The King's Damsel (22 page)

“I did not expect Sir Lionel to act so quickly.” I rose at Her Grace’s signal. “We have little time to plan, or to devise a means by which I can send messages to Your Grace.”

“Invisible ink?” Mary Dannett’s eyes lit up when she made this suggestion. “I have heard such a thing can be made from the juice of a lemon.”

“One of the stories you told us talked of a code,” the princess reminded me.

“Yes, but it did not explain how to use such a cipher.” I glanced toward the two yeomen to make sure they were not close enough to overhear what we were saying. “Plain writing will do, I think, so long as we have a secure way to deliver a letter.” I thanked the good Lord that I had been taught to write since joining Her Grace’s household.

“That may be difficult,” the princess acknowledged.

“It is a pity the dovecote contains no carrier pigeons,” I said.

My quip produced a fleeting smile. “I fear it would be noticed, Tamsin, if you carried away a cage full of birds when you left us for court.”

“There must be some other—” I broke off as the answer came to me. “Maria’s father is at court. Could he—?”

The princess clapped her hands together in delight. For a moment she looked like the fifteen-year-old girl she was. “How perfect!”

Maria nodded slowly. “Father writes to me several times a month.” Messages arrived for her almost as often as letters from Queen Catherine came for the princess.

“You must approach Dr. Vittorio as soon as you reach Windsor Castle,” Her Grace instructed me.

“I do not want to arouse suspicions. If I enter that woman’s household and immediately ask to speak to one of the most loyal members of the queen’s entourage, it will raise questions.”

“Not if you do so because you have a letter to deliver to him from his daughter. What could be more natural? And in that letter, Maria will explain, in Spanish, where your true loyalty lies. All that will remain to do is to devise a way to continue to cross paths with Dr. Vittorio at court.” She chuckled. “I suggest you develop some minor ailment soon after you arrive.”

“An allergy to the concubine?” I suggested.

On that light note, I bade the princess farewell, but I was anything but lighthearted by the time I returned to the maidens’ dormitory. I felt as I had when I’d been ripped from Hartlake Manor. I was leaving behind my home, my friends—all I held dear . . . except for Edyth.

My faithful tiring maid was no happier to be joining Anne Boleyn’s household than I was. I had to listen to an entire litany of complaints. In the end, I snapped at her to be quiet.

“We have no choice, Edyth. It is Windsor Castle or some godforsaken spot in Cornwall with Sir Lionel Daggett.”

“Oh.” Her face was easy to read. She had no more liking for Sir Lionel than I did. Without another word, she resumed packing.

I had one last, uncomfortable interview to endure before I could leave. The Countess of Salisbury sent for me. I thought she would deride me for abandoning the princess, but instead she sent me an approving look as soon as we were alone in her closet, the small room she used for private devotions and letter writing. Princess Mary had told her my plan.

The chamber was opulent, boasting a fireplace, a writing table, and not one but two comfortably padded Glastonbury chairs. The countess looked me up and down, as if she were inspecting every inch of me for flaws, before she waved me into one of the chairs. I perched on the edge of the seat cushion, uncertain what to expect from the old woman.

“You are going to the royal court,” she said. “I doubt you will be called upon to die for the princess there, but lie . . . aye, it may come to that. Are you prepared to take that sin upon your immortal soul for Her Grace’s sake?”

She made telling a few lies seem as great a sacrifice as dying, and a mortal sin besides. “I will do all I can for my true mistress,” I vowed, “and if I must sin, then I will confess my transgressions and be given penance for them.”

Lady Salisbury chuckled at that. “You are bold, I will give you that. Let us hope you are also clever. You never struck me as such, but perhaps you will learn. Be on your guard, Mistress Lodge. You will have no friends in Anne Boleyn’s household. Trust no one, not even your confessor.”

I promised to heed her warnings and the next day I departed on schedule. Only Maria came to see me off, giving me a hug in
farewell and slipping the letter she had written to her father into my hand. I quickly secured it in the inside pocket of my cloak.

When I stepped back, tears pricked the backs of my eyes. “I will miss you,” I whispered.

“Then you should not have asked to leave,” she shot back, speaking loud enough for everyone in the courtyard, including my escort, to hear.

Her aggrieved tone of voice shocked me. Dismayed, my feelings hurt, I sent her a reproachful look. She was already turning away but, at the last second, when she was certain only I could see her face, she winked at me.

T
he journey from Beaulieu to Windsor Castle took three days. I might have traveled faster without the baggage cart, but I was obliged to take all my possessions with me. I rode a palfrey borrowed from the princess’s stables. I had not had a horse of my own since I’d left Hartlake Manor.

Three days was long enough for me to realize the enormity of the task before me. I fretted over how I would be received. Somehow, I had to convince the concubine that I no longer felt any loyalty to the princess. Otherwise she would never trust me or allow me close to her. The first step, I decided, was to stop thinking of her as the concubine. To anyone who supported her, she was Lady Anne Rochford, the future queen of England.

I had stayed at Windsor Castle before. It had been to Windsor that the princess had come first when her household left the Marches of Wales for good. But now that I was to be part of the royal court, everything seemed different. Approached from the Thames, the towering edifice had a forbidding appearance, looming atop an escarpment. The approach by land was less daunting, but
once inside the ancient stone walls, I was immediately struck by how gloomy the place was, despite its size and grandeur. Windsor Castle contained neither galleries nor gardens. There was no respite from the brooding atmosphere that pervaded the place, not even in the apartments in the upper and middle wards, made bright by a multitude of decorative windows. These overlooked a steep cliff so frighteningly high that it made me dizzy to peer out.

My arrival at court caused only a small ripple of interest and might not have been noticed at all had I not assumed that I would be lodged in the maidens’ chamber. When I presented myself there, expecting to find a bed and sufficient space to store my traveling chests, I was informed that I was in the wrong place. Sir Lionel had arranged for me to be given the post of chamberer, not maid of honor. A chamberer was a much less exalted person, although the position was one that would place me even closer to Lady Anne. I would serve her in her bedchamber, attending to her most personal needs.

I was not overly concerned by my demotion, but there was a serious drawback inherent in my altered status. A maid of honor was not permitted to take a husband. A chamberer could be married. I spent my first day at Windsor Castle fearful that Sir Lionel intended to force me into wedding him, after all. I did not draw an easy breath until I was certain he had left to return to his duties in Cornwall.

The Lord Chamberlain, who was in charge of such things, assigned me to a tiny, windowless room at some distance from Lady Anne’s apartments. There was barely space for my boxes and a field bed—a portable folding bedstead—with a truckle bed for Edyth beneath.

“It is very small.” Edyth stood, hands on her hips, regarding the tiny space with disdain. As I had come down in the world, so had she.

“But it is ours alone,” I said, trying to find something positive about our situation. “And the bed is already supplied with a tester and a ceiler and curtains.”

Edyth did not bother to reply. She could see as well as I could that the hangings were made of dingy dark green wool, much faded and somewhat moth-eaten. No tapestry hung on the wall to mitigate the chill that came off the cold stone. Since there were no coals for a brazier, we could not light a fire to heat the chamber. In fact, there was no brazier. Even though it was June, that night we had to sleep together for warmth, wrapped in extra clothing and with our outdoor cloaks on top of us.

The next morning I reported to the head chamberer and was informed of my duties. They were simple but menial—brushing clothing, refilling pitchers, and carrying away the pewter chamber pot concealed in the close stool in Lady Anne’s stool chamber.

My new mistress ignored me for the first few days I was at Windsor. She had spoken to me only twice before. Those occasions had been several years earlier. But she was as sharp-witted as she was sharp-tongued, and sharp-eyed, too. Nothing and no one escaped her notice. I was certain she knew I was there and exactly who I was.

“Thomasine Lodge,” she murmured on my fourth day in her household. “You will comb my hair.”

The hair in question was thick and beautiful and Lady Anne was inordinately proud of it, refusing to wear gable headdresses because they covered it completely. She preferred what was called a French hood, and sometimes went about with no more than a net and a cap to contain her tresses.

I took up the ornately bejeweled ivory comb she indicated, feeling considerable trepidation as I did so. I felt sure she had singled me out for a reason.

“As I recall,” Lady Anne said as I began to work the sleep
tangles out of her long, dark hair, “you were Sir Lionel Daggett’s ward.”

“I am so still.”

Lady Anne laughed—a high-pitched, unnerving sound. “That is extremely doubtful. How old are you?”

“Nineteen, my lady.”

“And as yet unwed?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Well, then, Thomasine Lodge, let me educate you in the law as it applies to wardship. I am well versed in this subject, as I have several wards, including my nephew, Henry Carey, my poor dear sister’s son.”

She spared a fleeting smile for that lady, Lady Mary Rochford, widow of a courtier named William Carey who had died of the sweat. Lady Mary bore little resemblance to her younger sibling. Where Lady Anne was slim, dark, and in constant motion, Lady Mary was gently rounded, fair of complexion, and of a placid disposition.

“You had not, I take it, attained your fourteenth year at the time your father died?”

“No, my lady.”

“A pity. If you had, you would have received his lands into your own hands at his death. You would never have been subject to the court of wards at all.”

“So I have been told, my lady.”

She turned on me so suddenly that I almost snagged the comb in her hair. I pulled my hand back just in time, then tried not to fidget under the force of her disconcerting stare. Her eyes were very large and very dark, even darker and more intense than Princess Mary’s, and her gaze bored into me, as if she sought to touch my very soul.

“Since you were under fourteen at the time your father died, you entered wardship.”

“Yes, my—”

She swung away from me, once more facing a standing glass of steel in which she could see both our reflections. “And at sixteen, you came
out
of wardship.”

“I . . . I . . . I beg your pardon, my lady?” I had been about to resume combing her hair. My hand froze in midair. The comb fell from suddenly nerveless fingers.

She reached out, quick as a cat, and caught it before it could tumble to the floor. Then she laughed again, and all those within hearing distance—a half-dozen assorted females from among her gentlewomen of the bedchamber and her maids of honor—laughed with her.

While heat flooded into my face, I struggled to make sense of Lady Anne’s words. It seemed impossible to me that she was telling the truth, and yet she had no reason to lie. Was I such a great fool that I had not realized I’d been free of Sir Lionel these three years and more?

“Still,” Lady Anne continued when the laughter died down, “you remain dependent upon the advice of others, Sir Lionel most of all. You cannot contract or alienate your lands, by will or otherwise, until you reach the age of twenty-one. Although, naturally, if you marry, everything you own at once becomes the property of your spouse. I shall have to think about a husband for you. In the meantime, have you some trustworthy man to make decisions about your estates?”

“I believe so, my lady.” I choked out the words, hoping they were true.

Not once since I had left Glastonbury had I thought to ask for an accounting of my inheritance. I had assumed that Sir Lionel and my
steward, Hugo Wynn, would take good care of Hartlake Manor and the other properties, since their income, too, derived from them. How naïve I had been! Perhaps Sir Lionel had looked after the property and the people on it, anticipating that it would one day belong to him, but I had no proof of that. For all I knew, everything I owned had fallen into ruin by now, bled dry to provide Sir Lionel with funds to bribe court officials to grant me this post with Lady Anne.

My mind awhirl, I continued combing out my mistress’s hair long after she lost interest in me. That task at last complete, I drifted after her into the privy chamber.

Lady Anne’s apartments were packed with expensive furnishings. The privy chamber was hung with colorful tapestries depicting mythological scenes, and carpets graced the floor as well as the tables. There were no fewer than three elaborately decorated chairs, one of iron and two of wood. All three were covered with crimson velvet fringed with silk and gold. Lady Anne sat on one and took up her lute. She was immediately surrounded by young gallants. As she played, laughter and song filled the air.

Forgotten, I sank down onto a window seat, my hands clasped tightly in my lap, and desperately tried to order my scattered thoughts. It did not surprise me that my stepmother had known as little of the workings of the law as I had. Women were not expected to be well versed in such matters. Even the Countess of Salisbury, I realized, had not thought anything was amiss when she watched me sign a document for my guardian just
after
my sixteenth birthday. That document, I recalled, had been written in Latin so that I could not read it. Sir Lionel had known
exactly
what the law on wardship decreed.