“For God’s sake, do not do that! They’ll take you for a papist.”

“It is happening all over again. Is nowhere safe?” Frantic, Mistress Hussey craned her neck in every direction, as if searching for a place to hide.

Belatedly, Mary remembered that Lord Hussey of Sleaford had been executed for treason. “Your father took part in a rebellion against King Henry,” she murmured. “This is not at all the same.”

Still gripping the packet of letters, Mary ignored the silent tears running down the other woman’s cheeks and pushed past her, heading for the nearest garderobe.

The tiny room was cut into the outer wall. A wooden seat rested atop a shaft that emptied into a cesspit far below. Mary’s stomach twisted, but she had no choice. No one must ever read what Gabriel had written to her. Before she could lose her nerve, she untied the ribbon and ripped the first letter in two, then tore it again before she let the pieces fall from her hand and flutter into the abyss.

“Let me help.” Mistress Hussey appeared at her side.

Mary thrust half the letters into the other woman’s hands and went back to tearing those that remained into tiny bits. She kept back only one, the letter in which Gabriel had first said that he loved her. This she tucked into her bodice, certain no one would dare search her person.

“What now?” Mistress Hussey asked.

“Now we join my sisters in the parlor and pretend that we have only just heard of the arrival of the Earl of Sussex.”

NAN SPENT TWO weeks in daily anticipation of more bad news. Her stepfather was suspected of conspiring with Sir Gregory Botolph. He was a prisoner in the Tower. In Calais, Nan’s mother and sisters had also been arrested. Nan had no idea what the accusations against them were. She only knew that the king’s men had seized and inventoried everything in their house—clothing, books, papers, and even an old piece of tapestry too moth eaten to hang.

It was the fifth of June before Nan herself was summoned to be questioned. She dreaded the interrogation, expecting it to be conducted by Thomas Cromwell. Instead, Anthony Denny joined her in a small, stuffy room, accompanied by a clerk who would take down everything she said.

“Of what are my mother and sisters accused?” she asked before Denny could begin. “Surely they had no part in Sir Gregory Botolph’s mad plan.”

“They tried to conceal your sister’s trothplight to a Frenchman.”

Nan gasped. “She was already betrothed to him?”

Denny’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know of this matter, Mistress Bassett?”

Not “Nan,” she thought, as she had been when she lived in “Cousin Denny’s” household, but “Mistress Bassett.” Like everyone else, Denny would try to distance himself from the contagion of treason, as if it were something that could be contracted by breathing the same air.

“I know very little,” Nan said. “Only that a formal proposal of marriage from the young man’s uncle, the head of his family, was delivered to Calais just after my stepfather left for England. Mother, very properly, replied that he must wait for an answer until her husband came home. Then she wrote to Lord Lisle, telling him of the offer. Later, she sent me a letter, asking that I tell the king what I know of the seigneur de Bours, should His Grace question me about him.”

“And what do you know?”

“Only that my sister was brought up in the de Bours household and that a very natural affection grew up between them.”

“Marriage to a foreigner is not permitted without the king’s approval.”

“My stepfather intended to ask for King Henry’s blessing as soon as he arrived at court, but, if you recall, he fell ill shortly afterward.”

“And it slipped his mind thereafter?”

Nan ignored Denny’s sarcasm. “There was no formal betrothal, only a first step toward opening negotiations.”

“Certain depositions that were taken in Calais say otherwise. Your sister secretly married the Frenchman when he visited Calais on Palm Sunday last.”

“How is that possible?”

“They spoke legally binding words to each other. In such cases, neither witnesses nor ceremony are required, only consummation.”

“The words,” Nan interrupted. “My sister admitted that she pledged herself per verba de praesenti? Not per verba de futuro?” The latter was not binding; the former was.

Denny nodded.

Nan closed her eyes to hide her distress. Mary had entered into a clandestine marriage. Ned Corbett had once asked Nan to do the same.

“She compounded her crime by trying to destroy the letters de Bours had sent her. She threw them down the jakes. My lord of Sussex’s men retrieved a few fragments, enough to piece together the story. And enough to make them suspicious that more than love words were contained in those letters.”

“You think Mary was plotting to overthrow Calais?”

“The entire situation is suspicious.”

“The entire situation is ludicrous.”

Denny’s face remained set in grim lines. For a moment, the scratch of the clerk’s quill was the only sound in the quiet room. Nan forced herself to relax her clenched hands, to breathe evenly. Panic would avail her nothing.

“Why is my mother being held?”

“Your mother and sisters and several of the waiting gentlewomen at first denied any knowledge of the plighttroth. Some changed their stories when they were questioned a second time.”

“But Mother would not have known. Not if it was a secret marriage.” Philippa likely had. And Frances. “Where is my brother’s wife?” she blurted out, suddenly alarmed.

“Your brother went to Calais and took his wife and daughter back to England. They could not remain there. The household has been disbanded.”

“Then where—?”

“Your sisters have been placed under house arrest with families in Calais. They are well treated, I assure you. Your mother is likewise confined in the residence of a gentleman of the town. She has been permitted to keep with her a waiting gentlewoman, two other servants, and a priest.”

From her own household, Nan wondered, or spies appointed by the Crown?

Nan’s mind raced. On top of the charge that her stepfather had known about Sir Gregory Botolph’s plans, the suspicion that he’d arranged a secret alliance with a Frenchman could seal his fate, and perhaps her mother’s, too. How could Mary have been so foolish? Unless there really had been something treasonous in Gabriel’s letters, she had made matters far worse by destroying them.

“What now?” she asked after a long silence. “Am I to be arrested, too?”

Denny reached across the table and patted her hand. “You have done nothing wrong. You had no part in any of this. Keep your thoughts and opinions to yourself and be patient. There are other changes coming, but most will do you more good than harm.”

It was excellent, if enigmatic, advice, but difficult to follow. Nan was worried about her stepfather, about her mother and sisters, and about Ned Corbett, too. And she could not help but fear for her own future. If she tried to help any of those she cared about, she might also be accused of treason.

FIVE DAYS AFTER Nan’s interview with Anthony Denny, on the tenth of June, she heard of the arrest of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex. No one was quite sure what he had done to incur the king’s wrath, except that he had been instrumental in arranging His Grace’s marriage to Anna of Cleves.

The news made Nan think of young Wat Hungerford. He had wanted to speak with her shortly before her stepfather’s arrest. She wondered what he’d wanted, and what had happened to him now that both his master and his father were in the Tower. She knew Lord Hungerford’s lands had been seized. Wat had no home to retreat to.

One more person to worry about, she thought, when fretting did no one any good. She was glad she had her duties as a maid of honor to keep her busy. But only two weeks later, Queen Anna and her entire household were abruptly banished from court, sent to live at Richmond Palace while the king stayed behind.

Stout yeomen hauled traveling trunks into the maidens’ chamber, setting off a flurry of activity. Constance at once began to pack Nan’s belongings. She had outgrown her youthful awkwardness in the last year and developed into a sturdy young woman accustomed to physical labor. She did everything from beating the dust out of her mistress’s clothing to hauling water to the maids’ dormitory for baths.

“I am not going to Richmond,” Kate Stradling announced.

“But you must,” Nan said. “All the maids of hon—”

“Not Catherine Howard. She has already left for the old dowager Duchess of Norfolk’s house at Lambeth.”

Nan folded a pair of sleeves to give herself something to do with her hands. As impossible as it had seemed a few months earlier, the king was going to rid himself of his wife in order to marry Mistress Howard. “We know why Catherine has abandoned Queen Anna,” she said to her cousin, “but what incentive have you to stay behind? You’ll have no place at court.”

“My place will be with my husband.”

“You’ve married Sir Thomas Palmer?” Lucy Somerset exclaimed in surprise. Along with every other woman in the room, her gaze fixed on Kate. Sir Thomas Palmer had been courting Kate for some time, but Nan had always suspected that her cousin thought she could do better. Sir Thomas had a goodly estate but was also fourteen years Kate’s senior and had several grown children from an earlier marriage.

“I will be his wife just as soon as Thomas can obtain a special license.” Kate looked well pleased with herself. At twenty-eight, she could no longer afford to be choosy, especially now that it was obvious Queen Anna was to be put aside.

“I wish you well,” Nan said, embracing her cousin. But what she felt most strongly was a sense of relief. Kate knew too many of Nan’s secrets.

“Everything is packed,” Constance said, closing the heavy trunk lid with a thunk. The finality of the sound made Nan shiver. So much seemed uncertain. Richmond Palace was a beautiful place, but she had no desire to spend the rest of her life entombed there.

“POOR QUEEN ANNA,” Cat Bassett said, fanning herself. In spite of the breeze that occasionally blew up off the Thames, Richmond Palace was stifling. “She refuses to believe that the king will annul their marriage. Lady Rutland says Her Grace is convinced there are no grounds to dissolve their union.”

Nan was too hot and uncomfortable to twit her sister for quoting Lady Rutland. The weather had been abnormally warm and dry since the beginning of June and it was now the tenth of July. Even the most accommodating of individuals felt irritable. Those with little self-control lost their tempers at the drop of a hat.

“Lady Rutland fears for the queen’s life,” Cat continued. “If she opposes the king’s wishes—”

“She could end up like the last Queen Anne!” Nan snapped. “If she cannot see the way the wind blows, she deserves that fate.”

“How can you be so hard hearted?” Cat took a handful of caraway seeds dipped in sugar from an ornate little box and nibbled them.

“I feel sorry for the woman, just as you do. But if the queen fights to hold her place, as Catherine of Aragon did when King Henry put her aside, she will be fortunate to keep her head.”

“It is not her fault that neither her mother nor any of her senior ladies explained to her what constitutes the duties of a wife. She went to her marriage bed in total ignorance. She truly believed, until Lady Rochford bluntly told her otherwise, that the king had consummated their marriage simply by kissing her and spending part of the night in her bed.” The king, by common report, had never been able to force himself to couple with the queen.

“There is nothing you or I can do for her,” Nan said. “There is nothing we can do for anyone, not even our own kin.” She had never felt so helpless. She turned away from her sister to stare out the nearest window. The view might have been soothing had the drought not turned the grass brown and withered the leaves on vines and flowers.

When Nan looked her sister’s way again, Cat was calmly embroidering a sleeve with tiny rosebuds. Nan was too restless to settle. She prowled Lady Rutland’s chamber, picking up various of the countess’s possessions and putting them down again without registering what they were.

“Everything is Mary’s fault.” Nan knew the accusation was unfair as soon as she muttered the words, since Mary had nothing to do with King Henry’s dislike of his queen.

“She fell in love,” Cat said.

“That is no excuse for behaving like a fool. Her actions made everything worse. His Grace believes she knowingly destroyed evidence of treason.”