Maid of the King's Court

by Lucy Worsley

  There was a long pause, while my father looked out across the water. The sharp wind had made his eyes run slightly.

  “Indeed,” he said, and sighed. “To be frank,” he continued a little impatiently, “the matter does not go prettily. As you are such a woman of the world now, I can speak openly.”

  He sighed again and twitched his head towards me in his old fox-like manner.

  “There is the matter of our unfortunate brother that goes against our family,” he said drily. “Then there was the matter of the Viscount Westmorland. Although you really were blameless, there was some scandalous talk about the affair.”

  Another pause followed, and a glum silence descended over us both. I bowed my head and looked at the path. I had so looked forward to seeing him again and had hoped for better news than this.

  “Rosebud,” he finally said, slowing his pace still further and reaching for my hand. He fumbled a little in his heavy gloves. “Marriage need not be the only solution to our problems, you know. There are other ways to win riches at court.”

  “What in God’s name do you mean?” I cried, drawing him to a halt in the middle of the pathway and trying to withdraw my hand from his. I had a horrible premonition of what his answer might be.

  “Well, I have heard that the king has taken a great interest in you,” he said, as if unwillingly. “A great personal interest in you, I mean.”

  So someone had seen the king squeezing me tightly in his arms! I knew that gossip flew constantly round the palace, but the Countess of Malpas had warned me plainly enough that I must never feature in it. I could feel my cheeks grow red. Would my father despise me for being bold and saucy — as he had done once before when I met the viscount?

  But he had more to say and said it while looking right past me, fixing his glassy stare on the choppy waves.

  “Through all the years of history,” he continued, “the king has always taken a mistress, you know, as well as a wife. The mistress is well rewarded, with riches and with influence as well. As you know, the king needs children. Even illegitimate children are better than no children. If the king should ever ask you to share his bed —”

  This was not at all what I had expected. “Father!” I cried out.

  “You should not say no.”

  I could hardly bear to stay with him and listen to this, for it seemed such a betrayal. But neither could I leave this old man out here all alone with his stick.

  He sighed again, patting my hand gently between both of his clumsy gloved paws. Now he looked into my eyes, and I looked back to see the water from his eyes was brimming over on to his cheeks.

  “It would be a great gift to our family, Rosebud,” he said, “if you were to become the king’s mistress.”

  As I hurried back to my chamber, both arms hugging my furry cloak close to my body, I had never before felt in such need of a friend.

  My own father, suggesting this! Matters at Stoneton must have grown desperate indeed for him to recommend such a course, I thought, as I trudged from the garden into the cloister without really seeing either.

  But a sudden thought brought me to a complete stand still, and a passing page boy almost bumped into me.

  I’d remembered that my father had already tried to marry me off to a drunken and inconstant lout. Perhaps — astonishing thought — his judgement was flawed? Or perhaps I was being naive, and everyone would think me a fool if I were to turn down such an offer from the king … should it ever be made.

  But to whom could I talk for advice? I pondered the matter as I quickly changed my dress to go on duty. Certainly not to Katherine nor the Countess of Malpas. Nor even Henny, who was now doing my bodice up at the back with her customary efficiency. No, it would have to be someone who knew both me and the wicked world of the court. And it would have to be someone whom I could trust with my life.

  “Ned!” I hissed sharply, as he passed my station in front of the elephant tapestry, carrying his bundle of faggots towards the fireplace. He pretended to drop a piece of wood, scrabbling on the floor to rearrange his load and secretly smiling up at me through his silky fringe. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up a little, reminding me that he did real work, unlike the foppish middle-aged courtiers who fawned round the king. We both glanced at the king’s party, busy at cards at the other end of the Great Chamber near the warmth of the fireplace. They were happily engaged in their game, paying us no heed. “Meet me in the banqueting house at four!” I whispered, as discreetly as I could.

  The deep chimes of the palace clock kept us all to our schedules, but today they seemed to take their time in coming. But I knew that Ned would not let me down unless the king himself had demanded some whim be met. Once more wrapped in my warmest cloak, I scurried through the darkening garden to the little turreted building that the king used on summer evenings for listening to music. I knew too that Ned would somehow have got hold of its key, even though it was supposed to be locked up and out of bounds at this time of year. He had excellent contacts. Ned could obtain any key to any door, however private.

  I was right — the stiff, cobwebby door creaked open at my shove. The banqueting house was cold, of course, and a melancholy scatter of mouse droppings trailed across its floor. The blank eyes of ancient goddesses and nymphs gazed from the painted walls and ceilings. But Ned was there, bouncing up like a puppy and smiling in welcome. His teeth were so white that I could see his grin floating in the darkness. He had with him a little horn lantern, dark on three sides, casting just enough light to see, but not enough to arouse suspicion.

  He quickly sat me down on a cushionless bench, laying his own cloak across my knees. Ned laughed at my protests, telling me that he never felt the cold. “Now then, are you ready to see my marvellous new trick?” he asked, whipping out his tinderbox. His job had made him a master of fire-lighting, and he had so many different ways of striking sparks from his flint that I often teased him for being obsessed.

  “No, Ned!” I spoke more sharply than I’d meant to. “Not now. Something’s happened.”

  Instantly, he was all ears, and his arm was round my shoulders. I luxuriated for a moment in its warmth and weight. It was very difficult to begin, and I could not meet his eyes, but I explained everything that my father had said. When I had finished, I sat quietly, hanging my head a little, but feeling more peaceful inside for having let it all out.

  But Ned’s arm had dropped away, and he turned from me on the bench. He seemed strangely troubled by my story, so much so that a worm of worry started to writhe in my stomach again, even more violently than before. “This is not so unusual, is it?” I begged him. “Surely you have heard a tale like this before?”

  “Yes,” he said somewhat distantly. “It’s true that everyone said the lady Anne was the king’s mistress while Queen Katherine was still the queen, and then the future Queen Jane was seen sitting on the king’s knee while Queen Anne still lived. It has happened before.”

  “Well, then,” I said. I began to wonder if he thought I had been presumptuous in supposing that the king could possibly find me attractive. Perhaps it was my ridiculous pride, once again, that had simply been setting me up for a fall.

  “I know that I’m not plump or fertile or beautiful,” I said. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Ned. I don’t know how I could have thought that the king would ever seriously want me.”

  “Oh, come on!” Ned sounded almost annoyed. “You know better than that. You’re as bad as the rest of the bloody maids of honour, fishing for compliments. You must know that all the gentlemen of the court exchange huge sums of money just betting on the colour of the stockings you wear each day on your long legs.”

  This at least had the effect of jolting me out of my misery.

  “But how do they know?” I asked in some bewilderment. “I am very decorous and never lift my skirt. I don’t go in for all that French toe-pointing like some of the maids do.”

  “That’s true. You always keep your legs together, unlike Mistress H
oward. I think that hoity-toity French tiring woman of Mistress Howard’s finds out what you’re wearing underneath,” he said vaguely, as if not really interested. “She probably asks Henny and sells the information. Hoity-toity she may be, but she’s not too grand to take a bribe.”

  “Why don’t I know anything about this?”

  “Because the gentlemen are frightened of you. You’re cleverer than they are. You laugh at them, and it hurts them. That’s why they’re all attracted to the idea of bending you to their will.” This was a new concept to me. I began to turn it slowly over in my mind, considering it from all angles. I got up suddenly from the bench in order to disperse a fresh cloud of unpleasant ideas. Ned’s voice once again interrupted my train of thought.

  “But you — you, Eliza, as the king’s mistress!”

  The words burst from him, as if against his will. He grabbed my hand, pulled me back down towards the seat, and looked urgently into my eyes. Although I had studied them so often, I felt that I had never noticed before just how shapely his eyebrows were. Then he dropped my hand and turned away once again.

  “I hoped that you wanted something else. Something … different, not this. Nothing like this at all. I cannot tell you what to do.”

  With that he jumped up, took away his lantern and his light, and began barring up the shutters of the window.

  Our conversation was so strange and unsatisfactory that it had made me feel worse, far worse. I stared at him in consternation. What did he mean by “something … different”? Surely he didn’t mean me and him, together? Surely he couldn’t mean me and him?

  Ned was still in the room with me, dropping the shutter bars into place with needless force, but I felt terribly alone. I stood up abruptly.

  Without another word, I walked out and banged the heavy door.

  I trudged back through the gardens, leaving Ned to finish the locking up. My hands were freezing even inside my cloak. An icy little wind had started up, and the iron weather vanes set in the centre of each small square flower bed were beginning to turn and whistle.

  “I thought you were supposed to be my friend, Ned,” I muttered to myself. “I wanted advice from you, not mysterious riddles.”

  I wished that I’d had the wit to say it earlier, when I was still with him.

  “I’d better just keep away from you, Ned, if I make you feel bad,” I declared, with melodramatic passion. “It’s not as if we could ever marry. I really hope you didn’t mean that.”

  Then it occurred to me that if anyone could see me strolling in the wintry garden after dark, talking to myself, they’d assume I’d gone crazy.

  The palace lights, twinkling blurrily behind latticed panes, seemed warm and inviting, and I felt the urge for something to thaw me out. Unusually, I decided to go to the buttery adjoining the Great Hall and ask for a glass of spiced wine. We all had this privilege, though we maids of honour rarely used it. We preferred to eat in the Great Chamber, or else to have our servants bring us food and drink in our comfortable rooms rather than share the common benches with the lower servants. Indeed, I had not sat with the general run of the household staff since the very first night of our arrival, when Katherine and I had known no better.

  Of course I had been expecting far too much when I’d had the idea of spiced wine. They didn’t have anything so fancy at the buttery bar. I hadn’t the energy to refuse the proffered alternative of ale. I took my cup through to the hall and sat gloomily by myself at one of the long tables, empty at that time of day apart from the usual huddle of young men talking about the Lord knows what nasty business in the corner. I felt I couldn’t bear for one of my colleagues from the state apartments to have seen me at that moment, and that at least here no one would know who I was.

  After a moment, though, I realised that I was under surveillance. I was surprised to see Will Summers detach himself from the noisy group of stable lads and bakers’ assistants, and come towards me with his snake-hipped walk.

  “All alone, my lover?” he said, sitting down companionably beside me. “This isn’t quite the place for a maid of honour to be, you know.”

  “Of course not,” I said, hoping that I didn’t look as grumpy as I felt. “But I just wanted to be left alone for a while, and not be with the great gaggle of girls upstairs.”

  “Pondering our future, are we?” he asked, not unkindly. “I hear it speculated that great things are in store for you, indeed that the king himself has his eye upon your pert behind.”

  “Indeed, and a great burden to me the matter has become!” I burst out. It was surely indiscreet and dangerous, but I knew that Will Summers was wily and wise. I needed someone, at least, to be on my side. I noticed that in a normal doublet and hose, not his usual curious multicoloured costume, he looked handsome and almost like a fine young lord. For a moment I wished that he was indeed a lord and that my father could contract me in marriage to him. In a partnership with Will I suspected that there would be kindness, tolerance, and humour.

  “Now, Eliza,” he said sternly. “I can see what’s going on.”

  “Oh, is that so, Master Summers?” I said sharply, banging down my pewter cup on the table. I was further distressed at the notion my private affairs were so transparent. “Do give me the benefit of your advice.”

  “It’s simple,” he said, calmly pushing my cup out of his way and leaning on the table towards me. “And it’s clear what you should do. Don’t throw away your chances through some fine feelings about your honour. One of the most powerful positions at court is vacant at the moment. The king needs a mistress, it’s clear. He’s not getting what he wants from his wife. And a mistress has an untold opportunity for getting what she wants — or, if not what she herself wants, what her friends want.”

  I could see that he was earnestly giving me what he believed to be good counsel.

  “But, Will — would you?”

  “I know what you mean. That ulcer gives off a hideous stench. I have to put up with it myself when I entertain the king as the doctor gives his leg its mineral bath.” He laughed, but it was an uneasy sound.

  “But think of it this way, Carrots,” he began again. “One day you will have to marry — you won’t have any choice — and your husband will inevitably not be to your taste either. There’s no fairy-tale prince waiting to whisk you away to a life of romance, my dear. Master Barsby isn’t for the likes of you.”

  I winced, but Will ignored me.

  “Your business in life,” he said, “will be solely to bear some unattractive man his snotty children … unless you choose to do something about it. You’re clever enough to understand what I’m saying.”

  I thought hard.

  I had decided to cut Ned right out of my thoughts; he was too difficult, too upsetting. That much was clear. And certainly it could feel good to take action, to settle upon a future for myself.

  The idea started to grow on me. It was a challenge. I could see that many things I desired — jewels and influence — might be mine for the taking. In fact, why in heaven not? Why not make my own choice? I had never dreamed I had such power… .

  What about making a fresh start on my court career, with no thoughts of Ned to hold me back and glittering treasures ahead of me?

  I suddenly looked up and saw that Will was still watching me, smiling a little. I felt a blush rising up across my cheeks. I feared that he had been able to read my whole succession of thoughts as they had crossed my face.

  “Thank you kindly, Master Summers,” I said, draining my goblet and standing up decisively. “That is indeed a most interesting idea.”

  It was an interesting thought, but I did not act upon it straightaway, not least because I liked and respected my own mistress, Queen Anne.

  The king did not pick me out again for attention as spring slipped into summer, and I kept well away from Ned Barsby too. He was hardly ever in the Great Chamber. It was only by accident that I discovered where he had got to.

  “What’s that? Were you asking
why we never see Master Barsby?” The Countess of Malpas was speaking to another of the maids of honour, but I overheard her words. “I believe that he has requested a transfer to serve in the private dining chamber, instead of with us in the Great Chamber.” Without Ned to joke about with, the long evenings sometimes seemed endlessly dull. But I told myself that his transfer was the best thing for us both.

  I continued to wait upon the poor neglected queen, and when we were together in her own apartments, we often had gay times, laughing and joking. Gradually, we managed to get her into more becoming clothes, and even induced her to start drinking wine.

  And yet there was a sense of doom about the whole enterprise of her being queen. There was clearly no sign of a pregnancy, and the king gave up coming to her chambers at night. Katherine was also less and less assiduous in her attendance. In fact, it was almost as though she had ceased to be a maid of honour, and I was not sure how she was spending her time instead.

  The Countess of Malpas gave us dreadful warnings against gossiping about the king and queen’s relationship — or the lack of it. “We do not discuss the king’s private relationship, even among ourselves,” she said, as stern as I had ever seen her. “He has placed his trust in our mistress the queen. He believes that God will give her a baby boy, so we must do that too.”

  Will Summers told me that he and all the gentlemen had been called to a special meeting to hear the results of an enquiry by the royal doctors into the king’s health.

  “His Majesty is well able ‘to do the act’ with any woman he should choose,” Will hissed into my ear as he partnered me into chapel. “We heard it straight from the mouth of all three royal doctors. Just not with his wife. She’s simply too unattractive.”

  Katherine had made a rare appearance in the chapel, and I was pleased to see her scowling at us from across the aisle, aware that she was missing out on Will’s well-informed gossip.

  This news about the king’s virility was one of many things that half of me would have liked to talk over with Ned. Yet whenever I saw him in the courtyard or cloisters, I simply dipped my head and went on walking. I sometimes caught myself listening for his name on the lips of my colleagues as they talked over all the news of the palace.