Maid of the King's Court

by Lucy Worsley

  The silence seemed to me to be growing uncomfortable. “The Duchess of Northumberland has sent us from Trumpton Hall, Your Majesty,” I said.

  At once the countess shushed me. “Excuse her, Your Majesty, she does not yet know not to speak first.”

  “Ah, that ancient crone Northumberland has sent us a bold ginger kitten, I see!”

  I’d expected a booming, deep voice, but it was shallow and croaky, as if it belonged to a much older man.

  But at his words I could not contain myself. Gibes about red hair from the redheaded king himself !

  “Ginger,” I said loudly, “is a fine colour for the hair, sir, if I may be so bold.”

  There might have been a stifled yelp of laughter from one of the gentlemen standing behind the king. But a sharp pain in my ankle told me that the countess had actually given me a vicious little kick. I tensed myself, aghast. Had I been too personal?

  He glanced at me briefly, but then his gaze went quickly back to Katherine. She was still deep down in her curtsey, her head demurely bent forward, her shoulders pulled back, a picture of obedience. The king seemed deeply uninterested in the Duchess of Northumberland or the colour of hair. Spinning round abruptly, he went with his slow stomp to sit in the oriel window. I turned to my companions in some consternation and saw that Katherine was blushing and — to my mind — simpering. The Countess of Malpas was patting her arm approvingly.

  Too late, I realised that I’d made a mistake. He’d simply wanted to look at us, not to talk. I would have to take this maid of honour business, which sounded so easy, more seriously than I’d thought.

  The elephant tapestry became an ally of mine, for I loved to examine its beautiful intricacies as the long hours went slowly forward. Our first day in the Great Chamber set the pattern for many to follow. At first I could hardly bear to admit to myself that life at court was boring, but so it was. It was tiring too, as we were constantly on our feet, always smiling, curtseying to the king and the other men who came and went. Sometimes they lingered, staring at Katherine in open admiration, but often they scarcely seemed to see us at all.

  “We’re not just sheep for sale,” I would mutter under my breath if a gentleman paused by the tapestry for a long, leering look. But Katherine would shush me and smile ever more beatifically.

  When we were off duty, though, in the afternoons when the king was in council or out riding, the palace became a delightful place. There was the best of everything for us: fine beef, hot water brought at once whenever we wanted to wash, plenty of firewood to keep our rooms cosy, and huge squashy floor cushions upon which we could loll and gossip with the other maids and ladies-in-waiting. We drank amber wine from delicate glass goblets and never gave a thought to how much anything cost.

  “Look!” I said to Katherine. “The countess says we may borrow any of these books we like!”

  “Oh, don’t waste your time with books” came her dismissive answer. “I’m off to learn that new Italian song. There’s no time for sitting around reading, you know.” But in fact she spent the afternoon flirting with the singing man and not really learning the tune at all.

  Even better than the palace’s luxuries, though, was a long-anticipated treat from home. At my urgent written requests sent back to Stoneton, my father had agreed that Henny could come down to the court to be my own tiring woman. Although we were servants ourselves, each maid of honour was in turn allowed to have up to three lesser personal servants. So I was half sick with excitement to see Henny again.

  When finally the group of riders from Stoneton clattered into the palace courtyard, I could hardly restrain myself from leaping into Henny’s arms. I could tell that she, too, wanted to give me a hug. Instead, though, she disguised her spontaneous lurch towards me as a comical pretence at having lost the use of her legs through sitting too long. Once we were back in my room, away from the eyes of the snooty serving men, we did have hours of chat and some happy tears.

  I have to admit, though, that a certain awkwardness quickly descended upon our relationship. When we were in company, Henny’s accent to me sounded uncouth and uneducated, and I found her dresses embarrassingly out-of-date. I was grateful to Katherine for getting her own French tiring woman, Hortense, to take Henny in hand, forcing her to lace more tightly and to wear the white Dutch cap that all the older ladies wore to cover their offensively grey hair.

  One day Master Barsby found me mooning about at the window of the Great Chamber, watching Henny in the courtyard below as she went to fetch firewood for our rooms. I noticed that she completely failed to bow, as she should have done, to the Lord Chamberlain when he went by. She looked just as if she were crossing our courtyard at Stoneton, pattens on her feet, skirt hoicked up, and her red meaty forearms showing. It made me tap my fingernails on the pane with annoyance.

  “Having difficulty reconciling court and home?” he asked softly, as if he’d read my mind. “It happens to nearly everyone.”

  I did not wish to answer. “How long have you been at court?” I said, countering one question with another. Although I found him dangerously perceptive, Master Barsby did seem to be both knowledgeable and kind. It was a combination that I had already learned to be uncommon in the palace.

  “Since I was twelve,” he said, moving to stand elbow to elbow with me in the window bay. “I was sent here as a boy. I know all the wicked ways of the courtiers, but I can never really be one of them.”

  “Why not, Master Barsby?” I asked, turning to look at him. To me he seemed to be truly an integral part of the place, especially now, in his dark blue doublet, tossing his hair out of his blue eyes and smiling a little as he looked down at me. He was just a head taller than I was and pleasantly broadshouldered and narrow-hipped. His doublet lacing was all awry, as usual, and I had to restrain myself from absently reaching out to put it right for him.

  “I was born on the wrong side of the blanket,” he said, ruefully rubbing the back of his head. “In short, I’m a bastard. My father may be an earl, but he never married my mother. And he has no need to make me his heir because he has my half-brothers from his countess for that. Unlike you, I have no real home to go back to.”

  At this I noticed that he gave a heavy sigh. It was the first time he had seemed anything less than urbane and charming, and I found myself touching his sleeve in sympathy.

  I already knew that many courtiers did pine for their homes. Indeed, only the other day I had come across the Countess of Malpas with pink rims around her blue eyes and her hair all undone. “What’s the matter, my lady?” I’d said. “Have we displeased the king?” It was almost shocking to see her sad, as she was usually so relentlessly cheerful.

  “Oh no, oh no,” she said distractedly, pushing back her blonde hair. “It’s just that I miss my littlest boy so much. He’s at home in the country.” She had no fewer than ten children, I knew, and her oldest son was with us at court. “As I had so many other children for the succession, I thought I would keep my last baby just for myself,” she’d explained. “But I have hardly seen him since I was called into waiting.” I remembered her words as I heard Master Barsby confess that his situation was almost worse. He had no one missing him, no one to miss.

  “So …” I said slowly, “even though you’ve been at court for years, you don’t really live here?”

  Ned smiled but shifted his weight from foot to foot. This was getting to be the most serious conversation that we’d ever had. But he didn’t make a joke of it as I’d thought he might.

  “Well,” he said slowly, rubbing his head again. I’d observed that he often did that when he was thinking. It left his hair standing up in spikes so that he looked like a little boy. “No one really lives here. It’s not a home. It’s a place of work. I may look like I’m at home here, but that’s because of my job. You know that the king’s page spends a lot of time in the king’s company. I see much more of him than you maids of honour.”

  This was certainly true. And we’d heard gossip that when the d
oor to his private apartments was safely closed, the king would burp and swear and drink and tease or wrestle with his gentlemen, getting to know them almost as if they were his friends, not his servants.

  “Unlike you lot, though”— and here Ned swung his thumb towards the place by the tapestry where we maids of honour usually stood —“I can’t get any higher. You can marry well and climb the ladder. But I can never inherit my father’s estate or hope to become a groom or a gentleman of the bedchamber.”

  “So you’re not really a courtier — is that what you’re saying?” I was a little shocked that he would admit to this, for being a part of the court seemed to me — in theory at least — to be the most desirable thing in England.

  “Yes,” he said, nodding seriously. “But then who is really one of the courtiers, as you put it?”

  I widened my eyes, about to protest, but then I remembered the sadness of the countess.

  “This place plays tricks on your mind,” he said, as I reluctantly nodded back at him. “It all seems so wonderful, but it isn’t real. Don’t get drawn in too deeply, that’s my advice. Do you know what they say?”

  I shook my head, dumbly. With sudden and surprising grace, Ned leaned forward and used a forefinger to lift a curl of my hair away from my cheek. He put his lips so close to my ear that I could feel his warm breath. His whispered words thrilled but also chilled me.

  “They say you can never escape.”

  The next morning, I plaited my hair more carefully than usual and stole a little of Katherine’s rouge to put some colour into my cheeks. I intended to be on duty a little early, hoping to catch Ned Barsby once again before the rest of the courtiers arrived in the Great Chamber.

  I studiously avoided thinking about what Aunt Margaret might have said about my plan. I’d just received a letter from her enclosing a list of the values of the estates of all the king’s eligible unmarried gentlemen, and of course Ned Barsby’s name was not among them.

  But thinking over our conversation of yesterday, I felt that Ned’s revelations had made him my friend, perhaps the first male friend I’d ever had. Today I wanted to relax my guard with him, ask him stupid questions, maybe complain about the pompousness of the Lord Chamberlain.

  I even rehearsed various opening gambits in my mind.

  “What do you think, Ned, of the French ambassador?”

  I mouthed the words to myself before the silver mirror in our bedchamber, peering at my reflection and trying to calculate whether my lips looked prettier open or closed. “He said that we maids of honour are frightful English frumps and that our hair and dresses would never be tolerated at the chic court of France!”

  I had high hopes that Ned might disagree with the ambassador’s views.

  But the Countess of Malpas had other plans for our morning. When Katherine and I reached her room to have our outfits inspected before going on duty, it was full of commotion. The chamber was packed with all her servants, who were shaking with what looked like pain until I realised that it was actually suppressed laughter. They were wringing their hands, but the countess herself was wielding a broomstick. All of them were staring intently upwards at the carving over the window.

  “Shh!” Lady Malpas hissed as we entered, wagging her one free hand behind her back at us to make us stand still. Everyone froze. Looking upwards myself, I spotted the bony arms and long curling tail of a living creature, clinging to the scallop shell positioned over the window. The countess moved forward stealthily before suddenly giving a great wallop with her brush. With a horrible, childlike scream, the creature hurled itself down from the window, catching at a tapestry on its way with what appeared to be fingers, then loped sideways to the door.

  “Blessed Virgin protect us!” Lady Malpas was shaking her broom in rage. “That miserable monkey of Master Summers’s has been drinking Thimble’s milk again.” Thimble was the countess’s cat and much doted upon by his mistress.

  Katherine and I exchanged nods of recognition. We had heard about this famous monkey, which the courtiers found to be hilarious and exasperating in equal measure, but we had never before seen it. We’d often been told how it would steal the expensive imported figs brought out to tempt the king’s appetite after dinner in full view of everyone, but acting out a pantomime parody of a light-fingered burglar.

  Katherine and I could not help smiling as the ridiculous creature now scampered for the stairs, rubbing its backside, hooting, and making as much fuss as it possibly could. “You may laugh,” the countess said, but without much malice. “Look what the little devil has done to my tapestry!” The monkey had pulled loose great hanks of thread.

  “Does this mean that Master Summers is well again?” Katherine asked. We had heard of Master Will Summers, the king’s fool and the monkey’s master, but he had been sick since our arrival at court.

  “Indeed he is!” said the countess, finally letting one of her giggling tiring women take the broomstick from her and brushing down her skirt. “And he has been up here this morning with some news.” She smiled, her good humour restored. “Now that he’s back to normal, he’s planning the masque for Christmas, and you two are to have parts.”

  She was right to predict that we would be delighted. Katherine, always the charmer, flew across the room to give old Malpas a spontaneous kiss on the cheek. I had to admit it was hard to resist my cousin when she was in the grip of enthusiasm.

  And while I was conscious that my face had fallen into a crab-apple expression at Katherine’s antics, I was thrilled too. We had heard all about the court tradition of the masque, which was to be the climax of the forthcoming twelve-day feast of Christmas. During the midwinter holiday season, troupe after troupe of players, musicians, mummers, and acrobats would be brought in to entertain us. But best of all would be the Twelfth Night masque put on by members of the court. And this year, it would also be the crowning glory of the king’s wedding celebrations.

  “You, Mistress Howard, are to play the part of Jealousy,” Lady Malpas went on, consulting some notes on a piece of parchment, “in a rich red dress, and Mistress Camperdowne is to be Temptation, in green.”

  I couldn’t help feeling that our roles were the wrong way round and that Katherine would have made a better Temptation. Certainly, I felt like Jealousy myself when I imagined her in a crimson satin gown. Dressed like that, she was sure to snap up the best available husband. Marriage was in the very air we breathed. Every day brought fresh speculation about what the king’s new wife would be like.

  “But now,” the countess said, “be off with you! The king’s abroad early this morning, and you should get to the Great Chamber at once.” Like the monkey, we, too, rushed for the stairs, chattering as we went.

  The following afternoon saw the first of our rehearsals, and these quickly became our only concern and our main topic of conversation.

  When I first heard that the king had a fool, I assumed he would be a charity case like poor old Tub in Stoneton village, witless and speechless. Far from it. Will Summers, who had written the Masque of the Vices, as it was named, had more and better words than anyone I’d ever met.

  He strode into the tennis court, which was to stand in for the Great Hall for rehearsals, looking a little like a magician, or maybe an angry bat, in his long black cloak. The white paint he wore clung to the creases of his face to turn it into a slightly sinister mask.

  “Now then, my maids, mistresses, monkeys, and all,” he cried, twirling around on one heel with his hand on his hip. “Tomorrow you have your costume fittings. The day after, you need to be back here to try out your chariots. Yes, each Vice will enter in a little chariot. The Master of the Revels has hired six little boys, who will come prancing out like this”— here he demonstrated a beautiful prance —“while pulling your chariots behind them. I just hope they’ll be able to shift your not inconsiderable weight, ladies. Now, which Vice shall we see first? You … you’re supposed to be Pride, are you? Well, why are you standing there drooping like Misery?
Straighten up!”

  I could not wait to throw myself into my part. This was my chance to make an impression upon the court.

  “I think that Temptation should wriggle and writhe like this, don’t you think, Master Summers?”

  “She would indeed, Mistress Camperdowne, if this were a comedy,” he replied, as everyone started to guffaw at my antics. “Perhaps you could aim for sultry and seductive instead of playing it for laughs. Although I do like the way you’ve really embraced your role.”

  Master Summers had even insisted that Mistress Cornwallis, who worked in the kitchens making the king’s puddings, should appear in the masque as Greed. Fortunately, Mistress Cornwallis was a jolly soul and didn’t mind a mockery being made of her ample girth.

  Despite the general atmosphere of hilarity and lawlessness, I couldn’t understand half the things that Master Summers said, and I was shocked one day when I heard him referring to the king as “Fat Face.”

  When I asked the Countess of Malpas why Master Summers wasn’t locked up for treason, she just shrugged and said that the king’s fool always had the gift of free speech, and that the king sometimes relished plain speaking after all the nonsense he got from others.

  “But don’t you go speaking plainly to him yourself,” she warned me. “That would be dangerous.”

  I complained that I hardly spoke to the king at all, and that was because she herself would not let me.

  “That’s because you’re not ready for it,” she said. “Learn from your cousin Katherine. She chats to him as if he were a real human being. It’s a lot of nonsense really, but he likes her compliments and flirting. Not a great lecture on the ancient history of Derbyshire like you tried to give him the other day.”

  Even before she had finished speaking, I opened my mouth to complain. When I’d told the royal librarian about the antiquity of Stoneton Castle, he had seemed quite fascinated, if surprised, that a maid of honour was interested in anything more than matching the colour of ribbons to dresses.