I, Jane: In The Court of Henry VIII (44 page)

The king was naked a moment later, a burly mass of flesh, muscle, and thick copper coils of chest hair. He arched over her and entered her with an unrestrained grunt, not taking care to be gentle with her. There was something primal between them as he opened the door to forbidden pleasure, thrusting himself over and over forcefully into that most intimate place as he tangled his fingers in her hair. He came down hard on her mouth then and groaned as he moved. She tasted it, her mind reeling with the forbidden carnal sensations she was not supposed to enjoy. Thinking that only added to the building ecstasy as he drove into her small, pliant body, his own suddenly awash in perspiration. His rough, red beard scratched her mouth as he drove his tongue between her lips, mirroring the frantic pulsing movement of his body until, abruptly, she felt him tense, then slacken against her.

Afterward, he lay docile and smiling as he trailed a path from one bare nipple to the other. Only then, when it was over, did thoughts of William creep relentlessly back from the dark corners of her mind past the barrier of finality Jane had so cautiously erected. Almost as if he had known he needed to take possession of her body
in order to win her mind and her heart, Henry had forced this intimacy between them. Any tiny glimmer of hope that William’s pleading might lead the way to a happy ending between them was over now.

William Dormer belonged to Mary Sidney. Jane said it to herself over and over again now. And she was the possession of King Henry VIII, no matter how either of them wished it were different. Perhaps that was why Jane had not fought Henry harder. She had allowed the king to make the final decision she was simply unable to make for herself.

“They are so wonderfully small,” he remarked of her breasts. “Perfect little things.”

“I am glad they please you, my lord,” she said shyly.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, his own smile fading with the possibility. “I fear I did not take care to be gentle…It shall not always be like that, though. You shall grow accustomed to what will happen between us.”

“If it were to be just like that for the rest of my days, I should call myself a blessed wife,” she replied, knowing that saying so would please him.

Henry held up her hand that bore his signet ring. “It is time to replace this with something more official,” he said, and reached down, drawing off the signet ring and replacing it with the huge, sparkling ruby surrounded by diamonds.

“You are my passion and my love. Soon you shall be my bride, Jane. You shall need to begin assembling your own household. I imagine there are many you do not wish to keep on as your own ladies,” he said.

Jane had never considered that, but it was true. There were very few she trusted besides Anne Seymour and Elizabeth Carew.

“I have been giving some thought to calling your sister to court,” Henry announced. “Would that please you?”

Jane had not seen Elizabeth for two years, since she was away at her own estate. The prospect excited her.

“It would please me greatly, sire.”

“Lady Mary Dormer has also been proposed to me,” he went on.

Jane felt herself go very cold. “By whom?”

Jane almost did not want to hear.

Henry thought for a moment. “Cromwell, I believe. Her husband is in his employ, and I have known her father for many years, since he is cousin to my friend Charles Brandon. They are good, trustworthy sorts, although I know the girl’s husband not at all.”

Her mind flew with things she might say. Her heart was reeling from the great blow. Of course Henry did not know William. Perhaps Mary’s father was the unknowing instigator of this, for everyone sought advancement whenever a new change was upon the court.

“May I consider it?” she asked with believable sweetness, unable to imagine a circumstance, however, in which she would ever say yes.

Arrested and hauled away like a common criminal.

That was how it looked to Jane and the stunned crowd of ladies attending the queen two days later at the afternoon tennis match. Anne had put up a great struggle with the royal guards, calling out with a piercing cry for the king, but Henry was nowhere in sight. Even Jane had not seen him since the day before, when he had stormed out of the May Day jousting tournament. After Charles Brandon had whispered something to him privately, the king had left Jane alone in the stands without even an explanation. An hour later, Edward informed her that the king had left Greenwich for London
with only his aide Henry Norris amid a great shouting match between the two men.

The gossip had run rampant in the suddenly somber palace. The flirtatious court musician, Mark Smeaton, had been arrested and taken to the Tower of London. The whispered offense was adultery with the queen.

“It is said he has confessed,” Anne Seymour whispered to her as the tennis game was abruptly ended and the crowd began to disperse amid the fading sound of the queen’s cries.

“That would make the grounds for divorce a bit more simple this time,” Thomas drily observed, not seeming particularly moved by the scene. “The good Lord knows no one would have been able to accuse the last queen of adultery.”

“The only thing left in our way now is that bastard son, Fitzroy,” Edward interjected.

“’Tis enough!” Jane censured her brother and cast a scowl at him.

“I only mean to reassure you, sister. I am mightily pleased for you,” Edward declared in a boastful tone.

Jane began to feel ill. Some things were better left unseen. She could not quite wrap her mind around what she witnessed and heard. Trumping up charges against innocent people would be as horrid as premeditated murder. But nothing seemed so important to her brothers as her becoming queen. Was it so for Henry and his supporters?

“Francis Bryan told me it was not only Smeaton. Norris was always fawning over the queen as well. That is probably why the king has taken him to London. He’ll want to interrogate his old friend himself before letting the ax fall.”

Jane thought back to the flirtatious encounter between Anne
and Henry Norris that afternoon in the queen’s apartments. She only prayed that Henry was not involved in the calculated expedition of his divorce. She could not blame him for wanting to set himself apart from such a ruthless woman, but creating the means out of whole cloth would be an entirely different matter before God.

Mark Smeaton, Henry Norris, and even Anne Boleyn’s own brother, George, Lord Rochford, were imprisoned in the Tower. The moment he returned, Henry made the announcement to Jane with tears in his eyes. Only the poet Thomas Wyatt, initially implicated, had managed to convince the king’s henchmen that the rumors were untrue.

“’Tis one thing to suspect so great a crime in a marriage as adultery, but another thing altogether to see it so broadly confirmed,” he said brokenly, pressing a hand against his forehead as if he were physically pained by the ordeal. “Even with her own…
brother
.”

Jane went to him, colored sunlight spilling in through the wall of stained-glass windows beside them.

“All of them?”

“There is evidence. The testimonies have been given. I have just closeted with Master Cromwell,” he answered against her neck. He drew her hard against his broad chest as if his own life depended on their connection. Jane could feel his tears then, wet and warm on her throat.

“I tried with her, Jane, so help me God, I did.”

“I know,” she said softly. “I have been here to see much of it with my own eyes.”

“So you have,” he said, pulling back to give her a grim, watery smile that faded as quickly as it had come.

Only then did she notice the slim young man lingering behind
him near the door. He was handsome, yet gaunt, as though he had recently been ill. His hair was a slightly darker shade than the king’s, but the limpid color of his green eyes and the turn of his jaw were identical.

“I could not possibly endure this without the two most important people in my life together to give me courage,” Henry said, pivoting back, but with an arm tightly anchored around Jane’s corseted waist. “Harry, bid your father good night with a kiss.” He motioned with his plump, jeweled fingers for the elegantly dressed youth to draw near.

“Sweetheart, I know this is sudden, but I present to you Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, my son. He came here to support me as soon as he heard what was happening,” Henry proudly explained.

Of course. Bess Blount’s son. Jane remembered seeing him here and there over the years, but only on great occasions, when the size of the crowd had always precluded their meeting.

“I hope to be a comfort to you, Father.”

“You always are, my boy.” Henry sniffed and wrapped his other arm around Fitzroy’s slim shoulders, establishing an unlikely triumvirate: the king, the bastard son, and the future queen.

Henry’s tears had dried, and Jane saw the pride that replaced them. She exchanged a little glance of complicity with Fitzroy, seeing in that moment that they both loved and understood the king.

“Family is
everything
,” Henry declared, his voice catching on the last word. As he pulled them both closer, the tears again began to fall, and Jane could almost feel the pain of betrayal that weakened him.

To her mind, Anne Boleyn had only ever brought turmoil and unhappiness, and even Jane was growing anxious to be rid of her. When her trial was over and Henry had exiled her to France, as Jane assumed he would, their lives could truly begin.

“Ah, Harry,” Henry wept, seeming to break down a bit more with each murmured word to his son. “You and your sister Mary have truly been gifted by God to have escaped that woman’s venomous wrath. I am told she would have poisoned you both if she had not been imprisoned, such was her great ambition to see her own daughter on the throne of England to the exclusion of all others.”

“I miss Mary,” Fitzroy admitted.

“As do I. I am afraid she has been unfairly punished with this dark cloud upon my heart for so long, and for that I am to blame.”

Jane wanted to ask then if he should not send for Katherine’s child to bring him the same comfort as Fitzroy, but as the idea flared in her mind she thought better of it. As soon as it was within her power to do so, she would return Mary to court to reunite with her father. But for now, she would try to keep things simple, since she could see how much he needed that. The three of them sat by the fire together for a while before Fitzroy kissed his father, then bowed to bid him good night. As he turned to leave, he looked back at Jane.

“Does she not remind you of my mother?” Fitzroy asked Henry.

“I thought so as well. Jane certainly has her essence. I’ve told her that before,” the king concurred.

“I must like you for that alone.” Henry Fitzroy smiled boyishly at her.

Once he was gone, Henry folded her into his arms again and said, “He does not look well, does he, Jane?”

“That I cannot say, my lord, since he was unknown to me before this evening,” she hedged, knowing that, even so, Henry Fitzroy had nothing of the glow of youth and burgeoning manhood that should have defined a seventeen-year-old young man.

Henry went again to his chair and laid his head against the stiff back, more weakened than she had ever seen him. His eyes were still
clouded with tears. “That boy is the world to me. Nothing can happen to him. Especially not now, when the rest of my world is falling apart.”

She pressed a hand supportively onto his velvet-covered shoulder. “I am sure you worry needlessly.”

“In my world, there is no such thing as needless worry, sweetheart,” he said with a sigh. “Let us to bed, then, where my mind will allow only thoughts of you,” he added, and she saw that he was trying not to be too forceful. “If you wish it, that is.”

“I do wish it,” she replied with the skillfully demure tone that had won her family so much favor.

“I want you to know that I am leaving again by the morrow for London. I must keep a lower profile for a time, repairing to York Place. I will have you conveyed nearby. ’Twould be better, until all of this ugly business is over, if we were not seen together.”

Jane had to say that she agreed, and tried not to feel too dispirited.

Seeing her hesitation, Henry chucked her gently beneath the chin. “I shall take my barge down the river often to see you. You shall not keep me away.”

Jane smiled encouragingly, but still she could not shake the dark feeling that some great ominous cloud was nearing her, too, and no royal barge could outrun it.

Jane slept little that night. Instead, she lay awake watching Henry’s own fitful slumber, wondering what places his dreams were taking him as he thrashed and perspired and called out to the darkness. Her gentle hand on his temple and the hushing maternal sound she made soothed him for a while so that he dozed again. Then she lay back and gazed up at the painted ceiling, the details of which were
lit by the moonlight. Henry was fascinated by astronomy, so the ceiling was intricately painted with stars, planets, and distant galaxies. They had made love again, but not with passion so much as his need, and he had fallen asleep afterward, leaving her in a heightened state of her own awakening.

The next morning, three hours after Sir Francis Weston and William Brereton had followed the others to the Tower, feeding court gossip all the more, Jane received a visit from her arrogant cousin, the Duke of Norfolk. He was accompanied by Thomas Cromwell, and Jane was glad she had her sister-in-law beside her for support.

Jane’s heart skipped a beat as she and Anne dipped into deep curtsies before the two powerful men. Her first thought, upon seeing their sour expressions, was that they had discovered her history with William. In this dark period, plagued with arrests and accusations of adultery, was she next?

Cromwell was in his usual robe of long, crisp black silk, his fat face shiny with perspiration. Norfolk cut an imposing figure in an intricately embroidered doublet, his weathered face full of craggy lines caused by a long history of war, conflict, and political maneuvering.

Anne took her hand and squeezed it, both full of fear.

“A visit is long overdue, my good cousin. I trust you will forgive me,” Norfolk bid her. His seeming sincerity brought her as much surprise as it did confusion. They had never spoken before, and he had never acknowledged her presence.