“His uncle was one of the king’s men in Brittany. Sir Thomas Brandon knew. I am certain he told his nephew. That’s why the younger Brandon came sniffing around you, years ago, before he married that London widow.”

What Uncle said made a discouraging kind of sense. Learning our family secret could account for Charles Brandon’s sudden interest in me. He had been looking for a wealthy bride. It had not taken him long to realize I would be of no use to him, I thought ruefully. If my heritage were known, whatever man I married, whatever children I bore, risked being perceived as threats to the Crown. At the king’s whim, we could be showered with lands and titles or imprisoned in the Tower as traitors. On the other hand, as long as no one knew I was King Henry VII’s granddaughter, I would never have any inheritance at all. No wonder Brandon had abandoned his courtship!

“Did anyone else know?” I asked.

His eyes were bleary when he looked at me. “Anyone who was with the young Henry Tudor during his exile in Brittany.”

“They all knew you were his son?”

“They all suspected. How could they not? I looked a great deal like him.”

“That is not proof of anything,” I said. “Ned Neville and King Henry the Eighth look much alike, but Ned is not the king’s brother.”

Uncle quaffed more ale. “She was murdered, you know. Your mother.”

“Murdered? No. That is not possible.”

“Murder has been done before to secure the Crown. I have had a long time to think about it. I did not realize it then, but now I am certain that she was killed because she was King Henry’s daughter.”

If what he’d already told me had been difficult to accept, this defied belief. “Who do you think killed my mother?” I demanded.

“The king’s mother was responsible.”

“Elizabeth of York?” Confused, I struggled to follow his logic.

“Not our present king’s mother. I mean my father’s mother—Margaret Beaufort, the old Countess of Richmond. It was at Collyweston that your mother died. The countess’s house.” Uncle wagged a finger at me. “I see that skeptical look, but I know what I know. Someone told the countess that her son had fathered a daughter in Brittany and that your mother was that child. Mayhap she thought King Henry had married our mother. Mayhap she just wished to eliminate even the slightest threat to the succession. Whatever drove her, she had your mother poisoned at Collyweston.”

“But…but Maman was her granddaughter!”

He seemed so convinced his accusation was true that I began to wonder if he was right. Shortly after my mother’s death, the countess had become much more pious, even wearing a hair shirt next to her skin. Had she been seeking forgiveness for the sin of murder?

“If she killed Maman, why did she not seek you out and kill you, too?” I asked, fixing on the biggest flaw in my uncle’s theory.

“It is not easy to kill a trained knight.”

It is with poison, I thought. Then another realization struck me.

“Surely if what you say is true, she’d have ordered me slain, as well.”

“Not so long as you were ignorant of your heritage.”

“So you have been protecting me all these years?”

He winced at the skepticism in my voice, then forced a laugh. “Think what you will. I know what I know.”

I tried to convince myself that this was a tale told by a drunkard, an invention. Except for the part about King Henry being my grandfather. The more I looked at Uncle Rowland’s face, the more I knew that much was true.

I sank back down on the bench, too confused to think of any other questions to ask. We sat there in silence, save for the sound of Uncle lifting the tankard and swallowing. And then a question did occur to me.

“How did she know? The Countess of Richmond—who told her about Maman?”

Uncle shrugged.

“Who told her?” I shouted at him, on my feet once more. “You must have some idea!”

Grudgingly, he gave me a name. “I warrant it was Sir Richard Guildford. He was with the king in exile in Brittany, but he was in service to the countess originally.”

Harry’s father. The same Sir Richard Guildford who had written to his son that he wished to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land because he had a great sin on his conscience.

“He’s dead now,” Uncle said, “and so is the countess. But I am certain there are others who’d like to see our line end. Be very careful, Jane, when you return to court.”

I LEFT WALES the day after I heard my uncle’s story. Although I was convinced that he believed everything he’d told me, I was still uncertain as to how much of it was true. I could not understand why, if the countess had been responsible for my mother’s death, she had allowed my uncle to live. Surely, as a man, he posed more of a threat to the succession than any woman.

Uncle claimed that Henry VIII did not know he had a half brother. If that was true, why had he sent my uncle to Wales? At least an answer to that question was not hard to come by. Uncle had always been difficult to get along with, and the older he got, the more quarrelsome he became. He’d never been popular at court. Why wouldn’t the king seize on any excuse to send him away?

So, if King Henry did not perceive Sir Rowland Velville as a threat to the Crown, was anyone really trying to kill him? Was anyone trying to kill me? By the time I returned to Suffolk Place, I had convinced myself that neither one of us was in any danger. Too much drink had addled my uncle’s mind. The people who wanted him dead were figments of his imagination.

Traveling to Wales and back had taken well over a month. It was already the third week in April in the year of our Lord fifteen hundred and sixteen by the time I returned to Suffolk Place.

“Was your uncle any help?” Mary asked when she came to my chamber to welcome me from my journey. “Did he know why your mother left France?”

I shook my head, suddenly struck by the enormity of what I had learned. Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, although she was five years younger than I, was my aunt. The king was my uncle.

“A wasted journey, then. What a pity. You should have stayed here and been comfortable.”

“Has Queen Margaret arrived yet?” I asked. Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland…another aunt.

“She is expected to enter London on the third of May,” Mary said. “I wonder how much she will have changed.” Margaret had been fourteen the last time we’d seen her and Mary only eight.

I wondered if the two sisters would find they had much in common. They both had new babies, as did the queen. I supposed that would give them something to talk about. I doubted Margaret would have anything at all to say to me.

As Mary cheerfully continued to describe plans for the reunion of her siblings, I realized that my uncle’s secret was the one thing I could never share with her. Nor could I ever reveal his suggestion that the Countess of Richmond had been responsible for my mother’s death.

I’d spent much of my return journey and since thinking about that accusation. It was possible my uncle was right. The countess had been fully capable of doing whatever was necessary to reduce the number of potential claimants to the throne. She did, after all, orchestrate her son’s return to England and make sure he had sufficient allies to defeat King Richard III. She’d also arranged the marriage between her son and Elizabeth of York, to ensure that the succession would go unchallenged. If she had discovered that the king had another child, an older child, she might well have acted precipitously to eliminate that threat.

And Uncle was right. Sir Richard Guildford was the most likely person to have told her who Maman was when she was at Collyweston. A casual comment, perhaps. Not realizing that Maman had a twin brother, the countess had acted in haste to remove a potential threat. And then? Guilt? Regret? There was evidence of both in the countess’s sudden increase in religious fervor and Sir Richard’s pilgrimage. He’d have known he shared some of the blame.

I doubted I would ever know the full truth. Both Sir Richard and the countess were dead.

I responded absently to Mary’s comments while I considered Mother Guildford. She had gone out of her way to discourage my questions and make me think no one knew more than she was telling me. She had lied when she’d implied that Maman died of consumption. Did that mean she know Maman’s real heritage—and mine, too? Had she had a hand in the murder herself? Or had she only learned of it later from her husband?

I wanted to confront her, to demand the truth, but I knew better than to do such a foolish thing. She was a strong-willed woman. She’d never admit to any wrongdoing. She might even try to get rid of me, to protect her late husband’s reputation.

I could not tell anyone, I realized. My secret was too dangerous. My uncle and I might be in real danger if the truth came out.

Although my arm was still sore, it had mended adequately to allow me to return to Queen Catherine’s service a few days before Queen Margaret was scheduled to arrive. As soon as I was settled, I asked after Ivo Jumelle. Not because I thought he’d seen anything suspicious when I fell, but because I hoped he might have heard something more about Guy.

“The envoy he served has been recalled and took the young man away with him,” Harry Guildford told me.

“He was not here very long.” I stepped close to Harry, following the pattern of a complicated dance that was to be part of a masque to entertain Queen Margaret.

“Ran off in fear, no doubt, after hearing that King Henry is talking of another invasion of France.”

“Why? I had not heard that France has done anything to provoke an attack.”

“King Henry sees the new French king as a rival since they are so near in age and physical prowess. François acquitted himself well in his war in Italy. Now Henry is determined to prove himself the better commander.”

I thought that a very foolish reason for starting a war. Then it occurred to me that I might disguise myself as a soldier and travel to France that way. The possibility so distracted me that I faltered in the steps we were rehearsing.

Harry caught me around the waist and lifted me high. “Pay attention,” he cautioned me. “If one of us puts a foot wrong, we’ll all go tumbling down.”

I tried to concentrate, but it was difficult. I discarded the idea of dressing as a man, but only because I’d had a better idea. I’d thought of a way to persuade King Henry to send me home to Amboise. All I had to do was find a way to speak with him in private.

That would be a problem. The king could meet privily with anyone he wished if he chose to arrange the assignation. For me to whisk him behind an arras or into an empty antechamber would not be as easy. He was always surrounded by counselors, courtiers, or guards.

“By the saints, Jane!” Harry stopped the practice and waved the others away. “What ails you? If Bessie Blount were here, I’d bring her in to replace you even if it is the last moment.”

“She will be back soon enough,” I said. “In the meantime you must make do with me.” Bessie had left court to visit her mother, who was ailing, while I was in Wales. A pity, I thought. Her absence deprived me of the easiest means of access to the king.

Then it struck me. There was a way to get King Henry alone. I might not be able to enter the royal bedchamber in Bessie’s company, but I could contrive to be invited there in her place.











15

I considered trying to arrange a rendezvous with the king during a pavane or a galliard, but the movements brought partners together only briefly before drawing them apart again, making conversation difficult. I would flirt, then, I decided, but save my more devious machinations for the bowling green.

King Henry was fond of tennis, loved to joust, and excelled at games of chance, but he was also an enthusiastic bowler. The bowling alley was a turf-covered area bounded by hedges. Ladies usually watched the play from a gallery, but I chose to cross the close-shaven grass to a vantage point much nearer the players. I stood in the shadow of the tiltyard wall to observe the king and three of his companions play at bowls. The steady clack of wood on wood and the occasional bursts of applause were interspersed with sounds of low conversation and laughter from the players.

Stooping, the king balanced the first of two heavy, highly polished wooden balls called “bowls” on his palm and sighted the stake at the far end of the alley. His target was called a “mistress.” Dipping his right knee, he made his cast. A cheer went up from the spectators when it came to rest a scant inch from where he’d aimed it.