The King's Damsel (28 page)

“We cannot,” I gasped.

He retreated a scant few inches. His head dropped forward in defeat, but his hands still rested against the door on either side of my head, pinning me in place. “Do you know how often I think of you?” he asked in a choked voice. “Do you know how often I dream of you?”

There was such longing in his voice that I nearly threw myself back into his arms. My blood sang and my body yearned to be held close to his. But I had not lived at court all this time without learning the terrible consequences of following the lure of desire. Nor was I ignorant of the fate of those who defied convention and married beneath them.

Not that Rafe had mentioned marriage.

Straightening my spine, I found the courage to speak the hard truth. “We must not indulge ourselves this way. We have no future together. You must know that.”

Abruptly, he stepped back, although he could not retreat far in the confines of such a small room, even one that contained no more than a few storage boxes, a three-legged stool with only two legs,
and a wobbly candle stand. “I beg your pardon, Mistress Lodge. That was not well done of me.”

I wanted to tell him that he kissed very well indeed but decided such a remark would not be wise. Instead, I gathered my scattered wits and reminded myself of the reason we were together in the first place.

“Princess Mary,” I said.

“Yes. She must be warned of this development. I will take word to her myself.” He tilted his head, studying my expression. “Is there something more?”

“Only that I need a faster and more reliable way to reach you, Master Pinckney. Perhaps an order for ribbons made to your mother rather than to Mistress Wilkinson? Are you still her apprentice?” I knew that he was older than I, and felt certain that by now he had become a master of his craft.

He started to reply, then fell silent without answering my question. After a moment, he said, “A message will always find me if you send it to the Sign of the Golden Hart in Cheapside near the Great Conduit.”

“Perhaps we should devise a code,” I suggested. “An order for red silk ribbons means I have news the princess must hear at once.”

“A code could also save time if the matter is urgent,” he agreed. “Send for blue silk if the king is about to make his marriage public and I can convey that message to the princess at once.”

I was pleased to find Rafe and I were of one mind. In short order, we had assigned a dozen items of silk goods to represent as many messages.

“Will you be able to remember them all?” he asked, looking doubtful.

“I have an excellent memory, but if
you
wish to write them down—”

“There is no need.”

We stood facing each other as our single candle guttered. The flickering light made it difficult for me to read Rafe’s expression. I thought he intended to kiss me again. I wanted that more than I wanted my next breath. My eyes had already begun to drift shut as my body arched his way in invitation when the unmistakable sound of footsteps reached us from the other side of the door.

I froze, alarmed by the thought of discovery and suddenly very glad that we had written nothing down. Rafe plucked up the candlestick and blew out the flame, plunging us into darkness. Then we waited, the air between us as thick with tension as with unfulfilled longing.

Two men, laughing, passed by.

“You had best return to your duties,” Rafe whispered when all was silent again. “I can find my own way out.”

I nodded, then realized he could not see me in the blackness of the closet. “Safe journey, Rafe.”

“And you have a care for yourself, Thomasine,” he said as he opened the door, peered out to make sure no one was in sight, and gestured for me to precede him.

Although it had been years since we first met, he had never before addressed me by my Christian name. I started to hurry off in one direction while he went in the other, but I had gone only a few steps before I gave in to temptation. Turning and walking backward, I called after him: “My friends call me Tamsin!”

P
rincess Mary was not invited to court for Yuletide that year.

Just before dawn on the twenty-fifth of January, Anne Savage and I were rousted from our beds and ordered to help our mistress dress. Escorted by two of the king’s most trusted gentlemen, we followed the lady marquess to an upper chamber in the gatehouse. A priest waited there, together with the Earl and Countess of Wiltshire and their son, George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford.

By his robes, the priest was an Augustinian friar. His hands trembled visibly, making it difficult for him to hold on to the little book that contained the words of the sacrament of marriage. In a quavering voice, he asked the king if he had the pope’s permission for the wedding.

The king mumbled an answer. Unsatisfied, the priest mustered all his courage and asked if the document granting authority might be read aloud.

King Henry’s smile did not reach his eyes. They glittered with the threat of violence if he was not obeyed. “The license is among
my private papers,” he said in a voice so cold it made me shiver. “If I should, now that it waxes toward day, return there to fetch it, my appearance abroad so early would give rise to talk that would not be . . . convenient. Go forth, in God’s name, and do that which you have been summoned here to do.”

The priest did not dare call the king a liar. He proceeded with the ceremony.

As we were leaving the small room, I overheard my mistress’s mother question her son. “
Is
there such a license?” Lady Wiltshire whispered.

Lord Rochford chuckled. “It exists. The pope gave his consent for the king to remarry.”

“But?”

He shrugged. “The consent is conditional upon a declaration that the king’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon is void. It does not specify who should make this declaration of nullity. If the pope remains unwilling to do so, the king will obtain it from his newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.”

So the king had told a half-truth, I thought. It scarcely mattered. His Grace
was
the king. His word was law. Now that I considered the matter, I was only surprised that King Henry had delayed his wedding this long in the hope of winning the pope’s blessing.

It did not occur to me until later that the king might be excommunicated for flouting Pope Clement’s authority. When it did, my spirits sank even lower. His Grace must love Anne Boleyn very much indeed if he was willing to risk his immortal soul to have her.

I sent a coded message to Rafe. There was no need for us to meet. What had happened would be clear enough from the items I’d “ordered” from his silkwoman mother.

A few days later, I learned that there had been an additional
reason for the king’s haste. There was to be a child. King Henry had married to secure the legitimacy of the future heir to the throne.

Rafe and I had not worked out a code for this development, but I felt sure my message would be understood when I amended my order by the addition of one purple ribbon in a length too short to be of any practical use.

By the end of March, plans were well under way for the new queen’s coronation on Whit Sunday, the first of June. Queen Anne’s official household was also well on its way to being formed. As I was in high favor with Her Grace, I was to continue as one of her maids of honor.

In May, Anne Savage left our ranks to marry Lord Berkeley, and Anne Gainsford was soon to wed Sir George Zouche, the new queen’s longtime equerry. They would both return as ladies-in-waiting. To replace them, fresh faces arrived at court, including Queen Anne’s cousin, Madge Shelton, and a shy, quiet girl named Jane Seymour, who had previously served in Queen Catherine’s household.

“I need more servants,” Queen Anne mused one evening, tapping her long tapering fingers against her chin. I stilled, suddenly wary, for I could see that her dark eyes were alight with malice. “Ah, I have it. I will order the king’s bastard daughter to join my household.”

The queen’s sister-in-law, Viscountess Rochford, laughed. “That sour, ill-formed creature? Maids of honor are supposed to be pleasing to the eye.”

“I’ll have her for a chamberer, then, and keep her out of sight. Or better yet, I’ll assign her to the kitchens. Would she make a good scullery maid, do you think?”

“Better to keep her away from court altogether,” I dared interject,
knowing the princess would be safest for the nonce if everyone forgot her. “Did Your Grace not once think to marry her off to some foreign prince?”

“She does not deserve the honor! Besides, if I have my way, the king will strip her of her title. She will be plain Lady Mary and not a princess at all.”

Queen Anne paused to study her reflection in the standing glass, turning this way and that to admire the look of yet another new gown. Then she slanted her assessing gaze my way.

“You may be right, Tamsin. Mary would be nothing but trouble at court. Perhaps I will find some lowborn varlet to marry her to, someone from Northumberland, perhaps. Or Westmorland. Yes, that would solve the problem very nicely indeed!”

I spent a restless night considering what was best to do. In the morning, I sent another coded message to Rafe. Her Grace needed to regain the king’s goodwill, no matter what she had to do or say to accomplish that goal.

Whether in response to my suggestion or on her own initiative, Princess Mary wrote a letter to the king that pleased him mightily. I do not know what it said, but it effectively thwarted Queen Anne’s plan to permanently remove her stepdaughter from King Henry’s life. When the Archbishop of Canterbury formally declared the king’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon invalid, Princess Mary retained both her title and her place in the succession.

I
n the days leading up to her coronation, Queen Anne made many changes in her household, some to ensure that her court would appear as respectable as possible. We ladies were ordered to increase the hours we spent sewing clothes for the poor. The queen intended to give these garments away during her summer progress. To enhance an air of piety, she presented each of us with a book of prayers and psalms and the silken girdle from which to hang it.

All the liveried servants in the new queen’s household now wore blue and purple with livery badges inscribed with the motto
la plus heureuse
—the most happy. And Queen Anne’s heraldic emblem—a white falcon with a crown and scepter, standing with wings elevated on a tree stump covered in Tudor roses—appeared everywhere I looked.

I spent the bulk of my time with the other maids of honor, but now there was one significant change. Queen Anne employed a “mother of maids,” Mrs. Marshall. This worthy matron was charged with making sure the behavior of all the queen’s damsels was seemly, especially at night.

Bess Holland openly flouted her authority, going to the Duke of Norfolk’s bed whenever he sent for her, but the rest of us followed her rules. The post of maid of honor to the queen was highly coveted. No one wanted to be dismissed and sent home in disgrace.

Our primary duty remained the same—to provide an attractive, but not
too
attractive, backdrop for our mistress. Our fairer coloring made her dark skin, flashing black eyes, and ebony hair stand out in contrast.

I was still the tallest. Madge Shelton was the prettiest one among us. I envied the dimples that winked when she smiled. Like my old friend, Cecily Dabridgecourt, Madge was exceedingly soft-spoken. Jane Seymour had lovely blue eyes, although in general her features, save for a nose that was too thick at the point and a long upper lip, were too small for her face.

Queen Anne had decided that eight maids of honor suited her best. Of the four newcomers, two had previously served in Queen Catherine’s household—Mary Zouche and Margery Horsman. Mary had bright yellow hair, a square jaw, and a good complexion, but she was no great beauty. Neither was Margery, who was most distinguished by her brusque manner and her preoccupation with detail. Margaret Gamage, plump as a partridge, brown as a wren, and barely past her eighteenth birthday, was a novice in royal service, as was Jane Astley, who had only just turned sixteen. Jane was small and slender, with wide-spaced brown eyes, fair brows, and regular features.

Three days before her coronation, Queen Anne left Greenwich aboard a sumptuously decorated barge. She was accompanied by the principal ladies of the court. We maids of honor, together with the lesser ladies of the household, followed on a second barge. Behind us came the king’s barge, carrying His Grace’s yeomen of the guard and the royal musicians. More than one hundred and twenty large
watercraft and some two hundred smaller ones made up the flotilla. Among them were the fifty great barges belonging to the London livery companies. They had been rowed downriver to Greenwich only that morning. Their pennants and bunting and streamers of gold foil were impossible to miss when the little bells sewn at the ends made such a joyful sound.

I searched for Rafe among the citizens of London aboard the barges but there were too many people. They were all dressed in their finest, which was very fine indeed. Some prosperous merchants were wealthier than any peer could ever hope to be.

Other vessels carried cannon, fired off in celebration, that filled the air with a haze of choking smoke. One of the smaller barges transported a mechanical dragon that moved and belched out flames. A huge representation of the queen’s badge had been constructed on a wherry. The white falcon stood on a golden tree stump growing on a green hill. This enormous device was accompanied by young girls strumming lutes and singing sweetly.

Until coronation day, Queen Anne was to lodge in the royal apartments in the Tower of London. I had never before been inside its formidable-looking walls and I was unsure I wished to be confined within them. The Tower might be a royal residence, but it was also a prison and a place of execution. Lady Salisbury’s father and brother had died there.

My trepidation faded when we reached Queen Anne’s lodgings, apartments newly built in the Inner Ward north of the Lantern Tower. With little cries of delight, Her Grace explored her presence chamber, dining chamber, bedchamber, and stool chamber. All the furnishings were new and very grand.