The Queen's Governess (14 page)

“But to her way of thinking, she is yet ever loyal to him,” George Boleyn’s voice came to us.

“You sound as if you are on her side! And here I have the motto ‘Most happy’ on my badges, and I am miserable! Mis—”

“Keep your voice down.”

“I shall not. Do not gainsay me. I am queen here.”

Thankfully, the argument became more muted. The latch on the door rattled and people turned away. A few began idle chatter; I saw some just roll their eyes as if to say,
The usual Boleyn behavior.
One thing I had learned quickly upon my return to court was that, even though Anne had been queen these last years, the “climber Boleyns” still deeply rankled the nobility. I could not help but wonder if people resented Cromwell for his climb too.

Were things so dreadful between the king and queen here, and we at Hatfield had not heard? Perhaps Catherine, the former queen, was better off in exile from court, but my thoughts went to her dear daughter, Mary, ill herself with anguish and grief.

George Boleyn, Lord Rochford, looking flushed and harried, strode from Anne’s chamber, looking neither right nor left. Either he or she had mussed his hair and pulled his doublet awry. I wondered if they’d even had a tussle. Without a word, even to his wife, he stormed through the room and out. Although the queen had summoned me to await her pleasure, I was tempted to flee also, for I had no stomach for facing Anne’s choler. I would concoct some story of exhaustion or illness from my cold-weather journey yesterday.

I turned to make an excuse to Joan and found myself staring into the handsome, almost pretty face of a man holding a lute. His auburn hair was curled in ringlets, and he was finely garbed.

“Mistress Champernowne,” he said in a mellifluous voice, “Her Grace will see you now.”

“We have not met,” I told him as the chatter in the room picked up again, that sound of buzzing bees from my father’s hives.

“Mark Smeaton, the queen’s lutenist, at your service,” he said, and swept me a fancy bow with a flourish of his willow green tasseled cap.

I glanced at Joan, who nodded. Indeed, what was Anne’s court coming to, I thought, for her to have such a
contretemps
with her brother and for visitors to be summoned by a musician, one who seemed to dance his way back in her door and then close it behind me?

Inside Anne’s spacious bedchamber, the scent of heavy perfume almost staggered me. As I curtsied, I noted silk and satin pillows strewn on the floor rushes as if that is where people sat now instead of on chairs or stools. To my amazement, Mark Smeaton went over to sit cross-legged on the bed and began to strum a slow melody, one I did not know.

“Dear Kat,” Anne called to me, sounding as if she had not a care in the world, “what news of Elizabeth?” She gestured me over to a small parquet-topped table beneath a frost-blighted window while the wind howled outside. Such quicksilver moods, I thought, ones that seemed to match the tenor of tunes Smeaton played, for already he romped through a gay galliard. “Tell me all the latest of my sweetling, even the smallest detail!” the queen insisted as we sat close, with only a corner of the table between us.

I regaled her for nearly a half an hour with minutiae about her poppet. I was heartened to see her face brighten and a smile tilt the tips of her eyes and lips. I was appalled at how she had aged, even since her latest visit to Hatfield in October. Dark half-moons hung under her eyes, her skin was sallow and she looked gaunt. Despite her welcome, she seemed to have a hectic in the blood, for her long fingers never stopped darting here and there. So distressed was she that she forgot to cover her left hand with that strange vestige of a sixth finger. All that time, Smeaton’s skilled fingers danced from tune to tune as Anne listened avidly to my tales of Elizabeth’s antics and more new words and favorite toys.

“Well, I must buck myself up,” she said finally, downing some wine I, too, had been drinking. I never drank to excess anymore after that terrible night of Anne’s coronation, but all my talk made my throat dry. “Our little princess is coming to court for Yule,” Anne said. “I plan to have someone known as ‘the lady’ gone by then, so I shall have a happy time—time to conceive another child, a brother for my sweetling.”

I knew that Anne had suffered a miscarriage several months after Elizabeth was born, and had thought she was pregnant once when she was not. From what she said, I assumed she and the king were still bedding together, at least from time to time. I was perversely amused she referred to Jane Seymour as “the lady,” for people used to call Anne that when I first came to court. As Cromwell had said once, “There is nothing new under the sun, yet knowing King Henry, everything changes.”

Suddenly, leaning close to me across the corner of the table, she seized my wrist and said, “I brought you back to court, not Cromwell. We argued over it, and I told him I would have his head if he keeps trying to naysay me. I trust you and want you to keep a good eye on Mistress Jane Seymour for me. The king has not made a move yet, I think, but is circling her as a hunter does a doe.”

I stared speechless at her as thoughts assailed me—anyone but the Seymours. So, Anne was jealous of the lady. Jane was a danger to her just as she had been to Queen Catherine. For this task she was desperate enough to take me away from her beloved child. How fortune’s wheel had turned. But I sympathized with her hatred and fear of a Seymour. I actually yearned to put my arms around her and commiserate, but I simply nodded and said, “I will do what I can.”

Yuletide came and went,
a happy time for the Tudors; true to her word, the queen was pregnant again, and the king was ecstatic with hope. I was thrilled when Lady Bryan brought Elizabeth to court for the festivities; she remembered me and put out her little arms to be lifted up and held by her Kat. I vow but that child was precocious even then, but not, thank God, as things turned out, old enough to understand or recall what came next in that new year of 1536.

On January 8, word arrived that Catherine of Aragon had died the previous day at Kimbolton Castle. I became sick to my stomach at the celebrations that went on over that. The king, in canary yellow, hardly the hue of white for mourning, carried little Elizabeth about in his arms all day, rejoicing while Anne cavorted in her chambers. Her thoughtless, oft reckless behavior seemed to say that nothing could harm her now. The more the king flattered and flirted with Mistress Seymour, the more Anne flaunted her charms with male members of his court.

“What is good for the gander is good for the goose!” I heard her twist the old saying as she held wild parties in her chambers, often with the king’s own comrades in attendance. With a new woman in favor, though one who, like Anne, was surprisingly clever at holding the king’s avid attentions at bay, he, too, was acting as if he were invincible, with masques and dances, hunts and tournaments. In mid-January, he had an accident riding in the lists at Greenwich; thrown and partly crushed by his horse, he was unconscious for over two hours before slowly recovering. But he had sores on one leg and limped after that.

It wasn’t until January 29 that Catherine of Aragon was buried at Peterborough Abbey, attended by professional mourners—and, we heard later, many of her former English subjects lining the road to show their respect. That was something Anne had never had from her subjects except in a few Protestant pockets and her home shire of Kent.

That was also the very day that the task to which Anne had assigned me ended with a bang. I had attached myself to Mistress Seymour without much trouble, praying Tom would not come back to court. But one day, there he was, striding toward us down the long gallery where we walked in bad weather. He still wore riding boots and a mud-speckled cape that flapped around him, he came so quickly. With a wink at me—I would have liked to punch him in that eye—he hugged his sister hard, even swinging her about, to lift her slippered feet from the floor.

“I have missed you, brother,” Jane told him as he put her down. She brushed at the smudge marks he’d made on her gold brocade gown. “Edward is a bore, and his wife criticizes all I do, but with you home, we’ll have fun now.”

I was close enough to hear their next whispered words. Though I wanted to run away, for my duty to Anne I gritted my teeth and held my ground.

“Is His Grace not fun?” Tom inquired, his mouth so close to her temple that her ear bob bounced. Curse the wretch, but it was as if I could feel that hot breath against my own ear, feel him pressing me down.

“He wants to be,” she whispered back, “but I am true to my vow of chastity.”

“You had better be!” he said before he stepped away from her and turned toward me.
What a hypocrite, the blackguard,
I thought.

“Jane, did Kat Champernowne tell you that she and I are friends from far back, when we both first came to court?”

“No, I did not know,” she said, shaking a scolding finger at me, but smiling. “My dear Kat, you must tell me all about my naughty brother,” she said with a little laugh. “Come on then. Tom, you need to wash off that mud, and I shall see you later.”

Ah, he was so good with the ladies, even his own sister. Since I’d been back at court, I had heard more than one pretty maid ask Jane when he would be back and heave a heartfelt sigh.

Jane took my hand. She was one for that, always patting or touching people she liked. But I felt I was going to throw up all over that gentle little hand. How dare that lickspittle Seymour taunt me when he had dared to attack me and then lie to Cromwell and who knows who else about my throwing myself at him!

“Come, come then, Kat,” Jane cried, and tugged me away from the others. She pulled me into an alcove where, no doubt, I was to be privily interrogated about my relationship with Tom. Perhaps, I thought, he had set this up as a test that I would not give out what he had done to me. But both Jane and I gasped, for there, peeking out from the velvet draperies, stood the king. Was I to be an unwilling chaperone for their planned tryst? But no—Jane looked completely surprised.

“Oh, Your Grace,” she cried, and managed a graceful curtsy before I could even react. It was obvious to me that he had been watching us, perhaps stalking Jane.

“Mistress Champernowne,” he said, kissing Jane’s lips first, lingeringly, and then quickly mine, “how nice to see you back at court. Lady Bryan speaks highly of your services to our Princess Elizabeth.”

“The princess is dear to me and certainly a compliment to Your Majesty.” I was tempted to add,
as is the Princess Mary,
but, even as besotted as he seemed, gazing at Jane and barely listening to me, I dared not.

“You may wait with the others,” he said to me while his eyes, so small in his broad, florid face, glittered possessively over Jane. “And say naught of my presence here.”

I curtsied again and took my leave. No matter what His Majesty said, I would have to tell the queen that the king had been following Jane and requested time alone with her, else someone would inform her first. I was back to pacing down the way with the others when I heard a distinctive tap-tap of the cork-heeled slippers the queen had taken a fancy to lately. Yes, she was striding toward us and would surely come upon the king and Jane in the alcove.

All four of us turned to look at her, but only I knew Jane wasn’t alone within. I almost called out,
Oh, look, ladies, here comes the queen!
as loudly as I could to warn Jane, but it was too late. And then came the blast.

Anne glanced into the alcove and screeched, “Get off his lap, you strumpet! Doxy!” To everyone’s horror, she leaped into the alcove with her fist raised.

A slap resounded. Had she struck the king? But Jane came flying out, her hand to her cheek, her skirts tumbling down from where they must have been lifted, her bodice slightly awry.

“Madam!” the king roared. “Leave off!”

“I’m carrying your prince, and you dare to dally!” Anne shrieked. “No wonder I suffer so, for want of you!”

Curses. Cries. The king’s booming voice. When Jane scurried past us, I hurried after her, hoping she wasn’t running straight for her damned brother Tom.

 

 

 

On the same day
that Catherine of Aragon was interred, Anne, as I heard her own uncle Norfolk pointedly put it, “miscarried of her savior.” The fifteen-week-old fetus was formed enough to show it had been a boy. Anne blamed the king for the shock to her heart and soul. She insisted she had suffered when he was knocked unconscious at the tournament and that it was devastating to her health to see another woman being fondled by the man she loved so much.

And His Majesty’s reaction, so I heard from Madge and Joan: “You have caused the loss of my boy, madam! You will have no more sons from me!”

Lady Joan also told me that His Majesty had declared he had been seduced into wedding Anne by sorcery. After all, she did have the mark of a witch, that sixth finger on her left hand. God’s denying him a son was proof to him that their marriage was null and void.