The Queen's Governess (7 page)

I soon learned Tom Seymour could dart from topic to topic at will. Yet he knew how to look one in the eye and listen intently with a penetrating gaze, though I later learned his thoughts might well be elsewhere. He had a habit that was both disconcerting and delicious of looking me over. The man, young as he was then at age twenty, was the first who ever made me aware of my body in a new way. Before, the heated looks of men had made me want to turn away, but that devil made me want to flaunt myself, toss my head, pull in my stomach and thrust out my breasts. He was a great teaser and masterful flirt too. He cast a sort of devil-may-care spell that made one—made me—want to give him and tell him all.

It was only when the barge approached a cluster of eddies and small rapids that my surroundings seemed real again.

“High tide and rough waters ahead,” Tom told me, as if I could not see or hear the white water. The oarsmen not only rowed now, but they braced the barge to keep it from spinning. “Fear not, fair maiden,” Tom yelled to me over the men’s shouted orders and gurgling of the waters, “the royal oarsmen are skilled. They know we can’t keep the king—or now the Lady Anne—waiting!”

We began to spin, but they shot us through. Too much rain lately, I thought. Yet all this was exciting and seemed to heartily please my companion. We slanted up, down. I squealed and, despite trying to hold on to my nailed-down bench, was thrown toward Tom. He seized me and held me close as we bumped and turned, just missed a large rock, then burst free of the foam.

It was only later, when the waters and my heartbeat calmed, I realized he’d held me much too tight, one hand hard on my bottom right through my spray-damp skirts and the other cupping my left heaving breast.

For years after, anytime I was near Tom, it was just like that thrilling, bumpy ride.

 

 

 

I thought Hampton Court
was the most glorious, grand place I had ever beheld. Tom gave me a running commentary on it. “Cardinal Wolsey presented it to His Majesty three years ago when it became obvious to the king that His Eminence was living better than the sovereign. Quite a bribe to stay in favor, eh? I swear, York Place in London will be his next gift to the king if he doesn’t ram this damned divorce through soon.”

For once I was speechless, but Tom made up for that. “One thousand rooms here—about the same number as courtiers—and two-hundred eighty beds, they say, so I am sure we will find one that suits us.”

When I glared at him and turned away, much embarrassed, he went on as if naught were amiss, pointing in various directions, “Acres of tiltyards with observation towers, vast parklands, two massive courtyards, ponds and knot gardens. And, oh yes, a hornbeam maze perfect for lovers’ rendezvous. The king’s given the lady apartments next to his, despite the fact the queen still lives here too, but rumors are His Grace will send her away soon.”

I wanted to remain cold to him for his crude innuendo I might bed with him, yet curiosity and excitement got the best of me. “But how does the queen abide the Lady Anne when they are both here?” I asked, tearing my gaze away from the rosy-hued brick buildings that seemed to go on forever. We walked the quay toward the water gate, though I did not let him take my arm. I had been promised my trunk would be delivered. We had both dried out from our brief, rough passage, buffeted by the gentle autumn breeze the rest of the way. I tried to push my wayward tresses back under my gabled hood. Again, I was enthralled by all I saw. As in London, people darted here and there, streaming in or out of the palace, some ahorse. Cromwell had said I would be met here. Were none of these people looking for me?

“Ah, about the queen,” Tom said. I had nearly forgotten what I had asked him. “As you may have heard, she is stubborn and stoic about it all—that her king declares himself to be a bachelor since they were never legally wed, but to be certain, His Majesty plans to have their marriage annulled. Their Majesties will face off in court over that soon, at Blackfriars in London with Cardinal Campeggio sent from the Vatican to hear evidence and give his ruling.”

“One can indeed pity her.”

“But His Majesty cites much evidence for the annulment or divorce, including the fact that but one of their several children have lived, and that a girl—a clear sign that God does not approve of the union, he claims. For now, Queen Catherine mostly stays to her apartments and pretends to ignore the situation of the Lady Anne as best she can, hoping her husband returns to her royal bed.”

“Which, I warrant, he will never do if he has annoyed and defied the Pope and her nephew the Holy Roman Emperor to have the Lady Anne.”

“I knew there was a good mind inside those pretty wrappings,” he declared, making me blush again as we crossed the moat. As thrilled as I was to be here and despite the brash comment he had made to me earlier, I must admit I was loath to part with him. To my surprise he kissed me on the mouth, quick but hard.

“Fear not, fair maiden,” he said, sweeping his cap off with a grin and a mock salute of his hand pressed to his heart, “for I shall find you again in this great pile.”

With a laugh and a wave, he was off at a good clip across the huge base court we had entered. I looked around me, suddenly feeling dizzy, as if I still rode the barge in the rapids. Three stories with glittering windows glared down at me. Clots of clouds, racing overhead, made it seem the buildings would topple and crush me to the paving stones. For one moment, I couldn’t breathe. What was I doing here, Kat Champernowne from the small stone house near the moors where the wind blew cold and harsh?

People continued to scurry past. I wished Cromwell’s Master Stephen would materialize from one of the doorways or the next court I could see through an inner gateway beyond.

“Mistress Katherine Champernowne?” a voice called from behind me. I turned to see a smiling, petite, pert-faced woman. “Word had been sent you would arrive late midday, so I was watching for you.” She seemed to draw herself stiffly to her full height as she said, “I am Viscountess Rochford, wife of Lady Anne’s brother George, attendant on the Lady Anne, but you may address me as Lady Jane. I’m sure your things will be sent up to the chamber you’ll be sharing with two others. I hope your river trip was pleasant. Come this way.”

I believe, as kindly couched as she put that, it was the first of thousands of commands and orders I was to follow in my new life at one of many Tudor courts.

 

 

 

Anne Boleyn.
Mistress Boleyn. The Lady Anne. Or often, most simply, the lady. Her name was on everyone’s lips. When I first went to court, everything revolved around the king’s beloved, and for the first time in my life, I glimpsed the true power a woman could wield.

After I had rested and washed, settling into a small but pleasant chamber with two others of her ladies, the maidservant assigned to us unpacked my trunk while I was summoned by Lady Jane to meet my new mistress. Names and titles and connections already bombarded me: Lady Jane, Viscountess Rochford; the other two ladies in my chamber, Dorothy Cobham, Lord Sheffield’s daughter from Derbyshire, and Mary Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury’s youngest daughter—and the wife of Anne’s Boleyn’s former love, Henry Percy, no less! Thanks to the lady and Cromwell, I was instantly living in heady company.

I soon learned the Percy marriage was an unhappy one and they were much estranged, though Percy, heir to the earldom of Northumberland, was about the court in the king’s service, having previously served Cardinal Wolsey. [As many years and as many Tudor sovereigns as I knew, relationships both formal and informal, marital and political, did boggle the mind. Especially when my dear Elizabeth finally mounted the throne and advanced men of ability as well as nobility, it was a veritable spiderweb.]

I had to remind myself to breathe as I was led through a series of beautifully decorated chambers, each one with fewer curious and staring people in them, until we reached a small, empty but ornately appointed sitting room. Lady Jane knocked on a carved door, listened for a reply with her ear to the wood, then stuck her head in.

“Milady, the new gentlewoman from Devon, Mistress Katherine Champernowne, is here as you asked.”

The voice that answered was mellifluous but authoritative. “Send her in and close the door when you leave.” I could tell Lady Jane was not pleased, for she flounced out and closed the door a bit too loudly.

I saw the chamber I entered was a fairyland of woven tapestries, Turkey carpets on the table and a massive bed draped with red-gold silken curtains. It was said that Anne Boleyn had told the king she would not be his mistress but only his wife, yet here was a bed fit for royalty. Yet it was not the furbishings but the lady herself who commanded my interest.

This woman of twenty-seven years, who was the cause of “the king’s great matter,” also called by some “the troubles,” looked delicate and graceful. Her hair was raven black; she had dark doe eyes with a tilt to them that made her seem she would smile or flirt. I had expected her to be a ravishing beauty, but she was not. Yet there was something so inherently elegant and vivacious—something superior too—about her manner, the tilt of her head, the way she carried herself as she came away from looking out the window and turned toward me.

She wore a half-moon-shaped French headdress studded with pearls, which made my old-fashioned gabled hood feel heavy on my head. Like my stepmother, Maud, she seemed to float as she moved, which made me once again feel earthbound. About her slender neck, she had a strand of pearls from which hung an ornate, golden
B
with three oblong pearls dangling. She wore blue that day, shimmering peacock blue velvet with long sculpted brocade ivory satin inner sleeves, which hid most of her hands. I was soon to learn that the long-sleeved fashion was partly to cover a tiny sixth finger on her left hand, something used against her later, as was a mark on her neck, to accuse her of witchcraft.

I was grateful I knew to curtsy long and low. As I rose, she kindly held out her right hand to raise me, then indicated I might sit on a needlepoint stool while she took the chair. I saw she had been reading a book, a New Testament, and in English rather than the approved Latin. How much she dared, I thought, even then, for the king had been declared Defender of the Catholic Faith before all this came to a boil.

“I am pleased to have about me those who will be loyal, those from many shires of the kingdom,” Anne told me. “Devon is quite wild, is it not?”

“It is remote, my lady. It stretches from the lonely moors in the north to the cliffs overlooking the sea in the south, but there are many civilized places in between, I assure you.”

She asked me about my education and my faith. I told her the truth about Sir Philip’s household’s belief in the new learning and mostly the truth about everything else she asked. Since we were alone, would she not mention that I was to be her go-between to Cromwell when needed? But I learned then that she already knew what he had told me years ago, that the very walls might have ears. For, toying with her sweet-scented filigreed pomander, she rose in a rustle of skirts and summoned me with a graceful gesture over to a window she had flung wide. We stood in it, looking out over a pond and lovely, late-blooming garden.

Her bell-clear voice now dropped to a whisper. “I must tell you that here at Hampton Court, which once belonged to the pompous ‘pope’ of England, Cardinal Wolsey, and at York Palace in London are several secret staircases and passageways connecting the king’s chambers with others and to the courtyard or gardens outside—exits for times of need or desire. I tell you that not so that you will use them—for they are for the monarch only—but so that you know why, even in such a chamber as this, someone might overhear.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“And since you will be privy to some of my business, you must also realize that the king does not use those passages to visit me secretly, for I have told him that cannot be. But cleverness and care—that is what I expect of you. I believe you understand,” she went on, “that I will at times have need of you to carry a message for me to our mutual friend and perhaps return such from him, quietly and circumspectly.”

“I do, my lady.”

“It is all for a righteous cause, and those who stay with me to the end will reap rewards.”

“Yes, my lady. I shall serve you loyally.”

How many times later I recalled her words to me when we first parted:
those who stay with me to the end.
That day she dismissed me, I left her standing there at the window, suddenly silent, frowning and brooding. I quietly approached the outer door to not disturb her thoughts. When I opened it, Lady Jane, who must have been leaning tight against it, nearly fell into the room.

HAMPTON COURT