At the King's Pleasure (Secrets of the Tudor Court) (17 page)

“That is not the sort of marriage I hoped for.”

“It is better than nothing. You made your bed, George. Now you must lie in it. How comfortable it is will depend on how well or ill you treat your wife.”

B
e patient, my lady,” Meriall advised.

“I have used my last reserves of patience. If no one is going to rescue me, then I will have to find my own way to escape.”

“But where can you go?” Meriall asked.

“Oxford. Oxford is not that far. I can
walk
there. I will sell the rest of the jewels we removed from my clothing and my book of hours, too.”

“And then?”

Anne glared at her. “Must you
always
be the voice of reason?”

She knew her plan was flawed, but she grew daily more frustrated with her situation at Littlemore. Did George mean to leave her here forever? There were times when it seemed to her that he did. She’d written again to George’s mother, but she’d still had no reply. She told herself that she should not expect to receive one in writing. The prioress would have confiscated any letter that came for her. But she’d expected a messenger to come. She’d
hoped
George would, in spite of the fact that she’d told him she never wanted to see him again.

She paced the tiny cell, trying to convince herself to be grateful that Dame Katherine had accepted the changes George had insisted upon. Otherwise, Meriall would have been sent away. She forced herself to smile for her maidservant. Her tiring maid was a prisoner here, too.

Meriall cleared her throat. “There is one possibility, my lady, although I hesitate to mention it.”

“I will listen to any plan, no matter how fanciful.”

“Not fanciful, my lady. But I fear that it is something the duke would do, were he ever in your position.”

“An unlikely circumstance.” Anne felt her face relax into a genuine smile. “Tell me.”

“This priory is not what your brother believed it to be. The duke thought, because he had been told that the prioress was strict in disciplining her nuns, that she must also be a paragon of virtue.”

Anne frowned. “What have you learned?”

“That the priory chaplain, Sir Richard Hewes, spends every night in Dame Katherine’s bed. The baby girl who was christened on Whitsunday is their child. If you threaten to betray her secret—”

“How would that profit me? If Littlemore is deemed unfit for my prison, I might be sent somewhere worse. In a proper nunnery I would have even less freedom than I do here, and no chance at all to escape.”

“You would not need to carry out the threat, my lady, only let Dame Katherine
think
that you mean to. If you can convince her that you have smuggled a letter out, a letter detailing her sins, a letter that is to be opened and acted upon only if you do not appear in person to reclaim it within a certain period of time, then surely she will let you leave, and give you the wherewithal to live upon, too.”

Anne turned the idea over in her mind. It was a clever plan, but it had one drawback. “To make Dame Katherine believe me, I would have to prove that it is possible to send a letter from Littlemore. That would mean betraying Dame Juliana. Would you have me leave her behind to face her prioress’s wrath?”

“Your kind heart does you justice, madam,” Meriall said.

“But you think I would be a great fool to listen to it.” Anne sighed. “Perhaps so, but I think I will take a less devious route to freedom.”

It took three days to make the arrangements. On the twenty-second of June, when the moon was high and full in the night sky, Anne and
her faithful maidservant left the cramped cell behind and sallied forth to meet Juliana.

It was just possible, once her eyes had adjusted to the dimness, to find her way through the priory and out into the night without lighting a candle. Meriall crept quietly along behind her, carrying a bundle containing the few possessions they had left. Anne’s remaining wealth had been sadly depleted by the necessity of paying bribes. Even her soft cambric shifts had gone to compensate Dame Juliana for the risk she was taking.

The young nun walked several paces ahead of them, keeping an eye out for their friendly gatekeeper. Once away from the priory there would be more obstacles to face, but for the moment all Anne cared about was gaining her freedom. They would ride first to Oxford, where temporary shelter had been arranged. Then they were bound for Wales. Meriall still had kin there who would keep them both safe while Anne decided what to do next. She was inclined to think that a petition sent directly to the king might work best. Surely His Grace would not ignore a direct plea for help. All she had to do was find a way to send it to him without either Edward or George getting wind of it.

Juliana signaled for them to wait while she crossed the cobbled courtyard. She would not be coming with them. Indeed, outwardly, in her black habit with her head bowed and her hands tucked demurely into her sleeves, she appeared to be the most circumspect of nuns.

It was eerily quiet where Anne and Meriall waited, pressed against the smooth stone wall of the convent. The only sounds Anne could make out were the soft slap of Juliana’s leather-soled sandals and the distant whuffle of a horse.

The challenge came out of nowhere. “Halt! Who goes there?”

Suddenly the courtyard was blindingly bright, lit by torches carried by burly priory servants. The gatekeeper advanced directly toward the spot where they were hiding, flushing them out like birds for a band of hunters. His face was impassive, revealing no hint of his earlier willingness to aid in their escape. Close behind him came the prioress.

“So, this is how you repay my hospitality,” Dame Katherine said.

Anne managed a haughty, defiant look, but inside she was weeping in disappointment and despair. With the failure of this attempt, all hope of escape was gone.

The prioress ordered all of Anne’s belongings confiscated. The bundle Meriall carried was seized and taken away. “Who helped you?” Dame Katherine demanded.

“No one, my lady.”

Anne saw no purpose in implicating Juliana or the gatekeeper, especially since the young nun had vanished. Anne hoped she’d managed to flee back into the dormitory in all the confusion. Juliana had taken a great risk. Even if everything had gone as they’d planned, she might well have been blamed when Anne’s disappearance was discovered on the morrow.

Dame Katherine slapped Anne across the face. “Who helped you?” she repeated.

Anne gasped, more from shock at such effrontery than from pain.

“Who helped you?” The prioress’s hand lifted, ready to deliver another blow.

Anne fought not to cringe. Her cheek stung and she knew she’d have a bruise. “How dare you strike me? I am a duke’s daughter.”

“You are nothing here.” She barked an order to her henchmen. “Put her in the stocks.”

Seized by rough hands, Anne was half carried, half dragged to the corner of the garden. Her hands and head were forced into the slots allotted for them and the heavy upper piece lowered to hold her there. The lock snapped into place with a loud click.

“Release me at once!” Anne shouted, but no one paid her any mind. Moments later, she was left all alone, and they had taken the torches with them.

The moonlight, which earlier had seemed so friendly, now picked out eerie shadows. Anne found herself remembering every story she had ever heard about creatures that roamed in the night. Sudden panic overwhelmed her. She struggled to pull her hands free but only
succeeded in making her wrists bleed. One incautious movement sent pain lancing through the back of her head as it struck solid wood.

The blow knocked sense into her. She settled. There was no point in fighting against her restraints. She could not escape.

Dawn would come, she told herself. Eventually. And Dame Katherine would not keep her here forever. She might have been given leave by the Duke of Buckingham to ill-treat his sister, but she would not risk doing permanent harm to a noblewoman.

Slowly, Anne gathered her shattered self-control and steeled herself to endure. The position was horribly uncomfortable. Her toes barely reached the ground and her neck was forced to bend at an awkward angle. Splinters abraded her wrists.

Her thoughts turned, unbidden, to the budding life inside her. Would her child be harmed by this treatment? Anne’s stomach clenched. Her chest tightened to a point that was nearly painful. No. She would not let that happen. In the morning, she would reveal her secret to the prioress. Surely Dame Katherine, a mother herself, would show mercy to a woman who was with child. Considering how best to broach the subject distracted Anne for fully half an hour.

It did not occur to her until much later that Juliana might have betrayed her. Someone had, she realized. If it had not been Juliana, then it must have been the gatekeeper, or one of Juliana’s sisters. She clenched her fists and fought tears. She had trusted too easily again.

Anne spent the rest of the night and all of the next day in the stocks. No one came near her, not even when she called out. She received neither food nor water. As the hot sun beat down on her head, she wondered if she would be freed if she gave Juliana’s name to the prioress, but she could not make herself do it. Juliana’s punishment would be to take Anne’s place and even if the young nun
had
betrayed her, no one deserved to be treated with such cruelty.

By the time Anne was finally released from the stocks, she was so weak that two of the nuns had to help her walk up the stairs to her cell. They locked her in and left her there for another full day without sustenance.

On the third day, the prioress freed her from strict confinement but informed her that her maid had been put to work in the kitchen. Meriall, like Anne, was to be locked in at night, and from now on would live separate from her mistress.

“You do not need the services of a tiring maid,” Dame Katherine decreed.

That was all too true. The only possessions Anne had left were her nun’s garments. Even her book of hours had been taken away. Without it, Anne prayed more fervently than she ever had before, begging God for deliverance. . . or for the strength to endure until she could find a way to free herself. She was grimly determined to escape from Littlemore and equally resolved not to be returned to the stocks.

E
very time the court stayed at Windsor Castle, Will Compton imagined himself in St. George’s Chapel receiving the Order of the Garter from the king’s own hands. This visit in mid-July was no different. The Garter was an honor generally reserved for noblemen and foreign princes, but more humbly born men than himself had begun from nothing and gone that far ere now.

His goal was the same as it had always been—to make himself invaluable to King Henry and reap the rewards. A knighthood would come first, then a title. He’d earn both by listening to His Grace’s petty complaints, fetching and carrying, and escorting willing young women to the royal bed.

Will wondered if His Grace ever thought of Lady Anne. He doubted it. She’d been a passing fancy, easily abandoned when having her proved too much bother. That was Henry Tudor’s way—convince himself he had no share of the blame, then go on as if nothing had happened. As Lady Anne herself had predicted, His Grace had even managed to forget that the Duke of Buckingham had lost his temper in the royal presence and left the court in a rage. Barely two months after the incident, Buckingham was back. Moreover, the king had granted him the young Earl of Westmorland’s wardship. That included the right
to arrange Westmorland’s marriage. Doubtless the duke would wed the earl to one of his own daughters. Even if he did not, he’d have control of Westmorland’s lands and fortune until that young man reached the age of twenty-one.

It was a convenient ability, Will thought, to be able to ignore what one could not change. Queen Catherine possessed the same skill. In the end, she’d accepted the loss of Lady Fitzwalter’s services and been reconciled with her husband.

King Henry was eagerly anticipating the birth of their child, due at Yuletide. In the meantime, His Grace had been practicing his own form of discretion by bedding only women the queen was not likely to notice. The first one Will had brought to the secret lodgings had been the laundress whose favors Ned Neville had already sampled. The second had been a visiting country gentlewoman with a complaisant husband.

“A pity we cannot go direct to Woking,” Neville commented as he came up beside Will on the castle battlements, “instead of meandering between gentlemen’s houses and monasteries for so many weeks first. It has been far too long since we’ve had a proper tournament.”

The court was about to embark on a royal progress through Hampshire and Dorset. It would be late September before this annual ritual, a chance for the king to be seen by his people and to deal in person with various small matters of government, would come to an end with a stay at Woking. The royal manor house there was in need of rebuilding and was much smaller than the palaces at Greenwich, Richmond, Westminster, and Windsor, but it did boast a fine tiltyard.

“Aye, it has been.” Will bore Ned no ill will for the injuries he’d suffered at Richmond. Being hurt now and again was part of the sport.

It would have been good to have the distraction of testing his skill with a lance. Will had spent far too much time of late brooding about Lady Anne. When he’d ridden away from Littlemore Priory, he’d told himself that she was safe and in good health, even if she was unhappy. He’d meant to forget about her, but she refused to become a distant
memory. Instead she remained in the forefront of his mind, nagging at him like a sore tooth.

He’d done the honorable thing, he assured himself, and the only sensible thing. Had he abducted the wife of a baron and carried her off to Compton Wynyates, he’d have lost everything, including any hope of rebuilding the dilapidated house he’d inherited from his father. No woman was worth that, not even Lady Anne.