The Queen's Governess (5 page)

My home to the north had seemed so isolated and hemmed in by Dartmoor’s hedges and tall, stunted oaks; ancient stone walls; high, turf-topped banks and deep-cut lanes. By comparison, this area of Devon, called the South Hams, lay more welcoming. Though Modbury was sheltered by three hills, the land opened to wide vistas with fertile farms and pinkish soil producing barley, wheat and rye. It was a far cry from the tough plowing through turf and thick grass at home. Like the southern sea, it was a new, rich world in many ways, and, as my patron had commanded me, I soaked up every bit of it I could.

 

 

 

I was dismayed
one winter night when chill crept up the staircase and I hurried down it, to find my way blocked by Arthur. “Oh, you gave me a fright!” I told him, and gathered my skirts tighter to go around him. The family was roasting chestnuts downstairs, and all of us had been reciting parts from our lessons in geography and mathematics and displaying examples of our prayers in our best handwriting. They were prayers addressed directly to the Lord Jesus, not to the Virgin Mary or the saints, since the new religion did not accept such mediators to our Lord. My flowing, steady script had been especially praised; I knew I wrote a good hand, one I hoped a busy secretary would appreciate should I ever have an opportunity to write to him. For some reason, had Cromwell decided to leave me here?

“Wait—I pray you,” Arthur said, putting out a long arm to block my way downstairs. “I—I’ve been sent up to fetch my astronomy drawings, but I—Father says my written hand is dreadful, and I beg you to help me with it.”

“Oh,” I said, not looking directly in his wide eyes, soft and pleading like those of a deer in the manor’s small hunt park. “If we have permission from your parents and Master Martin, then all right.”

He snatched my hand and planted a wet kiss on my palm, not a steady, assured touch of the lips as Cromwell had done nigh on two years before. Of course, I liked the feeling of power over this young man. I was glad to prove Maud wrong, that I was not fetching enough to fetch attention from a lad worth the while. But I could not afford to displease his parents. Yet if they and Master Martin gave their permission, I would gladly help.

A few days later, as we huddled at a schoolroom table over a single piece of parchment, Arthur asked, “Can you not place your hand over mine to guide it when I form my letters?”

“I believe it best you watch and copy my movements.”

We were briefly alone, but I could hear Master Martin’s voice droning on to someone in the hall. Arthur pressed his thigh tighter against my skirts and shifted his foot against mine. I moved farther away.

“I do watch your movements, all of them,” Arthur whispered, his eyes narrowed. He breathed through his mouth, which made it seem he was panting. “Please, dear Kat, I adore—”

“No, I cannot adore your handwriting unless you improve it greatly,” I cut him off, and bounced up to move my stool farther yet from his.

“Kat, listen to me,” he pleaded. He looked so desperate—so besotted—my heart wrenched, but I was coming to fear him. Not that he would leap at me, though I sensed he longed to, but that he would endanger my own dreams and desires.

“Stop and copy that last line!” I clipped out, with a voice so stern it surprised even me. I hadn’t used such a tone since I’d told Maud I suspected her of my mother’s murder.

“Kat,” he breathed out, his eyes darting from my face to my bodice and back again, “do not flee. I swear to you, I will not so much as touch you, but I must tell you my prospects. Though I am not the heir, Father is talking to the Crown through a man named Thomas Cromwell, who is close to the seat of power, about buying Dartington Hall for me, near where you used to live. I shall move there, rear my family there, and would you not like to return to that place, to be Lady Champernowne, when I am knighted someday for my service to the king?”

I stared at him utterly aghast. Dartington Hall? But Cromwell had been hosted by the Barlows there, and they had been not only kind to me but to him. They had saved me by letting me tend poor Sarah, and what would she do without the home she knew and loved? Oh, yes, I knew the Barlows had leased the place from the Crown, that it was not theirs by birthright, inheritance or service, but surely the Thomas Cromwell I knew would not backstab them by seeing that their home went to another. Or—please, no, dear Lord—by his helping Sir Philip take the Hall from the Barlows because that was part of the bargain of my living here these years.

“I can tell you are overthrown,” Arthur said. “You have no words yet, but unlike my silly sisters, you are a rational woman, brighter than all, save mayhap John. In our lessons, you excel. You have outstripped us even in Latin grammar and rhetoric, I heard Master Martin say. You could teach much of it yourself, he told my mother.”

Ordinarily, I could have danced a jig at such praise, but my thoughts were snagged on the Barlows losing Dartington Hall.

“Can you even give me the faintest hope that you will think on my offer?” Arthur whispered, leaning closer to me across the table. “Before Master Martin comes back in to see how we are getting on, can you not vow at the very least you will think on it? My parents would accept it—a love match. We are but third cousins, ’tis done time to time hereabouts. And for you to go back to Dartington in triumph—Kat, you look pale. You will not faint? Say something.”

Should I finally write Cromwell and beg him not to let the Hall slip from the Barlows? But who would take such a privy message to him? Should I tell Arthur if he cared a fig for me that he should dissuade his father from this double-dealing? Cromwell tumbled off the pedestal of my hopes that day, for I saw now he must be one of those who helped others only if it helped himself. Yes, yes, I had seen that before in what he told me. And now, if I wanted to mount that ladder of life he had spoken of, was I tied to him?

Not for one moment did I allow Arthur to believe I would consider his pleas or promises. I would not go back home as his wife, even to live in the Hall, for that would devastate people I cared for deeply. I had to go to London. I must at least glimpse the Tudors and their palaces and power.

“Tell no one you have told me all this, please,” I said to Arthur as I rose from the table on shaky feet. “It must go no further.”

“I—I can keep a secret, but can I dare to hope? Of course, if you have your heart set on London, we could visit there. When I earn my way, we could even get a house there . . .”

“Arthur,” I said, turning back toward him at the door to the corridor from which I could still hear Master Martin’s voice. From here, I could tell he was speaking to young Kate. “I can promise nothing. It would not be fair to you or to your parents. Dartington Hall is already the home to a fine family, folk who have been kind to me, even as your family has. I—cannot say more now, but I have other plans.”

I felt crushed by what he had told me today. That things had gotten stickier with Arthur grieved me, yes. But more than that, I mourned because I saw now my shining savior Cromwell had feet of clay.

 

 

 

Within a fortnight,
Arthur had been sent to the household of Sir Philip’s brother who lived near Exeter. I was not told until he was gone, though Joan handed me a fervent farewell letter from him, hidden in the palm of her hand. The foolish boy had told his parents of his love for me. It was unrequited only, he was sure, because of my loyalty to them. I read his tortured promises and burned the letter. I was guilt-ridden. Since his thwarted, hopeless love for me had been discovered, should I not be the one sent away?

I felt I walked on eggshells, fearful the Champernownes would blame me for enticing him. But soon John, too, was sent away, to the Earl of Warwick’s house, no less. I could only pray that, direct or indirect, it would not be my fault if Cromwell’s influence took Dartington Hall from the Barlows.

 

 

 

In the first month of 1528,
after I had resided at Modbury Manor for over two years and Arthur had been gone for five weeks, Sir Philip suddenly summoned me to his privy chamber. Lady Katherine sat beside him across a small round table strewn with papers, a sanding box, an inkwell and a brace of quills. I rather feared I was to be either chastised or banished, and my heartbeat kicked up even harder.

“Sit, please, Kat,” Sir Philip said, gesturing to the short bench facing them.

I sat, wanting to stare at my knees but keeping my head up as I had been taught by the girls’ governess. I warranted I had learned good graces in my time here, but what if I was no longer in the Champernownes’ good graces?

“A message has come for you from London, from Secretary Cromwell, though it is addressed to me,” he told me, picking up a piece of parchment from his pile of them.

Despite my disillusionment about Secretary Cromwell, I longed to lunge across the table and snatch the missive from his hand. Finally? He had not forgotten me? Was the time ripe, as he had said once? And was I a vile betrayer of the Barlows to still want to serve the man who would take their home away, if that was still in the offing? How I longed to be in London, where I was sure I could speak my mind, make my own way—with Cromwell’s help and sponsorship, of course.

“He says,” Sir Philip went on, maddeningly slow, “he is well pleased to hear of your academic and mannerly achievements in this household and may soon have a place for you at court.”

“At court?” I burst out. “At
court
?”

“Thrilling, isn’t it?” Lady Katherine said with that wistful smile. “God willing, some of my daughters will hear those words someday.”

“Does he say when?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from trembling. I clenched my hands so tightly in my lap, my fingers went numb. Since they knew full well I could read, why not hand it to me—or was there something written of Dartington Hall, their price for keeping me these years?

“He says soon,” Sir Philip told me, “now that the world is changing.”

“With the new learning and religion?” I floundered.

“As you may well have observed, even here in our own household,” Sir Philip said, “the will of a woman can be powerful, and I speak not of my lovely lady wife. We are grateful that you, ah— handled Arthur’s foolish fancies properly. His wishes were entirely unreasonable. Clever woman that you are, you saw that.”

At least they didn’t not blame me, were even grateful. Or was Cromwell’s power over them my shield and buckler for that too? “Yes, my lord, my lady,” I said only.

“But as for the when of this—soon, is all it says,” he repeated, lifting the paper closer to his face and running his gaze over it again. “I warrant it will be when the Lady Anne Boleyn goes to court and manages to completely dislodge the queen in the king’s affections. Ah, the troubles in London.”

My mouth fell open. I knew none of this, though I had avidly learned the lists of England’s kings and families, even of present events such as how King Henry must balance the foreign powers of France and Spain, not to mention the Holy Roman Emperor Charles, who was his Spanish queen’s nephew. I could recite dates and outcomes of the battles of the so-called War of the Roses wherein the current king’s father had won his crown—but who was the Lady Anne Boleyn?

“You mean, I might serve this lady?” I asked.

“We all might, if she does not agree to be His Grace’s mistress soon and not keep dangling him,” Sir Philip muttered, and Lady Katherine shook her head. “As her family are upstarts and climbers—even if ones well-versed in the new learning—it may cause chaos at court. Well, that is all for now, Kat. We will most certainly keep you apprised of events. By the way, Arthur is to be betrothed to a lady from Kent, and after he earns his spurs, so to speak, they will reside not far from where you grew up, in a fine hall, where I believe you were once a servant.”

For the first time since I had known him, Sir Philip had a cutting edge to his voice, especially on that last word,
servant
. Was it my imagination that her ladyship looked down her nose at me and narrowed her eyes? Did I feel their disdain now because they deemed I was not worthy of the care they had taken for me, even if it had gotten them Dartington Hall for Arthur and his future bride? Or because their son had dared to want someone beneath his station? Or could it even be because of the interest shown in me by Cromwell, the man who had a ruffian beginning, as they had said once? If anyone was an upstart and a climber, it was he, though I did not feel contempt but kinship for that.

I rose, curtsied and left the chamber, but I also left the door ajar and paused in the hall, leaning my back against the oaken wainscoting. It surely wasn’t my fault if the Barlows were to be displaced, I tried to buck myself up. But to go to court! Not just to London, but to court and perhaps to the household of a woman the king favored—but at the cost of his lawful queen and his marriage? This Anne Boleyn must be a powerful woman, one worth knowing and studying. Was that what I must do now to pay back and please Thomas Cromwell—study her at close range and then tell him all about it?

I was relieved no servant or child was in the hall, for the words within floated clearly to me. “This Boleyn matter is outrageous! Insane!” Sir Philip cried. “His Grace has bedded the others without breaking down the order of things. Her Grace has managed to look askance since she bears him only dead sons and one living daughter. But the gall of this Boleyn whore does boggle the mind!”

“She isn’t a whore if she doesn’t lie with him,” Lady Katherine protested meekly.

“Not yet, but he’ll have her. Who would dare to gainsay the king?”

I realized then I had much more to learn. I had longed—yes, lusted, even as poor Arthur had for me—for lovely London, but now, I was not so sure.