“’Scuse me, ma’am, my name’s Jess’ca,” she squeaked out.
“And what are you doing in Mistress Boleyn’s chambers, Jessica?” I asked.
“Me mum is helping with the cleaning, my lady,” she said. She looked as though she were about to cry. I hadn’t meant to put her on the spot. I suspected she’d had to tag along when Bridget had grown ill at the last minute.
“Would you like a sweet?” I asked, and held the silver tray in her direction. She nodded shyly and took one and then dipped a curtsy. She may have been a servant’s child but she’d been taught manners. I took three more sweets and pressed them into her hand afore she fled.
The next day Anne rushed into my room. “Pack. Quickly. Henry is sending me to Hever. We are leaving the court.”
I stood up, alarmed. “What is it?”
She held my eye for a moment before rushing out of the room. “The Sweat.”
Anne went to her home and I to mine. My sister, Alice, arrived at Allington Court, too, with a few of her younger children in tow, avoiding London, where the Sweat dominated. Thomas, upon his arrival back from Italy, had immediately been appointed as the marshal of Calais. The king had sent him out of arm’s reach, not of the Sweat, but of Anne.
Alice and I sat on the portico and talked. “Father has resigned his position as treasurer of the king’s household,” I said, noting how our roles had reversed. As a lady-in-waiting of long service to Queen Katherine, she had once shared court news with me; now I did with her. She nodded.
“Yes. His mind…. wanders. So ’tis for the best, I believe. And Edmund has taken over the running of the property accounts?”
“Yes. Father has placed all family business in his hands now.” “Mayhap we should help find him a bride,” Alice suggested, though her dour look revealed her doubts. “I shall endeavor to think upon it.”
“I wish you success with that, sister,” was all I said. I looked out at the grassy field between Allington and the river and tried to keep my face pleasant and impassive. “What do you hear from John?”
Alice’s face broke into a broad grin. “He’s to come back to London. Anne’s ‘friend’ Cardinal Wolsey offered him a scholar’s position at his new cardinal’s college, at Oxford. Wolsey offered the same position to John’s friend Matthew Parker, who is a friend of the Boleyns. A position was also offered to Will Ogilvy.”
If John took a joint position with Will, in London, I was like as not to see him more often.
“Did John accept the cardinal’s offer?”
Alice shook her head. “All three declined. The cardinal is set in the old ways, and John, Matthew, and Will are stoutly convinced that reform is necessary, mayhap even certain. What that reform should look like is something no one can yet agree upon. Most, myself included, believe it should include Holy Writ in the reader’s own language, English, and a focus on salvation by grace, not by works.”
“Anne told me that the pope had agreed to nearly all of Henry’s requests. Mayhap he is open to the changes needed within Holy Church as well.”
“I wish ’twere so, but I suspect not. There are many pure men in the church, but there are also many impure. The pure men are serving with the heart of Christ. The impure men clench power tightly in their fists. ’Tis not to their advantage to loose the yoke of works. We shall see.”
From the corner of my eye I saw Edithe trying to get my attention. I excused myself from my sister and went to her. It was unusual for Edithe to interrupt me for any reason.
“Forgive the intrusion, my lady,” she began.
“’Tis no intrusion, Edithe. What ails you?”
“My husband, Roger, has sent word. The Sweat has come to Hever Castle. Many of the servants have it and there are few to care for the ill; Anne’s servant Bridget has died. Master George is infected, as is the lady Anne. And I fear for my husband and children.”
Anne. With the Sweat!
“Let us go,” I declared.
“I shall, lady, if you give me leave. But surely not you!”
I suspected Anne needed me now, and, as I had no husband of my own nearby nor children to attend to, I was free to insist.
We rode to Hever within the day and when we arrived we were not greeted at all. Lady Boleyn was ill; Sir Thomas was away. Edithe and I parted ways, she to the servants’ chambers, I to Anne.
She lay in bed, her black eyes deep in their sockets. Her skin looked not golden but yellow.
“How fare you?” I asked, kneeling beside her.
“Better, I think.” Her voice was small.
I helped her from her nightshift, which was soaked and cold, and into one that was dry. I stripped the linens from her bed and replaced them with some from her cupboard nearby.
“Henry sent his second-best physician,” she said. I tried not to frown. I’d heard that he’d taken his first-best physician with him—and the queen—to Waltham Abbey and then from safe house to safe house as he tried to flee the illness. At each stop he was scrupulous in observing religious rituals, having special prayers composed in every church. All London was whispering that the Sweat was visited upon England due to sin, perhaps the king’s. Henry, I am sure, would have agreed, though the sin he had in mind—his impure marriage—was most likely not the one the gossips would finger.
“Of course he did; he cares for you,” I said.
As she recovered her strength she recounted to me how it had all transpired. “On the journey back from court I was hit with the certain, uncanny knowledge that something dreadful had befallen me,” she said. “And then I began to tremble violently. By the time I arrived I could scarce keep my wits about me, I would laugh and cry without cause and my lady mother helped me to bed. I remember seeing fear in the face of my brother. George!” She looked up at me.
“He recovers,” I reassured her, and she sank back into the bed. “As does your mother.”
“I shall too,” she declared imperiously. I relaxed. The Anne I knew and loved had survived.
We remained in Kent for much of the summer, waiting for the illness to sweep through and then out of the realm and allowing Anne to recover her health. I took her for walks and then short rides to get clean air into her. We let the horses walk across the pastures nearby and watched as Edithe’s husband, Roger, directed the field hands to break up tough land more thickly studded with stones than one of Anne’s new bracelets.
“Henry sent jewels and letters declaring his love and they, more than anything, cheered me,” Anne said. “He tells me that Cardinal Campeggio will come anon to declare his marriage invalid and that we may move forth as we planned then. Wolsey reassures him this is so.”
I watched as the field men pushed the oxen, oxen that threw their whole weight to the task under the whip. My sister, Alice, had told me that Henry had also recently asked for a dispensation to marry a woman who was a close relative to—perhaps even a sister to—someone he’d had relations with. His logic confused me. Sometimes dispensations were wrong in his eyes and sometimes required? “So you have hope,” was all I said.
“I do,” she said, turning her face to the sun and sighing at its warmth. “Both for our marriage and for the reforms in the church. Henry is sure to bring things to rights on both counts.”
I hesitated ere speaking, knowing that there were certain topics we chose not to speak of for fear of damaging our friendship. “Henry does not strike me as particularly…. passionate for church reform,” I said. “Unless there is a clear benefit to His Majesty.”
She smiled. “I know. But there is much there that he will champion for, and if other good is done in the process, then that is an even greater profit. I believe God has chosen Henry for this purpose.”
I looked back at the oxen and spoke without thinking. “A good farmer uses the strongest beast to plow up the hardest fields, though that beast may not be the gentlest.”