Maids of Honour to the newly crowned Anne Boleyn. I may have grown
to dislike her but there was still that early tie between us. I prayed that her
death had been the first one rumoured, a natural one of gentle sleep and
drifting to her end, her mind made easy at having given birth to the King's
heir.
I feared that it might have been the second. That the
King had, indeed, valued his dynasty more than his wife and had ordered that
the child be ripped from her belly. That the gash had never healed and the life
had been bled from her as if she were a traitor to the Crown, tortured and left
to die a lingering and agonising death. Yet, all the while she had continued to
send her love to her murderer, rejoicing in her self-sacrifice.
I pressed my forehead to the window to cool it.
Rumours spread faster than the plague. Any of them might be true, none of them
might. Child birth was a chancy thing at the best of times. It was even more so
when the mother was nearing thirty.
I stared out of the window. Whichever of the rumours
was true there was one thing for certain now. Henry was a widower once again.
Three Queens gone. All lying in their cold, cold graves.
A chill hand seemed to clutch my stomach at the
thought.
The Queen's funeral took place on 12th November, the
first day after Martinmas. It was an appropriate day for a funeral, the first
of St Martin's Fast. Not that anyone took much notice of this particular Fast
in modern times. Certainly not the King.
Or at least not usually. This year, the period of
mourning and of Fast coincided most happily and the King commanded that all of
his Palaces should become places of sackcloth and ashes for the forty days of
the Fast. It seemed that the King had been traumatised by the death of his wife
and was genuinely grieving for her.
This surprised almost everyone at court. He had cast
off his two previous wives without a backward glance. His marriage to Anne
Boleyn had taken place before his marriage to Catherine had even been annulled.
He got engaged to Seymour the day after Anne's execution and walked his new
bride down the aisle ten days later. He never allowed a sense of propriety to
hinder his hunger to get all that he wanted.
This time it appeared that things might be different.
I had last been with the King two hours before the
death of Jane Seymour. Naturally, upon hearing the news of her imminent
departure he had been quick to order me back to my own bedroom.
I assumed there would be a period where he played the
grieving husband but fully expected that after a few days he would summon me
back to his chamber. No summons came.
For fourteen days I waited for the call, for the
appearance of Page Humphrey with all his cheek and lack of respect. I waited in
vain.
At last I began to abandon the idea of ever seeing the
King again. I came to realise that I had been merely a casual relationship;
indeed a very casual one. In his grief he had cast me aside. The death of Jane
Seymour had put paid to my advancement more than if she'd remained alive and
discovered our liaison.
Or maybe I was fooling myself in this. If she had
stayed alive things may have played out very differently.
Jane Seymour had been as shrewd and opportunistic as
she was ambitious. Witness her part in the downfall of Anne Boleyn to realise
this. She was adept at cloaking her desires behind a facade of demure primness.
She was, I believed, even more devious than Thomas Cromwell, implausible though
that notion may be.
If she had survived and discovered my relationship
with the King she would have manoeuvred as silkily and subtle as a swan and
then turned on me with a ferocity which knew no bounds. I would have fallen,
like Anne Boleyn, to her lust for power. And my head, like Anne's, may well
have fallen from my shoulders and rolled, pitter-patter, across the timbers of
the stage.
I shivered at the notion and reached up for the little
necklace which the King had given me. It was hardly more than a trinket,
to dislike her but there was still that early tie between us. I prayed that her
death had been the first one rumoured, a natural one of gentle sleep and
drifting to her end, her mind made easy at having given birth to the King's
heir.
I feared that it might have been the second. That the
King had, indeed, valued his dynasty more than his wife and had ordered that
the child be ripped from her belly. That the gash had never healed and the life
had been bled from her as if she were a traitor to the Crown, tortured and left
to die a lingering and agonising death. Yet, all the while she had continued to
send her love to her murderer, rejoicing in her self-sacrifice.
I pressed my forehead to the window to cool it.
Rumours spread faster than the plague. Any of them might be true, none of them
might. Child birth was a chancy thing at the best of times. It was even more so
when the mother was nearing thirty.
I stared out of the window. Whichever of the rumours
was true there was one thing for certain now. Henry was a widower once again.
Three Queens gone. All lying in their cold, cold graves.
A chill hand seemed to clutch my stomach at the
thought.
The Queen's funeral took place on 12th November, the
first day after Martinmas. It was an appropriate day for a funeral, the first
of St Martin's Fast. Not that anyone took much notice of this particular Fast
in modern times. Certainly not the King.
Or at least not usually. This year, the period of
mourning and of Fast coincided most happily and the King commanded that all of
his Palaces should become places of sackcloth and ashes for the forty days of
the Fast. It seemed that the King had been traumatised by the death of his wife
and was genuinely grieving for her.
This surprised almost everyone at court. He had cast
off his two previous wives without a backward glance. His marriage to Anne
Boleyn had taken place before his marriage to Catherine had even been annulled.
He got engaged to Seymour the day after Anne's execution and walked his new
bride down the aisle ten days later. He never allowed a sense of propriety to
hinder his hunger to get all that he wanted.
This time it appeared that things might be different.
I had last been with the King two hours before the
death of Jane Seymour. Naturally, upon hearing the news of her imminent
departure he had been quick to order me back to my own bedroom.
I assumed there would be a period where he played the
grieving husband but fully expected that after a few days he would summon me
back to his chamber. No summons came.
For fourteen days I waited for the call, for the
appearance of Page Humphrey with all his cheek and lack of respect. I waited in
vain.
At last I began to abandon the idea of ever seeing the
King again. I came to realise that I had been merely a casual relationship;
indeed a very casual one. In his grief he had cast me aside. The death of Jane
Seymour had put paid to my advancement more than if she'd remained alive and
discovered our liaison.
Or maybe I was fooling myself in this. If she had
stayed alive things may have played out very differently.
Jane Seymour had been as shrewd and opportunistic as
she was ambitious. Witness her part in the downfall of Anne Boleyn to realise
this. She was adept at cloaking her desires behind a facade of demure primness.
She was, I believed, even more devious than Thomas Cromwell, implausible though
that notion may be.
If she had survived and discovered my relationship
with the King she would have manoeuvred as silkily and subtle as a swan and
then turned on me with a ferocity which knew no bounds. I would have fallen,
like Anne Boleyn, to her lust for power. And my head, like Anne's, may well
have fallen from my shoulders and rolled, pitter-patter, across the timbers of
the stage.
I shivered at the notion and reached up for the little
necklace which the King had given me. It was hardly more than a trinket,
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