Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (13 page)

“You are not my keeper, Guy Dunois,” I said.

“That does not mean you do not need one.”

“I have lived at court for many years. I am accustomed to flirting with courtiers, noblemen and gentlemen alike.”

“Not French noblemen,” Guy muttered.

I saw no reason to be alarmed by the duke’s interest in me. Neither did I want to quarrel. “It was you I wanted to talk to, Guy.”

“You have an odd way of showing it.”

The sound of shuffling feet told me that the remaining guard
grew impatient. He had waited to escort Guy back to his quarters. The prisoners of war were confined in considerable luxury, but they were still prisoners.

“It is late.” More time than I’d realized had passed while I engaged in pleasant conversation with the duke. “Mayhap we should talk another time.”

He sketched a mocking bow. “As my lady wishes.”

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
, I sought Guy in the duc de Longueville’s lodgings in one of the many towers that made up the Tower of London. I encountered Ivo first. A gangly youth not yet grown into his feet, he directed me to a small inner chamber. When his voice broke halfway through this short speech, splotches of color stained his pale face.

In the room Ivo had indicated, I found Guy hard at work scribbling numbers in a ledger at a writing table. Papers were strewn across the table’s surface along with a scattering of quills and bottles of ink.

“Are you a clerk, then?” I asked.

Guy looked up in annoyance. Tiny spectacles slid down his nose. He removed them, closed the account book, and set the spectacles on top of it. “I serve as His Grace’s steward. I manage his estates when we are at home. And my own.”

“You have done well for yourself?”

“Well enough. What is it you want, Jeanne?”

“Jane.”

“His Grace is at the tennis play,” he said. Then he lapsed into a disapproving silence.

“I did not come here looking for the duke.”

I glanced around the antechamber. Ivo had left and no one else had come in. If I wanted to learn more about the rumors Guy had
heard of my demise, this was the time to ask. Yet now Guy seemed strangely unapproachable.

“Are you wroth with me?” I blurted out.

He shrugged. “I have seen too many women enthralled by an excellent physique and a surfeit of charm. My half brother has a wife and children back in France. He has naught that is honorable to offer you.”

Nettled by his words, I spoke without thinking. “Have you not heard of courtly love? A woman may derive great pleasure simply from being in a man’s company.”

“That is not the kind of pleasure the duc de Longueville has in mind. Be careful, Jane, lest you end up as his plaything.”

I scowled at Guy, pretending to be insulted. At the same time, my heart beat a little faster and a heady excitement began to build inside me. Had the duke spoken of me? One part of me knew I should heed Guy’s warning. Another urged me to seize the chance, mayhap my only chance, to step out into a storm of passion.

For years I had avoided engaging in anything more than mild flirtation with the men of King Henry’s court. Charles Brandon’s abrupt loss of interest in me had been proof that none of them would take me to wife without a dowry, and I’d had no interest in becoming some English courtier’s mistress.

This was different. Longueville was a nobleman, his rank high enough to protect me from the scorn that might otherwise come my way. That he had a wife did not trouble me. I was never likely to meet her. What mattered was that I was drawn to him, as I had not been to any other man I’d met. And he, if Guy’s intimations were to be believed, returned my interest.

Curiosity and lust are a potent combination. I started to speak, then thought better of it. Longueville was England’s enemy, a
prisoner of war. He would return to France as soon as he was ransomed.

So would Guy.

If I wanted answers about my past, I must ask my questions while I had the chance. I placed both hands on the table and leaned forward until we were quite close. “I want to speak to you of days gone by.”

His expression gave nothing away. “As you wish.”

I cleared my throat, still oddly hesitant to begin. “Have you all you need to be comfortable here?” I asked instead.

“All save the duke’s ransom.” He indicated the closed ledger. “We are housed in luxury but your king allots us only forty shillings a week to live on.”

I was surprised by the paltry amount and said so.

He shrugged. “Prisoners are expected to augment that sum from their own funds, but the duke’s only recourse would be to sell off his wardrobe and jewels, and that he will not do. We are reduced to living on pottage, brown bread, and cheese.”

“When the king returns, you will be given accommodations at court until the duke’s ransom is arranged. That will entitle you to three cooked meals a day.”

“You will pardon me if I remain skeptical.”

“The duke has been permitted to keep six servants,” I reminded him.

“With funds barely sufficient to keep one in food and candles. The constable of the Tower tells me that stipends for prisoners have not been increased in decades.”

Guilt assailed me. As one of the Lady Mary’s attendants I regularly had my choice among dishes of beef, mutton, veal, capon, cony, pheasant, pigeon, lamb, and chicken, not to mention a plentiful supply of butter and fruit and pastries. “I wish I could help, but
I receive no stipend at all, only a tiny annuity scarce sufficient to purchase New Year’s gifts for the members of the royal family.”

That silenced Guy’s complaints about money and all else. He rose and offered me his stool. I shook my head and we stood facing each other.

I met his steady gaze with my own. “Do you wish that the duke had left you behind when he went off to war? You might be free now. If not for your half brother, you might be riding through your own fields, supervising the harvest.”

Guy smiled slightly. His sea green eyes lost their forbidding look. “I was the one who persuaded Longueville that he should take me along on campaign instead of another of our father’s bastards, our brother Jacques. I wanted an adventure. Still, I cannot regret coming here. How else should I have found you again?”

“Was I truly supposed to be dead?”

“I fear so.” He took both my hands in his and his eyes twinkled in a way I remembered well from our shared childhood. “But I am beyond pleased to have found you alive and well.”

Tentatively, I smiled back. “It is a great mystery to me why anyone should have thought my mother and I had died.”

“That was the story on everyone’s lips. There was no reason to doubt it. You and your mother had gone off without a proper escort. No guards. No servants. I supposed that you had been killed by outlaws bent on robbing you.”

“You said there were other rumors.”

Guy released me to move to the window and stand staring out at the White Tower, the oldest part of the castle, and the temporary buildings erected in front of it to house court officials in need of work space after a fire the year before at Westminster Palace had destroyed their offices.

I crossed to him and placed my gloved hand on his arm.
“Maman died shortly after we arrived in England. She never told me why we left France.”

I remembered her words to me that day at the inn in London:
I will explain everything in good time.
But she had not lived long enough to keep that promise.

For the present it is best that you do not know too much.
She had said that, too. I had not known what she meant then and did not now. But now it seemed important that I find out.

“Tell me what people said about us, Guy. I have a right to know.”

“I do not want to upset you.” Turning, he placed his hand over mine. His grip was firm and somehow comforting, even if his words were not. “I remember how you adored your mother.”

I felt queasy but ignored the sensation. “Nothing you tell me will change my love for her or erase my fond memories.”

Reluctance writ large upon his face, he stared at our joined hands, thus avoiding meeting my eyes while he gathered his thoughts. “On the day after you disappeared, members of the royal guard—the
gens d’armes
—came to the house where you lived in Amboise.”

Inhaling sharply, I felt as if I had taken a blow. This news did not bode well.

“When they found only your servants in residence, they took your governess away with them.”

I struggled to recall the woman, but she had only been employed to look after me for only a short time. I could not bring to mind either her name or her face. “Why did they arrest her? And where did they take her?”

“No one knew. That is why there was so much speculation. Coming so hard upon King Charles’s death in the château above the town, there were some who said the two events must be connected.”

I stared at him, not only unwilling but unable to form the words to ask the next logical question.

Guy took pity on me. “That was sheer foolishness, I am certain. The king’s death was sudden, but it was an accident. He struck his head on a lintel. He was surpassing tall and the doorway was very low.”

I blinked at him, confused. I had never thought to ask how the king of France had died…or why my mother had left court immediately after his death. “He died of a blow to the head?”

Frowning, Guy released my hand and turned away. He stared out at the White Tower again, his thoughts clearly far away. “The accident brought on an apoplexy, or so I have been told. King Charles did not collapse at once. It was several hours before he fell unconscious and could not be revived.”

I was certain there was more to the story but I was hesitant to ask outright. I waited in an agony of suspense for him to continue. After a few moments, he did, his voice so low I could only just make out his words.

“He had eaten an orange that morning. Some said it was poisoned.”

My breath hitched. “P-p-poison?”

Of a sudden, I felt light-headed. I did not need to hear the words to know that the
gens d’armes
might have come looking for Maman because they thought she’d had something to do with the king’s death. She had been there in the château, in attendance on Queen Anne. I could not imagine why suspicion would fall on her, but clearly it had. Then an alternate explanation occurred to me.

“Mayhap Queen Anne sent the guards because she was concerned for Maman’s well-being.”

“I do not think so, Jane. Remember that it is the custom in France for a royal widow to lie in bed for six weeks in a darkened
room lit only by candles, cut off from the rest of the world. Queen Anne was already in seclusion on the day after King Charles’s death and in no position to give orders.”

“Then perhaps it was the governess they sought all along and not Maman.”

But Guy shook his head. “They asked all the neighbors if they had seen your mother. She was the object of their search, Jane. There is no doubt about that.”

“But why? Maman was a good person. She’d never have harmed anyone.” Whatever I had thought to learn from Guy, this was not it.

He glanced at the curtained doorway to make certain there was no one in the next room before he spoke again. Even though we were alone, he kept his voice low. “You know what royal courts are like. Ambition and intrigue abound. I cannot say for certain, but it is likely your mother had some connection to Louis d’Orléans.”

“Louis d’Orléans? The duc de Longueville?” I was truly confused now, and again felt light-headed.

“Two men bore that name in those days.”

Guy guided me to the stool and left me there while he went to a nearby cabinet. The screech of hinges in need of oiling made me jump, and I gave a nervous, embarrassed laugh. When Guy produced a cup and a bottle of wine, I accepted a drink without demur.

“The Louis d’Orléans I mean is not the duc de Longueville, but rather Louis the Twelfth, king of France. Shortly before King Charles’s death, Charles was investigating his cousin Louis d’Orléans for certain actions he took as governor of Normandy. They were at odds, too, because Louis had refused to lead Charles’s army to Asti in a renewal of the French campaign against the Italian city-states. It seemed as if Louis was waiting
for Charles to die, as if he remained close so he could more easily seize the throne.”

“Was he not the rightful heir?”

“He was one of them. François d’Angoulême had as good a claim, but he was a child of three at the time and no one wanted another regency.”

A few sips of wine had revived me and helped me think more calmly. “How do you come to know all this?” I asked. “You were scarce older than I was back then.”

“I kept my ear to the ground.” His gaze locked for an instant with mine. “And I wanted to know what had happened to you.”

“My mother had naught to do with King Louis, and naught to do with King Charles’s death.”

“Are you certain?”

“Did rumors suggest my mother acted on behalf of Louis d’Orléans?”

Guy winced at my sharp tone of voice. “I’ve told you as much. All manner of stories were bandied about. Most died away as fast as they sprang up, but Louis
was
nearby, at Blois.” He shrugged.

In my agitation, I stood and began to pace. Maman must have known Louis would be the next king. When she fled from court, had she been running from him? Had she somehow known
he
poisoned King Charles?

But no. That made no sense. Queen Anne had gone on to marry her late husband’s successor. She was married to him still.

“When did word come to Amboise that Maman and I were dead?”

Guy ran one hand over a face that suddenly looked more weary than his years. The dark stubble shadowing his jaw made him seem more soldier than courtier and his eyes were sad. “It was perhaps a month after you disappeared.”

“Where did the rumors say we died? And of what cause?”

Guy shook his head. “No one knew any details. Although I was still a child, I asked. Then I grieved for you…as my friend.” Another shrug. “Soon afterward I left Amboise to enter the service of my half brother.”

Pressing my fingers to my brow, I tried to think, tried to remember the details of our departure from Amboise and our journey to Calais. Those weeks of travel remained a blur, although I knew we had avoided the main roads and waterways. But my first clear recollections were of Calais and crossing the Narrow Seas and arriving in England.