Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (7 page)

I strained to see King Philip. I had heard him called “Philip the Handsome,” and sometimes “Philip the Fair,” and in French, “Philippe le Beau.” At first glance, he did not impress me as particularly imposing. He was only of medium height and heavily built. He was also shrouded in black—hood, gown, even harness, were all of that color, as were the garments of the dozen or so noblemen he’d brought with him.

“So that is the king.” I let my disappointment show.

“He is a very important man,” Francesca protested. “He is heir to the Holy Roman Empire and ruler in his own right of many Austrian possessions along the Danube and of the lands he inherited from his mother in the Netherlands. He is not just king of Castile, but Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, and Count of Flanders.”

Then he should dress in a more regal fashion,
I thought. In contrast to King Philip’s unrelenting black, King Henry wore a purple velvet gown and hood. His heavy gold chain had a diamond pendant that reflected the pale winter light.

“I wonder what courtiers he has brought with him,” Francesca murmured, leaning out at a precarious angle in an attempt to see them better.

“What does it matter who they are? They will not stay long.” King Henry had many entertainments planned, but even if King Philip attended every event, the festivities were unlikely to go on for more than a few weeks. If nothing else stopped them, they would cease at the beginning of Lent. This year, Ash Wednesday fell on the twenty-fifth day of February.

Francesca lowered her voice. “Have you ever suffered misfortune, Mistress Popyncourt?”

I frowned. “Have you?”

Her nod was so vigorous that it almost dislodged her headdress. “Like you, I was chosen to serve royalty and my family was glad of it, thinking that a rich marriage would be sure to follow.”

I did not disabuse her of the notion that we shared this particular background.

“The death of Prince Arthur was a great blow to my mistress.”

“As it was to us all.”

Francesca directed a wary glance at Catherine of Aragon, who stood next to the Lady Mary to watch the spectacle below. Catherine and Mary looked more like sisters by birth than sisters by marriage. Catherine, too, had red-gold hair and was no taller than ten-year-old Mary. Black velvet flattered her rosy complexion and gray eyes.

Reassured that the princess dowager was paying no attention to us, Francesca leaned so close to me that I could smell the lavender scent she’d used to perfume her body. “Her Grace cannot provide for her ladies as she should. Her father, King Ferdinand, refuses to release the remainder of her dowry to King Henry, and your king has been so miserly with our upkeep that we have been forced to live in poverty. We wear rags on our backs and have no hope of escape back to Spain.”

“You are scarcely in rags now.” I gave Francesca’s headdress and cloak a significant look. Although the gown beneath might be plainly cut, it was made of expensive velvet.

But I could not help but feel sorry for her. Under
my
cloak—pale gray with rabbit-fur trim—my velvet gown was a flattering peach color with close-fitting undersleeves, cut and slashed at the wrist, and long, wide oversleeves decorated with bands of embroidery. The skirt was long and loose, with a comfortable kirtle and chemise beneath, and it flattered my waist and hips as one of those
stiff
verdugados
could never hope to. It was the most beautiful garment I had ever owned, and I knew I looked very fine in it.

“Our good fortune will not last,” Francesca predicted with gloomy certainty. “I know what will happen to Princess Catherine when King Philip goes away again. She will be forgotten. She and her ladies will be worse off than before.”

“Why do you confide in me?” I asked, afraid she was about to criticize King Henry again. It was dangerous to speak so frankly and almost as unwise to listen to such sentiments.

“You have the king’s ear,” Francesca said. “You can persuade him to treat us better.”

“I have no influence over King Henry. I am like a poor relation, tolerated in a gentleman’s home out of charity.” Unsettled, I pretended great interest in the scene below, hoping she would say no more of this.

“Ah,” Francesca murmured. “Not unlike the princess dowager.” To my great relief, she walked away.

In the lower ward, minstrels played as gloriously attired courtiers rode into the castle. They’d spared no expense to make a grand display. There were splendid jewels and bright colors—gold and crimson and blue predominated. The members of the king’s household added to the sparkle. Livery badges with golden letters hung suspended from their long green-and-white-striped sleeves and reflected the sun almost as brilliantly as did the jewels.

My eyes narrowed when I recognized a familiar face among them. Charles Brandon had traded his old livery for the king’s colors. I had not seen him, not even at a distance, since the night the messenger from King Philip arrived at Greenwich. But his distinctive garments told me he’d joined the king’s spears, that group of gentlemen who were charged with protecting King Henry’s person on an even more intimate level than the yeomen of the guard.

I saw Charles Brandon next, again at a distance, at the first of the festivities King Henry had arranged to entertain his guest. Pretending to ignore him, I stared at King Philip instead.

The king had the blond hair so common among the Flemish. My own father had had the same coloring. I wondered if Philip dressed entirely in black to emphasize this feature. His face was handsome, but there was a hard, calculating look in his eyes when his gaze swept over the assembled English courtiers. Those same eyes acquired a lascivious gleam when he looked at the ladies, all except his sister-in-law, Catherine of Aragon.

The princess dowager was seated near her brother-in-law, but Philip for the most part ignored her presence. So did King Henry. Only the Prince of Wales paid attention to her. In fact, he stared, a look of adoration on his face.

The king of Castile’s minstrels performed, followed by the antics of John, King Philip’s French fool, and the Prince of Wales’s fool, Goose. Then the princess dowager performed a Spanish dance with one of her ladies. It was not Francesca, for she was too tall to look well dancing with a woman as petite as the princess dowager.

When they had finished, King Henry called upon the Lady Mary to dance. I was her partner, so it fell to me to take the gentleman’s part. As a man would, I removed my glove and offered her my hand. After all the years of lessons at Eltham, we fell easily into the familiar slow and stately steps of “The King’s Pavane.”

“Well done, Mary,” King Henry said as the last strains of music faded away. “Well done, Jane. Sit, my dears. Both of you. There, Jane.” He gestured toward a stool just outside the area covered by the cloth of estate. “Rest yourself.”

This unexpected consideration was most welcome. Now that the performance was over, my limbs had begun to tremble in reaction. I was no novice at the pavane but never before had I danced in front
of two kings and the entire court. For the next few minutes I simply sat, letting my heart rate slow and trying to catch my breath.

It was the sense of being stared at, long after everyone should have lost interest in me, that made me suddenly self-conscious. I surveyed the gathered company and caught sight of Charles Brandon just turning away. Had it been his gaze I’d felt?

Then I realized that someone else was watching me. Goose, Prince Henry’s fool, waggled his fingers in greeting and I smiled back at him. The man standing next to him glanced my way, too. At first I thought him a stranger. Dark skinned and wearing court dress, I supposed he was one of the Spaniards in King Philip’s retinue. Only after he sent a second, almost furtive look in my direction did I suddenly recognize him.

Seeing my start of surprise, the man ducked his head and walked swiftly out of the hall. I left my stool and circled the chamber until I reached Goose’s side.

Goose doffed his hat and bowed. “I fear you arrive too late, Mistress Popyncourt. Your secret admirer has fled.” For once, his odd, high-pitched voice did not make me want to laugh.

“Was that one of the king’s savages?”

“Bless me! It has eyes to see!” I took his answer to mean yes.

“How astonishing. Are the other two here, as well?”

“One died,” Goose reminded me. “Oh, woe is me.”

I remembered then that the keeper King Henry had assigned to care for the savages from the New World had dressed the remaining two in gentlemen’s attire and attempted to teach them English. Instead of learning the language, they had stopped speaking entirely. Everyone assumed their silence was because they were little better than dumb animals, incapable of being educated. But unless I was much mistaken, I had just seen the gleam of intelligence, as well as a hint of amusement, in the eyes that had been watching me.

“After so many years at court, both men must understand English tolerably well,” I mused aloud. “No doubt they can speak it, too…if they want to.”

“Hard to learn a foreign tongue,” Goose said.

“Not so very difficult.” A laugh caught in my throat. Like the dwarf and the giantess and the rest of the king’s curiosities, those savages had been taken from their homeland, brought to a foreign country where they did not understand the language, and kept at court to serve at the whim and pleasure of the royal family. For the first time I realized that the same could be said of me.

Pondering this revelation, I slowly made my way back to my stool and resumed my seat. The king had just announced that his daughter would perform on the lute. I welcomed the distraction.

The tune she played was familiar to everyone at the English court. It had been written to celebrate Henry Tudor’s marriage to Elizabeth of York and the end of civil war. The lyrics asked what flower was most fragrant and colorful and followed that question with a host of possibilities, each with their attributes—marjoram, lavender, columbine, primrose, violet, daisy, gillyflower, rosemary, chamomile, borage, and savory. It the end, the rose was declared to be above all other herbs and flowers, the “fair fresh flower full of beauty,” whatever its color. The song concluded with the words “I love the rose, both red and white.”

As the courtiers applauded both the sentiment and the princess’s performance, Princess Mary handed her lute to me and signaled for a manservant to bring in a rectangular box with a keyboard and thirty-two strings.

“Do you know why that instrument is called a virginal?” King Henry asked his guest. “It is because, like a virgin, it soothes with a sweet and gentle voice.”

King Philip smiled appreciatively. Prince Henry looked bored.
He grew restless whenever he was not the center of attention and fidgeted throughout his sister’s rendition of “The Maiden’s Song.” As soon as she lifted her hands from the keyboard, he leapt from the dais and called for the musicians to play a canary—a pavane designed to demonstrate a dancer’s skill. Then he turned to me.

“Come, Jane. Let us show them how it is done.”

He did not give me time to think, but caught my hand and pulled me to my feet. As the music began, he danced me to the far end of the hall, then withdrew to the point he’d started from, so that we were left facing each other from opposite ends of the room.

Panic swamped me. I swallowed hard. What should I do next? I’d memorized dozens of complicated floor patterns, from pavanes to
passamezzos
to
salte vellos,
but in that moment I could not remember any of them.

In the canary, first the gentleman and then the lady perform solo variations on the steps, dancing toward each other and then retreating. I had a choice between using steps I’d been taught by our dancing master or inventing new ones. Most people favored the latter course, priding themselves on the ingeniousness of what they created. Watching Prince Henry caper, clearly showing off, I realized that relying on learned steps was better. The simpler I kept my dance, the more my partner’s skill would shine.

The Prince of Wales was as enthusiastic a dancer as he was an archer, a wrestler, and a tennis player. He excelled at all sports. In dancing, he had been known to throw off his gown and perform in doublet and hose, the better to execute high leaps. He did not go that far on this occasion, but his energetic capering was both skilled and athletic.

Everyone applauded when the performance drew to a close. Afterward, I was in great demand as a partner and the prince asked his sister-in-law to dance. He had been showing off for Catherine,
I thought. It was an open secret among those of us who had been raised with the royal children that he was enamored of his late brother’s widow.

They made an attractive couple. Catherine was some six years older than Henry, but she was so tiny that she looked younger. His attitude toward her was both loving and protective.

Later, after the two kings withdrew, taking the prince with them, the dancing continued. By the time another hour passed, I was on the brink of exhaustion. I retreated to a secluded corner to rest, and it was there that Charles Brandon found me.

“Mistress Popyncourt,” he said.

“Master Brandon.” I expected him to ask me to dance. Instead he suggested that we go out for a breath of fresh air and to talk awhile.

When a servant had fetched my cloak, Charles wrapped it closely around me, tying the laces with his own hands. Then he took my arm and guided me along one passage and through another with the sureness of one who knew Windsor Castle well. We emerged in one of the smaller courtyards.

I shivered. It was much colder out of doors than it had been inside. Charles chuckled and slipped an arm around my waist to guide me over an icy patch.

“Prince Arthur once remarked that it was a great pity there were no galleries or gardens to walk in at Windsor,” he said. “I fear there has been little improvement in that regard since his death.”

Each step we took on the frozen cobblestones produced a crunching sound as a thin layer of ice cracked under our weight. A pale sun still lit the sky, but its beams held no warmth. I was powerfully tempted to burrow against Charles’s side to absorb his heat.