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

  “I am Doctor Lawrence Barchwell,” he said. “Of the cardinal’s household.”

  “Is His Eminence well?”

  “He is, thanks be to God. But many among his servants have died. Also one of his sons.” I knew that Cardinal Wolsey had a mistress and children, somewhere to the north of the capital. “He sends me with word of the lady Lavinia Terling,” the doctor said.

  “Lavinia!” Poor frightened Lavinia, red-faced and reeking when last I saw her, sweat pouring from her, reaching out for me, imploring me to help her. I shuddered at the memory.

  “She has been found. Dead in a wood near Clopsfield.”

  Healthy at noon, dead by suppertime.

  “Was she alone?”

  He nodded.

  “Lord rest her soul,” I said, and crossed myself.

  “Are you ill?” I asked the doctor.

  “No,” he answered, and smiled wanly. “Not at present. If I were, I would be the first to know. And I would not have entered these precincts.”

  I did my best to scrutinize his face through the narrow crack in the door. I saw no signs of the sweat on his brow. I thought he was telling the truth. I took the risk of offering him some of our food and he entered the outer chamber.

  “Will you rest here for the night?” I asked, but the doctor shook his head.

  “Thank you but no,” he said. “There are many who have need of me. I dare not rest until I have given what help I can.” Then, thanking me once again, he took what we had to offer, and rode off toward the village, where lights burned dimly.

  When the doctor had gone I lay down and tried to sleep. But the image of Lavinia’s ravaged face would not leave me. The most beautiful of us, turned so ugly by the merciless disease, and then taken so cruelly, so quickly.

  Would we survive?

  I went to the queen’s prie-dieu and knelt. The cushion was still warm from her body. It was a long time before at last I got up off my knees, went to my bed, and lay down in the darkness. Spare us, spare us, spare us, was all I could think. Let us live through this night. Spare us.

  SEVEN

  We awoke to the sounds of mourning.

  Bells rang out ceaselessly, their funereal pealing reminding us constantly that we were surrounded by death—and menaced by it.

  Carts piled high with corpses rattled through the palace courtyard, rolling slowly toward the uncultivated fields where, each year in plague season, a huge pit was dug to hold the bodies of the dead. The carts were followed by weeping mourners, some solemn, some near hysteria and frantic with grief.

  I stayed within the queen’s apartments, just as Will had said I must, but from the windows I could see, within the palace grounds and along the riverbank, villagers trudging past, many carrying crying children in their arms. Some came to the palace and tried to force their way in, but we were barricaded securely. No one gained entrance.

  No one, that is, until Anne Boleyn arrived.

  Anne had not been with the rest of us when Lavinia Terling became ill and fear of the sweat began spreading. She had been with the king, having left early that morning to go riding with him. No one had seen her since then. She had not been with the king when he returned from his morning ride—just at the time word began to spread that Lavinia had the sweat. He had ridden into the courtyard of the palace in the midst of the spreading panic. And he had left again at once.

  Now Anne had returned, and was demanding entrance to the palace.

  * * *

  “We must let her in, of course,” Queen Catherine said when I brought her to a high window and she saw Anne and heard her shrill cries.

  “But Your Highness, we cannot let anyone in with us. She might have the disease.”

  “And if she did have it, would she be able to pound so loudly with her fists and call out so fiercely?”

  For Anne was indeed making a very loud racket and showing no sign of weakness.

  “I will see to her,” Griffith Richards said, patting the sword that hung from his waist. I knew that he had no love for Anne; he blamed her for enticing the king into adultery, even though he knew well enough, as we all did, that King Henry had had a long list of previous mistresses, including Anne’s sister—and, if Jane Popyngcort was to be believed, Anne’s mother.

  “Where is the king? I know he is here, waiting for me. Let me in! I demand to see him! I demand that you let me in at once!”

  At length, and only after Queen Catherine ordered him to do so, Griffith Richards admitted the furious Anne, who in her bedraggled state, her clothing and boots dirty from the road, her tangled black hair tumbling down her back, her face smudged and her eyes full of fury, resembled nothing so much as a spitting tomcat. When she stomped into the queen’s apartments I saw several of the serving girls giggling at the sight of her, which only made her more infuriated.

  “Where is he? Where is the king?”

  I thought, if only the guards were here, they would never allow her to behave this way.

  I followed Anne as she searched from room to room, sighing with exasperation, and coming at last to the queen’s bedchamber. Catherine sat at her table, reading.

  “Where is the king? What have you done with him?”

  Catherine paused before replying, and fixed Anne with her level gaze.

  “It is our habit—indeed it is our duty—to bow before the queen,” I said to Anne, my tone sharp. “And as you know full well, we maids of honor do not speak to the queen unless addressed by her first. Have you forgotten?”

  Anne glared at me briefly, then turned her eyes on Queen Catherine.

  “My husband is not here,” Catherine said quietly. “No doubt he is in seclusion, as he ought to be. To ensure that his precious life is spared in this season of danger.”

  “He ought to be with me!” Anne burst out. “He took me riding. Then he rode off on his own. He left me!” Her voice quivered, no longer the voice of a petulant woman, but an anxious child.

  “He is the king,” Catherine said mildly. “You are hardly his only concern.”

  Catherine’s words had a bitter edge, which surprised me. But Anne barely seemed to hear her. She seemed to enter a state of reverie, her voice plangent.

  “He didn’t say anything to me, he just rode away. There was a farm, I went there but they said there was sickness. I thought he would come back for me. Why didn’t he come back?”

  She seemed genuinely bewildered. I thought, she must be very tired, to speak like this to the queen.

  “Why didn’t you ride to Hever?” I asked. Hever Castle was the principal dwelling of the Boleyns.

  “I started to, but then I heard there was sickness in Kent, so much sickness—”

  “But your family, weren’t you concerned to find out whether they were afflicted?”

  Anne turned and looked at me then, a look I could not fathom at first. A shadow passed over her face, her expression altered.

  “My sister is ill, her husband is dead. My brother may be dying. I did not need to know any more than that.” She sat down before going on.

  “There is disease everywhere. Every rider I met said so. ‘Do not go to Canterbury! Do not go to London!’ they said. ‘Do not go north.’ I thought I might ride to Croydon, but then I learned that Thomas Tyringham was dying, and that many others in his household were dead and buried. So I came back here. I was sure the king would be waiting for me here! Where is he?”

  “Thomas Tyringham? Dying of the sweat?”

  Anne nodded. “What can it matter to you?”

  My muscles were tense with fear. My nephews. Will. They were at Croydon, on Master Tyringham’s estate. I had to know that they were not among those stricken.

  “Are you certain of this?”

  Anne shrugged. She looked weary, and passed her hand over her forehead. “The roads are full of stories. Tavern gossip. Everyone is afraid.” She paused, then said simply, “I need to lie down.”

  Though we had little enough water, Catherine insisted that Anne be allowed
to wash, and told Griffith Richards to bring her a basin and ewer of water. He obeyed—with an ill grace. I led Anne, who was suddenly docile, with no trace of her former fury, into the room where the maids of honor usually slept and lent her some of my clean clothing. I knew that the clothes would be ill-fitting, as Anne was taller than I was, and more curvaceous.

  Griffith Richards brought the water and we left Anne to cleanse herself in private.

  “She is so frightened,” I remarked to Richards as we waited together in an adjacent room.

  “As well she ought to be,” was his reply. “And not only of the sweat. She knows that everyone is against her.”

  “Everyone but the king.”

  “Ah, but the king is changeable. He cannot be relied on. And there is no one else for her to turn to. All who love our good queen Catherine must despise Anne. Even her uncle Norfolk criticizes her for being too proud.”

  Anne’s uncle had begun to speak ill of her, and his words were repeated. She thought too highly of herself, he said. She wore too many jewels. She gave herself airs. She spoke too familiarly to the king. She imagined that one day she would be the most important woman at the court. What the duke wanted was quite different. In his plan his daughter Mary would be exalted to the highest rank, the loftiest position of power and influence among all the ladies of rank. She would marry Henry Fitzroy, and Henry Fitzroy would one day be king. By then Anne Boleyn would be forgotten, and Queen Catherine would be living in obscurity in a convent. Queen Mary would be supreme above all other women, her son by Henry Fitzroy would be the heir to the throne. And the Duke of Norfolk himself would be the true font of power.

  “Her uncle accuses her of being too proud,” I told the gentleman usher, “and yet she is guilty of nothing more than obeying the king’s will. His royal command.”

  Richards was not convinced. “No matter what the king may say or do, we are all master of our souls. We must all answer to God for our sins. She could have said no to his wooing. She could have fled, run to the safety of her family.”

  I shook my head. “The family that tolerated—no, encouraged—her sister’s pastime with the king? I hardly think so. The Boleyns have profited greatly by their daughters’ sinning, as you put it. Thomas Boleyn seems very quick to seek his own advantage.”

  “All the worse for her then,” Richards snapped. “A sinner from a lair of sinners.”

  I could not help smiling at him, as if to puncture his hauteur. “And are you so free from sin?”

  He had no answer, but kept his expression of disdain.

  I shrugged and let the moment pass. I was just as harsh in my judgment of my father as Griffith Richards was in his judgment against Anne. And was I, Jane Seymour, entirely free from sin?

  Presently I went in to where Anne, having washed, had gone to bed and was sleeping, her mouth open, her thin lips twitching faintly as she dreamed.

  I looked down at her, wondering why I had seemed to argue with Griffith Richards on her behalf. I had no more love for her, or regard for her, than he did; I thought her a self-obsessed, rude, irreverent girl whose cruelty to the admirable queen was hateful. Yet I thought I had detected, in her childlike fear earlier that afternoon, something very vulnerable, something that tempered her other qualities and made her less objectionable. Even if only slightly so.

  I saw that, as Griffith Richards had said, she had cut herself adrift: from her sisters among the maids of honor (all except Bridget), from the other courtiers, from all those who loved Queen Catherine and felt sympathy for her. Being the king’s mistress isolated Anne from others, especially since the King’s Great Matter had split the court into two camps, those whose desire to serve King Henry came before everything and everyone else, and those who were loyal to the queen and her cause.

  As to Anne’s family, I had not observed any of them closely enough to be able to say whether or not they would be her allies, should she need to call on them. She and her sister Mary were rivals—at least Anne considered them to be so, according to Bridget. The others were all but unknown to me, though I often saw Thomas Boleyn at court, walking swiftly, usually carrying a satchel full of papers, bent on some errand or other and looking as though no force on earth could deter him from his fixed purpose.

  Griffith Richards sniffed. Muttering “all the worse for her,” he went away, leaving me to watch the sleeping Anne and ponder his words. He was right, King Henry was, most likely, Anne’s only ally. A powerful protector indeed—for now. But what of the future? What if Emperor Charles chose to send his armies to invade England, to save Queen Catherine from the threat of the king’s nullity suit? Would Henry abandon Anne, just as he had ridden off and abandoned her on their ride together? Just as he had left her to fend for herself as the dreaded sweat descended on England, bringing so much fear and pain and death in its wake?

  * * *

  A spare supper was served, and the queen sat down to eat it, insisting that I share her table.

  “We can hardly keep to our usual ceremony here, Jane,” she said. “I will be glad of your company while I sup.”

  We had not eaten much when we heard a horse gallop into the courtyard below. It was a messenger, sent by Will to say that the chamber gentleman Thomas Tyringham had died but that he, Will, had left Tyringham’s estate and was at another nearby estate near Woldringham, with his two young friends.

  I knew, of course, who the “two young friends” were: my nephews Henry and John.

  “And are they well?” I called down to the rider.

  “I believe so, madam,” came the response. “Though there’s many a poor soul who’s well in the morning and in his coffin by evening.”

  “What of the sweat in Woldringham?” I wanted to know.

  “That I cannot say. But I was told to tell you that the nuns of St. Agnes’s are in good spirits, and their guest thrives.”

  So Cat was surviving the disease. This was a great relief, and I chose to assume that Will and Henry and John were all right.

  I thanked the messenger and threw down a coin to him, then returned to the table with the queen.

  The following morning Anne was slow to rise and ate little. Her spirits brightened a bit when, with a small commotion in the courtyard, Bridget Wingfield arrived at the palace and, since she showed no sign of the sweat, was allowed to join us in the queen’s apartments. Queen Catherine was still in her bedchamber but the rest of the household came at once to greet the newcomer.

  We were very glad to see that she brought with her some supplies and provisions, casks of wine and oil, flour, salt fish and even a few baskets of vegetables from the Wingfield estate at Darenth. She also brought news.

  “Is the king with you?” Anne asked Bridget at once.

  “He was, but now he has gone to Tittenhanger, to his tower there. He is all alone in the tower room. He lowers a basket out the window four times a day for his food. He occupies himself in reading and concocting new remedies for the sweat. In truth, he is terrified of it. More terrified than any of us I think.

  “Oh, and Jane,” she went on, “my husband has had a letter from your brother Edward. Most of those in your family are tolerably well, but your father is ill.”

  “Is he likely to die?” I asked.

  Bridget shook her head. “No one can say. But most of them do, once they start to stink. Once the sores appear.”

  God help me, I confess, I prayed for my father to die. If, as many said, the sweat was divine punishment, then surely no one deserved it more.

  “There is a letter for you, Anne. From His Majesty.”

  “Read it please, Bridget.”

  Bridget looked embarrassed.

  “Would you not rather read it by yourself, to yourself?”

  “I am tired,” Anne said, and indeed her voice was listless. She leaned on one arm. “Read it. I care not who hears.”

  “Sweeting,” the letter began, “fear nothing from this passing scourge. If we are cautious, and use good care, we will not be afflicte
d. Women are not taken as often as men. Take manus Christi and mix it with vinegar and wormwood, rosewater and brown bread crumbs. Smell this often and eat little. Purge your rooms each day with fire. If you can put living spiders into a pouch around your neck the poison will not enter through the heart. I would send you more potions but my apothecary Sartorius is ill and dying. Do not sleep! Else you may not wake.

  “Yours from the heart of one who desires you above all things, and will soon send you a shooting glove for us to take hunting. Fear not for want of grain but fasting will drive out sickness.”

  The letter was signed, “Your Henry, heart and soul.”

  I noticed that Anne was nodding off as Bridget was reading the king’s letter. He cautioned against sleep. I wondered if I ought to wake her. I reached out to touch her shoulder, meaning to shake her gently and rouse her.

  Her shoulder was wet.

  I gasped, loudly. I couldn’t help myself. We all knew what wetness meant. Sweat!

  “Anne, wake up! Anne!”

  She murmured a few words.

  I backed away. “She feels wet. Her skin is hot,” I said. With a boldness that surprised me, I grasped her arms and raised them high, as Will had done to me when he came to Greenwich just as fear of the sweat was gripping the palace and the town. I was looking for sores, blisters, evidence of the disease.

  Sure enough, in the hollows of Anne’s underarms were angry red pustules. She had begun to shiver.

  “Oh my Lord,” I heard Bridget cry out. “My Lord, preserve her! Preserve us all!”

  “The moat!” Griffith Richards shouted. “Throw her into the moat!”

  He went to the largest window in the royal apartments and, grasping the metal bars, gave a mighty tug on them. There was a crash of tumbling masonry as the old stones and mortar gave way, to reveal a clear if narrow opening. An opening barely wide enough for a small woman to squeeze through.

  But Anne is not a small woman, I thought. Still—

  Griffith Richards picked Anne up and hurried to the window. She kicked and squirmed, struggling to free herself from his strong grasp.