“You must have been disappointed, then, not to be allowed to go with the Lady Mary.”

“Has the king assigned you to test my loyalty?”

The blunt question surprised a laugh out of him. “No, he has not. Be of good cheer, Jane. You may yet have your heart’s desire. King Henry has been talking of a meeting with King Louis come spring. If the entire court travels to France, the queen will perforce take all her ladies with her, even you.”

I smiled and pretended to be pleased by the notion, but all I could think was that the king of France thought I should be burnt. I did not dare go back, not even under King Henry’s protection.

“HE WAS SO gentle with me, Jane. So tender.” Bessie whirled around in a circle, her face wreathed in smiles.

“I am happy for you,” I said.

“And I think I pleased him.” She blushed becomingly. “He praised my eyes and my hair and my breasts.”

“Bessie.” I caught her hands in mine and waited until she looked at me. “You must never forget that King Henry takes mistresses when the queen is with child and he is denied her bed. When he can return to it, he will lose interest in you. He is, in his way, a faithful husband.”

Her smile was one of pity. “But he is mine to keep for a while,” she said. “How many women can say they have bedded the king of England?”

IT WAS LATE November when Meg Guildford sought me out at court with surprising news. “Harry’s mother desires your company, Mistress Popyncourt,” she said. Her mouth was pursed with disapproval, making her look as if she’d just bitten into a lemon.

I dropped my needle in surprise. “She has returned to England?”

“She has. Will you come with me or not?”

I went. Mother Guildford was in full spate when we arrived at the double lodgings Meg and Harry occupied at court, complaining to Meg’s sister, Elizabeth, of King Louis’ many sins. She did not even pause for breath when Meg and I entered the room.

“He suffers from gout and God knows what else. Both hands and feet are crippled, and he can barely keep his seat on a horse. He needs the help of three servants to get him into the saddle. He is confined to bed for days at a time, and he is the most nervous fellow you would ever want to meet.”

“The king’s portrait showed a pleasant enough countenance,” I interrupted, remembering a strong face, weather beaten and sagging a little with middle age, but with striking features—large eyes and a long, thin nose.

“That was painted years ago. Now he looks a decade older than he is. Swollen cheeks. Bulbous nose. Decayed teeth. He is plagued by a catarrh, and he gulps his spittle when he talks. They say he was a tall man once, but you would not know it to look at him now.”

“I gather you did not get on with him,” I murmured.

She rounded on me and I heard both sisters suck in their breaths. Then, surprising all of us, Mother Guildford laughed. “You have changed little since I saw you last, Jane Popyncourt.”

“Have you news of the Lady Mary?”

“The queen of France, you mean.”

“Yes. The queen of France.”

“Only what all hear, that she sits beside her new husband’s bed, tending to him with loving kindness as he receives envoys from England.” Her face was a study in conflict, her dislike of King Louis at war with pride in Mary Tudor. “He sent me away on the day after the French wedding ceremony. Said I meddled.”

“That was nearly two months ago. Have you spent all this time traveling home?”

“On King Henry’s orders I went no farther than Boulogne, in case I should be called back. I spent weeks waiting there, hoping King Louis could be persuaded to change his mind. That foul old man! I should have heeded the omens.”

“The storm before you sailed, do you mean?”

“That one and the other tempest that struck when our ships were in the midst of the crossing from Dover. The fleet was scattered. The ship we were aboard ended up grounded on a sandbank.”

“My poor lady,” I murmured. “How terrified she must have been of the thunder and lightning.”

“That was the least of it,” Mother Guildford declared. “Her Grace was lowered into a rowing boat to be taken ashore, but even that small craft could not land. One of her entourage had to carry her through the surf in his arms. The queen of France! She arrived damp and bedraggled, hardly an auspicious beginning.”

“I am sure her new subjects took the weather into consideration. We have heard that there were pageants to welcome her and much rejoicing that the war was at an end.”

“The French put on a passable display,” Mother Guildford grudgingly admitted. “Both the Duke and the Duchess of Longueville came to greet their new queen,” she added, slanting her eyes in my direction. “The duchess is a striking woman. Very handsome. She and Longueville seemed most affectionate toward each other, as is only to be expected after such a long separation.”

That her comments failed to provoke a jealous reaction seemed to increase the old woman’s animosity toward me. She went on to provide elaborate descriptions of the journey to Abbeville and the official wedding ceremony held there, waxing vituperative and vitriolic once more about her dismissal from the queen’s service.

“Only a few minor attendants and six maidens too young to have had any experience at court remain with Queen Mary,” she complained. “I was replaced by a Frenchwoman, a Madam d’Aumont, about whom I know nothing.”

Mother Guildford’s litany of grievances was still going strong when I excused myself to return to my duties with Queen Catherine. Belatedly, she remembered that she had sent for me. She slid a sealed letter out of one of her long, loose sleeves.

“The Duke of Longueville’s man sends you this.” She fixed me with a gimlet-eyed stare, no doubt hoping for some telling reaction when she handed it over.

I thanked her politely and carried the letter away with me.

I stopped at the nearest window alcove after leaving the Guildfords’ lodgings and broke the seal, noticing as I did so that it showed signs of having been tampered with. I was not surprised, nor was I alarmed. Guy must have known that anything he wrote to me could be read by others.

He had written on the tenth of October, just before Mother Guildford’s departure from Abbeville. He began by expressing his sadness that I had been denied the opportunity to visit France. He made no mention of how the duke felt about that development. Then he said that it would be some time yet before he could travel to Amboise.

I read that sentence again. Amboise, not Beaugency, the duke’s home, nor yet Guy’s own lands, but Amboise, where I had hoped to go to ask questions about my mother. Did he mean to ask them for me?

A rustle of fabric had me hastily refolding the letter before I finished reading it.

“You are ill advised to fraternize with the French,” said Mother Guildford. “If you have the sense God gave a goose, you will live righteously from this day forward. No good ever comes of illicit love, nor yet from seeking to live above your station.”

“I am no longer in the schoolroom, madam, nor under your control. And I am no longer convinced that you have my best interests at heart.”

“Ungrateful girl!”

“Hardly a girl any longer, madam. And not best pleased to have been lied to.”

“What are you going on about now?”

“You, madam. You told me Queen Elizabeth’s ladies from my mother’s time had scattered, and you implied that most were dead. In truth, a goodly number of them now serve our present queen. And you must have known the name of the priest most likely to have heard my mother’s confession, for he went with your husband to the Holy Land and died there with him.” Once started, I could not seem to stop myself. “Was my mother really ill when she first came to court, or was that another lie?”

The look of panic on Mother Guildford’s face brought my tirade to an abrupt end. Bereft of speech, I watched as her eyes rolled up and her knees buckled. She landed in an ungainly heap at my feet.

Kneeling beside her, I called out for help. In short order she had been tucked into bed and a physician had been called to look after her. When Meg ordered me to leave, I did not argue, but I was puzzled by what had just happened. What had I said to cause such an extreme reaction?

Brooding, I returned to the queen’s presence chamber, where I was scolded for neglecting my duties. Many hours passed before I was able to finish reading the letter Guy had written to me more than a month earlier. When I did, a frisson of fear snaked through me.

The explanation for his delay in leaving for Amboise was both simple and terrifying. He intended to remain at the French court in order to participate in the tournament being held to celebrate Queen Mary’s coronation. He hoped to acquit himself better this time.

THE TOURNAMENT HAD originally been planned to last three days. In actuality, it stretched out over a much longer period because of delays caused by rain. The first event was held on Monday, the thirteenth day of November. Over three hundred contestants, fifty of them English, participated. Among them were Charles Brandon, Harry Guildford, and Ned Neville.

“Ten challengers were led by the Dauphin himself,” I heard someone say as I entered the queen’s presence chamber at Green-which the day following my encounter with Mother Guildford.

“—held at the Parc des Tournelles in Paris.”

“The old palace there was the Louvre, but it is in such bad repair that no one uses it anymore.”

“—interrupted by heavy rains.”

“Suffolk wore small red crosses all over his armor, for St. George and England.”

“They all did.”

The king, seated on the dais with the queen, raised his hand for silence. “The news from France is good. I received earlier reports, but now I have a letter giving details. On the first day of the tournament, my lord of Suffolk ran fifteen courses. Several horses and one Frenchman were slain but none of our good English knights took any serious injury.”

For a moment I lost my breath. One Frenchman slain? I prayed with all my heart that it had not been Guy. I did not consider for a moment that it might have been the duc de Longueville. If he had been injured or killed, the king would have said so.

Bracing one hand against a window frame, I forced myself to listen to King Henry, who was now reading from a letter. It gave an account of the bouts fought on the eighteenth of November.

“‘—divers times both horse and man were overthrown. There were horses slain, and one Frenchman was hurt that is not likely to live.’”

Yet again, word of an unidentified Frenchman. Did the English competitors care so little for life that they could not even be bothered to name their victims?

“My lord of Suffolk ran only the first day,” the king continued, squinting to decipher the tiny letters on the page, “because there was no nobleman to be put against him, only poor men at arms and Scots. Many were injured on both sides, but of our Englishmen none were overthrown nor greatly hurt except a little upon their hands.”

There was more, but my attention wandered. Around me I could see that the lack of names troubled others among the queen’s ladies. That their husbands or lovers or sons might be hurt “a little upon their hands” was a concern to them. Injuries, even small ones, could all too easily lead to death.

My gaze darted back to the king when he laughed. He joked with Compton but ignored the queen. There had been a certain coldness between them since he’d first learned of King Ferdinand’s betrayal. No one could hold a grudge like King Henry. I doubted that the queen would regain his favor fully until she gave birth to his heir, and that event would not occur for some months.

If the queen knew about Bessie, she pretended not to. Tonight, once again, it would be Bessie who shared the king’s bed. I would be the one to accompany her to their rendezvous and ready her to receive him. Then I would wait with Will Compton in a drafty antechamber until it was time to escort Bessie away again. Wait…and worry.

It did not matter where I spent the night. I doubted I would sleep even if I had our soft feather bed all to myself. My thoughts would keep circling back to the unnamed Frenchman who had died in the tournament. Were there more dead by now, more “poor men at arms and Scots” who did not deserve to be mentioned by name?

And was one of them Guy Dunois?

IN DECEMBER, ELIZABETH Bryan married Nick Carew at Greenwich Palace. I was there, as part of the queen’s entourage, for Catherine attended the wedding even though she was hugely pregnant. The king was there, too. So were Harry Guildford, at last returned from France, and Mother Guildford, fully recovered from what she now termed a mere dizzy spell.