At the King's Pleasure (Secrets of the Tudor Court) (38 page)

Egged on by Bergavenny, the familiar litany of complaints began slowly, with a mere murmuring against the Privy Council and others King Henry listened to at court. Before long, however, it built into a crescendo.

“By the Mass,” the duke swore, “I have done as good service to the king as any man, but I have not been rewarded for it. His Grace gives fees and offices to lowborn boys rather than to noblemen. You know this as well as I do. But I tell you now that I will prevail.” His voice rose suddenly, startling Bergavenny, and the baron stumbled as he backed away from the duke. “You speak of gifts. I have given away cloth of gold and cloth of silver and silks within this quarter year to many gentlemen. Your brother was not the only one. My generosity has found much favor within the royal guard. If the king should die tomorrow, I would have the rule of England, whoever might try to stay my hand.”

“My lord!” Bergavenny protested. “I beg you, do not speak of such things in my hearing.”

The duke’s smile put Madge in mind of a wolf about to pounce upon its prey. “I have no fear of or for you, my friend, for if you speak of what
has been said here today, I swear by St. George that you will be one of the first to feel my sword against your throat.”

Considerably shaken, Bergavenny vowed to keep silent and a few minutes later the two men left the gallery.

Madge remained where she was, feeling miserable and alone. How many people, she wondered, had by now heard the Duke of Buckingham make similar treasonous statements? He was bound for disaster. Someone was sure to tell the king or the cardinal and then Edward would be charged with treason. She did not want to be present to witness his arrest.

The thought of losing Edward forever haunted her as the household prepared to move from Bletchingly to Thornbury Castle. Her fears increased tenfold when she heard that Charles Knyvett would not be going with them. He was leaving the duke’s service.

“Why?” she asked the chamberer who told her the news.

The woman lowered her voice. “Still angry because the duke seized his sister’s possessions, I warrant. What does His Grace need with kirtles and the like? That’s what I’d like to know.”

“That was more than two years ago,” Madge objected.

But whatever Knyvett’s reason, his departure was worrisome. He knew too much. The image of a rat abandoning a sinking ship popped into her mind and would not be dislodged.

Madge tried to concentrate on her duties, to pretend that nothing was wrong, but restless nights and constant fretting took their toll. She dropped a pitcher, spilling water all over the embroidered cushions where the other ladies-in-waiting sat and shattering the container into dozens of sharp pieces, one of which nicked another gentlewoman on the hand. The duchess, normally the most unemotional of women, abruptly lost patience.

“Perhaps, Mistress Geddings,” she said in a cold, implacable tone, “you would like to visit your family at Penshurst instead of traveling to Thornbury. You seem overwrought of late. A respite from service might do you good.”

It was not a suggestion. She wanted Madge gone.

“My lady, I—”

The duchess held a hand up for silence. “You have fine clothing, jewelry, and an annuity. My husband provided well for you and your. . . mother.”

Was this dismissal meant to be permanent? Madge quailed at the thought but sensed that asking questions at this juncture would be a mistake. She curtseyed and backed out of the room. The full impact of the duchess’s decision did not crash down on her until she was in her own quarters, attempting to pack her belongings. Then she simply sank down onto the floor and wept until she had no more tears left. She had never felt so confused. One moment she was relieved to be able to leave. The next she longed to stay close to Edward, as if she could somehow protect him from his own folly if she remained at his side.

Early the next morning, she finished packing and retrieved her money and jewelry from their hiding place beneath a floorboard. She arranged for her trunks and boxes to be sent to her mother’s cottage on the Penshurst estate and then, taking only the necessities for a two-day journey, went to the stables.

Her plan was to order Goody to be saddled and to arrange to hire two of the duke’s henchmen to accompany her. It was not safe for a woman to travel England’s roads without some protection. But Charles Knyvett was there ahead of her, saddling his own horse, and he had already heard that she’d lost her post.

“I have business at Penshurst myself,” he told her. “I’ll take you there.”

Madge accepted the offer. Knyvett had his own servants to provide protection on the journey. She’d be a fool not to take advantage of the escort. She made only one condition.

“I do not wish to speak of the duke during the journey. Or of the duchess.”

Knyvett seemed to find this amusing, but he agreed.

A quarter of an hour later, they left Bletchingly. Madge kept her back straight and her resolution firm and did not look back.

L
ady Anne returned from yet another evening of banquets and disguisings to find Madge Geddings waiting for her in her lodgings at Greenwich. Madge did not look well. She had lost her accustomed plumpness and her normally rosy cheeks were pale.

Although Anne had told Madge to come for her if she ever needed help, she had not really expected the other woman to appear without warning at court. The last she’d heard, nearly two months earlier, Madge was living with her mother at Penshurst, where Madge’s daughter also resided.

When Anne realized that Madge had been weeping, she went to the wainscot cupboard, an impressive piece of furniture with two ambries and two tills, and fetched a flagon of wine and two goblets.

Madge accepted the cup and swallowed so much of the wine in one gulp that Anne suspected she was trying to fortify herself for a difficult interview. That did not bode well. Anne settled herself in a box-seated joined chair to wait until her friend was ready to confide in her, sliding her aching feet out of the slippers she’d worn to dance in.

Unlike Windsor Castle and Eltham Palace, where there were separate dancing chambers, Greenwich boasted no such amenity, but the king made up for the lack by clearing all the furniture out of the great
watching chamber. Anne was still considered one of the best and most graceful dancers at court, but these days she could not perform pavane after pavane without later feeling the effects.

After a few minutes, Madge set aside her wine cup. Perched on the flat-topped trunk beneath the window, she drew her knees up to her chin, clasping them tightly to her chest. Anne leaned toward her.

“What is it that troubles you?” she asked in a gently coaxing tone of voice.

Madge opened her mouth but no sound came out. Afraid she was about to burst into tears again, Anne moved swiftly to her side and engulfed her in a comforting hug. When Madge shifted her legs to curl them beneath her and Anne did the same, they had just room enough to sit face-to-face atop the cushioned window seat.

Giving one final sniffle, Madge managed a watery smile. “I did not know where else to turn,” she whispered. “I have been so afraid.”

“Of Edward?” Anne asked. Had her brother objected to Madge’s move to Penshurst?

“
For
Edward. I fear for his life.”

Anne clutched Madge by the shoulders and stared hard into her eyes. She could feel the other woman trembling beneath her hands. “What has happened?”

“Did you know that Charles Knyvett has left the duke’s service?” Madge asked. At Anne’s nod, she went on. “He has no business at Penshurst any longer, or at any of the duke’s estates, but I saw him there just three days ago. He was talking to Sir Robert Gilbert and another man, a man I recognized as one of Cardinal Wolsey’s servants. I saw the fellow in attendance on the cardinal at the Field of Cloth of Gold.”

The mere mention of Wolsey made Anne uneasy, but the depth of Madge’s concern puzzled her. There could be any number of reasons why her cousin Charles might visit Penshurst, and Gilbert was her brother’s chancellor.

“Why did this sighting alarm you, Madge?”

“Because Master Knyvett knows too much about the duke’s business and Sir Robert knows even more.”

“They have both been trusted family retainers for many years. It is only natural they should—”

“You do not understand!”

At the sudden urgency in Madge’s voice, Anne let her hands drop into her lap, but she kept her gaze on the other woman’s face. “Then tell me.”

“I have been trying to order my thoughts,” Madge began. “I have no idea why Sir Robert would turn on the duke, but Knyvett bears a grudge over Edward’s refusal to give up his sister’s goods after Bess Knyvett died. There is something more, too, but I do not know what it is, only that Knyvett was not happy about giving up his post as the duke’s surveyor.”

“Did Edward dismiss him?”

“That remains unclear, but however it came about, Knyvett was left with no source of income. What if he is selling information to the cardinal?”

“Even if he is, Madge, that does not mean he can do Edward any harm. Everyone who seeks advancement spies on everyone else. Nothing remains secret long at the Tudor court.”

New tears welled up in Madge’s light blue eyes. “Oh, Lady Anne—if the truth comes out your brother’s life will be forfeit.”

Anne’s hands clenched in her velvet skirt so hard that her fingers left deep creases. Very carefully, she released the fabric and drew in a calming breath. Now they came to it. She should send Madge away. She should not listen to her confidences.

“What truth, Madge?”

“It is all the monk’s fault,” Madge blurted out. “His predictions have convinced your brother that it is his destiny to rule England. Edward has come to believe that no one can stand in his way. He had a scare, when Bulmer was taken to task by the king for wearing his livery. Edward genuinely feared arrest then, but even that experience did not persuade him to give up his ambition. Now he seems oblivious to his danger.”

Monk? What monk? Anne knew who Bulmer was and that her brother had been reprimanded for giving livery to one of the king’s
servants, but she could not grasp the significance of the rest of what Madge was saying.

Then a faint glimmer of memory came back to her. Something about a priory Edward had supported years ago. Henton? No—Hinton. That was it.

She felt the color drain from her face as she remembered something else. Back then, desirous of revenge upon her brother for sending her to Littlemore Priory and costing her the life of her first child, she had written to Thomas Wolsey—he had not been a cardinal then, but simply the priest who had married Anne to George—to complain of her mistreatment by the prioress and to inform him of her brother’s misguided support for that religious house and one other. She had mentioned Hinton by name, having learned about Edward’s charitable gifts to the place from Madge.

Had she brought trouble down upon Edward’s head? It was all too terribly possible. Wolsey sat on secrets like a spider, patiently spinning webs, letting his victims trap themselves before he struck. So long as he had a use for Edward, her brother was safe, but once Wolsey decided to act against him. . .

She clamped down hard on incipient panic and returned her attention to Madge. “Start at the beginning,” she ordered. “Tell me everything that concerns you, most especially about this monk and his predictions.”

Madge complied. It took her some time to tell the whole story, but by the end of it Anne knew that Edward believed that this Nicholas Hopkins, a monk at Hinton Priory, was a true prophet, especially when he predicted that Edward would one day be king.

“How can he have been such a fool?” she wondered aloud. “No one with any sense believes prophets can see the future. Prophecy is not based on sound principles. The only sure way to predict a person’s fate is to cast a horoscope using the science of astrology and even then the signs are difficult to interpret. You must remember Edward telling us that King Henry the Seventh’s court astrologer predicted that Queen Elizabeth’s last child would be a boy and that she would live many years
after giving birth to him. Instead, Elizabeth of York died in childbirth with a girl.”

“There is worse to tell,” Madge said in a small voice. “Edward threatened to take King Henry’s life, and with his own hand, too.”

Anne slumped against the window behind them. It would not matter if the words had been spoken in the heat of anger or with deliberate calm—such a threat constituted treason. “Who else heard him say this?”

“To my certain knowledge, Knyvett, but Sir Robert Gilbert, Sir John Delacourt, and Lord Bergavenny have also been his confidants.”

Anne straightened abruptly, eyes wide in alarm. “Edward threatened to kill the king in
Bergavenny’s
presence?” Surely Bergavenny was a greater threat than Knyvett. As a baron, he had access to the court. His younger brother was one of the king’s boon companions.

Madge repeated the exchange she’d overheard in the gallery at Bletchingly. “Please, my lady—there must be something we can do to avert disaster.”

“If there is, I do not know what it might be.” Edward’s own words had condemned him, but Anne herself had made matters worse for him with a few careless strokes of the pen.

A decade earlier, she had passed many hours plotting revenge upon the brother who had shamed and mistreated her, but even then she’d only wanted to cause him embarrassment, not send him to his death. Guilt and sorrow filled her heart as she contemplated how such a little thing could have such dire consequences.

Madge clutched her arm. “The king has forgiven Edward before for words spoken in anger.”

“That was different. Less important.” Her lips twisted into an ironic smile. Edward had been furious when he was banished from court for sending her to a nunnery. He had not minced words with the king and yet barely a month had passed before King Henry forgave him.

Sending her to Littlemore had not been a treasonable offense.

Anne might have said more to Madge, but George’s return to their lodgings put an end to private conversation. Instead, she sent Madge off
with Meriall to find a bed for the night and pasted a bright smile on her face for her husband. For the nonce, she would keep what she’d learned to herself. She saw no point in worrying anyone else.