Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (76 page)

“Where can I find you when I have made the arrangements?”

“I will wait here.”

Husee looked as if he wanted to object. Then he opened his hand and took another look at the ruby. “I will return in a few hours. Make yourself at home.”

N
ED
C
ORBETT’S CELL
was in the Beauchamp Tower on the western curtain wall. Three floors high with a lead roof, brick floors, and whitewashed walls, it was used to hold prisoners of middling status who had been accused of treason. There were seven men currently lodged on the middle floor.

The conditions of Ned’s captivity had improved since he’d first been brought to the Tower. After he’d been allowed to send to the London goldsmith who held his money for him, he had paid to be unshackled and for a camp bed, bedding, candles, food, and drink. There had been no need to buy firewood or coals for a brazier. This was the hottest summer anyone could remember and it was warm, if damp, even within the thick stone walls of the Tower.

He was rousted from his bed in the middle of the night when the door to his cell was suddenly flung open. A man entered, carrying a lantern. It took Ned a moment to recognize him as the constable of the Tower.

On his pallet on the floor, John Browne grunted and sat up. He blinked warily at Sir William Kingston, then looked to his employer for guidance.

Kingston cleared his throat. “Get up, dress, gather your belongings, and come with me. You are both to be released at the king’s pleasure.”

Ned opened his mouth, then closed it again, sensing that there was something peculiar about this turn of events but reluctant to miss a chance at freedom. The feeling of wrongness increased when he stepped out of the cell. There were no guards in sight, nor did he see any as Kingston led them down the stairs and out of the Beauchamp Tower. As soon as they were through the outer door, Kingston closed the lantern and relied on the moon and the light from nearby buildings to guide them.

They followed the wall south toward the lord lieutenant’s lodgings. Ned recognized that building as the place where he had been questioned when he was first brought to the Tower. The kitchens there provided food for all the prisoners. Those with sufficient rank were sometimes invited to dine with Sir Edward Walsingham, the lord lieutenant. A few were even lodged in his house.

Did Walsingham know what Kingston was up to? When the constable continued to keep to the shadows, Ned decided he did not. Kingston was not releasing them. He was helping them escape.

A sense of elation filled him. He’d had no real hope of a pardon. He had nothing to lose by attempting an escape. His heart pounded with anticipation, not fear, as they went through the Byward Arch and passed the large, semicircular barbican where the royal menagerie was kept. Ned remembered visiting it years before to view four lions and two leopards in wooden cages.

Kingston proceeded along a path that looped around the Middle Tower and led to a gate. It was closed and locked and guarded by two
warders, but to one side there was a little wicket. As soon as the guards were looking the other way, Kingston ushered Ned and Browne through.

Ned inhaled a deep breath of salty, sewage-filled Thames air. Freedom!

But they were still not safe. The path wound back, taking them close under the outer wall. Should anyone chance to look out a window, they’d be plainly visible in the moonlight.

They continued on until Kingston stopped and pointed. “There the moat is so narrow and the water level so low that you can climb down the bank and cross on foot. Continue on to St. Katherine’s Dock.”

By the time Ned and Browne reached the other side, Kingston had disappeared back inside the fortress.

“I’ll look for a boat,” Browne said.

“Here,” a soft voice called.

Ned stood stock still. Impossible! But that had sounded like—“Nan?”

“Hurry!”

It
was
Nan. She was one of two cloaked and hooded figures waiting for them in a little rowing boat. In haste, he and Browne lowered themselves into the small craft. Browne gave a strangled cry when he recognized the other person as Constance, Nan’s maid.

Suddenly Ned felt like laughing. He might have, and hauled Nan into his arms and kissed her soundly, too, but she held a finger to her lips, reminding him that they were not yet out of danger.

“Take the oars from Constance,” Nan whispered to Browne, “and row downriver. Hurry.” She shifted on the passenger seat to make room for Ned.

She kept her eyes on the wharf as they pulled away. Ned followed her gaze. He saw two cranes, used to lift goods from boats, but not a single sign of man nor beast between Petty Wales and St. Katherine’s. No one pursued them. No one even knew they were gone.

“How did you manage it?” he whispered.

“Luck, lies, a few threats, and a little judicious bribery.” She laughed softly.

Browne grunted as he bent his back to the oars. Downriver was against the tide. “How far, mistress?”

“Put in on the opposite shore,” Ned said. “We can walk back to the Red Lion in Southwark.”

“No.” Nan grabbed his arm and gestured for Browne to row on. “If you are recognized, you will be taken back to the Tower.”

“I thought we’d been pardoned,” Browne said.

“Not quite. You will have to leave the country.”

“Exile?” Ned’s jubilant mood evaporated.

“Would you rather be dead?” Nan leaned toward Browne, pointing to a small merchant ship anchored just ahead. “There. You’ll sail as soon as the tide turns. Your passage to the Low Countries has been paid.”

“And once we arrive? We have no money. No passports. No friends.” Ned gave a bitter laugh. “Better to put us ashore in Southwark and let us hide out in one of the brothels.”

Nan and Constance stared at him. Browne stopped rowing.

“I can take myself off to Winchester. Or York. Someplace where no one knows me. I’ll still have no money or gainful employment, but at least I will not need a passport.”

Nan pressed a purse made of leather into his hands. He heard the clink of coins. “I am sorry I could not manage more, but there is nearly five pounds here. And I have also procured these.” She produced two passports from the folds of her cloak.

“How—?”

She pressed her fingers to his lips. “Do not ask questions. Go to the Low Countries and do not look back. That passport gives you a new name. Use it to build a new life for yourself.”

Browne resumed rowing and brought them alongside the ship. Crewmen, expecting them, threw a rope ladder over the side. After a momentary hesitation, Browne climbed aboard.

Ned seized Nan’s hand. “Come with me. We would not have much, God knows, but all I have I will share with you.”

She ducked her head so that he could not have read her expression
even if there had been enough light, but a tiny, choked sob reached him. “I cannot.”

“Why not? With your stepfather under arrest, you cannot expect to make a great marriage. Have you even retained your post at court?”

Nan jerked her hand free. “I have lost nothing, and I will not, so long as you leave now. If you care for me at all, Ned Corbett, then go.”

“Nan—”

“I must return to Queen Anna. To do otherwise will ruin everything. We will be pursued. Captured. Imprisoned. All of us. I cannot go with you.”

“No,” Ned said bitterly. “You do not
want
to.” She was unwilling to give up her post as a maid of honor. He should have known better than to think that, just because she’d risked so much to save his life, she would ever put his desires above her own.

He reached for the rope ladder and began to climb. From the deck of the ship, he looked back. Constance was already rowing away. The incoming tide carried the small boat swiftly out of sight.

C
ONSTANCE STARTED TO
cry as soon as she and Nan abandoned the rowing boat they’d stolen and set off on foot. Her tears continued to flow all the way back to Rutland House. By the time they reached the small door hidden in the garden wall, racking sobs made Constance’s entire body shudder.

“Stop that noise at once,” Nan hissed at Constance.

The maid sniffed, gulped, and finally subsided, although anyone who noticed her puffy eyes and reddened nose would know she had been weeping.

“Control yourself,” Nan warned.

“If John Browne had asked me to go with him,” Constance said in a broken whisper, “I’d have been on that ship in a flash.”

Nan pretended not to have heard. For just an instant, she
had
been tempted to accept Ned’s invitation, but aside from the reasons she’d given him, there was one more thing keeping her in England. Jamie was
here. She did not see him often, but she was loath to put even more distance between them.

Nan slipped back into Rutland House unseen, and into her chamber. “To bed, Constance. A few hours of sleep, and then we will pay a visit to Cheapside.”

They set out on foot at midmorning. Nan had intended all along to visit her son on this trip to London … if she managed to avoid arrest. He’d have grown since she’d last seen him. She hoped she would recognize him.

Her anticipation built as they neared Cheapside. Nan stopped to buy a poppet from a street vendor to take as a gift. She clutched it tighter when Master Carver’s shop came in sight, an excited smile on her face. It was only when she reached the door that she realized the establishment was closed. All the doors and windows were boarded up and an air of neglect hung over the building like a pall.

A cold dread began in the pit of her stomach and traveled throughout Nan’s body. She could feel the heat leach from her face. Something was terribly wrong.

Constance caught Nan’s arm to support her. “I will ask the neighbors where Master Carver has gone.”

Nan continued to stare at the empty shop, fighting to stave off the most obvious answer. But once Constance returned, there was no escape.

“It was the plague.” Nan heard her maidservant’s words through a buzzing in her ears. “The whole family died of it.”

In the back of her mind, Lord Rutland’s matter-of-fact voice echoed, reporting almost three hundred plague deaths in London the previous week.

She did not faint, but her body shut down. Unable to bear thinking, she blanked out everything. Afterward, Nan was never sure how Constance got her away from the silversmith’s shop. By the time she came back to herself and into the worst anguish she had ever known, they had returned to Shoreditch.

Devastated by the loss of her son, guilt ridden because she had not visited him more often, tormented by the thought that if she had married Ned and kept the boy, he might still be alive, Nan was barely aware of where she was or what those around her were doing.

Constance took her back to Richmond, back to the maids’ dormitory. Nan went through the motions of a normal life, but for a long time, nothing seemed real.

A small kernel of self-preservation kept Nan functioning day after day. She did not cry for all she had lost except late at night, when she was safely closed in behind the bed curtains. Even then, she was careful not to let any sound escape. She grieved in silence, despaired in solitude.

T
HE DAYS AT
Richmond passed with such sameness that Nan scarcely noticed them slipping by. She felt only half alive, and took refuge in sleep whenever she could. She knew that Constance looked out for her and was grateful, but nothing shook her out of the darkness until the day the king paid a surprise visit.

“Why is His Grace here?” Nan whispered to Dorothy Bray. And where was his new bride?

The other maid of honor, wide eyed and tense, only shook her head. Her nervousness communicated itself to Nan—the first real emotion she’d felt in days. Hands twisted together, she waited for His Grace to enter the presence chamber of Anna of Cleves, now officially his “sister.”

The former queen received King Henry with polite affection. He kissed her cheek and presented her with a small gift. When they stepped aside to speak together in private, Anthony Denny approached Nan.

“Do you wish to remain here or join Queen Catherine’s household?” he asked after they’d exchanged pleasantries.

“I prefer to wait on the queen.” The words came out without hesitation. More than anything, Nan wanted the distraction of life at court.

“Then make preparations to leave at once for Windsor Castle. In
a little more than a week, the king and queen will leave there to go on progress through Oxfordshire.”

Denny started to move on to Dorothy Bray, then turned back. “You may not have heard. The men who conspired with Sir Gregory Botolph to betray Calais were executed at Tyburn two days ago. Not your stepfather,” he hastened to add when she swayed. “I mean Clement Philpott and several others whose names I do not recall.”

With an effort, Nan regained her poise. “So should all traitors die,” she murmured.

And so Ned would have, if she had not acted when she did. She waited for Denny to mention the disappearance of two of the conspirators, but he said nothing more. Their absence on the scaffold had apparently gone unnoticed. Nan wished she could be sure, but she dared not risk reminding Anthony Denny or anyone else that Ned Corbett had once been a prisoner in the Tower of London.

The King is so amorous of her that he cannot treat her well enough, and caresses her more than he did the others. The new Queen is a lady of moderate beauty but superlative grace. In stature she is small and slender. Her countenance is very delightful, of which the King is greatly enamored, and he knows not how to make sufficient demonstrations of his affection for her.

—Charles de Marillac, French ambassador to England, to the king of France, 29 August 1540

14

Cat swept into the maidens’ chamber the next morning as Nan was packing. She was so agitated that she could barely speak. “So, you are leaving.”

Nan stared at her sister. “What ails you, Cat? You are remarkably flushed.”

“I am to have a new post. As maid of honor.”

“To Queen Catherine?” Nan sounded surprised. “I knew there were two vacancies. Dorothy, Lucy, Mary, and I are leaving Anna of Cleves to go to the new queen, but her two foreign-born maids will remain here at Richmond.” She returned a pair of silver tweezers, used to pluck her
eyebrows, to a small embroidered case and slipped it into a side pocket of her trunk.