Page 57 of Boleyn Traitor
‘Hush, hush,’ he says. ‘No need to bring it to the attention of the queen. Will she notice that Margaret is missing?’
Jane Seymour is so new to her part as queen that she has no idea who should be waiting on her and who is absent.
‘One of the ladies will tell her. I can divert her if I know what Lady Margaret has done?’
He makes a grimace as if he is chewing on a lemon. ‘Margaret’s done nothing – it’s another attack on me, on our house. The Spanish party accuse my half-brother Thom of flirting with Lady Margaret.’
‘Have they told the king?’
‘It’ll blow over,’ he says certainly. ‘Lady Margaret’ll be in disgrace for a few days. I’ll take young Thom home. Keep it quiet.’
I turn back to the stable-yard and smile at the queen and say: ‘No need to wait for Lady Margaret. My uncle says she’s delayed on the king’s business.’
Jane peeps up from the sables in the litter and asks stupidly: ‘But what business can have delayed her? What business does she do?’
Jane is easy to silence. I lean down and I whisper against her jewel-encrustedhood: ‘She’s in trouble for loving young Lord Thom Howard. Didn’t you know?’
Jane goes as white as the curtains of the litter. ‘I don’t know anything!’ she peeps.
I nod. ‘That’s what we’ll all say. We’ll say that we didn’t know anything, and nothing happened anyway.’
She looks sick with fear. ‘My brother...’ she says, looking round for help.
‘Let’s keep this to ourselves, to us ladies,’ I advise. ‘Let’s say that you know nothing. Everyone will believe that, after all!’
‘But, Lady Rochford, I really do know nothing!’
‘I know,’ I say reassuringly. I prompt her to raise her hand, and the muleteers start, and the rest of us follow her litter on horseback, and we leave the Duke of Norfolk on the steps, waving us out of sight as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
THE FIRST NIGHTof the progress we stop at Cobham Hall – showing royal favour to Anne, Lady Cobham. Nobody asks what she did in May that is rewarded by this royal visit in July. She is at the door of the great hall with her husband to welcome the king and Jane. I wonder if Jane remembers that Lady Cobham curtseyed as low to Queen Anne, and kissed her with just as much affection, and if Jane knows that she offered evidence that took Anne to the scaffold? I doubt Jane minds either way. Since she was dancing with Anne’s widower at the very moment that Anne died – why should she balk at her betrayer?
Jane waits politely to hear the speech of welcome from the Cobham herald, but the king hurries into the house, with Lord Cobham scuttling after him to show him his bedroom. His leg will be aching from a long day in the saddle, and he will need to piss and eat sweetmeats.
The next day, the court is ready to go hunting, but the king says his horse is overtired and blames his groom for not keeping it in good heart. The groom bows a contrite head and begs pardon.Will Somer the fool says that he is too tired to go another step and demands that the groom to carry him to his bed and mount him for a gallop in the morning, and the king roars with laughter, his good mood restored. I see Jane look inquiringly from her husband to the fool – either she does not understand the pun of ‘mounting’, or else she has decided – with thenon exemplarof Anne before her – to hang on to her virgin innocence.
We take a rest day, and the day after, the king complains that now his horse is too fresh and ill mannered. We all know from this that he is still tired and probably in pain; but he cheers up as his horse goes steadily down Watling Street, the broad pilgrim road from London to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury. The king waves to groups of pilgrims lining either side of the road as the heralds blast on their trumpets and shout: ‘Make way for the king!’
But something has soured in England this summer, like cream left out in sunshine. People still push back their hoods or pull off their caps as the court passes by; but there are no smiling faces turned towards us. Everyone making a pilgrimage from one religious house to another knows that the convents and monasteries are being inspected. Everyone knows that they are mostly well-run, and devout; but wrongly accused of being corrupt or wasteful or ill disciplined. They are harshly fined for imaginary misdeeds and sometimes even closed down, their treasures taken away, and their great lands given to court favourites.
And then what will happen to the hospital? To the library? To the school? To the church where people have prayed for hundreds of years? Will Saint Thomas Becket’s own shrine be one day taken by the king and its rich treasures sucked into his treasury? Will his sacred body be kidnapped and slung into a storeroom with all the other relics, even though everyone has seen and heard of miracles they have done? An assault on Thomas Becket’s body would be a second martyrdom by a second King Henry – and everyone fears that this Henry may have even worse advisors than the other, for these have killed not one turbulent priest but a bishop of Rochester,Sir Thomas More, another priest, four monks, a queen and even the whore who took her place and half a dozen men accused with her.
The king sets his shoulders square, and his little mouth pouts beneath his moustache. He orders the heralds to push people back – right off the highway, into the ditches and hedges. By the time we get to the Lyon Inn at Sittingbourne, we are all as quiet as Jane, who sits like a little doll behind her curtains of white silk and leans forward to draw them tightly closed when she hears someone shout defiantly: ‘God bless Bishop Fisher!’
We are dismounting in the inn yard, and the gates are closing on the staring crowd outside, when there is a shout from the high road and a band of exhausted riders wearing the livery of Henry Fitzroy rattles in.
Thomas Cromwell, who rides ahead of the court to ensure the king’s reception, is out of the inn to meet them before the lead rider has even dismounted, and he rushes Fitzroy’s herald into the great hall to speak to the king in private.
Jane, climbing slowly from her litter, asks me: ‘Who was that? They were in such a hurry?’ and when I tell her, she says: ‘Oh, what should I do?’
I gesture that she should go forward to stand beside the king, to receive whatever news Fitzroy has sent with such urgency, and I take her gloves and follow behind, feeling that I am pushing an unwilling broodmare into a pen. But she is so slow that Cromwell has already closed the door on the king’s private room.
Jane looks from the panels of the closed door to me, and I whisper: ‘Better wait.’
We stand awkwardly before the door, everyone watching us, and then I hear a great bellow from inside, as if the king has been gored by a bull or stabbed to the heart. I nearly run in I am so sure he has been attacked, and I hear him shout: ‘No! No! No!’
Thomas Seymour barrels his way through the shocked courtiers to get to his sister. ‘You’ve got to go in,’ he says urgently. ‘I think Henry Fitzroy is dead. I think they’ve just told him.’
‘Oh no!’ she says. ‘Oh why? Poor boy! But – oh no, Thomas, I can’t go in there...’
