We took leave of each other at the privy stairs. When I turned to wave one last time, from the middle of the river, Jack had already disappeared from view. With a sigh, I shifted my attention to the route ahead. I saw that it would not take us long to make the journey back to Paul’s Wharf because the tide had turned in our favor. Those boatmen rowing upriver now had to work harder. I gazed with sympathy at several small watercraft going the other way. Then my focus sharpened. I recognized the passenger aboard one of them. It was Sir Richard Southwell.

He was not looking my way, for which I was grateful. I planned to keep my face averted, but I could not resist another peek in his direction to see where he was bound. It was with a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach that I saw his boat make for shore just beyond Temple Bar. As I had myself only a short time earlier, he disembarked at the privy stairs of Seymour Place.

This could not be a casual visit. Southwell, although he served the king, as we all did, was supposed to be the Duke of Norfolk’s man, a loyal advocate for the Howard faction at court. He’d never been a particular friend to any of the Seymours, not to the Earl of Hertford nor to Hertford’s younger brother, Sir Thomas. When I added Southwell’s presence at Seymour Place to Jack’s enigmatic warning, his words seemed doubly ominous. I returned to the house in Watling Street in a most agitated frame of mind.












34

Windsor, early December 1546

Seen from the river, Windsor Castle rises ominously against the paleness of the southern sky. It loomed over the tilt boat that had brought us all the way from London for ten shillings apiece. The steersman and four oarsmen made the trip every few days, taking passengers back and forth on a river that was tidal as far as Teddington. It was slow going against the tide and faster with. By this water route, travelers could reach Windsor in a little more than ten hours, but at this time of year there was not that much light in a day. We had stopped for the night at Shepperton and covered the last fourteen miles the next morning.

The opposite shore of the river was heavily wooded, making it seem almost as forbidding as the castle. I felt certain there were dangerous animals hidden in the trees, everything from wild boar to wolves. That winter was almost upon us made the landscape seem even more bleak. The swans, usually so much in evidence, were ominously absent.

“There are no wolves in England,” Jack assured me when I shared my concerns with him, “although there may once have been. Nor are there lions, bears, tigers, or leopards, except in the royal menagerie. Even there, these days, only four lions and two leopards remain, safely confined behind wooden railings. The worst you will find here in the wild are foxes and badgers and the occasional boar. Far more dangerous are the animals that live indoors, wearing fine clothing and smiling.”

I tugged my warm, fur-lined cloak more closely around me, glad of its warmth and the protection of its hood. The chill from the water had turned my booted feet to ice and the stiff breeze blowing toward us from the shore pierced straight through all my layers of clothing.

As he’d promised, Jack had gone ahead to Windsor to make inquiries. He’d had no difficulty finding my mother. She lived in one of the small houses built right up against the castle walls. We would not have to venture inside them and risk being recognized.

In the time it had taken to make the remaining arrangements, the danger of meeting anyone we knew had decreased. The king was no longer in residence at Windsor Castle. His Grace had left for Oatlands in mid-November with what was called his “riding household,” a much reduced number of attendants. The rest of the courtiers had thus been freed from their duties and could go where they would.

If everything went as Jack planned, we would talk to my mother and be on our way back to London again in a matter of hours. By sunset, another tilt boat would have carried us a goodly distance downriver. After one more night in an inn, we’d continue on to the city. I had spent two nights away from home before without arousing suspicion. What I had never previously done was lie to Father about where I would be. I’d told him that I was going to stay with Lady Heveningham—Mary Shelton—at her brother’s house in the parish of St. Helen’s Bishopsgate.

With Edith close beside me, I followed Jack toward the ramshackle dwelling where my mother lived. It was set a little apart from the others, nearer to the river than most.

I smelled it before I saw it. My mother still earned her living as a laundress. A wooden bleaching tub sat beside the privy for the collection of urine. Not far away, in a larger tub, discolored sheets and table linen soaked in a thick green mixture of water and summer sheep’s dung.

I stopped.

“Audrey?” Jack sounded concerned. I knew that if I changed my mind, he would escort me back to London without demur.

“It has been many years since I thought about how much hard work is involved in producing clean laundry.”

“You were very young when the king rescued you. I am surprised you remember anything at all.”

“I can still recall how tired my mother was at the end of each day. Making soiled linen clean again is a long and backbreaking process.” I moved closer to the tub. “Soaking it is only the beginning.”

“Here, you! Leave that be!” My mother stood in the doorway, a basket full of dirty shirts and shifts balanced on one hip and a belligerent look on her face.

If not for her dark eyes, I would never have recognized her. Her complexion, always on the swarthy side and sometimes sunburnt, had turned sallow and unhealthy looking over the years. Her arms were as muscular as ever, from all the hard work she did, but the rest of her had gone soft and fleshy. Even her hair, although she could not yet have passed her fortieth summer, showed signs of age. Where it was visible, hanging in limp clumps that escaped from beneath a greasy kerchief, the brown had gone as grizzled as any crone’s.

Her eyes narrowed. “So you’ve come back, have you?”

“You know who I am?” It was a foolish remark, but the only thing I could think of to say to her.

“It would be hard not to know you with that hair.” Abruptly, she turned her back on me, pretending to check on the linens in the buck tub.

Tension radiated from her like heat from the sun, making me wonder if my sudden appearance alarmed her. I had no idea what the king had said to her, or to Dobson, on that long-ago day when he’d given me to John Malte to raise. Had she been paid to relinquish me? Or punished for mistreating me? Or had King Henry simply snatched me away to prevent me from being beaten again?

“I mean you no harm,” I said.

“Then go away.”

“I have come a great distance to speak with you. I . . . I have questions.”

She glanced at me over her shoulder. Slowly, her expression changed. Her gaze swept over me from head to toe, taking in my well-made clothing, my few pieces of jewelry, and the fact that I had both a gentleman and a maidservant in attendance.

I sighed. It was all too obvious that she was calculating my worth. “I can pay you for information.”

Father had always been generous with what he called “pin money” and I had saved a modest sum over the years, especially after Bridget married and left the house and could no longer help herself to what was mine. I had been able to pay my own fare, and Edith’s, for the tilt boat and afford lodgings at the inn. I still had several gold and silver coins in the purse concealed beneath my kirtle.

Behind me, I heard Edith’s familiar mutter of disapproval. Jack reached out to me. The brief touch of his hand on my arm steadied me and gave me the courage to continue what I had begun.

“How much?” my mother asked.

“Two gold angels.”

“You have done well for yourself, girl, if you carry that much money about with you.”

When I did not respond, she abandoned her work and led us into the little house. It was dark and dirty inside, smelling of unwashed bodies and wood smoke. A fire burned fitfully on the hearth but provided little warmth. She did not offer us refreshment but there was a bench to sit upon. I settled myself there while she plopped herself down on a three-legged stool.

“Nothing but ill luck has befallen me since the king took you away,” she said before I could ask my first question.

I considered my surroundings, taking note of the lack of anything that might indicate that the odious Dobson shared them with my mother. “Where is your husband?”

“Long gone. After the king took away his post in the castle, what else was he to do? He blamed me.”

“When it was all my fault?” I finished before she could say the words.

Looking sulky, she picked at a chipped fingernail and refused to meet my eyes.

“I want to know what the king said to you that day.” That was not all I wanted to know, but it was a place to start.

“He was angry because Dobson struck you.” Suddenly defensive, she glowered at me. “A father has a right to deal with a child as he will.”

“Dobson was not my father.”

“He was your stepfather. It was not your place to defy him.”

“Nor the king’s?” I took a breath and blurted out the question I most needed to have answered. “Is he my father? Am I King Henry’s child?”

The change in her was immediate. Her irritation with me was replaced by a far stronger emotion, one there was no mistaking. It was fear I saw in her eyes before she averted her gaze.

It had not occurred to me before coming to Windsor that by telling me the truth my mother might place herself in danger. I had not anticipated the possibility that she might have been threatened to keep silent about my paternity. Or bribed. Or both. Did she fear that if she made such a claim about the king, even if she only confided in me and in private, she could be taken up for treason?

“I swear I will not repeat to anyone what you say to me.” I leaned forward to take her rough, work-worn hands in mine.

She looked past me at Edith and Jack. “Tell them to go away.”

“Leave. Please,” I said without glancing over my shoulder. I heard the faint rustle of Edith’s skirts and the shuffle of Jack’s boots as they honored my wishes. The door closed behind them with a thump.

My mother freed herself from my grip and crossed her arms over her bosom. Even in the dimly lit hovel I could tell that she was glaring at me. “You were never anything but trouble! I should have gone to the village wise woman and done away with you before you ever drew breath.”

It hurt me that she hated me so much, especially when it was far too late to change anything that had happened. I rebuilt the shield around my heart and plunged ahead. “Who was my father? What man did you lie with in the year before my birth?”

“I did couple with the king.” For a moment Joanna—it was easier to think of her by her Christian name than to regard her as my mother—allowed herself to look smug. The expression faded quickly. She had harbored too much resentment for too many years. “He was mad for Anne Boleyn in those days and she would not let him into her bed. I had something of her coloring in my dark hair and in my eyes. The king wanted to swive her but she held him off. So he bedded me. Called me Nan once or twice while he was at it. Men!”

“Then I am his child?”

I’d thought myself prepared for this moment, but I had not. If the king was my father, why had he never acknowledged me? Why had he given me away? Why had Father—John Malte—lied to me? That last was the most hurtful thought. The suspicion was not new, but it pained me that I might finally be obliged to accept the truth of it.

“You . . . might be,” Joanna said.

“You are in some doubt? How can that be?”

At the astonishment in my tone, she gave a bitter laugh. “How do you think? The king was not the only one who bedded me. I liked coupling in those days. I went with any man who asked me and a great many did. How do you think King Henry found me, eh? He followed one of his courtiers to my bed.”

“Did . . . did you lie with John Malte?”

“I may have. I hear he claimed you were his get.”

“He was well rewarded for doing so by the king.” This time it was bitterness that laced my words. “But surely, even with so many men, when you discovered that you were to have a child, you must have considered which one was most likely to have fathered me.”

“Oh, I had one or two likely prospects—the ones who had money.”