went to stand before a barred window from which I could see the river and watch the small boats come and go. In a few minutes Ned and the grooms came into view, with Jane in her traveling cloak in their midst. Her trunks were put aboard the wherry, and with them, a smaller casket, so heavy it took two men to lift it.

  Later I told Anne Cavecant and Lavinia Terling what I had seen.

  “What do you suppose was in that heavy casket?” I wondered aloud.

  “Those jewels and chains of hers,” Lavinia said. “She must have had quite a few.”

  “It was coins,” Bridget announced, coming up to the three of us. “I wormed the truth out of one of her little Flemish maidservants. The girl was terrified. She knew something she wasn’t supposed to know. She overheard Jane talking, in English, and understood what she heard. Jane thought the maid knew no English. It was all about the king and Anne Boleyn’s mother. How they had been lovers, long ago.”

  Bridget’s eyes widened and she grinned. “Imagine the scandal!”

  I thought about my own father and Cat. Yes, I could indeed imagine the scandal. But I had to know more.

  “Did King Henry pay Jane to be quiet about his past relations with Anne’s mother? Has he slept with Anne and Mary and their mother too?”

  “That’s what the girl heard. And Jane was paid all right, but not by the king.”

  “Who paid her then?”

  “The girl doesn’t know. Someone at court.”

  “The cardinal,” Anne Cavecant said. “He’s rich.”

  “Or Anne’s father?” I speculated.

  I was trying to puzzle it all out. Henry had seduced all the Boleyns (something I had never heard before), and Jane knew of it. She must have threatened to tell what she knew, and demanded payment to keep silent. But there had to be more to Jane’s secret than the threat of scandal, it had to represent a threat to the success of the King’s Great Matter. There had to be some way in which Jane, if she revealed the truth, could ruin the nullity suit, or prevent King Henry from marrying Anne once the suit was successful. If that was indeed his plan. I resolved to ask Ned about this.

  In the meantime we watched, and waited, and told each other what we knew, or suspected. We heard of great events occurring in the world beyond England’s borders: a terrifying victory by the armies of the pagan Turks over the Christians at a place called Mohacs; the destruction of Rome, heart and center of all Christendom, by the soldiers of Queen Catherine’s nephew Emperor Charles, and the capture and imprisonment of the pope; and in the northern imperial lands, vast warfare with the peasants rising up to fight against their masters. Surely the end of the world was approaching, many thought, on hearing these things. Surely the biblical apocalypse was upon us.

  But to us, in those tense days, the expected end of King Henry’s marriage to Queen Catherine counted for more than anything. We were in dread that our own little world was about to end, there in the queen’s apartments, and that all that was familiar and right and precious to us was about to be swept away.

  * * *

  It was Lavinia Terling who first began to shiver, and grow warm, and complain that she needed air and a drink of cool water.

  The June sun burst down on us from a cloudless sky, we
were all hot as we prepared to leave Greenwich to travel to Waltham Abbey in Essex, to begin our summer progress.

  There was much confusion as the servants were packing all the bed linens and tapestries, plate and carpets, cooking pots and clothing and hunting gear into chests and baskets. Dogs were barking and the horses, impatient in the heat, were stamping and whinnying with impatience.

  And Lavinia was shivering.

  She was no longer hot, we realized. She was cold. She had a chill. Her blue eyes were clouded, her bow-shaped mouth twitched, her lips pursed unattractively. As we watched, her face began growing pink, then red. Her blond hair became damp beneath her cap, rivulets of perspiration were running down her neck and into the bodice of her gown.

  “Jane!” I saw panic in her eyes. She reached out for me, calling my name, and I instinctively drew back.

  “Help me, Jane! I’m so hot!”

  All her clothes were damp.

  Suddenly everyone did as I had, and moved back, away from Lavinia.

  “The sweat! The death sweat! She has the sweat!”

  “Get away! Get back! Get out!”

  The sweat was a scourge that ravaged us, leaving many dead. It was far worse than the plague, though its visitations were less frequent. When the sweat appeared, it spread swiftly, leaving many dead. Everyone who came down with it died, or nearly everyone. They died horribly. Painfully. And quickly! Healthy at noon, dead by suppertime, went the saying we all learned as children. Healthy at supper, dead by midnight.

  And now the sweat had made its appearance among us.

  Instinct took over, and we began to run.

  The king was shouting. “Fitzroy! Get Fitzroy to the north! Haste, haste!!”

  Sparing barely a glance for the rest of us, he was swiftly mounted and galloping away.

  Servants, guardsmen, grooms, everyone was running. Carts were overturned, the terrified horses trapped in their harnesses, screaming, struggling to right themselves. Flour poured from broken barrels, beer ran out in streams from splintered casks and sank into the thirsty ground. Squawking chickens fluttered, half flying, half running underfoot.

  “The sweat is in the palace!” came voices all around me. “Abandon the palace!”

  Amid the tumult I saw two men roughly snatching Lavinia and putting her on a horse, then whipping the poor beast until it ran, flanks red with blood, toward the open fields.

  I went quickly in the opposite direction, toward the riverbank, thinking—though my mind was too dazed to think very clearly—that I might find a boatman who would take me away, anywhere, away from the threat of death.

  Then all of a sudden Will was beside me.

  “Thank heaven I found you,” he said, grasping me by the shoulders, his eyes full of concern. He inspected me closely.

  “Are you hot? Are you sweating?”

  I shook my head.

  He lifted my arms, heedless of the tightness of my sleeves, and ripped away the cloth that covered my armpits.

  “Good,” he said. “No sores.” Victims of the sweat developed large painful blisters, often under their arms or in their groins.

  “And you, Will? How are you?”

  “Well.”

  “You were with Lavinia,” Will said.

  “Yes. We were all preparing to travel together, Lavinia and I, Anne and Bridget—”

  “But Lavinia was the only one who became ill.”

  “As far as I could see.”

  “Listen to me, Jane,” he said, grasping my shoulders more tightly, his voice more urgent than I had ever heard it. “Nowhere is safe. You must go back into the palace.”

  “But there is disease there!”

  He shook his head. “You must go back inside, shut yourself in with the queen, in her apartments, and bar all the doors and windows. Do not let anyone in. No one. Do you understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Above all, do not let anyone in who has sweat on their foreheads, or whose clothes are damp, or who looks weak. There is food in the castle larders. Bring it up into the queen’s rooms. And bring water. Lots of water. You may have to stay there for some time. If anyone in the queen’s rooms comes down with the illness, be ruthless. Throw them out the window, into the moat. It is your only chance to survive, Jane.”

  “Into the moat?” A horrifying thought—and one I would never have expected to hear from Will. Surely he couldn’t have meant it. Or could he? “But the queen has a physician—” I began.

  “He may have deserted her. Besides, there is little physicians can do against the sweat.”

  A terrible thought came to me. What if Will got sick? What if he died?

  “Dear Will, if anything should happen to you—I couldn’t—I don’t think I could—”

  “Yes you could. Of course you could. You are strong. And that is why you will stay healthy, and safe, here with the queen.” There was an edge in his voice, almost a hint of anger. He was being stubborn, challenging fate. He was saying that if he should die, I would find the toughness deep within me to go on without him. He was not allowing any thoughts of death, or defeat, to weaken him or frighten me. And it worked; I took heart from his stern, resolute optimism.

  “I will go to Croydon now to make sure Henry and John are safe and well. I will send you word as soon as I know they are all right.”

  “And Cat?”

  He nodded. “I will try to find out whether the nuns of St. Agnes’s are affected.”

  We made our way back, through the chaos in the courtyard to the palace entrance. There was fighting, shouting. Amid the damage and disorder, men were assaulting one another, struggling over damaged carts, chasing terrified horses that plunged and reared and galloped this way and that. Amid the noise and confusion, the palace itself looked deserted, unprotected. There were no guardsmen to prevent us from entering through the series of gates, no grooms to bar our way upstairs to the threshold of the queen’s apartments. After assuring himself that I would be all right, Will turned to me and enfolded me in his arms and kissed me. A deep, long kiss. I tried to suppress the thought that it might be our last.

  Will hugged me fiercely and we wished each other luck and I tried to smile jauntily and bravely as I waved goodbye.

  “Soon, Jane, soon,” Will called out as he went. “Keep me in your heart.”

  “Always.”

  After he was gone, I slumped against the wall, closing my eyes and feeling the weight of my weariness descend. My legs were weak under me. I was dizzy. Were these signs that I was coming down with the sweat?

  I did not feel hot. My face was not damp, and my clothing too was dry. I entered the queen’s apartments, unchallenged. No guardsmen stood guarding her outer door, none of the ladies in waiting or maids of honor were present inside to welcome me. I found Queen Catherine kneeling on her prie-dieu in her bedchamber, praying in a low voice for mercy. Candles burned before the small portraits of her dead babies. A lifeless Christ hung limp on a large wooden crucifix fastened to the wall.

  Help us, I prayed silently. Help us now.

  “I hope you are not feeling ill, Your Majesty?”

  “No, Jane. I am not.”

  The royal bedchamber, and adjacent rooms, were all but deserted save for Griffith Richards, the queen’s faithful gentleman usher, who stood by the bedchamber door, a short sword at his waist. Guarding the queen—though neither he nor his sword could guard her from the terrible sickness. Beyond him, in a small antechamber, half a dozen trembling servants cowered. As I watched, I noticed that they were keeping a wary eye on one another. Anyone, any time, could show the telltale signs of the sweat, as Lavinia had. They were watching for even the slightest such sign. A shiver. A twitch. A stink. A dampness.

  I went over to the gentleman usher. “We must be careful,” I said softly. “We must not let in anyone we do not know, anyone who looks ill.”

  I checked to make sure all the doors and windows were barred, as Will had cautioned me to do. The few servants were sent down to the palace lar
ders to fetch barrels of salt meat and oats, sugar and honey, beer and ale.

  I remembered what Will had said about throwing anyone with the disease out the window into the moat. It had seemed too outlandish a suggestion to be thought of. But the more I considered the danger we were all in, the more seriously I took it. Most of the windows in the queen’s apartments were small—too small for a body to squeeze through. I went to the largest of them and grasped the old iron bars that formed a protective grid over it. I tugged. Immediately I felt the stonework give way slightly. Under the more powerful tugging of a strong man like Griffith Richards, I thought, it would give way completely. It would be possible to pull the iron back so that a struggling, unwilling body could be pushed out. It was a long drop to the moat below.

  * * *

  A deadening silence filled the queen’s rooms. The courtyard outside had grown still, except for the occasional muffled shout or gallop of horses’ hooves. As if from a distance, we heard the first faint wails from the village beyond the palace walls, wails of lamentation for the dead.

  Healthy at noon, dead by suppertime.

  The long summer twilight grew dim. Servants brought in a meager supper and set it before the queen. She ate little. No one was hungry. We were all waiting, in a state of dread, for someone among us to begin to shiver, and then grow warm, and demand a drink of cool water. We watched each other apprehensively.

  Finally, when it grew dark, I helped the queen prepare for bed.

  She did not want to talk. She was preoccupied, made numb, it seemed, by the sudden crowded events of the day.

  “Henry, Henry, Mary,” she kept repeating in a whisper, her eyes intent on some unseen image. Presently she lay down to rest, with Griffith Richards standing guard just outside her door.

  It was after midnight when there came a pounding at the outer entrance to the royal apartments, where two thick oaken doors separated the quarters of the king and queen from the wing where royal officials and visitors normally occupied their offices and chambers.

  I peered out through the crack between the doors.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  A man stood before the entrance, out of breath and coughing. He was well dressed but his clothes were dusty. He removed his hat.