At the King's Pleasure (Secrets of the Tudor Court) (14 page)

“The sisters will receive Lady Anne, but the rest of the party will stay in the guesthouse,” Knyvett said. He had been at Littlemore only two days earlier and, considering himself an expert on the place, assumed a lecturing tone. “No men are allowed among the cloistered nuns.”

“What of my maid?” Anne demanded.

The glance George and Charles exchanged told her that they’d not
previously given a moment’s thought to what would happen to Meriall.

“It is not meet that she remain with you,” Anne pointed out.

Knyvett’s sneer was worthy of his master the duke, but George, after a moment’s hesitation, gave a careless wave of one hand. “Keep her with you, then.”

“That will not be permitted.”

George ignored Knyvett’s protest. His jaw was set in a hard line. Knyvett annoyed him, and that gave Anne a tiny flicker of hope that, if properly appealed to, George might be inclined to soften the conditions of her imprisonment, if only to spite her brother’s man. Then, too, there was one argument she had not yet tried, one that might make him change his mind about leaving her here.

A priest and a nun entered the courtyard from the cloister.

“That is the priory’s chaplain, Sir Richard Hewes,” Knyvett said, “and the prioress, Dame Katherine Wells.”

Anne studied both individuals with interest. Sir Richard was remarkably attractive for a priest, blessed with a tall, straight, long-limbed body and a strong-featured face. Dame Katherine appeared to be very young for a prioress. She was plainly dressed in the black habit of her order and wore no adornment on her person save a single gold cross around her neck, but her eyes were large and wide-spaced and her face was a perfect oval with pale, flawless skin.

George stepped in front of Knyvett, preventing the other man from taking charge. “There are two alterations to the orders you previously received,” he informed the prioress. “Lady Anne will be keeping her maidservant with her. And not one hair on her head is to be touched.”

Dame Katherine looked taken aback by George’s forcefulness, but she inclined her head in agreement. “It is not the custom,” she said in a mild voice, “for locks to be shorn until the final vows are taken.”

“The Duke of Buckingham promised us a generous contribution,” the priest cut in. “Will he change his mind if we follow your orders and not his?”

George managed a withering stare. “I am the one who will pay for
my wife’s keeping. Step aside with me and we will discuss the financial arrangements.”

Left with Dame Katherine, Anne tried to assess the woman who would have charge of her for the foreseeable future. The other woman’s bland expression gave nothing away, nor did she speak.

A few minutes later, the three men rejoined them. George and the chaplain, Sir Richard, looked satisfied. Knyvett did not. “You are to go with Dame Katherine, Anne,” George said. “She will take you to the nuns’ dormitory.”

“I have something to say to you first, my lord. In private.”

Eager to please, Sir Richard offered to show them to the guesthouse.

“Wait here,” George ordered his men. “You, too, Knyvett,” he added when Anne’s cousin started to follow them.

Sir Richard escorted them to the chamber George would occupy that night. The floors and walls appeared to have been freshly scrubbed, but there was a lingering odor of decay about the place. Anne did not think much of the narrow bed and sparse furnishings, either. She wondered if these accommodations would seem luxurious after she saw where she and Meriall were to sleep.

When Sir Richard left them alone together, Anne tried and failed to find the words to tell her husband that she was with child. Something in her rebelled at using her unborn child to win her freedom. George
ought
to want to take her away from here for her own sake. She cleared her throat. “You may want to reconsider your decision to leave me here. I—”

“A reprieve is out of the question!”

Irritated, she answered in kind. “What if I were to ‘plead my belly,’ as the lawyers say? Would that win me a stay of execution?” Bitterness laced her words.

“You had best pray you are not breeding, madam. And if you are, then pray you lose the brat, for given the circumstances that brought you here, I could never be certain who the father was.”

Anne’s pride would not allow him to see how much his harsh words hurt her. She wanted to wail, to abandon every vestige of self-control
and fly at him in a rage, raking his face with her fingernails and calling down curses on his head. Instead she made her voice as cold and emotionless as his had been. She would not humble herself further by begging him to accept that she was innocent.

“How long am I to stay here?” she asked. “Or am I to be incarcerated for life?”

“Until I decide to forgive you.”

“I do not
want
your forgiveness! I want you to
believe
me! If you leave me here, you need not bother to come back, for I will never forgive
you
for doubting my honesty.”

A flicker of doubt crossed his face, as if he realized, for the first time, just how deeply he had wounded her. “Anne, I—”

“Have you changed your mind? Will you take me with you? Take me back to court where I belong?”

“For the nonce, you must stay here.”

“Then I never want to see you again.”

He gave her a long, hard look, then turned his back on her. “So be it,” he muttered as he stalked out, leaving her alone in the guesthouse. She heard him calling for the horses, shouting that they would travel on to Oxford and stay the night at an inn rather than spend one more moment in such proximity to his wayward wife.

Anne almost went after him. She saw her hand stretch out in the direction he had gone, her fingers reaching blindly for her husband, for the father of her unborn child. She snatched it back when she heard the clatter of hooves and knew that George was riding away from Littlemore Priory with his men. Those same fingers curled into a fist.

“I do not deserve to be treated so,” she whispered. “I have done nothing wrong.”

A faint rustle of fabric from the doorway had her straightening, chin thrust out in defiance. The prioress stood just inside the chamber with Meriall behind her. Anne’s tiring maid looked as bereft and miserable as a lost puppy, but when she saw that her mistress was looking in her direction, she managed the ghost of a smile.

“Come,” Dame Katherine said. “It is time to retire to your cell.”

With no choice but to obey, she followed the prioress across the courtyard, where both wardrobe trunk and traveling litter had been abandoned, and into a walled space to the east of the church. A dozen steps brought them into a private garden. On the far side was the main building of the convent.

The nuns’ dormitory was located on an upper floor in the most inaccessible part of the priory, to protect the innocence of the inhabitants. The space was divided into two rows of tiny rooms. Dame Katherine led her into one of them, furnished with a narrow bed and a candlestand and nothing more.

“Where is my maid to sleep?” Anne demanded.

“She will have to make do with a pallet on the floor.”

“And my wardrobe trunk? Where am I to put that?”

“You will have no need for fancy garments. Your husband may have countermanded the duke’s order that your head be shaved, but he said nothing about your clothing. You will wear a novice’s habit while you are here and be treated as a lay sister. You will do your share of the work. If you transgress, you will be punished without regard to the nobility of your birth or the wealth of your family.”

So saying, the prioress left Anne and her maid alone in the tiny room. Its single window, Anne noted, was too small to climb through.

“Find out where they will store my trunk, Meriall,” Anne ordered. “Did you manage to pack anything of value?”

“The supply of coins you kept on hand to wager with at court was confiscated by the duke,” Meriall reported, “along with all your necklaces and brooches and rings. But he left your book of hours, my lady, the one the queen gave you as a wedding gift. And you still have your wedding ring and the jewels that are sewn onto your clothing.”

Pearls, Anne recalled, and semiprecious stones. Perhaps they could be detached and sold. Or used for bribes. As for the book of hours, it was a guide to prayer designed for use by a layman, but it might find favor with the prioress. Anne did not believe that Dame Katherine Wells was quite so pious as she wished to seem. As she’d left Anne’s cell, Anne had heard the distinctive swish of a silk underskirt.

“For the present, we will do nothing,” she said. “I need time to think. To plan.”

She would give George a few days to change his mind about leaving her at Littlemore. Then, if he did not return, she would find her own way out. She would have to learn the lay of the land. She must not do anything in haste. She knew none of the local landowners and therefore could not ask any of them to shelter her. Oxfordshire was foreign territory to her. No doubt that was why Edward had chosen it.

Anne sank down on the rock-hard mattress with a sigh. If only she had access to the properties she’d brought with her into her marriage. With that income, she’d be able to equal, perhaps even surpass, whatever contribution Edward had promised the priest, and top George’s gift to the priory, too. But as matters stood now, she was penniless.

One of the nuns, bright-eyed with curiosity, arrived with the novice’s habit. Anne dutifully donned a plain garment made of undyed wool, although she retained her own soft cambric shift. The tunic was grayish white and scratched her skin. It was worn with a leather belt. Over it went a loose scapular. A veil and wimple completed the costume. Anne also kept her own shoes and stockings rather than slide bare feet into poorly made leather-soled sandals.

“You are better dressed than I am now,” she remarked to her maid.

“You will find a way out of here, madam,” Meriall said loyally.

“So I will, with your help, my friend. Is there paper and ink in my trunk?”

Meriall brightened. “Indeed there is. No one told me not to pack your writing supplies.”

“Then we must think who best to send letters to.”

The ringing of the bell for Compline prevented any further discussion. Anne’s stomach growled as she left her cell. It was after sunset and she had yet to be offered any supper. Perhaps that was to be part of her punishment, she thought—frequent fasting. The queen would approve. A grim expression on her face, she fell into line behind three black-clad Benedictine sisters and followed them down a flight of steep stairs and into the priory’s tiny church.

O
n her first morning at Littlemore Priory, Lady Anne was put to work scrubbing floors. No one spoke to her. She was not surprised. She’d always heard that, in a convent, unnecessary conversation was not only discouraged, but forbidden.

During that first day, she heard the nuns speak only in whispers, save for when they performed the psalms and chants required by the liturgy. Choir service was, it seemed, the principal work of these Benedictine sisters. They spent several hours each day in the rather ramshackle church, singing and praying. The rest of their time appeared to be occupied with tending the small enclosed garden and keeping the priory and its furnishings clean. There were also periods for meditation and study.

The routine of the priory was simple, tedious, and repetitious. When in church, Anne was not permitted to sit in the choir with the nuns. She occupied a balcony that had been erected for residents of the guesthouse. There were none at present, or if there were, they did not attend services. In solitude, she cast a wary eye heavenward. The church gave evidence of having been repaired in a haphazard manner over the course of several centuries. To her normal prayers, she added one to prevent the roof from falling in on them during services.

There were only five nuns in Dame Katherine’s charge. They did not
acknowledge Anne as they filed into the church and took their places, but each time they assembled, Anne noticed that one or two of them sent curious sidelong glances her way.

They broke their fast with bread and ale after Prime. At nine the office of Terce was sung, followed by Sext at twelve. They dined before None at three. Vespers was at six. They supped at sunset, just before Compline, after which everyone retired for the night. And so the cycle began all over again.

Anne’s back ached and her knees were sore. The previous night, when she’d been ordered to bed right after Compline, she’d thought she heard voices from one of the other cells but had decided she was imagining things. It had taken her a long time to fall asleep, and then she had been jerked awake by the bell for Matins at midnight. Lauds had followed at three in the morning and Prime at sunrise.

On her second night at Littlemore Priory, she fell instantly asleep and did not stir between bells. But on the third night, as Anne again lay awake, too tired to sleep, she once again thought she heard voices. She listened harder.

“Is that a lute?” she whispered into the darkness.

“I hear it, my lady,” her maidservant answered. The cell was so small that her pallet was only inches away. “Shall I go and investigate?”

“We will both go.”

Anne slid out of bed, careful not to step on Meriall, and fumbled for the tinderbox to light the single candle she’d been allowed. She slid her arms into the blue velvet sleeves of her night robe—rescued from her trunk along with writing materials, the book of hours, and a gown heavily decorated with expensive baubles—and tied the sash. She did not bother with shoes.

There was no sign of life behind the closed doors nearest her cell, but light spilled out beneath the one at the far end of the row. As Anne approached, she heard muffled laughter. She exchanged a puzzled glance with Meriall, then boldly reached for the latch.

The door swung open to reveal three young women who did not look the least bit like nuns. They were in their night robes and sat
together on the bed, sharing a jug of wine. One of them had a lute in her lap.