The King's Damsel (8 page)

“I miss my home, too,” I said aloud. “Thornbury does not have the same magic.”

That got my bedfellow’s attention. “Magic? Do you mean sorcery?” She lowered her voice on the last word, as if to speak it aloud would bring curses down upon our heads.

I giggled. “No. Good magic. Miracles. The kind of magic the church approves of.”

And I began to tell her about Glastonbury, stories my father had told to me. I was barely launched upon the tale of how Joseph of Arimathea came to England after the crucifixion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, bringing with him the Holy Grail, when the bed curtains parted and Cecily joined us. She was quickly followed by the two Marys and Anne.

I had to admit that no one knew where Joseph had hidden the sacred chalice. “But we know he was there, at Glastonbury,” I insisted. “He was sent by the Apostle Philip to establish the first Christian church in England. Joseph was a very holy man. One night, he planted his staff in the ground on Wearyall Hill and by the next morning it had taken root. It grew into a hawthorn tree and it is still there today. Every Christmas, it bears green leaves, just as if it were summer. And there is a walnut tree near the Lady Chapel that comes into leaf each year on St. Barnabas’s Day.”

I had no idea if the walnut tree had any connection to Joseph of Arimathea, but my companions were mightily impressed by these wonders, and by the fact that the life of St. Joseph had been written up in a book. A monk at Glastonbury had composed it when my father was a boy. It now served as a sort of guidebook to the abbey, encouraging pilgrims to visit. This benefited both the abbey and the town.

“Are there other marvels at Glastonbury?” Anne asked when I’d finished recounting all I knew about Joseph of Arimathea. She followed the question with a jaw-cracking yawn.

“Oh, yes,” I assured her. “King Arthur is buried there, you know.”

“
The
King Arthur?” We were in darkness, but Mary Fitzherbert sounded so awed that I was certain her eyes had gone as round as saucers.

I would have launched into still more stories of Glastonbury had not a quiet rap at the door interrupted me. A woman’s voice, sounding amused, spoke from the other side. “It is well past time to sleep, young ladies.”

Anne sighed. “That is Lady Catherine, Sir Matthew Craddock’s wife. She occupies the chamber next to this one.”

“Will she report us for keeping her awake with our talking?” I felt I was well on my way to becoming friends with the other maids of
honor, but if my storytelling led to all of us being dismissed, the cost was too high.

“I do not think so.” Cecily’s near whisper was clearly audible in the quiet dormitory as she and the others crept back to their beds. “She is very kind.”

Then silence fell in earnest and in a little while we slept.

T
he next day, I was duly sworn in and was subjected to a lecture from the Countess of Salisbury on my duties and responsibilities. Summed up, they were simple enough—be loyal to Princess Mary and willing to die to protect her should the need arise. It was a theme the countess would expand upon frequently to the maids of honor and ladies of the privy chamber. She took her responsibility as the princess’s guardian very seriously.

Two days after my arrival, my new clothes were ready. Thereafter, I wore only the livery colors—russet and black—that identified me as one of the princess’s female attendants.

Within a week, my fellow maids of honor habitually gathered on my bed in the maidens’ dormitory as soon as the candles were snuffed. There, careful to keep my voice low, I spun stories about King Arthur, who had been taken to Avalon, the old name for Glastonbury, when he was mortally wounded in battle.

I told other tales, too. Before two weeks had passed, although we’d all sworn to keep our private entertainments secret, I noticed
that people were staring at me. Even that most august personage, Dr. Butts, the princess’s physician, sent me curious looks. Everyone from Lady Catherine, chief gentlewoman to the princess, to the stable boy named Thomas, whose title was “keeper of the princess’s nag,” seemed to know how we spent the first part of the night in the maidens’ chamber.

It was Lady Catherine who first approached me openly. Even though she was almost as old as Lady Salisbury, her face was still largely free of lines. She was, in fact, a beautiful woman, but both she and the countess had already passed beyond the half-century mark. As I was not yet fourteen, that seemed very ancient to me.

“Princess Mary has heard that you are a storyteller,” Lady Catherine said. “A veritable bard.”

The comparison pleased me. I preened. But I also had sense enough not to overstate my skill. “I do not sing of great battles or ancient warriors,” I warned her, “but I can tell tales of King Arthur and his knights, of bold explorers among the men of Bristol, of saints and miracles, and of the wonders of Glastonbury.”

And so, a short time later in the princess’s privy chamber, all sixteen of her ladies and gentlewomen gathered around me in a circle, prepared to be entertained. The princess sat on a chair. I was allowed a stool. Everyone else sat on cushions on the floor.

Thinking to flatter Her Grace, I chose a story that included one of her ancestors.

“During the reign of King Richard the Lion Heart,” I began, “the bones of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere were discovered in the graveyard at Glastonbury Abbey.”

Everyone knew some stories about King Arthur. The princess’s grandfather, King Henry VII, had revered him, even naming his firstborn son Arthur in his honor. My father, too, had been named for the ancient hero-king.

“It was the song of a Welsh bard that contained the clue to finding them,” I continued, “and the monks of Glastonbury managed to decipher it after many years of trying. They dug in the ground near the Lady Chapel and there they found a stone slab. Beneath it lay a leaden cross and on the cross was an inscription. It read:
Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon
.”

“In what language was the inscription?” the princess asked, interrupting me.

Happily, I knew the answer. “In Latin, Your Grace. The monks translated it so that everyone would know what it said.”

She gestured for me to continue. Her shortsighted brown eyes remained fixed on my face. She did not smile.

“The monks continued to dig and in a little while they came to a coffin made from a hollowed-out log. Inside they found two skeletons, one of a tall man and the other of a woman.”

A gasp, hastily stifled, came from one of the princess’s ladies. I thought it was Mistress Pole, who had been the princess’s wet nurse years before and had stayed on in her household as a waiting gentlewoman after Her Grace grew too old to need her original services.

“Although they were much decayed,” I went on, “the remains were determined to be those of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere.”

Princess Mary seemed untroubled by the suggestion of moldering bones. In truth, she took an almost ghoulish interest in the condition of the bodies. “How was King Arthur slain?” she asked. “Could the monks tell after so much time?”

“The skull was damaged.” My brother, as boys are wont to be, had been fascinated by such details and had duly relayed them to me. “Learned men came to view the bones and they determined that the king had been killed by a blow to the head.”

“Ahh,” the princess said.

“Both sets of bones were put on display. Hundreds of people came to see them. Thousands. Even a king came.”

“Which king?” Lady Salisbury’s avid voice assured me that she was as caught up in my story as anyone else in the privy chamber.

“It was some years after the first discovery. The king who came was King Edward the First and with him came good Queen Eleanor.”

Observing the satisfied expression on her face, I remembered that King Edward and Queen Eleanor were the countess’s ancestors, too.

“Edward the First was the king who so loved his wife that when she died he erected crosses to her memory at every stop made by her funeral cortege,” I added, remembering Sir Lionel’s instructions to please and flatter the most important members of the household.

These ornate “Eleanor Crosses” still stood. When, later, I saw one for the first time—in the city of Westminster, hard by London—I understood why both the princess and the countess took such pride in their heritage. Never had I beheld such a marvelous creation—all statues and carvings and standing higher than any other monument.

I had planned to launch into another tale of Arthur and the Round Table, after I recounted the discovery of the king’s bones, but Princess Mary was not through asking questions: “How did he come to be buried in Glastonbury?”

“The town was built on the ancient site of the Isle of Avalon, Your Grace. Another old name for Glastonbury is the Isle of Glass.”

I spoke with confidence. My father used to say that it is always best to sound as if you know what you are talking about, especially if you are not at all certain of your facts. Inside, I was beginning to panic. I had already revealed every detail I knew about King Arthur’s bones.

Before anyone could ask another question, I blurted out a related tidbit: “In those days the deep channel of the River Brue was surrounded by shallow swamps. The Perilous Bridge was once the only
way to enter the city by land from the south and it was from this bridge that the knight Bedwyr returned the sword Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake after the Battle of Camlann.”

Happily, this information diverted my audience and allowed me to launch into the tale of how King Arthur acquired his famous sword—which was not the same sword he pulled out of the stone. I followed that story with others, including the one about Joseph of Arimathea and the hawthorn tree. By the time I’d finished the latter, my throat was dry and my voice had gone hoarse from too much talking.

Lady Butts, the physician’s wife, regarded me with concern. She was a tall, exceedingly plain-faced woman with a decided chin, a prominent nose, and a brusque, no-nonsense manner. She served as one of the princess’s waiting gentlewomen. Before I could begin another tale, she reminded the princess that she had missed her morning walk: “It was raining earlier in the day, Your Grace, but there is just time now for a brisk stroll before supper.”

As this daily constitutional had been prescribed by Dr. Butts for the young princess’s health, a regimen that had the full approval of her mother the queen, the hint was sufficient to recall Princess Mary to her duty. She rose with a resigned sigh.

We all stood with her. The maids of honor always accompanied Her Grace on her perambulations, along with two gentlemen ushers, two gentlemen warders, two yeoman ushers, and two grooms. I took my usual place, at the end of the line of young gentlewomen, lowest in precedence as well as the last to join the household, but Lady Butts caught my arm as we started to file out.

“You should stay indoors, Mistress Lodge. I will send one of the servants for a hot drink containing honey and lemon juice to soothe your throat.”

“That is kind of you, Lady Butts.”

She snorted. “There is nothing kind about it. I should like to hear more of your stories, too, and you cannot tell them if you lose your ability to speak.”

But Her Grace, just as she reached the door to the garden, looked over her shoulder to fix her nearsighted gaze on me. “Come walk at my side, Mistress Lodge,” she piped in her high, child’s voice. “I would hear more of this magical hawthorn tree at Glastonbury.”

Lady Butts released me. I heard her sigh as I hastened to obey. Belatedly, I recalled that the hawthorn was also a
Tudor
symbol.

A
nne Rede’s prediction about state visits proved correct. Such spectacles may be exciting to watch but they proceed with agonizing slowness for those obliged to participate in them. Even riding on horseback was not the treat I’d expected. I was assigned a plodding palfrey whose only show of spirit was to nip my shoulder when I finally dismounted.

After we left Gloucester, the Princess of Wales’s court traveled another seven miles to Tewkesbury and settled into a pleasant manor house built of timber and stone and situated in the middle of a park belonging to the local abbey. By then I knew that Anne had also been right when she called life in the princess’s household dull.

Her Grace’s previous tutor had set up a strict regimen, one Queen Catherine had ordered Lady Salisbury to maintain, to the best of her ability, in the Marches of Wales. This accounted for the standing order that the princess’s clothes, chamber, and body be kept pure, sweet, clean, and wholesome, a requirement that extended to her closest attendants. We were also instructed, in Lady
Salisbury’s words, “to practice honor, virtue, and discretion in words, countenance, gesture, behavior, and deed.”

Frivolity of any sort was discouraged. The only approved pastimes were playing the virginals and other instruments, and dancing, which was considered healthful exercise. Is it any wonder that my stories became so popular?

Although amusements were frowned upon, learning was not. In addition to lessons in music and dance, I was taught to speak French and began instruction in penmanship. I had never expected to learn to write, but I caught on quickly. Within a few weeks, I was proficient enough to pen a short letter to my stepmother, trusting that she would find someone to read it to her.

The season of Advent was strictly kept in the princess’s household. Everyone was obliged to fast and attend church with even more frequency than usual and our meals contained far less variety. As the days grew longer and darker, I found it increasingly difficult to appear cheerful and willing to please. Indeed, on some cold, candlelit mornings I would not have arisen from my bed at all had Lady Catherine not made it her responsibility to make sure all the maids of honor reported for duty at the appointed time.

I began to feel better once the winter solstice was past. Supper on Christmas Eve, although there was still no meat or cheese or eggs to eat, marked the beginning of a more joyous season. Very early on Christmas Day, the princess went to Mass, attended by all six of her maids of honor. As it was well before dawn, we each carried a lighted taper, scented with juniper, and held it throughout the service. The sermon seemed endless, but when it was finally over we broke our fast with a veritable feast—boiled chine of beef, bread, beer, cheese, butter, and eggs.