I, Jane: In The Court of Henry VIII (38 page)

“I cannot find a way to speak about it just now,” she finally said when she knew that the words and the full depth of their meaning would not come to her. “But perhaps one day.”

“I would welcome that, Jane,” said her sister-in-law, the only woman in Anne’s retinue she could even partially trust. “And I will be there if you do. For now we must make certain that the king does not see the exchange of glances between the two of you that I have. The last man who was caught—the poet Thomas Wyatt—was banished from court and has not been back since. I do not suppose things will bode any better for Master Smeaton once word of tonight’s behavior becomes more widely known. We should all be well warned by that.”

Two days later, Thomas Cromwell sat motionless, the royal proclamation hanging from his veined hand. So it had begun in earnest, William thought, as he watched his employer. Both tried to make sense of the king’s order that Cromwell and his staff vacate his hard-won rooms down the all-important connecting corridor from the king’s official apartments. He knew that Cromwell must handle his public reaction with dignity and aplomb, for there would be no changing the command since it involved a woman. He had told William that he had learned this lesson well from his old tutor, Cardinal Wolsey, and feared doing otherwise.

“I have had these rooms as royal secretary for many years,” Cromwell said flatly, turning his haggard expression from William and gazing out the window down onto the king’s knot garden.

“Does it say who is to take them, sir?” William asked cautiously.

“His Majesty’s Chief Gentleman of the Chamber and his wife, apparently.”

“Edward Seymour?”

Cromwell’s tired eyes were full of disappointment. “That surprises you when everyone at court whispers of the king’s growing attraction to Seymour’s plain-faced sister?”

William betrayed nothing of his feelings for Jane. Though he was well apprised of the Seymours’ ambitions, he was shocked that their plans were coming to fruition so rapidly. Suddenly, he was not so certain that he could go along with them.

“The queen shall not be amused by this turn of events,” Cromwell blandly warned.

The consequences of the king’s newest obsession seemed to William like a gathering storm from which none of them could escape.

“Would you excuse me, sir?” William asked suddenly, cutting off the encounter. He knew where he must go, and he must go there now. Before Cromwell could respond, William bowed to him, then turned and very quickly went out of the room.

Jane opened the door and stepped back. His was the last face she expected to see in her private rooms in the daylight hours, and she reacted to his appearance with a little gasp.

“I must speak to you,” William said urgently, threatening to burst through the doorway without invitation. His expression was filled with panic.

“I have company,” Jane managed to respond, backing away so he could see Edward’s wife, Anne, perched on Jane’s bed. She regarded William with a curious smile.

“Well, now, this is awkward,” Anne remarked.

William looked at Anne; then his gaze slid back to Jane.

“I would not come here if it were not important,” he said.

“I can keep a secret.” Anne smiled.

“I trust her,” Jane confirmed. “Have we any other choice?”

He came into the room then, and Jane quickly closed the door. He loomed before her, tall and powerful, full of unspoken desire. Jane blushed at his nearness for what it always awakened inside of her.

“Master Cromwell is being moved from his apartments, and they are doing it this evening in the dead of night to avoid a scandal. Your brother Edward and you, Lady Anne, will be moved in directly afterward.”

Jane felt a jolt of surprise. Henry had told her many things in the times they had spent together, and yet still she had not expected this. At least, not so soon. Jane was not certain she was ready to play on such a grand field, feeling after so much work that this could become her undoing.

“Oh, dear.” Anne covered her mouth to hold back a smile. “A scandal seems unavoidable.”

“He wants you, Jane,” William said desperately.

“And I want him. If it comes to that,” she shot back too quickly. “There is really nothing else for me anyway,” she amended, feeling guilty even as the words left her lips.

William burst forward then and gripped her arms tightly as they hung at her sides. “’Tis not too late. You can stop this!”

“Why would I? You have a wife already.”

He hung his head, obviously stung by her clipped tone and the harsh truth in it. Jane looked at him in silence, wishing he would say something to argue that point, yet knowing there were no words that would make any difference.

“Might we speak privately for a moment?” he asked futilely as Anne arched her brows at him.

“I cannot see how any good would come of
that
,” she said flatly.

William shot a quick glance at the door; then he looked desperately back at Jane. She could feel the way his heart was torn in two. “What do you want, Jane? Tell me that.”

He was pleading with her. Pleading for something that could never be.

“What I want does not matter. It never has.”

“It
always
has,” he corrected her sadly. “It always will.”

The energy between them was a charged thing, and Jane felt her heart beating very fast. William reached up tentatively and lightly brushed Jane’s cheek with the back of his hand, in full view of Jane’s sister-in-law. “You have always had the most extraordinary skin. The first time I touched you, I remember thinking it was like gossamer,” he said, his voice tinged with sadness. “Be careful, won’t you?”

“I have my brothers and Master Carew to watch out for me,” she replied haltingly, trying to be optimistic. Yet both of them knew what danger lay in wait for her in the coming days.

“Then be happy. You so richly deserve that.”

“I do intend to try.”

“I will be around as much as I can if you need me.”

“I wish you would not. Seeing you only makes it more difficult.” She had not expected it, but her eyes filled with tears as the words left her lips.

William paused for another moment. “Then I shall do what I can to contribute to your happiness.”

As he left her in the doorway, Jane found herself anxious for the king’s return to Richmond. She certainly felt safer when he was near.

Or was it love?

Early one afternoon, Jane sat in the queen’s presence chamber at a card table of carved oak, along with Edward; his wife, Anne; Thomas; and Nicholas and Elizabeth Carew. As bright winter light streamed in through the diamond-shaped windowpanes, casting jewels against the tapestry-covered walls, they played another game of primero. While Jane was required to be present as a lady-in-waiting, she did her best these days until the king’s return from London to make herself scarce in her duties, particularly as the queen was often in a foul humor, unless Mark Smeaton or her brother, George, was with her.

The king’s most recent mistress, Margaret Shelton, was scheduled to marry Sir Henry Norris in the spring, and Anne seemed to delight in flirting with him right in front of her own attendant as a way to pass the time. She was in an adjoining room now with the two courtiers.

Turnabout, in Anne Boleyn’s world, had always been fair play.

As Carew dealt the next hand of cards, they could hear Anne’s throaty yet girlish giggle through the walls.

“Smeaton and Norris would do well to take care when the king returns,” Thomas observed. “Do neither of them see how the winds of change have been stirred?”

“Do keep your voice down. You sound like a silly child,” Edward snapped in a condescending tone.

“I would prefer childish to arrogant,” Thomas retorted.

“Gentlemen, enough!” Carew intervened. “This is not a game we play against each other.”

There had never been an outright display of sibling rivalry between them before, and it surprised Jane. After all, did they not have the same goal in mind?

“I only meant these are uncertain times, even for the queen,” Thomas explained.

“We know what you meant,” Edward pushed.

“Edward, please,” Anne said, stilling her husband with a gentle hand on his arm. “There is no need for us to fight among ourselves.”

Jane sensed someone enter the room behind her, and she turned to see Cromwell with William Dormer, having come to play cards with the others. Cromwell wore an unadorned black coat over his growing girth; William presented a stark contrast to his mentor in a puff-sleeved doublet and trunk hose of blue and gold-striped satin. When Anne glanced at her, Jane quickly lowered her gaze, as was her custom. Edward, however, saw the exchange.

“What is it?”

“It is nothing, my dear, truly,” Anne said.

“Do not tell me that! The greatest care must be taken by all of us now. One false move could spell disaster,” he whispered furiously just as the king’s private page, Francis Weston, who always traveled with Henry, approached the table. Wearing the royal livery of green velvet with a Tudor rose emblazoned on his doublet, Weston bowed to Jane. As he did, the double doors were opened by two guards, and the queen stormed in. Margaret Wyatt and Lady Rochford were with her. Biting back a little smile as she curtsied along with the others, Jane wondered what drama was about to unfold.

Her smile fell quickly when Weston offered to Jane his gloved
hand, which contained a letter. The folded vellum was stamped with the king’s seal. In his other hand was a velvet pouch clinking with coins. From the corner of her eye, Jane could see Anne’s approach. She heard Elizabeth Carew’s little intake of breath, and she could sense her brothers’ trepidation.

Jane was at a loss. If she accepted these items, she was making a public statement about her intentions with another woman’s husband. The minute she did, Anne would become the scorned woman, and Jane would become the aggressor. Without Henry here to protect her, the danger was great, especially with Anne’s contingent of supporters surrounding her.

This was about to be the performance of Jane’s life.

“His Gracious Majesty bids me to give you these, mistress, with his compliments, and instructs you to respond to his words after you have read them so that I may return to him at York Place with something to warm his heart,” Weston explained.

Anne and her retinue were only steps away. Neither William nor Cromwell moved. Jane’s heart thumped with dread. It felt as if she were diving off a cliff as she fell dramatically to her knees before Weston.

“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.”