No one save one. Jamie was coming to London!
TWELVE
Winter: Year of Our Lord 1547
Greenwich Palace
Whitehall
Baynard’s Castle
Seymour House, Syon House
Chelsea
The king and queen passed the autumn at hunt, comfortable in one another’s affections, though ’twas clear by the king’s panting breath, restless nights, and quick temper that he struggled with unwellness. Though I knew Kate reserved her heart for Thomas, she most clearly enjoyed the king’s companionship and he hers. She spoke softly and blushed at his jests while holding his arm tenderly. I thought back upon His Majesty’s physician’s comment that the king had not offered his other wives the chance of a visit once a warrant of arrest was signed. Her softness was perhaps the reason why.
So it came as a surprise when we were to take our leave from the king’s lovely, though incomplete, palace at Nonsuch, so named because there was no such place like it in the world, to return to London.
Kate was clearly upset that we were packing.
“What is wrong, Kate?” her sister asked.
“We are to go to Greenwich, where the Lady Mary will join me. The Lady Elizabeth and Prince Edward will return to their household. But the king goes to Whitehall!”
“Whitehall?” Lady Herbert inquired. “Afore Christmas? His Majesty always celebrates Christmas at Greenwich. Whitehall is for governance.”
“Edward Seymour has advised the king that they must spend a considerable amount of time, now that all the nobility are in London, reworking His Majesty’s will. To ensure that the prince is well provided for. ’Tis my belief that the prince is already well provided for in the current will, but Seymour has apparently persuaded the king differently.”
Ah. So then I knew why Lady Seymour was not in attendance at the moment. Kate suspected that Seymour was turning the king away from Kate’s influence in the prince’s regency and toward snatching power for himself.
I did not know what to think. Time, though, is a babbler.
Once at Greenwich the queen and the Lady Mary set about planning festivities for the other women and most of the court through the Christmas season and the New Year. The queen gave Edward Seymour a most conspicuous gift, a double portrait of Henry and herself as king and queen.
The king did not allow the Lady Mary nor the queen to visit him, which caused not a little talk. It was the first time that the king had left the queen on a solemn occasion.
As he grew more ill, the king struck harder, clearing the forest of all obstacles so his son might have a straight ride into manhood and kingship. He had Norfolk and his son, the Earl of Surrey, imprisoned for treason. The first thing Norfolk did was cry self-pityingly to the king, telling him that whilst his son was surely a traitor, he, Norfolk, was not.
Norfolk’s son, Surrey, was executed in a matter of days whilst his father moldered in the Tower.
The queen kept busy at sewing and reading, though with material not controversial, as she waited for a summons from the king.
“Your Grace.” Lady Seymour strode triumphantly into the chambers one day and spoke afore being asked to by the queen. “I thought it would bring you some comfort to know that the king has completed the changes to his will, and has entrusted the entire document into the safekeeping of my husband.”
“Thank you, Lady Seymour,” the queen responded coolly. “And now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to sup. I would ask you to stay, but I know you have comfortable quarters of your own and therefore have no need of mine.”
’Twas the first volley in a gowned skirmish.
The king was confined to his bed, and still not having been recalled to his side nor having had her pleading letters returned or acknowledged, the queen retired to Baynard’s Castle to wait. All of us lived as though on the edge of a cliff. The great king was to die, he who had completely dominated and subjugated our realm for as long as most could remember. Would young Prince Edward likewise dominate? I somehow doubted it and feared, as I knew the others did, what lay ahead. The young boy had not the strength yet to hold the reins.
On January 27 an especially dear friend of the queen came to visit her late at night with a small retinue. “My lord husband has spoken with His Majesty,” she said, once inside the warm great hall. “He has brought him ill tidings from the doctors. They have told the king that in their opinion, he is not like to live.”
The next morning came a messenger from Whitehall to Kate. The king, at the end, could not speak. He had Cranmer, and not Gardiner, by his side as he died, at the age of fifty-six. He had been omnipotent in the realm for thirty-eight years. Sir Anthony Browne, Lady Fitzgerald Browne’s husband and a religious conservative, and Edward Seymour, Lady Seymour’s husband, a reformer, went to deliver the news to Prince Edward and the Lady Elizabeth, who still lived together. Power was beginning to settle like stones cast into the Thames. The heaviest got there first.
Kate slumped and began to weep, for His Majesty, for herself, too, I was sure. The fact that the king had kept her from his side at the end likely meant that he had made changes which she would not find pleasing; the king oft distanced himself from those he was about to do some disservice or harm.
I tried to bring her comfort and cheer but, in truth, had little to offer. Kate had lost her greatest danger. But she’d also lost her only protector. ’Twas not for no reason that a group of courtiers is referred to not as a flock, nor as a pride, but as a threat.
On the last day of January Prince Edward was proclaimed king. There was a great procession to the Tower, and once there all persons of high or noble birth and all knights present greeted him and pledged loyalty, fealty, and deference. Kate could not have been a prouder mother, and she carried on about him when any could listen.
Shortly after the new king’s reception, the old king’s will was formally opened, though there had been whispers that Edward Seymour had opened it first, afore the old king even died, so that if he did not agree with the final contents he could vex the king further till he did.
As expected, the king had nominated sixteen council members to guide his son and the realm during his son’s minority; these sixteen were nearly equally divided among the religious factions. No one man was to be lord protector; each was to be an equal and thus preserve Edward’s supremacy.
The queen had ridden to Whitehall and had waited outside of the council room so as to be present when the will was read, but Edward Seymour would not let her in. Instead, he met her in the hall.
“I presented myself to him.” She recounted the situation to us later that evening, at her manor in Chelsea. “I wore my finest gown and jewelry, as is befitting a queen. ‘Why have you come?’ Edward Seymour asked me. ‘I come to hear my lord’s will be read, to hear my rights, and to know what shall happen to my son, Edward,’ I answered.”
She becalmed herself afore continuing. “‘He is not your son,’ my Lord Hertford responded. And I replied that, indeed, Edward had addressed every letter to me as ‘beloved mother’ and signed them as ‘your son.’ ‘He may give you the honorary title,’ Hertford replied, ‘but he is my sister’s son. Not yours. As such, I am in the best position to look after his interests, not you.’ And then he proceeded to tell me that the king had left me as queen dowager, with his deeply held affection, as his entirely beloved wife. He has left me no small amount of plate and I am to retain all of my jewelry, anything else I desire to take, my jointure, and further monies each year that shall allow me to live in a manner befitting a queen. My status, before all, is to remain as queen dowager.”