Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set

… since he learned the conduct of his last wife, [the king] has continually shown himself sad … but now all is changed and order is already taken that the princess shall go to court this feast, accompanied with a great number of ladies; and they work night and day at Hampton Court to finish her lodgings.

—Eustace Chapuys, imperial ambassador to England, to Mary of Hungary, regent of the Netherlands, December 1542

18

On New Year’s Day, Nan avoided the annual gift giving by pleading a megrim and staying in bed. She did not expect to see anyone but her maid. She knew the king would not trouble her, not with his aversion to illness of any kind.

“Nan?” Kathryn Latimer’s soft voice pulled Nan from a light doze. “I have brought you a poultice.”

Inwardly, Nan groaned. “I only need sleep,” she protested, but Kathryn had already shoved the bed hangings aside.

The smell of herbs tickled Nan’s nose—vervain, she thought, and betony. A moment later a damp, warm cloth settled over her forehead and eyes. Nan felt the feather bed depress as Kathryn sat.

“When you have warning of the onset of a megrim, you might try eating raisins. My first husband often found that effective.”

“Warning?” Nan echoed. Kathryn’s nurturing was so unexpected, so overwhelming, that she had difficulty thinking clearly.

“With a megrim there are usually some signs in advance of the onset. Problems with vision. Nausea. Clumsiness. There are those who say the ailment is akin to the falling sickness, in which case it may be cured by drinking spring water at night from the skull of one who has been slain.”

Nan pushed the poultice aside to stare at the smaller woman. “You must be jesting.”

“Indeed I am not. But there are many other remedies you might try if that one offends you. Lavender flowers in a bag—red silk for noblemen and plainer stuff for others—with bay, betony, red roses, marjoram, clove pinks, and nutmeg blossoms. Put that on your head and it will soothe the pain of most headaches. An infusion of cowslip juice, taken through the nose, can destroy some megrims. Or you might prefer a tisane of meadowsweet, feverfew, lavender, lemon balm, ground ivy, woodruff, melilot, lady’s bedstraw, or pennyroyal.”

“Kathryn, I just want to sleep.”

Through her lashes, Nan saw Kathryn’s eyes narrow. “Or, we could open the middle vein in your forehead.”

Nan’s eyes widened. She blinked when she saw the expression on her friend’s face. It was no use pretending any longer. Kathryn knew she was not ill. Nan removed the poultice from her forehead and sat up. “I have my reasons,” she said in a defensive tone.

“I am certain that you do. And I am pleased to know that you are not in any pain.”

“You will not … tell anyone?”

“Why should I?” When Kathryn started to slide off the bed, Nan caught her arm.

“Wait. Please. You … you seem to know a great deal about herbs and cures.”

“No more than any other countrywoman in charge of a large household. I am the one Lord Latimer’s dependents come to when they need care. To me, or to the village cunning woman. Physicians are in short supply in rural areas and cost money besides.”

“My mother once had similar responsibilities,” Nan said, “but I have never spent much time in the stillroom. Tell me, what would you recommend for the king’s ulcer?”

Kathryn’s face paled. “I would never presume to make suggestions. His Grace has an army of doctors at his beck and call. Those gentlemen frown on consulting healers, especially uneducated females.”

“You may not have studied medicine at a university, Kathryn, but you are scarcely unlettered.”

“I would never presume—”

“Yes, yes, I understand. But you must have seen grievous wounds, been called upon to nurse a man gored by a bull or a lad injured at swordplay.”

“There was a fellow once who’d been attacked by a wild boar. He did not live.” Kathryn scrambled off the bed and hurried toward the door. “I must return to my duties, as you have no need of my care.”

Nan lay back against the pillows and stared up at the tester overhead for a long time. Could she trust Kathryn not to betray her? She would have to. But she would have to be very cautious in implementing her plan to bring the soon-to-be-widowed Lady Latimer to the king’s attention.

WHATEVER KING HENRY had intended to give Nan as a New Year’s gift, he had apparently reconsidered by the time she recovered from her megrim and returned to the Lady Mary’s presence chamber. His Grace greeted her warmly and demanded that she join him to play the card game Pope July, but he made no reference to her absence, nor did he present her with any bauble.

The return to court of Sir Thomas Seymour, the late queen’s younger brother, provided the next diversion. Sir Thomas looked just as Nan remembered him—tall, dark, and handsome. Feminine heads turned as he strode across a room. He even attracted the attention of those who were usually immune to the charms of flashy courtiers, Nan herself and Kathryn Latimer.

Sir Thomas noticed Kathryn, too.

“Lady Latimer is married,” Nan warned him when she next had occasion to dance with Sir Thomas.

“I hear her husband is on his deathbed,” he countered. “She’ll soon be ripe for the plucking.”

Not by you, Nan vowed as she watched him head straight to Kathryn to ask for the next dance.

Nan kept close to Kathryn after that, although she could not be with the other woman every moment. And when the king asked Nan to sup with him, she took Kathryn along.

King Henry frowned at the sight of two women when he’d invited only one, but he accepted Kathryn’s presence with good grace. “Two beautiful ladies,” he boomed. “I am truly blessed.”

Another place was hastily set and, with the king’s permission, they sat and supped. Kathryn, as was her wont, said little during the meal. Nan encouraged King Henry to do most of the talking. He was in exceedingly good spirits until he rose from table and put weight on his bad leg. He gasped in pain.

“Your Grace,” Nan whispered, appalled. “I believe your bandage needs to be changed.” A horrible yellow stain, streaked here and there with red, had seeped through the king’s hose. The stench that rose from it made Nan’s supper try to climb back up her throat. She stepped quickly away, barely managing not to gag.

The king’s gentlemen surrounded him. Someone brought fresh bandages. A moment later, they fell back as the king roared, “Incompetent bumblers! Can no one change a dressing without causing me more agony?”

A low, soothing voice answered. “I can, Your Grace.” Moved to pity by his suffering, Kathryn Latimer slipped gracefully through the crowd of courtiers and knelt at the king’s side.

* * *

BY THE END of the third week in February, King Henry was visiting his daughter’s apartments two or three times every day. It was no longer Nan he came to see. To Nan’s great relief, His Grace now wanted Kathryn beside him when he played cards or threw dice. Soon he began to send her gifts, small tokens of his esteem.

Lord Latimer obligingly died at the end of February and was buried on the second of March. His widow mourned, but she did not put on widow’s weeds. “The king insists that I continue to wear bright colors,” she confided to Nan.

“Then you must do as he wishes.”

“It is no hardship.” Kathryn managed a shy smile. “I am particularly fond of red.”

“And the king,” Nan murmured, “seems particularly fond of your company.”

“I did not set out to draw him away from you, Nan. You must believe that.”

“I never thought any such thing,” Nan assured her. “And I ask no more than to see King Henry be happy.”

“He is … very kind to me.”

“May I be blunt, Kathryn? The king is lonely. He would like to take another wife, but he wants neither a foreign princess nor a slip of a girl. He wants a companion. Someone to comfort him in his declining years.”

“There were many who said he wanted you.”

Nan shook her head. “I am familiar to him. Like an old shoe.” She forced a laugh. “And I am not brave enough to deal with him when his leg pains him or his temper is short. I fear for my family at those times. What I do here at court has repercussions as far away as Cornwall.”

“I have family, too.”

“But your brother and your sister are both at court and already in favor with the king. He even remembers your mother fondly, from her days in service to Catherine of Aragon. When he thinks of my mother, he remembers Botolph’s conspiracy against the Crown.”

Nan took note of the pity in Kathryn’s eyes. She told herself that was good, nearly as useful as sympathy. Kathryn must believe her when Nan said she did not want the king for herself.

“I do not think I am suited to be queen,” Kathryn said quietly.

“You are as well born as Anne Boleyn or Jane Seymour or Catherine Howard.”

“That is not what I mean.” Color stained her cheeks and she did not meet Nan’s eyes. “There was … someone else who showed an interest in me during my husband’s illness. Someone I would … prefer to the king.”

“Sir Thomas Seymour, I presume. Kathryn, Tom Seymour is a notorious womanizer.”

Nan could have gone on categorizing Seymour’s flaws, but if Kathryn had fallen under that clever rogue’s spell, she was not likely to listen to warnings. Criticism would only make her more determined to have him.

“If you truly care for Sir Thomas,” Nan said instead, “you must have no more to do with him. The king has a jealous nature. He would rather destroy you both than let another man have what he desires.”

“Surely not!”

“I have seen the way the king looks at you, Kathryn. He’ll not let another man have you.”

“But … but I am not suited to be his wife. I cannot give him children. I have been married twice and never conceived. The fault is clearly mine.”

“The king has heirs enough.” Nan lowered her voice. “It is possible he lacks the ability to sire more children. He has not … we have not—”

She broke off when she saw the shocked expression on Kathryn’s face. Checking carefully to make sure no one was near enough to overhear, Nan leaned closer to her friend.

“Could you bring yourself to marry the king if you did not have to couple with him?”

“I … I do not know. But surely, if he is incapable—”

“I cannot be certain, but I think that is why he has not sent for me. Not once since before his marriage to Queen Anna.”

“But with Catherine Howard—”

“If he satisfied her, why did she risk everything to be with Tom Culpepper?”

Kathryn’s brow furrowed in thought. “There was a story that Lord Latimer told me. About the trial of George Boleyn, Lord Rochford, before the House of Lords. He was handed a slip of paper and asked if his sister, the queen, had ever made such a claim. Rochford knew already that his life was forfeit. The king was that desperate to rid himself of Anne Boleyn and marry Jane Seymour. So he pretended to misunderstand. He read aloud what was written on the paper—that the king was well nigh impotent.”

The two women stared at each other in silence for a long moment.

“It is possible his ailments took away his capability, or at least his desire,” Kathryn mused. “Or mayhap the treatments were responsible.”

“In any case, what he wants in a wife is a nurse and a companion, not a lover. You have already proven yourself capable of fulfilling his needs, Kathryn. And he told me himself that you have the gentlest touch of anyone, man or woman, when it comes to tending his leg.”

AS MARCH TURNED into April, Kathryn heeded Nan’s advice and avoided Tom Seymour’s company, but she also took care not to push herself forward with King Henry. It did no good. His Grace was determined to have her, and since she was a kind-hearted woman who hated to see anyone in pain, she went to him when he was ill, nursed him and comforted him. She was, Nan readily admitted, a much better person than Nan was.

On the twelfth of July, twenty witnesses gathered in the private oratory of the Queen’s Closet at Hampton Court to watch Kathryn Parr, Lady Latimer, marry King Henry. Nan was not one of them. She took herself off to the gardens to think about her own prospects.

She left the palace by the southern entrance, with its view of the river landing, but she ignored the path that passed between the pond and privy gardens and ended on the bank of the Thames. Instead she turned east, skirting the privy garden to reach the knot garden. She hesitated there. The knot garden was situated between the gallery wing and the chapel, with the gallery overlooking the garden from the north. The area was too public to suit her present mood.

She continued on, circling the palace but staying inside the moat. A desire for solitude drove her away from the occasional cluster of courtiers. By the time she reached the orchard, the only person in sight ahead of her was one of the mole catchers employed to keep pests out of the gardens.

In common with every other space on Hampton Court’s grounds, the orchard was decorated with numerous heraldic devices. Twenty-five carved beasts—antelopes, harts and hinds, dragons and hounds, gilded and painted—stood on green and white bases. At least here, among the apple and pear trees, they were not so overwhelming. In the privy garden there were 159 heraldic beasts, all aligned with rails painted green and white—the Tudor colors—to surround twenty garden beds. There were twenty sundials, too, but the centerpiece of the whole was a huge stone tablet with sculpted figures of the king’s beasts holding up the royal shield.

Nan wandered past the first rows of trees. The orchard was one of the newer additions to the palace grounds, much of it planted less than a dozen years before. Apple, cherry, pear, and damson were interspersed with oak and elm, medlar and holly, and the open places were planted in grain. It grew high just now, but it would be mowed at harvesttime.

Nan had wandered nearly to the far side of the orchard before she looked back toward the palace. She was taken aback to discover she was not alone among the trees. A man stood the length of a tennis court away from her, leaning casually against an oak tree.

Sunlight winked on the jewel in his velvet bonnet and dappled his dark hair, shaded face, and court gown. Nan squinted, certain she knew him but unable to see his features well enough to identify him. Whoever he was, he was blessed with a sturdy physique and excellent taste in clothes.

Then he moved, and she recognized Wat Hungerford. As she watched him stride confidently toward her, she could no longer doubt that the boy had grown into a man. He was, she realized, just the same age King Henry had been when he’d succeeded to the throne and married Catherine of Aragon, a woman six years his senior. And that marriage, no matter that it had ended badly, had lasted nearly twenty-five years, most of them in harmony.

“Mistress Bassett.” Wat grinned and seized both her hands. “Nan.”

“Wat. I did not expect to see you here.” She laughed softly. “I did not expect to see anyone here.”

“I had just arrived at the landing when I saw you leave the palace. I followed you. I hope you don’t mind.”

She should, Nan thought, but in truth she was glad to see him. It had been just over a year since they’d last met. At odd moments during those long months, she had wondered about him—what he was doing, if he had become fascinated with some other woman.

They began to walk among the apple trees. Above their heads the fruit was ripening. “I have heard rumors,” Wat said.

“Have you?”

“They say the king is about to marry again, and not to you.”

“They say true, for once.” She glanced back toward the palace. “By now, the deed is done and Kathryn Parr is queen of England.”

“Then His Grace can have no further objection to someone courting you.”

She had not thought Wat understood why she’d insisted upon limiting him to friendship. She had underestimated him. It appeared that his advanced maturity was not only physical.

“There are still good reasons why you and I should not—”

“I will not be put off this time.” Wat seized her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. His eyes locked on hers. “I wish to marry you, Nan Bassett. Do you want to marry me?”

She had to swallow hard before she could speak. Wat Hungerford had grown into a man she’d quite like to marry. Her heart thrummed as he drew her close. Her breath caught, but she managed a strangled answer. “No.”

He relaxed his grip but did not release her. “Liar.”

Nan swayed closer to him, inhaling his fresh scent. For just an instant she wished she could throw it all away, run off with him, escape the lies and deceit and danger of life at court. But she could not. Whether King Henry was married or not, she was the only one of her family who had his ear, the only one who might yet persuade him to restore lost properties to her two surviving brothers, her three as yet unmarried sisters, and her mother.

“You are still too young to wed without your guardian’s permission, and I have insufficient dowry to win anyone’s approval.”

His slow smile melted her heart. “Then say you will wait for me until I am of legal age to make my own decisions. Some three years more, Nan. Not so very long, not when I have waited for you nearly twice that long already.”

When she stepped back, he let her go. “I have no plans to marry anyone else,” she said, and began to walk again, in through the pear trees, heading toward the cherries. He followed a few steps behind.

In three years’ time, she thought, King Henry might be persuaded to restore Wat Hungerford to his father’s title. She could have everything she’d wanted, and Wat as well.

“I vow I will keep asking you to marry me until you accept.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Then, one day, I may surprise you by accepting.”

Delight flared in his eyes, quickly followed by desire. This time when he reached for her, she had to push with both hands against his chest to stop him from kissing her. “One day,” she repeated. “But not yet. I can make everything right again, Wat, but only if I am here at court, close to the king, close to those the king loves. When the time is right, I can ask for the return of lands and properties forfeited to the Crown. Lisle lands. Hungerford lands. The Hungerford title.”

“And if he refuses?” Wat’s hands caressed the small of her back, sending shivers of delight all through Nan’s body.

In a dizzying moment of self-awareness, she realized that she could envision spending her life with him, title or no, fortune or no. She could imagine giving him a child.

“Nan?”

“Keep your vow, Wat. Keep asking me.”

“Marry me now.”

But she shook her head. For a moment, she thought he might pick her up, toss her over his shoulder, and make off with her, but he thought better of it. With an exasperated groan, he took her hand and they started walking again, but this time they headed back toward the palace.

He treasured her, Nan thought, clinging to him. That was a great gift. She had once thrown away her chance of happiness with a man who cared for her. She would not repeat that mistake, especially since she was coming to treasure Wat in return. And she realized, suddenly, that although Ned Corbett had been her first love, Wat Hungerford would be her last.

Nan returned to her duties with the new queen with a sense of purpose. She would be patient. She would plan carefully. She might no longer be the youngest of the maids, now that she was twenty-two. Nor was she still the prettiest girl at court. Bess Brooke now had that distinction. But Nan had earned the gratitude and friendship of both the king and the queen. She was right where she belonged and where she needed to be. Until the day when she and Wat Hungerford could marry, she was content to be a maid of honor to the queen of England.