In The Midst of Madness: Tudor Chronicles Book Two Read online

  ‘Get her whatever she needs, Madam. But no bright colours for either of them. I don’t want anyone taking much notice of them, especially those Seymour rats. Make sure they know to keep their ears and eyes open, and their mouths firmly closed. And for God’s sake, make sure she keeps that hair bound tightly under her hood. Hell’s teeth, if any priest notices that, they will think she’s sent by the devil to tempt mankind!’ And with that he turned on his heel and left the room.

  ***

  Under Jane Rochford’s watchful gaze, the younger maids in waiting blossomed to their tasks. The younger maids waited on the older, more established Ladies who in turn, waited on the Queen. Thus they had the chance to get used to court life and the demands put upon them. They were also almost invisible, which is what Norfolk had hoped. However, even though neither Cat nor Kitty made much of an impression in the Queen’s household, serving as they did the Duchess of Richmond and Lady Margaret Douglas, Lady Rochford found it easier to send Meg to Cromwell or Norfolk with any information she discovered. Meg knew her way round all the palaces, serving Anne as she had, and Jane knew she wouldn’t get lost or distracted in the endless galleries and corridors as Kitty might.

  Meg sometimes felt her slippers knew their own way to Cromwell’s office; she went there so often as Cromwell was working in league with Norfolk all this time, against the detested Seymours. Meg was often required to leave messages for Norfolk at the office, and each time she knocked quietly on the hugely imposing door, the gentle voice of Ralph Sadler bade her enter.

  ‘Mistress Meg,’ his soft voice always containing a smile as he welcomed her.

  ‘Master Sadler, I have a message from Lady Rochford for both my Lord Norfolk and my Lord Cromwell.’ Meg always blushed when she saw Ralph. She was captivated by his clean-shaven good looks; he wasn’t vain or bold in the way he spoke to her, as some other of the men at court were, and he appeared totally unaware of the effect he had upon her.

  Ralph stood up, his black clerk’s robe swirling as he got to his feet. Meg smiled to herself as she saw the ink-stains on Ralph’s robe, where he had wiped his pen before copying important documents for Cromwell. Ralph seemed oblivious to how he appeared. His doublet and breeches were also black, making him look much taller, although even at his average height he still towered over Meg’s small frame. She tilted her head to look up at him as he smiled and went to knock on the inner door before entering. He immediately turned and beckoned her forward, opening the door wider for her to pass through.

  ‘Mistress Barre.’ Cromwell’s soft voice greeted her from behind the desk. Norfolk, seated as usual with a cup of wine in his hand, grunted from the fireplace in her direction. ‘What do you bring us today?’

  ‘An important message, my Lords, from Lady Rochford.’ Meg curtsied as she spoke to Cromwell, her simple blue wool gown pooling on the floor. He didn’t frighten her as he used to, and nowhere nearly as much as Norfolk still did. Cromwell was always unfailingly kind and courteous to her, and it always made her smile inwardly that he addressed her, an unimportant maid, as formally as he did.

  ‘Give me the paper then, girly,’ a growl from Norfolk.

  ‘There is no paper, my Lord. Lady Rochford made me remember the message, as she didn’t want to write it down and it be found,’ Meg curtsied again in Norfolk’s direction, eyes lowered, skirts spread. Only the ribbons on her cap trembled, betraying her trepidation.

  ‘Hell’s teeth, girly! Out with it then! What does Jane want us to know that is so secret it can’t be written down?’ Norfolk’s voice was rising, although whether with irritation or wine Meg couldn’t be sure.

  Cromwell held up his hand to stop Meg’s answer, and moved behind her to pull the hangings over the doors. Meg realised with a start that, although he trusted Ralph and his other clerk Richard implicitly, he couldn’t be sure that no-one else had entered the outer office since Meg had come in. It was well known at Court that secrecy was always paramount in Cromwell’s mind.

  ‘You may continue, Mistress Barre,’ Cromwell nodded his encouragement. Norfolk simply glowered at her.

  ‘The Queen is with child, my Lords. The babe is due in the autumn. The King has yet to be told.’ Meg breathed out, relieved that her message had been delivered exactly as Jane Rochford had instructed.

  ‘Hell’s teeth! May God damn and blast the bloody Seymours and this milk-sop marriage. With all the trouble Anne had getting in pup, I didn’t think Henry was capable any longer!’ shouted Norfolk, hurling the silver cup at the fireplace, wine hissing into the coals. Cromwell merely smiled at a blushing Meg, and escorted her out of the room, making sure he pulled the hanging back across when he was alone with Norfolk. Monseigneur’s loud, angry voice could be heard through the closed door, along with Cromwell’s more conciliatory tones.

  Meg smiled and blushed again at the sight of Ralph, bobbed him a curtsey and left the outer office, hurrying back to the maid’s quarters to tell Lady Rochford of the reaction of Norfolk. He certainly wasn’t happy.

  Chapter 5 - 1537

  y good morrow to you, Mistress Kitty.’ Sir Thomas Seymour cornered Kitty in the palace garden and pressed her fingers to his lips, smiling his winning smile into her wide green eyes.

  ‘Sir Thomas,’ she breathed softly, looking up beguilingly. Tom Seymour began to pull her towards him, when suddenly he heard a shriek behind him, making him drop Kitty’s hand as if it were a hot iron.

  ‘Kitty! Kitty Howard! Come here at once, child!’ Jane Rochford’s high-pitched voice pierced the late summer air as she hastened towards her charge, scandalised at the obviously predatory intent behind Tom Seymour’s seemingly languid stance.

  Childless and now widowed, Jane had inexplicably taken Kitty to her heart, worrying about her more than she worried about any of the other young maids in her charge. Kitty had such an air of vulnerability and lack of guile about her that Meg and Cat also worried about her and went out of their way to protect her.

  ‘Come along, Kitty,’ Jane took hold of Kitty’s hand and pulled her away from Tom Seymour, nodding haughtily to him in dismissal. ‘We are needed inside the palace.’ Kitty smiled regretfully at Tom Seymour, then trotted dutifully by Lady Rochford’s side. Jane and Kitty went along many of the sumptuous galleries and corridors towards the Queen’s presence chamber. Jane hadn’t really needed Kitty with her, but didn’t dare leave her to be preyed upon by men such as Tom Seymour, who was acquiring a notorious reputation with women since his sister had become Queen.

  ‘When we get inside the Queen’s room, you must stand near the wall, and be silent,’ Jane whispered as they hurried along. ‘The King may be there, and Cromwell. They have important business to discuss, with this uprising in the country.’

  Kitty looked blankly at Jane. She had understood ‘be silent’, but little else. In her dark blue velvet dress, with its high collar fastened with a plain silver brooch and her hair bound up into a wired gable hood, she looked like many other of the young maids. Jane hoped that this plain attire and unflattering hood would not draw attention to the pale green eyes and peachy skin. The fact that Kitty was so slight made her look child-like and thus easily ignored. They slipped quietly into the chamber, where Henry’s voice was getting louder and louder.

  ‘They what, Thomas?’ he roared. ‘They deny I’m the Supreme Head of the Church?’ Henry’s face, often flushed these days with an excess of wine, was getting redder and redder as his anger rose.

  ‘They wish to return completely to Rome, Sire, and they want to worship their saints and shrines.’ Cromwell faced the King, unafraid of his anger.

  ‘And their leader?’ Henry bellowed loudly.

  ‘Robert Aske, Sire. He says he is leading a Pilgrimage of Grace.’

  Henry’s face went redder still, and Q
ueen Jane stepped forward and put her hand gently on his arm.

  ‘Sire,’ her low voice barely above a whisper, ‘can you not allow them to worship as they wish?’

  Henry swung round and glowered at her for questioning his supremacy of the Church. Jane’s breath caught in her throat and she stepped back from her husband’s obvious ire.

  ‘Madam, mind your belly! What we require from you is a prince, not an opinion! Thomas, arrest the leaders, try them and then sentence them to death!’ Henry thundered, then he turned and swept from the Queen, leaning his bulky frame heavily on the shoulder of one of his gentlemen, Tom Culpeper. Since the jousting accident with Sir Thomas Wyatt several years previously, he was unable to take much exercise, which neither improved his health or his temper.

  Henry reached the door and glanced curiously in the direction of Jane Rochford and her charge, as another of his gentlemen opened the door for the monarch, then he left the room, closely followed by Cromwell and Ralph Sadler, busily making notes.

  Jane and Kitty rose from their curtseys to see the Queen weeping, surrounded by her ladies trying to comfort her. They persuaded her to go and lie down, in order to spare the unborn child any discomfort from the anger of the King. Jane went to write another note for Meg to deliver to Norfolk. All did not seem well in the ‘milk-sop’ marriage, and Norfolk would want to know all the details.

  ***

  ‘I think I bore him, brother.’ Queen Jane Seymour looked glumly across at her brother Ned, while her other brother Tom helped himself to the wine and Ned’s wife Anne passed her a plate of marzipan comfits. Jane bit down on one and chewed slowly.

  ‘I’m sure you soothe him, Jane. You have a very … soothing persona,’ Ned smiled at his sister encouragingly. Anne looked at her husband, surprise in her face.

  Jane shook her head and chose another comfit. ‘He thinks I’m boring.’ She chewed again. ‘I do try to be interesting. I try and read poetry so we can talk about it. I even…,’ she took a deep breath, ‘I have even read some forbidden books, so we can talk about those,’ another bite and chew, then through a mouthful of marzipan, ‘but Ned, I have to spend so long on my knees asking for forgiveness for reading the forbidden books, I hardly dare discuss them! I have to keep confessing, and my knees are sore.’

  Tom and Anne exchanged incredulous glances behind Jane, and Anne turned away and swallowed a smile. She looked at Jane thoughtfully. She saw Jane’s pale, plain face overpowered by an enormous, unfashionable wired hood, her washed-out, almost lashless blue eyes, and her receding chin topped by a small mouth, busily chewing another comfit. Jane turned her pale gaze on her sister-in-law for some more encouragement and Anne thought she looked like nothing so much as a sheep, placid and chewing and almost brainless. Ned would have to instruct her slowly about managing Henry, thought Anne. Very slowly!

  She swallowed another smile, and was grateful that she had married the clever one of the Seymour brothers. Tom had got the looks and the charm, she thought, both those characteristics missing Jane and Ned completely. But whereas Ned was clever, Tom was as vacuous and self-absorbed as a man could be, with an unsettling streak of recklessness that concerned her sometimes, and Jane’s vacuity was worse. No wonder Henry was bored!

  ‘Do you play any instruments, my Lady?’ asked Anne, trying to keep the laughter from escaping.

  ‘No,’ replied Jane in her slow tones, glumly shaking her head from side to side and choosing another comfit. ‘I learned sewing, not music. I can embroider, stitch, make lace, and my crewel work is extraordinary, everyone says so!’ She brightened and smiled, then her shoulders drooped again as she realised that Henry wouldn’t want to talk about embroidery. She chewed thoughtfully.

  ‘He was so attentive before we were married, Ned. And you told me I was doing a good job with him, and I should let him….,’ she stopped and chewed some more marzipan. ‘And I had to spend ever so long in confession for that. But now I’m with child, he just shrugs off what I say, or even shouts at me for saying it.’ Her pale eyes filled with tears and she bit another comfit and chewed again.

  ‘I’m sure, Jane, that when you have given him a son, his attitude to you will change.’ Ned spoke kindly to his sister and tried to smile sympathetically. She looked at Tom and Anne, and they both nodded at her in agreement.

  ‘Men always change when their wives are with child, Jane. He will be different, after.’ Anne smiled at her sister-in-law and wordlessly passed her the plate. Jane started chewing again slowly, lost in her own thoughts about how different her life would be after her baby was born.

  ***

  Norfolk, not a man noted for his perspicacity, had the decided impression of déjà vu. He was once again in attendance in the outer chamber, speaking to Cromwell about foreign marriages, while the Queen laboured next door to produce a prince. He hoped this Queen would prove more successful than the last.

  Again, the King was getting uproariously drunk in his apartments with Suffolk, and again neither he nor Cromwell had been invited to join him. Instead of George, Sir Thomas and Lady Elizabeth Boleyn waiting in the room with him like last time, he had to endure the company of the snake-like Seymour brothers. He studiously attended to his conversation with Cromwell, while trying to listen to the whispers between Tom Seymour and his elder brother Edward, newly created Earl of Somerset, all the while ignoring the screams coming from the Queen’s chamber.

  “She’s been screaming longer than Anne,” he thought. Indeed, Jane had been screaming for a whole day and night before Norfolk had come into the adjoining chamber, and she was weakening with every breath. Ladies in waiting hurried into and out of the room, looking tired and harassed, and maids rushed past with water and fresh linens, and empty bowls and soiled cloths every few minutes.

  Finally, after a sudden piercing shriek that turned to an agonising groan, the loud cries of a child could be heard. All heads turned towards the door, and Elizabeth, Jane’s widowed sister who had recently married Cromwell’s son Gregory, brought a crying bundle forward.

  ‘A prince, your Lordships,’ she said with a smile, blood on her forehead, smeared up her wrists and on her gown. Norfolk turned to go and inform the King, but he was beaten to the door by Edward Seymour, who said imperiously, ‘I shall inform his Majesty,’ before sweeping past Norfolk towards the King’s apartments.

  Norfolk was incandescent with fury, but Cromwell placed his hand on his sleeve. ‘Not now, my Lord,’ Cromwell whispered. ‘Choose your battle.’

  Loud noises came from the corridor and Henry, staggering with drink and hampered by his ulcerated leg, burst into the room, hurrying into the birthing chamber to see the Queen and his son.

  ‘How now, sweeting,’ he boomed. ‘A prince, eh? A prince, you say? Prince Edward, I say!’ and he kissed the Queen heartily and turned to receive the congratulations of his court. The ladies managed to remove the King and his gentlemen from the lying-in chamber, saying that the Queen needed to be cleaned, then she needed to rest. Henry moved into the outer chamber and told Cromwell to arrange for the prince to be christened four days hence.

  Chapter 6 - 1538

  eg bent her head closer to her mending, so no-one would see if she began to blush all over again at her thoughts. Her mind was whirling with the events that had happened only that morning.

  She had woken at dawn and dressed very quickly, in order not to disturb Cat and Kitty, fast asleep in the large tester bed. Meg had smoothed her black mourning gown and decided to walk in the palace gardens. It was very early in the morning, so she wouldn’t interrupt any of the noble ladies and gentlemen when it was time for their promenades after the dinner hour, and it seemed she had been shut up in the palace for so long since the death of the Queen. She needed some fresh air, and although it was cold at the end of February, t
he sun was out and the air was crisp.

  The water of the river Thames sparkled as it lapped the edge of the garden, and the ducks and swans pecked at the foliage lining the path of the river. Meg breathed deeply, as if she couldn’t quite fill her lungs properly. It had been such a difficult time for the whole court, and she was looking forward to the appearance of spring flowers to brighten the tedious existence they all currently had.

  With no Queen in residence, the ladies had mostly returned to their family homes in the country. However, the Princess Mary was still at court, so Lady Margaret Douglas, who was her cousin, and Lady Mary Fitzroy, Duchess of Richmond were attached to her household, and Lady Rochford was still in charge of training the younger maids serving them. Meg could not go home to Hever quite yet, while Cat and Kitty remained at court.

  The King was drowning his grief in wine, helped by Suffolk, Tom Wyatt, Tom Seymour and some of the younger gentlemen of his court. The baby Prince Edward was well cared for, and seemed to be thriving. He was not old enough to know how his mother had died on the fourth day following his birth, having been put through the ordeal of a state christening when she was so weak after an exceptionally difficult birth. It had seemed that all the attention had been devoted to christening the new prince, while no-one noticed his mother dying of neglect on her cloth-of-gold litter.

  Meg sat on a stone seat at the side of the path down to the landing jetty and watched the traffic on the river, always busy with traders going up to the capital. Suddenly, someone sat beside her, making her jump as she had been so lost in her own thoughts.