Royal Inheritance (10 page)

The Earl of Surrey and some of his followers were in his sister’s rooms when I arrived. Surrey looked at Pocket askance, not having seen him before.

“That is a glove beagle,” he remarked, “not the usual sort of lapdog.”

“He was a gift, my lord.” The slight sneer on Surrey’s face prompted me to add, “From the king.”

One auburn eyebrow lifted and he darted a questioning glance at the duchess. She ignored him. I tucked Pocket away, out of sight, uncomfortably aware of the earl’s scrutiny and that of a member of his entourage, a fellow I had not noticed before.

He was the oldest person present, by at least a decade, and, by his dress, of lower birth and status than the earl. His mouth turned
down while his nose stayed up in the air, as if to avoid smelling something unpleasant. He was clean-shaven, a poor choice since it revealed a weak chin.

“Have you heard about Anne of Cleves’s visit to court over Yuletide?” Mary Shelton asked, glancing up from her needlework. With a gesture, she invited me to sit beside her and join in the task of hemming what appeared to be an altar cloth.

I was glad of the excuse to move farther away from the stranger, who was now whispering in a servant’s ear. The lad scurried away as if he feared a beating if he did not make haste. I thought perhaps he had reason.

“I heard that the former queen was installed at Richmond Palace,” I said to Mary. King Henry had given it to her in return for her agreement to annul their marriage.

“She’s hardly a prisoner there! In any case, she arrived at the gates of Hampton Court on the third of January, two days after the traditional exchange of gifts on New Year’s Day.”

“You make it seem as if she was not expected.” Surrey sounded disgusted by the subterfuge. “The entire production was carefully staged.” He helped himself to a goblet of wine and drank deeply.

“No doubt it was.” His sister kept her eyes on the intricate stitches she was using to attach a piece of black-work lace to a kirtle. “But it was a splendid spectacle all the same. You’d have enjoyed it, Audrey. Lady Anne of Cleves, who now must call herself the king’s sister where once she was his wife, threw herself to her knees before Queen Catherine like the most common suitor. Then the king arrived on the scene—just in time to witness this touching tableau. He raised Lady Anne up and kissed her and embraced her and then they all sat down to sup like three old friends.”

“Has Anne of Cleves finally learned enough English to converse
properly?” I asked. Her difficulties with the language had been widely reported.

Lady Richmond laughed. “So it would seem. But the highlight of the evening came after the king retired to his own apartments. Catherine called for music and then the two ladies danced together, whiling away the rest of the evening in that manner.”

“A display of perfect amity.” Scorn laced Surrey’s words.

“Why are you so wroth with Cousin Catherine?” the duchess asked. “It is to our benefit to have a kinswoman in the king’s bed.”

Seated beside Mary on her bench, I felt as well as saw her wince. “Is aught wrong?” I whispered.

Mary, blunt as ever, gave me a frank answer. “A momentary pang, I assure you. Having a kinswoman in the king’s bed is not always comfortable for the rest of the family. You see, during Anne Boleyn’s tenure as queen, she ordered her kinswoman, my sister Margaret, to allow the king to seduce her. The queen hoped to distract His Grace from lavishing his favors on another young gentlewoman at court.”

She kept her voice low, but the same gentleman who had earlier been so rudely staring at me cocked his head in our direction, blatantly eavesdropping on our exchange. Tom Clere, who was also close enough to overhear, leaned past me to give Mary a quick peck on the cheek. As he did so, I caught a whiff of bay leaves.

“Here you have the only woman in England who would not think it an honor to be the king’s mistress,” he said with a chuckle.

Mary swatted at him, missing when he ducked and nearly striking me. “Terrible man!” She sent me an apologetic look and sighed. “The truth is that people often confuse me with my sister. It is most annoying.”

“Better that than to be mistaken for your namesake the nun,” Clere teased her.

“Former nun,” Mary muttered through gritted teeth. There were neither nuns nor monks in England anymore, not since King Henry dissolved all the religious houses.

Clere, unrepentant, wandered off. I realized, with a sense of surprise, that the duchess and her brother were still talking about Lady Anne’s visit to court. The exchange between Mary and Tom Clere had passed unnoticed by anyone but myself and the stranger.

“After dinner the next day,” Lady Richmond said, “well pleased with his new bride, the king presented her with a ring and two lapdogs. The queen, to show favor to her guest, promptly offered all three to Lady Anne, who accepted them most graciously.”

“Did the queen not fear to offend His Grace by giving his gifts away?” The question burst out of me before I could stop it. I stammered an attempt at an explanation: “I . . . I would never give Pocket to someone else.”

Surrey laughed. “No, indeed. The king would not be pleased to hear of it if one of his glove beagles were to go to another. I am surprised he parted with that one. But these dogs were just ordinary spaniels, like that lazy beast.” He sent a contemptuous look in the direction of one of his sister’s lapdogs. Curled up close to the hearth, it was snoring gustily.

“I suspect they had arranged it all between them beforehand,” the duchess said, “for the king was quick to make a gift of his own to his former wife—an annuity of a thousand ducats.”

My eyes widened at the magnificence of this sum. King Henry must have been very grateful indeed to Anne of Cleves for allowing him to put her aside without protest.

“Lady Anne’s gift to the king,” Lady Richmond continued, “was also very fine—two splendid horses caparisoned in purple velvet.”

I scarce heard her. That man was watching me again. He had an intense, disconcerting gaze. His heavy-lidded eyes shifted as I
moved, leaving me with the uneasy feeling that he had some special reason for wanting to examine me so closely. Unable to imagine what it was, I fixed my attention on my stitches and attempted to ignore him, but I found no true relief until the earl and his gentlemen took their leave of us.

“Who was that older man?” I asked. “The one who stared at me so boldly.”

“Sir Richard Southwell.” Mary’s lips pursed as she spoke his name, as if saying it left a bad taste in her mouth.

“He is one of my father’s retainers,” the Duchess of Richmond said.

I looked from one woman to the other, puzzled by their reticence. Only the strength of my own reaction to the man persuaded me to pursue the matter. “Neither of you cares for the fellow. What has he done to make you so dislike him?”

Mary’s derisive snort spoke volumes, but did not clarify matters for me.

“What has he
not
done?” The Duchess of Richmond made a moue of distaste. “Some seven or eight years ago, he and several accomplices pursued a man into sanctuary at Westminster and slew him.”

I gasped. Murder was a heinous crime, but to violate sanctuary made it a hundred times worse.

“There was no doubt of his guilt,” Lady Richmond continued, “but my father the duke did not wish to do without his services. He persuaded the king to grant Sir Richard a pardon. The villain was fined a thousand pounds, but he kept his life, his property, and his freedom.”

“And he did not even have to pay the entire fine,” Mary put in. “He gave the king two of his manors in Essex to make up the difference, and after that it was as if nothing untoward had ever
happened. He has been at court ever since, regularly collecting honors and new grants of land.”

“Why was he so interested in me?” I asked.

“No doubt because you are new to our circle,” the duchess said.

Mary snorted. “Say rather because she is young and innocent of the ways of men. And her looks are . . . pleasing.”

I had the oddest sense that she’d meant to say something quite different, but I did not pursue that point. An alarming possibility had occurred to me. “Is he looking for a wife?”

Mary laughed. “Oh, he has one of those already, and one in waiting, too. A mistress,” she clarified when I failed to comprehend her meaning. “But he’s not the sort of man to be faithful.”

She set aside her needlework to stare into the past.

“I was newly at court at the time of his pardon, young and foolish, though not so young as you are. My sister and I thought him fascinating—an outlaw like Robin Hood rather than the vicious killer he really was. Sir Richard can be courtly when he chooses. He was on his best behavior with us . . . in public. In private he took liberties he should not have.”

She resumed embroidering with a vengeance, jabbing needle into cloth with unnecessary force.

“Then I found out about his wife . . .
and
his mistress. I accused him of deceiving me, and when he realized that I had thought he was courting me, intending marriage, he
laughed
at me.”

This time when the needle struck, it drew blood. Mary raised her wounded finger to her mouth with a sound of annoyance.

“It is not such an unusual thing,” the duchess remarked. “Married men often prey on innocent young women. The practice is not limited to the court, either.”

“My sister Margaret had more than one married suitor,” Mary said.

“So did you,” the duchess murmured.

“Not Master Clere!” Horrified by my outburst, I started to apologize, but Mary cut me off.

“Not Tom. He’s good and true. But Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, the poet, held in high regard by all of us for that talent, like Southwell has a wife and a mistress and still tried his luck with me.”

“At least Wyatt is not a murderer.” The duchess smiled at me. “It is well to be wary of the ways of men, Audrey. Your good Edith will protect you, but only if you stay within her sight. No slipping off on adventures of your own.” She wagged a finger at me.

“How can the king condone such behavior in his courtiers?” I asked.

The duchess and Mary exchanged a look.

“Murder?” Mary asked. “Or licentiousness?”

“The king has been known to ignore both the law and common sense when they stand in the way of what he wants.” I heard the bitterness in the Duchess of Richmond’s voice. “His punishments can be as fickle as his forgiveness. In the manuscript Mary keeps of our poems you may read an exchange of love sonnets between the king’s niece and my uncle. They married in secret, without King Henry’s permission, and when he found out he imprisoned them both. Lord Thomas Howard died in the Tower.”

She did not need to remind me that her cousin, Queen Anne Boleyn, had also lost her life in that grim fortress. Queen Anne had been a cousin to Mary Shelton, too, on the Boleyn side, and the king had rid himself of her for no better reason than that she’d given birth to a princess instead of a prince. No one had ever told me all the details but, even at that young age, I was astute enough to guess, from certain unguarded comments my friends had made, that the evidence of the queen’s adultery had been fabricated in order to clear the way for the king to make a new marriage.

The saddest part of Anne Boleyn’s disgrace and death was what it had done to her little daughter, Elizabeth. When the marriage was declared invalid, the child born during it became illegitimate. At barely three years old, Elizabeth Tudor went from being a pampered princess to a royal merry-begot.

S
ir Richard Southwell has been sent to Allington Castle to confiscate all of Wyatt’s possessions,” Tom Clere reported to the women gathered in the Duchess of Richmond’s rooms. He’d come alone to bring word of this development to those anxiously awaiting news of the fate of Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder.

Sir Thomas had been out of the country on a diplomatic mission to Spain when he’d inexplicably been taken into custody and charged with making treasonable statements. He had been brought back to England under guard and taken directly to the Tower of London. Although I had never met him, I shared my friends’ concern for their friend’s safety. To be convicted of treason meant a terrible death. The condemned were hanged, drawn, and quartered and their heads stuck on pikes on London Bridge.

“I pray that wildhead son of his will not try to keep Sir Richard out,” the duchess said. “Else young Sir Thomas will end up in the Tower, too.”

“The son is not the only one living at Allington who will object,” Tom Clere said.

Mary turned to me. “He means Wyatt’s longtime mistress, Elizabeth Darrell. She has borne him at least one child. And Thomas Wyatt the Younger has a wife and young family, too.”

“But what of the elder Sir Thomas’s wife?”

“Lady Wyatt lives with her brother, Lord Cobham. Wyatt set her aside many years ago, claiming she had taken a lover.” Mary’s lips twisted into a wry smile. “If she did, no one knows who he was, and she has always denied it. More likely husband and wife simply did not get along. That is the fate of many couples when their marriages are arranged by their parents.”

“But how else
should
a marriage be made?” I had always expected that Father would find a husband for me, although not until I was at least fifteen. That was the age his stepdaughters had been when he began negotiations on their behalf. Elizabeth, the younger, was to wed later in the year.

“I myself am in favor of love matches,” Tom declared, placing one hand on Mary’s shoulder.

I expected her to remove his fingers and skewer him with a disdainful look. Instead, she laughed up at him. For the first time, it struck me that, for all their bickering, they had a deep and abiding affection for one another.

“Such marriages often end badly,” Lady Richmond murmured, no doubt thinking of Lord Thomas Howard and the king’s niece, “but it is far worse to be bound to someone you hate for all of your life.” Seeing my confusion, she gave a rueful little laugh. “I speak of my parents, Audrey. The Duke and Duchess of Norfolk are notorious for their unhappy marriage. Ever since my father openly took Bess Holland as his mistress, my mother has shouted her anger to the world. Even locked away in a remote manor house, as she is now, she manages to make her wrath felt at court. She is a prodigious letter writer.”