The King's Damsel (26 page)

O
n the first day of September in the year of our Lord 1532, Lady Anne Rochford, formerly known as Mistress Anne Boleyn, was created Marquess of Pembroke in her own right in a ceremony at Windsor Castle. She did not forget that I was the one who’d suggested that elevation into the peerage might make her more fit to meet the king of France. When she increased the number of her maids of honor, she rewarded me with a promotion.

The concubine chose blue and purple as her new livery colors. She redecorated her rooms at court. But she was far from content. She’d wanted more. She had already waited years to become England’s queen.

The king talked openly of marrying his new peeress. The lady marquess herself made no secret of that fact that she hoped to be queen by the middle of the month. But matters did not fall out quite as she expected. Public sentiment continued to oppose their marriage and the pope continued to balk at annulling King Henry’s marriage to Queen Catherine.

As the lady marquess’s moods became more erratic, she took out
her frustrations on her servants. Her voice, at other times so pleasant, went high and shrill at the least provocation. She screamed orders and threw things when she was not obeyed swiftly enough. I soon became adept at ducking flying objects, but I had my ears boxed twice for impertinence.

In this time of upheaval and uncertainty, only the ties I maintained with Princess Mary kept me anchored. I did not dare make friends in the lady marquess’s household. Any one of them might betray me. I could not even confide fully in Edyth, for she was a simple woman and might, in all innocence, say too much to the wrong person. Instead, I let her believe I was carrying on an inappropriate and illicit love affair with Rafe Pinckney as my excuse for meeting with him so often.

As Rafe had predicted, Mistress Wilkinson was not averse to accepting his assistance when she delivered silk ribbons and other trimmings to the court. Wherever and whenever we could, he and I exchanged news, although there was often little to share. To the concubine’s frustration, matters remained in flux. Long stretches passed in which nothing changed at all.

The tiltyard at Greenwich provided an ideal place for several of our clandestine meetings. When it was deserted, we were assured of privacy. When there were knights practicing at the barriers or the ring, enough people crowded into the stands to watch that our presence went unnoticed.

“The princess is at Baynard’s Castle,” Rafe said on a sunny afternoon in late September as we pretended to watch two competitors ride at each other with blunted lances.

“In London?” I had heard nothing of this.

He nodded. “She arrived yesterday.”

“Will she come to court, do you think?”

“Maria sent word that Her Grace has been invited by the king to see his new palace, the one His Grace is building near York Place.”

“I know something of that. The lady marquess is much displeased by King Henry’s plans.” I could not hide my smile, remembering how she’d ranted and raved when she’d heard of them. “The king intends to use the new palace as a London residence for the royal children, both Mary and Henry Fitzroy.”

Rafe did not return my smile. “As if King Henry regards them both as bastards?”

“I had not thought of it that way. Well, then, the princess must make a special effort to charm her father when she has the opportunity. Warn her that she must avoid angering him. It would be best that she make no mention at all of her mother, no matter how great her longing to ask the king for permission to visit the queen.”

“I agree.”

Our eyes met. Somehow, during these brief meetings, widely separated as they were, we had come to understand each other very well. There were times when we almost seemed to read each other’s thoughts. Gazes locked, I felt myself swaying closer to him and wishing that the tale I’d spun for Edyth’s sake were true.

The clash of swords from the tiltyard pulled me back from the brink. I hastily drew the hood of my cloak over my head and turned away. “I have been gone from the lady marquess’s lodgings too long,” I mumbled, and fled.

It was the next day, as I was adjusting my mistress’s new French hood over her long, thick black hair, that she broached the same subject Rafe and I had been discussing—the princess’s plans to spend an afternoon in her father’s company.

“I do not like it that Henry wants to be alone with her,” she grumbled.

“Now, Anne, you know you are the one he loves,” Lady Mary Rochford said. “Let him have his walk in the fields with his daughter. It will do you no harm.”

“It is not the walking I mind, but the talking they will do at the same time.” She scowled at her reflection in the looking glass. “I want to know what they say to each other and I do not think Henry will tell me, especially if his cat of a daughter spills poison into his ear.”

At the mention of poison, I started and dropped the hairpins I’d been collecting from the floor. The lady marquess turned to look at me, annoyance writ large on her countenance. But after a moment, she began to smile. That second expression unnerved me even more than the first.

“Tamsin,” she purred, “you served the princess for many years.”

“Before I had any choice in the matter, yes, my lady.”

“But you parted on good terms?”

“Well enough, my lady. I let Princess Mary think that it was my guardian’s desire to place me in your service.”

She laughed at that, remembering that by then I had been out of wardship but had not known it. “Mary did not know she could keep you if she wished to?”

“She is clever when it comes to the things she can learn from books, my lady, but she has little idea of how the real world works.” Sadly, that was true, although I felt like a traitor for sharing my observation with Anne Boleyn.

“Nevertheless,” said the lady marquess, “you must take advantage of this opportunity to pay your respects to your old mistress. You will accompany the king to St. James and when you return you will tell me everything they said to each other.”

Elated, I made a deep obeisance, hiding both my face and my thoughts. I saw this assignment as proof that I had won the
concubine’s trust, and it had the added benefit of allowing me to see Princess Mary again.

St. James in the Fields was the name King Henry had given to the magnificent new house he was building near York Place. We traveled upriver from Greenwich on one of the smaller royal barges, since King Henry took only a few attendants with him. His Grace made no objection to my presence, but neither did he pay me any attention.

We docked in London long enough for the princess and some of her ladies to join us and then were rowed around the curve of the Thames toward the privy landing. Princess Mary’s shortsightedness prevented her from recognizing me at first. When she did, she started to speak, then looked carefully at the other faces surrounding her. This evidence of excessive caution broke my heart. The innocent child I had met at Thornbury no longer existed. Naïve she might still be, but she had learned to be wary and trust no one.

I bobbed a curtsey. “Your Grace. It is good to see you looking so well.”

“Tamsin.” She gave a regal nod of the head. “I trust you prosper in your new position.”

“I am content, Your Grace.”

Just the faintest flicker of a smile appeared, enough to reassure me that she knew I was still her devoted servant, in spite of appearances. We were unable to say more to each other. There were too many people around.

It had not occurred to me before, but now I realized that any one of them might also be there as a spy for the concubine. Every word I spoke would be reported back to her.

Horses were waiting for us when we disembarked. Accompanied by only a handful of servants, myself among them, the king and the princess rode into the open countryside beyond the king’s
manor of York Place in Westminster. Although I was close enough to overhear what father and daughter said to each other, I had no intention of repeating all of their conversation to anyone. I listened hard only so that I might later pick and choose how much to share. It was necessary to remain in favor with the lady marquess, but I was determined not to betray my true mistress in any way that mattered.

To be honest, there was little said of a personal nature. The king did not ask his daughter’s opinion of his forthcoming marriage. Queen Catherine’s name was not mentioned. Instead, His Grace explained how he had acquired the old leper hospital of St. James, pensioned off the few inmates who’d remained, and razed the buildings. The new palace, I gathered, would have a large gatehouse with octagonal turrets.

“It will be decorated with the Tudor rose and the initials
H
and
A,
” the king said.

The princess, although she paled slightly at this evidence of her father’s intent to remarry, said only, “Tell me more, Father.”

His Grace showed her where each of the four courtyards would be, and pointed out the location of the royal lodgings, the chapel, the tennis court, and the tiltyard. “I am having some sixty acres of marshland drained,” he continued, “to create a park. This will be stocked with deer. And I will add a hunting chase that will stretch as far as Hampstead Heath and Islington.”

Princess Mary showed proper enthusiasm for her father’s plans. I found them far less interesting, but I was able to repeat them in full, mind-numbing detail to the concubine when I returned to Greenwich. The lady marquess found them even more boring than I had.

When I fell silent, she snapped at me. “So much for your much-vaunted reputation as a storyteller!”

Stung, I blurted out a defense. “Tales that stem from the
imagination are always more stimulating than those that must rely upon dry facts.”

Her lips quirked in amusement. “Tell us a tale, then. Perhaps I will repeat it the next time I am with someone in need of
stimulation
!”

I did not understand what she meant, but I obliged her with the story of Gammer Calista and her piskies, a rollicking tale of mistaken identities, lost gold, and magic.

O
n the seventh of October, King Henry and his lady love left Greenwich with a large retinue that included the thirty women who would wait upon the lady marquess in France. I need not have worried about being included among them. The concubine took with her almost every female in her household and added a sprinkling of noble ladies-in-waiting to augment her consequence.

En route to Dover, we spent one night at Stone Manor in Kent, another at Shurland on the Isle of Sheppey, and the third in Canterbury. On the eleventh of the month, we set sail for Calais. The king and Lady Anne were aboard the
Swallow
and her maids of honor accompanied them. Had I still been a chamberer, I’d have been relegated to less glittering company on a smaller ship.

I had never been at sea before. I did not enjoy the experience, even though it was pleasant weather with a fine wind and we reached Calais in less than five hours. Dressed all in blue and purple, the lady marquess’s colors, we made a grand procession along cobbled streets lined with tall, narrow houses, stopping first
at St. Nicholas to hear Mass and then, having given thanks for our safe passage, going on to the Exchequer, the grandest mansion in the English Pale, where the lady marquess was installed in a suite of seven rooms. One of them had a connecting door to the king’s bedchamber. I caught only a glimpse of this room, but that was enough to see that it was hung with green velvet and contained an enormous bed.

Speculation was rife among the women the lady marquess had brought with her that the king would marry his mistress during their stay in Calais. The concubine herself certainly expected to be queen before much longer, ostentatiously wearing jewelry that had once belonged to Catherine of Aragon. Even so, the first ten days in the English Pale were spent not in wedding preparations but in hunting and hawking, gambling, and feasting. The constable of France sent many delicacies for the royal table, everything from pears and grapes to porpoises.

It was the twenty-first day of October before the two kings met at Sandingfield, near the border between the English Pale and French territory. No women witnessed this event, but we were there to watch King Henry ride out of Calais. In the bright sunlight, His Grace was a splendid sight, all in russet velvet bordered with goldsmith’s work and pearls. He was accompanied by an escort of one hundred and forty noblemen and gentlemen and forty guards.

The lady marquess watched them until they were out of sight and then turned with a sigh. Four long days loomed ahead before the king was due to return. “His Grace might have left a few of the more interesting gentlemen behind,” she complained to her sister.

“Do you not find the young Henry Fitzroy interesting?” Lady Mary teased her, referring to the Duke of Richmond, the king’s illegitimate son by Bessie Blount. He was thirteen years old and the
king intended to present him to King Francis when the two monarchs returned to Calais, but for the nonce he remained with the women.

“We must see about a marriage for that boy, perhaps to our cousin, Lady Mary Howard.”

My fellow maid of honor, Bess Holland, gave a snort of laughter. “Oh,
that
will please the lady’s mother.”

A satisfied smile lit my mistress’s countenance, the kind that made me think of a cat that has gotten into the cream. The concubine liked arranging marriages, even if she had not yet managed to schedule her own.

Lady Mary Howard was the sister of that Earl of Surrey whose wedding to Lady Frances de Vere the lady marquess had already accomplished. Did she truly like playing matchmaker, I wondered, or did she just enjoy thwarting the Duchess of Norfolk, her aunt by marriage, who had refused, out of loyalty to Queen Catherine, to remain at court once the rightful queen was sent away? It
had
been to taunt the duchess that Bess Holland had been named a maid of honor. Bess was the Duke of Norfolk’s longtime mistress.

I liked Bess, who was country-bred like myself. She had a nature every bit as acquisitive as the concubine’s, but it was fueled by the practical necessity of providing for herself should the duke one day tire of her. Bess accumulated jewelry like a magpie collected glittering objects, but she was also fun-loving and cheerful. So were the other two maids of honor with whom I spent most of my time, Anne Gainsford and Anne Savage. I had to be careful around all three of them, for they had all been with the lady for a long time and were truly loyal to her. It suited me well that neither of the Annes paid much attention to me, but I
could not help but be pleased that they did not put on airs or snub me, either.