Read Online The Queen's Governess by Karen Harper - Free Book Online
Authors: Karen Harper
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everything revolved around the king’s beloved, and for the first time in my life, I glimpsed the true power a woman could wield.
After I had rested and washed, settling into a small but pleasant chamber with two others of her ladies, the maidservant assigned to us unpacked my trunk while I was summoned by Lady Jane to meet my new mistress. Names and titles and connections already bombarded me: Lady Jane, Viscountess Rochford; the other two ladies in my chamber, Dorothy Cobham, Lord Sheffield’s daughter from Derbyshire, and Mary Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury’s youngest daughter—and the wife of Anne’s Boleyn’s former love, Henry Percy, no less! Thanks to the lady and Cromwell, I was instantly living in heady company.
I soon learned the Percy marriage was an unhappy one and they were much estranged, though Percy, heir to the earldom of Northumberland, was about the court in the king’s service, having previously served Cardinal Wolsey. [As many years and as many Tudor sovereigns as I knew, relationships both formal and informal, marital and political, did boggle the mind. Especially when my dear Elizabeth finally mounted the throne and advanced men of ability as well as nobility, it was a veritable spiderweb.]
I had to remind myself to breathe as I was led through a series of beautifully decorated chambers, each one with fewer curious and staring people in them, until we reached a small, empty but ornately appointed sitting room. Lady Jane knocked on a carved door, listened for a reply with her ear to the wood, then stuck her head in.
“Milady, the new gentlewoman from Devon, Mistress Katherine Champernowne, is here as you asked.”
The voice that answered was mellifluous but authoritative. “Send her in and close the door when you leave.” I could tell Lady Jane was not pleased, for she flounced out and closed the door a bit too loudly.
I saw the chamber I entered was a fairyland of woven tapestries, Turkey carpets on the table and a massive bed draped with red-gold silken curtains. It was said that Anne Boleyn had told the king she would not be his mistress but only his wife, yet here was a bed fit for royalty. Yet it was not the furbishings but the lady herself who commanded my interest.
This woman of twenty-seven years, who was the cause of “the king’s great matter,” also called by some “the troubles,” looked delicate and graceful. Her hair was raven black; she had dark doe eyes with a tilt to them that made her seem she would smile or flirt. I had expected her to be a ravishing beauty, but she was not. Yet there was something so inherently elegant and vivacious—something superior too—about her manner, the tilt of her head, the way she carried herself as she came away from looking out the window and turned toward me.
She wore a half-moon-shaped French headdress studded with pearls, which made my old-fashioned gabled hood feel heavy on my head. Like my stepmother, Maud, she seemed to float as she moved, which made me once again feel earthbound. About her slender neck, she had a strand of pearls from which hung an ornate, golden B with three oblong pearls dangling. She wore blue that day, shimmering peacock blue velvet with long sculpted brocade ivory satin inner sleeves, which hid most of her hands. I was soon to learn that the long-sleeved fashion was partly to cover a tiny sixth finger on her left hand, something used against her later, as was a mark on her neck, to accuse her of witchcraft.
I was grateful I knew to curtsy long and low. As I rose, she kindly held out her right hand to raise me, then indicated I might sit on a needlepoint stool while she took the chair. I saw she had been reading a book, a New Testament, and in English rather than the approved Latin. How much she dared, I thought, even then, for the king had been declared Defender of the Catholic Faith before all this came to a boil.
“I am pleased to have about me those who will be loyal, those from many shires of
After I had rested and washed, settling into a small but pleasant chamber with two others of her ladies, the maidservant assigned to us unpacked my trunk while I was summoned by Lady Jane to meet my new mistress. Names and titles and connections already bombarded me: Lady Jane, Viscountess Rochford; the other two ladies in my chamber, Dorothy Cobham, Lord Sheffield’s daughter from Derbyshire, and Mary Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury’s youngest daughter—and the wife of Anne’s Boleyn’s former love, Henry Percy, no less! Thanks to the lady and Cromwell, I was instantly living in heady company.
I soon learned the Percy marriage was an unhappy one and they were much estranged, though Percy, heir to the earldom of Northumberland, was about the court in the king’s service, having previously served Cardinal Wolsey. [As many years and as many Tudor sovereigns as I knew, relationships both formal and informal, marital and political, did boggle the mind. Especially when my dear Elizabeth finally mounted the throne and advanced men of ability as well as nobility, it was a veritable spiderweb.]
I had to remind myself to breathe as I was led through a series of beautifully decorated chambers, each one with fewer curious and staring people in them, until we reached a small, empty but ornately appointed sitting room. Lady Jane knocked on a carved door, listened for a reply with her ear to the wood, then stuck her head in.
“Milady, the new gentlewoman from Devon, Mistress Katherine Champernowne, is here as you asked.”
The voice that answered was mellifluous but authoritative. “Send her in and close the door when you leave.” I could tell Lady Jane was not pleased, for she flounced out and closed the door a bit too loudly.
I saw the chamber I entered was a fairyland of woven tapestries, Turkey carpets on the table and a massive bed draped with red-gold silken curtains. It was said that Anne Boleyn had told the king she would not be his mistress but only his wife, yet here was a bed fit for royalty. Yet it was not the furbishings but the lady herself who commanded my interest.
This woman of twenty-seven years, who was the cause of “the king’s great matter,” also called by some “the troubles,” looked delicate and graceful. Her hair was raven black; she had dark doe eyes with a tilt to them that made her seem she would smile or flirt. I had expected her to be a ravishing beauty, but she was not. Yet there was something so inherently elegant and vivacious—something superior too—about her manner, the tilt of her head, the way she carried herself as she came away from looking out the window and turned toward me.
She wore a half-moon-shaped French headdress studded with pearls, which made my old-fashioned gabled hood feel heavy on my head. Like my stepmother, Maud, she seemed to float as she moved, which made me once again feel earthbound. About her slender neck, she had a strand of pearls from which hung an ornate, golden B with three oblong pearls dangling. She wore blue that day, shimmering peacock blue velvet with long sculpted brocade ivory satin inner sleeves, which hid most of her hands. I was soon to learn that the long-sleeved fashion was partly to cover a tiny sixth finger on her left hand, something used against her later, as was a mark on her neck, to accuse her of witchcraft.
I was grateful I knew to curtsy long and low. As I rose, she kindly held out her right hand to raise me, then indicated I might sit on a needlepoint stool while she took the chair. I saw she had been reading a book, a New Testament, and in English rather than the approved Latin. How much she dared, I thought, even then, for the king had been declared Defender of the Catholic Faith before all this came to a boil.
“I am pleased to have about me those who will be loyal, those from many shires of
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