The King's Damsel (29 page)

“Light all the quarriers,” the queen commanded as she ran one hand over the smooth surface of a breakfast table made of walnut. “I wish to see into every corner.”

The quarriers—square blocks of fine beeswax—illuminated bed hangings embroidered with entwined
H
’s and
A
’s and chairs with braided and tasseled cushions and footstools. Queen Anne laughed when she came to a round table covered with black velvet for playing card games. The half-dozen coffers filled with jewels brought tears of joy to her eyes.

The queen’s procession through London two days later was accompanied by salutes of cannon fire and fireworks but the crowds lining our way remained strangely silent. Although members of the livery companies cheered and doffed their hats, some of the common spectators sent looks that were overtly hostile toward their new queen. Far too many kept their caps on their heads.

The coronation ceremony lasted nine hours. It was an exhausting experience for a woman six months gone with child. Afterward, Queen Anne needed time to recover. She retreated to her bedchamber . . . with the king. They spent long hours there together during the following days, excluding all others.

Left to their own devices, the queen’s ladies, gentlewomen, and maids of honor sat and sewed and talked in quiet voices of the doings of their betters.

“I wonder,” Bess Holland mused, “if His Grace will follow his usual practice during the last month or so of the queen’s pregnancy.”

“What is that?” Jane Seymour asked. She was old enough that she should have been able to guess, especially given Bess’s well-deserved reputation for making bawdy comments, but in common with Princess Mary, Jane was more naïve than most other females of the same age.

Bess’s laugh was bold and earthy. “Why that is the time when His Grace is most likely to take a mistress . . . so as not to ‘disturb’ his wife.”

“That may have been the case with Queen Catherine,” Madge
Shelton said, “but it is plain to see that King Henry is madly in love with this wife.”

“And Queen Anne is still young and beautiful,” Jane Astley put in, “not old and haggard-looking like—”

Mary Zouche reached out and pinched her, preventing her from completing her sentence.

A pained silence fell. We had all taken an oath to serve Queen Anne, but old loyalties died hard.

I dismissed Bess’s prediction without another thought. His Grace’s astrologers and the queen’s physicians all agreed that the child she was carrying was a boy. The king made grandiose plans for a joust to celebrate the birth of his heir and his delight in his new queen seemed stronger than ever. It was only toward the end of July, after the king left a very pregnant Queen Anne and her ladies at Windsor while he went off to visit the homes of several courtiers, that the subject of the king’s . . . appetite . . . came up again. He was gone nearly two weeks.

“King Henry is still in the prime of his manhood,” Bess remarked as she and I sat side by side on a window seat to work together on hemming an altar cloth. “In the last weeks before a woman gives birth, it is common practice for her to avoid conjugal relations for fear of harming the unborn child.”

Because of Bess’s comments, I paid particular attention to His Grace when he returned to Windsor Castle. He seemed happy to see his wife, but he did not spend the night with her.

I was unsure what to pray for. The king had
married
Anne Boleyn. Even if he had now strayed from her bed, she was still queen. She still had influence over His Grace. She would have even more after their son was born.

But if his interest wandered, I wondered, could another woman’s influence diminish the queen’s power? Could such a one persuade
the king to look out for his daughter and protect her from the machinations of her evil stepmother? It seemed possible, but as I had no idea who His Grace’s current mistress might be, or even if he truly had one, there was nothing I could think of to do to advance Princess Mary’s cause.

Then everything changed.

On an evening when the entertainment included the performance of an interlude about a chivalrous knight and his lady, His Grace danced with the maids of honor, bestowing compliments upon each of us in turn. When it was my turn, he held me close, running one hand along my arm beneath my loose sleeve as he bestowed upon me a smile that made me tingle all the way down to my toes.

Much later, back in the maidens’ dormitory, the other maids of honor surrounded me the moment I entered the room. “What did he say to you?” Mary Zouche’s lips might be pursed in prim disapproval, but her eyes were avid with curiosity.

“Pretty meaningless words,” I said, “just like the ones His Grace showered on all of you.”

In truth, I could not remember exactly what the king had said to me. I had been too nervous, and too shaken by the way he pressed me against his big, strong body while we danced. I’d never before felt such powerful sensations, not even when Rafe Pinckney kissed me. What I’d experienced was, or so I supposed, the difference between being wooed by a boy and being seduced by an experienced man.

“We all saw the look he gave you,” Bess said. “There was more than a hint of amorous interest in his eyes.”

“You are imagining things,” I insisted, refusing to voice my own suspicions aloud.

“The queen most certainly was!”

Appalled, I stared at her. Bess shrugged, as if arousing Queen Anne’s jealousy were of no consequence.

“His Grace meant nothing by it,” I said again. The queen had once boxed my ears for failing to bring her the right pomander ball. I hated to think what she would do if she thought I was trying to steal the affections of her husband! “He is playing at the game of courtly love, nothing more.”

But barely had the words left my lips than one of the royal pages appeared at the door to deliver one red rose and one white. “From your servant, mistress,” he said, and winked at me.

“The king pursues you, Tamsin,” Bess declared as soon as the boy had gone. “He wants to bed you.”

“You are mistaken.”

Bess shook her head, a knowing look in her eyes. “I am never mistaken about such matters.”

“Then His Grace’s pursuit of me is only a game. King Henry is enamored of the queen. Why, just look at the splendid gifts he’s sent her.”

Before we’d left Greenwich, he’d given his pregnant wife an enormous bed, one that had once been part of the ransom of a French duke. In this, she would give birth to his son.

“The king has healthy appetites, Tamsin.” She drew me aside to add, in a whisper, “The king may be forty-two years old and past his first youth, but he still jousts regularly and is in good physical shape. And he can be charming when he wants to be. It would be in your own best interest to encourage his advances.”

I shook my head, once again rejecting the possibility that the king wished to seduce me. “His Grace is not so much interested in coupling as he is in engaging in courtly love with a lady not his wife . . . and not great with child. King Henry loves to dance,” I added, “and for the time being the queen cannot partner him.”

“If you believe that, then you are a fool!”

I was a long time falling asleep that night. The idea that the king might desire me was both terrifying and tempting. If I pleased him, perhaps I
could
thwart the queen’s efforts to turn him against Princess Mary. But that would mean becoming his mistress—giving my body to the king.

I had always supposed, when I thought about it at all, that I would one day marry. I knew full well that most marriages were not based on love, no matter how much the poets rhapsodize about that emotion. I expected to wed and bed a relative stranger. With luck, over time, we might grow fond of one another.

But that was marriage, sanctioned by God and man. Surrendering my maidenhood to the king in the hope he would grant me favors—that was something else entirely. I shuddered at the thought. Not only was fornication outside of marriage a sin, but all my knowledge of the physical act was based upon bawdy innuendo overheard at court and the fact that I had once seen a stallion mount a mare.

Even before Queen Anne decided that her maids of honor should have reputations pure as new-fallen snow, I had held myself aloof from both casual flirtations and romantic entanglements. I’d fixed my mind on my mission and, truth be told, barely noticed whether any of the gentlemen at court showed an interest in me. As for Rafe Pinckney . . . as usual, I forbade myself to wish for the impossible. Members of the queen’s court did not wed the sons of shopkeepers.

I sighed, rolled over, and punched my pillow into a more comfortable shape. I prayed that in the coming days I would be proved right and Bess Holland wrong. For when I had considered the possibility that the king might choose a mistress who could diminish the queen’s influence over him, I had never imagined that mistress might be me!

I
woke still burdened by my dilemma. During the night, I had remembered Lady Salisbury’s remarks about lying and sin, made on the eve of my departure for the royal court. In light of recent events, they took on new meaning. Were I to lie with the king, I would gain an opportunity to advance Princess Mary’s interests. Had that been what the countess had meant me to do all along? Could she have intended that I catch the king’s eye, become his mistress, and displace Anne Boleyn, just so that I could influence His Grace to favor his daughter over his concubine?

That evening, when the court gathered for music and dancing in the king’s great watching chamber, Queen Anne watched me through eyes narrowed to slits. She disliked that the king had paid even platonic attentions to another female. I could feel her anger building, a palpable force, but King Henry, oblivious, continued to flirt with me and flatter me. It was obvious now, to everyone who saw us together, that he desired me in a very physical way.

The next time His Grace returned to the dais where his queen sat, she turned to him with fury in her eyes. Then she began to rail at him.
I could not hear precisely what she said, but it was abundantly clear that she was complaining about his behavior toward me.

His Grace did not take criticism well. At first he simply looked taken aback by his wife’s anger. Then he lost his temper and no longer troubled to speak softly.

“You must shut your eyes and endure, as your betters have done!” he roared at the queen. “I can lower you in only a moment longer than it took to raise you up.”

A stunned silence fell among the listening courtiers. Several of them glanced my way, making me wish that the floor would open up and swallow me.

“You would not dare!” the queen shouted back.

“Would I not? Do not question what I would or would not do, madam. I do what I will!” And with that, King Henry stormed out of the chamber.

I did not sleep at all that night. I half-expected one of the king’s minions to arrive at the door of the maidens’ dormitory with a demand that I follow him to His Grace’s bedchamber.

Dawn came without any such interruption, but the king and queen did not speak to each other for two days. By the end of the third, however, they had been reconciled. My brief tenure as a woman in whom the king was interested was over.

O
n Thursday the twenty-first of August, the court moved from Windsor to York Place and on the Monday following traveled on to Greenwich, where carpenters had been busy during our absence. Queen Anne began her confinement on Tuesday, shutting herself into her apartments, her women with her, to await the birth of the future king of England.

It was a luxurious imprisonment. The queen’s presence chamber was divided by a curtain. No men save the physicians could pass through to the inner half. Her Grace’s newly enlarged bedchamber, which now contained an oratory for prayer, was hung with tapestries depicting the legend of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins. Next to the magnificent bed the king had given her was a pallet with a crimson canopy, the place where she would actually give birth. And, in case the child should need immediate baptism to save its soul, a font sent for from Canterbury stood at the ready.

On the seventh of September, at three in the afternoon, the queen’s child was born—a healthy, red-haired daughter. King Henry named her Elizabeth, after his mother.

I liked the king, even if I had little sympathy for the queen, and I felt sorry for him in his disappointment. At the same time, I secretly rejoiced. If the king were to die leaving only two females as his heirs, then Princess Mary, as the eldest, would have the better claim to the throne.

Or so I thought.

I was soon proved wrong in this assumption. Unbeknownst to me, the queen had persuaded King Henry that Mary should abandon the title of princess and call herself only the Lady Mary. Informed of this, Princess Mary wrote a hasty letter to her father, refusing to oblige him. Infuriated, His Grace became even more determined to force his daughter to accept his will.

The king was enthralled all over again with Anne Boleyn, despite the fact that she had failed to give him a son. He was even overheard to say that he loved the queen so much that he would beg alms from door to door rather than give her up.

Matters deteriorated rapidly after that. On the fourteenth of December, the king dissolved his seventeen-year-old daughter’s household and ordered her to Hatfield to serve as her half sister’s waiting woman.

At Yuletide, Rafe contrived to accompany Mistress Wilkinson when she delivered fringes and frontlets and other trimmings to Greenwich. He also arranged for the two of us to be left alone aboard the small barge the silkwoman had used to transport her goods downriver.

My lower lip trembled as I looked at him. “I failed the princess,” I blurted out.

“That is nonsense. You did your best.”

“Did I?” I wished I could be certain of that. There was very little I was sure of anymore, except that I could trust Rafe.

In a rush, I told him of the king’s short-lived interest in making
me his mistress and of my failure to hold on to His Grace’s attention long enough to benefit the princess. Tears blinded me, so that I could not see his expression, but I’d barely stopped speaking before he closed the short distance between us and took me in his arms.