The Unfaithful Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Fifth Wife Read Free

letters, and I go with grandmother and my cousins to the farms and villages near here when she gives out her cures.”
    “Her cures?”
    “Her medicines. Her gingerflower water and oil of rosemary and all the other potions and possets she says will cure the poor.”
    “I wish she had a cure for the stone,” my father muttered.
    “Ask her for one,” I said. “And father—”
    “Yes?”
    “Until you are recovered, why not stay with Uncle William? He would welcome you I’m sure.” My uncle William Cotton, my late mother’s half brother, had a large estate in Kent. He was a warm, congenial man, known for his kindness and goodheartedness. I had never heard him speak ill of my father. “No need to go back to stay with Margaret.”
    Father nodded. “Yes. I’ll do that. If only his estate were nearer the court.” And with a final pat on my shoulder he went to find grandmother.
    *   *   *
    I never knew what I might find when I went upstairs, into the room we called the Paradise Chamber, the cold, drafty, barnlike room with the lofty ceiling where we girls spent our days and nights when not attending to our duties or our lessons.
    When I first arrived at Horsham it was all I could do not to think of the Paradise Chamber as not a paradise at all but rather a sort of dungeon, a place of no escape where we girls were locked in at night and watched by our jailers. We each had a small bed, with a thin mattress and a blanket, but bedwarmers were few, and my feet were always cold at night. The Paradise Chamber was drafty, and the beds farthest from the single hearth got little heat. At the foot of each bed was a trunk that held our clothing and other possessions. Some of the girls hid things underneath their mattresses but as the mattresses were full of fleas nothing of value could be kept there, except coins, and no one dared to put coins under their mattress because everyone knew that was where they were likely to be hidden.
    Nights in the Paradise Chamber were full of discomforts. We were awakened by the barking of the watchdogs in the courtyard, or by the moans and coughs of the sick girls among us, or by the cries of others awakened by nightmares.
    Some girls wept. One night not long after I arrived at Horsham I was awakened by the sound of sobbing from a bed near mine. The fire in the hearth had burned low and the few candles in the room gave little light, but when I sat up and looked for the source of the sobbing I quickly realized that it was coming from the bed directly across the room from mine. The bed where Alice Restvold slept. Like nearly all the girls in the room, Alice was a distant relation of mine, a few years older than I was, a red-headed girl with a pinched face and large staring blue eyes.
    The noise of her sobbing and sniffing annoyed me, I did not like being awakened. But at the same time I was curious to know what was causing her such distress. I got out of bed and, taking a candle, went to her.
    “Alice!” I whispered. “What is it, Alice?”
    “He—has—gone away,” she managed to say.
    “Who has gone away?”
    “My John.”
    “He is—your betrothed?”
    “No!”
    “Then who is he?”
    “My—beloved!”
    Her beloved, I thought. But not her betrothed. I had never known love, but I had seen it, often. I had seen lovers walking hand in hand, lying together in the warm wet grass on May Day, exchanging glances in church or at table—even embracing in darkened hallways. Father Dawes lectured us sternly about lust, the devil’s temptation of the flesh, but young as I was, I knew that love was a thing apart, nobler far than lust. A treasure to be cherished. I did not yet understand how the two can be entangled, how confusing the urges and pleasures of the body can be.
    “Why would your beloved ever leave you?” I whispered to Alice.
    But my question only made her sob more freely and more loudly. Several of the other girls tossed irritably in their beds and tried to shush