Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (73 page)

Word of the arrests eventually leaked out. Constance dissolved into tears when she heard that John Browne was in the Tower. Nan’s sister Cat, at court as one of the Countess of Rutland’s waiting gentlewomen, denounced Ned in no uncertain terms, both as a traitor and because he had been disloyal to Lord Lisle.

No one else at court seemed much interested in an insignificant and
unsuccessful treason plot in an outpost across the Narrow Seas. A far more fascinating scandal had erupted closer to hand. Lord Hungerford of Heytesbury was also in the Tower of London. He was to be tried for sorcery and buggery as well as for heresy and treason.

Nan paid little attention to the details of the case, although she did spare a moment’s pity for Lord Hungerford’s son. When young Wat Hungerford sent word that he wanted to speak to her, Nan set aside her needlework, prepared to meet with him.

Her cousin, the Countess of Sussex, stopped her. “Best you have nothing to do with the lad,” Mary advised.

“The son is not in disgrace, only the father.” And Wat was still in Cromwell’s service. Nan had seen him at a distance, resplendent in the new Earl of Essex’s livery. Wat’s arms and chest had filled out and he’d grown taller. She did not think he would be referred to as a lad for much longer.

“Lord Hungerford is worse than a traitor, Nan. You do not want your name linked with him, even indirectly.”

Nan frowned, trying to recall what she’d heard. Something about casting a horoscope to know when the king would die. And another charge: Lord Hungerford was supposed to have taken another man as his lover. Under a newly passed law, the penalty for that unnatural act was death.

Nan supposed Cousin Mary was right. It was best to have nothing to do with Wat Hungerford. She barely knew him, after all. She sent him away without hearing what he had to say.

N
AN SUPPED WITH
her stepfather in his chamber on the evening of the seventeenth of May and stayed late because Lord Lisle was in an expansive mood. He had plans to take a more active role in Parliament and at court. His continued belief that he would soon be honored with an earldom gave him new vitality, and his enthusiasm was infectious. When Nan was with him, she could almost believe it would happen. She hoped it would. A highly favored earl would be in an ideal position to ask the king to pardon one of his gentlemen servitors.

“Have you broached the subject of Mary’s betrothal with the king?” she asked. “I’ve had a letter from Mother asking me to sing Gabriel’s praises to His Grace.”

“I will wait until I have my earldom to discuss the matter with King Henry.” Lord Lisle bit into a tart.

“Is it wise to delay? You would not want to be accused of keeping their liaison secret.”

“Do not worry your pretty little head about it, my dear. I will know when the time is right.”

Nan made no further protest, but she felt uneasy. The king had a limited supply of goodwill.

“You seem agitated, Nan.” Lord Lisle reached for another tart.

Someone began pounding on the door before Nan could deny it.

“Send them away, whoever they are,” Lisle shouted to his manservant.

But the men on the other side of the door did not wait to be admitted. Several yeomen of the guard in royal livery and carrying halberds burst into the chamber. Nan recognized their leader. He was Lady Kingston’s husband, Sir William—the constable of the Tower of London.

“What is the meaning of this intrusion?” Lisle rose to his feet so quickly that his chair toppled over with a crash.

Nan jumped up and ran to his side. A terrible tightness constricted her breathing. When the edges of her vision narrowed, she was afraid she might faint. She forced herself to drag in a great gulp of air. Even before Sir William spoke, she knew he had come to arrest her stepfather.

I
T WAS TWILIGHT
when the Earl of Sussex entered the great parlor of the lord deputy’s residence in Calais. Mary Bassett, perched on a stool near a wicker screen and picking out a tune on her lute, saw him first. Her mother caught sight of him a moment later, as did Frances and Philippa, who were comfortably ensconced on large cushions on the floor to engage in a game of cards.

The earl’s gaze roved over the domestic scene. His expression revealed nothing, but Mary saw a flash of panic in her mother’s eyes. Had
something happened to Lord Lisle? Her stepfather had written of falling ill shortly after his arrival in England, but that had been almost a month ago.

Honor Lisle remained seated in the room’s only chair, her embroidery hoop clasped in both hands. “My Lord Sussex, this visit is unexpected.”

Sussex moved toward her. Behind him came three men Mary recognized as members of the Calais Council.

“Gentlemen?” Mary heard the note of alarm in her mother’s voice, but Lady Lisle, elegantly dressed in a kirtle of black velvet and one of her best taffeta gowns, assumed a regal hauteur as she waited for an explanation.

“Madam, I am sorry to have to tell you this,” the earl said, “but your husband has been arrested and charged with treason.”

Mary bit back an exclamation of dismay.

Her mother dropped her needlework to grip the arms of her chair. “No. That is not possible. My husband has done nothing wrong.”

But Sussex was still talking. “By the king’s command, I am ordered to seize and inventory all of Lord Lisle’s possessions, most especially all correspondence, and to question everyone in this household. You, madam, are to be confined to your chamber.” At his signal, one of the Calais Spears entered the room. “Take Lady Lisle away and stand guard outside her door.”

While her mother raged against such treatment, drawing everyone’s attention to her, Mary set her lute on the floor and slowly, quietly, rose from her stool. In a few furtive steps she was hidden by the wicker screen that shielded the room from drafts. Seconds later, she was through the small door behind it and on her way to her bedchamber.

They were going to confiscate letters. They were looking for treasonous correspondence. They probably thought her stepfather had been writing to Cardinal Pole. Mary did not care about that. She had other letters to hide from prying eyes. Personal letters. Private letters. Love letters.

She kept everything Gabriel had ever written to her in a coffer near
her bed, tied up with a red ribbon. Retrieving the thick packet, Mary hugged it to her breast. She could not bear to think of strangers reading words meant only for her.

There was no fire in the hearth, not on the twentieth day of May. Mary reached for the tinder box to start one, then had a better idea.

She encountered one of her mother’s waiting gentlewomen as she left the bedchamber. “What has happened?” Mistress Hussey asked. “There are soldiers everywhere.” She was a young woman only a few years Mary’s senior and she was pale with fright.

“Lord Lisle has been arrested. The king’s men are looking for damning documents to use against him.”

Mistress Hussey’s dark brown eyes went wide. Her face turned the color of whey. She hastily crossed herself.

“For God’s sake, do not do that! They’ll take you for a papist.”

“It is happening all over again. Is nowhere safe?” Frantic, Mistress Hussey craned her neck in every direction, as if searching for a place to hide.

Belatedly, Mary remembered that Lord Hussey of Sleaford had been executed for treason. “Your father took part in a rebellion against King Henry,” she murmured. “This is not at all the same.”

Still gripping the packet of letters, Mary ignored the silent tears running down the other woman’s cheeks and pushed past her, heading for the nearest garderobe.

The tiny room was cut into the outer wall. A wooden seat rested atop a shaft that emptied into a cesspit far below. Mary’s stomach twisted, but she had no choice. No one must ever read what Gabriel had written to her. Before she could lose her nerve, she untied the ribbon and ripped the first letter in two, then tore it again before she let the pieces fall from her hand and flutter into the abyss.

“Let me help.” Mistress Hussey appeared at her side.

Mary thrust half the letters into the other woman’s hands and went back to tearing those that remained into tiny bits. She kept back only one, the letter in which Gabriel had first said that he loved her.
This she tucked into her bodice, certain no one would dare search her person.

“What now?” Mistress Hussey asked.

“Now we join my sisters in the parlor and pretend that we have only just heard of the arrival of the Earl of Sussex.”

N
AN SPENT TWO
weeks in daily anticipation of more bad news. Her stepfather was suspected of conspiring with Sir Gregory Botolph. He was a prisoner in the Tower. In Calais, Nan’s mother and sisters had also been arrested. Nan had no idea what the accusations against them were. She only knew that the king’s men had seized and inventoried everything in their house—clothing, books, papers, and even an old piece of tapestry too moth eaten to hang.

It was the fifth of June before Nan herself was summoned to be questioned. She dreaded the interrogation, expecting it to be conducted by Thomas Cromwell. Instead, Anthony Denny joined her in a small, stuffy room, accompanied by a clerk who would take down everything she said.

“Of what are my mother and sisters accused?” she asked before Denny could begin. “Surely they had no part in Sir Gregory Botolph’s mad plan.”

“They tried to conceal your sister’s trothplight to a Frenchman.”

Nan gasped. “She was already
betrothed
to him?”

Denny’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know of this matter, Mistress Bassett?”

Not “Nan,” she thought, as she had been when she lived in “Cousin Denny’s” household, but “Mistress Bassett.” Like everyone else, Denny would try to distance himself from the contagion of treason, as if it were something that could be contracted by breathing the same air.

“I know very little,” Nan said. “Only that a formal proposal of marriage from the young man’s uncle, the head of his family, was delivered to Calais just after my stepfather left for England. Mother, very properly, replied that he must wait for an answer until her husband came home.
Then she wrote to Lord Lisle, telling him of the offer. Later, she sent me a letter, asking that I tell the king what I know of the seigneur de Bours, should His Grace question me about him.”

“And what
do
you know?”

“Only that my sister was brought up in the de Bours household and that a very natural affection grew up between them.”

“Marriage to a foreigner is not permitted without the king’s approval.”

“My stepfather intended to ask for King Henry’s blessing as soon as he arrived at court, but, if you recall, he fell ill shortly afterward.”

“And it slipped his mind thereafter?”

Nan ignored Denny’s sarcasm. “There was no formal betrothal, only a first step toward opening negotiations.”

“Certain depositions that were taken in Calais say otherwise. Your sister secretly married the Frenchman when he visited Calais on Palm Sunday last.”

“How is that possible?”

“They spoke legally binding words to each other. In such cases, neither witnesses nor ceremony are required, only consummation.”

“The words,” Nan interrupted. “My sister admitted that she pledged herself
per verba de praesenti
? Not
per verba de futuro
?” The latter was not binding; the former was.

Denny nodded.

Nan closed her eyes to hide her distress. Mary had entered into a clandestine marriage. Ned Corbett had once asked Nan to do the same.

“She compounded her crime by trying to destroy the letters de Bours had sent her. She threw them down the jakes. My lord of Sussex’s men retrieved a few fragments, enough to piece together the story. And enough to make them suspicious that more than love words were contained in those letters.”

“You think
Mary
was plotting to overthrow Calais?”

“The entire situation is suspicious.”

“The entire situation is ludicrous.”

Denny’s face remained set in grim lines. For a moment, the scratch of the clerk’s quill was the only sound in the quiet room. Nan forced herself to relax her clenched hands, to breathe evenly. Panic would avail her nothing.

“Why is my mother being held?”

“Your mother and sisters and several of the waiting gentlewomen at first denied any knowledge of the plighttroth. Some changed their stories when they were questioned a second time.”

“But Mother would not have known. Not if it was a secret marriage.” Philippa likely had. And Frances. “Where is my brother’s wife?” she blurted out, suddenly alarmed.

“Your brother went to Calais and took his wife and daughter back to England. They could not remain there. The household has been disbanded.”

“Then where—?”

“Your sisters have been placed under house arrest with families in Calais. They are well treated, I assure you. Your mother is likewise confined in the residence of a gentleman of the town. She has been permitted to keep with her a waiting gentlewoman, two other servants, and a priest.”

From her own household, Nan wondered, or spies appointed by the Crown?

Nan’s mind raced. On top of the charge that her stepfather had known about Sir Gregory Botolph’s plans, the suspicion that he’d arranged a secret alliance with a Frenchman could seal his fate, and perhaps her mother’s, too. How could Mary have been so foolish? Unless there really had been something treasonous in Gabriel’s letters, she had made matters far worse by destroying them.

“What now?” she asked after a long silence. “Am I to be arrested, too?”

Denny reached across the table and patted her hand. “You have done
nothing wrong. You had no part in any of this. Keep your thoughts and opinions to yourself and be patient. There are other changes coming, but most will do you more good than harm.”

It was excellent, if enigmatic, advice, but difficult to follow. Nan was worried about her stepfather, about her mother and sisters, and about Ned Corbett, too. And she could not help but fear for her own future. If she tried to help any of those she cared about, she might also be accused of treason.