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

  “No, wait!” It was Bridget. “Not that!”

  “It is the only way,” Richards insisted. “Otherwise we will all perish. Would you have that on your conscience?”

  “Don’t wait!” the servants were chanting. Their faces reflected no dread, only a cruel glee. Griffith Richards had been right. Anne was hated.

  Had Will been with us, he would not have hesitated to do the thing that would save us all. Yes, I thought. Do it. Do it and be done with her …

  Richards was stuffing Anne’s struggling body through the opening in the stonework. She was kicking vainly and crying out for Henry.

  “Stop!”

  At the sound of Queen Catherine’s voice, the gentleman usher hesitated, looking back over his shoulder at his royal mistress. But then I heard him say “no” and he resumed pushing and shoving Anne’s resistant body through the narrow opening.

  “Stop this at once! It is my royal command! My husband would never allow this!”

  I saw Griffith Richards’s large hands grow slack. He hung his head, though he still kept his hold on Anne’s bulky gown.

  “We are Christians, not savages!” Catherine was saying. “Release that woman at once!”

  Richards loosened his grip and stood aside. I saw him grasp his short sword.

  Sobbing, sweating, Anne was managing to pull herself back into the room. No one went to her aid. We were all too much in fear of the disease.

  “Come with me, Anne,” Queen Catherine said calmly, walking toward the doorway. “I will make up a bed for you in the laundry. I will bring you food myself, if no one else will. Lord willing, you may be restored to health by means of the king’s preservatives. And may God have mercy on your soul.”

  EIGHT

  We had no physician to treat Anne, in her room at the opposite end of the palace. She complained that the room, which was in the laundry, among the washing tubs, was dark and damp, though I thought to myself, how can she know that it is damp when she herself is soaking wet with the dripping of the sweat? I chided myself for even thinking of such a question, and tried to imitate the queen’s charitable attitude. For the queen, we all knew, had saved Anne’s life. Her command to Griffith Richards had come at the last moment; had she not intervened, Anne would have drowned in the moat.

  And though no one said it, we all admired Catherine for her forgiving attitude toward the woman who was her husband’s mistress. The woman he intended to marry.

  It was not long before Cardinal Wolsey, who, as my brother Ned liked to say, had eyes and ears everywhere, learned that Anne was ill with the sweat and sent Dr. Barchwell to the palace to treat her.

  He was a tall, outsize man whose grey hair was thinning, and who smelt of the ointments and potions he carried in his bags of medicines. His boots were crusted with mud, his riding cloak dirty from the road. We led him into the palace and offered him what food we could spare. He said little but ate greedily, frowning when we told him we had very little wine and needed to preserve what we had.

  “For the Lady Anne, and any others who may fall ill,” I explained.

  “If the servants don’t get at it first,” was the doctor’s cynical response. “I need a bed,” he added gruffly. “I have not slept in two days.”

  Griffith Richards took the physician to an antechamber where he could rest.

  “Fire,” I heard him mutter. “Light fires in the sickroom, where the Lady Anne lies. As many fires as you can.” Then he lay down to sleep.

  We lit fires in the laundry and brought in as many candles as we could find, until the entire area was ablaze with light. Fire was believed to purge sickness—and also to induce a trancelike state in which healing happened quickly.

  When Dr. Barchwell awoke he washed and dressed hurriedly and then, taking his bags of medicines, went down into the laundry to see Anne. I went with him. Anne was shivering beneath her blankets, visibly weaker than the last time I had seen her, clearly succumbing to the fearsome disease. Her eyes were wide and full of fear.

  The doctor produced a leather pouch and strode rapidly to one corner of the room, where spiderwebs spread themselves in dark clumps against the walls. Heedless of the spiders’ poison, he scooped up several of the webs and poked them down inside the pouch, then pulled the leather thong tight so that the wriggling spiders could not escape.

  “Fasten this around her neck,” he said to me, handing me the pouch. Anne was wearing a gold chain and I hung the pouch from it, near her throat.

  “Have you any bread?” he asked. “Brown loaves, not white.”

  I assured him that we did. We had not yet eaten all the loaves Bridget brought with her. I went upstairs to get the bread and when I returned I crumbled it as the doctor instructed. He combined the crumbs with the herbs and liquids he was mixing.

  Over the next hour, as Anne slipped into a faint and the room filled with the pungent odors of vinegar and rosewater, musk and wormwood and other scents unfamiliar to me, the doctor prepared a powerful remedy.

  “It is the king’s own formulation,” he said. “He swears it will cure the sweat. Only it did not save his own apothecary. The poor man died.”

  Dr. Barchwell placed the strong-smelling concoction next to the narrow bed where Anne lay.

  “Now we wait,” he said.

  “Shouldn’t we try to wake her, to make her drink the draught?”

  “No. It is the scent of it that heals.”

  I did not question this. I merely sat quietly at Anne’s bedside, the doctor beside me, intently watching for any change in her appearance. From time to time he reached out and touched her arm.

  “It is the manus Christi,” he said at one point. “It is having its effect. She is drying up. The manus Christi is healing her, Lord be praised.”

  And just before midnight, our long vigil at an end, Dr. Barchwell told me he would not be needing my help any longer.

  “She will survive,” he said, and I saw, for the first time, the smallest of grins on his solemn features. His entire face seemed to relax, the lines of tension in his forehead and around his mouth grew less deep.

  “It is well,” he added. “The king will be pleased.”

  The doctor stayed with us for several days, continuing to watch over Anne in her recovery and preparing fresh batches of the healing medicines that had preserved her.

  His long weary hours of anxious watching had taken the last of his strength. He looked drained and haggard, his eyes shadowed and ringed with dark circles. He looked as though he had passed through an ordeal of illness himself. Though we urged him to rest before leaving he refused, saying that he was needed, that there were so many others to treat. We saw to it that he had provisions and then sent him off, spent and weakened as he was, on his next errand of mercy.

  So many were dying, we knew. I worried constantly that I would hear the dreaded news that Will had succumbed. Instead I had a dream.

  It was more than a dream, it was a premonition. I dreamed that my nephew John was sick.

  I awoke from my dream and left almost at once for Woldringham, never doubting that the queen, had I consulted her and asked her permission, would have sped me on my way.

  I rode as rapidly as my horse could carry me, along dusty narrow roads and across meadows where the last of the wild flowers still bloomed, along with grasses and weeds. I knew that Will had taken the boys to an estate near the town, but which estate? Once I arrived in the vicinity of the town, I began to make inquiries. I soon discovered the answer.

  “Ah, you must mean Peregrine Lavington’s house,” I was told. “All the sick children are being taken there.” If John was indeed ill, then I reasoned that he might be at this house. I followed the directions I was given and soon found myself riding down a lane among orchards, the trees sweet-smelling and heavy with fruit. The July sun was hot, a heat haze rose from the earth and I almost wished it would rain, if only to offer some relief. Presently a large house came into view—a mansion, dilapidated but still sturdy, its soft yellow walls
crumbling, its thick roof slates beginning to crack and separate from one another. Thatched cottages surrounded the old house, green with moss; the lawns and once luxuriant hedges that spread outward from the structures were neglected.

  “Have you brought us another?” asked a woman who came to the door in answer to my knock, her eyes full of concern. She wore no cap, instead her curling grey hair was caught up in an untidy knot and the apron she wore over her bodice and skirt was none too clean. I took her to be a laundrywoman.

  “I have not brought anything,” I said. “Only myself. I am Mistress Seymour, of the queen’s household, looking for Will Dormer and the boys he has with him, Henry and John.”

  “My good Mistress Seymour,” the woman said kindly, “you ought not to be here. There is sickness in this house. I beg of you, find somewhere else to go.”

  Just then Will appeared in the doorway, a small child in his arms. A girl. He looked harried, but when he saw me, he grinned.

  “Jane! My dear! I see you have met Peregrine, selfless soul that she is. She has opened her house to the children. The sick ones, the ones left orphaned by the sweat. All the unwanted ones whose families have died. She is compassion itself.”

  Peregrine Lavington shrugged. “All the monasteries and convents are full, they cannot take in any more of the afflicted. So this house becomes a hospital. It is a good use for it.”

  “I had a dream,” I told them. “I dreamed that John was sick with the sweat. Is he here, with you?”

  Both Peregrine and Will were silent for a brief moment. They exchanged glances. Then Peregine spoke.

  “I’m sorry, Mistress Seymour, but your little friend John is very ill indeed. I see now why you are here, despite the sickness. Come, let me take you to him.”

  Dread rose up in me as I followed Peregrine inside the old house. I had been right. John was ill and in need of my love and care.

  The drafty old mansion was falling down. The walls were full of wormwood and smelt of mold, but the rushes on the floor were clean and I caught the scent of fresh herbs amid the moldy odor. A cacophony of children’s voices reached us as we went up the stairs, some shrieking, others crying, a few giggling and even singing. Each room we passed through had many beds, and in each bed, I saw, were several children. Some were mere babies, others, I guessed, were as old as thirteen or fourteen—more than old enough to be chasing crows in the fields or helping with the coming harvest.

  In one small bed a child lay unmoving, his white body being wrapped in winding sheets by two women. As soon as they finished their sad task, and carried the dead boy out into the corridor, the bed was laid with fresh linen and Will put the little girl he was carrying down on it and covered her with a thin blanket.

  “We have so many ill here, Mistress Seymour. Not all who come here die, but so many do! A few recover and they stay on to take care of the others. I am grateful for their help. As I am for Will here.” She smiled at Will, then led me into another noisy room.

  My nephew John was lying in bed, curled into a ball, like a sick puppy, the runt of the litter.

  “He has been with us for several days,” Peregrine told me. “He has survived so far. A good sign.”

  “His grandfather’s namesake,” was all I said. “Little John Seymour.” I sat down on the low bed and put my hand on John’s damp forehead. I did not shun contact with him, as I had with Lavinia and with Anne. I did not care, in that moment, whether or not I became ill; my only concern was for the boy. John made a faint sound, a muffled grunt. He did not open his eyes.

  “His brother is very worried about him,” Will told me. “But I keep Henry away from here, to preserve him from the sweat. I have apprenticed him to an archer in the royal guard. He boards with the archer’s family.”

  My nephew Henry was a sturdy boy, tall for his age, already an athlete at six years old, a good rider and able to handle his small crossbow with some skill.

  “You would be proud of him, Jane. He carries the quiver for his master, and is learning to lead his warhorse. He will be a soldier in the king’s armies one day. He is strong, and does not flinch.”

  “And he has not come down with the sweat.”

  “No.”

  I was concerned about Henry, to be sure, but from the moment I saw John I was preoccupied with him. I rubbed his body with an ointment Peregrine recommended, a mixture compounded with treacle and wormwood, rosewater and the time-honored remedy called Rasis Pills. I eased his sore head with the juice of daisy leaves. I tried to keep him from falling asleep, remembering the warning in the king’s letter to Anne, though he was very drowsy. I tried to feed him turnips, which were said to be very beneficial in strengthening the sick and bringing them back to health, but he spat them out and cried. In the end I gave up.

  Hour after hour I sat on his bed, soothing him, singing to him, praying over him and smiling down into his small face, hoping that my presence would give him ease. From time to time Peregrine looked in on us, and I marveled at her tireless attention to the many children under her charge—not to mention her own ability to stave off the pestilence.

  “How is it you do not fall ill, Peregrine?” I asked her. “What preserves you, when so many others succumb?”

  “I almost wasn’t preserved,” was her blunt reply. “I was ill. Like the others. But I recovered.”

  “The Lord has spared her,” Will remarked, “to help these little ones.”

  I was drawn closer to Will than ever before in those sad days, and often went to him for strength and comfort. He enfolded me in his arms, I put my head on his chest and closed my eyes, thinking how grateful I was for his love. We kept watch together by John’s bed, and when John slept—as he inevitably did—we helped with other tasks: feeding sick children, washing them when they were first admitted to the house (many of them were filthy, having slept in ditches while roaming the countryside on their own), wrapping them in their small winding sheets when all hope had left them.

  I did what I could, and I mourned. Will and I mourned together, and comforted each other.

  Will came up to me and tenderly ran one finger along my cheek. “Are you sorry you came here, Jane dearest?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said softly. “Despite everything, I am not sorry. I am with you.” I kissed his cheek. “And there is so much love in this place. So much caring. It is beautiful to see, to be a part of.”

  Peregrine’s mansion was more than a refuge, it felt like a small community, a village, a vast united family arising amid the ruins of the disease. The children stood by one another, not quarreling or fighting. There were no strangers among them, only family. Family brought together by need—and by grace.

  I slept on the hard floorboards beside John’s straw mattress and tried to ignore my own symptoms which, I hoped, were not symptoms of the sweat but of a fever. An ordinary fever, one that would not kill me.

  I had a headache and my stomach hurt. It was all I could do to drink a cup of soup. My muscles were clenched in pain and my bones ached. I was so anxious!

  I watched Will for signs of pain or fatigue but like Peregrine, he seemed to go on doggedly through the days, sleeping little at night, all his concentration on the children and the need to comfort them and give them relief so that they could endure the assault of the illness and overcome it.

  By my fourth day in Woldringham I knew, deep down, that my little nephew could not survive much longer. I had the sense that we were waiting—not for John’s return to strength but for his valiant struggle to end. Time seemed suspended. There were no minutes or hours, only the immeasurably long wait for his release.

  Everything within me cried. All the sorrows of the world seemed to gather in the weakening body of one small defenseless boy, fatherless, motherless, and in the care of strangers.

  And yet not strangers. For they gathered, the other children who had survived the ordeal of the sweat unscathed, as if they knew what was approaching, and made a circle around us. Around John, lying quietly on hi
s bed of straw, one small weak arm reaching up to rest against my neck. Around Will, beside me, ever near, and around me, lost in tears, barely able to face my nephew’s final moments of life.

  They encircled us, silently, benevolently, and we waited together.

  I was assailed by wild thoughts. Angels, I thought, as I tried to wipe away my tears. They are angels on earth. Ministering to us, as the dark angel of death passes over us.

  My heart broke then, for I felt John’s hand slip down off my arm, and he fell back into senseless, lifeless nothingness. No more than a puff of wind. A billow of smoke. A fallen petal. A distant bell. One small life that was no more.

  * * *

  The season of the sweat passed. The dead were buried, and with the advent of crisp fall weather, the number of new deaths dropped, and life began, slowly, to resume its everyday pattern.

  Thomas Tyringham’s estate at Croydon passed into other hands, Edward Woodshaw’s duties at the Maidens’ Bower were taken over by Henry Norris, and then by others less intimate with the king. Anne Boleyn’s sister Mary mourned her late husband Will Carey, and was said to have found comfort with another man, a soldier in the royal guard. The king engaged a new apothecary and replaced his deceased chamber gentlemen as well. Anne managed to find a new maidservant and promptly forgot the name of the old one who had been carried off by the sweat.

  One thing she did not forget: how swiftly and eagerly Griffith Richards had reached for her when it was clear she was infected, and how vigorously he tried to push her out the palace window. It seemed to me that she never again looked at Richards in the same way as before, and I noticed that she stayed as far away from him as possible, and never went near the largest window in the queen’s apartments, the window from which the bars had been torn out, the opening just wide enough to accommodate a body.

  Within a few weeks all was restored, after a fashion. Will took me back to Woldringham to visit my nephew Henry, and I embraced him and rejoiced to see how he had grown, and what a strong, brave boy he was becoming. I was very glad that Henry was alive and well, but I still grieved for John. And in my grief—heaven help me!—I cursed God again and again for sparing my villainous father (who had, after all, lived) but allowing my innocent nephew to die.