The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [217]
As we passed farther north, settlements fell away and we rode through longer and longer stretches of forest. The days lengthened, too. Twilight seemed almost as long as the afternoon.
“The farther north, the longer the day,” said Wyatt, who was fascinated by oddities of geography. “At the highest latitudes, as in very northern Scotland and the Orkney and Shetland Isles, there is no night at all in June. Just a sort of purple twilight.”
Wilder and wilder it became. There was so much game that after the first novelty of it, we did not bother to hunt. Besides, the surrounding forest was so dark and extensive it seemed unwise to chase far into it. We were near Robin Hood territory, and now the sheriff of Nottingham’s reluctance to pursue Robin Hood and his merrie men into the fastness of Sherwood made perfect sense. I would have let the outlaw roam, too.
Lincolnshire, which I had once called “one of the most brute and beastly shires of the whole realm,” was the beginning of the territory of traitors. It had taken us forty days to reach it from London, travelling at our slow ceremonial pace, it was so remote. Small wonder Lincolnshiremen considered themselves beyond our grasp, a feudal kingdom of their owoss I said lamely. “I shall await him. In the meantime, the ceremony distinguishing between the traitors and the true subjects must be carried out.” I was not looking forward to this, but rgarent size="3">As I approached the door to her apartments, a dark shape rose from a chair nearby, and glided toward me.
A spirit ... or at first I thought so. I was infected by the wild strangeness of this whole region. For it was a face I had thought never to see again: Jane Boleyn, George Boleyn’s wife. She who had betrayed her own husband and testified against him at that sordid time of Anne’s downfall.
“Why, Jane—” I whispered.
“Your Majesty.” She bowed low. It was truly she.
She stood. A hood of the new fashion framed her face, but otherwise it was the same. An ugly face, with a long, bulbous nose and dark, shining, feral eyes too close on either side.
It seemed that she was guarding the doors. But there were yeomen for that. It must be my own imagination, I remember thinking then.
I tapped on the door, and Jane reached out a hand as if to restrain me. There was no response within; everyone must be dead asleep. Perhaps my Catherine was, as well? I produced the proper key (for we always carried our chamber locks with us to protect us from assassins who might have procured a key to the built-in lock), but Jane stayed my hand.
“The Queen sleeps,” she said. “She asked me to keep watch in the outer chambers, lest she be disturbed.”
“I will not disturb her,” I assured her. “I will sleep on a pallet at her bed-foot, if need be. Her presence will aid me to sleep.”
“Very well.” She nodded stiffly.
The key worked well enough, but the door was barred from the inside as well. I could see the metal rod passing across the door-crack, and a great coffer pressed against the doors. I could not gain entrance without causing a great commotion.
Disappointment flooded me. I had not realized until that moment how much I longed to be with her. I had wanted to tell her how proud I was of her, how my heart was near to bursting as I presented her as my Queen. These recalcitrant northerners had always loved Katherine of Aragon, and remained her partisans. But now there was a new Queen, another Catherine, whose gentle ways and pretty manners had charmed them, a Catherine who bore no taint of Protestantism such as Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, and Anne of Cleves had. She had reconciled me with my wayward subjects, as well as with myself.
“She is afraid of assassins,” Jane, Lady Rochford, explained in a whisper. “These tales of bloody Scots have frightened her.”
Poor, gentle child. I nodded. They were enough to frighten anyone. I understood her concern. “I would not disturb her,” I said. “Let her sleep, sweet Queen.”
The next morning she was in my inner chamber, stammering and embarrassed at her makeshift defences. She