Boleyn Traitor, page 7
I take a lot of care with my reply, and I write in Latin:
Dear Master Secretary,
I greet you well and thank you for your enquiry after the health of my father and mother who are (praise God) both well this Christmas season.
I am grateful for the invitation to return to court. If there be any service that I may do you, I shall not fail you.
Jane Boleyn
I fold and double-fold the page, and I spend an hour on making a letterlock and sealing it with wax. It does not hurt to show him that my father has taught me Italian spy-craft as well as Italian courtier skills. Whatever Thomas Cromwell wants from me, he will not be offering me a rescue for nothing in return. No one in Thomas Cromwell’s service is idle.
Morley Hallingbury, Norfolk, Spring
1535
THE SNOWDROPS COME out like little fingernails of green and white, pushing through the dead leaves as if they will never grow tall and droop their pretty heads like bells. I think the winter has been long for them, but still they rise. The people in the cottages at Hallingbury have eaten up all their winter stores, and Mother says they must go to the abbeys for charity: the king’s new church must take care of the king’s poor as the old one did. Someone breaches the wall of the park and kills a deer; my father says that he will hang him. The game in our park is for sport – the king might want to come and kill our stags one day – it is not meat for stew pots of hungry people.
It has been a long cold winter for the traitors in the Tower, too: four monks, a priest, and Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher have gone all season without fires or hot food. I suppose that the king is leaving them there to die of cold and hunger, but Father says no: Master Secretary Cromwell is wrestling with them.
‘Wrestling?’ I ask, as if they have a booth on Tower Green.
‘Entrapping them,’ he says. ‘But I don’t think even Thomas Cromwell will trick Thomas More. He’s a learned man, and he loves his family. He’s not going to make a slip of the tongue that could cost him his head. He’s going to want to get home to that funny little wife of his and his great library in that beautiful house by the river.’
‘But who wants the house by the river?’ my mother asks, coming in at the end of the conversation and getting the wrong idea, as usual. ‘Who gets the library?’
SLOWLY, THE DAWN comes earlier and earlier each morning, and the birds start to sing at seven by the church bell, and then six and then five, and the woods turn green; but still, I wait for an invitation to return to court. At church on Sunday, the sunshine streams through the stained-glass window, and when I enter, early, for mass, I find our priest working on his missal with a knife and glue like a spy on a letter. He is sticking a piece of paper over the name of the pope every time it occurs in the prayers for blessings.
‘What are you doing, Father Pierce?’
‘Obeying an instruction from my bishop.’ His pale face is flushed with irritation. ‘I am to cut out the name of the … of the Bishop of Rome …’ The title sounds oddly in this church that has prayed for our Holy Father since it was built five hundred years ago. ‘Cut it out of my prayer book! And we are no longer to pray for … him. See—’
He shows me the bishop’s letter. It says that instead of the pope and the cardinals, the prayers are to be for the whole Catholic Church and for the Catholic Church of Rome, for the king – only Supreme Head of the Catholic Church of England – for Queen Anne and the princess, Lady Elizabeth, for the whole clergy and temporality.
He looks at me, indignant. ‘What will your father say to this, Lady Rochford? What would he have me do? For my bishop commands it – but the people won’t like it, and I …’ He breaks off.
‘He’d want you to obey the law. The king’s will,’ I say firmly.
‘But is it the king’s own will?’ the vicar asks me in an undertone. ‘For it’s not what he swore at his coronation, and it’s not what I swore when I was ordained? Is it the king’s will or that of bad advisors?’
I shake my head. We both know this is Anne’s will, and the law is written at her bidding. Who but Anne would command the people of England to pray for her and order every priest to name her in royal prayers in every parish instead of the pope?
‘My father obeys the law,’ I say shortly. ‘As do we all.’
He bows his head; he turns away, as if he is disappointed in me, and he goes back to defacing his missal. We both know it is the vandalising of the books that will upset my father more than anything.
Morley Hallingbury, Norfolk, Summer
1535
JUST BEFORE MIDSUMMER day, Father is summoned to London on royal business.
‘They don’t ask for me?’ I check.
He shakes his head. ‘You don’t want to come to court this summer, Jane, and I wish I didn’t have to. It’s a bad business. The trials of Bishop Fisher and the king’s dearest friend, Thomas More.’
Mother and I stand on the great steps of the new hall to wave him goodbye, the bright oak double doors behind us, open to the summer sunshine.
‘I’ll be back in a sennight,’ my father promises dourly. ‘This won’t take long.’
I go down the steps to his horse’s head to ask him quietly, so that no one else can hear: ‘What if they plead not guilty? What if Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas refuse to swear the oath and refuse to say anything at all? You can’t be guilty of treasonous words if you don’t speak – can you? You can’t find them guilty if won’t take the oath; but don’t say why?’
My father makes a grimace. ‘I’m not riding up to London in the heat of summer to find them not guilty,’ he says shortly. ‘This is a treason trial organised by Master Cromwell for the benefit of the Boleyns. The verdict is as secure as that man’s grasp of the law – which is to say clawlike – unguibus. I’m going to show loyalty to the king and to enforce his will – not to judge guilt or innocence.’
I bend my head for his blessing, and he puts his heavy hand on my hood.
‘Anyway,’ he says more cheerfully. ‘Cromwell has promised me the pick of the books from Thomas More’s library – I’d go for that alone. Your husband’s already got More’s lands.’
‘Before the verdict?’ I ask, shocked, though I also want to know: what lands? And how much?
‘Aye,’ my father says. ‘Before the verdict. Before us judges even arrive, before we’re sworn in. So that tells you there’s no doubt, doesn’t it? Thomas More isn’t going to go home and find his furniture gone and his books missing. He’s never going home at all.’
He wheels his horse, and his men form up around him, two before, two on either side, and two behind; the roads have become dangerous in Anne’s England. He waves to my mother and pats his pocket to show her that he has the list of things that she needs from the London merchants. He throws a salute to me, and he sets off down the long drive between the fresh green beech trees, to sentence the Bishop of Rochester and the Lord High Chancellor of England to death – because these two good men, great men, refused to obey Anne’s new law.
WHEN HE COMES home, a pack horse behind him laden with books from Thomas More’s library, he brings the news – that is no news – that Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher – and five holy men were all sentenced to death, for refusing to acknowledge that there is a new pope and he is Henry. Thomas More and John Fisher have gone to the scaffold, true to the faith of their childhoods.
‘There’s no greater power than the King of England in England,’ my father says shortly. ‘Ergo, the king is pope and emperor in England.’
I open my mouth to ask that – since there is only one church – if the king is pope in England, is he also pope in Italy, where the other pope sits on his throne at Rome? Is he an emperor in Spain, where the emperor is Charles?
But my father shakes his head, draws me very close, and whispers in my ear: ‘Seven better scholars than I answered that question, and they are dead for it. A wise man or woman does not ask it. A good courtier does not think it. Prepare yourself to return to court, Jane, and don’t think of things where the king has been advised, parliament has enacted, and the executioner has confirmed – most finally as only he can do.’
AFTER THE DEATHS of Bishop Fisher and Thomas More, the court goes on summer progress without a care in the world. Protestants and Papists, enemies and friends leave the crowded, diseased capital city for weeks, and Church and people are forgotten by the man who demanded complete power over them.
‘Nobody is going to invite you back to court while they are on progress.’ My mother states the obvious.
‘I know,’ I say patiently. ‘I don’t expect it.’
‘So, when do you expect to go? If you know everything?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say, gritting my teeth on my irritation. ‘Master Secretary will send for me, when the queen needs me.’
‘She gets everything she wants,’ she says with mild spite.
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘She’s queen.’
IT IS NOT until the end of summer that another letter comes for me, with the Cromwell seal on the outside and the loopy round initials of T for Thomas and C for Cromwell at the foot of the page. Again, it is letterlocked: folded over and over and spliced on itself, though again, there is nothing in it to interest any spy.
Cromwell writes the usual courtesies: he tells me of the summer progress the court made to the West Country; they chose not to stay at Margaret Pole’s great palace at Bisham – which I read as a snub to the lady of the old royal family and a blow to the Spanish party, who are reeling with the death of their champions, Fisher and More – and their majesties are so merry that progress is to be prolonged into autumn.
Only at the very end of the letter do I find the invitation.
The queen’s rooms have missed your good sense, and her ladies have missed your supervision. Her Majesty will need the ladies of her family at her next confinement, and her sister, Mary Boleyn – now Mary Stafford – will never return to court. You may come back to your former place as senior lady-in-waiting in the queen’s rooms, living with your husband on the king’s side, on the usual terms. The queen commands me to say that you may come at once, and I trust you will consider me as your friend.
I note that Anne – now the wife of a pope and an emperor – is now ‘Her Majesty’. I don’t care. I will call her Holy Father if she wants.
I tap on the door of the library, and enter, confident of my welcome. My father is seated at his great carved table, parchment unrolled and weighted down around him, writing on a great folio of paper, with one of the many quills I trimmed for him. I see the scribbled versions of different translations and the blotted tries at rhyming words.
He looks up as I come in, and he smiles at me. ‘Master Secretary told me he would invite you back to court after the summer progress. Has he done so?’
I lay the letter before him, and I see his satisfied smile as he reads it.
‘You could not have a better man for your sponsor,’ my father says. ‘He’s not noble blood; but don’t despise him on that account, Jane. He’s a man of great abilities and a favourite of the king. In him, you see how a common man rises through work and education. His Italian is better than mine; I envy him his years in Florence.’
‘He says I am to consider him as my friend.’ I point to the looping words.
‘Yes, he means you’re to tell him all that passes in the queen’s rooms.’ My father picks up his pen and corrects an error in spelling, just for his own satisfaction, because he cannot help but improve a line, even from another author.
‘I’ll never interfere in royal business again,’ I say hotly. ‘I shan’t fight Anne’s battles for her!’
‘You’ll do your duty,’ he corrects me. ‘He’s not invited you back to court to be idle. You’ll observe her, and her ladies, and tell him what you see. He’s putting you in the queen’s rooms to give him forewarning. He’ll want to know everything before it gets out – that the pregnancy is going as it should, that her ladies are fit for their posts, that no one’s speaking against the new laws, who’s in favour of the old queen – that sort of thing. More than anything, he’ll want to know what Anne is thinking, before he hears from the king that he has had a new idea – quite his own – and it must be law tomorrow.’
‘As the queen’s senior lady, it is my duty to keep the king’s principal secretary informed,’ I say carefully.
‘Warn him what she’s thinking,’ he tells me. ‘If you can, tell him what she’s going to say, before she puts it into the king’s mind as his own idea. Get ahead of her, and you’re ahead of the king, and so – more to the point – is Cromwell.’
I hesitate. ‘But Father, is this not to make a tyrant? To do his will before he’s asked it? If the king is first among equals, should he not speak his wishes and his peers debate it in parliament? And now, as Head of the Church – should he not put his ideas to the bishops and scholars for them to test against the Bible and the philosophers? Otherwise, he is the only power in England? Is that not tyranny instead of monarchy? Wasn’t that the dilemma of Rome?’
My father puts a gentle hand on mine. ‘Yes,’ he says very quietly. ‘But I have just come from the execution of a man who warned of this. Think, Jane, as I have trained you to think. Machiavelli says that all kings have to become tyrants or be overthrown. This is the rise of the Tudors to tyranny; this is the rise of Anne to tyranny. Make sure you rise with them.’
Greenwich Palace, Autumn
1535
GEORGE IS NOT waiting for me in the stable-yard at Greenwich when I ride in, at the head of a small train of my father’s servants. He is not in our rooms when I go to change from my travelling clothes. I understand at once, that I am restored to court, but not to a true wife’s place. The tidy well-swept room is cool, indifferent. I am not returning to a loving home. I make my way to the other side of the great hall, to the queen’s rooms. The guards open the doors with a bow, and I go in.
Anne barely looks up at my reverent curtsey. She is seated on a decorated chair, wearing a gown as big as a tent, as if to emphasise that she cannot bear tight lacing over the baby in her belly. This pregnancy is to be no secret. This baby, announced in the first month, cannot come soon enough. Her dark hair is loose, hanging down over her shoulders; she is crowned with a circlet of wheat. The ladies are practising tonight’s dance – the court is celebrating harvest – and Anne is seated at the centre of it.
She nods at me and says grimly: ‘I am Ceres. Fertility.’
‘Not Demeter?’
She scowls and says: ‘For God’s sake! I see you’ve been in your father’s library all year.’
‘I didn’t mean to correct you … It’s just that Demeter is the Greek goddess, and your gown is Greek style, so I thought …’
‘The gown’s called Demeter, then. And I am Ceres inside it. Does that satisfy you?’
I giggle, and she finally smiles.
‘Anyway, welcome back,’ she says.
She may not have missed me, but she needs me. She is surrounded by kinswomen and companions but no friends. I can tell at a glance that the new favourite flirt must be our kinswoman Mary Shelton – the second Shelton girl to come to court. She leads the ladies in the dance, and beside her is an empty place for her partner, the lord of the harvest. Who else would play lord of the harvest but the king? He’s not going to sit beside a pregnant wife for the next seven months. Mary Shelton has the long Boleyn face, but her grey eyes are sparkling with excitement, and she is always smiling. She’s a younger, merrier version of Anne. If Anne had ever been carefree, this is what she would have looked like.
One glance at Mary, and at the beautiful sleeves laced onto her ordinary gown, tells me everything: that our family has put one of our own in the king’s path, so that the place of the Boleyn wife will be held by a Boleyn mistress for the duration of the pregnancy. Someone has managed to persuade Anne that she cannot demand the king’s fidelity for the next seven months. Someone chose Mary Shelton as a girl whose loyalty to family means she will step forward and then step back again, and someone has persuaded Anne to turn a blind eye. It can only have been my husband. Only George could have persuaded Anne to tolerate Mary Shelton, her own cousin, as the new favourite, and only George could have persuaded Anne that it is better to be a ruling queen in power for life, than a mistress beloved for months and then forgotten.
I smile at Mary Shelton so she knows this is well understood by me: she is the new herald of the king’s supremacy, and there will be no milk in her sheets or pinching. I look at her bright, flushed face and think it a shame that all this liveliness and prettiness should be devoted to a man who will use her only to boast of his virility.
‘Do I have to learn the steps?’ I ask Anne.
She nods. ‘They saved a place for you. Edward Seymour’s your partner.’
‘Who is George’s partner?’ I ask. My voice sounds strained, I assume he has taken a mistress.
‘He sits out with me.’
Margery Horsman points out where I am to stand, and I take my place in the rows of young women and look around. Nan Zouche and Jane Ashley smile at me; Margaret Shelton gives me the confident wave of a kinswoman; Lady Anne Cobham curtseys; Jane Seymour, who was a maid with me in Queen Katherine’s rooms, is too shy to greet me – Lord knows why Anne has brought her back to court. Anne Parr, my old schoolfellow, gives me a wry smile; her younger sister Kateryn is beside her, visiting court. Elizabeth Somerset introduces a young kinswoman. The Queen of England needs a defensive camp of women around her, whatever name she goes by: Demeter or Ceres, Katherine or Anne.
