Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (10 page)

As was the custom, the queen and her ladies pretended not to know who the intruders were. I had no doubt that Catherine had recognized her husband. She’d never have allowed the assault on her dignity otherwise, and she must have realized that her guards would never let strangers into her chamber.

“You give me no choice, sirrah,” she said. “I yield.” Catherine had a deep, throaty voice at odds with her small stature and, in spite of the many years she had been in England, retained the hint of a Castilian lisp. She permitted the king to lift her out of her bed and set her on the rush matting in her bare feet.

One of the Merry Men produced a lute and soon there were several couples dancing. I joined in the merriment with Harry for a partner, and amused myself by trying to identify the other revelers. Even with a visor hiding his face, the king was impossible to mistake. For height and breadth of shoulder, only Ned Neville was his equal, and Ned lacked that shock of bright hair.

Ned was also easy to pick out, but the others were more difficult. They all wore identical coats of Kendall green. I decided that the one who seemed a bit aloof was Harry’s half brother, Sir Edward Guildford, who was older than the rest of us and a bit stodgy. I could tell Charles Brandon by his demeanor, and if Brandon was one of the party, so were Tom Knyvett and Lord Edward Howard.

At first I did not realize that my identity, too, was the object of speculation. Several of the queen’s ladies stared openly at me as I danced. I’d forgotten I was supposed to be pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman.

I tried to change my movements, to make my steps bigger and less graceful, but it was too late. A glance at Queen Catherine
told me that she, too, had recognized me as a female. When King Henry was not looking, she glared at me with venom in her eyes.

My heart sank. The queen had set ideas about what sort of women were permitted to live at court. She disapproved of lewd behavior and clearly thought me a creature of low station and even lower repute. I was grateful the visor concealed my face.

The dancing continued for another hour. I was relieved to be allowed to depart still unmasked but I spent the next few days expecting at any moment to be banished from court. Nothing happened. As far as anyone knew, the queen never asked who had played Maid Marian. She did, however, take a renewed interest in the morals of the court.

A short time after our morning invasion of her chamber, Queen Catherine convinced her husband that the reputation of his innocent young sister—Mary was then not quite fifteen—must be protected. He agreed. Henceforth, he decreed, Mary was to be shielded from the bawdier aspects of court life. He had no intention of restricting the antics of the high-spirited young men who were his boon companions, but it cost him nothing to put the Lady Mary’s household out of bounds. Not just the princess, but all the ladies who served her were, therefore, protected from temptation.

I told myself I should be grateful that we had not been sent away to rusticate at some distant country manor. At least we were still at court and able to attend all the pageants, tournaments, dances, and hunts.

J
UST BEFORE MY
twenty-first birthday, Queen Catherine gave birth to a son. Her first pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage, but now King Henry had an heir, yet another Prince Henry.

As master of revels, Harry Guildford was responsible for producing a pageant to celebrate the christening and, as he often had
during the year and a half of the reign, he asked me for suggestions. The result was a great success, but Harry had another reason to be pleased with himself. He confided his news to me as we were supervising the removal of the pageant wagons afterward.

“The king has approved my betrothal to Meg Bryan, Jane. We are to wed sometime next year.”

“I am happy for you, Harry.” I knew Meg only in passing, but she seemed pleasant enough. She was eighteen, a slender girl of middling height with thick, dark brown hair and widely spaced, deep brown eyes. Her mother was one of the queen’s ladies and her father was the vice-chamberlain of Queen Catherine’s household. Meg and her younger sister, Elizabeth, had no official standing at court, but they had shared their parents’ quarters since the beginning of the reign and attended all the dances and tournaments.

“I feared her father might object. Because of what mine did,” Harry confessed.

“Sir Richard was pardoned,” I reminded him. “Besides, it is how you are regarded at court that matters now and everyone knows that you are one of the king’s oldest and dearest friends.”

“Oldest, mayhap, but no longer his favorite. Charles Brandon has usurped that honor. It is a good thing Brandon has no interest in Meg or he’d have had her instead of me.”

“I should think any father
would
object to that!” Harry’s mother had been right all those years ago. We had not heard the last of Charles Brandon’s irregular matrimonial history. Because of his earlier betrothal to Anne Browne, his marriage to Lady Mortimer had been annulled. After that he’d finally married his longtime mistress, but Anne Browne, poor lady, had died soon after giving birth to Brandon’s daughter.

“Will you befriend Meg, Jane?” Harry asked. “Talk to her about
me while I am gone so she will not be tempted to flirt with any other man?”

I stared at him, perplexed. “Gone? Where are you going?”

He grinned at me. “Did I not tell you? I am to leave for Spain at the end of next month on an embassy to King Ferdinand.”

I had to force myself to smile. “That is a great honor, Harry.” One that would take him away from England for many months.

“Say rather a great challenge. Queen Catherine’s father is a treacherous man. Sometimes he has been England’s friend and other times he has plotted against us. I do not think he can be trusted at all and yet I must treat with him to maintain our alliance.”

“You have had a great deal of practice dealing with difficult monarchs,” I reminded him.

“Indeed I have,” he agreed. “But you have not given me your answer. Will you spend time with Meg while I’m gone? I have already told her that you are one of my closest friends.”

“I will be happy to,” I said, although I had my doubts even then. For some reason the other girls among the children of honor had never taken to me, and I had always felt more comfortable spending my free time with the boys. That preference had not changed over the years. The only female confidante I had ever had was the Lady Mary.

I had every intention of keeping my promise, but only a few days after Harry left for Spain, the infant Prince of Wales suddenly died. The entire court went into mourning, eliminating all entertainments at which I might encounter Meg Bryan by chance. Eventually, I sought her out in her lodgings, but only her sister, Elizabeth, was there.

“Will you tell your sister I would like to speak with her about Harry Guildford?” I asked.

Elizabeth paused between stitches in her needlework to smile sweetly at me. She was fifteen and the beauty of the Bryan family. She had bright, chestnut-colored hair, delicate features, and an air of innocence about her. “Meg does not want to talk to you, especially about Harry.”

“Why not?” I blurted out, too surprised by the young woman’s blunt statement to be any more subtle than she was.

“You are Harry’s…friend.” Her tone insinuated that we were more than that. Elizabeth was not so innocent as she appeared.

“He is like a brother to me.”

Her eyebrows lifted in disbelief.

If Elizabeth thought I was Harry’s mistress, clearly Meg did, too. I was at a loss as to how to convince either of them otherwise. “Harry and I have spent many long hours together,” I said, “planning masques and pageants.”

“Why would he want your help?” Elizabeth asked.

“We are old friends.”

“So you said.” She jabbed her needle into the cloth and I had the uneasy suspicion that she’d have liked to stab me with it. I admired her loyalty to her sister, but it was both frustrating and insulting to be condemned without a hearing.

I never did manage to have a conversation with Meg. In the end I gave up trying.

A
FTER A LONG
sojourn in Spain, Harry came safely home. On the twenty-fifth day of April in the year of our Lord fifteen hundred and twelve, he wed Meg Bryan. The king himself attended the ceremony and so did his sister. Meg would no doubt have preferred that I not be there, but I came as the Lady Mary’s waiting gentlewoman and she could hardly send me away.

Harry’s embassy to Spain resulted in an alliance to invade
France and reclaim territory there that had once been ruled by England. The English fleet sailed a week after Harry’s wedding. He went with it as captain of the
Sovereign.

For the first time in years, I found myself remembering France and my life there. I knew that the French were not the monsters the English believed them to be. Guy Dunois had been a sweet, amiable boy, every bit as much my friend as Harry Guildford later became. My governess, although I had by then forgotten her name, had been kind to me. Even Queen Anne of Brittany, the one time I had been presented to her, had kissed me and made much of me. Anne was still queen of France. She had taken King Louis XII, King Charles’s successor, as her second husband.

I did not voice my opinions about the French. I did not want to remind anyone of my foreign birth. This proved to be a wise decision when the ships England sent to war were routed. Harry had a close brush with death when a ship blew up right next to the
Sovereign
. Tom Knyvett, another of the king’s friends and one of our band of Merry Men, was killed in the sea battle.

King Henry swore to avenge Tom’s death. So did Tom’s closest friends, Charles Brandon and Henry’s lord admiral, Lord Edward Howard. Tom was a man they’d jousted with and reveled with. He was a man with whom I had danced and flirted, but I was very glad that if someone of our circle had to die, it had not been Harry or Will Compton or Ned Neville.

In March, less than a year after Tom Knyvett’s death, a second fleet set sail. This time it went without Harry, who was busy helping the king ready a land army. A few weeks later, I was on my way from the Lady Mary’s apartments to my own lodgings when I came upon him standing in the middle of an otherwise deserted corridor. His face was devoid of color.

I touched his arm. “Harry?”

He started and stared at me. He did not seem to recognize me.

“Harry, what is it?” Alarmed now, I tightened my grip and shook him.

“Lord Edward Howard is dead.” Harry looked like a corpse himself.

“A battle?”

He nodded. “The news came an hour ago. They fought a great naval battle off the coast of Brittany near Brest.” I thought he might start to cry.

“What else, Harry?” I could sense there was more.

“Lord Edward captured a French vessel. He and his men boarded it, thinking that the French crew had been disarmed, but something went wrong. The ship was cut free of its captor and some fifty Englishmen were trapped onboard. The French dispatched some of them with pike thrusts and threw others into the sea.”

“Lord Edward, too?” I was appalled. As King Henry’s lord admiral, he should have been taken prisoner and held for ransom.

“Lord Edward was pinned against the rails by a dozen Moorish pikes. Then the French admiral, Bidoux, ordered him killed. And worse.” I did not want to hear the rest, but Harry could not now be stopped. “Bidoux!” He spat. “The one they call Prior John. He desecrated Lord Edward’s body. Oh, he ordered that it be embalmed and sent home, but first he cut out the heart. He has kept it as a trophy!”

O
N THE THIRTIETH
day of June, King Henry landed on the continent at Calais with an army at his back. Leaving Queen Catherine as regent in his absence, he took courtiers and soldiers alike to exact revenge upon the French.

Those of us who remained at court with the queen were at
Richmond Palace when word arrived that the two armies had met on the sixteenth day of August. This time England had emerged victorious.

On into September, we busied ourselves sewing standards, banners, and badges for the king’s army. The battle had been won, but not yet the war.

I was engaged in hemming yet another banner showing the red dragon of Wales when I heard the rustle of brocade and caught a whiff of a perfume made with marjoram. I looked up to find Mistress Elizabeth Blount, Queen Catherine’s newest maid of honor, standing beside me. She had been at court all of a week.

Bessie Blount was a pretty creature with fair hair and sparkling blue eyes. She was fifteen to my twenty-three and had never before been away from her father’s country estate. She had a puppy’s eager friendliness, anxious that everyone think well of her.

“Mistress Popyncourt,” she said in a low, sweet voice, “the queen wishes to speak with you.”

“With me? Are you certain she did not send you for her sister-in-law?” We both looked toward my eighteen-year-old mistress Mary Tudor, who sat on a padded window seat, engrossed in the badge she was embroidering. With her head bent over her work, all I could see of her face was an inch of pale forehead and the narrow band of red-gold hair that showed at the front of her elaborate headdress.

“The queen wants you,” Bessie insisted.

The Lady Mary gave me leave to go and even suggested that we use the privy stairs to the queen’s apartments, the most direct route. In actual fact, the rooms in question were the king’s. As regent, Queen Catherine had installed herself in King Henry’s apartments and given those she usually occupied on the floor below to the Lady Mary.

Once in the stairwell, I took the lead, speeding upward with footfalls so nearly silent on the stones that the yeoman usher stationed on the next landing did not hear my approach until I was almost upon him. With a yelp of surprise, he lowered his halberd, leveling the point at my chest. Only a hasty step backward saved me from being pinked by the spear end of his weapon.

“Your pardon, Mistress Popyncourt,” he stammered. “I did not mean…that is, I—”

“No harm done,” I assured him.