I, Jane: In The Court of Henry VIII (17 page)

The second room, the more important privy chamber, was more richly appointed than the first. A long walnut sideboard stood against the wall full of gleaming Spanish silver, all of it glinting in the light cast from the bank of diamond-shaped leaded-glass windows on the opposite wall. Outside, she heard the sound of gardeners constantly clipping bushes and shrubs. At the end of the vast room, flanked by tapestries depicting two gruesome scenes of the Crucifixion, sat a heavily carved throne with a long crimson and gold tester behind it. The stout, dark-haired woman seated beneath it was not at all what Jane had expected. She seemed much older and more starkly unattractive than Jane had imagined when she thought of the grandeur of court. Her full, sallow face looked like rising dough beneath her ornate, gabled black hood. Her black dress was ornamented only by a large silver crucifix that hung over her chest.

Jane and Margery drew forward, then dropped into low, reverent curtsies. Her father bowed deeply. The silence around them was palpable.

“Lady Seymour, it has been many years,” the queen said without benefit of introduction. Her soft voice was heavily accented. “Time has been kind to you, I see.”

Jane knew that many years ago, her mother once had a place in
the household of her powerful aunt, the Countess of Surrey, where she had met John Skelton.

“Thank you, Your Highness.”

“And this girl, she is yours?”

Jane felt herself blanch at the implied insult of the queen’s disbelieving tone.

“She is indeed, Your Highness. May I present my eldest daughter, Jane Seymour.”

“Edward’s sister.
Sí
, the resemblance is very clear. They look like their father.” She smiled condescendingly. What might she have been like in her youth, able to capture not one, but two princes of England? It seemed unfathomable now.

Amid the tension and silence, Jane saw Francis Bryan. He was standing to the queen’s left with a small collection of very dignified young men garbed in costly slashed-velvet doublets, heavy gold chains, and plumed caps. The man next to him was noticeably older, though fit and trim, and his hair was the same color as the silver gleaming on the sideboard. It swept back from a widow’s peak at his forehead in a great wave to match his neat silver beard and mustache. He looked like a wax figure, lean and stiff, Jane thought, like someone not quite real. He was certainly a bit menacing. She straightened her back then, remembering her mother’s constant remonstrations to always stand with dignity.

The women around the queen’s throne—some standing, some seated in tall tapestry-covered chairs—were like petals on a rose; elegant and regal. Jane detected scents of cinnabar, vanilla, and rose water, the combination of which made her a little dizzy.

She was most definitely a thorn among roses.

“My lord Norfolk,” said the queen, turning just slightly to the
silver-haired man, her tone a little cooler and more formal, “you recall your good cousin Lady Seymour, I assume?”

His nod to Margery was tepid, as though he had seen her the day before, not decades earlier. “’Tis my pleasure, Lady Seymour,” he said in a perfunctory tone.

“And my honor, Your Grace.” Jane’s mother was squeezing her hand so tightly that it began to hurt.

Her expression did not reveal the slightest hint of anxiety.

“I am reminded that you are to counsel with the king on the hour, Thomas. Pray, do make haste,” the queen said to the duke suddenly.

Norfolk nodded to her. “Indeed I shall, Your Highness. Many thanks for the gracious reminder.”

He had stiffened at the mention of the king, Jane noticed. At Elizabeth’s wedding, Edward had told them that Mother’s cousin, Thomas Howard, was now the powerful Duke of Norfolk, rivaling Wolsey for power and influence. Things were changing swiftly between the royal couple, and many of the most intimate courtiers had begun to choose sides. Jane was not yet certain on whose side she would find Norfolk, so she must take care not to insult him until she did.

“Very well, walk with me, then, Mistress Seymour,” the queen suddenly bid her. Jane could hear the whispers rise as Katherine was helped down from the dais and Jane advanced.

The third room in the chain of rooms into which they moved was smaller and far more intimate than the other two. It was a grand bedchamber, and the smell of incense was very strong. A Spanish woman approached the queen, and there was a hushed exchange between them before Katherine lifted a censuring hand, indicating that she wanted no assistance. She wished to speak privately with
Jane. The walls and ceiling to which Jane cast her gaze were fully paneled in an intricate block design. At the opposite end was a large canopy bed dressed in crimson sarcenet and a grand fireplace. Above each were the king and queen’s seal, an
H
and
K
surrounded by a Tudor rose.

The queen went to the window and Jane stood behind her, waiting for her to speak.

“Tell me, do you know what it means to be loyal, Jane?” she finally asked as she gazed wistfully past the massive courtyard to the great, glimmering, barge-dotted Thames beyond.

“I hope that I do, Your Highness, since there is little of greater value than loyalty.”

“You betray your youth and inexperience, Mistress Seymour, both of which ring hollow in these halls. Many have left me for
her
apartments these past months. Can you imagine that harridan has her own suite of rooms now, more elegantly appointed than these? They are directly beside my husband’s official apartments. Everyone still smiles at me and flatters me as they must, but privately they have cast their lot with her, paying court to
her
now, as if they believe she will vanquish me.”

Jane still could not believe that the king’s new paramour was that dreadful child she had met in France, grown to womanhood now, Mary Boleyn’s dark-haired sister, Anne.

“I must have loyalty, Jane, some paltry bit of it left, as I try to do battle with this. Of course I have my precious Maria here. But the others are like the great Duke of Norfolk, who comes here and bows to me, but who follows his niece, Mistress Boleyn, boldly behind my back. His betrayal is as regular as day and night. You are fortunate to have a benefactor like Francis Bryan, who tells me not just of your loyalty, but of your clever mind.” The queen turned back from the
windows, then settled her eyes, glistening with unshed tears, on Jane. “I find that I could use someone with your assets when so many around me seem to be losing sight of theirs—a plain girl who, like myself, understands how cruel it is to be outshone.”

In the awkwardness of such a personal moment, Jane curtsied again. The queen’s words seemed to be meant as something of a compliment.

“But I warn you, Mistress Seymour, I shall not suffer betrayal. I know perfectly well that you are a second cousin to that she-devil, bound by Norfolk on your mother’s side. Pray God you share only her determination and not her blind ambition.”

“I met Mistress Boleyn once when we were children in France, Your Highness,” Jane surprised herself by confessing. “She stuck her foot out so that I would trip and look like a fool right in front of the king’s sister. I did not like her then and I would not like her now, no matter what blood we might share.”

The queen’s plum-colored mouth lengthened into an oddly malevolent smile, and she reached up to clutch the heavy silver cross at her breast. “Praise to my Almighty God,” she muttered, and then began to whisper something in Spanish as she lifted the cross to her lips and kissed it.

Edward held his mother in a prolonged embrace beneath an archway in the corridor outside the queen’s apartments, pretending to feel the loyalty he was meant to feel. He had been away from her influence for so long that he felt little emotional attachment. She was the woman of his childhood but not of his heart. That part of himself had been irrevocably broken by his cheating wife, Catherine, who had taken the last bit of his true compassion with her
infidelity. But no one at court would have known that. He had become too experienced to let it show.

Still a good and seasoned courtier, Edward made a convincing display of it now that his mother was here.

“I cannot believe Jane’s good fortune,” she whispered with a smile. “Who would have ever thought of
her
?”

“Now, don’t be too proud, Mother. You know part of the reason the queen has her here is to counteract
my
influence with the king’s little bastard, the Duke of Richmond, and Norfolk schemes for his niece.”

“Whatever her reasons,” Margery said, kissing his bearded cheek, “Jane is here now, and I thank God for our king’s penchant for infidelity.”

Edward tried not to laugh at that, but he could not help himself. What promise she might have shown at court if she had not been married off to his father, that grizzled old cur.

Father or not, the devil take him. He had flirted with Catherine right before Edward’s eyes at Elizabeth’s wedding. He had seen it, and no matter how vehemently the old man denied it, he believed his father later bedded his wife. When confronted with his suspicions, Catherine had not offered up the same denial his father had. His wife had certainly seemed more concerned about her own pleasurable conquests and less concerned about hurting him, and so she had.

Because of her alluring beauty, Edward had refused to acknowledge how promiscuous she was, both before their marriage and after. He had thought himself skillful and handsome enough to tame her, but he had been painfully wrong. Elizabeth’s wedding had been the end of things for them, almost before they had begun. But
the world would never know the gaping wound left to bleed right beneath the layer of rich Italian velvet covering his proud, slightly puffed-up chest.

Now, once again, ambition, not love, was the thing.

Margery pulled away, and her eyes glittered brightly with all of her own hope and ambition. Edward knew she was thinking how much like his father he was, something she had often told him as a child, and he tried very hard not to shrink from the sensation of revulsion it brought.

His mother instantly understood his thoughts, but he knew she did not realize the full extent of his father’s betrayal. No one did, as Edward had never made his accusations public. She had only sensed the growing divide between them. “Pray, will you not cease this quarrel between you and speak to him before we depart?”

“You would be better served asking me to drive the dagger at my hilt right into his heart, as he has already plunged one into mine.”

“Will you not give him a chance to explain whatever dreadful misunderstanding has occurred between you?”

Edward tensed and took a step back from her, his taut body a ramrod of self-defense.

“He is your father, Edward. He is an old man now who cannot harm you.”

“The damage is done.”

“You are a Seymour, product of his own loins. I despair at the division among us. Have you no loyalty?” she asked him angrily.

“No, Mother, there is no loyalty between us,” Edward coldly countered. He did not want to fight with his own mother or hurt her with the revelation. He favored his emotional neutrality with her as much as the geographical distance between them when he was here
and she was at home in Wiltshire. “I am hardened now, Mother, grown and changed into someone you do not know beyond what you see. Go back to Wolf Hall with him, and I shall keep a watchful eye on Thomas and Jane as much as I am able. Perhaps one day you and I will have cause for a merry reunion. But by my troth, it shall not involve John Seymour.”

Then he walked away from her. That really was the best that he could do.

“Ungrateful hound,” Thomas thought ruefully as he watched his elder brother leave the room. Having witnessed the whole scene between Margery and Edward, he saw that she had been petitioning him to rejoin the family. Clearly that was not going to happen. Thomas suspected that the divide between Edward and their father had something to do with Edward’s former wife. He shook his head disdainfully.

He did not know Edward or understand him. The gap in their experiences was too great. The blood tie that bound them was now frayed by years of separation. On the few occasions of Edward’s visits to Wolf Hall through the years, they had rarely spoken. Edward had no time for his fair little brother with his smattering of freckles and pale Wentworth eyes.

As Thomas came into his own, there seemed to be an element of fraternal envy added to the mix. Thomas was as put off by his brother as Edward seemed to be by him. Thomas stood now in the presence chamber with Francis Bryan, his new benefactor, waiting awkwardly with everyone else as the queen took Jane away to speak privately.

For the moment, he chose to take in all the characters and ingratiate himself where he could, before Francis hauled him off to some
horribly forsaken outpost to earn his keep. As if he could read Thomas’s mind, Francis Bryan looked across the room at Norfolk.

“Intimidating, is he not?” Francis asked Thomas of the silver-haired, bold-looking man who had been stopped by the imperial ambassador on his way out the door to see the king. “You would do well to find him so. That is the Duke of Norfolk. He and Wolsey fight like mad dogs for the king’s favor. Wolsey is more pious, but Norfolk is more quietly clever. Who knows how it will end between them.”

“From the looks of it, I would wager that Norfolk will emerge victorious,” said Thomas with an air of cool detachment, trying to make it appear as if he belonged here as much as anyone else. Inside, however, he was full of heady sensations, as if he had drunk too much Rhenish wine. All these powerful players, all the elegance. The beauty! The danger!

“People to avoid certainly include the stone-faced Spaniard across from Norfolk, not that a sane man would ever be moved to approach her anyway, other than her husband, Lord Willoughby. That is Maria de Salinas, and she guards the queen with an eagle’s eye. Very little gets by her, so do not try unless your wish is for a quick expulsion from court or a swift death. Whichever she decides. The queen’s influence may be somewhat diminished with the king because of his bastard son, but believe me, Maria knows how to protect her.”