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Plain Jane
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Excerpt from
A Novel of Jane Seymour
by
Laurien Gardner
The Phoenix in the Forest
I
II
III
October 1537 Hampton Court Palace
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Jane felt warm. Too warm. She pushed back at the
heavy covers confining her slim body. Her fingers clutched feverishly at furs
and fine spun wool, seeking to free herself from the embrace of the enveloping
softness that was making her burn.
Firm hands — the fingers cool against her skin —
pushed the covers back.
Confined, bound, desperate, Jane tried to turn.
The same hands, respectful, cool and soothing, pushed her back. Another hand
held her own – a large hand, enveloping but soft.
She closed her fingers hard upon it, and the hand
clutched hers feeling cool and moist against her parched skin. There was a
sound, low and crackling, pervading all. Hail? No. Fire. It was the crackle
of the fire.
The heat. Jane was burning. There was a fire.
She would perish. Her mind conjured up images of a great conflagration, of
fire eating walls and roofs and crawling, devouring, unforgiving, towards Jane in
her bed.
“The heat,” she whispered. “Burning.”
“Jane,” a voice said. A familiar voice.
The hand enveloping hers, moist and cool, squeezed
her fingers, and there was a great intake of breath, a ponderous sigh. Jane
knew the sound of that sigh, she knew the voice, but she could not quite
remember.
She fought to open her eyes. It felt as though
twin weights rested on her eyelids, and all her efforts could only gain her a
narrow sliver of light and vision. As if the world had become straightened,
narrowed.
Turning her head slowly, she saw a large woman by
her. Or rather, she saw the ample bosom of a woman rising and falling with
deep breaths. It was covered in a rich red velvet surcoat. From the
neighborhood cooing sounds emerged, the sort of noise a certain type of woman
makes under her breath to calm babies, puppies and invalids.
Jane didn’t know who the woman was or why she was
near her. She turned her head away and saw at the foot of the bed two men in
dark attire, their heads inclined. A faint whisper of Latin issued from them,
soft-sweet in the heavy, closed-in atmosphere of the room.
It wafted in the air, crisp, familiar and formal
like incense at high mass. Rolling her head further upon the pillow, Jane saw
a roaring fire upon a deep, wide fireplace. Too hot, she thought. Far too
hot. She smelled her own sweat tinged with the sharp tang of fever. She tried
say the word but no sound came from her parched lips.
The woman attending her raised her gently on one
arm supporting Jane against her ample bosom, the brocade cool and rough against
Jane’s cheek.
Yet someone understood. A metal cup touched her
lips. Sweet claret flowed upon her tongue and dripped down her throat. Jane
swallowed. Again and again she swallowed with a sense of relief. As her
attendant released her, she fell back, gratefully, upon mounded pillows.
She managed to open her eyes a little further and
allow her curious gaze to fix, past her attendant upon the rich tapestries on
the wall. There were rich furnishings, too. The bed was hung with heavy,
intricately worked curtains that half-obscured the two praying priests.
Where was she and why were they praying? She could
not remember anything at all and her eyes dwelt wonderingly upon the great
carved walnut bedstead above her head, far richer and costlier than any
furniture she had ever had.
Why was she in such surroundings and why was she so
hot?
She felt as though a fire consumed her from the
inside, as though the room were an oven within which they meant to roast her.
The heat made her languid and slow and seemed to make her breathing difficult.
Her wondering gaze took in carvings up near the
ceiling, gilded wood and inlays. A unicorn a rose, and the moto bound to
serve and obey.
Her gaze rested on it, fascinated, slow. It all
felt so far away and strange like the background of an obscure painting.
The hand holding hers squeezed, and she turned to
look at it. It was a huge, powerful hand though covered in a layer of fat. A
massive signet ring shone upon the middle finger.
Jane recognized the ring, and blinked at it in
confusion. It was King Henry’s ring.
The king. It is the king. She tried to
rise. She must get up and prostrate herself before her sovereign.
Trembling, she tried to get up, to fall on her
knees. But the attendant woman held her down, and the king patted her hand
with his free hand. “Jane, Jane,” he said.
He spoke tenderly to her. The king was her
friend.
Jane looked anxiously at the king’s large face, his
eyes fixed on her with peculiar kindness and concern. He squeezed her hand
again. “Jane,” he said. “You must live. And give me many sons.”
Sons? the king was ... her husband?
But it couldn’t be. She’d known since she was nine
that she would never be married. She wasn’t beautiful enough for anyone to
wish to marry her.
This was a dream. A strange dream. She must
waken.
The sights, the sounds, the smell of her own sweat,
the feel of oppressive heat all recede. There are images in her mind and they
overpower all, shining clearer, brighter than anything outside. Her eyes fall
closed.
“The queen, the queen,” a woman’s voice cried. “Someone
help me.”
But Jane did not care. In her mind, she was a
slight girl of nine running down a cool hallway at Wulfhall, her family manor
in Savernake forest.
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The crisp, cool sunlight of autumn fell richly upon
the stone walls of Wulfhall in Wiltshire.
Filtered through the red and gold leaves of
Savernake forest, it lent a gilding patina making the stolid stone building
look like a rough common pebble that has been polished to look like a jewel.
The manor, traditional dwelling of the family that
acted as guardians of the royal forest, bustled with the routine activity of a
rural household. Grooms coming and going, maids tending to cleanliness and
food preparation entered and exited through various doors. At the kitchen door
a dozen hares were hung by their feet, waiting skinning and cleaning.
In the kitchen garden a maid sang an old ballad
while picking through the herb patch.
Three blond children, two boys and a girl stood in
front of the great detached barn at the side of the house.. They were children
of the Seymour family the current owners of Wulfhall and guardians of the
forest.
Edward was twelve, Thomas ten, and Jane nine. The
boys had taken it into their heads to get their horses out for a run and, with
the help of a young stable boy little older than they, were saddling them.
Jane stood a few steps away, looking on.
“If we had the king’s permission,” Thomas said. “As
he gives father twice a year, we could have a great hunt.” Ruddy, bright eyed
and stocky he was fastening his saddle on sloppily, while smiling at the
prospects of an imaginary sport. “We could hunt a deer. I bet I could bring
down a buck with my bow.”
His brother Edward, older and quieter, was also
more careful and exact. He gave Thomas a long, doubtful look. “We’ll ride
through the glades,” said.
“Jane, aren’t you coming?” Thomas asked as if only
then realizing that his sister hadn’t got her own horse and was making no move
to saddle up.
The little girl shifted from foot to foot and edged
away a little. Her threadbare pale green dress left her thin calves and
slippered feet uncovered. “I don’t know if–” she said. “I don’t know if I
rightly may.” A little slip of a child, with a cloud of spun-sugar hair and
skin so pale that it appeared green in certain lights, she trained huge, eager
eyes on her brothers, clearly longing for the sport and the race through the
autumnal fields.
They always had a grand time while Thomas shouted
instructions as though they were all esquires on a royal hunt.
And she could almost feel the cool wind on her
face, the horse beneath her, the excitement of racing out with the boys. The
oldest daughter of the family, born after four sons of which Edward was the
oldest surviving and Thomas the youngest, she had grown up being treated as one
of the boys.
Three years ago she would not have hesitated to
saddle her own horse and go riding with her brothers, with no question to
anyone. But the last three years had brought a change, and the nurse hired to
look after Jane and her sisters had taken it into her head that Jane was
growing wild and must be curbed.
She was a kindly, poor kinswoman, distantly related
enough to have only a tenuous claim on the Seymours, but well brought up enough
to know the rules. She paid great attention to propriety and behavior in those
she pleased herself to call the young ladies.
Not that Jane minded, usually. The nurse, Anne,
taught her embroidery and sewing and Jane enjoyed the fine, demanding work and
was good at it, learning designs quickly and executing them to perfection. But
Anne was all too reluctant to let Jane go running with Edward and Thomas.
And yet... And yet, Jane could almost feel the
horse gathering speed beneath her, she could almost smell the spicy air of
Autumn amid the golden splendor of ripe crops and yellowing leaves.
“You should go ask your nurse, Jane,” Edward said.
“Mayhap she’ll allow you to come with us.”
“Why, only yesterday father said good riding and
hunting were necessary accomplishments of any gentlewoman,” Thomas said. “I’ll
wager he wants you to acquire them right enough, Jane, if he expects you to
marry well.”
His boisterous words and encouraging smile defeated
Jane’s hesitation. She turned on her heel, headed into the house by the door
nearest the stables and ran down the long gallery that led to the family
quarters.
The gallery was deep and narrow. On one side were
portraits of ancestors, going back to the thirteenth century, when the limning
was done in paints that had faded and the figures represented distorted, the
heads out of proportion, so that ancient Seymours and Esturmis looked not quite
human but like those titans and dwarves that ancient stories spoke of.
The Esturmi family had held this manor and the
honor of keepers of the Royal Forest till a Seymour had married the last
Esturmi and, with her hand, taken manor and honor.
Jane had heard all these stories from her older
brothers who’d heard them from her father and every time she went through the
gallery no matter how fast she ran or how little she was thinking of house and
ancestors, she got a sense of how long ago her people had been here and that
the blood that ran in her veins was ancient and respectable.
That day she smiled a little, at the long row of
serious-faced men and, at the occasional stern-faced woman though her mind was
wholly on her nurse, both anxious to reach her and dreading her response to
Jane’s request.
Nurse would be in Jane’s room, or in Elizabeth’s room at this time of the morning. She might very well wonder where Jane was.
She might very well have already looked for the girl to set her at some mending
task, or some other needlework. Or to sit her before her virginals, practicing
the music at which Jane was wretched indeed.
The thought of how Nurse’s lips would purse and how
displeased she would look at Jane’s lateness made Jane stop running and start
walking, haltingly, down the hallway.
The house being made of stone, it was colder inside
than out, the full heat of summer never having penetrated the long gallery.
And the windows that opened on the other side of this hall faced the wall of
the great barn, too close by to allow direct sun in the house. Though glazed
with panes divided by lead into small rectangles, the windows let in a hint of
cold breeze through their imperfect jointures. Jane longed more than ever to
be out, in the sunlight of fall.
She didn’t want to face Nurse, who might be
displeased with Jane over her absence this morning so early. But neither did
she want to go back and admit to Thomas that she lacked the courage to ask.
After all, though the nurse had authority over the girls, she was only a
servant, and Thomas would remind Jane of this in withering tones.
By the time Jane reached the end of the gallery she
was walking slowly and halting often. Just then, from her right, her father’s
voice came, with a hint of stern reproach, “Jane, now.”
Jane stopped and froze. She looked around wildly,
thinking her father must be somewhere behind her and reproaching her. Perhaps
the nurse had already gone to him?
But look as she might, she didn’t see Sir John
anywhere.
“Jane is so plain,” her father’s voice said,
calmly, clearly, in the tone of someone who continues an interrupted
conversation. “I doubt we can get her a marriage. Or at least a creditable
one. Not on any dowry we can command.”
Jane blinked. Her father was referring to her as
too plain to marry? Why? And to whom would they marry her at nine, who would
mind her looks? Looking around again, she realized the voice came from the
barely open door of her mother’s small sitting room where Jane usually went for
her instruction in music.
Shocked by being called plain and by a hint of
unconcealed disdain in her father’s voice, Jane gaped and thought He’s talking
to mother. Mother will no doubt defend me. Mother always says it’s the beauty
of the soul that counts.
“Jane is indeed, plain,” Jane’s mother said, her
voice containing no hint of offense or heated defense of her progeny. “And
yet.” She sighed. “You know plainer than she have got married before.”
Jane’s father made a sound in the back of his
throat, a sound she knew full well from when John Seymour discussed the value
of his ewes wool or the price of lambs with their shepherds and thought the
shepherds were far wrong.
“Aye, plainer have married,” he said. “But not
without a dowry. Not without some enticement to bring the young man to the
altar. Come, come, Margery. Think of your daughter’s face. Those protruding
eyes, those thin lips, the receding chin – no, wife, we should thank the Good
Lord that Elizabeth and Dorothy are not as plain as Jane is. They will get
good marriages, good husbands. But that leaves us still with Jane.”
Jane’s mother sighed. “Well then,” she said. “It
is a good thing that Jane is the oldest of the girls, and of a good, steady
temper, too.”
She paused for a moment and Jane could picture her,
threading her needle in the interval, because Jane had never seen her mother
hold any conversation without her hands being busy at some domestic task of
sewing or embroidery.
“She’ll help me till the others marry and then we’ll
find the money for an offering to a convent and give her to the church. Some
small convents don’t demand too much of an offering. And she can go in and
spend the rest of her life decently, without remaining forever an old maid and
a burden on her brothers as they go on to greater things.”
“Well, and that’s good enough,” John said and
sighed. “But how she should be born so plain when your beauty was reputed all
over the countryside...”
His hint of reproach was ignored by his wife, who
instead said, in a firm voice, as if she were holding back comments about John’s
female ancestors, “Cousin Francis wants to take Thomas with him to court. He
says he could use a boy of such cleverness on his foreign missions.”
“Francis Bryan?” John Seymour asked, in a tone of
great astonishment. “What a great opportunity for Thomas, for Francis is a
friend of the king himself.”
“Yes, but ... perhaps a little bawdy withal. And
Thomas is young.”
John made a sound of dismissal at his wife’s
mention of their kinsman’s less than reputable character. “Every male at court
who is close to the king is reputed bawdy. It means nothing. A little too
much drink, a bit of wenching now and then. It signifies nothing at all.
Though to be sure, Thomas is perhaps still full young...” His voice trailed
off, as if he were thinking.
Jane became aware of herself where she stood in the
hall. Her feet were cold in their thin slippers and a breeze from some open
door somewhere played the hem of her dress around her ankles. A thin dress and
nothing much for the daughter of the manor to run around in, but her parents
had never taken much pains over ensuring that Jane looked her best, and now
Jane thought she understood why.
Her hands clutched at her skirt in distress and her
small teeth clamped on her lower lip. They thought her plain. Too plain to
marry, to plain to display. Plain.
Her logical mind fastened on the list of faults her
father had enumerated. She knew her own face well enough. In her room, she
had a polished silver round she used as a mirror, and though Nurse had always
discouraged her from contemplating herself in it, and Jane’s mother talked of
the demon of vanity hiding within mirrors, Jane had spent long enough in front
of it, while arranging her hair in the morning.
Thin and silk-soft, her hair shed all binds, all
clips, all attempts at controlling it, and the family had too many daughters
and too little money to afford her a skilled maid who could fashion her hair
into something less than frightful. So the task fell to Jane herself and while
seeing to it, she had stared at her own features long enough.
Her chin did recede, and her lips were indeed thin
and her eyes did poke out a little, giving her an impression of perpetual
surprise. She’d seen the way nearby landowners and her parents’ friends would
smile at her sisters and then let their gazes slide over Jane as if she didn’t
exist.
She’d heard – more in jest than in actual planning –
several matches talked of for Elizabeth and even for little Dorothy who was
just learning to walk. But no landowner, no neighbor, no friend had ever joked
about matching their likely lad to Jane.
Because she was plain. And yet her brothers with
much the same features were not regarded as being less worthy. Everyone talked
of how bright they were, and how far they would go in the world.
Jane let go of her skirt and lifted a hand to her
hair, in a desultory gesture. Her parents talked of sending Thomas to court.
And they’d always talked about how bright Edward was. Jane was bright too – or
at least, she had a steady and capable mind. Why should that not count? Why
would it be different for a girl?
And what fault was it of hers if God had made her
plain? Surely all of the work of His hands was pleasing, no matter what form
it took?
Jane shifted a little on the floor and frowned at
the door of her mother’s room, from which the sound of her parents’ voices
still issued. She was no longer attending to their conversation. She was no
longer interested. She’d heard their opinion of her and their plans for her,
and she was surprised and angry.
She did not want to be a nun. She wanted a
family. She wanted a husband who’d look at her with the same love and desire
she saw in her father’s eyes when John Seymour looked at Margery.
“Jane?” Edward’s voice from behind her, hesitant.
She turned to see her father walking down the
hallway towards her.
“Jane, have you asked? Can you ride with us?” he
asked. “Only... Thomas is anxious to leave. He says the ride will be at its
best before the heat of noonday.”
Jane realized she had been standing there long
enough that she’d had time to ask her nurse for permission two or three times
over. She felt the cold trails of tears down her face.
Oh, do not let her have to tell Edward what she had
just heard. Not steady, unimaginative Edward who would tell her that her
parents were right and that she should be sensible about it all.
She covered her face so Edward wouldn’t see her
distress. She wanted neither sympathy nor mockery and, most of all, she did
not want his sense and reason in this matter. There was nothing reasonable
about this. It was a blight come upon her for no cause.
“Jane, what is wrong?” he said.
She could not stand to explain. Her face covered,
she shook her head and ran away from him, down the hallway to her room.
Nurse was not there, the bed was carefully made as
Jane had left it. Jane locked her door and flung herself, face down upon her
woolen blanket.
The tears came then, fast and unstoppable.
It wasn’t just that she was plain, but that her
parents thought so and that they thought her plainness and lack of grace would
prevent her ever being anything in life, save perhaps a nun because the Lord
didn’t care how ill-favored his brides were.
“Jane?” Edward’s hand knocked, lightly on the
door. “Jane, if you don’t come, Thomas and I will go. I can’t hold him back
much longer.”
Jane wanted to reply, but she could not because her
voice would drip with the unsteadiness of tears and shake, brittle with
self-pity. She could not talk without giving away her distress and Edward was
a good person. If he heard her distress he would demand a complete
explanation, or worse, he would tell her parents.
She remained still, quiet. For a while, she was
aware of his presence there, outside the door, and could imagine him, his hand
raised to knock again but hesitating. Presently, she heard him walk away,
headed for his ride through the morning-still glades.
And Jane would be left behind, now as she would be
left behind in life. Always the one left at Wulfhall until she became enough
of an embarrassment that her parents would dispose of her to the cloister.
She cried she didn’t know how long. It seemed to
her that at some time someone tried the door – another of her brothers, or
perhaps Elizabeth or even her nurse. Whoever it was asked no questions and
made no sound beyond trying to open the door and leaving.
After a long time, Jane got up and looked at
herself in the mirror. It was highly polished and gave her back her reflection
with just a slight tinge of ghostly distortion. Her face was just as her
father had described it, save that her eyes were now rather swollen from crying
and her hair, having come lose, made a pale hallo around her unlovely face.
None of which improved her appearance.
How strange it was that, if a woman’s face were her
best weapon in the battle of life, she should have come to it armed with such
paltry and insufficient weapons.
And yet, the intent too-pale blue eyes that looked
back at her from the mirror showed a more acute expression than she was used to
seeing in people she met.
Jane had always been a good girl, quietly following
her brothers’, pacifying their quarrels, pleased enough to join in what they
contrived for their own amusement. She had taken her mother’s and nurses
impositions and done her best at her needlework and her music, though she didn’t
enjoy the latter very much.
Now, her pale eyes showed something like a fire of
rebellion. Her small fists tightened on either side of her body.
Her father called her plain. And said that this
made her fit for nothing but maybe the convent.
Well, let Jane be plain. The Good Lord in his
mercy had given her good and plentiful understanding and that ought to be
enough to make up for her plain face. She looked in the mirror, determined,
intent.
Aye, she’d wager her good mind against any woman’s
prettiness, her understanding against any woman’s wiles.
Looking at the pale blue eyes in the mirror, she
vowed to herself that she would do better than any of her ambitious brothers or
pretty sisters.
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It was Summer. The brilliant, merciless sun
glinted down from a molten-white sky and shone unforgivingly upon field and
glade, upon town and village.
In London the sweating sickness raged. It was a
peculiar malady where the seemingly healthy victim started sweating and felt
faint and was dead within two hours. Women and men, children and adults seemed
to melt in the intemperate sun of July and fell dead wherever they were
standing.
Seventeen year old Jane had heard the stories, most
of them told in great horror by noblemen fleeing the crowded cities in the hope
of thus fleeing death. The sweating sickness was no respecter of persons.
Unlike the plague which took peasants by the dozen in their festering hovels
but left the well-born near untouched, the sweating sickness took nobleman and
peasant alike. It reached its fearful fingers even into the hallowed precinct
of the royal court.
It was said that one of the ladies of Queen
Catherine herself had fallen ill, and that King Henry was terrified of catching
it.
And now it had reached into the Seymour family.
Jane stood outside, just within the shadow of
Wulfhall, staring out at the sun-dappled paths of the forest and she felt like
she would very much like to start walking and never stop.
The day before her youngest siblings, three year
old Anthony and one year old Margery, had caught the sweating sickness.
Jane’s mother had called on all her knowledge of
herbs and Jane had been summoned, too, to minister to them. But cold
compresses and fanning, bleeding and tizannes had all been for nothing and by
nightfall both little Seymours lay dead.
They were now encoffined and resting in the chapel,
to be buried before noontime, for this hot weather would not admit of a long
mourning or a great vigil. Father James and John and Margery Seymour were in
the chapel too, praying for the repose of souls that, surely, had died
unstained.
But Jane had got up from her pew at the back of the
dim chapel and slid away between an Ave and a Pater Noster. She’d escaped the
chapel for the well-lit hall and then from the hall she’d escaped outside, to
the forest, whose trees started just past the great barn.
She felt unable to bear the confined atmosphere,
the faint smell of corruption and death that seemed to her to escape from the
chapel and penetrate the whole house.
And what she could stand least of all were her
parents tear-marked countenances, their open crying for these young children,
not yet much of anything on their own accounts. Perhaps it was that both her
parents projected onto their babies what they wished to see. It was easy
enough to do with young children, who were like wax to the adult molding mind.
Or perhaps it was that Anthony had been a clever,
well-spoken child, already learning to read and knowing a little Latin. And
Margery... Well, young Margery had been a pretty, round-faced babe with her
mother’s expressive dark blue eyes.
Pretty.
The word seemed a reproach to Jane. She knew she
was being unkind, but she couldn’t help but think that if it were her who lay
in that chapel, encoffined, waiting burial, there would be not a tear in her
mother’s eyes. Nor her father’s.
Oh, they’d say the decent things and speak calmly
of a great sorrow and a great loss. But in fact they would feel a burden had
been lifted from them.
Jane looked up at the dark-green leaves on the
trees and the glaring sky beyond. Already her sisters, Elizabeth and Dorothy,
were never home. Always invited here, always going there, gracing various
companies with their presences and doubtless fairly on the way to engaging many
young gentlemen’s hearts.
But Jane was here. No one ever asked her to go
away, and her parents never requested that anyone take her, or show her off, or
display her.
“Jane,” she told herself in a low voice. “Your
life shall be lived out here, at Wulfhall, your days enclosed in the green
cloister of the trees of Savernake forest, at least until your parents find the
money to shut you up in that more permanent cloister of a convent.”
And suddenly her restlessness, her sense of being
confined, was more than she could take. She must walk, or run, or die. She would
go for a walk down a forest path. She’d tell no one.
If she asked her parents... if she told anyone she
was going for a walk, they’d think her impious and unfeeling.
Oh, no, let her parents think her shut up in her
room with her crying, mewled up with her pain, but let her get out of here
before she shouted truly impious things.
She went into her room for her hat, not the coif
and headdress she would decently wear for company but a broad brimmed straw hat
of the sort that had come to Britain when the Roman Empire had occupied the
isles and which, doubtless, would be around for another thousand years more.
She often wore it while tending the garden at the back which had, over time,
become her responsibility, entire.
The hat would protect her fair skin from the
unforgiving sun, but more important, unlike her headdress, it gave no
indication of her being a lady of some quality. Oh, her dress was better than
that of a peasant, but not much better than that of a merchant’s daughter.
After all, new dresses were always needed for
Elizabeth and Dorothy and even for little Margery and Jane had to shift as she
could by mending and refashioning hers. In this case it was a much-worn linen
shift that had once belonged to her mother and that Jane had altered for
herself.
With it on and the hat on her head, she looked like
a woman without much to lose but her virtue. Which was good for the paths of
Savernake forest were not wholly devoid of footpads and normally she would have
asked a servant or two to accompany and protect her.
But she did not intend to go very far and, dressed
as she was, she did not think herself in much danger. As for her virtue, her
plainness must be its shield.
She set forth, quickly. There were, as usual, many
people milling around the manor – servants and shepherds, a pedlar or two come
to show his wear to the kitchen staff, a few accustomed beggars and the farmers
who slept at the manor or the outbuildings during planting season, because the
villages in which they lived were too far a walk to take after their days work.
None of them stopped her, none of them questioned
her. If any recognized her at all in her unassuming attire, they would have
thought that she was on an errand for her mother. Jane had that reputation of
a good, steady daughter, who never stirred but at her parents’ order.
What other reputation would she have? No one looking
at her could imagine her a wanton.
She walked down the first green path. There was in
her mind a destination, a vague idea of where to go.
For years now, her walks had taken her to a place
where the thick hedges formed a little refuge, a slight detour. There, the
edges, which in this part of the country surrounded every path, had grown into
something like a loop, circling upon itself.
This hedge was between the forest and the fields
and beyond it champion ground opened, tilled and fertile.
The circle it formed enclosed enough span of ground
to create a good-sized room. It was carpeted in soft moss, due to a little
rivulet of water that grew on the field-side of the fence, and to the perpetual
semi-darkness of being enclosed by a man-tall hedge.
It could only be entered by a narrow opening which
Jane had found because she was following a small bird.
Her curiosity about the bird had led her to the
perfect hideout which most would imagine a mere thickening of the hedge.
Within it all was cool and green and the only sound
ever heard were birdsong and the running brook. And the air was ever fragrant
from the wild roses, pink and white — perhaps from the garden of some
long-vanished cottage — which grew tangled in the hedges.
Jane had been accustomed to leaving her escort
outside of it and going into the space confined by hedges on her own, and
sitting alone and thinking of nothing much. It was a time when she could
forget herself and the circumstances of her life, a time to just be, like those
ephemeral, fast-withering roses.
Today she wished to go there and spend time thinking
of how to escape her situation.
Well did she remember that day, so many years ago,
when she’d stood before her mirror and promised herself that she would do
better than all her siblings, that her plain face would not stop her achieving
more than any of them. But since then, what had she done? She was seventeen.
Had she been prettier, suitors would have been seeking her for two or three
years now.
Had she been prettier, her mother would already
have sought to place her in some local court, as attendant to some noble lady
who could look after Jane and advance her prospects.
Edward and Thomas, the companions of her childhood,
were long since gone to London in search of their fortune. Edward was
gentleman of the king’s chamber and Thomas an envoy and aide to Sir Francis
Bryan, indispensable — so that gentleman said -- in diplomatic missions
abroad. And her sisters were always going here and there. But Jane, despite
her brave promises and all she’d told herself, had not gone anywhere. She
remained here, circumscribed by her looks and her family’s expectations for
her.
The anger behind her thoughts quickened her steps,
but she could think of no way to escape, nothing to do. While she was yet
growing, she had dreamed that her features would somehow rearrange themselves
with age and that she would wake up one day beautiful, like the caterpillar
who, after long slumber, emerges as a butterfly.
But at seventeen her features were set for life and
she could no longer deceive herself. She kicked a small pebble hard and walked
faster.
She could see, just ahead of her, where the path
climbed slightly and the trees thinned to the right, giving way to fields – a
great expanse of champion ground now planted with green wheat, the stalks
waving the breeze, like the waves of a land-locked sea. There the hedge
between path and forest curved. There. Jane could already smell the heady
scent of the summer roses.
She hastened forward, running a little, because
here the path lost the shading provided by the tall trees and once she got into
her hideout she could sit down and be in cool shade once more.
She ran around the corner of the hedge and into the
narrow opening that led to her sanctuary. And almost kicked a man who reclined
on the moss-covered ground.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said, thinking he was
surely a footpad and that this was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever done,
yet, apologizing to a footpad in this way. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t see– ”
“No, no, it is I who must beg– ” He stood up,
unfolding to a great height. A tall, ungraceful young man or older boy, in the
later stages of adolescence when the full adult height has been achieved but
the body has yet to fill out and acquire the full adult proportions. “I should
never have lain here like this, without cause,” he said.
And Jane realized that if he were a footpad, he was
the best dressed footpad she’d ever seen and provided with the best horse any
footpad she’d ever known. The beast, white and high-legged, with something of
the Spanish grace to it stood a little while away, past the hedge, browsing on
the grass of the nearby field -- just visible from this angle. At least Jane
assumed it was the man’s horse for it was a strange beast to these parts and it
was unsaddled, while a saddle was flung on the ground nearby the young man and
he’d been resting his head upon it.
The man, himself, wore a rich dark velvet doublet
and fine hose and, beneath it, what were undoubtedly, stockings of the finest
silk. There was a pearl in his hat and another in his right ear. In all this
splendor, it must be owned the tall, dark man looked like a sow’s ear that
someone had tried, not very successfully, to make into a silk purse.
He was tall, and that was the best to be said for
him. The praise ended there. His height, unsupported, left uncovered wobbly
knees, prominent knuckles on his great, reddened hands, and a sharp Adam’s
apple on a too-thin neck.
His features were small, eyes and lips and cheeks,
all crowded in the center of his great square face, as though they feared
giving offense. As if to compensate, his nose took up far more space than it
should, protruding and making much of itself and quite appearing to rule over
the rest of the face.
This should have made any other woman or eligible
girl recoil, but it gave Jane an instant liking for him, a sense of belonging.
He was as plain as she.
Not that it mattered much, she told herself, how a
man looked. No. For men the yardstick was wholly different and had to do all with
intelligence, pluck and ambition, all of which she had, but went unheeded.
Still, she smiled at him, tilting her head back and
allowing him an unstinting look at her features such as they were. “You will
pardon me. It is not proper. I should not be out and about on my own, only I
just came from Wulfhall and I– ” She lowered her head, and curtseyed, and
started backing away, making as if to leave.
“I will go now,” she said. “For my father and
mother would be shocked to find me abroad like this, and were it not– ” She
curtseyed again. She could see some feeling or other work itself through his
large face with its small, crowded features. But expressions were hard to read
on a man whose overriding look seemed to be of cringing in distress. “I shall
go.”
“Wait,” he said, when her backing up had almost
taken her out of the clearing. “Wait,” in tone of great urgency.
And then, while she stood there, waiting, he
visibly groped for words. “Wulfhall,” he said, at last. “Are you much
acquainted with the family?”
“I am their eldest daughter, Jane,” she said.
“Oh, Jane,” he said, as if the name were perfectly
original, so original in fact that he must repeat it to fix it in his mind. “I’d
not... I’d not heard, that is...”
She supposed he was about to say he had not heard
of her. Which she judged not. She did not know who he was or where from, but
surely anyone speaking of the Seymours would mention pretty Elizabeth and
lively Dorothy. Not Jane who usually hid at the back of the family group in any
public gathering and had precious little to say for herself.
“I am William Dormer,” he said. “Son of Sir Robert
and Lady Jane Dormer.”
It was Jane’s turn to be surprised, though she
recalled herself enough to make no sound of astonishment at his announcement,
but merely to courtesy again, and lower her head.
The Dormers were by the way of being the
well-regarded and most ancient family of the region. Unlike Jane’s father who’d
never held a title, Sir Robert Dormer was a knight, as had been his ancestors
before him time out of memory. It was said they had come with the Norman
conquest and stormed this region and held it for their seat.
Indeed, if the Seymours were to go to nearby Marlborough for some great religious ceremony, at the church they would be treated as no
more than inconsequential local gentry.
The large pew and the place of honor were reserved
there for the Dormers.
And the Dormers had many children, who were often
heard of around the region, for their intelligence, their acumen, their looks.
“I daresay you’ve never heard of me...” William
said, and, before she could deny it, he laughed, a laughter that might have
sounded foolish did it not resound with such great, echoing bitterness. “My
mother would much rather I had been born the second son, I think. Or the
third, certainly the fourth or the fifth, a boy she could have shut away in
some monastery and forgot about.”
She looked up at him, with sudden understanding and
kinship.
He mistook her look for confusion, she was sure, because
he said, “You see, all my brothers are handsome or clever or good hunters...”
He shrugged. “I can match none of their accomplishments and therefore I must
go through life feeling the full weight of my parents’ regret that I was born
to them and that I am their heir.”
He threw back his head and, for a moment, appeared
if not handsome at least dignified. “So, you see, they sent me to a monastery,
anyway, seeking to moderate my lack of accomplishments or ambition with
learning. Perhaps it worked, but I find myself very out of place in society
now.”
There were many things that Jane could and should
have said to this. The words thronged to her mouth – the correct, proper words
that she’d been trained to say her entire life. That he was not plain, that he
was not without grace, that she would be honored in his acquaintance, that she
was sure his parents prized him.
She opened her mouth and, to her horror, what came
out, in a still, even tone, was the absolute and unvarnished truth. “I am the
plain one in my family,” she said. “And I’m sure that all my relatives wish me
gone.”
She realized with a shock what she had said, and
she looked up at him and met his astonished, shocked expression as she said, “Yesterday
my youngest siblings died, of the sweating sickness, Margery and Anthony, they
were, and likely children, accomplished and bright. I should be mourning them,
except...” She paused a moment and thought that having disgraced herself,
already, before this acquaintance of less than an hour, she might as well
continue and fully destroy his opinion of her. “Except that I think my parents
mourn them as they would not mourn me, that they feel regret over them, because
they were likely to do well in life. They would not had I been the one to die.”
She did not know what she expected from him,
revulsion, shock or a sudden recoiling. What she got instead was a melting, a
softening.
His face softened as if it were wax under the hot
sun and suddenly all the features looked more like they fit together. “I know
exactly what you mean,” he said. And cleared his throat. “I don’t mean that
you are–”
But she shook her head. “There should be no
deception between us,” she said, astonished at her own boldness. “I am plain
and you should not deceive me about it.”
“No,” he said, and inclined his head. “I suppose
not.”
He was quiet a while and she thought surely she’d
finally shocked him, surely he would now make an excuse to go away from this
very improper encounter.
Instead, he inclined his great head, where the
overlarge ears protruded, too noticeable beneath the jeweled hat. “Miss
Seymour, I don’t suppose you’d do me the very great honor of walking with me?”
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Were they lovers? In truth Jane didn’t know.
Oh, if her parents found that she’d been meeting
Robert Dormer, unchaperoned in the depths of the forest, in the quiet of Summer
evenings or in the early dawn coolness of the day when they both were presumed
to be listening to mass with their respective families, Jane would have no
doubt at all they’d accuse her of having a secret lover.
But it wasn’t like that. In the two months they’ve
been meeting and talking, sometimes walking together when fields and paths
looked deserted enough that it was not likely any farmers or servants would see
them, they’d not even touched fingertips. What tenderness there was between
them was like the tenderness between angels, all confined to the mind and not
at all of the body.
The truth was while they were together, she could
forget her plainness and he could gratify his sense of social awkwardness by
knowing she looked kindly upon him, was impressed by his title and grateful of
his attention.
They shielded each other from the feeling that each
one alone was singularly unsuited to their roles in life.
And William was fond of word games and of reading,
and together they discoursed on theology and other matters of great mental
import. It was said that the king was seeking a way of putting aside his
long-suffering wife Catherine and sought to marry a much younger woman who
might give him children.
Without ever having seen any of the participants,
knowing no more of it than she had heard her parents’ discuss late at night
while they sat together and quite forgot her presence, while she plied her
needle near them, Jane felt a great sympathy with the queen whom they said had
once been beautiful but whom time and many childbirths had left worn out and
coarse and unattractive.
William discussed it from the viewpoint of the
theological justification for it, and said that after all the Good Book said
that if a man married his brother’s wife they would be cursed and not have
children.
It seemed to Jane that this overlooked the very
real existence of princess Mary, who was definitely a child of the king, even if
not a son. And then, did not the Good Book also say that a man should take his
dead brother’s wife and raise up a progeny for his brother?
It was hardly the stuff of heady lovemaking, or the
high-minded poetry of courting, but they could discuss all and do battle of
wits between them and in the end part as good friends as when they’d started.
To Jane, it was enough to make her heart beat
faster, to make her feet speed, stealthily away from her seat in the back pew
of the family chapel during the celebration of the early service. She ducked
out of the chapel while everyone – her parents and the servants and other
attendants who had mass with the family – was rising for the gospels, so that
her leaving might not be noticed.
Her desire to sit in the back pew so that no one
would stare at her had long ago been gratified with a smile, by her mother,
less, Jane thought, out of respect for Jane’s modesty than to avoid displaying
Jane to the world.
Jane’s plainness wouldn’t be so hard on the whole
family, Jane believed, if her mother in her youth had not been reputed far and
wide as a famous beauty. But Miss Margery Wentworth – as Jane’s mother had
been – had been talked of all over the shire, her beauty praised in song and
poem. She could not understand much less accept how Jane had been born to
her. And, on her more rational days, Jane understood her mother’s
disappointment.
But she was glad for William, who understood her.
And who talked to her and asked her opinion.
He was practically the only person to do so.
So Jane escaped the chapel and made her way through
now accustomed halls to the side entrance of the home. Since everyone who
mattered was within at chapel and the other servants and field workers already
busy at their early-morning tasks, she rarely crossed paths with anyone and
even when she did no one dared question her.
She ran up the path in the forest, to their
appointed meeting place, much closer to the hall now as William feared that
Jane would be attacked by footpads if she went too far.
Jane had taken some care over her attire of late.
Oh, her clothes were the very same that she’d always gotten from her parents –
worn dresses that her mother set aside or gowns that her sisters, out and about
in the larger households of her mother’s friends, thought too humble or plain
for them.
But now when Jane modified them, cutting away a
worn bit, or pinning up the hem – for of all her family she was the smallest
and slightest – she covered the worn part with a bit of lace or did some embroidery
to disguise where she had pulled up the hem. And she made sure her hair was
properly combed, even if it took her a bit longer in front of the mirror and
tempted the demon of vanity. And she never left home without her coif and
headdress, and that the prettiest she could command.
Oh, she knew she was probably being foolish, as, no
matter how washed, a russet wool sack would not become a velvet gown. But she
felt as though she were at least showing William she was willing to try.
He had changed too. She wasn’t quite sure in
what. His features were still not so much unpleasing as inharmonious and
unremarkable. And his frame was still too thin for his height. But his
shoulders looked more square, and he held himself with more dignity.
Meeting, they smiled at each other nervously, then
veered off the main path and onto one of the side ones, which crossed the
forest solidly between the trees and where they were less likely to run into
any curious passerbyes.
Today he seemed to Jane more silent than normal.
He’d not even made any comment on the weather, which was balmy early September,
with the faintest tinge of crispness in the air, nor the quiet of the forest,
which was great at this time of morning, broken only by birdsong and the
occasional scurry from the undergrowth.
Even his great horse, Samson, pacing sedately
beside him seemed to Jane more reserved and distant than normal.
“The summer is coming to an end,” Jane said, at
last. “And harvest will be upon us soon.”
It sounded, she thought, like some page from a
great book of hours, but the truth was that they often resorted to such
platitudes. And one such non-threatening comment on weather or season was
usually enough to allow William to overcome his shyness and start talking.
Instead he nodded, a slow, ponderous nod, as if she’d
stated some great and momentous truth. And it seemed to Jane as if their
footsteps on the mossy path were loud as the shriek of a nightingale upon a
summer evening. Was he being sent somewhere, perhaps? Away from her? Or was
there some other matter weighing on his mind? Or had he, perhaps, simply tired
of her unstinting but plain company?
“Listen, Miss Seymour... Jane...” he said at
last. He had, for some time been taking the liberty of her first name, as he
should not and as she should not have allowed him. But without being lovers
they had committed themselves to some sort of relationship where it seemed only
fair that their given names should be used, without pretense as she’d first
told him.
She now looked at him, alarmed by his reverting to
her family name and not quite certain what to expect.
“My parents are talking of... marrying me.” He
sighed, a deep, ponderous sigh that expanded his chest beneath its expensive
doublet.
“Marrying you?” Jane asked, without comprehending.
“They speak of betrothing me to one of the
daughters of the Sidneys,” he said, naming another of the great families in the
region as if they’d been no more than beggars at the door. “Mary, they say her
name is. A pretty, lively thing.”
On those words, pretty and lively
his tongue delayed and demurred, as if wishing anything else upon the future
companion of his days but those two characteristics. And, looking at William,
Jane could see how a pretty and lively spouse would either terrify him or
suffocate him, either scaring him into silence and mute conscience of his
inadequacy or conquering him wholly and trailing him behind herself as it was
said that great barbarian queens of old took their captives, tied to their
chariot wheels and dragged behind.
“I don’t suppose,” she said. “That we could talk
to your parents... Marrying your sons with no regard to their attachment is
acknowledged by many to be wrong. I don’t suppose we could tell them that we’d
prefer...”
Here she hesitated because he’d never told her that
he’d prefer to marry her. Nor, indeed, had there ever been any tender word
between them to indicate he loved her or thought of her as the future companion
or his fate. There had been nothing, in fact, between them, but these walks
and talk of politics and religion and sometimes discussion of the old legends
of the region.
He hesitated too, his mouth opening and closing but
no sound issuing, till Jane wondered if he was shocked at her daring or if he
was looking for a way of letting her know that he’d never meant to marry her.
But, instead, William shook his head, making the little hat he wore – red, this
day, and with feathers – bob up and down unsteadily. “You don’t know my
parents,” he said. “You don’t know what they are like. I’d never get out
three words together, much less...”
Jane’s heart sped up and something like a
constriction formed in her throat. He’d never said that he didn’t intend to
marry her, never denied that his affections were attached. That meant that he
wished in fact to marry Jane.
She wanted to laugh or cry or fling the light cloak
she wore up in the air in rejoicing. Plain as she was, she had attached the
son of a Knight and he wished to marry her.
Her mother would be shocked, and likewise her
father. She could well imagine them looking at her, mouth agape, when she
announced her betrothal.
She was so carried away with this thought that for
some moments she did not think that she was not indeed betrothed, that the
gentlemen lacked his parents’ consent and was not likely to obtain it, or not
at least if she counted on William for the negotiations.
Not William with his shyness, his modesty, his fear
of offending.
He was staring down at her in mute appeal, as if
expecting that she would offer to talk to his parents for him. But even in as
odd a courtship as theirs had been, such would, naturally, prove impossible.
As for her own parents, if they were to approach
them first, Jane could well imagine that their incredulity, their low opinion
of Jane’s charms, would never allow them to make a case for their daughter’s
betrothal. It seemed a desperate cause.
But Jane, having labored long to engage the most
eligible man she’d ever met, did not wish to lose him. And having found a
friend who valued her as she was, for her talk, her thought, her earnestness –
and who never made her feel plain or inadequate while she was with him – did
not wish to lose him and return to the lonely and hopeless days before she’d
met him.
Something had to be done.
And then she remembered her mother telling her,
early this morning, that she must get the linen sheets from the press and make
the guest bed in the east guest bedroom for their cousin Sir Francis Bryan.
Sir Francis and Jane’s brother, Thomas, whom Sir
Francis employed, were to come into town that very night.
Sir Francis was, of course, a very great personage
at court, a friend of King Henry himself since their childhood days. And he
was a good humored man, old enough to be Jane’s father and always full of song
and talk and story.
Oh, true, his words were often bawdy and his
stories often caused Jane’s parents to cast her worried looks and imply that
perhaps it was time that Jane retired to her bed. But in all his talk, all his
good humor, Sir Francis had one excellent qualification to be Jane’s advocate
in this: it was that he alone in her parents’ acquaintance, seemed unable to
see how plain Jane was.
Jane had often thought that Sir Francis liked all
women so well that even the plainest of them still engaged his interest. Or
perhaps it was that he heard of Jane from Thomas, who still prized his sister
as the companion of his childhood – he heard of her as lively and a good
huntress, unafraid, and full of energy. And perhaps this served to mask the
awkward reality of Jane’s plain face and unlovely body.
What Jane knew for sure was that the old man was
ever full of gentle jests and bawdy compliments to her person and always joked
about her having a secret lover somewhere. He alone would not be surprised by
William’s existence, nor shocked that William wanted to marry Jane. Which
meant he might very well undertake, in all earnestness, to pursue the
negotiations between the parents. And he had standing enough at court to
silence Jane’s parents in the unlikely even they should raise objections, and
to convince the proud Dormers that Jane had connections worth knowing.
“Be at my house,” she told William. “This evening,
after the supper hour. Come quietly into the garden. Leave your horse without
the walls, and come softly. Wait for me outside the eastern entrance, where I
shall come and get you.”
William looked shocked indeed, a high blush tinging
his fleshy cheeks.
It occurred Jane that it sounded as if she were
arranging for an illicit assignation. She smiled at the thought as she added, “My
cousin, Sir Francis Bryan, the king’s friend, is visiting us. I will arrange
for you to talk with him, as will I, and plead our case. There is some chance
he will intercede for us and our attachment with each of our parents.”
She ran home, to be at the chapel’s entrance when
the mass ended, and to go prepare the guest bedroom for a guest who, of a
sudden, seemed much more important to her than he’d ever been.
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