The King's Damsel (36 page)

“What if he should discover where we’ve really gone and come after us?” Edyth asked as we were rowed downriver in a boat so tiny there was scarce room for the two of us, our bundles, and the boy. Darkness had fallen by then and the moon on the water cast eerie shadows.

“He will not know where to look.”

“He is an evil man, Mistress Tamsin. One of his men told me that he’s forced Griselda Wynn to warm his bed ever since your stepmother ran away to the nunnery.”

“I doubt Griselda had to be forced into anything. She was always
one to seize the main chance.” But that explained why her father, Hugo, had never answered my appeal. “As for Sir Lionel, he’ll never find us once we reach London. It is a very large city, Edyth. We can vanish into its vastness.”

“That we can vanish, I do not doubt,” Edyth said, her voice gloomy, “but how are we to
live
?”

W
e passed the remainder of the night in the flea-infested upper room of an alehouse. The innkeeper’s son delivered us there to await the first tilt boat of the morning. They did not ply the river after sunset. Rather than sacrifice another pearl, which might rouse suspicion, I used half of my small winnings at cards to pay for the doubtful privilege of sharing a straw-stuffed pallet with my tiring maid.

Tilt boats, so called because of the tilt, the canopy that protects passengers from inclement weather, travel the Thames from Windsor to Gravesend. Once aboard, surrounded by a dozen or more strangers, I deemed conversation unwise. Instead I watched the shore and the other vessels on the river—tide boats, private barges, and large barges carrying produce from the country to the city.

Edyth’s question had kept me awake most of the night. I had planned to escape from Sir Lionel’s clutches at the first opportunity, but I had not thought beyond that point. We could live for some time on the profits of selling my valuables, but I might be cheated by some unscrupulous buyer, or robbed outright. We would also have to
find lodgings. They could not be too respectable or Sir Lionel might locate them. But we dared not live in the roughest part of London, either. My head swam with the sheer number of matters I would have to settle by nightfall.

I did not know many people in London and trusted only one. When we docked, I began to walk northward. I had never been afoot in the city before. People crowded in on every side, pushing and shoving. Everyone seemed to be trying to sell me something . . . or pick my pocket. Pungent smells assaulted me from every direction.

A lad of no more than eight years grabbed my bundle and attempted to make off with it. Having kept a good grip on it, I retained possession, but it was a near thing. When Edyth cuffed him on the ear, the boy cursed her and fled into a narrow alley.

A nearby horseman laughed. The bay gelding he rode nearly trampled me as it surged forward through the crowd of pedestrians. “Quickly, Edyth,” I said, and followed in his wake. We made good progress until he applied his spurs and left us in his dust.

When we reached Cheapside, I turned east and continued walking along that broad thoroughfare. I had ceased to hear the street cries. The noisome odors of cesspits and middens, unwashed bodies and animal waste had blended into one and the constant exposure had deadened my sense of smell.

Edyth clung to me like a leech as I pushed onward. I passed the ornate Eleanor Cross without even pausing to admire its intricate carvings and statues. Ahead, I recognized the Standard, one of several conduits that provided water to the citizens of London. Statues adorned it, too. As I walked rapidly past, I remembered that it was sometimes used as a place of execution.

A man carrying a full bucket bumped into me, sloshing some of the liquid onto my shoulder. He had come from the Great Conduit.
I stopped, searching for one particular sign along the north side of the street. Fine, high buildings lined Cheapside. Some were shops. Others were the houses of prosperous merchants. T
HE
S
IGN OF THE
G
OLDEN
H
ART
hung above the door to one of the latter.

A workroom took up the ground floor. A half-dozen women busily turning silk into points and laces looked up when Edyth and I entered. None of their faces was familiar to me.

I cleared my throat. “I am looking for Rafe Pinckney.”

“He’s not here, dearie,” one of the women called out, “but his mother is.”

She left me no choice but to follow her up a flight of stairs and into a richly appointed solar. Rafe’s mother sat at a writing table, a ledger open before her. A pair of regals sat in a corner. A lute lay abandoned on a chair upholstered in the finest silk.

“Mistress Lodge!” she exclaimed in surprise.

“Mistress Pinckney. I must beg your forgiveness for intruding upon you without warning but—”

“You are most welcome at any time,” she said, cutting short my apology. When she offered food and drink, I accepted with gratitude. Neither Edyth nor I had eaten since the previous day.

Over small cakes and barley water, I reconsidered my hastily conceived plan to ask Rafe for help in selling my valuables, finding a place to live, and hiring a lawyer. Rafe had once asked me to marry him. I still did not know why. But no man could want a bride who had lost her virtue. Even Sir Lionel had not. I could not bear the thought that Rafe would turn from me in disgust.

Mistress Pinckney, on the other hand, was a silkwoman. An independent businesswoman in her own right. She did not have to ask anyone’s permission to offer me assistance. And she had no reason to expect me to have led an exemplary life.

I told her my tale, or at least the parts of it that I could bear to
share. I did not admit that Sir Lionel’s reason for threatening to make me his mistress was that I had already given myself to the king. Mistress Pinckney did not frequent the court. I doubted she knew I had ever been the king’s concubine.

“Why have you come to me?” she asked when I had finished describing how Edyth and I had escaped and traveled to London.

“I have jewels and other small valuables I wish to sell or pawn for ready money, but I do not know whom to approach, or how. I must also hire lodgings.” Another thought occurred to me. “And I must make haste to send a sufficient sum to the nunnery at Minchin Barrow, to ensure my stepmother’s continued safety.”

“Can the nuns protect her? A vowess is not cloistered.”

“If her lodging is paid for, she will be safe enough.” At least until Master Cromwell carried out his plan to dissolve the nunneries. “The sisters at Minchin Barrow are more fierce than Sir Lionel realizes. Two of them are my aunts. They will have no sympathy for the man who usurped property belonging to their kinswoman.”

Mistress Pinckney nodded approvingly. “And how do you mean to reclaim what is rightfully yours?”

“That is what I will do with the rest of the money from selling my jewelry. I must hire a lawyer and bring charges against Sir Lionel for appropriating my land. And it may be necessary to hire men to help me evict my former guardian from Hartlake Manor.”

“An ambitious scheme,” she murmured, “and perhaps more expensive to carry out than you realize. As every merchant has cause to know, court cases can drag on for years. Have you the where-withal to support yourself for that long?”

When I had described all the king’s gifts save Star of Hartlake, Mistress Pinckney was shaking her head. “Such items sound very fine indeed, but for all you propose to do, I suspect they will yield
insufficient wealth. Moreover, most lawyers will advise you to resign yourself to living under Sir Lionel Daggett’s care until you marry.”

“Never!”

“Never return to Sir Lionel?”

“And never marry, either.”

Mistress Pinckney looked thoughtful. I wondered if she was considering offering me employment as a silkwoman. “Wait here,” she said, rising. “Let me make a few inquiries.”

I heard footsteps approaching on the stairs less than a quarter of an hour later, but it was not Mistress Pinckney who entered the room. It was Rafe.

I stared at him. He was the same, and yet so different. No one would mistake him for a humble apprentice now. He looked every inch the successful merchant.

He reached for me.

I stepped back.

“You have left the queen’s service.”

“I can be of no more use to the princess.”

“Then you are free to do as you will.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “How much did your mother tell you? How much did you know of my inheritance when you asked me to marry you?”

A scowl replaced his smile. “Did you think I was after your fortune? It appears to me that any man who marries you will entangle himself in legal battles for years to come!”

“That was not why I refused you. Not entirely. I feared to bring Sir Lionel’s displeasure down upon you and your family. And perhaps the king’s, too.”

“I inherited my father’s business—he was a mercer—when he
died last year,” Rafe said. “I have sufficient wealth to protect and keep you and take the odious Sir Lionel to court, too.”

“Why would you
want
to?” I blurted out. “I’ll bring you nothing but trouble.”

His expression serious, he waited until our gazes locked before he spoke. “I fell in love with you the first time I saw you, Tamsin. I’ve never wanted to marry anyone else. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Together we’ll win back everything that is yours by right. For our children.”

The future he described was one I longed to embrace with all my heart. How could I have denied the truth for so long? I loved Rafe Pinckney. I wanted to marry him and have his children. In that moment of revelation, I could not imagine my life without him in it.

And yet . . .

“How can I?” I whispered.

“Do you care for me, Tamsin? Just a little?”

“More than a little, Rafe.” The confession was wrenched out of me.

“Then there is no impediment to our marriage.”

“There is one.” As much as I now wanted to wed Rafe, I could not agree to do so under false pretenses. Steeling myself for rejection, I took a deep breath and told him what stood between us. “I am not the innocent maid you imagine me to be. Before I left the court, I was the king’s mistress.”

Rafe’s expression turned rueful. He clasped both my hands in his. “I admit I was not happy when I heard the rumors.” He made a self-deprecating sound, almost but not quite a laugh. “I cursed fate, and the omnipotence of kings, and my own helplessness to intervene, but I never blamed you. What choice did you have? Even if the king had been willing to take no for an answer, you vowed long ago to sacrifice yourself in the princess’s cause. You are an honorable woman, and I love you all the more for it.”

“You
knew
?” I stared at him in stunned disbelief, scarcely daring to hope that he meant what he said.

The endearing grin that first drew me to him spread across Rafe’s features as he pulled me close. “In spite of what members of the royal household might like to think, there are no secrets at the Tudor court. It is the future I care about, Tamsin, not the past. Share it with me.” Then he kissed me, assuaging the last of my doubts about how he felt.

W
E WERE MARRIED
as soon as the banns could be read. It took five years to evict Sir Lionel from Hartlake Manor, but in the end we succeeded in reclaiming my inheritance. We settled there with our growing family. I told the children stories, including some about life at court, and I taught them to ride on Star of Hartlake, the girls as well as the boys.

A letter from the Spanish ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, written on September 27, 1534, reported that the king had “renewed and increased the love he formerly bore to another very handsome young lady of the Court” and that the queen had tried “to dismiss the damsel from her service.” Other letters from Chapuys reveal that this young woman was a “true friend” of the Princess (later Queen) Mary, Henry’s daughter by Catherine of Aragon, and that Queen Anne’s sister-in-law, Lady Rochford, was banished from court for quarreling with this mysterious woman in an unsuccessful attempt, at Anne’s instigation, to provoke the king into sending his mistress away.

No one knows who this “king’s damsel” really was. For the purposes of this novel, I created a young gentlewoman named Thomasine (Tamsin) Lodge. Her family, her servants, Sir Jasper Atwell, Sir Lionel Daggett, and Rafe Pinckney and his mother are all fictional characters, but the rest of the people in this novel are real, as are most of the events Tamsin narrates. In general, I’ve used the chronology of events found in David Loades’s biography of Mary Tudor, as it seems the most logical as well as the most consistent. I’ve followed Eric Ives’s account of Anne Boleyn’s life
rather than that of Retha M. Warnicke. It is to Ives that I owe my understanding of how the “game of love” was played at the court of Henry VIII. Also particularly useful were Alison Weir’s
Henry VIII and His Court
and Simon Thurley’s
The Royal Palaces of Tudor England
(source of the material on royal bathtubs). A complete list of biographies and other references used in writing this novel can be found at
http://www.KateEmersonHistoricals.com/bibliography.htm
.

In some cases, I had to choose between conflicting accounts of historical events, or make slight alterations in the time frame to fit the plot. I chose to make Sir Ralph Egerton Princess Mary’s valentine, although at least one scholar not only places a different person in this role, but argues that the event took place on a different date. I moved Anne Rede’s courtship a bit earlier than the dates on which her marriage was being discussed in extant letters. It is uncertain where Anne Boleyn was in 1526, but since she could already have been one of Catherine of Aragon’s maids of honor, I made it so. It was probably not until 1533 that the silkwomen of London competed for Anne Boleyn’s patronage, but she certainly employed someone as early as late 1531, when I have four of them vying for her favor. I did depart from Professor Ives’s research in one regard. He makes a good case for the entire affair of the “unnamed damsel” to have taken place in 1534, rather than there being two stages, one during each of two of Queen Anne’s pregnancies (1533 and 1534). For dramatic purposes, I kept the dating, mistaken though it may be, that is given in the
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII,
edited by James Gairdner in 1893.