The gentlemen the king left behind flocked to Her Grace’s presence chamber like moths to flame. Will Parr was there to be with Dorothy Bray. Sir Edmund Knyvett came sniffing around Nan. Tom Culpepper was among Nan’s admirers, as well, but his heart wasn’t in it.

A frown knit Nan’s brows as she watched Culpepper watch Catherine Howard. His open admiration filled Nan with concern for his safety, but that was nothing to what she felt when she saw the amorous look in Her Grace’s eyes. How fortunate that a queen was never truly alone! With so many witnesses surrounding her, she could not do more than lust in her heart for a virile young man.

As Nan continued to watch, Queen Catherine turned her back on Tom Culpepper. Nan told herself she’d imagined Her Grace’s prurient interest. Since it was never safe to speculate about such things, she put the incident out of her mind, but her uneasiness returned a few days later when the queen suddenly dispensed with the services of her maids of honor, sending them away for the rest of the afternoon.

“Go and enjoy yourselves,” she ordered. “Lady Rochford is all the company I need while I rest.”

“How she can stand that prune-faced Lady Rochford, I do not know,” Dorothy Bray said as she and Nan and Lucy Somerset made their way to the tennis court. Will Parr was to play in one of the matches that afternoon.

“She likes the way Lady Rochford abases herself,” Lucy replied. “She’s so willing to please that she’ll do anything the queen asks of her.”

“We all serve the queen,” Dorothy said primly. “If she wants us on our knees to hand her an apple, we go down on our knees.”

“But Lady Rochford would gladly crawl,” Nan said. There was something not quite right about the older woman. Her face customarily wore a look of quiet desperation and her eyes were always darting this way and that, as if she expected someone to jump out at her from behind an arras.

When they entered the enclosed tennis court, Nan anticipated hearing the crack of tennis balls against racket and floor and wall. The sound of a scuffle reached her ears instead. A man grunted. Another swore. The three maids of honor came out into the gallery in time to see several courtiers pull Sir Edmund Knyvett away from another gentleman. The second combatant swabbed his freely bleeding nose.

A sudden terrible silence fell over the entire company. Nan lifted her hand to her mouth to hold back a sound of distress. To strike another person, especially to draw blood, was an offense against the king when it occurred at court. This was far more serious than a simple brawl.

Will Parr came up to them, a stricken look in his hazel eyes. He was a tall, well-built gentleman with a long face and wore both hair and beard close cropped. Like his sisters, Anne Herbert and Kathryn Latimer, his normal disposition was cheerful, but at the moment he showed no sign of lightheartedness. “You’d best leave, my love,” he told Dorothy. “They’ll come to arrest him now. There will be no more tennis this afternoon.”

“What will happen to him?” Nan whispered. She had refused Sir Edmund’s offer to make her his mistress, but she bore him no ill will for suggesting that role for her. In fact, she was grateful to him for opening her eyes to her altered status at court.

“Knyvett must forfeit the hand he used to strike the blow.”

Parr’s blunt words made Nan’s stomach roil. “Is there no remedy?”

He shrugged. “The king can pardon him, but I do not think he will. His Grace’s leg has been causing him a great deal of pain these last few days. He is not in charity with anyone but the queen.”

Queen Catherine, Nan remembered, was Sir Edmund’s kinswoman. She could intervene. More times than she could count, Nan had seen Catherine tease and cajole her husband out of the foulest of tempers. His Grace was as besotted with her as he had been before they were wed. All the queen had to do was smile in order to twist him around her little finger. Picking up her skirts, Nan hurried back to the queen’s apartments, but Lady Rochford barred her way.

“Her Grace is resting!” she said in a voice loud enough to wake anyone on the other side of the bedchamber door.

“She will want to hear my news. It concerns the impending arrest of her cousin.”

Lady Rochford blanched. “Cousin? Which cousin?”

“Sir Edmund Knyvett.”

The other woman’s obvious relief made Nan wonder who she had supposed Nan meant. The queen had a large family. There were Howards on her father’s side, and her mother—her mother had been born a Culpepper.

Nan was relieved to find Her Grace alone in her bedchamber when Lady Rochford at last permitted her to enter. In a few terse sentences, she told Queen Catherine what had transpired at the tennis court. Catherine listened and expressed concern, but she refused to intervene on Sir Edmund’s behalf.

“The king has been in a volatile mood of late,” she said by way of an excuse. Catherine toyed with the gem-encrusted brooch pinned to her bosom. “Perhaps you should ask the king yourself when he returns to Hampton Court.”

Catherine would like that, Nan thought. She’d be delighted if the king lost his temper with a woman who had once been his mistress. Although she had no cause, Catherine was apparently still jealous of Nan.

“I have not Your Grace’s … influence with King Henry,” Nan said carefully. “Surely Your Grace will be able to find an opportunity to plead for your cousin, perhaps when the king is in a mellow mood.”

“Perhaps my cousin should consider asking me himself. Go and fetch my cloak, Nan. I have a sudden craving to walk in the gallery for exercise.” As far as the queen was concerned, the subject was closed.

JUST AS WILL Parr had predicted, Sir Edmund Knyvett was brought before the Court of the Verge in the Great Hall of the palace and sentenced to have his right hand amputated and to forfeit his lands and possessions for having drawn blood at the royal court. On the morning the sentence was to be carried out, courtiers crowded around the windows overlooking the appointed courtyard. Nan stood next to Anne Herbert, fighting the urge to bolt.

Two forms had been set up. One held instruments and supplies, the other wine, ale, and beer.

“For the witnesses,” Anne explained.

“Oh, yes, let us drink to the horror!”

“Hush, Nan. There’s still hope of a pardon. And if not, well, there is a sergeant surgeon in attendance.”

“This is no surgical amputation.” And even with a skilled surgeon, the removal of a limb often led to death from loss of blood or from fever. She watched, wide eyed, as the sergeant of the woodyard brought forth a mallet and a block.

“A sergeant of the larder will set the blade right on the joint,” Anne said. “A master cook will wield the knife. When the cutting is done, a sergeant farrier will use searing irons to sear the veins.”

Nan looked at the pan of fire used to heat them. A chafer of water stood nearby—to cool the ends, she supposed. And a yeoman of the chandlery was in attendance, ready to supply sear cloths to dress the stump. The only person whose presence Nan could not comprehend with chilling clarity was the sergeant of the poultry. “Why has he brought a cock?”

“The bird will be beheaded on the same block and with the same knife. To test the equipment, I presume.” Anne did not seem unduly upset by what they were about to witness.

Nan’s stomach churned. She tasted bile. When the knight marshall brought Sir Edmund out, she pressed her fists to her mouth.

Sir Edmund was in shirt and breeches, wearing neither doublet nor gown in spite of the February chill in the courtyard. His face was as white as the patches of snow on the cobblestones.

Sir Edmund went down on his knees to confess his crime. In a last, desperate effort to save his hand, he begged the knight marshall to go and plead with the king for mercy on his behalf. “Ask His Grace if I might lose my left hand rather than the right,” Sir Edmund called after him as he entered the palace, “for if my right hand be spared, I may hereafter do much good service to His Grace.”

Proceedings halted. Nan prayed for Sir Edmund’s deliverance but, in her heart, she knew that it was not God’s mercy that he needed. It was the king’s.

After what seemed an eternity, the knight marshall returned from speaking to King Henry, who had come back from London the previous day. “His Majesty is impressed with your loyalty, Sir Edmund. He will grant your request.” He turned to the master cook. “Take off his left hand.”

Nan could not help herself. She pressed closer to the window, watching in sick fascination as Sir Edmund’s hand was positioned on the block. The blade was aligned. The cook took hold of the knife’s handle. A thin line of red appeared on Sir Edmund’s wrist.

At the last possible moment, a man ran into the courtyard—a messenger from King Henry. “On the king’s command,” he shouted, “you are to stay the execution of the punishment until after dinner!”

Nan rested her forehead against the window glass. Not a pardon. A delay. She had underestimated the king’s capacity for cruelty.

Three hours passed while the king dined. Then His Grace made his way in person to the courtyard where Sir Edmund and all the officers still waited. They must be nearly frozen by now, Nan thought, resuming her post by the window. She heard someone come up beside her but did not turn around to see who it was. She assumed Anne Herbert had returned.

King Henry moved with slow, ponderous steps, using a staff to help him walk. He had rarely been without the accessory since the winter began. “Have you anything to say to me, rogue?”

Sir Edmund spoke in a low, trembling voice, beaten down by fear and the cold. “I desire Your Grace pardon my right hand and take the left, so that I might hereafter do such good service to Your Grace as shall please you to appoint.”

A smug smile appeared on the king’s face. At her side, Nan heard a little sigh of relief. She glanced at her companion. Only then did she see that it was not Anne Herbert who stood next to her. It was the queen. Nan started to drop into a curtsy, but Catherine caught her arm to keep her upright. “His Majesty is about to speak. Listen.”

“In consideration of your gentle heart, Edmund, and your long service to the Crown, I grant you pardon. You shall lose neither hand, land, nor goods, but shall go free at liberty.”

Catherine clapped her hands in delight. “See how His Grace grants my slightest wish!”

“His Majesty loves you, Your Grace,” Nan whispered. As relieved as she was that Sir Edmund had been spared, the queen’s display of jubilation filled her with dismay. Without stopping to think how her warning would be received, Nan blurted out, “His Grace once loved your cousin with equal passion.”

Instantly infuriated, Queen Catherine slapped Nan’s face. “Insolent wench! All the world knows that Anne Boleyn bewitched him.”

“And that she was unfaithful,” Nan added in a whisper. Her cheek stung, but she could not seem to stop speaking. “Queen Anne was beheaded for indiscretion. There was no pardon for her.”

Catherine’s face twisted into an ugly sneer. “Taking lovers was not her greatest mistake. It was that she railed at His Grace and made his life a misery. I never contradict him, only sweetly persuade him to do my bidding. I know how to please a man.”

“Your Grace, have a care! There are ears everywhere.”

But Queen Catherine seemed to lack both common sense and any instinct for self-preservation. “I am queen,” she boasted. “I do as I please.”

It was Catherine’s good fortune that, this time, only Lady Rochford, lurking a short distance away, was close enough to overhear.

AS PART OF the usual revelry that preceded Lent, there were masques at court on two consecutive nights. The king failed to attend either.

“Have you heard?” Dorothy whispered on the second night, after she and Nan were closed into the relative privacy of their bed.

“Heard what?” Nan was exhausted from the dancing that had followed the masque. Sir Edmund, having survived a close brush with disaster, was more importune than ever about making her his mistress. There were times when, out of equal parts pity and loneliness, she was tempted to give in.

“The king’s ulcer suddenly became clogged. It has closed up and is causing him great pain. He has a high fever, too.”

Nan prayed for the king’s deliverance. His heir was a child. If King Henry died, England would be plunged into chaos. Worse, there would be no queen at court. If there was no queen, there would be no place for a maid of honor.

The next day, Queen Catherine was banned from her husband’s bedchamber.