A remark Catherine Howard had once made, back when she was a maid of honor, niggled at Nan’s memory. She did not wish to examine it closely. It was not safe to know too much, she reminded herself again. Nor was it wise to speculate.

THE PROGRESS MOVED on to York, arriving there in mid-September. Two weeks later they were in Hull and traveling slowly south once more. On the twenty-sixth day of October, they reached Windsor Castle, and then it was back to Hampton Court.

Home, Nan thought. As much as any one place could be to an itinerant entity like the royal court. The king was in high spirits. The queen smiled a great deal. Francis Dereham appeared to have taken himself off somewhere, to the great relief of everyone in the queen’s household.

And then, on Friday the fourth of November, the king’s guards appeared in the queen’s apartments. She was informed that neither she nor her ladies were to leave her rooms for any reason.

“How dare you!” Queen Catherine shouted. “I will go to the king. He will tell you that you have no right to confine me.”

But they would not let her pass and, in the morning, one of the yeomen of the guard let slip to Nan that the king had left Hampton Court for Whitehall.

The next two days were filled with wild speculation. Nerves frayed and tempers snapped. It was almost a relief when Archbishop Cranmer arrived, together with the Duke of Norfolk and several clerks with quills and paper. They closeted themselves with the queen.

Dorothy Bray was pale as death. “They are interrogating Her Grace,” she whispered.

“They will ask us questions, too.” Nan exchanged a look of panic with Dorothy. All the queen’s secrets seemed likely to come out.

Should she lie and pretend ignorance? Or tell the truth? Either course might result in being charged with treason.

THE NEWS THAT Catherine Howard was being questioned at Hampton Court spread like wildfire. It did not take long to reach the household of her predecessor at Richmond Palace, and it filled Anna of Cleves’s ladies with such elation that they had difficulty restraining themselves.

Cat Bassett had been fond of Lady Rutland, but she’d come to love Anna of Cleves. In Cat’s eyes, her mistress could do no wrong. She had felt frustrated and angry on the Lady Anna’s behalf when, to Anna’s detriment, she’d heard people singing Queen Catherine’s praises. Word of the king’s domestic troubles therefore pleased Cat mightily. It seemed only right that King Henry should suffer in retribution for all the sorrow he had caused others.

“His Grace should never have put Queen Anna aside,” Cat’s friend Jane Ratsey said. “Pray God he will see sense when he’s rid himself of Catherine Howard.”

“What! Is God working to make the Lady Anna of Cleves queen again?” Cat rather liked the idea, although she pitied any woman married to King Henry.

Jane was convinced of it. She rattled on while they sat and wrought, praising Queen Anna’s virtues and making rude remarks about her successor. “It is impossible that so sweet a queen as the Lady Anna could be utterly put aside,” she declared, just as they were joined by Dorothy Wingfield, one of Anna’s bedchamber women.

“I would think the king has had wives enough already,” Dorothy said, stitching industriously at the hem of a handkerchief.

“That is why he should take the Lady Anna back,” Jane insisted. “It would be as if Catherine Howard never existed.”

“What a man the king is!” Cat said with a laugh. “How many wives will he have?”

“Four and there’s an end to it,” Jane said firmly. “Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, and our own Lady Anna.”

“That’s only two,” Dorothy pointed out, “as the law says neither of the first two marriages ever existed.”

“Why, the poor man,” Cat said. “He has scarcely any acquaintance with matrimony at all!”

THE DUKE OF Norfolk waited in a tiny, dusty, windowless room. Nan was not the first person to be interrogated there. The place smelled of sweat and terror.

On trembling legs, she stood in front of the table where the duke sat. A clerk was hunched over a sheaf of papers at its far end, ready to take down whatever damning evidence Nan might have to give.

Norfolk was frightening enough in normal situations, with that hawk nose and long, deeply lined face. His eyes were devoid of emotion, dark and flat and utterly without mercy. Under his stare, Nan remembered hearing that his own wife had accused him of physically abusing her and putting his mistress in her place. Norfolk had also turned against his own niece, Queen Anne Boleyn, and presided over her trial at the king’s bidding, even pronouncing sentence of death upon her. It appeared he was prepared to do the same thing again to a second niece. Nan did not expect him to show any mercy to her.

Confined to their dormitory, the maids of honor had heard no details of the charges against Queen Catherine, nor had they dared speculate to each other. It was too easy to be overheard. They had pretended, to themselves as well as to others, that they had never noticed anything amiss. Nan prayed she had sufficient talent at deception to convince the duke of her innocence. She could not bear to think about the alternative.

“You are Mistress Anne Bassett, maid of honor to the queen?”

Nan had to swallow before she could answer. “I am, Your Grace.”

“Your mother is currently a prisoner in Calais and your stepfather is confined to the Tower of London.”

At his accusatory tone, Nan felt her spine stiffen. Her lips compressed into a hard, thin line. She answered with a curt nod.

“And Mistress Catherine Bassett, a maid of honor to the Lady Anna of Cleves, is your sister?”

That question caught her off guard. There was a quality in the duke’s voice warning her that he was not just verifying Cat’s identity. “She is.”

“Has Mistress Catherine Bassett ever spoken to you of the King’s Grace?”

Nan hesitated. It would be peculiar if she had not. “I do not understand the question, my lord.”

A flash of impatience darkened his features. “Has your sister ever said to you that Anna of Cleves should be queen again?”

“No, my lord.” That question, at least, she could answer honestly.

When he continued to ask questions about Lady Anna of Cleves, Nan wondered what the king’s former wife had done. There had been a rumor, following the king’s visit to Richmond a few weeks after his wedding to Catherine Howard, that he had gotten Anna with child, but like so many of the stories told of King Henry, there had been no truth to that one.

Nan gave careful answers, then offered an unsolicited remark. “My sister and I are not on the best of terms. She has been envious of me ever since I was chosen to be a maid of honor to Queen Jane and she was not.”

“You have made a profession of courtiership, I perceive.”

“As many have before me, Your Grace.” Until that moment, Nan had never thought of her position in quite that way, but it was an excellent description.

“You are an observant woman.”

“I like to think so, Your Grace.” Dangerous waters here!

“What have you noticed about Master Francis Dereham’s behavior in the queen’s presence?”

Nan had been prepared for questions about Tom Culpepper. She had not expected to hear Francis Dereham’s name. At her evident astonishment, the duke frowned.

“Well?” he prompted her.

“Master Dereham is somewhat forward.” Once again, Nan chose her words with care.

Norfolk made an impatient gesture with one hand. “Is he intimate with the queen?”

“I know of no improper familiarity between them, my lord. Why, Master Dereham only joined the queen’s household during this summer’s progress. And he came recommended by the old duchess—I mean, by your stepmother, Your Grace.”

Only by a slight tightening of the lips did the duke betray his annoyance. Then the questions continued. He kept at Nan for the better part of another hour, badgering her to supply the kind of details that would damn the queen.

Nan gave him little satisfaction. Anything she had suspected, she kept to herself for her own protection. The longer the interrogation continued, the more she realized that, in truth, she had observed very little of what must have taken place.

At last the duke seemed satisfied that he had wrung every drop of information out of her. He turned his cold, implacable gaze on her one last time. “You will not be returning to the maids’ dormitory, Mistress Bassett. The queen’s household has been dissolved. Your belongings have been searched and secured. They will be released to you when you leave Hampton Court.”

Nan started to protest that she had no place to go, but stopped herself in time. The Duke of Norfolk had no interest in her fate. Nor did she want him to. She’d prefer it if he’d forget he’d ever heard of her.

Drained of energy, as dazed as if she’d taken a blow to the head, Nan turned out of habit toward the queen’s apartments. Guards blocked the door to the presence chamber, effectively preventing her from reaching the privy chamber, bedchamber, and the other smaller rooms beyond.

Nan descended to the kitchens instead. She gave no real thought to where she was going until she found herself at the foot of the small spiral staircase that linked the two floors and allowed servants to deliver food to the queen without actually entering the royal lodgings. There she stopped, wondering where she thought she was going.

She had no place with Queen Catherine anymore.

She had no place anywhere.

The queen’s household had been disbanded, her attendants questioned and sent away … or to prison. Nan tried to take comfort from the fact that she had her freedom, but that did not solve her immediate need for a roof over her head.

Could she throw herself on Cousin Mary’s mercy? Or ask charity of Jane Mewtas or Joan Denny? Each of them had been kind to her, befriended her, but at the time there had been some personal advantage to them in coming to her aid. Now there was none. There might even be a stigma attached to offering her a home.

Where else could she go? Not to Ned, that much was certain. Not Calais. That left only Tehidy, the Bassett seat in Cornwall, where her sisters now lived with Frances, their widowed sister-in-law. Spending the rest of her life rusticating in the country was not acceptable. There had to be an alternative.

Nan was still dithering at the foot of the stairs when she heard the patter of rapidly descending footfalls. Anne Herbert appeared on the landing. Her eyes widened when she saw Nan. She glanced behind her to make certain they were not observed, then made little shooing motions to indicate that Nan should step out of her way.

“The pond garden,” Anne mouthed as she passed.

A short time later, they met near one of the sunken fishponds that gave the Pond Garden, located between the palace and the Thames, its name. Surrounded by low walls, the ponds housed fresh fish slated for the king’s table. From this vantage point, Nan and Anne had a clear view of anyone approaching.

“What has happened?” Nan demanded. “I’ve been told nothing, only questioned and ordered to leave.”

In the bright November sunlight, Anne’s face looked ravaged. She had been crying. “Oh, Nan. It is all so dreadful. How could it be that no one knew about the queen’s past?” Anne sank down on the stone-topped brick wall. “They say she took lovers when she was a mere girl.”

“Francis Dereham?” Nan guessed.

“And another man, too. She was no virgin when she came to the king, but she deceived him into thinking her innocent. No wonder he is in a rage.”

Nan’s stomach clenched and she leaned for support against one of the stone beasts that decorated the wall at intervals. If the king had seen through Catherine’s falsehoods, he might now suspect that Nan had also lied to him. She would truly be ruined if that were the case.

“And there is more,” Anne said. “The queen is accused of taking Tom Culpepper as her lover after she was queen. That is treason and the king will have her head for it! The old Duchess of Norfolk and her son, Lord William Howard, have been arrested and taken to the Tower. So have Lady Rochford and two of the queen’s chamberers. The queen herself is to be imprisoned in the old abbey at Syon.” Anne gave a humorless laugh. “I am to be one of her jailers. I am to accompany her there.”

“As jailer … or prisoner?”

Anne fiddled with her sleeve. “No one who served the queen is free of suspicion. I suppose I will be both until I prove my loyalty.”

As the king’s spy, then. Nan kicked at a loose clod of earth. “Have you heard any rumors about Anna of Cleves? Or about my sister?” She was worried about Cat. If Anne’s husband, Will Herbert, or her brother, Will Parr, knew what was going on at Richmond, Nan was certain they’d have told Anne.