Royal Inheritance

The funeral cortege taking King Henry’s body to Windsor for burial left Westminster on the fourteenth day of February. On the fifteenth, John Malte breathed his last.

We were all at his bedside. Mother Anne and I had been in nearly constant attendance for weeks. At the end we were joined by Mary, Elizabeth, Bridget, and Muriel and their husbands.

“I’ve named you executor,” Father said to John Scutt, although he had to pause for breath between words. “You and Bridget together. Anne will give you my will when the time comes.”

Bridget looked so pleased that I wanted to kick her.

“Take care of Audrey. She has no one else.”

Scutt frowned but promised.

Then Father turned to me. I feared he was about to ask me once again to agree to marry Sir Richard Southwell’s son, but he only smiled a little sadly, closed his eyes, and died.

Mother Anne and I clung together, weeping, for a very long time. By the time I recovered myself enough to pay attention, Bridget had Father’s will in hand and was working herself up into a fine fury over the provisions.

“Listen to this!” she exclaimed. “To Joanna Dingley, otherwise Joanna Dobson, twenty pounds. Five pounds to the foundling child left at my gate. To Audrey Malte my bastard daughter begotten on the body of Joanna Dingley, now wife of one Dobson, the manor of Andesay otherwise Nyland in Somerset.” She stopped reading, her face purpling with rage. The list of manors in my inheritance, I supposed, went on and on and on.

“Father was generous to all of us,” Muriel said in a futile attempt to cool her sister’s temper.

“But he loved her best. It was ever so!”

I knew from long experience that it was no good trying to reason with Bridget. I ignored her outburst and concentrated on comforting Mother Anne as best I could. Of all of us, she would feel Father’s loss most deeply. Adding to her grief was the responsibility of running the tailor’s shop and seeing that Father’s apprentices finished their training. She would have to decide whether to take over, as was her right as a widow, or sell out to another member of the Merchant Taylors’ Company.

The new king’s coronation took place a few days after Father died. The entire city turned out for his procession through London to the Tower. They celebrated with bonfires and fireworks when he was duly crowned. Although King Edward was just a little boy and England would, it seemed, be ruled by his uncle, the Duke of Somerset, most ordinary citizens looked upon the change in the monarchy as a reason for celebration. King Henry had not been as popular in his last years as when he first came to the throne. Many hoped the new regime would be better.

I simply hoped that Sir Richard Southwell had less influence with the new king than with the old one. In this I feared I was to be disappointed. He sent word through John Scutt that he awaited my agreement to the marriage contract he and Father had negotiated.

“I am past the age of fourteen,” I informed Bridget’s husband. “I am of age to inherit on my own and to decide my own fate, as well. Tell Sir Richard that I will not marry his son and that I will never change my mind.”

That son left his studies at Lincoln’s Inn to come to the house and ask to see me. I refused to speak with him.

Master Scutt delayed submitting Father’s will for probate, which meant I had no ready money of my own and no way to claim the lands bequeathed to me. I therefore also lacked the wherewithal to do anything but stay on in Watling Street with Mother Anne.

Although she was still deeply sunk in her own grief, she kept a watchful eye on me. I could tell that something worried her. That suspicion was confirmed when she took me aside and warned me to guard myself well anytime I ventured out of the house.

She looked as if she wished to say more but was unsure whether she dared voice her thoughts.

“What have you heard?” I took both her hands in mine and willed her to meet my eyes.

“Nothing.”

“Then what do you suspect?”

She pulled free of my grip and went to stand by the window. “What do you see from here, Audrey?”

“John Scutt’s house.”

“The day you turned Southwell’s son away, he left here and went directly there.”

I considered that. As executor of Father’s will, Master Scutt had already shown himself willing to delay handing over my inheritance. Such meddling did not alter my rights. I could not be forced into marriage. Indeed, if he continued to withhold my property, I could take him to court.

Confident that, in time, any legal issues would be settled in my favor, I counted my blessings. I had a roof over my head and food in my belly. And even though he was now a very old dog, I had Pocket to cuddle when I needed comfort.

41

February 27, 1547

On the first Sunday in Lent, we went to church as we always did. The congregation included my sisters and their husbands, all of us still wearing mourning for Father, as we would be expected to for some months to come. Mother Anne would wear black for him for the rest of her life.

I avoided Bridget and Master Scutt, but Mother Anne spent some little time talking with them before we returned to the house. Her worried frown warned me she had more bad news to impart.

“Does he still refuse to fulfill his duties as executor?” I asked. “Mayhap it is time to consult a lawyer.”

“It is more than that.” Unaware that she did so, Mother Anne twisted her hands in the fabric of her skirt, clenching and releasing, clenching and releasing.

I took her arm and led her to the window seat with its view of the street below. “Tell me. Together we will deal with it, whatever it is.”

“You are a good girl, Audrey, but it is yourself you must have a care for, not me. Bridget has never made any secret of her resentment of you. I fear she has let envy rule her. And now Sir Richard seems willing to make it worth her while to conspire with him—”

“Conspire? To do what? No one can force me into a marriage I do not want.”

“I do much fear you may be wrong about that. Heiresses have been kidnapped ere now. And priests bribed.” She seized me by the shoulders, her fingers biting into my arms. “There is no denying that men are stronger than women. You could easily be carried away against your will. Imagine yourself in some remote spot, all the doors locked and guarded by Sir Richard’s men. If, then, his son forced himself upon you to consummate the marriage, there could be no possibility of an annulment.”

“But if there is no marriage, no betrothal, that would be rape.”

“You could be beaten into submission. Thrashed until you signed the papers.”

The picture she painted was an ugly one. I wanted to say she was imagining things, but it was all horribly possible. What recourse would I have if I were subjected to such treatment?

Best to avoid any chance of being captured by such villains, but if Bridget was in league with Sir Richard . . .

I slept little that night. With both Father and King Henry gone, I had only myself to rely upon. I’d heard not a word from Jack Harington since the day he’d brought me back from Windsor Castle. I thought he was still with the new Baron Seymour of Sudeley, but I was not even certain of that.

I needed the protection of someone more powerful than I was if I wished to keep my freedom. There was only one person I could think of who might be persuaded to take me in.

In the very early hours of the next morning, I ordered Edith to pack my belongings and hire a cart to take my boxes to Paul’s Wharf. I told the boatman where I wished to go and in short order we were headed westward on the Thames. It was bone-chillingly cold. The waterman said there was ice-meer in the water—cakes of ice that floated up from the bottom of the river, where it was frigid enough to freeze. Stones and gravel came up with it, making travel by water more hazardous than usual.

Halfway to my destination, we passed Norfolk House in Lambeth, only it was not Norfolk House any longer. It had been seized by the Crown and then King Henry had granted it to Queen Kathryn’s brother. I wished him joy of it.

A bit more than an hour after embarking, I stepped ashore at the royal manor of Chelsea. The gardens stretched down to the river, but in February there were no colorful blossoms. Even the evergreens looked dull and lifeless.

The house itself was built of brick, with small turrets and many chimneys. It had been designated the dower house of the queen dowager, Kathryn Parr.

I took a deep breath and, leaving Edith to see to my possessions, boldly approached the liveried guard at the gate. A few minutes later, I was shown into Queen Kathryn’s privy chamber.

“Mistress Malte,” she greeted me. “How unexpected to see you here, and at such an early hour.”

My obeisance was as deep as I could make it without tumbling over. “Your Grace, I have come to ask a boon.”

“Have you indeed. I was under the impression that the king had been most generous to you.”

She knew, I thought. She knew for a certainty that I was King Henry’s daughter.

“His Grace was most generous to my father,” I said, stressing the relationship to John Malte, “because of Father’s long years of service to the Crown,” I added. “But I fear there are unscrupulous persons who wish to prevent a good man’s last wishes from being carried out.”

A flicker of interest showed in the queen dowager’s hazel eyes. One of her carefully plucked eyebrows lifted. “Tell us more.”

I told her almost everything. Since she knew the truth, she could surmise the rest. Aloud I said only what I was content for the world to know—that Sir Richard Southwell pursued me for his son because I had a goodly dowry and, now that I had the freedom to refuse, was plotting with my half sister to force me into an unwanted marriage.

I did not realize that Princess Elizabeth was also at Chelsea Manor until a rustle of brocade gave away her presence. She had heard all I’d said to her stepmother.

If there was anyone who could understand a half sister’s jealousy, it was Elizabeth Tudor. From an early age, she and Mary, King Henry’s daughter by Catherine of Aragon, had been at odds, simply because Elizabeth’s mother had replaced Mary’s as queen. Elizabeth remembered me from that long-ago progress. And I remembered that, at the time, I had wondered if it had been a question about my parentage that had been responsible for the king’s decision to send his daughter away.

The queen dowager, too, seemed to find something in my plight that she could sympathize with. “You fear and despise the young man’s father,” she said. “Knowing Sir Richard, I can understand your feelings. But is there more to your reluctance to wed an otherwise unobjectionable young man? Is there another, mayhap, you’d prefer to take as your husband?”

I hesitated. “I thought there was. I . . . I think he has been frightened off.”

Some strong emotion flickered across the queen dowager’s features but it was gone again so quickly that I thought I might have imagined it. I did not imagine her compassion.

Pocket chose that moment to poke his head out of the placket in my skirt. He was no longer overweight. Indeed, he reminded me a little of Father at the last, shrunken and wasting, but he still held a place in my heart and he loved me unreservedly.

“Why, it is the little dog the king gave you!” Princess Elizabeth exclaimed.

I drew Pocket out. “He is very old now for his breed, but I could not abandon him.”

“Nor will we abandon you, Mistress Malte,” the queen dowager said. “For as long as is needful, you shall have a place in my household.”

42

Chelsea Manor, March 1547

The queen dowager’s entourage at Chelsea was not unlike that she’d maintained as queen consort. A number of her ladies remained with her and she’d been joined not only by her stepdaughter, Princess Elizabeth, and Elizabeth’s household, but also by her sister Anne, the wife of Lord Herbert. He used Baynard’s Castle as his London residence, and since Lady Herbert’s three-year-old son was there, she spent much of her time traveling back and forth on one of the small row barges at Queen Kathryn’s disposal.

Within days of my arrival, another familiar face turned up at Chelsea, bringing a message to the queen dowager from the Lord Admiral. Jack Harington’s eyes widened when he caught sight of me among the women in the queen’s presence chamber, but more than an hour passed before he was able to seek me out in private.

“What are you doing here, Audrey?”

We were alone in a quiet gallery and he had me pinned between his arms, one on each side of me, his palms resting against the wall that supported my back. I was hemmed in. Surrounded by him. And yet nowhere did his body touch mine.

I glared at him. “Keeping myself safe. And you?”

Taken aback by my blunt reply, even though it was in direct response to his own rude question, he dropped his arms and stepped away from me. “Safe?”

“Yes, safe.” I stayed where I was. “Did it not occur to you that I’d need protection after my father died?”

“Whi—? You mean John Malte?” He took off his bonnet, slapping it against his thigh, and raked his fingers through his hair until it stood up in disordered peaks. “I was saddened to hear of his death, but with the king so recently dead . . . That is no excuse, and well I know it. I should have sent a message of sympathy. I should have attended the funeral. I do most sincerely beg your pardon, Audrey.”

“I suppose your employer keeps you busy.”

I do not know why I wanted to ease his conscience by making excuses for his neglect. Who can explain the attraction that draws one person to another or the urge to defend one’s beloved? I knew full well that Jack Harington had flaws, but from very nearly the first moment I saw him, when I was still a child, I had felt a powerful bond with him. As I grew older, the need to have him in my life had blossomed into desire. It no longer mattered to me that my feelings for him were so much stronger than his for me. This was the man I would have for my husband, or I would take no husband at all.

“I am Lord Seymour’s man,” Jack said. “I do as he bids me. Of late, that has meant that I am here at Chelsea as often as I am at Seymour Place.”

For a moment, I did not grasp his meaning. I’d been so absorbed in reacquainting myself with his physical appearance—his tall, muscular form, his thick brown curls, those brown eyes with their amber flakes in the depths—that his words had made little impression. I shook myself free of carnal thoughts and sent him a hard look of another sort.

“Why are you here?”

He laughed. “Can you not guess? The Lord Admiral Sir Thomas Seymour is most assiduously courting our widowed queen, as he has been ever since he received word of the king’s death.”

I must have looked shocked, because he laughed again.

“Why do you find that surprising? They are in love. They have been since before Kathryn Parr caught King Henry’s eye. It was the Lord Admiral’s interest in her, back before he was Lord Admiral, that prompted His Grace to send Seymour abroad on one mission after another. Anything to get him out of the country and keep him far away from court.”

“Is that why Sir Thomas did not pursue a marriage to the Duchess of Richmond?”

Jack nodded. “One reason, at least. His feelings for the queen have been one of the worst-kept secrets at court. I am surprised you were unaware of them.”

“I did not go to court all that often,” I reminded him. “And of late the only news I’ve heard has come through my sister’s husband.”

It was cold in the long, nearly empty room. Drafts seeped in through the many windows. But when Jack indicated that I should sit on a padded bench in front of one of them, I was willing enough to oblige. I caught his hand and pulled him down beside me. Knee to knee, his gloved fingers clasped in mine, I told him everything that had transpired since the last time I’d seen him.

When I got to the part about Sir Richard Southwell’s plan to kidnap me with Bridget’s help, he let out a low whistle. “I always knew she hated you, but such wickedness is beyond belief.”

“Believe it, Jack, for I do.” I marveled that he, who had lived at court so long, could be surprised by anything. Perhaps it was that a woman was involved.

“Does Sir Richard know where you have gone?” he asked.

“Not yet, but he is sure to learn of my whereabouts eventually. When that happens, I pray that the queen dowager can keep me safe.”

“You are of age and—”

“Merely having the law on my side may not be enough to save me, not if Sir Richard is high in favor in the new regime.”

His face a solemn mask, Jack confirmed my worst fear. “He is on the Privy Council, and he is one of the Lord Protector’s favorite toadies.”

“There must be something more I can do to protect myself.”

Jack stared out at the bleak landscape beyond the window. “The Lord Admiral is not without influence. He’s the new king’s uncle, too. I will speak to him, Audrey. And I can ask the Marquess of Dorset and his wife for help. I was kindly received by them when I carried messages back and forth concerning the Lord Admiral’s plan to advance the interests of their eldest daughter at his nephew’s court.”

I frowned, trying to sort out what family he meant. I was not familiar with every title, and several noblemen had been advanced in the peerage in the new reign, thus changing the names by which they were known. “Who are they?” I asked.

“Lady Dorset was born Lady Frances Brandon. Her mother was the late king’s younger sister.”

My cousin, I thought. We’d never met and I wondered if she had ever heard of me and if it would make a difference if she had.

“After the negotiations I conducted on the Lord Admiral’s behalf, Lady Frances’s daughter, Lady Jane Grey, went to live at Seymour Place in the care of Lady Seymour, the Lord Admiral’s mother.” Jack was already speaking softly, but he lowered his voice still more. “If all goes according to the Lord Admiral’s plan, the Lady Jane Grey will marry her cousin the king.”

This scheme was of little interest to me. I was only concerned with one thing—would the Dorsets lend their support to my cause. “Will they help me if you ask them to?”

“I think they will. Their influence, added to that of the Lord Admiral and the queen dowager, should be sufficient to keep you safe from Southwell’s machinations.”

“If you are so certain of that, then why do you still look worried?”

His frown smoothed out as if by magic. “It is nothing.”

I sighed. Jack now sat as far away from me as the window seat allowed, careful not to touch me even in the most casual way. And yet I did not think it was because I repelled him. I was certain the most obvious solution has already occurred to him, and if he would not voice it, for whatever reason, then I knew I must. “I would be truly safe from Sir Richard Southwell once I wed someone else.”

My words hung between us. Jack took a long time to respond to them. Too long. I tried to take comfort from the fact that he did not react with surprise or distaste or even discomfort. It was that he did not react at all that defeated me.

“Say something,” I begged him, “even if it is to tell me that you cannot bear the sight of me.”

“My dearest Audrey! How can you think such a thing?”

“How am I to think otherwise? You said once that you would marry me if you had land and wealth, but you have never said that you loved me. You are a poet, but you have never made me the subject of one of your poems! And now that I am truly free to choose my own husband, you still say nothing.”

“I still have nothing to offer a wife.”

“You do not need anything. I am an heiress.”

“Unless Scutt contests the will. Or destroys it.”

“I would still come into a considerable fortune in land. I have the right of survivorship in the king’s grant—a manor called Kelston in Somerset, a house called Catherine’s Court, and four hundred ewes.”

“Sheep?”

“Yes, sheep. Will you marry me for my ewes, Jack?”

“I will marry you for you, Audrey.”

And then, finally, he gathered me up in his arms and gave me a proper kiss.

43

Chelsea Manor, April 1547

Sir Richard Southwell did not quite dare threaten the queen dowager, but he made it clear he was not leaving Chelsea until he had spoken with me. “She is my son’s betrothed,” he insisted.

“I am no such thing,” I assured Queen Kathryn.

She addressed Sir Richard in a stern voice. “Have you signed a pre-contract?”

Sputtering, on the very verge of swearing in Her Grace’s presence, Sir Richard finally had to admit that he had not. I breathed a little easier. I had been afraid he’d counterfeit one. It would not have been difficult to forge my signature, or my father’s.

“A word with the young woman, Your Grace? In private.”

“I cannot permit you to hound her, Sir Richard. Her maid will accompany her and at least one gentleman, and that is only if she agrees to speak with you.”

Since I had a thing or two I’d like to say to Sir Richard, now that I felt he’d been put in his place by the queen dowager, I consented.

“Are you certain this is wise?” Jack asked. He’d been at my side throughout Sir Richard’s audience with Queen Kathryn. He’d followed at once when he’d learned from one of the Lord Protector’s servants that Sir Richard was on his way to Chelsea.

“You will be with me. And Edith.”

“Best take Pocket along, as well. If all else fails, your little dog can bite him.” Pocket had, quite sensibly, taken an immediate dislike to Sir Richard the first time he’d caught a whiff of him.

We adjourned to an antechamber. Sir Richard sent Jack a baleful look, having no doubt by now about who his son’s rival was. How long he’d known, I could not begin to guess, but it scarce mattered any longer.

“Ever the knight-errant,” he sneered.

“Jack and I intend to wed. You can do nothing to stop me from choosing my own husband. I know the law on marriage.”

I did not like the way he was smiling.

“I cannot stop you,” he agreed, “but there is one who can. The king is your half brother, Audrey. You know it and I know it and soon the king will know it.”

I could not see what difference that would make, but the pressure of Jack’s hand on my arm warned me not to speak, not even to deny that King Henry was my father, until Sir Richard revealed what he had in mind.

“His Grace has two half sisters already, Mary and Elizabeth. Legally, both of them are also bastards, since the late king’s marriages to their mothers were annulled. King Edward would regard your situation as no different from theirs.” He paused, to make sure I was following him. I was not, but when I said nothing, he continued, his tone that of a teacher speaking to a dull-witted child. “A king’s kinswomen are subject to his control in the matter of their marriages, no matter how old they are.”

This threat had teeth, but I had been intimidated by this wicked man for far too long already. “You are mistaken, Sir Richard, in thinking that King Henry fathered me. He did not.”

“Can you prove it?” He laughed, certain I could not.

I had the good sense not to answer him and, after a moment, still chuckling to himself, he left.

“Can you prove it?” Jack asked.

I threw my arms around him. “Yes! The wording of John Malte’s will proves I am his merry-begot, not the king’s. He even names my mother.”

“But Audrey, for all you know, John Scutt destroyed your father’s will. It has not yet been probated.”

“We have to convince him to produce it. Failing that, those who have read it must be forced to come forward.”

“Bridget?”

The reminder earned him a scowl but did not dent my certainty. “I will find a way. I cannot believe Master Scutt would destroy the will. There were too many witnesses to its making. And besides, it contained generous provision for Bridget and her son. If the estate has to be divided among Father’s heirs, as it will if Father is declared to have died intestate, then Bridget could well end up with less.”

“I will ask the Lord Admiral to lend his support. And you must talk to the queen dowager. She still uses Master Scutt’s services, does she not?”

“She’s had little need for them, being in mourning, but that will not last forever. In the meantime, the Lord Protector’s wife is his patron. She is the Lord Admiral’s sister-in-law. Perhaps—”

Jack cut me off with a short bark of laughter. “I would not look for help from that quarter. The Lord Protector and his wife have refused to return Queen Kathryn’s jewelry, even those baubles she owned before she married the king. For that reason alone, there is no love lost between the brothers.”

“Still, you will try, will you not?”

“I will do my best,” he promised, “but we must proceed with caution. The last thing you want is to remind Sir Richard of the existence of that will.”

I resolved to bide my time, but others saw no point in waiting for what they desired. The plans Jack and I had made were thrown into confusion by love. Not my love for Jack, but the Lord Admiral’s for Queen Kathryn and hers for him. Too impatient to let a respectable period of mourning pass, they wed in a private ceremony shortly before April turned into May.

The secret was ill-kept, at least at Chelsea. The servants and the ladies who attended the queen dowager knew that the Lord Admiral spent his nights in Queen Kathryn’s bed. Rather than be thought a whore, she told a select few of her household the truth and they spread the word. By mid-May everyone knew.

“You should follow our example,” Queen Kathryn advised me. “You are free to wed whatever man you choose, just as I was as a widow. Why not do so? Let the legal matters sort themselves out later.”

I saw the sense in what she said even as I recognized the irony of her words. There was a storm coming over her hasty marriage. At court, her new husband was just waiting his chance to speak with King Edward in private so that he might ask the young king’s blessing for their union. Without it, should the news break too soon, the Lord Admiral might even find himself in the Tower for having had the audacity to wed a royal widow without prior permission. Queen Kathryn, whether she was willing to admit it or not, was bound by the same law that controlled the marriages of the king’s half sisters. It was treason to marry one of His Grace’s kinswomen without first securing royal approval of the match.

“What would happen if we married now?” I asked Jack when he returned to Chelsea with a message from the Lord Admiral to his wife—a report that, as yet, he’d had no success in meeting with the king.

“I have been thinking about that. It is possible that the very fact of our marriage might push Master Scutt into producing the will. He knows I have powerful friends. I just wish we knew whether or not Sir Richard has had anything to do with Scutt since you slipped out of their clutches.”

“Mother Anne might know.” I felt a pang of guilt. I’d left a note telling her I was going somewhere safe, but I had not been in touch with her since taking refuge at Chelsea. For all she knew, I could be dead.

Jack went in secret to the house in Watling Street. He returned with Mother Anne’s blessing on our union and the news that Bridget had complained long and loud about Sir Richard’s failure to do as he had promised and send new business Master Scutt’s way.

“Southwell openly snubbed Scutt at court,” Jack reported, “acting as if he was too good to be seen associating with a mere artisan. He made a mistake there.”

“Bridget will never forgive him,” I agreed. “She’ll help me now, if only to spite him.”

As soon as the banns could be read in Chelsea church, Jack and I were wed. It was a quiet ceremony, with only the queen dowager and the Lord Admiral as witnesses. The next day, we paid a visit to my sister and her husband to announce the happy event.

Bridget looked down her nose at us. To her mind, I’d married a nobody. Jack had no profession and no fortune of his own.

A few minutes of conversation made it clear that Master Scutt knew nothing of Sir Richard’s latest threat.

“Once probate is complete,” Jack reminded him, “Audrey will be in a position to reward you for your services as Malte’s executor, and your own wife will be able to claim her inheritance.”

Scutt sent a fulminating glare Bridget’s way, making me think she had been the one responsible for the delay. She smiled sweetly back at him.

“I’ll see to it,” Scutt promised.

I hid my elation, lest Bridget turn against me again. If Scutt kept his word, there would be no more claims that I was King Henry’s daughter. Once John Malte’s will was properly entered into the official record, I would have documentary evidence to the contrary.

We went next to Mother Anne to announce our marriage, then visited my other sisters and their husbands. By the time we left London for Kelston, the largest part of my inheritance, I was at peace with all my kin.

We planned to live quietly in Somersetshire. Kelston was an idyllic setting for newly wed couple. Edith was with us, and little Pocket. Although the house had not been lived in for some time, it had been in the care of an industrious housekeeper. We settled in to wait for all the legalities to be settled.

The first good news to arrive was word that the will had been probated, thus rendering Sir Richard Southwell’s latest threat impotent. When he learned how he’d been thwarted, his first reaction would be anger and a desire for revenge. We resolved to rusticate awhile longer, giving his temper time to cool.

In July, news of the queen dowager’s remarriage became public. The Lord Protector was furious with his brother the Lord Admiral. Fortunately for the Lord Admiral, he had already succeeded in obtaining the young king’s enthusiastic approval.

“They are safe,” Jack reported, looking up from the letter that brought us this news.

“Thank the good Lord. They deserve their happiness.”

“As do we.”

I smiled at him. The weeks just past had been the most blissful of my entire life. Having established beyond a doubt that I was Audrey Malte, I was now quite content to be, only and forever, Audrey Harington.

44

Catherine’s Court, November 1556

The fire in the withdrawing room had burned down to ashes by the time Audrey stopped speaking, but she did not call for a servant to build it up again. It would do no good. She felt the cold deep inside herself where no flame could warm it. It was as she had feared. It hurt almost as much to relive moments of great happiness as it did to remember those filled with grief.

Hester stood and stretched. “I wish we could acknowledge being kin to the queen, but I am glad you and Father were able to wed.” She grinned. “I should not be here if you had not.” She headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

At the sharpness of Audrey’s question, Hester turned in surprise. “To the hall. I want to look at the portraits.”

They lined the walls—Audrey and Jack, King Henry, King Edward, Queen Mary. There were even small ones of the Lord Admiral and the queen dowager, a gift on the occasion of Audrey’s wedding to Jack.

With an effort, Audrey hoisted herself out of the chair and followed her daughter. There was more she needed to tell her, and perhaps seeing the likenesses of those she’d talked about would enhance her words.

Hester stopped first in front of the picture of Queen Kathryn. “I know what happened to her. She died in childbirth.”

In her innocence of such matters, she said the words easily. She had no idea how many good women perished just as they achieved their greatest triumph. Audrey herself had almost succumbed. After Hester was born, the midwife had told her she was unlikely ever to conceive another child.

Audrey indicated the likeness of Thomas Seymour, Lord Admiral of England. “It was not long after his wife’s death that Seymour attempted to break into the bedchamber of his nephew the king. He killed one of the king’s dogs, lest it sound an alarm.”

This elicited a horrified gasp from Hester, who was as fond of dogs as she was of horses. Audrey, too, had been appalled by the Lord Admiral’s act, the more so because, at the time, she had just lost, to old age and infirmity, her own longtime companion. She’d buried Pocket in her garden just a few days before news of the Lord Admiral’s arrest arrived at Kelston.

“You were not yet a year old when he was executed for treason by his own brother, the Lord Protector. As I told you, your father was in the Lord Admiral’s service. He delivered messages for him and therefore was privy to many of the Lord Admiral’s plans.”

The worried look in Hester’s eyes told Audrey that her daughter had an inkling what she would hear next.

“Jack was arrested, too. He was in prison for over a year.”

“But he was released. It all ended well.” Hester moved on to the portrait of King Edward and frowned.

“The young king reigned only a few years,” Audrey said. “Upon his death, the country was very nearly plunged into civil war. That was averted, but more plots against the new queen, Mary, were quick to surface.”

“I remember,” Hester said. “I was old enough by then to know something of what was happening. You and father were both taken away. Did Father conspire against Queen Mary?”

“Never! No more than he knew of the Lord Admiral’s plans to kidnap King Edward. But innocence does not guarantee safety. You will remember that I spoke of Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger?”

Hester nodded.

“He attempted to march into London and capture Queen Mary to prevent Her Grace from marrying Philip of Spain. People were in great fear of Spanish rule in those days.”

And of the return of Catholicism to the land, Audrey added to herself. That fear had been well founded. They were all good Catholics now, under the rule of Mary and Philip, no matter what they believed in their hearts.

“The Duke of Suffolk was to raise the Midlands,” she continued. “That was the Marquess of Dorset, Lady Jane Grey’s father. He’d been elevated in the peerage two years earlier, when his wife’s brothers died. Poor Lady Jane was already in the Tower of London, for she’d been a pawn in an earlier scheme to keep Mary Tudor from claiming the throne. At the time of Wyatt’s uprising, your father was at Cheshunt. He had just delivered a letter to Princess Elizabeth at Ashridge when two of the duke’s brothers, on their way to join Suffolk, stopped there for the night. They tried to convince Jack to join with them. He refused, but the mere fact that they’d spent the evening together was sufficient to condemn your father in the queen’s eyes.”

“Did Wyatt mean to put Elizabeth on the throne in Mary’s place?”

“Some say he did. No one really knows.”

From what Audrey had heard since, the leaders of the rebellion had been a confused lot with conflicting goals and little in the way of organization. Any well-trained housewife could have mounted a better campaign.

“It scarce matters what his goal was,” she continued. “Queen Mary was suspicious of her half sister and that suspicion extended to everyone associated with her, including your father. He was accused of being a conspirator and imprisoned in the Tower of London. Then the queen ordered Elizabeth to come to London and lodged her, under guard, in a secure corner of Whitehall Palace near the privy garden.”

Hester listened attentively, her eyes wide. Audrey prayed for the strength to make her understand what the rest of her story meant. Hester had not asked again to go to court and meet her royal aunt, but that did not mean she had given up her ambition to be a maid of honor. In telling her daughter the next part of the story, Audrey hoped to dissuade her, once and for all, from ever trying to trade on her royal inheritance.

She drew in a strengthening breath. She needed her wits about her now more than ever. When she’d begun, her only goal had been to make certain that her daughter did not grow to adulthood in ignorance of her heritage. Audrey would not have wished that fate on anyone. But now there was more she must do. The simple truth was out but it was not enough. Now she must shape her remaining memories into a cautionary tale, to prevent Hester from misusing her newfound knowledge.

45

Whitehall, March 1554

When word came that Jack was back in the Tower, I at once made plans to leave Somerset for Stepney. We’d acquired our house there some three years earlier. Even though he’d just spent many months imprisoned for no greater crime than being one of the Lord Admiral’s loyal retainers, he’d laughed when he first noticed that we had such an excellent view of his former prison. Then he’d recited the epigram he’d written on the subject of treason:

Treason doth never prosper. What’s the reason?

Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

That was how he passed his time while incarcerated for the first time—writing. He translated Cicero’s The Book of Friendship and composed verses, including a sonnet to the Lord Admiral that, had anyone seen it, would most likely have added to the length of Jack’s imprisonment. The poem ended with a couplet:

Yet against nature, reason, and laws

His blood was spilt, guiltless without just cause.

I did not like to think what new verses my husband might be composing. He was temperate in speech, but he seemed to believe that expressing his thoughts as poetry gave him license to say what he would. The day after my arrival in Stepney, I applied to visit him. When that request was denied by the constable of the Tower, I presented myself at court and begged an audience with Queen Mary.

King Henry’s eldest daughter had been at Ashridge the one summer I went on progress with the court but I had never been presented to her. I did not think she had noticed me. For the most part, I had stayed well in the background, even though I was made welcome in Queen Kathryn’s household.

When I arrived at Whitehall Palace with my petition for Jack’s release I expected to spend days, if not weeks, awaiting the opportunity to plead my case. I was not the only suitor hoping to see the queen on behalf of a loved one. Between those who’d been involved in the futile attempt to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne in Mary’s place when King Edward died and the rebels who’d joined with Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger and the Duke of Suffolk in this more recent rebellion, a great many men were currently locked away.

It was already too late for some. The Duke of Suffolk had been executed. So had his daughter, Lady Jane Grey, despite the fact that she’d had naught to do with this latest uprising. Wyatt yet lived, no doubt because the queen hoped to persuade him to implicate her half sister, Elizabeth, in his treason.

On the second day of my vigil at court, one of the queen’s ladies, recognizable by her russet and black livery, came for me. She led me into the queen’s privy chamber, where Queen Mary sat not on a throne, but on an ordinary chair, her hands busy with needlework. She was beautifully dressed, in a gown of violet velvet. Her skirt and sleeves were embroidered in gold. At first glance, all this magnificence disguised the fact that in her person she was rather plain.

Filled with trepidation, I approached Her Grace. Now that the moment was upon me, I was terrified that I would say the wrong thing and make things worse for Jack.

She squinted at me when I rose from my curtsey—she was notoriously shortsighted—and bade me come into the light shining through the window beside her. Even though the queen was seated, I could tell that she was of low stature, much shorter than I was. I tried not to stare, but I could not help but think that she had not inherited much from her father. Her hair was a dull reddish brown instead of the true “Tudor” red. She did have King Henry’s fair skin, but her face was as lined as that of a much older woman—she was thirty-eight at that time—and her lips were thin and bloodless. Her eyes were her most prominent feature, large and dark.

When she spoke it was in a powerful, almost mannish voice. “We are told, Mistress Harington, that you have a petition for us.”

“Yes, Your Grace. I have come to beg you to release my husband from the Tower. He has done nothing wrong.”

“Has he not? We have met John Harington, madam. He is a most pernicious fellow. This is not the first time he has attempted to meddle in the succession. He acted as a go-between when the late Lord Admiral conspired with the Marquess of Dorset, as he was then, to marry the Lady Jane to King Edward.”

“I know nothing of that, Your Grace.”

I lied with a straight face. I knew all about the messages he’d carried back and forth between the two men, and that Lady Jane Grey had been sent to Seymour Place and the keeping of the Lord Admiral’s mother in order to be closer to court and the young king. Shortly after I married Jack, the Lady Jane had gone to live at Chelsea with the queen dowager. She’d remained with Queen Kathryn until Her Grace’s death and had served as chief mourner at her funeral.

The queen continued to stare at me, making me so nervous that I burst into speech. “My husband spent nearly a year in the Tower for no other reason that he was one of the Lord Admiral’s gentlemen, but in the end he was freed and pardoned.”

“Pardoned for what crime, madam?” She leapt on that like a dog on a bone. “To have been pardoned, he must have been guilty of something. Come, we know he played a role in the Lord Admiral’s schemes. And then there is his faith. He composed a certain scurrilous hymn that the late king our father did like to sing.”

“He was a very young man when he wrote that, Your Grace. At the time, the Church of Rome had been banished from the land.”

My fervent defense caused an ugly red color to suffuse the queen’s face. I bit my lip, wishing I had kept silent.

Queen Mary leaned forward to peer more closely at my features. “You seem familiar to us, Mistress Harington. Have you been at court before?”

“My father was John Malte, the royal tailor.”

The queen jerked back as if she had been struck. In that instant, I knew that she had heard the old rumor about me. I’d have suspected Sir Richard Southwell of repeating it to her, except that I’d already heard that he’d fallen out of favor in the new regime. Uncertain what to say, I said nothing. The queen was silent, too. Then she waved me away.

“Return on the morrow. We will speak with you again then.”

I backed out of the privy chamber in a state of profound confusion.

I was no less befuddled when I returned the following day. Another of the queen’s ladies was on the lookout for me. She escorted me to a small room furnished only with a prie-dieu and the large, ornate cross on the wall in front of it. She instructed me to wait there.

Obedient, I stood and stared at the low desk. It had a space for a book above and a cushioned kneeling pad below. Once every home had had one of these, but they had gone out of fashion after King Henry broke with Rome in order to end his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Queen Mary, Catherine’s daughter, had steadfastly refused to give up her faith. Now that she was on the throne, she intended to restore the religion her father had tried so hard to replace.

Tentatively, I knelt. The cushion felt odd beneath my knees but I folded my hands in front of me and bowed my head. If ever I had needed my prayers to be answered, this was the day, but no words came to me. I did not know what to pray for. That Jack be innocent? I feared he was not. That the queen would pardon him? Would that be enough? While I was still wrestling with this quandary, the door behind me opened and closed.

When I tried to stumble to my feet, the queen’s gruff voice ordered me to remain on my knees. Having shifted onto the bare floorboards, I froze, half turned away from the prie-dieu.

“It is good to find you at prayer,” Queen Mary said. “Do you accept the true faith?”

“I . . . I am in need of instruction, Your Grace. Much has been forgotten. Even the priests do not seem to remember what to do.”

She nodded, accepting the truth of that assessment. Her religious practices had been outlawed for more than fifteen years. “Instruction will be provided for you. And for your daughter.”

I swallowed convulsively. It frightened me that the queen knew about Hester but I thanked her for her consideration. Then I waited, so nervous of what she would say next that I could scarce hold still.

“There are some who say you are not John Malte’s daughter at all.”

I had tried to prepare myself for this line of questioning. I knew I must continue to deny that I had any trace of royal blood. Furthermore, I must make the queen believe me. I cleared my throat.

“It is clearly stated, in both John Malte’s will and in a royal grant given him for loyal service, that I am Malte’s bastard daughter by Joanna Dingley. On the one occasion when I spoke to my mother about rumors to the contrary, she assured me that John Malte had fathered me.”

“So you did have doubts?”

I managed a weak smile. “I heard the rumors, too, Your Grace. But I am satisfied that they are untrue.”

“You bear a strong resemblance to the Lady Elizabeth.”

“A coincidence only, Your Grace.” My nervousness increased at the form of address the queen chose to use. Not Princess Elizabeth but the Lady Elizabeth. What did it mean that the queen would not call her half sister, the heir to her throne under King Henry’s Act of Succession, by her rightful title?

“There are many red-haired men at court,” the queen murmured.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

She nodded, as if I’d just confirmed something she’d thought for a long time. Belatedly, I realized what it was. She did not believe King Henry was my father because she did not believe he had fathered Anne Boleyn’s child, either. The claim that Elizabeth was not the king’s child had been made before, when Queen Anne was tried and executed for adultery, but most people did not believe it. One had only to look at Elizabeth Tudor to see King Henry.

It was not to my advantage to point this out. I kept my mouth shut.

“You wish me to release your husband, Mistress Harington. In good time I will do so, but freedom must first be earned.”

“Your Grace?” I could not imagine how Jack could earn his freedom so long as he was locked up.

“You will earn it for him,” the queen explained, “by entering the service of the Lady Elizabeth and reporting back to me everything she says or does that is the least suspicious.”

What choice did I have? I agreed.

46

Tower of London, March 18, 1554

I was thrust upon the Lady Elizabeth on what must have been one of the worst days of her life. It was Palm Sunday, when almost everyone was in church, that she was taken forth from confinement in Whitehall Palace and escorted to a waiting barge. I was already aboard and I had known for some days what our destination would be. Her Grace had no warning, although she must have feared this outcome from the moment she arrived in London. To make matters more difficult still, her guards waited until the last moment to tell her that most of her ladies must be left behind. She could not help but resent anyone chosen as a replacement.

That she recognized me was not in doubt, but she had other things on her mind. She did not bother to demand an explanation for my presence. No one save her sister the queen could have selected the attendants who would wait on her during her coming incarceration.

We were rowed rapidly downstream. Since the tide was low, we could pass beneath London Bridge without danger of being dashed to bits, but once on the other side, I had an unobstructed view of what was about to become my prison, too.

Small clouds of kites and other carrion birds flew up in front of the barge, an evil omen. But at least, given the state of the tide, we were unable to enter by water through the Traitors’ Gate. I counted it as a small blessing when we landed at Tower Wharf instead. We walked into the massive fortress by means of a drawbridge.

Sir John Gage, Constable of the Tower, came forward to escort the Lady Elizabeth to her lodgings. She maintained a stoic fortitude until she saw that there were armed guards standing all along the way she must pass.

“What? Are all these harnessed men here just for me?”

“No, madam,” Gage assured her. “They are present at all times.”

“They are not needed for me,” she said with an attempt at irony. “I am, alas, but a weak woman.”

Some of the guards doffed their caps as she passed by. One knelt and cried out, “God save Your Grace!”

The way was narrow in places, and there were more drawbridges. We were in the middle of one of them when a terrible sound rent the air. It was so loud and so unexpected that it made me jump. One of the other ladies turned pale and another let out a squeal.

“You have nothing to fear,” Sir John assured us. “That is just one of the lions in the royal menagerie.”

I remembered Jack telling me that there were four of them and two leopards. Kept behind wooden railings, he’d said. Poor things. They were prisoners, too.

The Lady Elizabeth faltered only once, when she passed beneath the Bloody Tower and caught a glimpse of the scaffold erected at the far side of the court. It was the one where her cousin—my cousin—Lady Jane Grey had so recently been executed. No doubt it stood in the same spot as the earlier scaffold Anne Boleyn had mounted to meet the headsman specially imported from France to sever her neck with a sharp, merciful sword instead of an ax.

Sir John hurried us along past the grisly sight and through Coldharbor Gate, the main entrance to the inner ward. He led us not to some dank dungeon, or even to a single cell, but into the royal apartments—the same ones where Anne Boleyn had lodged before her coronation and again when she awaited execution.

There were four chambers—a presence chamber, a dining chamber, a bedchamber with a privy, and a gallery. The latter adjoined—although that door was now locked—the king’s apartments. Beyond there was also a bridge across another moat that led in turn to a privy garden. The whole was comfortably furnished and the Lady Elizabeth would be attended by a full dozen servants, but it was still a prison. The door through which we entered had two great locks in it. Sir John kept the heavy keys that fit them.

“Your hall and kitchen staff will be accommodated on the other side of the Coldharbor Gate,” he told the princess. “Your meals will be brought to you here.”

“And for exercise?” the Lady Elizabeth asked. “Are there leads upon which I may take the air? Am I to be permitted to venture into the garden?”

“For the present, my lady, you must remain within.” He backed hastily out of her presence. The sound of the keys turning in the locks sounded as loud as cannon fire.

In silence, my half sister explored her prison. The bedchamber was large and well appointed. A fire warmed it and tapestries had been hung on every wall to keep out the drafts.

“Leave us,” she instructed the few women she’d been allowed to keep. “All except Mistress Harington.”

When we were alone, I flung myself to my knees in front of her. “I am not here by my will, Your Grace. The queen gave me no choice.”

Elizabeth’s dark eyes, so like my own, bored into me for a long moment. Then she gestured for me to rise. “What threat does she hold over your head?”

“It is my husband, Your Grace. You know him well, I think. He is here in the Tower, on suspicion of complicity with the rebels.”

“Was he complicit?”

“I . . . I do not know. I do not think so. It seems to be the fact that he is known to have delivered a letter to Your Grace that brought him to the queen’s attention.”

A rueful smile played about her lips. “Ah, yes. But the queen can prove nothing, can she? There is no evidence of wrongdoing.”

Sir Thomas Wyatt might still be tortured into implicating others, but I kept that thought to myself.

“You have been instructed, I presume, to spy upon me.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“And will you tell the queen everything you hear and observe?”

“No, Your Grace, although I must tell her something.”

She nodded, accepting that. “I will be careful to say nothing incriminating in your presence.” And then she laughed. “If you are to pretend to serve me, you may begin at once. Fetch my other ladies. Then you must unpack the few belongings I was permitted to bring with me. At least I am allowed my books and paper and ink.”

I wondered if she meant to write poetry, as Jack had during his last imprisonment.

Elizabeth Sandes, one of the Lady Elizabeth’s most faithful servants, sent me a hate-filled look as she swept past me. “Lady Harington,” she sneered. “We know all about you.”

I could not fathom what she meant, but I accepted that my presence was resented. The princess might trust me, but even she would not befriend me when anyone could see us. I was resigned to being shunned. I told myself there would be compensations. In the end, Jack would be freed. The queen had promised it. And in the interim, I would be permitted conjugal visits.

In the days preceding the first of these, Mistress Sandes took to falling abruptly silent whenever I passed by, as if she had been talking about me. When she tired of that, she made a point of asking if my husband had ever written a poem in my honor.

He had not, but I lied and said he had.

“Master Harington penned poetic tributes to six of the princess’s maids of honor when we were last at Hatfield.”

“He is inspired by many things, Mistress Sandes.”

“One of those pretty young women had the honor of receiving two poems written to praise her beauty and her virtues . . . and perhaps more.” Her smirk left unclear whether she meant more poems or just . . . more.

“How lovely for her,” I said, and walked away. Either interpretation meant that Jack had favored another woman over me. That was a bitter pill to swallow.

The very next day, I found a scrap of paper among my possessions. On it was written a poem. The verses shook me to my core, for I could not help but read the worst possible interpretation into them.

Oh! most unhappy state,

What man may keep such course,

To love that he should hate

Or else to do much worse:

These be rewards for such

As live and love too much.

It was Jack’s work, to be sure, and enigmatic in many ways, but I took his words to mean that he had never loved me—that he was close, indeed, to hating me. And that now he loved another. The mysterious maid of honor at Hatfield, I presumed.

On Easter Sunday, after the mass celebrated in the Lady Elizabeth’s rooms by a priest the queen had sent, I was taken to see my husband.

Jack was lodged in far less sumptuous quarters in the Broad Arrow Tower, a squat structure two stories high that could only be entered by way of a staircase in the north turret. His cell was not as bad as it might have been. He had a pallet and bedding, candles, a brazier and coals to burn in it, a table, and a chair. And he had books and papers and pen and ink, which I suspected were more important to him than food or drink.

“Audrey?”

Under other circumstances, the astonishment in Jack’s voice would have been insulting. Clearly, no one had warned him to expect a visit from me. Nor, it seemed, did he know that I, too, now resided in the Tower of London. I lost no time apprising him of the situation.

“Queen Mary trusts you? Are you certain?”

“They both do, I think. The queen expects me to do what I must to free you. The princess accepts my word because she trusts you and knows I would never betray her.”

“Truly, I do not deserve you,” Jack murmured.

“What I deserve,” I told him, “is the truth. I could not answer the queen’s questions because I did not know what you had been up to at Ashridge and elsewhere, but I assured Her Grace that you are innocent. Are you, Jack?”

“I did nothing more than take a letter to Ashridge from the Duke of Suffolk in which he advised the princess to leave there for the greater safety of Donnington Castle. She’d already been given the same advice by others who had some inkling of what was afoot. She may even have been considering following it, but the queen’s ministers learned of the rebels’ plans before she could do so.”

“Her Grace was questioned about Donnington in my hearing,” I told him. “Members of the Privy Council came to the Tower to interrogate her. At first she said she could not remember owning a house by that name. Then she recalled the property but pointed out that she had never visited it. Finally, she agreed that there might have been talk among her officers of going there but she turned the tables on the councilors by asking why they should question her right to travel to any of her own houses at any time.”

“How did they react to being challenged?”

“One or two looked skeptical, but others were won over. The Earl of Arundel, upon leaving, threw himself to his knees and begged Her Grace’s forgiveness for having troubled her.”

“Is Her Grace well? In good spirits?”

I assured him she was. “She is to be allowed to walk for exercise twice a day in the privy garden and also in the great chamber adjacent to her lodgings.”

Jack sent a scornful look at the four walls that contained him. “Then she is fortunate indeed. Fresh air is a luxury here, as is open space. And for everything there is a fee. Have you money?”

“A little. A purse hidden beneath my skirt.”

“Keep it for now, but if I send to you for it, do not hesitate to give it to the guard who brings the message. I have all but exhausted what I had. First I had to pay to be unshackled, then to have all this brought to me.” His gesture encompassed everything in his cell.

I was appalled by the notion that had he not had a few coins with him at the time of his arrest, he’d have been chained to the wall. Now that I looked, I could see the bolts that secured unfortunates there. Then I glanced again at the table.

“I see that you paid for pen and ink, as well.”

“Those are not luxuries, but rather a necessity, if you would have me emerge from prison a sane man.”

I picked up one of the sheets of paper and read the poem he had been composing.

When I look back and in myself behold

the wandering ways that youth could not descry

and see the fearful course that youth did hold

and met in mind each step I strayed awry

my knees I bow and from my heart I call

O Lord forget youth’s faults and follies all.

“Faults and follies,” I murmured. Choosing the wrong cause to follow? Or the wrong woman to wed?

“The princess’s women tell me you have written several poems in praise of the ladies who serve Her Grace. The few who were allowed to come with her to the Tower are most impressed by your skill with words.”

“Which gentlewomen are here?”

When I told him their names, his relief was palpable.

“Who is she, Jack?”

“I do not understand you.”

“You understand very well. I am told that one of the princess’s maids of honor inspired you to write more than one poem in her honor.”

“A poet must have a muse,” he protested.

I nodded encouragement, even though my heart was breaking. “Tell me about her.”

“Her name is Isabella. Isabella Markham. She was in attendance on the princess not long ago. Do you know where she is now?”

“The queen sent her sister’s maids of honor and waiting gentlewomen back to their families.”

He must have heard the anguish in my voice, or seen something in my expression. He seized me by the shoulders and waited until I met his eyes. “Audrey, Isabella is not my mistress. Only my muse. She is the lady on a pedestal, in the old tradition of courtly love.”

But he loved her, as he had never loved me. I’d always known that Jack had married me for what I could bring him. I could not fault him for that. Marriages are rarely made for love. And to give Jack credit, he had never claimed to be passionately in love with me.

He did love our daughter. I had no doubt of that.

And he was my husband, and would be until death parted us.

That being the case, I meant to do everything in my power to free him from the Tower . . . so long as it did not also endanger the princess.

Although I had served Elizabeth for only a short time, I had long been aware of the connection between us. That our appearance was so similar was only part of that bond. She had inherited King Henry’s presence, and his ability to inspire loyalty. Not even the continual backbiting of her other attendants could turn me against Her Grace.

Sir Thomas Wyatt was loyal to his princess, too. He went to his death on the eleventh day of April, marched out of the Tower and up Tower Hill. On the scaffold, he proclaimed her innocence, denying as he had all along that Elizabeth had been complicit in his treason.

A priest came to her chambers afterward, the one sent by the queen to witness Wyatt’s execution. He tried to shock the princess into betraying herself.

“He met a traitor’s death, madam—beheaded first. Then his body was quartered on the scaffold. His bowels and private parts were burned and the head and quarters went into a basket to be taken by cart to Newgate Prison. There they will be parboiled before being nailed up as a warning to all who would betray the queen. The head will go on top of the gibbet at St. James’s Palace.”

His graphic description sickened me, but if it affected the Lady Elizabeth, she did not let her revulsion show. Disappointed, the priest left. The councilors who came the next day likewise failed in their attempt to persuade Her Grace to admit she’d supported the rebellion. The only time I ever saw my princess show any reaction at all was when, in early May, she heard that she was to be placed in the care of Sir Henry Bedingfield.

“Is the Lady Jane’s scaffold still standing?” she asked in a shaken voice.

47

Tower of London, May 19, 1554

Two months after she’d been brought to the Tower by water, Elizabeth Tudor left it the same way. We traveled on a row barge accompanied by smaller craft carrying armed guards. Crowds gathered to watch from the shore and cheer for the princess, thinking she’d been freed. As we passed the Steelyard, where the merchants of the Hanse have their depot, guns fired a salute.

My longing gaze picked out familiar sights along the way. I could not see my old home on Watling Street from the river but St. Paul’s sat on a hill and dominated the skyline. We passed Seymour Place, the property of a new owner. And Durham House, where I had met the Earl of Surrey, the Duchess of Richmond, and Mary Shelton so long ago. Whitehall sprawled on one side of the Thames and Norfolk House stood on the other. I did not know who now lived in the latter. Queen Mary had taken it away from Queen Kathryn’s brother when he backed the attempt to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne in her place. Only days after being pardoned for that treason, he’d been arrested again for complicity with Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger.

As far as I knew, he was still a prisoner in the Tower.

So was Jack.

We disembarked at Richmond Palace, more than a dozen miles upstream from London. Sir Henry Bedingfield and his men surrounded the princess the moment she set foot onshore and allowed no one to come near her. She was escorted directly to the chamber where she would spend the night. Contrary to the rumors in the city, Elizabeth had not been set free. She was on her way to Woodstock, there to be held under heavy guard at the queen’s pleasure.

When I started to follow the princess and her guards into the palace, a hand caught my arm. “Not you, Mistress Harington.”

I did not know the man who’d stopped me, but he wore Queen Mary’s livery.

“I must go with—”

“Your services are no longer needed.”

My “services” had been of little help to Queen Mary. I had duly reported on the Lady Elizabeth’s activities. Her Grace read, she embroidered, she played cards with her ladies, she ate, and she slept. She walked for exercise as often as it was permitted. Sometimes other prisoners in the Tower called out to her, but I did not repeat those words of encouragement.

I did not object to being dismissed. I was not cut out to be a spy. But I did mind being left in limbo. “What about my husband?”

“I know nothing of him.” The fellow released me and turned away.

“Wait! How am I to reach Kelston?”

Somersetshire was a considerable distance from Richmond and I had no servants and little ready money. I had sent those who’d escorted me to Whitehall home when the queen ordered me to join the Lady Elizabeth’s household.

“That is not my concern,” the queen’s man said, and he kept walking.

At first I despaired. I stood on the river stairs, buffeted by a light wind and spray from the Thames, and could not think what to do. I was not accustomed to being completely on my own, but neither was I helpless. I squared my shoulders and counted my money. The only sensible thing to do was book passage on the next tilt boat bound for London.

During the journey, I had to endure bold stares from the men on board. They saw a woman traveling without a maid or a gentleman escort and thought the worst. Ignoring them as best I could, I set my mind to thinking what my next step would be. Those to whom I once would have turned first for help—Mother Anne and my sister Muriel and Sir Anthony Denny—were no longer alive. I dismissed at once the idea of asking assistance from Bridget and Master Scutt. My faithful Edith was still in Somersetshire, for I’d trusted no one else to look after Hester in my absence.

That left only my sister Elizabeth. From her husband I obtained an escort to take me safely to our house in Stepney. We’d left a few loyal retainers there. Within a week, I was back at Kelston and reunited with my precious daughter.

The strain was terrible during the months that followed. I did not sleep through a single night in all that time. I had no way of knowing what the queen would decide to do with Princess Elizabeth or with Jack. If my husband was charged with treason, all he owned, including everything I had brought to our marriage, would be forfeited to the Crown. Hester and I would be destitute.

Another fear haunted me, too. The queen, for all she wanted to believe that the Lady Elizabeth was not her sister at all, could not deceive herself forever. Elizabeth’s resemblance to King Henry—a resemblance I shared—was too pronounced. If Elizabeth was a threat to the throne, then so was I. In Mary’s mind, we were both the king’s bastards.

In January, Jack came home to us. He had spent more than eleven months a prisoner, a shorter incarceration than the last time, but not by much. It had been more than eight months since I’d seen him last. He was thinner, and more somber. He swore to me that he was a changed man.

“We will build a new life for ourselves,” he promised. “You and I and Hester will rusticate here in Somerset, far from the royal court, free of intrigue and in no danger.”

The year of our Lord fifteen hundred and fifty-five, spent at Kelston and Catherine’s Court, was the happiest of my entire life.

48

Catherine’s Court, March 1556

I went to stand beside Jack as he stared up at the night sky. The comet was there again, as it had been all week. It looked like a star with the long tail and many people were frightened by it.

“Is it an omen?” I asked.

“Some believe comets foreshadow future events, but whether those events are good or evil, who can tell?” Then he laughed.

“What amuses you?”

“If this comet augurs well for the future, then perhaps it is time I returned to London.”

“If you think you can ingratiate yourself to Queen Mary, you are much mistaken. She will be too suspicious of your motives to allow you anywhere near her.”

Even in Somerset we’d heard rumors of yet another plot against the queen. I imagined Her Grace’s councilors would look askance at anyone new arrived at court, especially someone like Jack, who had twice before been arrested because he’d had ties to enemies of the Crown. That nothing had ever been proven against him would matter little.

He followed my thoughts without difficulty and answered the question I had not dared ask. “I have had no dealings with any conspirators, nor do I have seditious books or papers in my possession.”

Failure to conform to the teachings of the Church of Rome was as dangerous in Queen Mary’s England as fomenting rebellion. Those who clung to the church King Henry had established soon found themselves in gaol. If they would not recant, they were burned at the stake for heretics. Many people had fled into exile, vowing to remain abroad until Elizabeth succeeded to the throne.

So long as the queen and her Spanish husband did not produce a child of their own, Mary’s half sister remained her heir. Our hope that Elizabeth Tudor would eventually reign, restoring the New Religion to England, was one of several things about which Jack and I were in perfect agreement. Our opinions on other matters diverged. I opposed his return to Stepney.

“Why go there when you have no hope of being given a place at court?” I asked.

“But to be seen to hover on the fringes, supporting the queen,” he argued, “can do me no harm. And to have you and Hester with me in Stepney would provide most excellent proof of my sincerity.”

“And when you are not at court?” I was beginning to have a bad feeling about this. “Will you stay with us there?”

He grinned unrepentantly at me. “Part of the time. Then again, it is but a short ride to Hatfield.” Princess Elizabeth, after a long incarceration at Woodstock, had been allowed to return to her own house.

“Hatfield is at least twenty miles from Stepney.”

“I can ride that distance in one day.”

“To see the princess? Or is that just an excuse to visit your muse?”

“But that’s the beauty of it!” he exclaimed. “To all those who have read my poetry, it will seem that I go there to see Mistress Markham. No one will suspect that I carry messages of support to Elizabeth Tudor.”

The smug satisfaction in his voice made me want to strike him.

“How many people do you suppose have read your poems, since they have never been published?”

“Rumor is enough to carry out the ruse. The ruse of the muse.” He chuckled, delighted with his own cleverness.

“Rumor will not call her your muse, Jack. Everyone will think you have abandoned me for your mistress.”

His smile turned to a frown. “I will remind them of Surrey and Fair Geraldine.” At my blank look, he laughed again. “Have you never read the poem the earl wrote to Elizabeth Fitzgerald? She was a child at the time. He felt sorry for her, alone at court and blighted by her Irish father’s treason. The verses singing her praises were intended to remind men of her noble heritage and help her to a good marriage.”

“So you wrote poetry to Mistress Markham only to help her find a husband?” The words were so sweetly said that honey should have dripped from my lips.

Jack lapped them up. “I wish her well, as I do all of the ladies who serve the princess or have served her in the past.”

I knew better. As they had in the Tower, his features softened whenever he spoke of Isabella Markham. She was more than a muse to him. More than a young woman he sought to help to a marriage with someone else. He desired her. If he had not committed adultery in the flesh, he had most assuredly sinned in his thoughts about her.

It is always better to face the truth than to deceive one’s self, even when the truth is so painful that it hurts to take the next breath.

We left for Stepney within the fortnight.

49

Stepney, August 1556

It was some five months later that the summer fevers came. I fell ill, so ill that I feared I would die. To be so near to death forced me to think about my life and whether I would have done anything differently. I decided that I would not, but as I began to recover, it worried me that my daughter lived in total ignorance of her connection to the royal family, even more so than I had for so many years.

Ignorance is never wise.

I had no desire to claim a royal inheritance. It was far too dangerous. I wanted to be John Malte’s bastard rather than the king’s and I had fought to back that claim with legal documents. But since both Queen Mary and Princess Elizabeth knew the truth, I no longer believed I could protect my daughter by keeping her uninformed.

I quarreled with Jack about telling her my story. He forbade it. That ended the discussion for a time. I felt too weak to argue further. But as the weeks passed and I did not regain my former good health, my sense of urgency grew stronger. When fortune presented me with an opportunity, I took it, and so began my tale.

50

Catherine’s Court, November 1556

There was silence in the hall. The portraits on the walls looked down on Hester Harington and her mother, seated side by side on a padded settle before the hearth. Audrey had her arm around her daughter’s shoulders, holding her close.

She had told Hester everything now, Audrey thought, all except the reason they were presently rusticating in Somerset. Her daughter appeared to be mulling over what she’d learned. Physically spent, mentally exhausted, Audrey could not think of anything more to say. Had she convinced Hester to keep silent about her royal blood? The girl was so young. Did she truly understand the danger?

A voice spoke from behind them. “It is very late. You both should be in bed.”

Hester abruptly disentangled herself and ran to greet her father. Jack hugged her tightly in return, then gave her a little push in the direction of her bedchamber. She made a face, but she went.

“I wish she would obey me as readily as she does you,” Audrey murmured.

Jack said nothing.

“I’ve told her everything. It will be up to you to guide what she does with that knowledge.”

He frowned. “What do you mean? You are her mother.”

Audrey rose slowly, attempting to compensate for the dizziness she knew would come. The spells did not pass as quickly as they once had. By the time she felt steady enough to take a step, Jack was at her side, his face ashen.

“There are learned physicians in London. We could return there.”

“My fate is in God’s hands. Have we not been taught that, Jack, by both the New Religion and the old?”

In his face she saw the confirmation of her fears. She had never fully recovered from the fevers of the summer just past. She grew weaker with each passing day, not stronger. She might have weeks left, perhaps even months, but her days were numbered.

Jack helped her from the hall. Slowly, they made their way toward Hester’s chamber. By the time they reached her bedside, she was already soundly sleeping, one hand curled under her cheek.

Audrey smiled. She had finished what she’d set out to do. For better or worse, with or without her mother’s presence, Hester would not have to go searching for the truth. She knew what her royal inheritance was and she knew why it was better to make no claim to it.

A glance at her husband reassured Audrey. That Jack would remarry when she was gone seemed certain. No doubt he’d wed his muse. But his feelings for Hester would never change. As they stood together, looking down at the sleeping child, his eyes were full of his love for their daughter.

NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR

Although this is a work of fiction, all the characters except Edith, Mistress Yerdeley, and Dionysus Petre the dancing master are based on real people. You will find mini-biographies of some of them in the next section. These may also contain spoilers.

Many of the things Audrey experiences really happened, although she may not have been present when they did. We do not know exactly when she died or where, but there was an outbreak of fever in the summer of 1556 and many who were ill then but survived were carried off by a second outbreak that took place during the winter of 1556–57.

The names Audrey and Hester may strike readers as unusual for the times. Audrey was a nickname for Ethelreda (don’t ask me how, but I’m told there is a linguistic explanation). Many girls were named after this English saint who lived in East Anglia from 630 to 679. It has been suggested that Audrey was named for her because she was born on St. Ethelreda’s Day, June 23. As for Hester, I think it likely that something happened circa 1548 to call attention to Queen Esther’s story in the Bible, perhaps the publication of a popular version of the tale. In addition to Hester Harington, there were at least two other Hesters born at about that same time, Hester Saltonstall and Hester Pinckney.

The glove or pocket beagle is a real breed and King Henry is known to have kept a pack of them for hunting.

Audrey’s mother is said to have been a laundress at Windsor Castle. I didn’t want to include an information dump in the novel, but for those who are interested in what the life of a laundress was like, what follows is a description of how you’d get your linens clean in the sixteenth century. The process would start on a Saturday by soaking the laundry in a thick green mixture of water and summer sheep’s dung. This took three days. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, each item had to be dipped repeatedly in the river. After the last rinsing, it was beaten out and left to soak until Thursday morning, when it was finally allowed to dry. On Friday the laundress put everything into a buck tub. This sat up on a stool with an underbuck beneath it for the lye to drain into. A laundress would spread a buck sheet over the linen and then spread a thin paste of dog’s mercury, mallow, and wormwood over the sheet. Finally, she’d pour strong, boiling lye over the whole thing, cover it up, and leave it to stand overnight. In the morning, she’d take the linens out and spread them on the grass and water them all morning. This business with the buck sheet and the lye and the watering would be repeated twice more before the laundry was dropped into a vat of lye and urine and soaked to bleach it. Then, on Monday morning, each piece would be laid out and watered. This process was repeated daily until the laundry was considered to be white enough. Sometimes that required another week or more.

As for Princess Elizabeth’s incarceration in the Tower of London, my account contradicts some popular beliefs about her stay there. I’ve relied for details on the information in David Starkey’s 2001 biography, Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne, which points out several factual errors in earlier accounts.

WHO WAS WHO AT THE ENGLISH COURT

1532–56

ANTHONY DENNY

Anthony Denny was one of King Henry VIII’s most trusted servants throughout the period of this novel. He was a yeoman of the wardrobe by 1536, as well as a groom of the privy chamber. In 1539 he became chief gentleman of the privy chamber and deputy groom of the stool. He was knighted in 1544. In October 1546 he was named groom of the stool and was also keeper of the “dry stamp” with the king’s signature. In other words, he could authorize documents in the king’s name. This made him a very powerful figure at court, despite the fact that he was not a nobleman. His wife was a lady-in-waiting to all six of Henry VIII’s queens. He died in 1549.

JOANNA DINGLEY

Nothing is known about Joanna Dingley or Dyngley other than that she was said to have been a royal laundress. Her natural or “base” daughter, Audrey Malte, was raised as the child of John Malte, Henry VIII’s tailor, but was later said to have been the king’s child. Joanna was married to a Mr. Dobson by the time Malte made his will on September 10, 1546. It refers to her as “Joane Dingley, now wife of one Dobson” and as “Joane Dyngley, otherwise Joane Dobson.” He left her twenty pounds. Joanna does not seem to have played any part in her daughter’s life and the identity of Mr. Dobson remains elusive.

EDWARD VI

Not yet ten years old when he became king, he was a devout follower of the New Religion and favored his Protestant half sister Elizabeth over his Catholic half sister Mary. Modern scholars seem to agree that it was Edward’s own idea to pass over both Elizabeth and Mary in favor of making his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, his heir. He died in 1553.

PRINCESS ELIZABETH

Elizabeth was at Ashridge in August 1543 with her half siblings, father, and new stepmother. She went with the royal progress to Ampthill but was abruptly sent back to Ashridge. The supposition is that she asked the wrong question, probably about her mother. Speaking the name Anne Boleyn in the presence of King Henry was not permitted. In 1554, when she was briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London, one of her attendants was John Harington’s wife, Audrey. Elizabeth did consider fleeing to France in 1556–57, but decided against it, remaining in England until she succeeded Queen Mary, peacefully, in 1558. She reigned until her death in 1603.

HESTER HARINGTON

Hester was the only child of Audrey Malte and John Harington. The date of her birth is uncertain, but could have been no earlier than 1548. At one time there was a portrait of her, described as showing a child holding a book. She was still living in 1568 but after that disappears from history.

JOHN HARINGTON

A gentleman of the Chapel Royal early in his career at court, Harington later entered the service of Sir Thomas Seymour, most often serving as a messenger. He helped arrange for Lady Jane Grey to join the household at Seymour Place. When Seymour was arrested for treason, Harington spent more than eleven months as a prisoner in the Tower of London. He was there once again in 1554, suspected of conspiring with the Duke of Suffolk during the uprising known as Wyatt’s Rebellion. It is not known how he met Audrey Malte, but they were married by 1548 and through her he became a considerable landowner. They had one child. By 1549, he is believed to have fallen in love with Isabella Markham, one of Princess Elizabeth’s ladies, to whom he wrote poetry. She later became his second wife. Harington died in 1582.

HENRY VIII

King of England, known for having six wives and numerous mistresses. In fact, the only two women who were certainly his mistresses were Elizabeth Blount and Mary Boleyn. Did he have a child with a laundress? We’ll never know for certain. He died in 1547 and was succeeded by Edward VI.

HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY

Known as the poet earl, Surrey was a loose cannon. He did go rioting through the streets with his friends. He did suggest, in public, that his sister would do better to become the king’s mistress than Sir Thomas Seymour’s wife. Was he guilty of treason? Probably not, but there was just enough doubt about his intentions to send him to his death in 1547.

MARY HOWARD, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND

Mary Howard was the daughter of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk. She was a maid of honor to her cousin Anne Boleyn, and was married to King Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond, at Hampton Court on November 26, 1533. They never consummated the marriage. Following her husband’s death in 1536, Mary lived primarily at Kenninghall when she was not at court. She was at the center of a literary circle that included her brother, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Lady Margaret Douglas. She was a lady-in-waiting to Catherine Howard but was sent back to Kenninghall in November 1541 when the queen’s household was disbanded. There was talk of a marriage with Thomas Seymour, Queen Jane’s brother, as early as 1538 and the idea was broached again in 1546, but Surrey was violently opposed and Mary does not seem to have liked the plan much herself. In December 1546, when Mary’s father and brother were arrested on charges of treason, she was forced to give evidence against them but managed to say very little of use. After Surrey was executed, Mary was given charge of his daughters. She established a household at Reigate and employed John Foxe to educate them. Unlike most of the rest of the Howards, Mary adopted the New Religion, which meant she fell out of favor when Queen Mary came to the throne. She remained close to her father and when he died in 1554 he left her five hundred pounds. Mary died in 1557.

ANNE MALTE (MAIDEN NAME UNKNOWN)

Anne Malte was the second wife of John Malte, the king’s tailor. On October 16, 1548, Anne Malte purchased the manor of Hickmans in the Hamlet of Haggerston and about one hundred acres in the northeast part of the parish of Shoreditch. Anne left this property to her daughter Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s husband, Thomas Hilton, who were also named executors of her 1549 will.

AUDREY MALTE

Audrey Malte, also called Ethelreda and Esther in various documents, was officially the illegitimate daughter of John Malte, Henry VIII’s tailor, by Joanna Dingley or Dyngley. The late-sixteenth-century book Nugae Antiquae, written by John Harington’s son by his second wife, is the earliest source for the claim that she was the natural daughter of the king and this may be a complete fiction. What seems to support it is the fact that the king gave a large grant of land jointly to John Malte and Ethelreda Malte. This document is very specific in identifying Ethelreda as Malte’s bastard daughter. John Malte’s will, dated September 10, 1546, and proved June 7, 1547, is also clear on this point, leaving a generous bequest to “Awdrey Malte, my bastard daughter, begotten on the body of Joane Dingley, now wife of one Dobson.” She was to inherit most of his property in Berkshire, Hertfordshire, and Somerset. One wonders why both documents were so careful to point out both her illegitimacy and the fact that she was Malte’s child. How old she was at the time Malte died is unclear, but there were already negotiations under way for her betrothal to an illegitimate son of Sir Richard Southwell. At some point between September 10, 1546, and November 11, 1547, however, she married John Harington of Stepney instead. There is no indication of when or where they first met. They had one child, a daughter they named Hester. In 1554, Audrey was one of Elizabeth Tudor’s attendants during the princess’s incarceration in the Tower of London. She was still living in early 1556 but had died by 1559.

BRIDGET MALTE

Bridget Malte was the daughter of John Malte, the king’s tailor, and his first wife. Most accounts call her his youngest daughter. By 1545, she had married John Scutt, a much older man, and given birth to a son, Anthony. Bridget and John Scutt were named overseers of John Malte’s will. After the family moved to Somerset, Scutt gained a reputation for mistreating his wife. When he died suddenly, there were whispers of poison. The whispers grew louder when Bridget remarried a fortnight after her husband’s death, taking as her second husband Edward St. Loe, the son of a local landowner. Later it came out that Bridget was three months pregnant with St. Loe’s child at the time of the marriage, but two months after they wed, on November 30, 1557, it was Bridget who died suddenly. Six months after that, Edward St. Loe married her stepdaughter, Margaret Scutt. All this gave rise to suspicion but no proof of murder. The inquisition postmortem was held on August 9, 1558. In the Chatsworth House Archives there is an account of a lawsuit in which Bridget is described as “a verye lustye yonge woman.”

ELIZABETH MALTE

Elizabeth Malte may not have been a Malte at all. She was certainly the daughter of Anne Malte, second wife and widow of John Malte (d. 1547), royal tailor, because Elizabeth and her husband were executors of Anne’s will. Elizabeth is not, however, mentioned in John Malte’s will. By then, Elizabeth was probably already married to Thomas Hilton (Hylton/Hulton), usually identified as the illegitimate son of William Hilton, who served as the king’s tailor before John Malte.

JOHN MALTE

John Malte was the king’s tailor until late 1546. The Malte house was in Watling Street in the parish of St. Augustine at Paul’s Gate. In 1541, Malte’s worth was set at two thousand marks and he was assessed £33 6s 8d in the London Subsidy Roll for Bread Street Ward. John Malte wrote his will on September 10, 1546, and it was proved June 7, 1547. He left bequests to his two married daughters, his two married stepdaughters by his first wife (I reduced this to one), his unmarried bastard daughter, and the foundling child left at his gate. His second wife, Anne, survived him.

MURIEL MALTE

Muriel Malte was the daughter of John Malte, the king’s tailor, and his first wife. In 1545, she married John Horner. In 1544, his father had purchased Cloford, Somersetshire, and John Malte purchased the manor of Podimore Milton, Somersetshire. Both properties were given to the young couple on their marriage. They had three sons: William, Thomas, and Maurice. Muriel died on March 9, 1548.

KATHRYN PARR

Henry VIII’s last queen attempted to reunite all the royal children at Ashridge during the summer progress of 1543. After the king’s death, she moved to her dower house at Chelsea Manor, where she maintained her own household. I have no evidence that she even knew Audrey Malte, but she certainly knew John Harington. As one of Thomas Seymour’s gentlemen, he would have been party to Seymour’s courtship of Kathryn and their later marriage. The queen dowager died in 1548.

JOHN SCUTT

John Scutt or Skutt was one of the royal tailors from 1519 to 1547, making clothing for all six of Henry VIII’s wives and also for private clients. Scutt was master of the Merchant Taylors’ Company in 1536. He was a widower with a young daughter, Margaret, when he married Bridget Malte, who appears to have been his neighbor in Bread Street Ward (parish of St. Augustine at Paul’s Gate). His worth was recorded at two thousand marks in 1541 and he was assessed £33 6s 8d. Scutt was granted arms on November 12, 1546. After the death of Henry VIII he retired to the manor of Stanton Drew, Somerset. He died in 1557. There was some speculation that his wife might have poisoned him.

THOMAS SEYMOUR

It is believed that Henry VIII was aware that Thomas Seymour and Kathryn Parr had tender feelings for each other after Kathryn’s second husband, Lord Latimer, died and that the king deliberately sent Seymour out of the country on diplomatic missions. Seymour’s hasty marriage to the queen dowager, his inappropriate behavior toward Princess Elizabeth, and his clumsy attempts to influence his nephew King Edward VI, and possibly to kidnap him, led to his downfall. He was executed for treason on March 10, 1549.

MARY SHELTON

Mary Shelton was the daughter of Sir John Shelton of Shelton, Norfolk, and Anne Boleyn, the sister of Queen Anne Boleyn’s father. A number of scholars argue that Mary Shelton was the king’s mistress in 1535 and also a candidate to become Henry’s fourth wife. I find the logic of this unconvincing. The mistress of 1535, known to history as “Madge,” was more likely to have been Mary’s older sister Margaret. The single mention of Mary Shelton as one of two ladies in whom the king was interested in 1538 comes in a letter that says nothing about marriage. The comment could as easily refer to the king’s choice of one of the two as his next mistress. What we do know to be true about Mary is that she was friends with Lady Margaret Douglas, Lady Mary Howard, Duchess of Richmond, and the duchess’s brother, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. She contributed to and edited the “Devonshire Manuscript,” a collection of poems, some of them original, that was passed around among members of their circle. Two of the poems suggest that Sir Thomas Wyatt pursued Mary and was rejected by her. Of course, Wyatt was married at the time. Mary may have been in attendance upon Queen Catherine Howard. After Catherine’s arrest, she spent most of the next year with her friends Mary Howard and Margaret Douglas at Kenninghall in Norfolk, Mary Howard’s home. She fell in love with Thomas Clere, one of the Earl of Surrey’s close friends. They intended to marry but were prevented by Clere’s death on April 14, 1545. Clere made her his principal heir and she is mentioned in the elegy Surrey wrote to Clere. Sometime in 1546, Mary wed Sir Anthony Heveningham, by whom she had several children. It is as Lady Heveningham that Surrey wrote to her while she was staying at the house of her brother, Jerome Shelton, formerly part of the priory of St. Helen, and this letter led to the suggestion that she be questioned after Surrey was arrested for treason. After Heveningham died, Mary wed Philip Appleyard. She was probably the Lady Heveningham at court in 1558–59. She died in 1571.

SIR RICHARD SOUTHWELL

Sir Richard Southwell is the villain of this piece. I can’t say for certain how he behaved toward Audrey Malte, although he did negotiate with John Malte for her marriage to his illegitimate son, but he did murder a man in 1532 and he did give evidence to the Privy Council that led directly to the Earl of Surrey’s arrest and execution in 1547. He also had a hand in the downfall of two other important figures at the court of Henry VIII—Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell. His weak chin is immortalized in a sketch and portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger. Southwell fell out of favor at court after the death of Edward VI. No earlier than 1559, he married his longtime mistress and had one more child by her. This child, although legitimate, was a girl. Richard Darcy, alias Richard Southwell the Younger, remained his father’s principal heir. Southwell died in 1564.

RICHARD DARCY, ALIAS SOUTHWELL

Sir Richard Southwell’s illegitimate son studied at Cambridge and later entered Lincoln’s Inn. His betrothal to Audrey Malte was thwarted by her marriage to John Harington. He later married twice, the first time around 1555, and had numerous children. He died in 1600.

For more information on the women on this list, please see their entries at http://www.KateEmersonHistoricals.com/TudorWomenIndex.htm.

READING GROUP GUIDE

ROYAL

Inheritance

BY KATE EMERSON

About This Guide

This reading group guide for Royal Inheritance includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

Introduction

This new novel from Kate Emerson, the critically acclaimed author of the Secrets of the Tudor Court series, centers around Audrey Malte, an illegitimate daughter of King Henry VIII who grows up at court thinking that her father is the king’s tailor.

When Audrey reaches marriageable age, she begins to realize, from the way certain people behave toward her, that Malte is keeping secrets from her, and she sets out to discover the truth. Her quest brings her into contact with some of the best and worst of Henry’s courtiers, among them a man with whom she falls in love.

Unfortunately, Malte has already entered into negotiations for her betrothal to someone else. It is up to Audrey to navigate Henry’s court so that she may marry the man she loves.

With the rich, lush detail that has become a trademark of Kate Emerson’s novels, Royal Inheritance is a wonderful picture of a young woman trying to find her own legacy at the Tudor court.

Topics and Questions for Discussion

1. As

Royal Inheritance

begins, Audrey has decided to tell her daughter, Hester, the truth about her own background. Why does she think that she has a duty to do so? Do you agree with Audrey’s decision to tell Hester the truth? What does Audrey mean when she tells Hester,

“Close kinship to the Crown is a burden, not a gift”

? Discuss the ways that Audrey’s statement manifests itself in her own life.

2. Audrey says,

“It is always better to face the truth than to deceive one’s self, even when the truth is so painful that it hurts to take the next breath”

. However, when she first begins to have doubts about her parentage, she delays in finding out more. Why do you think she does so? Are there characters you encounter in

Royal Inheritance

who hide important truths from themselves? Who?

3. Audrey refers to her hair as having a

“too-bright color”

. Why does she think it is too bright? What other clues about the true nature of Audrey’s parentage are there?

4. The first time Mother Anne meets Jack Harington, she greets him with a “friendly kiss . . . as is the custom when greeting those who are truly welcome,” leading Audrey to believe that he

“must have desirable connections at the royal court”

. What are your initial impressions of Jack? Do they change throughout the course of the novel? In what ways and why?

5. When Audrey is an adolescent, she says,

“I did not often remember that I was a bastard myself. Even Bridget did not taunt me about it”

. Why do you think that Bridget refrains from ridiculing Audrey? Discuss the relationship between the two sisters. Compare and contrast it to that of Elizabeth and Mary.

6. Mary Shelton says,

“It is the fate of wives to be unhappy”

. Do you think that Audrey is happy in her marriage? Do you agree with Audrey’s assessment that

“any woman takes a great risk when she gives herself to a man”

? What does Audrey give up by getting married?

7. After Audrey meets Elizabeth for the first time, she says,

“The encounter left me feeling strangely vulnerable”

. Describe the encounter. Were you surprised by the way that Elizabeth reacts to Audrey when they are in the Tower of London together?

8. When Audrey reconnects with her mother, she says that

“it was easier to think of her by her Christian name than to regard her as my mother”

. Why do you think that this is the case? Describe their encounter. Were you surprised by Joanna’s treatment of Audrey? Why or why not? Why does Edith think that Joanna should be pitied rather than reviled? Do you agree with her?

9. Joanna tells Audrey that Malte is a good man. Why do you think that Joanna chooses to tell Audrey this at the end of

their encounter? Do you agree with Joanna’s assessment of Malte? Why do you think that Malte agrees to raise Audrey as his own? How do they make Audrey feel that she is part of their family?

10. When Audrey criticizes Jack for spending his money on pen and ink while imprisoned in the Tower of London, he responds, “Those are not luxuries, but rather a necessity”. Why is writing important to Jack? Poetry is also important to the circle of friends that Audrey meets through Jack, including Thomas Clere and Mary Shelton. Discuss their meetings. What role does poetry play?

11. Malte tells Audrey he wants her to marry Southwell’s son Richard Darcy because “I want you to be safe after I am gone . . . Southwell looks after his own”. What reasons does Audrey give for refusing to do so? Do you think that Audrey will be safer married to Richard Darcy? Or do you think that she is correct to distrust Southwell?

12. Jack tells Audrey, “Far more dangerous are the animals that live indoors, wearing fine clothing and smiling”. In what ways is the court a dangerous place? Discuss the shifting alliances that occur throughout Royal Inheritance.

13. When Audrey says that Henry is the head of the Church of England because of his reforms, Mary Shelton responds, “There are reforms and then there are reforms”. What does she mean by this statement? Discuss it in the context of Elizabeth’s and Mary’s reigns.

14. After being told Anthony Denny’s title, Audrey says that it “sounded very important, although no more so than ‘royal tailor.’ I was too young yet to grasp the difference between a gentleman born and a merchant whose wealth allowed him to rise into the ranks of the gentry”. What is the difference? How is it apparent in the betrothals that occur in Royal Inheritance? Why is Richard Darcy seen as a better partner for Audrey than Jack Harington?

Enhance Your Book Club

1. Henry VIII’s royal court serves as the backdrop for

Royal Inheritance

and many historical figures appear as characters in the book, including Lady Jane Grey, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth. Learn more about these historical figures by visiting the official website of the British Monarchy at

http://www.royal.gov.uk/HistoryoftheMonarchy/KingsandQueensofEngland/TheTudors/TheTudors.aspx

.

2. Audrey finds herself in the Tower of London serving Elizabeth, who has been incarcerated by her sister, Queen Mary. Take a virtual tour of the Tower:

http://www.londononline.co.uk/towerguide/

and discuss the conditions in which Elizabeth and Audrey may have lived while they were staying in the Tower.

3. To learn more about Kate Emerson and find out more about her Secrets of the Tudor Court series, visit her official site at

http://www.kateemersonhistoricals.com/

.

4. Read more depictions of life in the Tudor court. Suggested reading:

The Red Queen

by Philippa Gregory,

In a Treacherous Court

by Michelle Diener

, Royal Mistress

by Anne Easter Smith,

The Last Wife of Henry VIII

by Carolly Erickson,

The Queen’s Gambit

by Elizabeth Fremantle, and

At the King’s Pleasure

by Kate Emerson.

KATE EMERSON

delights in researching the lives of little-known Tudor women in order to re-create their fascinating stories in her award-winning novels. Visit her at

KateEmersonHistoricals.com

.

FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:

authors.simonandschuster.com/Kate-Emerson

MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

SimonandSchuster.com

Facebook.com/GalleryBooks

@GalleryBooks

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Also by Kate Emerson

The King’s Damsel

At the King’s Pleasure

The Pleasure Palace

Between Two Queens

By Royal Decree

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Gallery Books

A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Kathy Lynn Emerson

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books trade paperback edition September 2013

GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Cover illustration by Larry Rostant

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Emerson, Kate.

Royal inheritance / Kate Emerson.—First Gallery books trade paperback edition.

pages cm

1. Inheritance and succession—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3555.M414R69 2013

813’.54—dc23

2013009133

ISBN 978-1-4516-6151-4

ISBN 978-1-4516-6153-8 (ebook)

CONTENTS

Maps

The Children of Henry VIII

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Notes from the Author

Who Was Who at the English Court: 1532–56

Reading Group Guide

About This Guide

Introduction

Topics and Questions for Discussion

Enhance Your Book Club

About Kate Emerson