Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (16 page)

His brow furrowed in thought. “Before the great fire at Sheen that were, and after the great scholar Erasmus came to visit the royal children.”

“No. After the fire and before the visit.”

Goose thumped the side of his head with one fist. “Long ago. Long ago.” Then he brightened. “Lady Lovell. She were there!”

“Sir Thomas Lovell’s wife?”

“Aye, that’s the one. She yet lives. She serves the new queen now.”

My breath came a little faster at this news. Not only was Eleanor, Lady Lovell, in service to Queen Catherine, but so was her husband. Sir Thomas Lovell also held the post of constable of the Tower. Although he had gone north with the army to repel the Scottish invasion, he should return soon. The soldiers who had defeated the Scots were expected home well before the larger force that had gone with King Henry to France.

“Do you wish to hear the names of the others?” Goose asked.

“There are more? Ladies who served Queen Elizabeth and now serve Queen Catherine?”

“Oh, aye.” His head bobbed up and down. “Lady Weston. Lady Verney. Mistress Denys. Lady Marzen. Lady Pechey, too. Some not yet married in the old days, but they were at court.”

I recognized the names. I knew all these women by sight, although I was not on intimate terms with any of them. At present, five were with the queen at Walsingham. The sixth, Lady Marzen, was a member of the Lady Mary’s household.

That was not entirely good news, for it revealed a flaw in Goose’s memory. I had no doubt that everyone he’d named had once served Elizabeth of York, but the queen had outlived my mother by some five years and the composition of any royal retinue was wont to change with great frequency. Lady Marzen had been a minor heiress from Hertfordshire when she’d married Sir Francis, a groom of the privy chamber to King Henry VII…but they had not wed until well after my mother’s death.

“Died, did she?” A bemused look on his face, Goose seemed to be struggling to remember something.

“My mother? Yes. At Collyweston, on progress.”

Instantly, he brightened. “Skyp would have been there then. Ask Skyp.”

“Alas, I cannot.” Skyp, the Countess of Richmond’s fool, was long in his grave.

“Always wore high-heeled shoes, did Skyp,” Goose said. “Reached above his ankles.”

Boots, not shoes. Poor Goose could not even keep articles of apparel straight. And yet, in spite of my doubts about the fool’s memory, I asked another question. There was always a chance he would recall what I wished to know. “What priest would have given her last rites, Goose? What physician would have attended her?”

“Master Harding, clerk of the queen’s closet, was a priest.” Goose put both hands on his head. “Black round cap and black gown. A dull fellow.”

“What happened to him?”

“Went on pilgrimage and died in the Holy Land.”

Dumbfounded, I stared at him. I had heard of only one other Englishman who’d gone on pilgrimage in all the years I’d been at court. “With Sir Richard Guildford?”

“Aye. Aye. That’s the one. Reached Jerusalem only to die there.”

I felt as if I’d taken a blow to the midsection. Had Mother Guildford deliberately tried to mislead me? If Harding had traveled with her husband, she must have known his name. Could she have forgotten he tended my mother? It seemed unlikely. She remembered other things well enough. And she must also have known the names of all those ladies who’d returned to court to serve the new queen.

Goose picked up his pack and started to wander off, but at the door he turned back to me, eyes bright with curiosity. “If she died at Collyweston, would she not have been attended by the Countess of Richmond’s servants?”

“Who was the countess’s physician? Who was her confessor?”

But Goose’s moments of clarity had been flashes of lightning in the dark of night. Even as I watched, he went dull eyed and slack jawed. His wits dimmed by age, he could recall no more, not even my name.

It was left to me to puzzle out who among the ladies still at court might remember my mother and be able to tell me what physician and priest were with Maman when she died.

S
INCE
I
COULD
do nothing to pursue my inquiries until we left the Tower of London and rejoined Queen Catherine’s court, I set aside my questions for the nonce. The queen, sadly, had suffered another miscarriage shortly after leaving the shrine at Walsingham. She had sent word to the Lady Mary that Mary was to stay where she was. In the king’s continued absence, Catherine’s word, as regent, was law.

It was no hardship to remain in the Tower of London. The duc de Longueville’s company amused Mary and delighted me. The princess gave orders that he be allowed to go anywhere he chose within the Tower, save for her privy lodgings, without a guard. He gave her his parole not to try to escape.

After that, we spent a great deal of time in his company. The Lady Mary laughingly called me her duenna, charged with guarding her reputation while she dallied with the well-favored duke.

Afternoons and evenings passed quickly, filled with laughter and fine food, good music, and, because the princess commanded it, dancing. The duke often chose me as his partner, although I danced with Guy, too. It was from Guy that I learned that the duc de Longueville was King Louis’ distant cousin.

“I wonder if King Henry knows that,” I mused as we whirled in a circle with the movements of the dance. “Prisoners’ ransoms are set according to kinship as well as rank. The amount should be much higher for a king’s cousin.”

“
Distant
cousin,” Guy repeated. The steps of the dance took us apart, then brought us together again. “And even more distantly related to King Charles.”

“Then you must be, too,” I said without thinking.

“I do not count.” He chuckled. “Although it was through a bastard line that the Longuevilles descend from kings.” I could see he was well aware of the irony of that.

When I danced with Guy, we talked and sometimes joked.

When I danced with the duc de Longueville, the mere touch of his hand created a subtle longing to be held more closely in his arms, to be alone with him.

I took care never to be out of sight of the princess. Although she did not know it, she also served as my duenna.

Then came the evening when another strong thunderstorm blew in. The princess took to her bed, and I slipped away from her lodgings to let myself into the privy gallery. Within moments, the duke joined me.

“Mistress Popyncourt. I thought I might find you here.” The duke’s voice was deep and smooth, and when his hands came up to caress my shoulders I abandoned myself to the sensation. We were quite alone. No guards. No princess. No Guy.

In silence we watched until the storm passed. His hands slid from my shoulders to my waist, but he made no further overtures. In the eerie quiet that followed the noisy display of flashes and bolts, I felt him sigh.

“In that direction, far to the south, is our homeland,” he said.

“I was born in Brittany, not France,” I reminded him, and reminded myself that Brittany had been a separate entity at the time. Only after losing a war with France had Duchess Anne agreed to marry King Charles and unite the two.

“Brittany is part of France now,” the duke said, following my thought. “That makes you French.”

“I am English,” I insisted.
Jane, not Jeanne.

“Are you?” The duke’s lips twitched, as if my assertion amused him. “I am not certain one can change one’s heritage.”

“I do not remember much about France,” I said. “I was only eight years old when I left. My mother brought me to England because my uncle was already here. He had come to this country with Henry Tudor, after King Henry’s exile in Brittany. The Lady Mary’s father,” I added, lest he should confuse the two King Henrys.

For a long time, I had avoided thinking about my earliest memories. It had been too painful to dwell on what I had lost. My father had died. My mother had died. I’d been taken away from everyone else I knew and cared for. And since it hurt to remember, I had lived entirely in the present. I had turned myself into a complete Englishwoman and a loyal servant of the Crown.

Longueville turned me in his arms till we faced each other yet kept a respectable distance between our bodies. His eyes were in shadow in the dimly lit gallery, but I could see his mouth most plainly. “A pity your mother did not take you to Brittany instead. We might have met sooner.”

“I suppose her family there had all died.”

“And your father’s family?”

“He came from Flanders. I know nothing of his kin.”

More questions. I wondered if I would ever answer them all.

“Are there many Bretons at the English court?” the duke asked.

“Fewer than in the last reign. My uncle remains, as does Sir Francis Marzen.” At that moment, I could think of no others.

Longueville’s thumb brushed my cheek. “Such a serious
expression. Do you wish you might return someday?” He toyed with a lock of my hair that had somehow come loose from beneath my headdress.

Caught off guard by the suggestion, I took a step away from him.

He chuckled. “England and France will not always be enemies, Jane. You could return to Amboise.” He touched a fingertip to my lips. “You must forgive me. I asked Guy about you. My country seat is not far from Amboise, at Beaugency. Dunois Castle has been ours since my ancestor, the Bastard of Orléans, gave his support to Joan of Arc against the English.”

“Yet another time when England and France were at war. I do not think it would be wise for me to visit your homeland, my lord.”

“Will you go with your princess when she marries Charles of Castile?”

I nodded. I felt no great enthusiasm at the prospect. Charles of Castile had lands in Spain and in the Netherlands. I could not imagine living in either place.

“That is a great pity,” Longueville murmured. “Charles is a mere boy, not yet fourteen, with a great ugly beak of a nose.”

I turned to stare out at the darkness again. I could make out dozens of darting lights—lanterns carried by boats on the Thames. “I would like to see Amboise once more,” I admitted, “but I have no more choice about where I go than the princess does.”

“How long has her marriage been arranged?”

“Nearly seven years now. When she marries, she will be obliged to leave her homeland forever, as her sister, Margaret, did when she married the king of Scots. Mary has already said she wants to take me with her.” That would mean I’d most likely never see England again, but the alternative was even less to my liking—a pension
and genteel poverty for the rest of my days. In my mind’s eye I saw myself living out my life in a little house in Blackfriars, slowly turning into another Mother Guildford.

“You might return to France instead.”

“I lack the wherewithal to travel, even if a peace were to last long enough to make such a thing possible.”

“You might come home with me,” Longueville whispered.

The flutter in my stomach, the sudden race of my heart, had me turning, lifting my face toward him. “You already have a wife.”

He smiled. “She is an understanding woman. She will not object to sharing me with you.”

“I do not wish to be…tolerated.”

His smile broadened, creating deep lines around his mobile mouth. “If she finds you even half as delightful as I do, she will befriend you.”

I felt my eyes narrow. “How many of your mistresses has she taken to?”

He laughed aloud at that. “You, my dearest Jane, are unique. You will enchant her, but not, I hope, in quite the same way I wish you to please me.”

Slowly, giving me every chance to evade him, he lowered his head toward mine. Our lips touched. He kissed me with exquisite, gentle thoroughness. Heart racing, skin hot as fire, limbs atremble, I kissed him back.

When he took my arm, I went with him through one torchlit passage, down a stairway illuminated by lanterns, and along another corridor, this one redolent with freshly changed rushes and crushed woodruff. I knew where we were headed, but I did not demur. At that moment, I wanted to lie with him more than I wanted my next breath and it had little to do with his offer to take me with him to France.

“Shall I serve as your tiring maid?” he asked when we were alone in his bedchamber. The only light came from the hearth, bathing the chamber in a rosy glow.

Without waiting for my answer, he put his mouth on mine again and set quick, clever hands to untying the laces at my back. He freed me from my clothing with a skill and a rapidity that left me almost as dazed as the magic in his kiss.

Caught up in myriad pleasurable sensations, I never thought to protest. Everywhere he touched, I tingled. It was like being caught out in a furious storm—thrilling, exhilarating, and just a little dangerous.

When he had stripped me of all but my shift, discarding my body stitchet by tossing it halfway across the room, he started on his own clothing. I touched the place his mouth had been with the tip of my tongue and tasted him there—sweet Spanish wine and something darker and more heady still.

Doublet and hose soon lay in a disorderly heap atop my bodice and kirtle, and he was edging me backward toward the curtained bed. Laughing, he reached out to catch me by the waist and lift me up onto the mattress. With a lithe movement, he positioned himself beside me and began kissing me again.

I put a hand out to stop him. “I have not…I do not—”

“I know,” he said. “I will be gentle with you.”

His kisses were soft, his breath sweet. He knew just how to dispel a maiden’s fears. The sensual aroma of ambergris surrounded us, a subtle, mossy, musky scent drifting up from the bedding.

I shook my head to clear it. “This is not wise,” I murmured, more to myself than to him.

“No harm will come to you for being with me, my dearest Jeanne. I swear it.”

“Jane.” I corrected him without thinking, then froze,
remembering that he was the duc de Longueville. He was the next thing to royalty and not to be contradicted.

He surprised me by laughing again. “I believe I shall address you as ‘sweeting,’ as the English do their paramours.” The way he said the word, in English with a trace of a French accent, made the endearment sound as if he had coined it just for me.