The Queen's Governess Read Free Page B

Maud, I wiped Master Cromwell’s face with cool water and tipped a mug of ale to his parched lips. Once, when Master Stephen went into the shippon to see to their horses tethered amidst our cattle, Thomas Cromwell seized my wrist and called me wife.
    “Wife, my time has come. Through Wolsey, I shall serve the king.”
    “I’m Katherine Champernowne, Master Cromwell. Your horse threw you in Devon, and you have a fever.”
    “All my work,” he went on as if I had not spoken. “I couldn’t see why at first he wanted me to survey the abbeys this far away, but now I do. He’ll quietly close them; he’ll use their riches for the schools he’ll build in his name. His great legacy is not only ruling England for the king but his new colleges at Ipswich and Oxford.”
    “Who is that, sir?”
    “Wolsey. His Eminence, the Cardinal Wolsey!”
    It was the first time it had occurred to me that the king might reign, yet did not rule England by himself. Without anyone else to hear, it was great fun to pretend I was this man’s wife and lived in London and had a horse of my own to ride.
    “I should like to see your Cardinal Wolsey,” I told him. I knew he wasn’t hearing what I said in his delirium. How I’d like to beg him to take me with him when he went back to London. The privy desires of my heart went to my head as I told him, “I should like to see London and the king and his Spanish queen and live there too!”
    “Who would think it?” he raved on, thankfully not responding to my chatter. “I must list the abbeys for him. But don’t tell the king!”
    “No, I won’t.”
    “Won’t what?” he said, looking at me, puzzled. As if his fever had broken, he was even more drenched with sweat. Since he hadn’t really heard a thing I’d said, I told him, “I won’t tell the king that you had to put up here in the likes of a cattle- and beekeeper’s house in the depths of Devon, tended by a maid who longs to see the places you’ve been dreaming about.”
    “Dreaming? Have I?” he said, releasing his strong grip on my wrist at last. “Dreaming, I warrant, of a Devon lass. One with a quick wit. I was talking about Cardinal Wolsey’s orders, was I not?”
    I looked him straight in the eyes, eyes darker than my tawny brown ones and far deeper set, as if shadows lurked there, guarding whatever depths lay within.
    “You did, Master Cromwell, but I know how to keep a secret and am of no account in this backwater place anyway.”
    His eyes glittered with the remnants of delirium. Eagerly he drank from the cup of ale I offered him, then cleared his throat and said, “I think your father told me you can read and write.”
    “I tend the lord and lady’s daughter at the Hall, so when she and her brother are tutored, I am too, silently, but I rehearse it all well later.”
    “Clever girl. I’m exhausted now. Pain—debilitating,” he said, though I recall I didn’t know what that last word meant then and later asked Sarah. “I need to sleep, and we will talk in the morning.”
    “In the morning, if you wish, we can move you to Dartington Hall.”
    He shook his sleek, dark head. “Shoulder hurts too much. Maybe later, everything later . . .”
    He seemed instantly to sleep. But with Thomas Cromwell, I learned later to my detriment, seeming was more important than being.

    It’s true and no mistake that Thomas Cromwell was secretary and councilor to the king’s great and powerful Cardinal Wolsey. Cromwell had no broken shoulder but a severely wrenched one that had come out of its socket. Sadly, for me, he did move to Dartington Hall, where Lord Barlow’s leech put it back in place and made him a sling and dosed him with pain-deadening herbs. Maud, fat as a woolsack in her third pregnancy, was ecstatic that he’d given Father a half crown for our tending of him. For several days, I caught only glimpses of Cromwell here and there about the manor grounds with Lord Barlow. I heard Cromwell had ordered his man