Jean Plaidy - Murder Most Royal: The Story of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard

“Come hither, Jane!” he said in the soft, slurred voice of a lover, made husky with good ale and wine. And she came to him most cautiously, until he, seizing her, pulled her on to his knee.

“Well, what did you think, Jane, when that fool Norfolk ran around telling the world I was done for, eh?”

Jane’s eyes filled with tears.

“There, there!” he said. “’Tis no matter for weeping. Here I am, hale and hearty as ever, except for a sore leg . . .”

He liked to talk of his leg; he spent a good deal of time thinking about it.

“Every physician in London has had a go at it, Jane! And to no avail. I’ve tried charms and potions . . . no avail . . . no avail.”

Jane was timidly sympathetic; he stroked her thighs caressingly.

He liked Jane; he could sit thus happily with her, feeling a mild pleasure in her, without that raging desire which must put a man in torment till it was slaked; it was just pleasant, stroking and patting and going so far and then drawing back.

The door opened, and Anne was watching them. All the fears which she had successfully pushed away came rushing back. She knew Jane Seymour . . . sly, waiting, watchful of her opportunities. Anne suddenly realized why they waited, why Henry could be content to wait. They were waiting to see whether she bore a son. If she did, then Jane Seymour would be the King’s mistress. If not . . .

Anne’s self-control broke. She began to storm and rage. She now said to the King all those things which had been in her mind and which, even in her most frank moments, she had never mentioned before. It was as though she dragged him away from that bright and pleasant picture he had made of himself, and held up her picture of him. She was laughing at his conscience, at his childish method of putting himself right. Did he not think she saw through that! Did he not think that the great men about him did not either!

She was maddened with rage and grief and terror, so that she knew not what she said.

Henry’s one idea was to calm her, for he must think of the son, whom she was so soon to bear.

“Be at peace, sweetheart,” he pleaded, “and all shall go well for thee.”

But Anne was not at peace. Jane Seymour ran and hid herself behind the hangings, covering her face with her hands and audibly murmuring: “Oh, what have I done!” while she rejoiced at what she had done.

For what could she have done to suit herself and her supporters more, since, after that sudden shock, prematurely Anne’s son was born dead!

Trembling, they brought the news to the King. He clenched his hands; his eyes seemed to sink into the flesh about them, while the veins stood out knotted on his forehead. In uncontrollable rage he strode into Anne’s room. He stood over her as she lay limp, exhausted and defeated. Words flowed from that cruel little mouth. She had done this! She had humiliated him! She had deceived him into thinking she would give him sons! She was a witch, a sorceress . . .

Enfeebled as she was by hours of agony, yet she answered with spirit: “There was none to blame but yourself. This is due to the distress of mind you caused me through your philanderings with that sly Seymour wench!”

Henry roared back wrathfully: “You shall have no more sons by me!” And then, cunning and pious: “I see well that God does not wish to give me male childen.”

But he did not really believe this, not seeing how he himself could possibly be at fault in this matter.

“When you are on your feet, I will speak to you,” he said coldly.

Then he went from the room, his thoughts with Jane Seymour. It might well be that this marriage was a mistake, he was thinking. By God, I was forced into it by sorcery! She was irresistible, with her long hair and her wicked little pointed face. It was beyond the power of man to say nay to her. Sorcery! This is why God does not permit me to have male children. Might it not be that I should make a new match?

Jane Seymour sat in her apartments at the palace, awaiting the King. These apartments which were splendid and hung with rich arras and cloth of gold, had a short while before belonged to Thomas Cromwell, but he had vacated them that Jane might use them, because adjoining those of the King they could most easily and secretly be reached by His Majesty.

Jane was rather frightened by the great happenings which had come about ever since that day when the King had glanced in her direction. Her brothers, Thomas and Edward, had planned ambitiously, and their plans, they told their sister, were all for her. Edward was clever, subtle and ambitious; Thomas was fascinating, dashing and also ambitious. Look what came to Anne Boleyn! said these two. Why not to Jane Seymour? True, Jane had not the obvious attractions of Anne Boleyn, but men were strange in their fancies, and was it Anne’s beauty and wit that had charmed the King as much as her reluctance? If Jane had not beauty and wit, she could be as reluctant as Anne, and in all probability with more effect, for shyness would seem more natural in Jane than it ever could be in Anne.

So Jane must bow to the wishes of her family. Chapuys and the imperialists were with Jane too, eager to support any who would bring disfavor on the partisans of Martin Luther.

So here was Jane, meek and mild, yet not being entirely without ambition, feeling that it would be somewhat pleasant to wear a crown, and that to discountenance the haughty Anne Boleyn would be most gratifying. She was therefore ready enough to step into her mistress’s shoes, yet a little frightened, for she could not but be aware that this role which was being forced upon her—even though she was not altogether reluctant to take it—was a very dangerous one. Anne was losing her place; Anne who had wit and beauty; Anne who had kept the King for five long years after she had become his mistress; and when she remembered this, Jane dared not think more than a month or two ahead. Her brothers had assured her that all she need do was obey their orders. She admired her brothers; they were clever, which Jane had never been; they were men, whereas Jane was just a weak woman. She was afraid of the King; when he put his face near hers and she smelled the wine on his breath, when she looked at the great face with its purple veins, when the little bloodshot eyes twinkled at her, she did not have to feign a desire to run. Jane, without pity, thought of the Queen who would have to be displaced if she were to sit on the throne; it was not that Jane was cruel or hard-hearted, but merely that she was without imagination. Children could move her a little; they were small and helpless like Jane herself, and she understood their doubts, their fear of their elders, their gropings for enlightenment. She had wept a little for the Princess Mary, for surely that child had suffered a very hard fate; if Jane were ever Queen, she would do her best to see that even little Elizabeth was treated fairly, for bastard though she was, she was at least a child, and a little child at that.

Jane’s thoughts went back to that important day when the King’s messenger had come to her with a letter and purse of gold from the King. Her brothers had been expecting some such approach from the King, and had primed her as to what she must do. Jane was ever obedient; her nature demanded that she should be; so she obeyed her brothers. She kissed the letter to show how greatly she esteemed the King’s person, how if he were but free to pay honorable courtship to her, she would so willingly have linked her fortune with his. The purse she refused.

“Kneel to His Grace the King,” said Jane, “beseeching him to consider that I am a gentlewoman of good and honorabIe family. I have no greater wealth than mine honor, and for a thousand deaths I would not sully it. If my lord the King desires to make me a present of money, I pray it shall be when God sends me a good offer of marriage.”

The King had evidently not been displeased with this response. Jane had made it tremblingly, doubting whether her brothers had not gone too far and might have displeased His Majesty. But no! Her brothers had been right; the King was enchanted by such modesty and virtue. He would have the world know that the virtue of the ladies of his court was their most admired possession in the eyes of their King. The Seymours were honored; they should have apartments in the palace near the King, for with Jane’s family and friends he was more at ease than with Anne and hers. He was never sure of Anne’s friends; they were too clever, too subtle. In future, give him good practical jokes; give him hearty humor that all could understand; he had done with mockery and smartness, and people who wrote and talked in a manner that he was not at all sure did not put him in the shade. No, he liked the company of the Seymours; they soothed him, and it was pleasant to contemplate a good and virtuous woman who appealed to him without arousing too insistent a passion.

He knew what the Seymours were after. Well, well, Anne could not have boys. A daughter from Katharine, a daughter from Anne! He wondered what he would get from Jane. With Anne he had scarcely thought of children at first, so greatly had he desired her, but he would not marry Jane on the chance that she might have a child; he would have to make sure that she was capable of doing so, before he committed himself again. This was a delicate situation for the Seymours, which while it was full of the most dazzling possibilities, was rampant with danger. Jane’s strength had been in her aloofness, and how could she remain aloof and at the same time prove to the King that she was capable of bearing his child? The Seymours had to act with extreme tact; they had to take a risk, and they took it boldly. Hence the apartments close to those of His Majesty; hence the secret visits of the King, when he found Edward Seymour and his wife discreetly absent, and Jane alone and not so demure, waiting to receive him.

His courtship of her was a sober matter when he compared it with his courtship of Anne Boleyn. There was something restful about Jane; he never forgot for a moment when he was with her that he was the King, and never did he lose sight of the real meaning of this love-making. If Jane was unlike Anne, she was also unlike the King; he looked at their reflections, side by side in the mirror; himself large and red, she small and white; he completely master of the situation, she shrinking, a little afraid. She did not shrink from his coarseness as Anne had often done; cleverly she feigned such innocence as not to understand it; if she made a false move, if she said anything to arouse his anger, she would be meekly apologetic. With Jane Seymour he was enjoying a period of domestic peace which he had not enjoyed since he had banished Katharine and taken Anne to live beside him. In the turbulent years he had longed for that peace which would be brought about by what he thought of as Anne’s sweet reasonableness; it had been a goal to which he, in his sentimental hours, had reached out with yearning hands, and never did he succeed in attaining it. Now here was Jane, offering it to him; he could lie back, close his eyes, enjoy it, say what he liked, and be sure of approbation.

The girl was a bit insipid though; he realized that, after the first few nights with her. She was too passive; neither eager nor repulsing him; just meek and submissive. All that a Queen should be to a King of course, but . . . Ah! he thought, I think of Anne. I gave too much of myself to that witch, for witch she is, with the devil’s own power over me, so that even when I lie with another I cannot forget her. There will be no peace for me, while Anne lives, for the power of a witch is far-reaching, and she can cast spells even when her victim is in a good woman’s arms.