Royal Inheritance (22 page)

If I had not been watching for his reaction, I might have missed it. As it was, I saw the slight widening of his eyes and heard the quick, indrawn breath.

“That is not what your father thinks, is it?”

“I do not know what you mean.”

“You need to spend more time at court, Master Darcy. You would learn to be more convincing when you tell a lie.”

He looked over his shoulder toward the door of the workroom. We’d been left alone there except for Edith. She sat in a distant corner and appeared to be absorbed in her mending. I had no doubt but that she could overhear what we said to each other, but I did not care.

“Father believes you are the king’s child,” Darcy admitted.

Although the idea was scarcely new to me, this was the first time anyone had said the words aloud. I started to utter a denial but before I could say a word, Darcy spoke again.

“It is the color of your hair. Father says he knows of only two other people who share it. One is Princess Elizabeth. The other is King Henry. And then there are your eyes. Was Anne Boleyn your mother, too?”

Taken aback, for this was an idea that had never once crossed my mind, I blurted out the raw truth. “My mother was a laundress at
Windsor Castle who gave birth to me out of wedlock.” I drew in a steadying breath and then added, with slightly more dignity, “I am a bastard, Master Darcy. A merry-begot.”

“So am I.” He said it as though it did not matter, but I suspected that it did. “Still, I am Father’s heir. And I am not Richard Darcy any longer. Father says I’m to call myself Richard Southwell the Younger.”

“I liked you better with your original surname,” I muttered.

“The Darcys of Essex are my mother’s family.” He elaborated on that subject, but I had stopped listening.

I’d been struck by an intriguing notion. I wondered that I had never thought of it before. The one person who must know who had fathered her child was that child’s mother. To learn the truth about myself, all I had to do was find Joanna Dobson, née Dingley, and ask her.

There was a difficulty, however. I had no idea what had happened to my mother. I did not even know if she was still alive. I had not seen her for fully fourteen years, not since the day the king placed me in John Malte’s care.

I
was still trying to think of a subtle way to ask Father for information about the woman who had given birth to me when an odd incident occurred. A foundling was left at our gate. Some poor woman abandoned her child where it was certain to be found by the maidservant who went out to empty the chamber pots.

Such events were not unheard-of. The hope was that the rich merchant who lived within the gate would take pity on the abandoned infant and give it a home. In this case, the baby was a little girl only a few weeks old. She had pale skin and blue eyes and was still bald. She was also covered in flea bites and stank most abominably. Mother Anne ordered Lucy to bathe her.

“Well, my dear,” Father said to Mother Anne. “What shall we do with her?”

I was not included in their discussion. I was not even supposed to be privy to it. But I had been about to enter the hall when Father spoke. I paused at the top of the stair, just out of their sight. Simple curiosity compelled me to remain where I was.

“I suppose you want to adopt her,” Mother Anne said. “You have always been a great one for taking in strays.”

At first I thought she meant the occasional dog or cat who came our way and was put to work catching rats in Father’s warehouse. Then a more personal interpretation of her words occurred to me. I felt myself blanch. Was
that
why Father had accepted responsibility for me fourteen years earlier? Because he saw a little girl who needed a loving home? Because he felt
sorry
for me?

I told myself I must be mistaken. I had no doubt of Father’s affection for me. Or Mother Anne’s. But shaking off doubt was not an easy process. With an effort, I kept my focus on the conversation in the hall.

“I am too old to take on the care of another young child,” Mother Anne said.

Had I imagined the slight emphasis on the word
another
?

Father did not answer. He could not. One of his ever more frequent fits of coughing rendered him incapable of speech.

“You are not fit now, either, John,” she added. “You know this to be true.”

“It is nothing,” he whispered. “This catarrh will pass.”

A little silence fell.

“Let us send the child to Muriel,” Mother Anne suggested after a time. “She has taken to motherhood far better than Bridget did. She has room in her heart for a second baby, and milk enough to feed it, too.”

This proved to be an excellent solution, although Father continued to take an interest in the infant who’d been abandoned on his doorstep. He worried about her. He worried, it seemed to me, about everyone and everything in his life, the more so since he no longer went to court.

Day by day, his catarrh worsened. The bouts of coughing weakened
him and made him dizzy, forcing him to take to his bed. One morning, soon after that overheard conversation, he called me to him, along with Mother Anne and the apprentices. He’d already sent for John Horner and John Scutt. When they arrived, we all gathered around his bed.

“I have spent the night writing out my will,” Father announced.

At his words, silent tears began to flow down my cheeks. Mother Anne moaned aloud.

“This is to protect you, my dears. A precaution only.”

I watched him sign it and saw Master Horner and Master Scutt add their signatures to his as witnesses.

A great sense of calm seemed to come over Father. When the others left, Mother Anne and I remained. We sat one on each side of the bed, clasping Father’s icy hands. The expression on Mother Anne’s face told me that she feared Father’s death was imminent.

Of a sudden, his hand went limp in mine. His eyes were closed. I could see no movement of his chest beneath the coverlet. In a panic, I leapt up, upsetting my stool.

“Father!” I cried.

The anguish in my voice roused him. His eyes opened. He even managed a weak smile. “I am not dead yet, child, only resting.”

“You gave me such a scare!”

Pocket, who had tumbled off my lap when I sprang to my feet, barked in agreement.

“Put the little dog on the bed. He comforts me.”

With Pocket lying next to him, licking his hand and being petted, Father did seem better, until another spasm of coughing gave the lie to appearances. It took him a long time to recover his breath. I stayed with him while Mother Anne went off to fetch more barley water and a soothing lozenge.

“There are things I must tell you,” he whispered as soon as she left us.

Not now, I thought. If I am not John Malte’s daughter, I do not want him to tell me so.

This man, who had given me nothing but love, who had acted in my best interests even when I did not agree with him as to what those were, was my true father, no matter who had coupled with the black-eyed laundress who had given birth to me.

I berated myself for failing to notice how frail Father had become during the last few months. No wonder he had stopped fighting to keep his post at court. Since our return to Watling Street from court, since he’d fallen ill, he seemed to have aged a decade. The hand I once more took in mine trembled. Veins bulged in the paper-white, paper-thin skin.

“I may yet live for many years, Audrey,” Father said, “but a wise man makes provision for his family. That is why I made my will. Everything that the king intends to grant us jointly will go to you when I am gone, as will my manor of Nyland in Somerset. I have left property to your sisters as well, and to their sons. John Scutt and Bridget will serve as executors.”

He went on to enumerate several smaller bequests. He was generous. He even left five pounds to the foundling so recently abandoned at our gate. That made me smile, but my expression changed to one of shock when he added that he’d made a bequest to my natural mother of twenty pounds.

“I . . . I had wondered if she was still living,” I murmured. “Where is she, Father? Where is Joanna Dobson?”

His hand tightened painfully on mine. “There is no need for you to know that, Audrey. She is no longer part of your life.”

“And yet you would include her in your will.”

“She gave me you.”

“Did she? Or was it the king who gave me to you? Is—?”

“Stop badgering your father!” From the door, Mother Anne’s voice snapped like a whip, making me cringe and shrink away from her.

“Anne, I—” That was all Father managed to say before yet another fit of coughing overtook him. Pocket fled.

“He will recover,” Mother Anne said in a fierce voice. “If he stays in bed and drinks strengthening broths, all will be well. But he is far from well yet. Go away and let him mend.”

Banished from the bedchamber, I took comfort in my lute and in playing with my little dog. Father and Mother Anne were my parents, I told myself, no matter whose blood flowed in my veins. But the need to know the truth about myself continued to gnaw at me. Now that I was certain that my mother was still living, I knew I must find her.

Fourteen years earlier, she and her husband had lived and worked in Windsor Castle. That was a long time ago, but I was sure someone there would remember where they’d gone.

All I had to do was find a way to get to Windsor.

A
lthough Father continued to suffer from a nagging cough, his recovery was swifter than anyone expected. He was up and about a few days after he made his will and, just a week after calling us all in to witness the signing, he announced that he intended to pay a visit to the local barber-surgeon to ensure that he remained in good health.

“This is the seventeenth of September,” he informed us, “the traditional day to be bled as a preventive against dropsy.”

“You do not
have
dropsy.” Mother Anne glanced up from the beaker of ale with which she’d broken her fast. “You do not even suffer from tympany.”

“Nor do I wish to become afflicted with either ailment.” And with that, taking only a bit of bread and cheese to sustain him, he left the house.

“What is tympany?” I asked when he’d gone. I had already finished eating and was tempted to follow Father to make sure he returned home safely. Being bled always made me dizzy. I worried that
it would affect Father the same way, especially as he’d been so weak during his recent illness.

“Tympany is wind colic.” Mother Anne pushed aside her trencher with more force than necessary. “If your father wishes to avoid wind after meals and excessive gas in the abdomen, then I will make him a draft to drink an hour before eating. There is no need for him to be bled.”

As she left the room, I could hear her muttering to herself. The list of ingredients—coriander, conserve of roses, galanza root, aniseed, sugar, even cinnamon—sounded more like a receipt for cookery than physic.

Father returned an hour later, unsteady on his feet and white as parchment. “The humors have been restored to their natural balance,” he assured me as I assisted him to climb the stairs. “Dropsy is caused by superfluous cold and moist humors. That is why it was necessary that I be bled.”

I make no pretense of understanding the theory of humors. To me it sounds as mad as predicting the future by the stars. All I cared about was that Father not fall ill again. Our household might have escaped, summer after summer, from the ravages of the plague, and been spared other dread diseases, too, but I knew full well that life, like a candle, could be snuffed out in an instant.

Father’s dizziness abated but he began to pass water an immoderate number of times a day. Mother Anne was worried enough to consult a physician about that condition. This doctor charged an angel for just one visit. He examined Father’s urine, prepared an astrological chart, and gave him a purge. Then he made him drink cold water until he vomited. To complete the cure, Father was supposed to eat four eggs prepared with powdered red nettle and sugar every morning. This he refused to do. For a time, his health improved.

In October, the royal grant we had been promised was duly issued, more than doubling Father’s wealth.

We were not cut off from news of the court, even though neither Father nor I went there anymore. John Scutt was still the queen’s tailor and Bridget still took pleasure in repeating every juicy tidbit he shared with her. In this way, I learned that King Henry had been ill.

“The king and queen are at Windsor now,” Bridget announced in mid-October, “but the king is not hunting, as is his wont. It is said he’s not well enough to stand the exertion.” She rolled her eyes. “I do not see that His Grace ever exerts himself overmuch. Master Scutt told me once that King Henry is accustomed to shoot at deer from a fixed standing. And even when he did ride down game on horseback, armed with darts and spears, he used a purpose-built ramp to mount his horse.”

“You must not be disrespectful of the king,” Mother Anne warned her.

“Is it disrespectful to speak the truth?”

“It can be,” I murmured.

Bridget, who had never been to court herself, paid no attention to our warnings. She prattled on, repeating the latest rumors. I assumed that what her husband told her had some basis in fact. The stories she picked up in the marketplace were less reliable, but she repeated those, too. Unable to tell the wheat from the chaff, Bridget was always certain they were all true.

It was from Bridget that I first heard that Sir Thomas Seymour was in residence at Seymour Place, a house in the parish of St. Clement Danes. The king had given it to him, so Bridget said, for his good service to the Crown.

I knew where Seymour Place was located. It was situated on the Strand, just beyond Temple Bar on the way to Westminster.
Although this was outside the city gates, I reckoned that it would not be a very great journey from Father’s house. It was, in fact, nearer to Watling Street than Norfolk House and even easier to reach by wherry.

On the pretext of a shopping expedition to buy new shoes, I set out with Edith at an early hour. I walked rapidly to Paul’s Wharf, where I hailed the first boat I saw. Edith had been sworn to secrecy but she was a reluctant accomplice and was already out of sorts because she’d had to trot to keep up with me.