The Queen's Governess Read Free

record of my life, hoping I would someday amount to something. Over the years, from time to time, I went back and amended it from a far wiser point of view. And, oh yes, in my treasure box, I also kept a list of hints I brooded over, hoping to prove Maud had something to do with my mother’s accident, but who would credit it since it would be my word against hers?
    Without my tasks at Dartington Hall and my walks to and from that fine gray stone manor each day, I would never have had time to hide these pages or to seize a moment to myself— carpe diem, my first snippet of Latin. Without the kindly Barlows, I would not have learned about the other world beyond our thatched longhouse built of moorstone with the attached shippon which housed our six cattle. I never would have known about fine needlework or Turkey carpets or tapestries or delicacies like squab pie instead of fat bacon or Latin, let alone English sentences. I never would have heard of the other English shires beyond remote Devon, a distant world where a king ruled his people from great palaces. Without my times at Dartington Hall, I would never have learned such or yearned much. But still, it was not enough, and I longed to escape to—to I knew not where.
     
     
     
    “Unless her ladyship can find a lad in service for you to wed, you’ve managed to outprice yourself for the likes of most men round here,” Mistress Maud scolded me one day. “Too much fancy learning makes you put on airs. Your speech apes the Barlows’ and makes you stand out like a white duckling among the yellows. Besides, too many Champernownes live in these parts. They’d be the best prospects, but you’re cousins to most of them. So mayhap like a nun, you should just stay to home.”
    I was nearly nineteen then, but had kept myself so busy—and stayed so solitary when I could snatch some moments to myself—that I hadn’t given marriage a thought. Besides, Maud had managed to subtly convince me I was not, as she put it once, “fetching enough to fetch a good man.”
    Even after two children and nine years wed, Maud was still comely and knew it well. Her blond curls and blue eyes made me feel a lesser being with my unruly bounty of auburn hair and what Lady Barlow had once called my “tawny brown eyes.” I thought my face was fine enough with a straight nose and full, pert mouth, though my cheeks and nose were too oft tinged russet by the sun. But I was never one to study myself in the polished copper surface of a looking glass Maud had bought, and Lady Barlow kept such out of Sarah’s chamber.
    Then, too, Maud was slight and graceful, a far cry from my hourglass build. Lady Barlow was graceful too. I loved to watch her ride sidesaddle round the walls of Dartington Hall with her husband and son while Sarah and I waved. Someday, I vowed silently, I would learn to ride like that. In faith, even if it meant living near Maud, I’d rather read or ride than be wed—unless my husband bought me a horse and took me to live in London, that is.
    All these years, I was certain the good Lord would send me some sign that I was meant for better things than housemaid and nursemaid. I’ve since oft asked for forgiveness for this sinful thought, but then I thought the Great Creator of the world must owe me something for the loss of my mother so young. How was I to know what I deemed a gift from God for my deliverance must have come instead from the very gates of hottest hell?
     
     
     
    The second day that was to change my life forever, the first being the day my mother died, was the day I saw a king’s man, come clear from London. It was mid-October 1525, and the man was far more exciting than glimpses of Lord Barlow, who leased Dartington Hall from the Crown, even though it was the same fine manor that had once been owned by the Dukes of Exeter. But a man who worked for the king—or rather for King Henry’s great and powerful Cardinal Wolsey—that was splendid, despite the way I