1536
IHIDE IN THEBoleyn family rooms instead of my own, avoiding any snares on my usual pathways like a hare with a chewed-off foot. George’s mother and father left for Hever straight after the sentencing, before the deaths. Their horses were standing by, waiting for Anne’s father to give his verdict with his fellow-judges. He said ‘guilty’ of his own son. He said ‘guilty’ of his own daughter,and he and his wife left for Kent as soon as his wife’s brother, our uncle, put on the black hat, turned the blade of the axe outwards, and declared the sentence of death.
Their servants were dismissed but for one groom of the chamber to hand over the keys to the new tenants of their rooms at Greenwich Palace. They did not forbid me to hide in these empty rooms, my last home at court. But nor did they offer me refuge. They did not speak to me at all.
In their absence, in the absence of incomers, the servant and I camp out like beggars in a barn. He sleeps on the floor in the men servants’ room; I have a truckle bed, little and low amid the dust of old strewing herbs in the grand Boleyn bedroom, and a blanket that they left behind in a forgotten box. I am not cold. I have a stool at the fireside and a few boxes of my own things, saved from George’s debtors: some clothes, a pair of shoes, my books – I saved my books, although I can’t be bothered to read any of them.
I dine in the great hall with the few remaining courtiers, though I am never hungry. Every day, I walk to the ladies’ table half-expecting a groom of the household to turn me away, but no one objects when I take a lowly place with the other single and widowed ladies of court. They too, have nowhere else to go and are neither dismissed from court nor invited elsewhere. No one speaks to me; this is not hurtful as I have nothing to say to anyone.
We bow our heads in silence for Grace, and we eat in an unbroken silence, like Benedictine nuns. After dinner, I walk down to the river to watch the water flowing out to sea, as if it, too, is leaving without a word. I walk back through the weary gardens, the leaves crumpled by the summer heat. The sun beats down on the winding paths of the privy gardens, the white stone paths too bright to bear; but I am not hot.
The king stays away from court, the remaining noblemen go to their estates in the country, and the servants clean their rooms. I have to pick my way over wet floors in the galleries, and there are buckets and brooms in the open doorways to the great rooms.
The weather turns suddenly cold and rainy, and the Boleyn groom and I draw coals and candles from the royal household stores and light the fire in the Boleyn hall in the evenings. I am not cold.
I am neither cold nor hot. I think of God saying:For thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, neither hot, I shall begin to cast thee out of my mouth. Thou knowest not, that thou art a wretch, and wretchful.
I thinkRevelation 3; but I don’t pray. I think if I am a wretch and wretchful, then I have nothing to pray for. The souls of George and Anne, and the souls of our friends, beheaded with them, will go to hell, I suppose, for their terrible sins. Unless they were all innocent and go, headless, to purgatory. It will depend on whetherparticularjudgement is under the control of the Spanish party or of the Boleyns? Whether the old faith is right and they are waiting in purgatory for masses to be sung to release them to heaven; or they have gone at once to bliss or hell as we reformers believe.
I suppose I shall have to go to the living purgatory of my home at Morley Hallingbury. I have nowhere else to go. There is no place for me at the palaces and castles of my bridal days and I cannot afford to run Beaulieu Palace, or pay the servants. I have been dropped again; but this time, no one will summon me back to court, and my father will never forgive my disgrace. I suppose I shall live and die there and be buried in the parish church under a modest stone, fitting for a widowed daughter of no importance.
I cannot bring myself to write to my father to ask him to send his grooms to fetch me home. My paper and my pens are in one of the boxes with my books. I cannot be troubled to look for them. For the first time in my life, I have no interest in study.
Days pass. A week passes. Then I come back to the rooms after dinner, and the groom of the chamber is waiting for me. ‘You’ve got a letter,’ he says. ‘Special seal.’
I take it without interest, and I stare blankly at him until he ducks his head in a bow and leaves. I take my seat on the stoolby the mean fire and look at the letter – the first I have had, since George’s final note.
I feel a stir of interest like the rising of temptation. This is no ordinary letter – it is letterlocked: the tongue of the page intersects itself and is pasted down. Who would writing something to me, which is to be read only by me?
I look at the wax seal. It is Thomas Cromwell’s crest.
I have obtained for you the place of chief lady-in-waiting to Queen Jane. You can draw gowns, etc., from the royal wardrobe, and your fee from the treasury. Other ladies will come to Greenwich Palace shortly. Please ensure they are housed in the queen’s rooms, as they should be, and that the rooms are ready for Her Grace, who will come within the week.
I look at the stroke of theTand the half-moon of theC, and I think: good God, I am not going to die wretchful; I am not a wretch and wretchful. I am going to survive this. Good God, my life is going to begin again.
Thomas Cromwell has not packed his bags and gone to his country house while the king dallies with a new bride, like the old lords. Thomas Cromwell does not hide from failure like the Howards and the Boleyns. Thomas Cromwell continues, as always. Probably, he never stopped, not even for the trials. The dark chamber is still taking in the king’s letters – probably everyone’s letters – reading them, resealing them, and sending them out again, apparently untouched. The Cromwell men are still in post: sheriffs, mayor, justices of the peace, middling men, and wealthy merchants. The Cromwell machine of government rumbles on, unstoppable. The Cromwell Court of Augmentations takes in and redistributes the wealth of the monasteries; the Cromwell inspectors travel the land to find corruption in the rich monasteries. Amazingly, in all this work, Cromwell still thinks of me.
He is not thinking of me – I, myself, Jane Boleyn, pauper widow. He is thinking of how he can use me. He needs a spy in the court of the new queen; he needs someone to watch the Seymours, someone to watch the Spanish party, someone to predict the king’s next idea, someone to create the king’s new idea and slide it into his wishes. I will be more use than ever before, now that the Spanish party think I am their friend; warning them of the danger to Lady Mary. They think I gave evidence against Anne and brought her and George to their deaths. Thomas Cromwell has written a part for me in this masque, as the traitor-sister to a queen, whose star was falling, and as a friend to the rising star, the new queen, and the Spanish party that has put her in place.
Jane Seymour will be so glad to have a lady-in-waiting familiar with the private rituals of the queen that she will overlook thefroideurnatural between a man’s new wife and his former sister-in-law. Her brothers will disregard me, thinking all women as dull as their sister. The king himself sees me more as palace furniture than Boleyn – I have been here for nearly twenty years, single and married and widowed.
I shout for the groom. He is so startled by my raised voice after days of silence in the empty rooms that I hear him scramble up and fling open his door. He comes at the run.
‘What is it? What did the letter say?’
‘You can move my boxes,’ I tell him.
‘Where to?’ His eyes are wide and frightened. ‘The Tower? You too?’
‘To the queen’s rooms,’ I say triumphantly. ‘To the rooms for the chief lady-in-waiting.’
IT TAKES ONLYa few days and everything is restored. Everything is as it was for the last queen – and for the one before that. The maids-of-honour return; I greet the familiar ladies-in-waiting. Even the king’s friends, coming and going withcompliments and invitations, are the same. Why should there be any difference? It’s only been two short weeks between the death of one queen and the arrival of another.
Jane Seymour sails downriver from Chelsea in Anne’s barge, wearing Anne’s clothes, and sleeps in Anne’s bed, in Anne’s sheets. The monograms on the sheets and towels and linen are picked out, and theAunder the coronet is replaced with a newly embroideredJ. In the evenings, we light the candles that Anne ordered; they have not even burned down. Everything is the same; only the queen is different, and the newly joyous mood of the court.
We are merrier than in April, happier than we were at May Day, at the May Day joust that nobody ever mentions. The king is in a most boisterous mood: pleased with everything. The same entertainments and games planned by the same master of revels now bring him delight, as if before he was pretending happiness – as false as any courtier. He comes into the queen’s rooms with his face wreathed in smiles, his limp hardly noticeable. His fool, Will Somer, gambols like a lamb at the heels of a well-fed lion, as if none of us need fear anything.
There are a few faces missing: the lute music is bright, but it is not the ripple that only Mark Smeaton could play. The king’s friends still come running with messages that the king is on his way and we had better be looking our best, but we miss Francis Weston’s boyish laughter. There is no Henry Norris, lounging through the door, flirting with Margaret Shelton and winking at me; no William Brereton frowning at Elizabeth Somerset, and she is still away from court in the confinement that she and Anne thought they would share. Now, Anne’s baby is long gone and forgotten, and Anne is dead, too.
