She had not seen her brother since they were nine. Within three years Rowland’s leaving home, Henry Tudor had become King Henry VII of England.
“And you, my dear sister,” Rowland Velville said courteously, “have a most pleasing countenance.”
“Jeanne,” she said, turning to me, “this is your uncle, Master Rowland Velville.”
“Sir Rowland,” he corrected her, sparing one hard stare for me.
I studied the two of them while they talked quietly together, fascinated by their similarities. Both were blessed with thick brown hair and large, deep-set brown eyes. I shared their coloring, but my eyes have golden flecks. I was extraordinarily pleased with that small difference. I did not want to be just like anyone else, not even my beloved mother.
My uncle’s nose was large, long, and thin. My mother’s, too, was thin, but much smaller. Mine was the smallest of all—a “button,” Maman called it. Uncle was of above-average height. Maman came up to his shoulder. Both of them were slender, as was I.
Having given her brother a brief account of our journey, Maman described the scene we had witnessed in the innyard. “Poor man,” she said, meaning Perkin Warbeck.
“Do not waste your sympathy!” Uncle sounded so angry that I took a quick step away from him. “He is naught but an imposter, a commoner’s son impersonating royalty.”
Maman’s brow furrowed. “I know that, Rowland. What I do not understand is why he would try to escape. The rebellion ended months ago. We heard about it at the French court, including how King Henry forgave Warbeck for leading it.”
“Your information is remarkably accurate.”
“Any tale of the English court soon reaches the ears of the king of France. No doubt the English king has similar sources who report on every rumor that comes out of the court of France.”
“If he does, I am not privy to what they tell him. He has never confided in me.”
Maman looked relieved to hear it.
“King Henry does not always reward those who deserve it.”
“He has been generous to you. You have been made a knight.”
“An honor long overdue.” He sounded bitter. “And there were no lands to go with it. He takes more care for the future of this fellow Warbeck! As soon as the pretender admitted that he was an imposter, the king gave him leave to remain at court. He was under light guard but was treated like a guest. Warbeck’s wife fared even better. She has been appointed as one of Queen Elizabeth’s ladies and is accorded her full dignity as the daughter of a Scottish nobleman.”
“Lady Catherine Gordon,” Maman murmured. “Poor girl. She thought she’d married a king and ended up with a mere commoner.”
“Warbeck will be lodged in the Tower of London from now on. He’ll not find life so easy in that fortress, nor will he have any further opportunity to escape.”
“The Tower of London? It is a prison?” Maman sounded confused. “I thought it was a royal palace.”
“It is both, often at the same time. Prisoners accused of treason and those of noble birth are held there. And kings have kept lodgings within the precincts from the earliest days of the realm.”
I tugged on my uncle’s dark blue sleeve until he glanced down with the liquid brown eyes so like my mother’s. “How could a commoner be mistaken for a prince?” I asked.
“He was well coached by King Henry’s enemies.” My uncle went down on one knee so that we were face-to-face and caught me by the shoulders. “You are a clever girl, Jane, to ask me this. It is important that you know who people are. The court much resembles a small village. If you do not know that the butcher’s wife is related by marriage to the blacksmith, you may do yourself much harm by speaking against him within her hearing. So, too, with plots and schemes. A family’s enmity can—”
“Rowland!” My mother spoke sharply, cutting him off. “Do not continue, I beg of you. She is too young to understand.”
He gave a curt nod, but kept hold of my shoulders and looked me straight in the eye.
“Listen well, Jane. I will tell you a cautionary tale now and save the other story for another day. Many years ago, the two sons of the English king Edward the Fourth were declared illegitimate upon King Edward’s death by Edward’s brother, Richard the Third. Richard then took the throne for himself. Thereafter the princes disappeared. No one knows what happened to them, although most men believe that Richard the Third, now king, had them murdered. Henry Tudor then defeated King Richard in battle at a place called Bosworth and became King Henry the Seventh in his stead. To end civil war, Henry Tudor married Elizabeth of York, Edward’s eldest daughter, even though she, too, had been declared illegitimate by Richard’s decree.”
My uncle glanced at my mother. “King Henry the Seventh is especially sensitive just now on the subject of the royal bastards.”
“That is understandable,” Maman replied. Her expression was serene, her voice calm, but sadness shone in her eyes.
My uncle turned back to me to continue his history lesson. “But King Henry’s throne is not yet secure. He has been plagued by imposters claiming to be one of the missing princes. So far, his grace has always been able to discover their true identities and expose them, taking the heart out of the traitors who support them. But many rebellious souls still exist in England, men all too ready to rise up again, even in the cause of a royal bastard.”
My brow puckered in confusion. “I know what a bastard is, Uncle. It means you are born outside of marriage. My friend Guy Dunois is one. But if these two boys—who may or may not be dead—are bastards, why would anyone try to impersonate them? They cannot claim the throne even if they are alive.”
Uncle gave me an approving look. “I would not be so certain of that. Before marrying their sister, King Henry the Seventh reversed the royal decree that made her and her brothers illegitimate. So, dead they are and dead they must remain—for the good of the realm.”
My curiosity led me quickly to another question. “Why was Warbeck’s scaffold made of wine pipes and hogsheads?” I asked.
The briefest hint of a smile came over my uncle’s face. “Because the popular belief is that the king’s navy came close to capturing Warbeck before he ever landed on these shores. He eluded them, it is said, by hiding inside an empty wine barrel stowed in the prow of his ship.”
My mother’s fingers moved from her rosary to the silk sash at her waist. Her voice remained level, but the way she twisted the fine fabric around one hand betrayed her agitation. “With so much unrest in his land,” Maman said, “it is good of the king to take an interest in us.”
“Your future is not yet secure, Joan.”
“She is Jeanne,” I protested. “Jeanne Popyncourt. As I am.”
“No longer. You are in England now, my dear niece. Your mother will be known as Joan and you will be Jane, to distinguish between the two of you.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“I will explain everything in good time, Jeanne,” Maman said.
“Jane,” Uncle insisted.
“Jane, then,” she continued. “Be patient, my child, and all will be revealed. But for the present it is best that you do not know too much.”
“And in the meantime,” my uncle interrupted, “you will both be provided for. Come. I am to take you to the king.”
“Now?” The word came out as a hoarse croak. Maman’s eyes widened in alarm.
“Now,” he insisted.
At my uncle’s urging, we gathered up our possessions and soon were aboard a wherry and headed upriver on an incoming tide. I sat between him and my mother in the pair-oared rowing boat.
The vessel’s awning kept the sun out of our faces, but it did not obscure my view. Attempting to see everything at once, I twisted from side to side on the cushioned bench. We had boarded the wherry just to the west of London Bridge and so had a good distance to travel before we passed beyond the sprawling city of London with its tall houses and multitude of church steeples. When at last we rounded the curve of the Thames, the river broadened to reveal green meadows, riverside gardens, and a dazzling array of magnificent buildings that far outshone anything the city had to offer.
“That is Westminster Abbey,” my uncle said, pointing. “And there is the great palace of Westminster, where the king is waiting for us.”
Once we disembarked my uncle escorted us to the king’s privy chamber. I caught only a glimpse of bright tapestries and grand furnishings before a liveried servant conducted us into the small complex of inner chambers beyond.
“Why is it so much darker here?” I whispered, catching hold of my mother’s sleeve.
“Hush, my darling.”
“Show some respect,” my uncle snapped. “Do you not realize what a great honor it is to be allowed to enter the king’s ‘secret’ lodgings?”
We moved briskly through one small chamber and into another. There the servant stopped before a curtained door.
“Make a deep obeisance,” my uncle instructed in a harsh whisper. “Do not speak unless spoken to. Address the king as ‘Sire’ or ‘Your Grace’ when you do speak to him. And do not forget that you must back out of the room when you are dismissed.”
My eyes wide, my lips pressed tightly closed, I crept farther into the room. Like a little mouse, I felt awed and terrified by the prospect that lay before me—my first meeting with my new liege lord.
In those days, King Henry did not stoop, as he would toward the end of his life. He was as tall as my uncle, a thin man but one who gave the impression of strength. His nose was long and thin, too. He was dressed most grandly in cloth-of-gold and crimson velvet. His black velvet bonnet, sporting a jeweled brooch and pendant pearl, sat atop reddish brown hair. It was just starting to go gray. Beneath was a clean-shaven face so exceedingly pale that the red wart on his right cheek stood out in stark contrast.
I stared at him, my mouth dropping open, as fascinated as I was awestruck. King Henry regarded us steadily in return. For a considerable time, he said nothing. Then he dismissed his servants and sent my uncle away, too.
“You have your mother’s eyes,” he said to Maman, speaking in French.
“Thank you, Sire,” she said. “I wish I could remember her more clearly, but I have always been told that she was a most beautiful woman.”
This was the first that I had heard of my grandmother’s beauty. Maman rarely spoke of her parents. I knew only that her mother had died when she was a very young girl and that afterward her father had sent her to the ducal court of Brittany to enter the service of the duke’s daughter, Anne.
“I was sorry to hear of the death of your husband,” the king said.
“Johannes was a good man, Your Grace.”
“A Fleming, was he not?”
“He was. A merchant.”
There was a small, awkward silence. Maman was of gentle birth. She had married beneath her. I knew a little of the story. Maman had wed at fifteen and given birth to me the following January. Then she had returned to the Breton court. The following year, when Duchess Anne married King Charles, she had become part of the new French queen’s entourage. Papa had often shared the houses she found for me near the court, but sometimes he had to go away to attend to business. He imported fine fabrics to clothe courtiers and kings.
“Plague?” the king asked, suggesting a likely cause for my father’s death.
Maman shook her head. “He had purchased a new ship for a trading venture. It proved unseaworthy and sank when he was aboard. He drowned.”
“A great pity. Did he leave you sufficient to live upon?”
Maman’s reply was too low for me to hear. When they continued their conversation in quiet voices, I heard their words only as a gentle whisper in the background.
My gaze wandered around the room. The chamber boasted no tapestries and had no gilded chests or chairs, but it did contain a free-standing steel looking glass. I longed to peer at my own face, but I did not dare move from where I stood. On a table next to the looking glass, a coffer overflowed with jewels. I also noticed books. I had never seen so many of them in one place before.
The restless movements of King Henry’s fingers, continually twisting the fabric of the narrow silk scarf he wore knotted around his waist, brought my attention back to the king. I strained to hear what he and my mother were saying, but I could only catch a word or two. The king said, “my wife” and then, “my protection.”
King Henry glanced my way and deliberately raised his voice. “It is well that you are here. I give you my word that you will have a place at court as long as you both shall live.” A slow smile overspread his features. For some reason, he seemed mightily pleased that my mother and I had come to England.
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