Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set

14

In his role as Master of Revels, Harry Guildford brought together his usual lieutenants to plan Queen Margaret’s entertainment. Officially, Master Gibson was his second in command but, as he had so often in the past, Harry asked for my suggestions. Once again, I was to play an active, if unacknowledged part in the proceedings.

“We have until the first of May,” Harry Guildford announced one morning several weeks after my visit to the Duchess of Suffolk. “Queen Margaret will not travel south until then. When she does, her brother wishes to give visible proof of his affection and forgiveness. I am inclined toward gentlemen dressed in Turkey fashion and carrying scimitars.”

“It is already early March,” I reminded him, “and surely King Henry will want something original.” This presented a problem. There was very little that had not been done before. Neither the Fortress Dangerous nor the Rich Mount were novelties any longer.

“Build a bigger castle,” Master Gibson suggested, “one twenty feet square and fifty feet high. The ladies within will be the object of an entire tournament instead of a simple mock combat.”

“We should need to stage such a thing out of doors,” Harry mused.

“And why not?” Gibson’s eyes gleamed. “The ladies would be delighted by such a spectacle, would they not, Mistress Popyncourt?”

“Must it always be ladies hidden within a mountain or a castle?” I ran my hand over a sample of velvet Gibson had brought with him. “Do you remember the pageants when the queen married Prince Arthur? There was a pageant wagon in the shape of a castle with four towers, but instead of ladies, each one contained a singing child.”

“There must be beautiful women somewhere,” Harry objected. “The king expects it.”

“As does every other gentleman at court,” Gibson agreed, “and the more outrageously clad, the better.”

Harry laughed. “Eight damsels, I think, in a castle, drawn in on a wagon pulled by eight burly, costumed servants. Two will be garbed as a golden lion, two as a silver lion, the third pair as a hart with gilt horns, and the fourth team as an ibex.”

“What if we add a second pageant wagon?” Master Gibson suggested. “It will carry a ship in full sail manned by eight gentlemen dressed as knights. It will drop anchor near the castle and the knights will descend by means of a ladder and approach the ladies.”

“Still nothing new.” I grew tired of their debate. I had lost my enthusiasm for pageantry.

They ignored my comment. “The audience will think this is all that is in store for them. Some will even begin to chatter among themselves as the knights try to gain access to the ladies. Flattery will fail. So will the threat of force. But then, just as everyone expects the knights to storm the castle, a third pageant wagon will be pulled into the room.”

“The mountain?” I intended sarcasm but was not really surprised when Master Gibson nodded.

“I can paint it a bright Kendall green this time and adorn it with banners. It will open to reveal yet another band of knights. They will fight with the knights from the ship. After the battle, the winners will compel the ladies to surrender, descend from the castle, and dance.”

They were still sketching out ideas when I slipped quietly away. Neither noticed my departure.

Halfway back to my lodgings, I caught sight of a familiar face and my heart stuttered. “Ivo?”

It was plainly Ivo Jumelle, Longueville’s page, only he had finally grown into his feet. He was taller than I was now, and his chest and arms had filled out, giving the impression of considerable strength.

“Mistress Popyncourt,” he greeted me after an awkward moment when he seemed torn between acknowledging me and taking flight. “You look well.”

“And you, Ivo. I did not think to see you again, at least not in England.”

“I have a place in the retinue of the new envoy,” he said with no little pride in his voice. “We have come from King François with gifts for the baby princess.”

I walked with him toward the royal apartments. “Did any of the duke’s other servants come back with you?” I held my breath.

“No, mistress. I have not seen them since the duke left to fight at Marignano.”

“Did…did Guy Dunois cross the Alps with him?”

“I…I suppose you would not hear.”

“Hear what, Ivo?” I felt cold all over, as if the life was slowly draining out of me. I stopped him at the top of a staircase, catching his arm and tugging until he turned to face me. He tried to avoid my eyes, but I would not allow it. “What have I not heard?”

“I do not know that it was Guy, mistress.” He squirmed in my grasp and looked everywhere but at my face. “I only heard that it was one of the duke’s brothers. It could have been Jacques.”

“What happened!” I had both hands on his arms now. I’d have shaken the information out of him had he not been too big for me to move.

“He was killed!” Ivo’s voice broke. “The duke lost a brother in the Battle of Marignano! Not his full brother, who is a priest. It was one of his father’s bastards, but I do not know which one.”

“I must find out,” I said, half to myself. “If need be, I will go to France without the king’s permission.”

I was standing at the top of the stairs when I suddenly lost my footing. I felt myself falling and heard the horrendous crack of a bone breaking as my arm struck the stone steps. A moment later, everything went black.

When I regained consciousness, I was lying on my own bed. Worried faces hovered over me—Bessie, Harry, and Will Compton.

“According to the king’s surgeon, you are most fortunate,” Bessie said. “You broke your arm when you fell, but the bone has been bound tight and he says it will likely heal in time.”

I looked down at my arm. Lead plates had been tied around it to keep everything in place. It throbbed with pain. So did my head. Gingerly, I lifted my good arm to feel the lump beneath my hair.

“He used the large hollow root of comfrey as a bonesetter and packed it around the straightened bone,” Bessie continued. “He said you must not try to lift anything for at least two months.”

I did not want to think very far ahead. “Did he leave anything for the pain?” I asked.

Harry produced a vial of poppy juice, and when I had swallowed a dose, I sank back into pain-free oblivion. While I slept, Bessie, Harry, and Will sent word of my accident to Suffolk Place.

The Duchess of Suffolk did not respond at once. On the eleventh day of March she gave birth to a son. As soon as she was advised of my condition, however, she asked Queen Catherine if she could spare me and, with unflattering speed, I was transported from Greenwich to Southwark.

As I began to recover, I realized that I had been gifted with an opportunity I should not waste. I was no longer at court. No one would notice if I also left Suffolk Place. At first I thought I might manage to travel all the way to France, but I soon realized I would not be able to leave the country without a passport, not unless I could afford a hefty bribe. That it was still March was a further deterrent. For a safe crossing, I should delay at least until May.

I would find a way to go there. I was determined upon it, and not only to discover more about my mother. I had to find out what had happened to Guy. I did not want to believe he was dead. I prayed it had been his brother Jacques who had been killed in battle.

Frustrated in my desire to cross the Narrow Seas, I soon conceived an alternate plan. Whether I succeeded in finding my way to France or not, I doubted I would ever have a better opportunity to take another journey. This was my best chance to visit my uncle, the one person my mother was most likely to have confided in when she first came to England.

“What better medicine than to be reunited with my only remaining family member?” I argued when Mary reminded me that I was not yet fully healed.

“But Sir Rowland is in Wales,” she objected. “The journey there is long and arduous even for someone in the best of health.”

“I am not ill, Mary, only afflicted with a bulky set of bandages, and since it is my left arm that is broken, I can still control a horse.”

“You’d do better in a litter.”

“A litter requires too much fuss and too many men and horses and is both slower and more uncomfortable than traveling on horseback. I am a good rider.” I had learned to manage a horse at Eltham and had since ridden in processions, on progresses, and to hunt.

“The roads are frozen,” Mary protested, “where they can still be found at all beneath the snow.”

“And when spring comes in earnest, the roads will be even worse, a quagmire.”

Throwing up her hands in defeat, she insisted that I take along four sturdy Suffolk retainers as protection.

I SET OUT for Wales in late March. Little can be said of the journey itself except that it was unpleasant. We rarely managed to travel more than ten miles a day and were obliged to stay in the guesthouses provided by priories and monasteries along the way, there being few reputable inns. Nearly two weeks after leaving Southwark, I reached the island of Anglesey in North Wales.

My first glimpse of Beaumaris Castle left me awed and speechless. It stood at one end of Castle Street, partially surrounded by a water-filled moat. Set between the mountains and the sea, its stone walls looked impenetrable, but the guards let me pass through the gates on the strength of my claim that my uncle was the constable.

It was a huge place, but a question to a passing maidservant was sufficient to locate Sir Rowland. He was in the mews with his falcons and hawks.

I cannot say he was pleased to see me.

He was also cup-shot, and this appeared to be no new condition. His eyes had the redness, his physique the flabbiness of a confirmed tippler. When I’d last seen him, just before the king embarked on his invasion of France, he’d gained weight. He’d no longer been the premiere jouster he once was. But I was shocked by how dissipated he’d become in the less than three years since then.

“Are you my charge now, to go with the new annuity?” he demanded when I greeted him and reminded him of who I was.

“I know nothing of any pension,” I said, wrinkling my nose at the smell of bird lime and giving the hooded hawks on the nearest perch a wary look. Such birds were trained to catch and kill their prey. Their talons were sharp and deadly. I was relieved when Uncle, muttering to himself, escorted me out of the mews, across a courtyard, and into his own lodgings.

“Agnes!” he bellowed. “We have company!”

A small, plump wren of a woman popped out of an inner room. I would have thought her Uncle’s housekeeper had he not slapped her on the rump as he passed.

“Jane is my niece,” he announced. “Find her a place to sleep.”

When he’d stumbled out again, Agnes eyed me curiously. She did not appear to be in awe of me, for all that I had dressed in court finery for my arrival at the castle.

“I fear I have descended upon you without warning, madam.”

“Mistress Dowdyng,” she said, introducing herself. “I am a widow. What escort have you?” She spoke English, but with a Welsh accent.

“Four henchmen and a maid,” I answered. Mary had provided a sturdy young woman named Nell to look after me.

Agnes Dowdyng showed me to a small, drafty bedchamber, and I suspect she intended to abandon me there, but when I shrugged out of my cloak, she saw my bandaged arm and the sling that supported it. “You are injured, Mistress Popyncourt.”

“A small accident. The bone is healing nicely.”

She peered into my face, her brow wrinkling and her gaze intense. “You are too pale. Lie down and rest. I will find your maid and send her up with a light supper.”

I was asleep within moments.

The next day, I attempted to speak to my uncle, but he avoided me. He’d had a great deal of practice doing so. I could count on my fingers the number of times in the last eighteen years that we had exchanged more than a few words with each other.

Left with only Agnes to talk to, I set about making an ally of her. She was, as I had guessed, my uncle’s mistress. With her sympathy and support and the promise that I would leave as soon as I was satisfied, I at length persuaded Uncle to agree to listen to my questions.

He watched me through narrowed eyes as I entered the room he used for conducting business. With ill grace he waved me toward the uncomfortable-looking bench that was the only place to sit besides the Glastonbury chair he already occupied. A half-empty tankard of ale sat in front of him on the table.

“What is it you want to know?” Impatience simmered beneath the question. He took another swig of the ale while he waited for my answer.

“Why did my mother leave France?”

“I’ve no idea. She never said.” He scowled so hard at my injured arm that new furrows appeared in his forehead. “I say, let the dead past stay dead.”

“Why are you here in Wales and not at court?” I asked.

“The king sent me here.” Bitterness laced his words.

“It is an important post, is it not?”

“It was a way to get rid of me.”

“Why should he want to?”

“His minions said I was too quarrelsome, that I could not control my temper, but I suspect there was another reason.” He looked at my arm again, but still did not remark upon my injury.

If he did not want to talk about himself, I had no objection to returning to other questions. “Do we have kin still in Brittany?” I asked.

He drained the tankard before he answered. “Our mother died long before my sister brought you here.”

“But surely there were a few Velvilles still alive at that time. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins. I—”

The tankard slammed down onto the table with a crash. I jumped and pressed my lips together to hold back the spate of questions. Anger simmered behind his dark brown eyes, but I did not think it was aimed at me. For several interminable minutes he sat there, lost in thought. Then he turned his head and glared at me. “I suppose you will not be satisfied until you know everything.”

“You suppose correctly. I want to know why Maman did not return to Brittany, to her family.”

“The Velvilles wanted no part of her, or of me.”

“Why not?”

“Because they were no kin to us and they knew it.”

“I do not understand.”

A sneer replaced the scowl. “Use your head, girl. It is perfectly plain. My mother was a young wife who betrayed her husband and gave birth to twins.”

I could feel my eyes widen. “How do you know this?”

“Because she told us, your mother and me! How else do you suppose? We were very small, and she was dying, but I remember. Oh, yes. I remember.” He started to lift the tankard, realized it was empty, and rose to refill it from a cask in the corner of the room.

“What of her family, then?”

“She never spoke of them. I’ve no idea who her people were. I do not even know what surname she had before her marriage. What does it matter? Your mother did not go to them. She came to England.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “For the same reason I stayed—to be with our father.”

His answer so startled me that I could not think of a single thing to say.

“Speechless?” He laughed and drank deeply from the brimming tankard. “So you should be. She meant to tell you. I suppose she died too soon.”

“Tell me what?” My voice sounded hoarse, but was audible enough.

“It is a simple story.” He flung himself into the chair and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “There were a goodly number of Englishmen living in exile in Brittany, unlikely ever to return to their homeland unless the Duke of Brittany—Duchess Anne’s father—decided to renege on his pledge of protection and turn them over to King Edward. They were shuffled about from castle to manor to château until, when one particular English exile was about fifteen—a very foolish age—he met a beautiful young gentlewoman. They conceived a passion for each other, a love that would not be denied even though the gentlewoman was married. After the young man was moved to another place, his mistress discovered that she had conceived.” He drank again, deeply, and his eyes began to go bleary.

I rose, unable to sit still any longer. My thoughts whirled. I was not particularly upset to learn that he and my mother were illegitimate, or that their father had been an Englishman. It was the Englishman’s name that concerned me. The obvious choice seemed impossible. I planted my good hand on the table and leaned across it to assure that I had my uncle’s full attention. “Who was your father?”

“Have you not guessed?” He snickered into his tankard. “He went by the title the Earl of Richmond when he was in exile, but by the time his legitimate children were born, he was King Henry the Seventh. A pity he could not have married your grandmother,” he added sourly. “If he had, I’d be king of England now.”

“This cannot be true.” King Henry VII my grandfather? King Henry VIII and Mary and Margaret my uncle and aunts? No wonder Maman had hesitated to burden me with her secret.

“Why not?” Suddenly belligerent, Uncle half-rose from his chair. “The old king refused to acknowledge me in public, but he knew who I was. Why else bring me with him to England when I was but a boy?”

Staring at his face, I suddenly saw King Henry’s features there. The eyes were a different color, brown not blue, but they were deep set like the late king’s. Uncle Rowland also had the same long thin nose, high cheekbones, and thin lips. All he lacked was a wart on his cheek and he’d have been the image of his father.

“He should have acknowledged you!”

“Oh, aye. He should have.” He subsided, drank, and let out a gusty sigh. “He did not dare. Think back, Jane. You were only a child, but you remember Perkin Warbeck. There were other challenges to the throne. Even if he’d been married to your grandmother, he’d not have wanted his English subjects to know. Especially if he’d married her! Another potential challenge to the throne? God forbid!”

His voice full of bitterness and resentment, he rambled on about “this godforsaken outpost” and how little he had to show for his royal blood.

“Be grateful,” I snapped when I could bear no more. “Royal blood is a deadly inheritance, and well you know it.” Imposters were not the only ones King Henry—my grandfather—had executed. If Uncle’s secret ever came out, he risked the same fate. My hand crept to my throat and I swallowed hard. “When old King Henry was alive, I often felt I was not quite servant, not quite family. Now I know why.”

“For all the good it will do you!”

“Does…does the present King Henry know about you? About me?”

Uncle shook his head, but his gaze had once more fixed on my broken arm. “How were you injured?”

“A fall down a flight of stairs at Greenwich. An accident.”

“Are you certain of that? There are others who know about us. Not the king, but people who might wish to eliminate us all the same.”

“There was no one nearby when I fell who could possibly mean me any harm.”

“You were alone? Mayhap a thin rope, stretched across the top of the stairs—?”

“I was talking to a young man. A friend.”

For the first time, I wondered what had become of Ivo Jumelle. I had not seen him again after my fall. I assumed he’d gone for help, but for all I knew, he’d run off in a panic.

“Never be certain of anything, Jane.”

“You have had too much to drink, Uncle. You grow fanciful.”

“I drink to forget that I live in fear for my life.” He suited action to words. “I am safe only here, far from court.”

“Who at court would wish you harm?”

“I have enemies. Those who fear I might one day try to claim the throne.”

He had enemies because of his temper, I thought, not because he was Henry Tudor’s bastard son. It was the Tudor temper, I realized. Thank God I had not inherited that!

“What enemies?” I asked after Uncle had taken another swallow. “Who knows your secret?”

“Our secret now! Knowledge is no boon, Jane. It will make you more vulnerable to harm.”

“Nonsense,” I said brusquely. “It is ignorance that puts me in danger, if there is any danger. I ask again—who knows?”

“Brandon,” he muttered. “Your great and mighty Duke of Suffolk, God rot him.”

“Charles Brandon? How could he? He wasn’t even born when King Henry the Seventh took the throne.”

“His uncle was one of the king’s men in Brittany. Sir Thomas Brandon knew. I am certain he told his nephew. That’s why the younger Brandon came sniffing around you, years ago, before he married that London widow.”

What Uncle said made a discouraging kind of sense. Learning our family secret could account for Charles Brandon’s sudden interest in me. He had been looking for a wealthy bride. It had not taken him long to realize I would be of no use to him, I thought ruefully. If my heritage were known, whatever man I married, whatever children I bore, risked being perceived as threats to the Crown. At the king’s whim, we could be showered with lands and titles or imprisoned in the Tower as traitors. On the other hand, as long as no one knew I was King Henry VII’s granddaughter, I would never have any inheritance at all. No wonder Brandon had abandoned his courtship!

“Did anyone else know?” I asked.

His eyes were bleary when he looked at me. “Anyone who was with the young Henry Tudor during his exile in Brittany.”

“They all knew you were his son?”

“They all suspected. How could they not? I looked a great deal like him.”

“That is not proof of anything,” I said. “Ned Neville and King Henry the Eighth look much alike, but Ned is not the king’s brother.”

Uncle quaffed more ale. “She was murdered, you know. Your mother.”

“Murdered? No. That is not possible.”

“Murder has been done before to secure the Crown. I have had a long time to think about it. I did not realize it then, but now I am certain that she was killed because she was King Henry’s daughter.”

If what he’d already told me had been difficult to accept, this defied belief. “Who do you think killed my mother?” I demanded.

“The king’s mother was responsible.”

“Elizabeth of York?” Confused, I struggled to follow his logic.

“Not our present king’s mother. I mean my father’s mother—Margaret Beaufort, the old Countess of Richmond. It was at Collyweston that your mother died. The countess’s house.” Uncle wagged a finger at me. “I see that skeptical look, but I know what I know. Someone told the countess that her son had fathered a daughter in Brittany and that your mother was that child. Mayhap she thought King Henry had married our mother. Mayhap she just wished to eliminate even the slightest threat to the succession. Whatever drove her, she had your mother poisoned at Collyweston.”

“But…but Maman was her granddaughter!”

He seemed so convinced his accusation was true that I began to wonder if he was right. Shortly after my mother’s death, the countess had become much more pious, even wearing a hair shirt next to her skin. Had she been seeking forgiveness for the sin of murder?

“If she killed Maman, why did she not seek you out and kill you, too?” I asked, fixing on the biggest flaw in my uncle’s theory.

“It is not easy to kill a trained knight.”

It is with poison, I thought. Then another realization struck me.

“Surely if what you say is true, she’d have ordered me slain, as well.”

“Not so long as you were ignorant of your heritage.”

“So you have been protecting me all these years?”

He winced at the skepticism in my voice, then forced a laugh. “Think what you will. I know what I know.”

I tried to convince myself that this was a tale told by a drunkard, an invention. Except for the part about King Henry being my grandfather. The more I looked at Uncle Rowland’s face, the more I knew that much was true.

I sank back down on the bench, too confused to think of any other questions to ask. We sat there in silence, save for the sound of Uncle lifting the tankard and swallowing. And then a question did occur to me.

“How did she know? The Countess of Richmond—who told her about Maman?”

Uncle shrugged.

“Who told her?” I shouted at him, on my feet once more. “You must have some idea!”

Grudgingly, he gave me a name. “I warrant it was Sir Richard Guildford. He was with the king in exile in Brittany, but he was in service to the countess originally.”

Harry’s father. The same Sir Richard Guildford who had written to his son that he wished to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land because he had a great sin on his conscience.

“He’s dead now,” Uncle said, “and so is the countess. But I am certain there are others who’d like to see our line end. Be very careful, Jane, when you return to court.”

I LEFT WALES the day after I heard my uncle’s story. Although I was convinced that he believed everything he’d told me, I was still uncertain as to how much of it was true. I could not understand why, if the countess had been responsible for my mother’s death, she had allowed my uncle to live. Surely, as a man, he posed more of a threat to the succession than any woman.

Uncle claimed that Henry VIII did not know he had a half brother. If that was true, why had he sent my uncle to Wales? At least an answer to that question was not hard to come by. Uncle had always been difficult to get along with, and the older he got, the more quarrelsome he became. He’d never been popular at court. Why wouldn’t the king seize on any excuse to send him away?

So, if King Henry did not perceive Sir Rowland Velville as a threat to the Crown, was anyone really trying to kill him? Was anyone trying to kill me? By the time I returned to Suffolk Place, I had convinced myself that neither one of us was in any danger. Too much drink had addled my uncle’s mind. The people who wanted him dead were figments of his imagination.

Traveling to Wales and back had taken well over a month. It was already the third week in April in the year of our Lord fifteen hundred and sixteen by the time I returned to Suffolk Place.

“Was your uncle any help?” Mary asked when she came to my chamber to welcome me from my journey. “Did he know why your mother left France?”

I shook my head, suddenly struck by the enormity of what I had learned. Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, although she was five years younger than I, was my aunt. The king was my uncle.

“A wasted journey, then. What a pity. You should have stayed here and been comfortable.”

“Has Queen Margaret arrived yet?” I asked. Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland…another aunt.

“She is expected to enter London on the third of May,” Mary said. “I wonder how much she will have changed.” Margaret had been fourteen the last time we’d seen her and Mary only eight.

I wondered if the two sisters would find they had much in common. They both had new babies, as did the queen. I supposed that would give them something to talk about. I doubted Margaret would have anything at all to say to me.

As Mary cheerfully continued to describe plans for the reunion of her siblings, I realized that my uncle’s secret was the one thing I could never share with her. Nor could I ever reveal his suggestion that the Countess of Richmond had been responsible for my mother’s death.

I’d spent much of my return journey and since thinking about that accusation. It was possible my uncle was right. The countess had been fully capable of doing whatever was necessary to reduce the number of potential claimants to the throne. She did, after all, orchestrate her son’s return to England and make sure he had sufficient allies to defeat King Richard III. She’d also arranged the marriage between her son and Elizabeth of York, to ensure that the succession would go unchallenged. If she had discovered that the king had another child, an older child, she might well have acted precipitously to eliminate that threat.

And Uncle was right. Sir Richard Guildford was the most likely person to have told her who Maman was when she was at Collyweston. A casual comment, perhaps. Not realizing that Maman had a twin brother, the countess had acted in haste to remove a potential threat. And then? Guilt? Regret? There was evidence of both in the countess’s sudden increase in religious fervor and Sir Richard’s pilgrimage. He’d have known he shared some of the blame.

I doubted I would ever know the full truth. Both Sir Richard and the countess were dead.

I responded absently to Mary’s comments while I considered Mother Guildford. She had gone out of her way to discourage my questions and make me think no one knew more than she was telling me. She had lied when she’d implied that Maman died of consumption. Did that mean she know Maman’s real heritage—and mine, too? Had she had a hand in the murder herself? Or had she only learned of it later from her husband?

I wanted to confront her, to demand the truth, but I knew better than to do such a foolish thing. She was a strong-willed woman. She’d never admit to any wrongdoing. She might even try to get rid of me, to protect her late husband’s reputation.

I could not tell anyone, I realized. My secret was too dangerous. My uncle and I might be in real danger if the truth came out.

Although my arm was still sore, it had mended adequately to allow me to return to Queen Catherine’s service a few days before Queen Margaret was scheduled to arrive. As soon as I was settled, I asked after Ivo Jumelle. Not because I thought he’d seen anything suspicious when I fell, but because I hoped he might have heard something more about Guy.

“The envoy he served has been recalled and took the young man away with him,” Harry Guildford told me.

“He was not here very long.” I stepped close to Harry, following the pattern of a complicated dance that was to be part of a masque to entertain Queen Margaret.

“Ran off in fear, no doubt, after hearing that King Henry is talking of another invasion of France.”

“Why? I had not heard that France has done anything to provoke an attack.”

“King Henry sees the new French king as a rival since they are so near in age and physical prowess. François acquitted himself well in his war in Italy. Now Henry is determined to prove himself the better commander.”

I thought that a very foolish reason for starting a war. Then it occurred to me that I might disguise myself as a soldier and travel to France that way. The possibility so distracted me that I faltered in the steps we were rehearsing.

Harry caught me around the waist and lifted me high. “Pay attention,” he cautioned me. “If one of us puts a foot wrong, we’ll all go tumbling down.”

I tried to concentrate, but it was difficult. I discarded the idea of dressing as a man, but only because I’d had a better idea. I’d thought of a way to persuade King Henry to send me home to Amboise. All I had to do was find a way to speak with him in private.

That would be a problem. The king could meet privily with anyone he wished if he chose to arrange the assignation. For me to whisk him behind an arras or into an empty antechamber would not be as easy. He was always surrounded by counselors, courtiers, or guards.

“By the saints, Jane!” Harry stopped the practice and waved the others away. “What ails you? If Bessie Blount were here, I’d bring her in to replace you even if it is the last moment.”

“She will be back soon enough,” I said. “In the meantime you must make do with me.” Bessie had left court to visit her mother, who was ailing, while I was in Wales. A pity, I thought. Her absence deprived me of the easiest means of access to the king.

Then it struck me. There was a way to get King Henry alone. I might not be able to enter the royal bedchamber in Bessie’s company, but I could contrive to be invited there in her place.