Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (27 page)

“At most tournaments,” I said to Bessie, “the rules are carefully laid down in advance and a marshall is present to enforce them. That prevents most serious mishaps and injuries.”

Once again the king fought the duc de Longueville. Once again there was no clear victor. Then Guy rode out to face the Duke of Suffolk for a second time. I felt a chill run down my spine.

Charles Brandon was the most skilled jouster among the king’s friends. Years of practice had made him a formidable opponent. When he’d been a young man, I remembered, participating in tournaments had kept him poor. That was no doubt why he’d decided to marry a wealthy widow rather than his pregnant mistress…or me.

The armor Guy wore had come from the king’s own armory. I could not shake off the frightening notion that it might have been tampered with. There was no reason to think so. There had been no sign of trouble in the earlier bouts. The armor was cunningly jointed and padded. At most, even if a competitor took a solid hit from a lance or a sword, he should come away from a tournament with no more than a few bruises. But when Brandon and Guy took their positions at opposite ends of the course, my fingers strayed to my rosary.

A rare moment of absolute silence fell over the crowd. In the stillness, I heard Guy’s visor slam shut. His warhorse, also
borrowed from the king, pawed at the ground. Then there was nothing but the thundering of hooves as the two combatants galloped toward each other.

Wood thudded against metal. Guy’s spear shattered into three pieces against Brandon’s breastplate. A second later, Brandon’s lance struck Guy’s helmet just at the edge of the eye opening in the visor. Guy’s head jerked back.

I was on my feet, my hands pressed tight against my lips to hold back a cry of distress. Had the visor been properly fastened? Even if the tip of the lance had not penetrated, if so small a thing as a splinter worked its way inside, it could do most terrible damage.

All around me spectators stood, cheering for the Duke of Suffolk. Shouts of “Finish him off!” and “Kill the Frenchman!” filled the air.

Guy swayed in his saddle but kept his seat. His horse carried him to the other end of the course and disappeared behind the row of tents set up for the combatants. Trembling, I sank onto my cushion.

Under cover of the noise, Bessie leaned close to my ear. “You should go to him.”

I shook my head. “Women are not permitted to interfere in tournaments.” Neither would it be a good idea to call more attention to myself when feelings ran so high against the French. Will’s idea had worked, but only to a point. Many in the crowd still wanted blood.

“If you will not go yourself, then send one of the Lady Mary’s pages to inquire after your friend.” Kindhearted to a fault, Bessie found one of the boys for me. Under cover of the end of the tournament—without a mêlée—and the announcement that the Duke of Suffolk was champion of the day, a young lad in livery slipped away from the grandstand unnoticed.

While I waited anxiously for his return from the tents with news, Queen Catherine, who was the avowed enemy of all things French, announced that 114 lances had been broken that day. She presented Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, with a jewel-encrusted gold ring.

Guy’s reward was a visit from the king’s surgeons and apothecaries.

“Y
OU ARE FORTUNATE
not to have lost an eye!” I said to Guy as he lay on the field bed. He had been moved from Longueville’s pavilion to the duke’s lodgings, into the tiny, windowless cubicle he’d claimed for a bedchamber when he’d first taken up residence at Greenwich Palace

Guy made no reply.

“His ears are still ringing,” Ivo Jumelle said. “He cannot hear you.”

“I intend to remain until I am certain everything necessary has been done for him.”

I moved closer to the bed, noting that although it had the usual tester, ceiler, and bed curtains, the bedstead folded to make it portable. The duke had brought into captivity all the furnishings he’d taken with him on campaign.

Guy’s face was a trelliswork of scratches, gouges, and bruises. There was swelling around both eyes and along the line of his jaw. I swallowed convulsively as I realized it was not just his sight that the lance had endangered. The wooden tip had slid upward beneath the visor, beneath the fringe of hair that covered Guy’s forehead, nicking the center of that expanse. A tiny bit more force and it would have penetrated deeply enough to kill.

Without warning, I collapsed at the foot of the bed, my knees too weak to hold me upright any longer. With fingers that felt cold as ice I reached for Guy’s hand.

“It distresses you that he is injured?” Ivo watched me with an unnerving intensity, head cocked to one side like a curious bird.

To show too much concern was unseemly, but I was strangely reluctant to release my grip. Then Guy squeezed my fingers and I forgot all about the boy’s presence. Ivo was the duke’s servant, no doubt some gentleman’s son, but of little consequence himself.

Guy’s eyes slitted open. His gaze caught mine and held. I stared back, trying to read his emotions, but the damage to his face made that impossible. When he finally spoke it was only to ask for something to drink.

After I helped him take several swallows of barley water, I settled myself on a stool pulled close to the head of the bed. “Sleep now, Guy.” I told him. “Rest is the best cure for injuries.”

“Your good luck charm kept me safe.” His hoarse voice was gravelly but strong.

“Not safe enough.”

“You must take it back. To protect you.” To please him, I retrieved the dragon pendant from his discarded clothing.

“You need not keep watch over me.”

“I know I
need
not. I wish to stay.” I settled once more on the stool.

“The duke—”

“Longueville is with the king and has no need of me.”

I hid my disgust. The duke had abandoned his half brother, who had bled and might have died for him. He was off carousing with King Henry and his companions, celebrating a successful afternoon in the lists. The enmity between English knights and French had been defused, as Will had predicted, by spilling blood. Guy’s blood.

“Talk to me, then,” Guy said. “Take my mind off the throbbing.”

“Is the pain too great? The apothecary left a vial of poppy syrup.”

“Have you ever had a bad tooth? I feel as if I have a whole head full of them.”

I dosed him with poppy syrup first, then began to talk, recalling random memories of Amboise in our shared childhood. “It seems to me,” I said, “that there was a constant parade of workmen coming and going along that winding road that led from the village up to the château.”

“The workmen built that, too—a continuous circular ramp that runs all the way from town to castle, wide enough for wagons.”

“The moat had no water in it,” I recalled.

“King Charles’s courtiers used it as a tennis play.” He winced.

“Is the pain—?”

He waved away my concern. “It will pass, and already I grow sleepy. What else do you remember about Amboise?”

“Courtiers’ houses lay clustered below the walls of the fortress. When I was very small, my father and I used to walk past them and make up stories about the people who lived there.”

“I remember him, I think.” Guy’s words began to slur and I sensed that he would soon fall asleep. I smoothed his brow with one hand, relieved when the skin felt no warmer than was normal.

Amboise. What else
did
I recall? We could see Tours cathedral in the distance, off to the west, and the forest of Blois in the opposite direction. The main route to reach either was the river Loire. Water traffic had been as steady along that byway as it was on the Thames, with a constant procession of barges and ships bringing all manner of merchandise to the royal court.

“There was a zoo,” I murmured. “I had forgotten that. King Charles kept lions in captivity. And once we went to see a rope
walker perform on a rope strung between two towers of the château. He did somersaults and danced and hung by his teeth, all high above the ground.”

I glanced at Guy, wondering if he remembered that day. He was deeply asleep. He lay with one arm flung wide and the other resting on his chest. His face, in repose, looked younger. Even the bruising seemed less severe.

Although I knew I should leave, I remained where I was, watching over him through the evening. Only once, when I heard low voices beyond the door, did I step away. Ivo was the only one there when I peeped out. Frowning, he was turning an oilskin-wrapped packet over and over in his hands.

“For the duke?” I asked in a whisper.

He shook his head. “For me. From my father. This is the first letter he has sent to me since we were captured, although I have written faithfully to him.” Looking cautiously pleased, he broke the seal.

I left him in private in the outer room, where he and Longueville’s four other attendants slept on pallets, to read his father’s letter, but the door did not completely close behind me. A moment later I heard Ivo mutter something to himself, an oath, I thought.

I went to the door. “Ivo? Is something wrong?”

“No, Mistress Jane.”

I studied his pale face. “Something is troubling you.”

“It…it is just that my father has asked me to do something I do not wish to do.” The paleness vanished beneath a wave of color. My questions plainly embarrassed him and he was too polite to remind me that what the letter contained was none of my business. I apologized for disturbing him and returned to Guy’s bedside.

I stayed the night. There was no need, but it was no trouble and I doubted anyone would remark upon my presence in his room when my own lodgings were so near at hand. I fell asleep, head pillowed on arms resting on one side of the field bed.

I woke to discover that my headdress had fallen off. Guy’s fingers rested gently on my hair.

11

T
he court moved from Greenwich to nearby Eltham in early May. Once I knew Guy would recover from his injuries, and could travel with us, I was happy enough to go. In our new lodgings I had, as before, two rooms for my own. When I was not on duty with the princess, I spent long, lazy afternoons escorting the duc de Longueville and Guy around the place where I had passed so much of my childhood. We ventured into every corner of the old redbrick palace, from the royal lodgings in the donjon in the inner court to the great hall to the grassy mount overlooking the moat where the royal swans glided, their collars glinting in the sun.

We promenaded along Eltham’s tiled floors, pausing to gaze out the glazed windows toward the forested deer park that surrounded the place. We laughed and talked of inconsequential things. By mutual consent, we avoided visiting the tiltyard.

Early on a morning in mid-June, we three rode from Eltham to Greenwich together. There Longueville and Guy went aboard the barge already occupied by the king, the queen, and the princess. King Henry was a splendid sight in breeches and vest of cloth-of-gold and scarlet hose. He wore a whistle on a gold chain around his neck, the insignia of supreme commander of the navy. Beside him stood Queen Catherine, visibly pregnant.

I boarded a smaller barge, along with the lesser ladies of the court.

Even a small royal barge offered every comfort, from bread and cheese to stave off hunger to soft cushions to sit upon. The chatter of the other gentlewomen was loud and good humored as we set off for Erith, a village located on the Thames between Greenwich and Gravesend. It was home to a royal dockyard. Soon barges filled the river from one bank to the other, creating a magnificent pageant. The weather was perfect for such an expedition and for the launching of His Grace’s great warship, the thousand-ton
Henry Grace à Dieu.

“See that man standing with the king?” I overheard Meg Guildford ask her sister, Elizabeth. “He is the new ambassador from King Louis.”

“Another one?”

“A significant one,” Meg said. “Harry says he’s too important to have been sent just to arrange a ransom, even for a duke.”

“Why is he here, then?”

Meg whispered her answer, but I could guess what she’d said when Elizabeth gave a little squeal of excitement.

I moved away, standing apart so that I could watch the two sisters and also the men on the king’s barge. The creak and slap of twenty-four oars and the steady drumbeat that kept the rowers’ rhythm smooth and steady momentary blocked out the rise and
fall of feminine voices. Small waves broke against the side of the barge as we moved through the water.

I had met the new ambassador from France earlier that morning. Meg was correct. He had not come to negotiate Longueville’s ransom. He was in England to make a formal offer for the Lady Mary.

The negotiations had been conducted in secret for months, offer and counteroffer. The last I’d heard from Longueville, King Henry held firm, saying he would not sign a peace treaty or seal it with his sister’s hand in marriage for less than 1,500,000 gold crowns; English control of Thérouanne, Tournai, and Saint-Quentin; and an annual pension of 50,000 ecus. King Louis had balked at those demands.

Carried on the freshening breeze, a female voice I did not recognize said, “I heard the king said he’d accept an offer of 100,000 crowns per annum if King Louis would take the older sister instead of the younger.”

So, the “secret” was out. I wondered if the king himself had leaked the news in order to gauge reaction at court. Skirting the brazier where sweet herbs burned to mask the most offensive of the odors wafting up from the water’s surface, I moved closer to Meg, hoping to hear what else was generally known.

A gust of wind caught at my skirts, making them billow perilously close to the embers. I had to twitch the fabric out of danger and sidestep, but neither sister noticed.

“I hear the queen of Scotland is not only willing but eager for the match,” Meg said.

Elizabeth smirked. “I hear she’s grown stout and coarse featured living in that heathen land.”

“All the more reason not to be choosy,” one of the queen’s maids of honor chimed in. Several of them clustered close, a flock of brightly colored birds pecking at the crumbs of rumor.