“And no one cared.”

“People sicken and die all the time, Jane. It is God’s will. You must be satisfied with that.”

No, I thought. I cannot be.

I had lived too long questioning nothing. It was past time I dug further into my own background. There were answers to my questions, all of them, and I was determined to find them. When my uncle returned from the French war, I would be waiting for him.

IN THE ABSENCE of both King Henry and Queen Catherine, we remained in the Tower of London. The queen, having managed things to her liking in the matter of Scotland, all without the need to travel farther north than Woburn, went on to Walsingham to visit the shrine of Our Lady. This was a popular pilgrimage for women who wished to pray for the safe delivery of healthy children.

The Lady Mary and I passed our time agreeably enough. King Henry VII’s library was housed in the tower he’d built adjacent to the royal apartments. It contained French romances as well as religious tomes and histories. The Lady Mary enjoyed being read to. Still more, however, she liked to be active and she preferred to include gentlemen in her activities. The duc de Longueville accompanied us when we went to visit the royal menagerie.

“Kings of England have kept lions and leopards here at the Tower of London for as long as anyone can remember,” the Lady Mary told him.

The three of us peered into the pit where one of the great cats was confined. He had a golden mane and many sharp teeth and roared when the Lady Mary threw a rock in his direction.

“In my father’s reign,” Mary said, “a lion just like that one mauled a man to death.”

I was surprised she remembered hearing about that incident, for she’d been no more than three at the time. It was before I came to court. Her brother Henry had been old enough that when he’d been told what happened, he’d vowed never to go near the beasts again. To the best of my knowledge, he never had.

“In France, lions are used for sport,” the duke said. “Once I saw a mastiff pull down first a huge bear, then a leopard, and finally a lion, one after the other.”

“My father,” Mary countered, “once ordered a mastiff hanged because it presumed to fight against a lion. The lion, he said, was king and had sovereignty over all other beasts, therefore it was treason for a dog to attack it.”

“Let us go look at the porcupine,” I suggested.

Before we parted company with the duke, the princess invited him and the other French prisoners to dine with her the next day.

“What do you mean to offer for entertainment after we dine?” I asked as we watched Longueville walk away.

Mary’s smile faded. “It was most unfair of Henry to take the King’s Players away with him to war, and his fools and minstrels, as well. How am I to provide a lavish display with only a few musicians?”

“They will do well enough to provide music for dancing. And I am not without resources. I did help Harry Guildford devise some of his masques and pageants. Thanks to Harry, I know how to procure the services of tumblers, jugglers, and Morris dancers. I also know where to find John Goose.”

“Henry’s Goose?”

“The same.” The elderly fool, once part of the young Duke of York’s household at Eltham, had retired years before, but he lived in London.

I made all the arrangements. Less than twenty-four hours later, Goose was taking his final bow and the Lady Mary, wearing a new gown of carnation-colored brocade, claimed the duc de Longueville as her partner for a dance.

I found myself facing Guy Dunois as the musicians struck up a lively tune. “You look tired, Jane,” he said.

I made a face at him. “You are supposed to tell me my beauty surpasses that of a rose and give me other flowery compliments.”

We parted, as the dance demanded. When we faced each other again, his eyes were full of mischief. “You were never the rose, Jane, and these days, I vow, you are more like the thorn.”

“How wicked of you to say so.”

“I do but tell the truth. If you prick me, I will bleed.”

When we danced apart again, I frowned, trying to make sense of his banter. I had never purposely hurt Guy. Was he only teasing me, or had I inadvertently caused him pain? Or did he mean that I was about to?

As we once more joined hands, he begged my pardon for his harsh words. “You are, it is certain, no English rose, nor yet a French lily, but mayhap you are one of those new blossoms from the East that now grow in the Low Countries. They call them daffodils.”

For the second dance, Guy partnered the Lady Mary and I found myself facing the duc de Longueville. Rational thought fled. He paid me all the pretty compliments I could desire, making me feel like a princess myself.

He was a superb dancer, even better than King Henry. When he partnered the Lady Mary for a second time, I retired from the floor and gave myself leave to stare at him with unabashed appreciation.

Small shivers of excitement passed through me as I watched him caper and cavort. There was no question but that he was toothsome and that I was physically attracted to him. I told myself he was not for me, but I could not stop myself from imagining what skills he might bring to the bedchamber.

I repressed a sigh and chided myself for my wanton thoughts. When he was eventually ransomed, he would return to France to his wife. If he took me for a mistress now, where would I be then?

Tearing myself away, I slipped into the antechamber where the hired entertainers had gathered. It was my responsibility to make sure all of them had been fed and had received payment for their services. I stopped before the fool. “Master Goose,” I said. “Well played.”

“Mistress.” Age had lowered the pitch of his voice, but not by much.

Some fools are innocents, in need of a keeper to make certain they are fed and clothed. Others live by their wits, daring to be outrageous but seeing far more than they ever speak of. John Goose was in the latter category. “Did you know my mother, Goose?” I asked on an impulse.

“No, mistress. She was part of Queen Elizabeth’s household. I belonged to young Henry.”

I might have left it at that, but if Goose knew my mother had been one of the queen’s ladies, he might also recall other names. “Who else was there then?” I asked. “Can you remember?”

His brow furrowed in thought. “Before the great fire at Sheen that were, and after the great scholar Erasmus came to visit the royal children.”

“No. After the fire and before the visit.”

Goose thumped the side of his head with one fist. “Long ago. Long ago.” Then he brightened. “Lady Lovell. She were there!”

“Sir Thomas Lovell’s wife?”

“Aye, that’s the one. She yet lives. She serves the new queen now.”

My breath came a little faster at this news. Not only was Eleanor, Lady Lovell, in service to Queen Catherine, but so was her husband. Sir Thomas Lovell also held the post of constable of the Tower. Although he had gone north with the army to repel the Scottish invasion, he should return soon. The soldiers who had defeated the Scots were expected home well before the larger force that had gone with King Henry to France.

“Do you wish to hear the names of the others?” Goose asked.

“There are more? Ladies who served Queen Elizabeth and now serve Queen Catherine?”

“Oh, aye.” His head bobbed up and down. “Lady Weston. Lady Verney. Mistress Denys. Lady Marzen. Lady Pechey, too. Some not yet married in the old days, but they were at court.”

I recognized the names. I knew all these women by sight, although I was not on intimate terms with any of them. At present, five were with the queen at Walsingham. The sixth, Lady Marzen, was a member of the Lady Mary’s household.

That was not entirely good news, for it revealed a flaw in Goose’s memory. I had no doubt that everyone he’d named had once served Elizabeth of York, but the queen had outlived my mother by some five years and the composition of any royal retinue was wont to change with great frequency. Lady Marzen had been a minor heiress from Hertfordshire when she’d married Sir Francis, a groom of the privy chamber to King Henry VII…but they had not wed until well after my mother’s death.

“Died, did she?” A bemused look on his face, Goose seemed to be struggling to remember something.

“My mother? Yes. At Collyweston, on progress.”

Instantly, he brightened. “Skyp would have been there then. Ask Skyp.”

“Alas, I cannot.” Skyp, the Countess of Richmond’s fool, was long in his grave.

“Always wore high-heeled shoes, did Skyp,” Goose said. “Reached above his ankles.”

Boots, not shoes. Poor Goose could not even keep articles of apparel straight. And yet, in spite of my doubts about the fool’s memory, I asked another question. There was always a chance he would recall what I wished to know. “What priest would have given her last rites, Goose? What physician would have attended her?”

“Master Harding, clerk of the queen’s closet, was a priest.” Goose put both hands on his head. “Black round cap and black gown. A dull fellow.”

“What happened to him?”

“Went on pilgrimage and died in the Holy Land.”

Dumbfounded, I stared at him. I had heard of only one other Englishman who’d gone on pilgrimage in all the years I’d been at court. “With Sir Richard Guildford?”

“Aye. Aye. That’s the one. Reached Jerusalem only to die there.”

I felt as if I’d taken a blow to the midsection. Had Mother Guildford deliberately tried to mislead me? If Harding had traveled with her husband, she must have known his name. Could she have forgotten he tended my mother? It seemed unlikely. She remembered other things well enough. And she must also have known the names of all those ladies who’d returned to court to serve the new queen.

Goose picked up his pack and started to wander off, but at the door he turned back to me, eyes bright with curiosity. “If she died at Collyweston, would she not have been attended by the Countess of Richmond’s servants?”

“Who was the countess’s physician? Who was her confessor?”

But Goose’s moments of clarity had been flashes of lightning in the dark of night. Even as I watched, he went dull eyed and slack jawed. His wits dimmed by age, he could recall no more, not even my name.

It was left to me to puzzle out who among the ladies still at court might remember my mother and be able to tell me what physician and priest were with Maman when she died.

SINCE I COULD do nothing to pursue my inquiries until we left the Tower of London and rejoined Queen Catherine’s court, I set aside my questions for the nonce. The queen, sadly, had suffered another miscarriage shortly after leaving the shrine at Walsingham. She had sent word to the Lady Mary that Mary was to stay where she was. In the king’s continued absence, Catherine’s word, as regent, was law.

It was no hardship to remain in the Tower of London. The duc de Longueville’s company amused Mary and delighted me. The princess gave orders that he be allowed to go anywhere he chose within the Tower, save for her privy lodgings, without a guard. He gave her his parole not to try to escape.

After that, we spent a great deal of time in his company. The Lady Mary laughingly called me her duenna, charged with guarding her reputation while she dallied with the well-favored duke.

Afternoons and evenings passed quickly, filled with laughter and fine food, good music, and, because the princess commanded it, dancing. The duke often chose me as his partner, although I danced with Guy, too. It was from Guy that I learned that the duc de Longueville was King Louis’ distant cousin.

“I wonder if King Henry knows that,” I mused as we whirled in a circle with the movements of the dance. “Prisoners’ ransoms are set according to kinship as well as rank. The amount should be much higher for a king’s cousin.”

“Distant cousin,” Guy repeated. The steps of the dance took us apart, then brought us together again. “And even more distantly related to King Charles.”

“Then you must be, too,” I said without thinking.

“I do not count.” He chuckled. “Although it was through a bastard line that the Longuevilles descend from kings.” I could see he was well aware of the irony of that.

When I danced with Guy, we talked and sometimes joked.

When I danced with the duc de Longueville, the mere touch of his hand created a subtle longing to be held more closely in his arms, to be alone with him.

I took care never to be out of sight of the princess. Although she did not know it, she also served as my duenna.

Then came the evening when another strong thunderstorm blew in. The princess took to her bed, and I slipped away from her lodgings to let myself into the privy gallery. Within moments, the duke joined me.