Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set

The Deputy of Calais, my Lord Lisle, hath not been led to judgment; and it is said that he shall be kept prisoner in the Tower for his life, where he is somewhat more at large than formerly he was. And in truth, Sire, certain noblemen of this Court have said to me that on several occasions they have heard the King their master say that the said Lord Deputy hath erred more through simplicity and ignorance than by malice.

—Charles de Marillac, French ambassador to England, to the king of France, 18 July 1541

15

Ned Corbett started his search for Sir Gregory Botolph in Louvain, then moved on through the Low Countries until at last he located his quarry in a nondescript tavern in an obscure Flemish town.

“So, Botolph,” Ned said to him, “we meet again.”

With extreme caution, Botolph reached up, took the point of Ned’s knife between his fingertips, and eased it away from his own neck. Ned sheathed the weapon and slid onto the bench opposite Botolph’s stool. All around them he heard the fragments of conversation and the bursts of laughter typical of a dark, noisy tavern. This one was much like the places Ned had frequented in London and Calais, but here the language being spoken was not English.

“My man, Browne, is right behind you, Botolph, should you decide to flee.”

“Where would I go, Ned? Indeed, I am glad to see a friendly face in this godforsaken place.”

“I’ve no desire to be your friend and every inclination to spill your blood for what you did to me and to Philpott and to the others.”

“What I did?” With exaggerated calm, he took a swallow of beer, watching Ned over the rim of the tankard. “I did not coerce anyone. I used no force or violence. Clement Philpott brought disaster down upon his own head by betraying all he believed in.” He sipped again and grinned, unrepentant. “Indeed, if all had gone according to plan, my friend, you’d have been the one to cry foul treason to Lord Lisle.”

After following Botolph’s trail for six months, Ned was not inclined to rush the other man’s explanation. He signaled to the tavern keeper for a beer of his own and one for Browne and motioned for his servant to take a seat on the other side of Botolph.

“I want the true story,” he said when he’d downed enough of the dark, frothy brew to take the edge off his thirst. “All of it. Your mad scheme cost good men their lives and forced others into exile.”

Botolph shrugged. “I am not the villain here, but the man responsible is beyond your reach.”

“Who?”

“Thomas Cromwell.”

“Cromwell’s dead.”

“Precisely.”

Ned’s initial reaction was disbelief. He already knew Botolph was a practiced liar. But something about the fellow’s demeanor made him think that, unlikely as it seemed, he might be telling the truth. “Start at the beginning.”

“I stole some plate when I was a canon. In hindsight, a grave miscalculation, but I needed money. Lord Cromwell found out about it and summoned me to his house in London. We met in secret in the dead of night and he made me a proposition I was unable to refuse. My freedom and my reputation for helping him bring about Lord Lisle’s fall from grace.”

“He wanted to fill Lisle’s position in Calais with his own man.” That much had been obvious for years.

“Not only remove the lord deputy, but make it seem as if he had betrayed the king, betrayed England. Cromwell wanted him imprisoned, at least for a time.” Botolph grinned. “Cromwell intended to tell the king the whole story, admitting he’d entrapped Lisle to prove how unfit the fellow was for his post. Then he’d have interceded for Lisle with the king, persuading His Grace that Lisle was merely incompetent for allowing treason to prosper, not a traitor. Lisle would have been freed and restored to his title and honors, but he’d never again have been given any responsibility. And I’d have been pardoned.”

“And Philpott? He’s dead, Botolph. Hanged, drawn, and quartered. As I would be had I not been helped to escape.”

Botolph shrugged. “I warrant Philpott would still have been executed one day, for heresy if not for treason.”

Ned’s fingers itched to throttle Botolph. His former friend showed neither guilt nor remorse. “You could have come forward. Saved him. Saved us all.”

“From what? Your own stupidity? Those who were arrested did conspire to commit treason, no matter if it was a real plot or not. Besides, once Cromwell was arrested, who would have believed me? His execution ruined everything.” He drank deeply.

“You knew your friends would suffer for believing in the scheme. Left to his own devices, Philpott would never have plotted treason.”

“It was all Cromwell’s plan,” Botolph repeated.

“Even your meeting with Cardinal Pole and the pope?”

Botolph laughed. “I never went to Rome, Ned. Why should I?”

“For the gold?” Ned drained his tankard and signaled for another. Was this possible? Was everything Botolph had told them an invention?

“That, too, was supplied by Lord Cromwell. I did as I was told and I received my reward. Two hundred gold crowns. Enough to help me elude pursuit. There was to have been more but, as matters turned out, that will not be forthcoming.”

“Two hundred crowns is the rough equivalent of fifty pounds.” John Browne spoke for the first time, his voice a harsh monotone. “A man can live comfortably on a tenth of that per annum. Monks pensioned off when their monasteries closed are managing on far less.”

Botolph drank again and stared at the dregs. “I was never a monk. I never wanted to be a priest, either, but I was the fourth son. What else was there for me? And then I fell into Cromwell’s clutches.”

“You could go back,” Ned suggested, unmoved by Botolph’s whining. “Perhaps the king will reward you for your honesty. Lord Lisle surely will, since it will mean his freedom.”

Botolph started to laugh. “What kind of fool do you take me for? I may not be able to live in luxury, but I still have my head.”

For a moment, a red haze distorted Ned’s vision. His hands curled around the ceramic tankard and squeezed as the urge to kill Botolph grew stronger, all but overcoming his common sense. He wanted to shift his grip to the other man’s throat and snap his lying neck.

The tankard cracked with a sharp, splintering sound. Ned stared at his beer-soaked fingers, at the growing puddle on the table. Slowly, he shoved himself away from the table.

When he had control of himself again, the mess had been cleared away, and he had a fresh tankard of beer—pewter this time—he looked Botolph in the eye. “If you will not voluntarily go back to England to face the king’s justice, then Browne and I will take you there, bound and gagged, if necessary.”

“You’d forfeit your own freedom for revenge? I do not think so. You cannot return home any more than I can.”

“Gregory Sweet-lips” still possessed the silver tongue that had led so many men astray. Within a quarter of an hour, he’d convinced Ned that, with Cromwell dead, there was no one left who would believe the true story.

“Then give me one good reason not to kill you here and now,” Ned said.

“Only one? I can give you a hundred. And I can make it worth your while to go away. Cromwell paid me two hundred crowns. Half of that is yours to forget you ever found me.”

“While you stay here, living under a new name, enjoying your new life?” He would disappear again, to lead other men into trouble, or perhaps to rob another church of its plate. Ned considered the situation while he finished his beer. The decision to take all a man’s money, along with his life, was not one that could be made lightly.

IN EARLY FEBRUARY, the king went to London, leaving his bride behind at Hampton Court. It was the first time they had been separated for any length of time since their marriage, but King Henry had been growing ever more unpredictable. Nan did not think he’d tired of his young bride, but perhaps he needed a respite from her company.

Queen Catherine scarcely seemed to miss him. She occupied herself as she always did, with dice and cards and dancing and a steady stream of entertainers to provide distraction.

The gentlemen the king left behind flocked to Her Grace’s presence chamber like moths to flame. Will Parr was there to be with Dorothy Bray. Sir Edmund Knyvett came sniffing around Nan. Tom Culpepper was among Nan’s admirers, as well, but his heart wasn’t in it.

A frown knit Nan’s brows as she watched Culpepper watch Catherine Howard. His open admiration filled Nan with concern for his safety, but that was nothing to what she felt when she saw the amorous look in Her Grace’s eyes. How fortunate that a queen was never truly alone! With so many witnesses surrounding her, she could not do more than lust in her heart for a virile young man.

As Nan continued to watch, Queen Catherine turned her back on Tom Culpepper. Nan told herself she’d imagined Her Grace’s prurient interest. Since it was never safe to speculate about such things, she put the incident out of her mind, but her uneasiness returned a few days later when the queen suddenly dispensed with the services of her maids of honor, sending them away for the rest of the afternoon.

“Go and enjoy yourselves,” she ordered. “Lady Rochford is all the company I need while I rest.”

“How she can stand that prune-faced Lady Rochford, I do not know,” Dorothy Bray said as she and Nan and Lucy Somerset made their way to the tennis court. Will Parr was to play in one of the matches that afternoon.

“She likes the way Lady Rochford abases herself,” Lucy replied. “She’s so willing to please that she’ll do anything the queen asks of her.”

“We all serve the queen,” Dorothy said primly. “If she wants us on our knees to hand her an apple, we go down on our knees.”

“But Lady Rochford would gladly crawl,” Nan said. There was something not quite right about the older woman. Her face customarily wore a look of quiet desperation and her eyes were always darting this way and that, as if she expected someone to jump out at her from behind an arras.

When they entered the enclosed tennis court, Nan anticipated hearing the crack of tennis balls against racket and floor and wall. The sound of a scuffle reached her ears instead. A man grunted. Another swore. The three maids of honor came out into the gallery in time to see several courtiers pull Sir Edmund Knyvett away from another gentleman. The second combatant swabbed his freely bleeding nose.

A sudden terrible silence fell over the entire company. Nan lifted her hand to her mouth to hold back a sound of distress. To strike another person, especially to draw blood, was an offense against the king when it occurred at court. This was far more serious than a simple brawl.

Will Parr came up to them, a stricken look in his hazel eyes. He was a tall, well-built gentleman with a long face and wore both hair and beard close cropped. Like his sisters, Anne Herbert and Kathryn Latimer, his normal disposition was cheerful, but at the moment he showed no sign of lightheartedness. “You’d best leave, my love,” he told Dorothy. “They’ll come to arrest him now. There will be no more tennis this afternoon.”

“What will happen to him?” Nan whispered. She had refused Sir Edmund’s offer to make her his mistress, but she bore him no ill will for suggesting that role for her. In fact, she was grateful to him for opening her eyes to her altered status at court.

“Knyvett must forfeit the hand he used to strike the blow.”

Parr’s blunt words made Nan’s stomach roil. “Is there no remedy?”

He shrugged. “The king can pardon him, but I do not think he will. His Grace’s leg has been causing him a great deal of pain these last few days. He is not in charity with anyone but the queen.”

Queen Catherine, Nan remembered, was Sir Edmund’s kinswoman. She could intervene. More times than she could count, Nan had seen Catherine tease and cajole her husband out of the foulest of tempers. His Grace was as besotted with her as he had been before they were wed. All the queen had to do was smile in order to twist him around her little finger. Picking up her skirts, Nan hurried back to the queen’s apartments, but Lady Rochford barred her way.

“Her Grace is resting!” she said in a voice loud enough to wake anyone on the other side of the bedchamber door.

“She will want to hear my news. It concerns the impending arrest of her cousin.”

Lady Rochford blanched. “Cousin? Which cousin?”

“Sir Edmund Knyvett.”

The other woman’s obvious relief made Nan wonder who she had supposed Nan meant. The queen had a large family. There were Howards on her father’s side, and her mother—her mother had been born a Culpepper.

Nan was relieved to find Her Grace alone in her bedchamber when Lady Rochford at last permitted her to enter. In a few terse sentences, she told Queen Catherine what had transpired at the tennis court. Catherine listened and expressed concern, but she refused to intervene on Sir Edmund’s behalf.

“The king has been in a volatile mood of late,” she said by way of an excuse. Catherine toyed with the gem-encrusted brooch pinned to her bosom. “Perhaps you should ask the king yourself when he returns to Hampton Court.”

Catherine would like that, Nan thought. She’d be delighted if the king lost his temper with a woman who had once been his mistress. Although she had no cause, Catherine was apparently still jealous of Nan.

“I have not Your Grace’s … influence with King Henry,” Nan said carefully. “Surely Your Grace will be able to find an opportunity to plead for your cousin, perhaps when the king is in a mellow mood.”

“Perhaps my cousin should consider asking me himself. Go and fetch my cloak, Nan. I have a sudden craving to walk in the gallery for exercise.” As far as the queen was concerned, the subject was closed.

JUST AS WILL Parr had predicted, Sir Edmund Knyvett was brought before the Court of the Verge in the Great Hall of the palace and sentenced to have his right hand amputated and to forfeit his lands and possessions for having drawn blood at the royal court. On the morning the sentence was to be carried out, courtiers crowded around the windows overlooking the appointed courtyard. Nan stood next to Anne Herbert, fighting the urge to bolt.

Two forms had been set up. One held instruments and supplies, the other wine, ale, and beer.

“For the witnesses,” Anne explained.

“Oh, yes, let us drink to the horror!”

“Hush, Nan. There’s still hope of a pardon. And if not, well, there is a sergeant surgeon in attendance.”

“This is no surgical amputation.” And even with a skilled surgeon, the removal of a limb often led to death from loss of blood or from fever. She watched, wide eyed, as the sergeant of the woodyard brought forth a mallet and a block.

“A sergeant of the larder will set the blade right on the joint,” Anne said. “A master cook will wield the knife. When the cutting is done, a sergeant farrier will use searing irons to sear the veins.”

Nan looked at the pan of fire used to heat them. A chafer of water stood nearby—to cool the ends, she supposed. And a yeoman of the chandlery was in attendance, ready to supply sear cloths to dress the stump. The only person whose presence Nan could not comprehend with chilling clarity was the sergeant of the poultry. “Why has he brought a cock?”

“The bird will be beheaded on the same block and with the same knife. To test the equipment, I presume.” Anne did not seem unduly upset by what they were about to witness.

Nan’s stomach churned. She tasted bile. When the knight marshall brought Sir Edmund out, she pressed her fists to her mouth.

Sir Edmund was in shirt and breeches, wearing neither doublet nor gown in spite of the February chill in the courtyard. His face was as white as the patches of snow on the cobblestones.

Sir Edmund went down on his knees to confess his crime. In a last, desperate effort to save his hand, he begged the knight marshall to go and plead with the king for mercy on his behalf. “Ask His Grace if I might lose my left hand rather than the right,” Sir Edmund called after him as he entered the palace, “for if my right hand be spared, I may hereafter do much good service to His Grace.”

Proceedings halted. Nan prayed for Sir Edmund’s deliverance but, in her heart, she knew that it was not God’s mercy that he needed. It was the king’s.

After what seemed an eternity, the knight marshall returned from speaking to King Henry, who had come back from London the previous day. “His Majesty is impressed with your loyalty, Sir Edmund. He will grant your request.” He turned to the master cook. “Take off his left hand.”

Nan could not help herself. She pressed closer to the window, watching in sick fascination as Sir Edmund’s hand was positioned on the block. The blade was aligned. The cook took hold of the knife’s handle. A thin line of red appeared on Sir Edmund’s wrist.

At the last possible moment, a man ran into the courtyard—a messenger from King Henry. “On the king’s command,” he shouted, “you are to stay the execution of the punishment until after dinner!”

Nan rested her forehead against the window glass. Not a pardon. A delay. She had underestimated the king’s capacity for cruelty.

Three hours passed while the king dined. Then His Grace made his way in person to the courtyard where Sir Edmund and all the officers still waited. They must be nearly frozen by now, Nan thought, resuming her post by the window. She heard someone come up beside her but did not turn around to see who it was. She assumed Anne Herbert had returned.

King Henry moved with slow, ponderous steps, using a staff to help him walk. He had rarely been without the accessory since the winter began. “Have you anything to say to me, rogue?”

Sir Edmund spoke in a low, trembling voice, beaten down by fear and the cold. “I desire Your Grace pardon my right hand and take the left, so that I might hereafter do such good service to Your Grace as shall please you to appoint.”

A smug smile appeared on the king’s face. At her side, Nan heard a little sigh of relief. She glanced at her companion. Only then did she see that it was not Anne Herbert who stood next to her. It was the queen. Nan started to drop into a curtsy, but Catherine caught her arm to keep her upright. “His Majesty is about to speak. Listen.”

“In consideration of your gentle heart, Edmund, and your long service to the Crown, I grant you pardon. You shall lose neither hand, land, nor goods, but shall go free at liberty.”

Catherine clapped her hands in delight. “See how His Grace grants my slightest wish!”

“His Majesty loves you, Your Grace,” Nan whispered. As relieved as she was that Sir Edmund had been spared, the queen’s display of jubilation filled her with dismay. Without stopping to think how her warning would be received, Nan blurted out, “His Grace once loved your cousin with equal passion.”

Instantly infuriated, Queen Catherine slapped Nan’s face. “Insolent wench! All the world knows that Anne Boleyn bewitched him.”

“And that she was unfaithful,” Nan added in a whisper. Her cheek stung, but she could not seem to stop speaking. “Queen Anne was beheaded for indiscretion. There was no pardon for her.”

Catherine’s face twisted into an ugly sneer. “Taking lovers was not her greatest mistake. It was that she railed at His Grace and made his life a misery. I never contradict him, only sweetly persuade him to do my bidding. I know how to please a man.”

“Your Grace, have a care! There are ears everywhere.”

But Queen Catherine seemed to lack both common sense and any instinct for self-preservation. “I am queen,” she boasted. “I do as I please.”

It was Catherine’s good fortune that, this time, only Lady Rochford, lurking a short distance away, was close enough to overhear.

AS PART OF the usual revelry that preceded Lent, there were masques at court on two consecutive nights. The king failed to attend either.

“Have you heard?” Dorothy whispered on the second night, after she and Nan were closed into the relative privacy of their bed.

“Heard what?” Nan was exhausted from the dancing that had followed the masque. Sir Edmund, having survived a close brush with disaster, was more importune than ever about making her his mistress. There were times when, out of equal parts pity and loneliness, she was tempted to give in.

“The king’s ulcer suddenly became clogged. It has closed up and is causing him great pain. He has a high fever, too.”

Nan prayed for the king’s deliverance. His heir was a child. If King Henry died, England would be plunged into chaos. Worse, there would be no queen at court. If there was no queen, there would be no place for a maid of honor.

The next day, Queen Catherine was banned from her husband’s bedchamber.

“The king refuses to see anyone, Your Grace,” Tom Culpepper told her. “And I doubt Your Grace would want to see the king. At one point, His Grace’s face turned black. The doctors feared for his life until one of the surgeons drained fluid from the ulcer. Then the swelling went down and His Grace’s health improved considerably, but not, I fear, his temper.”

“Word of Henry’s violent outbursts has already reached us,” the queen said.

“He even railed at me,” Culpepper admitted with a rueful grin. “His Grace called me a lying timeserver and a flatterer who looked only to my own profit. But then he also said he knew what his councilors were plotting and that he would take care that their projects should not succeed.”

“It is the pain talking,” Anne Herbert murmured in Nan’s ear. “What a good thing it is that men do not have to endure childbirth. They would be quite unfit to live with if they did.” Anne had left court briefly the previous year to give birth to her first child and considered herself an expert on the subject.

“His Grace’s misery is so great,” Culpepper continued, “that he will not even allow music to be played in his bedchamber.”

That news alarmed Nan more than anything else she had heard. King Henry loved music. He’d even written several songs himself. That he found his musicians annoying and preferred silence to the distraction of their playing was deeply disturbing.

Culpepper lowered his voice, but that only made the maids of honor stretch their ears. “His Grace bemoaned the loss of Lord Cromwell. He said that his councilors, upon light pretext and by false accusations, conspired to turn His Grace against the most faithful servant he ever had.”

How strange, Nan thought. Did the king truly feel regret? Could it be that His Grace was capable of admitting he could make mistakes?

Nan pondered that possibility during the next ten days. All the while, the king kept to his rooms and refused entry to all but a few trusted gentlemen. Nan was unable to go to him, unable to ask him to pardon Lord Lisle.

His pretty young wife was also kept out of the king’s apartments. More alarmingly, courtiers were sent home in droves. Those who remained sank into a gloom that was the equal of the king’s.

But then, with as much suddenness as His Grace’s health had failed him, he was himself again. He summoned Queen Catherine. He was ready to plan her long-delayed official entry into London.

NED CORBETT SECRETLY returned to England a few weeks after he ran Sir Gregory Botolph to ground. He chose yet another new name for himself and stayed well away from court, but he was not content without employment. When he heard of a wine merchant’s widow who needed a secretary, he decided that such a position had possibilities.

Ned expected to be interviewed by an aged crone who had depended upon her late husband for everything—someone Ned could flatter and impress. The woman seated behind a table piled high with ledgers and correspondence did not fit that image.

She was young, no older than Ned. Even in the unrelieved black of mourning dress, she was attractive. Her skin was milky white, her figure was rounded in all the right places, and her eyes were the exact color of violets.

Once he got over his surprise, he also recognized shrewd intelligence in those eyes. The widow was examining him every bit as thoroughly as he’d categorized her attributes. Sending a taut smile his way, she gestured for him to sit.

Intrigued, he complied. She had questions. He answered them, most of them honestly, faltering only when she demanded to know if he was a displaced priest.

“No monastery would have taken me,” he told her, and dared a wink.

She blinked, then slowly smiled. “You are wondering why I asked. As it happens, most of the applicants for this position have been monks turned out to fend for themselves when their monasteries were dissolved. They were pensioned off, but the paltry sums they were allotted are not enough to keep body and soul together. I feel sorry for such men, but I do not want to employ one.”

“Why is that, madam?” Ned asked.

“As a rule, they do not approve of women, especially women who wish to manage their own businesses.”

“I have no such failing. I am ready and willing to assist you.” He’d quite enjoy working for her.

“Not all men are so open-minded. Indeed, most of those I have encountered believe that women are incapable of anything more complicated than brewing, baking, and needlework.”

“That is shortsighted of them. I have been privileged to observe many accomplished women in my … travels. I am certain that you can succeed at anything you choose.”

“You show a remarkable degree of confidence in someone you have only just met.”

Ned grinned. “I am in need of a job, madam. But though I say it myself, I am also an excellent judge of character.” The smile faded when he remembered Sir Gregory Botolph. “I did make a mistake once, but it is not one I am ever likely to repeat.”

Her stare bored into him, as if she were attempting to look at his soul. He had to fight to keep from squirming, but he met her intense scrutiny with surface calm until she dropped her gaze to the papers in front of her on the desk.

“Do I meet with your approval, madam?”

“Have you wife or children?”

“No.”

“A mistress?”

“Not at present.” Ned narrowed his eyes at her. “What has that to do with employment as a secretary?”

“I require one thing more,” she said bluntly. “In order to ensure that the business my husband left me continues to prosper, I require a husband.”

* * *

IN MID-APRIL, SHORTLY after the court moved to Greenwich Palace, a sickness ravaged the land. For some it was no more than a mild stomach complaint—Queen Catherine mistakenly believed herself to be with child when she came down with it—while others became deathly ill. Tom Culpepper was among them. So was Nan’s oldest brother, John Bassett.

Nan considered this news, wondering if she could use it to her advantage. She was not close to her brother. She had seen him only once after she’d been sent into France to be trained. Before that, the Bassett sons and daughters had largely been raised apart. But John’s sickness, she decided, was a valid excuse to approach the king, especially if she exaggerated how ill her brother was.

She did not attempt to see King Henry alone, but chose a time when His Grace was visiting Queen Catherine’s apartments to approach them both. The king was in a cheerful mood, in spite of his grossly swollen and throbbing leg, which rested on a jewel-studded stool. The bandages on his leg were more noticeable than they had been, as if it required additional layers to contain seepage.

King Henry smiled benignly down at Nan when she knelt before him to ask a boon. “What would you have, my pretty Nan?”

“Your Grace, I have received word that my brother is sick and like to die.” His smile vanished. Belatedly, Nan remembered his aversion to illness. He did not even like to hear about those who were ailing. She rushed on, hoping to make her case before he turned against her completely. “Sire, I beg you. He is at Lincoln’s Inn. If you could permit my mother to go to him in his hour of need, it would be a great kindness.”

The king’s face turned an ugly shade of red. Suddenly afraid, Nan fell silent. She did not dare say more. She had no need to in any case, for the king knew full well who her mother was and why she was unable to go to her son’s deathbed without royal permission.

“You ask me to set a traitor free?” His voice was harsh. He glared at her through small, hard eyes devoid of compassion. Piggy little eyes, Nan thought, and then was horrified lest he somehow guess what was in her mind.

Nan bowed her head and waited for the next blow to fall. She clasped her hands tightly together in a futile attempt to keep them from trembling. He was going to refuse. She had no doubt of that. But what if there were more serious repercussions? What if His Grace decided he did not want a traitor’s daughter at his court?

“I have already done you the favor of freeing your sisters,” King Henry reminded her.

“Yes, Your Grace. Your Grace has been most benevolent.” She sent him a beseeching look.

“That is all I am prepared to do. I will hear no more of this matter.” The finality in his voice left Nan close to tears. She’d waited so long to choose her moment and now she’d chosen wrongly. She stumbled as she backed away from him.

The king watched her. She felt his eyes upon her on and off for the remainder of his visit to Queen Catherine. The queen prattled on, as she always did, talking of inconsequential things. Once or twice she made His Grace laugh, but his good mood was much diminished.

A week later, Nan’s brother died.

Tom Culpepper recovered.

AS SPRING ADVANCED, the queen was full of plans for the next progress. They were to set out from London at the end of June and head north, visiting Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, counties where there had been uprisings a few years earlier over the king’s decision to dissolve the monasteries. Another outbreak of dissension caused a furor at court. The small band of rural rebels was quickly quashed by well-trained royal troops, but King Henry’s response did not end there. He ordered the execution of the old Countess of Salisbury. Cardinal Pole’s mother, who had been held in the Tower of London since shortly after her older son was executed, was beheaded.

When Nan heard of it, she went straight to Anthony Denny, hoping for reassurance. “Are there to be other executions?” she asked. “Is my stepfather in danger of losing his head?”

“Not to my knowledge.” But the pity in Denny’s eyes told her that the situation could change at any moment.

When days turned into weeks and nothing more happened, Nan began to feel more confident. Once on progress, she thought, the king would forget all about Lord Lisle and his wife.

They set out as planned, but then the skies opened and rain fell in torrents, turning the roads into quagmires. As the caravan traveled from Dunstable to Ampthill and on to Grafton Regis, the king’s councilors advised him to abandon the journey.

King Henry would not listen. His annual progress was the means by which he showed himself to the people and gave them the opportunity to present him with petitions. Besides, he and the queen slept warm and dry every night. They were not much concerned that hundreds of others, those of lowest rank like Nan’s Constance, spent the hours of darkness in tents pitched in the sodden fields and the days shivering in wet shoes and damp cloaks. Nan’s maidservant was a sorry sight, but there was little she could do to relieve the girl’s discomfort.

The progress stopped in Northampton, then left there in the third week of July to spend a few days at the king’s house at Collyweston. In early August, the entourage reached the outskirts of the city of Lincoln. Tents were set up seven miles south of the gates, at Temple Bruer, where the king enjoyed his dinner under a canopy before continuing on into Lincoln itself.

He changed into garments of Lincoln green for the ride to Lincoln Castle, where he and the queen and their closest attendants would be housed. The queen was carried in a litter. She kept the curtains closed for warmth and privacy. Her maids of honor rode behind. On horseback there was little protection from the elements, especially since Queen Catherine had commanded that they put aside their cloaks to better show off their elegant black livery.

Nan was drooping with fatigue by the time the procession neared the castle. She was weary of travel, tired of the rain and unseasonable cold, worn out by nagging fears about the future that never quite went away.

She barely glanced at the large crowd gathered to see the king pass through the city. King Henry’s subjects had collected in large numbers all along the route of the progress. Their faces had become a blur. And yet, just as Nan was about to ride through the castle gate, her gaze fell on one particular man in the crowd. For an instant, his face was clearly visible. Nan’s breath caught and her heart stuttered.

Imagination, she told herself. Ned Corbett could not be in England. Besides, the fellow she’d seen was clean shaven. Ned had always had a very fine beard.

But the incident left her shaken. More than once in the course of the evening, she caught herself wondering what her life would have been like if she’d gone with Ned into exile.

VERY EARLY THE next day, Constance slipped into the chamber assigned to the maids of honor and touched Nan’s shoulder to wake her. Constance held her finger to her lips, reminding Nan that the slightest sound might wake her bedfellow. Quietly, she rose, closing the hangings behind her, and dressed with Constance’s help. Whatever her tiring maid had on her mind, it was clearly important or she would not have left Temple Bruer before dawn and walked seven miles in the dark.

Carrying her shoes, Nan tiptoed out of the chamber and followed Constance along corridors and through antechambers until they stepped out into a courtyard. There were already scores of people stirring, preparing for a day of festivities, but no one took any notice of Nan and Constance as they scurried through the gate and out of the castle.

“This way,” Constance whispered, and hurried downhill, into the town.

“What is this about?” Nan demanded as she followed. “Where are we going?”

But Constance only walked faster, forcing Nan to do likewise, and led her to a large and prosperous-looking house of the sort owned by wealthy merchants or lawyers or physicians.

A violet-eyed woman wearing an expensively decorated French hood let them in, examining Nan with blatant curiosity as she escorted her into a large and finely proportioned hall. She did not stay with them, but rather disappeared back behind the screen that shielded the room from drafts. Two men stood at the far side of the room, beneath an oriel window and near an unlit hearth. The diffuse light of early morning shone down on them, showing them in silhouette.

Nan gasped. For a moment the room around her dimmed. She pulled herself back by sheer willpower. A spurt of anger drove away any remaining chance that she would faint. “What are you doing in England?” she demanded. “Have you lost your senses?”

Ned Corbett turned as she stormed toward him. She had seen him the previous day. Except for the lack of a beard, which revealed a strong, square jaw, he was just the same—brown haired and blue eyed, with laugh lines around his eyes; a head taller than she was and well proportioned, if a bit leaner than she remembered.

“I could not abide foreign parts,” Ned said when she stopped only inches from him.

“But the risk—”

“Very small. I have been here in Lincoln for the last five months and no one has questioned my identity.”

She reached out, placing a hand on his cheek. He felt real, warm and solid. His scent was the same wonderful mix that had drawn her to him so long ago.

It had been nearly four years since she’d come to England to become a maid of honor, and just over one year since she’d helped Ned escape from the Tower of London and set sail on that Dutch merchantman. Just over a year since their son had died.

Nan closed her eyes against the sudden pain of that memory. It was difficult to think of Jamie. Far easier to pretend he’d never existed. That made her feel guilty, but not so guilty that she stopped trying to forget.

“Nan?”

Her eyes popped open. Hope flickered to life. If Ned was back, safe, then they could—

But no. Nothing had changed. She could not leave court without arousing suspicion.

“Nan?” This time she heard a smile in his voice. A grin overspread his familiar features. “You are thinking too much. Just ask me what you want to know.”

“How? Why did—?” She stopped short of asking him why he had not contacted her. Why should he? She had sent him away and refused to go with him.

Belatedly, she noticed Constance. Her maidservant stood a little apart, wrapped in the arms of Ned’s companion. John Browne had returned to England, too.

“You should not be here, Ned. There are others who might recognize you. The Countess of Sussex. Lady Rutland. The—”

“I will stay out of sight until the progress moves on, but I wanted to see you once more. I did not intend to talk to you, even after you saw me in the marketplace, but Browne went looking for Constance, and although she has agreed to marry him, she would not stay in Lincoln unless I told you everything.”

“Constance?” She turned to her tiring maid in surprise. “Are you certain?”

“Oh, yes, mistress. Never more so.”

“Then you have my blessing, but I will miss you terribly.” And she envied Constance, Nan admitted to herself.

“Nan, I’ve something to tell you.” Ned was no longer smiling. “Constance says you know already that Lord Cromwell was behind Sir Gregory Botolph’s plot.”

“You knew?”

“Not until I caught up with Botolph on the Continent. It took months to locate him, but finally, in January, I tracked him down. He confessed everything, how the entire plot was a ploy to discredit your stepfather and oust him from Calais.”

Just as Wat Hungerford had said. “So many men dead. So many lives ruined. And for what?”

“Greed. Power.” Ned shrugged. “All the evils of the court. I am glad to be well away from such things.”

“And Botolph? Can you tell the king’s men how to find him?”

“He’s dead.” The stark words and the hard look on Ned’s face discouraged questions.

Nan’s heart sank as her best chance to help Lord Lisle died, too.

Ned glanced up at the window as a beam of sunlight struck his face. “The morning advances apace. You must go back to the castle before your absence is noticed.”

“Will I ever see you again?”

“No, Nan.” His voice was gentle and a little sad. “Best you do not. I have yet another new name now. And I have a wife.”

“The violet-eyed woman,” Nan said slowly. Suddenly details of her appearance, barely noticed a few minutes earlier, came back to Nan with crystal clarity. Ned’s wife was young and pretty and she wore her gown unlaced at the front, as women were wont to do when they were with child.

For a moment, Nan couldn’t remember how to breathe. She felt as if she’d lost both Ned and Jamie all over again.

“Nan?” Ned sounded worried. “I never meant to hurt you. I owe everything I have now to you. I owe you my life.”

She drew in a deep breath. “I am happy for you.” She forced herself to look away from Ned and focus on Constance. “For all of you. And you are right. We must not meet again.”

In haste, before she could lose her fragile control of her emotions, she bid them farewell and fled. Back into Lincoln Castle. Back to her duties as a maid of honor to the queen.