As a young child, I might have believed that was all there was to it, but I knew better now. The king’s largesse was too great. Royal retainers rarely received annuities amounting to more than one hundred pounds.

“How much of this grant is to be included in my dowry?” I asked.

“You will be a considerable heiress,” Father allowed.

“And so this is all part of the king’s plan to push me into marriage with Richard Darcy.”

“I do not understand why you are so opposed to the young man.” For once, Father let his annoyance show. “He has no flaws that I can see.”

“And if he turns out like his father? Unfaithful to me? Begetting bastards right and left? Murdering men in sanctuary?”

“Sir Richard Southwell has his faults, but he is not without good qualities. He has served the king long and well and continues to do so.”

Father’s words lacked conviction, but the stubborn tilt of his jaw warned me that there was no profit in further argument.












31



The next day, Richard Darcy sought me out, sent by his father. He seemed as reluctant as I was to spend any time together. We passed a quarter of an hour in stilted conversation, most of it concerning his studies at Cambridge and his desire to make something of himself when he entered one of the Inns of Court.

“Do you like music?” I asked him.

“I am not particularly musical. When I have time for amusements, I prefer to hunt. I am a good shot with a crossbow.”

“Have you ever written poetry?”

He looked at me as if I had gone mad. “Whatever for? It is difficult enough to copy out what others have written and I only do that when my tutors insist upon it.”

“Master Darcy,” I said. “I bear you no ill will, but I will never tie myself to you with the bonds of matrimony.”

“I do not much care for you, either,” he said.

“Oh. Well . . . that is good.”

His quick smile almost made me like him.

Father and I remained at court until the king left on a hunting progress on the fourth day of September. I did not see His Grace again, but I was thrust repeatedly into Richard Darcy’s company. Every time, as I had on that first occasion, I told him bluntly that I would never be his wife.

“You will, you know,” he said on the last day. “Father will not give up. He says you are too rare a catch.”

“I cannot think why. My father is naught but a simple merchant tailor.”

If I had not been watching for his reaction, I might have missed it. As it was, I saw the slight widening of his eyes and heard the quick, indrawn breath.

“That is not what your father thinks, is it?”

“I do not know what you mean.”

“You need to spend more time at court, Master Darcy. You would learn to be more convincing when you tell a lie.”

He looked over his shoulder toward the door of the workroom. We’d been left alone there except for Edith. She sat in a distant corner and appeared to be absorbed in her mending. I had no doubt but that she could overhear what we said to each other, but I did not care.

“Father believes you are the king’s child,” Darcy admitted.

Although the idea was scarcely new to me, this was the first time anyone had said the words aloud. I started to utter a denial but before I could say a word, Darcy spoke again.

“It is the color of your hair. Father says he knows of only two other people who share it. One is Princess Elizabeth. The other is King Henry. And then there are your eyes. Was Anne Boleyn your mother, too?”

Taken aback, for this was an idea that had never once crossed my mind, I blurted out the raw truth. “My mother was a laundress at Windsor Castle who gave birth to me out of wedlock.” I drew in a steadying breath and then added, with slightly more dignity, “I am a bastard, Master Darcy. A merry-begot.”

“So am I.” He said it as though it did not matter, but I suspected that it did. “Still, I am Father’s heir. And I am not Richard Darcy any longer. Father says I’m to call myself Richard Southwell the Younger.”

“I liked you better with your original surname,” I muttered.

“The Darcys of Essex are my mother’s family.” He elaborated on that subject, but I had stopped listening.

I’d been struck by an intriguing notion. I wondered that I had never thought of it before. The one person who must know who had fathered her child was that child’s mother. To learn the truth about myself, all I had to do was find Joanna Dobson, née Dingley, and ask her.

There was a difficulty, however. I had no idea what had happened to my mother. I did not even know if she was still alive. I had not seen her for fully fourteen years, not since the day the king placed me in John Malte’s care.












32

September 1546

I was still trying to think of a subtle way to ask Father for information about the woman who had given birth to me when an odd incident occurred. A foundling was left at our gate. Some poor woman abandoned her child where it was certain to be found by the maidservant who went out to empty the chamber pots.

Such events were not unheard-of. The hope was that the rich merchant who lived within the gate would take pity on the abandoned infant and give it a home. In this case, the baby was a little girl only a few weeks old. She had pale skin and blue eyes and was still bald. She was also covered in flea bites and stank most abominably. Mother Anne ordered Lucy to bathe her.

“Well, my dear,” Father said to Mother Anne. “What shall we do with her?”

I was not included in their discussion. I was not even supposed to be privy to it. But I had been about to enter the hall when Father spoke. I paused at the top of the stair, just out of their sight. Simple curiosity compelled me to remain where I was.

“I suppose you want to adopt her,” Mother Anne said. “You have always been a great one for taking in strays.”

At first I thought she meant the occasional dog or cat who came our way and was put to work catching rats in Father’s warehouse. Then a more personal interpretation of her words occurred to me. I felt myself blanch. Was that why Father had accepted responsibility for me fourteen years earlier? Because he saw a little girl who needed a loving home? Because he felt sorry for me?

I told myself I must be mistaken. I had no doubt of Father’s affection for me. Or Mother Anne’s. But shaking off doubt was not an easy process. With an effort, I kept my focus on the conversation in the hall.

“I am too old to take on the care of another young child,” Mother Anne said.

Had I imagined the slight emphasis on the word another?

Father did not answer. He could not. One of his ever more frequent fits of coughing rendered him incapable of speech.

“You are not fit now, either, John,” she added. “You know this to be true.”

“It is nothing,” he whispered. “This catarrh will pass.”

A little silence fell.

“Let us send the child to Muriel,” Mother Anne suggested after a time. “She has taken to motherhood far better than Bridget did. She has room in her heart for a second baby, and milk enough to feed it, too.”

This proved to be an excellent solution, although Father continued to take an interest in the infant who’d been abandoned on his doorstep. He worried about her. He worried, it seemed to me, about everyone and everything in his life, the more so since he no longer went to court.

Day by day, his catarrh worsened. The bouts of coughing weakened him and made him dizzy, forcing him to take to his bed. One morning, soon after that overheard conversation, he called me to him, along with Mother Anne and the apprentices. He’d already sent for John Horner and John Scutt. When they arrived, we all gathered around his bed.

“I have spent the night writing out my will,” Father announced.

At his words, silent tears began to flow down my cheeks. Mother Anne moaned aloud.

“This is to protect you, my dears. A precaution only.”

I watched him sign it and saw Master Horner and Master Scutt add their signatures to his as witnesses.

A great sense of calm seemed to come over Father. When the others left, Mother Anne and I remained. We sat one on each side of the bed, clasping Father’s icy hands. The expression on Mother Anne’s face told me that she feared Father’s death was imminent.

Of a sudden, his hand went limp in mine. His eyes were closed. I could see no movement of his chest beneath the coverlet. In a panic, I leapt up, upsetting my stool.

“Father!” I cried.

The anguish in my voice roused him. His eyes opened. He even managed a weak smile. “I am not dead yet, child, only resting.”

“You gave me such a scare!”

Pocket, who had tumbled off my lap when I sprang to my feet, barked in agreement.

“Put the little dog on the bed. He comforts me.”

With Pocket lying next to him, licking his hand and being petted, Father did seem better, until another spasm of coughing gave the lie to appearances. It took him a long time to recover his breath. I stayed with him while Mother Anne went off to fetch more barley water and a soothing lozenge.

“There are things I must tell you,” he whispered as soon as she left us.

Not now, I thought. If I am not John Malte’s daughter, I do not want him to tell me so.

This man, who had given me nothing but love, who had acted in my best interests even when I did not agree with him as to what those were, was my true father, no matter who had coupled with the black-eyed laundress who had given birth to me.

I berated myself for failing to notice how frail Father had become during the last few months. No wonder he had stopped fighting to keep his post at court. Since our return to Watling Street from court, since he’d fallen ill, he seemed to have aged a decade. The hand I once more took in mine trembled. Veins bulged in the paper-white, paper-thin skin.

“I may yet live for many years, Audrey,” Father said, “but a wise man makes provision for his family. That is why I made my will. Everything that the king intends to grant us jointly will go to you when I am gone, as will my manor of Nyland in Somerset. I have left property to your sisters as well, and to their sons. John Scutt and Bridget will serve as executors.”

He went on to enumerate several smaller bequests. He was generous. He even left five pounds to the foundling so recently abandoned at our gate. That made me smile, but my expression changed to one of shock when he added that he’d made a bequest to my natural mother of twenty pounds.

“I . . . I had wondered if she was still living,” I murmured. “Where is she, Father? Where is Joanna Dobson?”

His hand tightened painfully on mine. “There is no need for you to know that, Audrey. She is no longer part of your life.”

“And yet you would include her in your will.”

“She gave me you.”

“Did she? Or was it the king who gave me to you? Is—?”

“Stop badgering your father!” From the door, Mother Anne’s voice snapped like a whip, making me cringe and shrink away from her.

“Anne, I—” That was all Father managed to say before yet another fit of coughing overtook him. Pocket fled.

“He will recover,” Mother Anne said in a fierce voice. “If he stays in bed and drinks strengthening broths, all will be well. But he is far from well yet. Go away and let him mend.”

Banished from the bedchamber, I took comfort in my lute and in playing with my little dog. Father and Mother Anne were my parents, I told myself, no matter whose blood flowed in my veins. But the need to know the truth about myself continued to gnaw at me. Now that I was certain that my mother was still living, I knew I must find her.

Fourteen years earlier, she and her husband had lived and worked in Windsor Castle. That was a long time ago, but I was sure someone there would remember where they’d gone.

All I had to do was find a way to get to Windsor.












33



Although Father continued to suffer from a nagging cough, his recovery was swifter than anyone expected. He was up and about a few days after he made his will and, just a week after calling us all in to witness the signing, he announced that he intended to pay a visit to the local barber-surgeon to ensure that he remained in good health.

“This is the seventeenth of September,” he informed us, “the traditional day to be bled as a preventive against dropsy.”

“You do not have dropsy.” Mother Anne glanced up from the beaker of ale with which she’d broken her fast. “You do not even suffer from tympany.”