The Queen's Governess Read Free Page A

discovered the poor man. As if it were indeed a heavenly omen, I found him nearly in the same spot my mother had died, but nearer the road toward the old clapper bridge.
    “Hey, there! Mistress!” a man called out to me. “My master’s been ill with a fever, and now his horse stepped in a hole and threw him. Perchance you can summon aid.”
    I knew instantly they were not from Devon, for the man’s speech was not broad and slow but clipped, sharper. I peered round a tree and saw the other man on the ground with the one who’d called out hovering over him. Two horses stood nearby, fetlock-deep in the brightly hued tumble of fallen leaves.
    “I can’t bring him round, but he’s breathing,” the burly man said as I approached, wary at first of a trick. The man who had called out looked terrified. That and their fine mounts and the prone man’s clothes made me think he must be someone important. And yes, he was sweated up with a fever, so it seemed someone had thrown river water on his face already.
    While I kept back a bit, the man who’d called out asked, “Pray, can you help me to waken him, then fetch help?”
    My heart thudded like horses’ hooves. Again I saw my mother’s body laid out here, but I bent at the river’s edge to fill my cupped hands with water and threw it on the unconscious man’s face. A strong face, chiseled, with dark, straight eyebrows. He was clean shaven, but not a young man, mayhap in the midst of his third decade. He had a pronounced scar across his pointed chin as if he were a ruffian, but his hands were not those of a fighter or laborer. Long-fingered, he had a pronounced callus where he must have oft gripped a pen; ink circled the close-cut nails of his right hand like half-moons. Dressed in leather and brown wool, he wore a befurred cape spread out under him as if he had wings—like an angel, I thought, another celestial sign.
    I got a second double handful of water and—unlike with my mother—brought him back to life, cursing and sputtering. But when he tried to shift his position, he muttered “Araugh!” through gritted teeth.
    “Master Cromwell, should I go for help?” his man asked. He was younger, burlier, more guard than secretary.
    “Can’t—move my shoulder—without pain—araugh!” he cried, clutching at it. The cords of his neck stood out; his face went red and more sweat popped out on his forehead. “Mistress, do you live nearby? This fever’s just from something I must have eaten—not the sweat or worse. We can pay for food and shelter, till—till my man here finds a place—ah, hell’s gates, it might be broken and my writing arm, too!”
    “I live with my father and his wife nearby in humble circumstances, just across that field,” I said, gesturing. “But if you could make it a mile beyond, I’m sure the Barlows would take you in at Dartington Hall. I know the family. It’s a grand place, once the seat of the Dukes of Exeter.”
    “We were headed there—for the night. But no. Too far. Maybe on the morrow. I’ll barely make it anywhere . . . and you speak well.”
    I spoke well! My heart leaped with loyalty, even a sort of love for this stranger. So I led their horses, as sleek and well fed as those the Barlows rode, while Master Stephen—that was the only name I knew him by, even years later—assisted Master Cromwell across the field toward our house.
    One look at the men and, with assurance the fever was not dangerous, Father lodged them in his bedroom, while the pregnant Maud took my tiny room where I usually slept with the two children. That night Father stayed on a pallet before the hearth and I on the thick horse blanket that had been under Mr. Cromwell’s saddle with his fine fur-lined cape spread over me. It smelled of wind and mist and pure adventure.
    In his fever that first night, he ranted about making his way in the world. Father and I tended him, with his man’s help. By candlelight, for hours, after Father went to look in on