Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (80 page)

“She will want to hear my news. It concerns the impending arrest of her cousin.”

Lady Rochford blanched. “Cousin? Which cousin?”

“Sir Edmund Knyvett.”

The other woman’s obvious relief made Nan wonder who she had supposed Nan meant. The queen had a large family. There were Howards on her father’s side, and her mother—her mother had been born a Culpepper.

Nan was relieved to find Her Grace alone in her bedchamber when Lady Rochford at last permitted her to enter. In a few terse sentences, she told Queen Catherine what had transpired at the tennis court.
Catherine listened and expressed concern, but she refused to intervene on Sir Edmund’s behalf.

“The king has been in a volatile mood of late,” she said by way of an excuse. Catherine toyed with the gem-encrusted brooch pinned to her bosom. “Perhaps you should ask the king yourself when he returns to Hampton Court.”

Catherine would like that, Nan thought. She’d be delighted if the king lost his temper with a woman who had once been his mistress. Although she had no cause, Catherine was apparently still jealous of Nan.

“I have not Your Grace’s … influence with King Henry,” Nan said carefully. “Surely Your Grace will be able to find an opportunity to plead for your cousin, perhaps when the king is in a mellow mood.”

“Perhaps my cousin should consider asking me himself. Go and fetch my cloak, Nan. I have a sudden craving to walk in the gallery for exercise.” As far as the queen was concerned, the subject was closed.

J
UST AS
W
ILL
Parr had predicted, Sir Edmund Knyvett was brought before the Court of the Verge in the Great Hall of the palace and sentenced to have his right hand amputated and to forfeit his lands and possessions for having drawn blood at the royal court. On the morning the sentence was to be carried out, courtiers crowded around the windows overlooking the appointed courtyard. Nan stood next to Anne Herbert, fighting the urge to bolt.

Two forms had been set up. One held instruments and supplies, the other wine, ale, and beer.

“For the witnesses,” Anne explained.

“Oh, yes, let us drink to the horror!”

“Hush, Nan. There’s still hope of a pardon. And if not, well, there is a sergeant surgeon in attendance.”

“This is no surgical amputation.” And even with a skilled surgeon, the removal of a limb often led to death from loss of blood or from fever. She watched, wide eyed, as the sergeant of the woodyard brought forth a mallet and a block.

“A sergeant of the larder will set the blade right on the joint,” Anne said. “A master cook will wield the knife. When the cutting is done, a sergeant farrier will use searing irons to sear the veins.”

Nan looked at the pan of fire used to heat them. A chafer of water stood nearby—to cool the ends, she supposed. And a yeoman of the chandlery was in attendance, ready to supply sear cloths to dress the stump. The only person whose presence Nan could not comprehend with chilling clarity was the sergeant of the poultry. “Why has he brought a cock?”

“The bird will be beheaded on the same block and with the same knife. To test the equipment, I presume.” Anne did not seem unduly upset by what they were about to witness.

Nan’s stomach churned. She tasted bile. When the knight marshall brought Sir Edmund out, she pressed her fists to her mouth.

Sir Edmund was in shirt and breeches, wearing neither doublet nor gown in spite of the February chill in the courtyard. His face was as white as the patches of snow on the cobblestones.

Sir Edmund went down on his knees to confess his crime. In a last, desperate effort to save his hand, he begged the knight marshall to go and plead with the king for mercy on his behalf. “Ask His Grace if I might lose my left hand rather than the right,” Sir Edmund called after him as he entered the palace, “for if my right hand be spared, I may hereafter do much good service to His Grace.”

Proceedings halted. Nan prayed for Sir Edmund’s deliverance but, in her heart, she knew that it was not God’s mercy that he needed. It was the king’s.

After what seemed an eternity, the knight marshall returned from speaking to King Henry, who had come back from London the previous day. “His Majesty is impressed with your loyalty, Sir Edmund. He will grant your request.” He turned to the master cook. “Take off his left hand.”

Nan could not help herself. She pressed closer to the window, watching in sick fascination as Sir Edmund’s hand was positioned on the block.
The blade was aligned. The cook took hold of the knife’s handle. A thin line of red appeared on Sir Edmund’s wrist.

At the last possible moment, a man ran into the courtyard—a messenger from King Henry. “On the king’s command,” he shouted, “you are to stay the execution of the punishment until after dinner!”

Nan rested her forehead against the window glass. Not a pardon. A delay. She had underestimated the king’s capacity for cruelty.

Three hours passed while the king dined. Then His Grace made his way in person to the courtyard where Sir Edmund and all the officers still waited. They must be nearly frozen by now, Nan thought, resuming her post by the window. She heard someone come up beside her but did not turn around to see who it was. She assumed Anne Herbert had returned.

King Henry moved with slow, ponderous steps, using a staff to help him walk. He had rarely been without the accessory since the winter began. “Have you anything to say to me, rogue?”

Sir Edmund spoke in a low, trembling voice, beaten down by fear and the cold. “I desire Your Grace pardon my right hand and take the left, so that I might hereafter do such good service to Your Grace as shall please you to appoint.”

A smug smile appeared on the king’s face. At her side, Nan heard a little sigh of relief. She glanced at her companion. Only then did she see that it was not Anne Herbert who stood next to her. It was the queen. Nan started to drop into a curtsy, but Catherine caught her arm to keep her upright. “His Majesty is about to speak. Listen.”

“In consideration of your gentle heart, Edmund, and your long service to the Crown, I grant you pardon. You shall lose neither hand, land, nor goods, but shall go free at liberty.”

Catherine clapped her hands in delight. “See how His Grace grants my slightest wish!”

“His Majesty loves you, Your Grace,” Nan whispered. As relieved as she was that Sir Edmund had been spared, the queen’s display of jubilation filled her with dismay. Without stopping to think how her warning
would be received, Nan blurted out, “His Grace once loved your cousin with equal passion.”

Instantly infuriated, Queen Catherine slapped Nan’s face. “Insolent wench! All the world knows that Anne Boleyn bewitched him.”

“And that she was unfaithful,” Nan added in a whisper. Her cheek stung, but she could not seem to stop speaking. “Queen Anne was beheaded for indiscretion. There was no pardon for her.”

Catherine’s face twisted into an ugly sneer. “Taking lovers was not her greatest mistake. It was that she railed at His Grace and made his life a misery. I never contradict him, only sweetly persuade him to do my bidding. I know how to please a man.”

“Your Grace, have a care! There are ears everywhere.”

But Queen Catherine seemed to lack both common sense and any instinct for self-preservation. “I am queen,” she boasted. “I do as I please.”

It was Catherine’s good fortune that, this time, only Lady Rochford, lurking a short distance away, was close enough to overhear.

A
S PART OF
the usual revelry that preceded Lent, there were masques at court on two consecutive nights. The king failed to attend either.

“Have you heard?” Dorothy whispered on the second night, after she and Nan were closed into the relative privacy of their bed.

“Heard what?” Nan was exhausted from the dancing that had followed the masque. Sir Edmund, having survived a close brush with disaster, was more importune than ever about making her his mistress. There were times when, out of equal parts pity and loneliness, she was tempted to give in.

“The king’s ulcer suddenly became clogged. It has closed up and is causing him great pain. He has a high fever, too.”

Nan prayed for the king’s deliverance. His heir was a child. If King Henry died, England would be plunged into chaos. Worse, there would be no queen at court. If there was no queen, there would be no place for a maid of honor.

The next day, Queen Catherine was banned from her husband’s bedchamber.

“The king refuses to see anyone, Your Grace,” Tom Culpepper told her. “And I doubt Your Grace would want to see the king. At one point, His Grace’s face turned black. The doctors feared for his life until one of the surgeons drained fluid from the ulcer. Then the swelling went down and His Grace’s health improved considerably, but not, I fear, his temper.”

“Word of Henry’s violent outbursts has already reached us,” the queen said.

“He even railed at me,” Culpepper admitted with a rueful grin. “His Grace called me a lying timeserver and a flatterer who looked only to my own profit. But then he also said he knew what his councilors were plotting and that he would take care that their projects should not succeed.”

“It is the pain talking,” Anne Herbert murmured in Nan’s ear. “What a good thing it is that men do not have to endure childbirth. They would be quite unfit to live with if they did.” Anne had left court briefly the previous year to give birth to her first child and considered herself an expert on the subject.

“His Grace’s misery is so great,” Culpepper continued, “that he will not even allow music to be played in his bedchamber.”

That news alarmed Nan more than anything else she had heard. King Henry loved music. He’d even written several songs himself. That he found his musicians annoying and preferred silence to the distraction of their playing was deeply disturbing.

Culpepper lowered his voice, but that only made the maids of honor stretch their ears. “His Grace bemoaned the loss of Lord Cromwell. He said that his councilors, upon light pretext and by false accusations, conspired to turn His Grace against the most faithful servant he ever had.”

How strange, Nan thought. Did the king truly feel regret? Could it be that His Grace was capable of admitting he could make mistakes?

Nan pondered that possibility during the next ten days. All the while, the king kept to his rooms and refused entry to all but a few trusted
gentlemen. Nan was unable to go to him, unable to ask him to pardon Lord Lisle.

His pretty young wife was also kept out of the king’s apartments. More alarmingly, courtiers were sent home in droves. Those who remained sank into a gloom that was the equal of the king’s.

But then, with as much suddenness as His Grace’s health had failed him, he was himself again. He summoned Queen Catherine. He was ready to plan her long-delayed official entry into London.

N
ED
C
ORBETT SECRETLY
returned to England a few weeks after he ran Sir Gregory Botolph to ground. He chose yet another new name for himself and stayed well away from court, but he was not content without employment. When he heard of a wine merchant’s widow who needed a secretary, he decided that such a position had possibilities.

Ned expected to be interviewed by an aged crone who had depended upon her late husband for everything—someone Ned could flatter and impress. The woman seated behind a table piled high with ledgers and correspondence did not fit that image.

She was young, no older than Ned. Even in the unrelieved black of mourning dress, she was attractive. Her skin was milky white, her figure was rounded in all the right places, and her eyes were the exact color of violets.

Once he got over his surprise, he also recognized shrewd intelligence in those eyes. The widow was examining him every bit as thoroughly as he’d categorized her attributes. Sending a taut smile his way, she gestured for him to sit.

Intrigued, he complied. She had questions. He answered them, most of them honestly, faltering only when she demanded to know if he was a displaced priest.

“No monastery would have taken me,” he told her, and dared a wink.

She blinked, then slowly smiled. “You are wondering why I asked. As it happens, most of the applicants for this position have been monks turned out to fend for themselves when their monasteries were dissolved.
They were pensioned off, but the paltry sums they were allotted are not enough to keep body and soul together. I feel sorry for such men, but I do not want to employ one.”

“Why is that, madam?” Ned asked.

“As a rule, they do not approve of women, especially women who wish to manage their own businesses.”

“I have no such failing. I am ready and willing to assist you.” He’d quite enjoy working for her.

“Not all men are so open-minded. Indeed, most of those I have encountered believe that women are incapable of anything more complicated than brewing, baking, and needlework.”

“That is shortsighted of them. I have been privileged to observe many accomplished women in my … travels. I am certain that you can succeed at anything you choose.”

“You show a remarkable degree of confidence in someone you have only just met.”

Ned grinned. “I am in need of a job, madam. But though I say it myself, I am also an excellent judge of character.” The smile faded when he remembered Sir Gregory Botolph. “I did make a mistake once, but it is not one I am ever likely to repeat.”

Her stare bored into him, as if she were attempting to look at his soul. He had to fight to keep from squirming, but he met her intense scrutiny with surface calm until she dropped her gaze to the papers in front of her on the desk.

“Do I meet with your approval, madam?”

“Have you wife or children?”

“No.”

“A mistress?”

“Not at present.” Ned narrowed his eyes at her. “What has that to do with employment as a secretary?”

“I require one thing more,” she said bluntly. “In order to ensure that the business my husband left me continues to prosper, I require a husband.”

*  *  *

I
N MID
-A
PRIL, SHORTLY
after the court moved to Greenwich Palace, a sickness ravaged the land. For some it was no more than a mild stomach complaint—Queen Catherine mistakenly believed herself to be with child when she came down with it—while others became deathly ill. Tom Culpepper was among them. So was Nan’s oldest brother, John Bassett.