Chapter 21
Hampton Court, Autumn
IN THE AUTUMN, we all go to Hampton Court for Jane to give birth in the newly renovated queen’s rooms – beautifully designed by Anne, who made the rooms into a glamorous shell to house a dazzling queen.
Jane is overawed by the gold leaf on the wooden carvings, the heraldic beasts, the massive wood shutters, the heavy wood furniture.
She looks like a country cousin on a visit and perches uncomfortably on the edge of her throne.
It is a small court – only a few ladies are admitted. There is plague in London, and the king, always terrified of illness, insists that Jane is locked into the empty palace, as he hides from illness at Esher. He does not even say a proper goodbye in his haste to get away.
I have seen two queens miscarry. All through the birth, which lasts a day and a night, I expect something to go wrong; but Jane labours with the trappings of her old-fashioned faith all around her: the unrolled manuscript which she calls the girdle of the Virgin around her straining belly, the communion wafer in a huge crystal monstrance in her sight, holy water on one side of the cradle, blessed wine on the other, holy oil in a jar, a piece of the true cross on her table, some saints’ bones enclosed in a crystal, half a dozen things – mostly fakes – and the prayers of a hooded priest muttering through the grille of a closed door.
In the early hours of the second morning, she gives birth to a boy.
The messengers in the presence chamber, who kept their horses saddled and ready all night, race to be first with the news to the king, to the lords, to London.
I don’t need to tell my spymaster; his pigeon master frees his fastest bird from one of the towers at Hampton Court. He will have the news before anyone.
There is a huge service of thanksgiving in St Paul’s and in every church in the country, and at once, the machinery of the court grinds into motion.
The builders make the last touches to the royal chapel, and the palace fills up with nobles for the christening.
The king greets the guests but will not attend the royal christening.
He prefers to conform to tradition and stay away than risk being upstaged by a baby.
My father is honoured to walk four-year-old Lady Elizabeth up the aisle of the royal chapel, carrying the vial of oil for anointing her baby half-brother, Edward Seymour, on her other side.
Known Papists, and Anne’s enemies are honoured with prominent roles.
Gertrude Courtenay of the Spanish party carries the precious baby, her husband beside her, Lady Mary is godmother.
The final insult to Anne is that the wife of her jailor at the Tower, Lady Kingston, carries Lady Mary’s train.
The men who gave fatal evidence against Anne – Sir Francis Bryan, Sir Nicholas Carew, and Sir Anthony Browne – are the guardians of the font.
Anne’s judges: my uncle Thomas Howard, and Charles Brandon, and her confessor Archbishop Cranmer, are godfathers.
The king does not see Jane alone, he will not meet her privately, until she has been churched and emerged from her confinement rooms. Loving husbands break these rules, but the king, equally horrified by illness and female mysteries, keeps his distance.
So he does not see Jane’s quiet pride when we bring the baby back to her room and tell her that he has been christened Prince Edward for the saint’s day of his birth, like a good Roman Catholic baby.
Indeed, the king never sees Jane again, as she dies of a fever a little more than a week later.
He is not missed – Jane would have been horrified by a deathbed visit, and how could we have welcomed and flirted with him, when we were distracted by her dying?
Without him, she makes a good death – better than her two predecessors: in comfort, fully shriven, drenched in the oil of extreme unction, revelling in the only moment of triumph of her entire selfless life.