Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (96 page)

Lord Parr could add nothing to our knowledge of the new Lady Browne. She’d retired to the country after her marriage.

“And what of your sister, Lady Latimer?” Mother asked Lord Parr. “How does she fare? We heard of her husband’s recent death.”

Lord Latimer had died at the beginning of the month. Father had brought that news home with him. Since I had never met either Lady Latimer or her late husband, I was not much interested in Will Parr’s reply, but Dorothy was acquainted with both of Lord Parr’s siblings.

“The other sister,” she whispered to Kate, “was a maid of honor until she married William Herbert, one of the King’s Spears.”

“Kathryn joined the Lady Mary’s household some months ago,” Lord Parr said, “and has resumed her duties there.”

“So soon?” My grandmother, who still wore black for Grandfather Bray, dead these four years and more, looked disapproving. Widows customarily went into seclusion, at least for a while.

“The king insisted that she return,” Lord Parr said, “and by His Grace’s decree, Kathryn has also forgone wearing mourning dress.”

The exchange of meaningful looks between my mother and grandmother assured me that they thought this as odd as I did, but no one pursued the subject.

“What else is new at court?” Dorothy asked.

“The king has acquired a new pet,” Will Parr said as he sampled the stewed pike, a favorite of mine. It was seasoned with currants, sugar, cinnamon, barberries, and prunes. “An ape. The creature is half as big as a man and wears a damask collar studded with pearls. It has its own keeper, but I fear it needs more than one man to look after it. The beast escaped last week and went on a rampage in the lodgings of an unfortunate courtier. It ripped his best bonnet to shreds.” Parr’s light brown eyes twinkled as he paused for effect. “And then it ate the feather.”

When our laughter died away, I realized that Father was frowning.

“Did they ever identify those drunken ruffians who caused so much damage in London back in January? It was one night after curfew,” he explained for the benefit of those of us unfamiliar with the incident. “They broke dozens of windows, targeting prominent citizens and churches,
too. Then they crossed the Thames in boats and attacked several whorehouses in Southwark.”

“I am certain no one complained about
that,
” Aunt Elizabeth said with some asperity.

We all looked at Lord Parr expectantly. He toyed with his food and appeared ill at ease.

“Well,” Father demanded. “Have the brigands been caught?”

“It has become a matter of some delicacy,” Lord Parr hedged.

He took a swallow of wine, but that only delayed the inevitable. No one changed the subject. He sighed and gave in.

“It appears that the young men were in the company of the Earl of Surrey.” His glance slid to Aunt Elizabeth, then quickly away. “The last I heard, just before I left court, was that the earl had been ordered to appear before four members of the Privy Council on the first of April. Two of his boon companions have already been sent to the Tower of London. At first, they denied taking part in the rampage. Then they confessed. I regret to tell you, Lady Wyatt, that one of them is your son.”

Aunt Elizabeth’s lips compressed into a flat, disapproving line, but she did not look surprised by this news, nor unduly upset by it. After a moment, she gave a careless wave of one hand. “A few months in prison will do Tom good, but I feel sorry for his poor wife.”

“Are you certain you were not one of them, Lord Parr?” Grandmother Jane asked. She had the look of a cat toying with a mouse when she added, “I was under the impression that you were also one of Surrey’s minions.”

Lord Parr opened his mouth, then closed it again. He did not seem to know how to react to my grandmother’s rudeness. Had she been a man, I am sure he’d have made some arrogant denial, perhaps even let his anger at the insult show. But he was our guest and she was a baron’s widow. Long years of training in courtly behavior rose to the fore. He sent her a charming if insincere smile. “Alas, dear lady, I fear your information is some decades out of date. As boys, the earl and I were both members of the late Duke of Richmond’s household. We were the king’s son’s devoted servants until the day he died.”

My mother, ever the good hostess, stepped in to smooth over the awkwardness. “As I recall, Lord Parr, you are the patron of a troupe of Italian musicians and I see that one of the servants you brought with you has the look of a foreigner. Is he, by chance, a Bassano?”

“Indeed he is, Lady Cobham. Jasper Bassano. Shall I have him perform for you? He sings and plays any number of instruments with great skill and, should you have others to provide the music, dances extraordinarily well, too.”

“Your other servant is not musical?”

“Griggs?” Lord Parr chuckled. “He can gentle a horse with a whisper but his singing sets the hounds to howling and frightens small children.”

When the trestle table had been removed to leave a space in the middle of the room, Master Bassano, swarthy and black haired but handsome for all that, demonstrated each of his skills, first the dancing, then the singing, and finally the playing. When he launched into a pavane and Father’s musicians joined in, Lord Parr asked Dorothy to dance with him.

“There are enough of us for an alman,” Grandmother said in a carrying voice. The music abruptly stopped. She rose and crooked a gnarled finger at Matthew Rowlett, one of Father’s gentlemen. “You there. You’ll do for my partner.”

Rowlett’s ruddy complexion lost some of its color, but he obediently presented himself before her and managed a respectable bow. Grandmother gave a satisfied nod, but she was not through rearranging things. A shove here and a deft tug there and by the time we were lined up with the men on the left and the women on the right, Rowlett was holding hands with Dorothy and I stood face-to-face with Lord Parr.

“Mistress Bess,” he greeted me, taking my hands in his.

“Lord Parr.” My voice shook a little, affected by his touch in spite of my resolve not to show any interest in him. Dorothy was already wroth with me. I had no desire to increase her ire.

The hopping steps kept me close to him for a measure, then carried us apart. When it was time to repeat the pattern from the beginning, he
leaned close to whisper in my ear, “Surely you can call me Will. We are all friends here.”

“I do not believe my grandmother would agree.”

His laughter followed me as I danced away to clasp hands, each in their turn, with George, my father, and Master Rowlett.

Lord Parr partnered me twice more that evening. The tug of physical attraction grew stronger every time our hands touched or our bodies swayed side by side in the movements of the dance. No wonder Dorothy was so determined to have him for her husband! Although I did my best to ignore these tingles of awareness, when Will Parr was close to me a thrill of excitement penetrated straight to my vitals. When his arm brushed against my breast—an accident, I am sure—my entire body tightened deliciously in response.

That night my sleep was broken by vivid and disconcerting dreams.

The next morning, when I caught sight of Lord Parr, at a distance, I followed him. It was as if I had no control over the impulse. I had no plan, should I overtake him, but I was disappointed when he entered my father’s closet, the small room Father used when he wished to be private to write letters or read his Bible.

I turned back the way I’d come and stopped short. Dorothy blocked my path.

“Is he in there?”

When I nodded, she brushed past me and applied her ear to a panel of the door.

“You will not be able to hear what they are saying that way. The wood is too thick.”

Her eyes narrowed as she considered my words. “Where, then?”

I hesitated. I had no reason to help Dorothy, but I was curious, too. “Follow me.”

Around the corner and along a narrow passage we came to a wall hanging painted with a pastoral scene of sheep and shepherdesses. It hid a peephole I’d discovered years before. I did not know if someone had
deliberately bored it or if it were a knothole left by nature, but just on the other side was Father’s closet.

There was room for only one person at a time. I let Dorothy take the first peek. After a moment, she backed away. “They are talking of
Parliament,
” she complained.

I stepped up to take my turn at the peephole. With my eye close to the opening, I had an excellent view of both Will Parr and my father. Will’s words were clearly audible.

“As you know, George,” he said, “I have already secured a legal separation from my estranged wife on the grounds of her adultery, and a bill has been introduced to prevent her children from inheriting my estates. I would appreciate your support in this matter.”

I barely contained my gasp of surprise. Will Parr already had a wife? No wonder Grandmother Jane objected to his attentions to Dorothy. And no wonder he had not asked Dorothy to marry him. He was not free to wed.

Deceitful brute!
I thought, and leaned closer. Lord Parr’s case was the one I had heard discussed during my brief sojourn at court. He was the unnamed lord all the ladies had pitied because, even with his unhappy marriage dissolved, he could not remarry until after the death of his cast-off wife.

“I wed Anne Bourchier,” Will said, “when she was ten years old and I was fifteen. I had no say in the matter, nor did she.”

Reluctant sympathy stabbed at me. The circumstances made his plight more pitiable, but they carried no weight under English law. He was still married and would be as long as this Anne Bourchier lived—just as Aunt Elizabeth had been tied to Sir Thomas Wyatt until she’d finally been set free by his death. As for the children his wife had borne, they were innocent victims, but they gave me even more reason to feel sorry for Will Parr. Under the law, they were his heirs, no matter who their father had been.

Dorothy tugged at my sleeve, demanding her turn at the peephole, but I refused to budge.

“It seems certain,” Will said, “that the king will marry my sister.”

This news was just as startling as the revelation of his marital status. Kathryn, Lady Latimer, the recent widow, was
old,
at least compared to King Henry’s last wife. Catherine Howard had not lived to see her twentieth year. I tried to wrap my mind around the idea of a matronly queen, all the while straining to hear more.

“His Grace visits Kathryn daily in his daughter’s household,” Will said as Dorothy seized me bodily and hauled me away from the peephole. “Sometimes three or four times a day.”

“What are they saying?” she demanded.

“That Lady Latimer is to be our next queen.”

“Truly?”

“Lord Parr just said so.”

“Oh, excellent! That means I will soon return to court. The king himself promised me that I would be one of his next queen’s maids of honor. And with Will’s sister as queen, His Grace will surely agree to unmake Will’s marriage to that wicked woman in Essex.”

“So you knew he already had a wife.”

“Everyone knows, and everyone knows he would gladly be rid of her.” She stepped up to the listening post, but Father and Lord Parr had finished their conversation and were already on their way out of Father’s closet.

Dorothy, ever the bold one, intercepted them. I crept quietly away and did not see Will Parr again before he left Cowling Castle.

4

M
ore than three months passed before word reached our remote peninsula that King Henry had wed for the sixth time. By then it was late July. It had been an unusually wet summer. There were outbreaks of the plague all over England. In an attempt to avoid both the worst of the inclement weather and the deadly path of the disease, the court went on progress in Surrey and Buckinghamshire, far away from Kent. Using the excuse of limited accommodations at some of the king’s smaller manors, large numbers of courtiers fled to their own estates.

No one knows what causes a visitation of the plague, but fewer people seemed to contract the dread disease in the country. At Cowling Castle with my family, I remained safe from infection.

Mother, well aware that I had hoped to return to court once there was a new queen in residence, spent most of August and the first part of September sending letters to influential acquaintances. To distract me, she kept Kate and me busy in the stillroom, teaching us how to make herbal remedies and preventives. Most of the latter were intended to keep the plague at bay.

It is the duty of every wife, whether she be married to a cobbler or a great lord, to look after the health of her household. To that end, Mother taught us to identify dozens of healing herbs and how to prepare them for use. Ceramic pots covered with thin goatskin, glass and horn containers plugged with stopples, and even a few imported stoneware jugs with parchment tied over their mouths to keep the contents dry filled the stillroom shelves. They contained powders, extracts, oils, ointments, and pills. Drying roots hung in bunches from the ceiling. The long table where we worked held equipment, everything from a small still to a handpress used to squeeze the juice out of fruit.

“But why must preventives always smell so vile?” I asked, wrinkling my nose in distaste as I labored with mortar and pestle. The stench of burning leather permeated the entire castle because the purifying fumes created by setting fire to old shoes warded off disease.

“The onions are not so bad,” Kate said. Peeled onions left in a house for ten days absorbed infection from the air, but not even the sweet herbs we used for strewing could mask their pungent odor.

“If remedies do not smell awful, then they taste terrible.” I bore down harder on a handful of briar leaves.

Mother stopped beside me to inspect my handiwork. “
Stamp
the herbs, Bess. Do not grind them into powder. Bruise them
gently
.”

I sighed and started over. When I’d
bruised
the leaves properly, I added them to handfuls of sage, rue, and elder leaves and strained them with a quart of white wine sprinkled with ginger. Everyone in the family had been drinking a little of this concoction, morning and night, for two months. It was not the worst thing I had ever tasted, but I was heartily sick of it.