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Authors: Karen Harper
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the kingdom,” Anne told me. “Devon is quite wild, is it not?”
“It is remote, my lady. It stretches from the lonely moors in the north to the cliffs overlooking the sea in the south, but there are many civilized places in between, I assure you.”
She asked me about my education and my faith. I told her the truth about Sir Philip’s household’s belief in the new learning and mostly the truth about everything else she asked. Since we were alone, would she not mention that I was to be her go-between to Cromwell when needed? But I learned then that she already knew what he had told me years ago, that the very walls might have ears. For, toying with her sweet-scented filigreed pomander, she rose in a rustle of skirts and summoned me with a graceful gesture over to a window she had flung wide. We stood in it, looking out over a pond and lovely, late-blooming garden.
Her bell-clear voice now dropped to a whisper. “I must tell you that here at Hampton Court, which once belonged to the pompous ‘pope’ of England, Cardinal Wolsey, and at York Palace in London are several secret staircases and passageways connecting the king’s chambers with others and to the courtyard or gardens outside—exits for times of need or desire. I tell you that not so that you will use them—for they are for the monarch only—but so that you know why, even in such a chamber as this, someone might overhear.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“And since you will be privy to some of my business, you must also realize that the king does not use those passages to visit me secretly, for I have told him that cannot be. But cleverness and care—that is what I expect of you. I believe you understand,” she went on, “that I will at times have need of you to carry a message for me to our mutual friend and perhaps return such from him, quietly and circumspectly.”
“I do, my lady.”
“It is all for a righteous cause, and those who stay with me to the end will reap rewards.”
“Yes, my lady. I shall serve you loyally.”
How many times later I recalled her words to me when we first parted: those who stay with me to the end. That day she dismissed me, I left her standing there at the window, suddenly silent, frowning and brooding. I quietly approached the outer door to not disturb her thoughts. When I opened it, Lady Jane, who must have been leaning tight against it, nearly fell into the room.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
HAMPTON COURT
September 1528
C ome one and all, ladies!” Mary Talbot summoned us on my fifth day in Anne Boleyn’s household. Mary clapped her hands as if we were the lap spaniels the ladies loved so much, though Anne herself stood out from the rest by favoring a sleek greyhound at her heels. “Bowling on the green today with the king’s coterie. Though,” Mary went on, rolling her eyes at me, probably because she believed I was so new and unconnected that it didn’t matter a fig what I saw or heard, “I wish he would not bring my helpmeet with him, damn the man—not the king, of course, but Percy.”
At age seventeen, Henry Percy, after his secret betrothal to Anne Boleyn had been crushed by the king and Wolsey, had been ordered to wed Mary. Their union had been agony for both. Mary would fall flat on the floor if she knew that Cromwell had told me all that. After two years of wedlock, with Percy yearning for his lost love, moping about, oft falling ill, Mary had left him. Yet both served at court these five years later, he as esquire of the body for the king, she first with Queen Catherine and now with Anne. The Percys tolerated each other—barely. It was, I thought, a fair warning about forced marriage. But my parents had chosen each other, and they fought far too much. And then there was the Tudor royal marriage, or rather, the ruin of it.
Her fourteen ladies fell in behind Anne, somewhat in pecking order, which put me in the last pair beside the pretty Madge Shelton, whom I was helping to learn to write a
“It is remote, my lady. It stretches from the lonely moors in the north to the cliffs overlooking the sea in the south, but there are many civilized places in between, I assure you.”
She asked me about my education and my faith. I told her the truth about Sir Philip’s household’s belief in the new learning and mostly the truth about everything else she asked. Since we were alone, would she not mention that I was to be her go-between to Cromwell when needed? But I learned then that she already knew what he had told me years ago, that the very walls might have ears. For, toying with her sweet-scented filigreed pomander, she rose in a rustle of skirts and summoned me with a graceful gesture over to a window she had flung wide. We stood in it, looking out over a pond and lovely, late-blooming garden.
Her bell-clear voice now dropped to a whisper. “I must tell you that here at Hampton Court, which once belonged to the pompous ‘pope’ of England, Cardinal Wolsey, and at York Palace in London are several secret staircases and passageways connecting the king’s chambers with others and to the courtyard or gardens outside—exits for times of need or desire. I tell you that not so that you will use them—for they are for the monarch only—but so that you know why, even in such a chamber as this, someone might overhear.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“And since you will be privy to some of my business, you must also realize that the king does not use those passages to visit me secretly, for I have told him that cannot be. But cleverness and care—that is what I expect of you. I believe you understand,” she went on, “that I will at times have need of you to carry a message for me to our mutual friend and perhaps return such from him, quietly and circumspectly.”
“I do, my lady.”
“It is all for a righteous cause, and those who stay with me to the end will reap rewards.”
“Yes, my lady. I shall serve you loyally.”
How many times later I recalled her words to me when we first parted: those who stay with me to the end. That day she dismissed me, I left her standing there at the window, suddenly silent, frowning and brooding. I quietly approached the outer door to not disturb her thoughts. When I opened it, Lady Jane, who must have been leaning tight against it, nearly fell into the room.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
HAMPTON COURT
September 1528
C ome one and all, ladies!” Mary Talbot summoned us on my fifth day in Anne Boleyn’s household. Mary clapped her hands as if we were the lap spaniels the ladies loved so much, though Anne herself stood out from the rest by favoring a sleek greyhound at her heels. “Bowling on the green today with the king’s coterie. Though,” Mary went on, rolling her eyes at me, probably because she believed I was so new and unconnected that it didn’t matter a fig what I saw or heard, “I wish he would not bring my helpmeet with him, damn the man—not the king, of course, but Percy.”
At age seventeen, Henry Percy, after his secret betrothal to Anne Boleyn had been crushed by the king and Wolsey, had been ordered to wed Mary. Their union had been agony for both. Mary would fall flat on the floor if she knew that Cromwell had told me all that. After two years of wedlock, with Percy yearning for his lost love, moping about, oft falling ill, Mary had left him. Yet both served at court these five years later, he as esquire of the body for the king, she first with Queen Catherine and now with Anne. The Percys tolerated each other—barely. It was, I thought, a fair warning about forced marriage. But my parents had chosen each other, and they fought far too much. And then there was the Tudor royal marriage, or rather, the ruin of it.
Her fourteen ladies fell in behind Anne, somewhat in pecking order, which put me in the last pair beside the pretty Madge Shelton, whom I was helping to learn to write a
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