Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (34 page)

“I thought he was newly wed.”

“So he is, to a lumpish girl named Claude, my stepdaughter. And he has a mistress, the young wife of an elderly Paris barrister.” She gave a light laugh, but it conveyed no pleasure.

I shifted closer to her on the padded bench we shared and helped myself to a slice of candied apple from the bowl she held in her lap. The treat had been a gift to Bessie from the king. “How did you deal with him?”

“I told him the truth, that I loved Charles and wished to wed him. Then I burst into tears and said that I did not trust my brother to keep his promise. It was not at all difficult after that to convince the king of France to help us. It was a chance, you see, for him to score points against Henry. They are like little boys, the two of them, setting themselves up as rivals.”

“Little boys with great power,” I reminded her. “If you had returned unwed, your brother would have found some way to thwart your plans.”

Color flooded Mary’s face and her hands curled into fists. “Henry will not make decisions for me ever again!” I caught the bowl just as she was about to hurl it across the room.

When her temper cooled, I asked after the duc de Longueville.

“Oh, Jane, what you must think of me!” She fumbled in the purse suspended from her belt and produced a letter. This time the seal was unbroken.

I waited until I was alone to read Guy’s missive. It was short and to the point and written on Longueville’s behalf: Should I choose to leave England, King François had no objection to my presence in France.

S
EVERAL DAYS PASSED
before I found an opportunity to speak privily with King Henry. It was evening and, as usual, there was music and dancing. The king partnered me in a pavane. I waited until the dance was done, then placed one hand on his forearm when he tried to take his leave.

“Jane?” Mild annoyance shimmered just beneath the curiosity in his voice.

“Sire, I have a boon to ask.” I spoke quickly, fearing we’d be interrupted. The music had already started up again.

Thunderclouds darkened his expression before I was halfway through my request. My heart sank. I had been too hasty. I should have waited longer. And I should have approached him through channels, perhaps recruiting Will or Harry to speak on my behalf.

“You wish to go to France?” His voice was dangerously quiet.

“A visit only, Your Grace. I lived there once, you know.”

Mentally kicking myself for reminding him that I was not a native Englishwoman, I clamped my lips tightly together. To say more would only make matters worse.

“Do you still miss your lover?” Again the silken tone was deceptive, but I knew how I must answer that question.

“No, Your Grace. I do not.” It was, after all, the truth.

The king shook his head, his eyes full of suspicion. I did not dare remind him that when Mary was wed to King Louis he had
wanted
me to go to France.

“You are forbidden to leave England,” King Henry said. “You
will not go to France or to any foreign land unless I give you leave.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” Repressing a sigh, I made my obeisance and backed away. Tears swam in my eyes but I refused to let them fall.

E
VERY SUMMER THE
king went on progress. The route varied so that he could visit different subjects each time. The houses he would stay in were announced well in advance. When I realized that the upcoming progress would pass near Fyfield, the house belonging to James Strangeways and his wife, I made plans of my own. Not all the answers I sought were to be found in France.

James Strangeways’s wife had been born Lady Catherine Gordon, the daughter of a Scottish nobleman, and had been married off by King James IV—the same James who later married Margaret Tudor, the same James killed at Flodden Field—to the pretender, Perkin Warbeck, in the belief that he was the rightful heir to the English throne. Lady Catherine had accompanied her first husband when he invaded England and had been captured. Instead of being imprisoned, however, she had become one of Queen Elizabeth of York’s ladies, just as my mother had.

She and my mother, so I had been told, had befriended each other.

I had seen Lady Catherine at court when I was a child, and she had assisted with the preparations for Princess Margaret’s wedding to the Scots king, but I did not think I had ever spoken to her. Certainly she had never sought me out. Still, I hoped she would agree to talk to me.

I was curious about her, aside from her connection to my mother. As I recalled the story, she had been kept apart from her husband, but otherwise well treated. She’d stayed at court even
after Warbeck’s execution. Following Queen Elizabeth’s death, she had married Strangeways, a gentleman usher to the king, and been granted the rural manor of Fyfield in Berkshire. Since then, Lady Catherine had remained in the country.

To leave the progress and travel to Fyfield, I was obliged to ask permission from the queen’s chamberlain to visit “an old friend.” To my relief, he made no difficulty about my going. As far as the chamberlain was concerned, my absence meant he had one less body to provide with food and shelter. I borrowed a groom and horses for Nan and myself from Harry Guildford and set out over wretched rural roads.

I had not written to say I was coming. I was not certain Lady Catherine could read, and I wanted my business kept private. That meant I could not be certain she would be at home when I arrived. I could, at least, be certain of her hospitality. Country landowners always kept open house for gently born travelers. I was made welcome as soon as I identified myself, and within an hour of my arrival was sitting in the parlor with my hostess.

Lady Catherine’s slender figure had become plump since I’d last seen her, but she was still pretty, and she had an air of placid contentment about her. She waved me toward a stool near her chair and ordered her hovering maidservant to bring barley water and comfits.

“It is rare that anyone from court comes to visit me here at Fyfield,” she remarked.

“The king is on progress and staying nearby.”

She chuckled. “Not so very close or I should have been obliged to house excess courtiers.”

I smiled at her observation, thinking it must be a great imposition to have the king visit. No one would dare tell him they did not want his company, but being his host entailed considerable expense.
There was food and drink and entertainment while the king was in residence and then the cost to clean up the mess the court left behind.

“Is it curiosity that brought you to me, Mistress Popyncourt? Did you wish to see what had become of me?”

“Curiosity, yes, but not about you. Or, not only about you.”

“Mistress Popyncourt,” Lady Catherine repeated, abandoning a piece of fine embroidery for the collar of a shirt to peer into my face. “I remember you now. You serve the Lady Mary, do you not?”

“I did, madam, but when she went to France to marry King Louis, I became one of the queen’s maids of honor.”

Her eyebrows, already arched, shot higher. “A bit long in the tooth for a maid, are you not?”

“And you, madam, are much younger than I expected.” She could have been no more than fifteen or sixteen when she wed Perkin Warbeck. Either that or the country air was exceptionally beneficial to preserving a youthful appearance.

“You left the progress to travel here on your own,” she observed. “Why?”

“You knew my mother. Lady Lovell told me that you befriended her when she first came to England.”

“Say rather that she befriended me.” Lady Catherine’s unlined face showed no emotion, but her eyes lost their welcoming gleam. “You were a child in those days, but you must have known how incensed the court was by my first husband’s ingratitude. He’d dared try to escape his velvet shackles.”

Uncertain how to respond, I held my silence. I had seen Perkin Warbeck after his capture. I remembered that he’d tried to escape a second time and had been executed for it. Even if she had not loved him, he had been her husband. She’d shared his defeat and his disgrace.

After a moment, Lady Catherine continued speaking. “My first marriage lasted four years. I wed in good faith, and Richard, as I called him, believing he was the prince he claimed to be, was a gentle and loving husband. I accepted that we could never live again as man and wife after our capture. I even understood the reasons when King Henry ordered his death. But there was always a part of me that wondered what my life would have been like had he been what he claimed, if he had won the support of his people and deposed the upstart Tudor king.”

“You would have been queen of England.”

Her smile was sad. “Most of the time, I am convinced I had a lucky escape.”

“There do seem to be…drawbacks to being wedded to a king.” Thinking of the Lady Mary, of the Lady Margaret, and of Queen Catherine of Aragon, I sighed.

The maid returned bearing a heavy tray.

“The queen is again with child,” I said as she set out food and drink. “A babe that, God willing, will be born in February.” King Henry had already taken Bessie Blount back into his bed.

The door closed behind the servant with a solid thunk. Lady Catherine reached for a seed cake. Our eyes met as she took the first bite. She chewed thoughtfully, then took another. “What do you want to know about your mother?”

“She died only months after coming to court. I had been separated from her, sent to the royal nursery at Eltham. No one I have talked to seems to have known her well enough to tell me how she spent her last days.”

“And you want to learn more.” She pondered this, consuming the second seed cake. “Well, I will tell you what I can recall, but I do not believe it will be of much help to you.”

“I understand that it was a long time ago, that memories—”

“Oh, I recall that year well enough! How could I not. Everyone regarded me with suspicion, and yet I was obliged to go along on progress with the rest of the court.”

“Maman died at Collyweston.”

“The Countess of Richmond’s house.” Lady Catherine nodded, looking thoughtful. “Oh, yes. I remember the king’s mother well. She traveled with the court most of that summer. We left London in late July, as I recall, and stopped first at Stratford Abbey.”

She closed her eyes, the better to let her mind drift back to that time.

“We visited Havering, and were at Sir James Tyrell’s house, and at Mr. Bardwell’s. Those were in Essex.” She frowned. “One or two fine old castles, and then on to Bury St. Edmunds. Thetford. Buckingham Castle. Norwich. Sir William Boleyn’s place in Norfolk. Blickling Hall, I believe it is called. Then Walsingham and King’s Lynn. We visited Sir Edmund Bedingfield’s widow at Oxburgh Hall. Newmarket. Ely. Cambridge. Huntingdon. Peterborough.” She ticked the towns off on her fingers, one by one.

“You have an excellent memory.” Impatient, I fought the urge to tell her to skip ahead to Collyweston.

“At times I think memories are all I have left to me.” Her eyes popped open and she trilled a light, self-deprecating laugh. “You must not feel pity for me. I am quite content to live in the country. Here I am ruler of my own little domain.” She reached for a third seed cake.

“What of Collyweston?” I prompted her.

“That was the next stop. The king stayed three days, then went on to Drayton in Leicestershire and one or two other places. Queen Elizabeth and her ladies remained at the Countess of Richmond’s house for two more days before joining King Henry at Great Harrowden in Northamptonshire.”

“And my mother succumbed to her illness during that five-day stay?”

“Your mother fell ill and died right after the king left his mother’s house.”

My breath caught in my throat. My surprise must have shown on my face, because Lady Catherine narrowed her eyes at me. “You were told something different,” she murmured. “What was it?”

“That my mother was dying even before she came to England, wasting away from some illness no one could cure.”

“Nonsense. There was nothing wrong with her that I could see. She was cheerful and energetic in spite of the rigors of being on a royal progress. She had begun to make friends with some of the other ladies, and she even seemed to have won the approval of the king’s mother.”

“The Countess of Richmond took note of her?”

“She did, and was most distressed when your mother died.” Lady Catherine frowned. “A bad mushroom, someone said. Food poisoning.” She shrugged.

“Did anyone else fall ill?”

“Not that I recall, but then the English are not overly fond of mushrooms. The French dote on them, or so I am told.”

“Maman was not French,” I murmured. “She was Breton.”

Lady Catherine did not seem to be listening. “No doubt your mother gathered the mushrooms herself and mistook one for another. That happens all too often in the country. I am obliged to take the utmost care that I do not mix in the wrong herb by accident when I prepare medicines in my stillroom.”

I
HAD MUCH
to think about when I rejoined the royal progress. Lady Catherine’s account of my mother’s death was vastly different from Mother Guildford’s, but I could think of no reason why
Mother Guildford should try to prevent me from learning the truth…unless Maman’s sudden illness and death had not been a case of
accidental
poisoning.

When the progress ended and the court was once more at Greenwich, near enough to London that I could consider confronting Harry’s mother with what I had learned, I found myself strangely reluctant to do so. I wished I had someone to confide in, someone with whom I could discuss what to do next, but the habit of secrecy was strong, as was my fear of trusting the wrong person. What if I was right? By revealing my suspicion, I might alert the killer, and I might be the next to die.

Foolish imaginings! I told myself that I’d thought of murder only because Maman had been accused of poisoning King Charles. Lady Catherine had not questioned the cause of my mother’s death. The refusal of other ladies to tell me what they could recall likely stemmed from guilt over the shabby way they’d treated a newcomer. They’d not have wanted to remember that! And Mother Guildford’s lie? Well, she had been raised in the Countess of Richmond’s household. Could I believe this just an example of misguided loyalty? Rather than let the slightest blame fall on the king’s mother for a death that had occurred at her house at Collyweston, Mother Guildford might have invented the tale of a wasting sickness, thinking that would cause less consternation.