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

her.
    “She’s at it again!” I heard one of them say. “Why can’t she just forget him! He’s gone!”
    Presently I heard a disturbance behind me and in a moment another girl had come up to Alice’s bed. A girl I didn’t recognize. In the dim light I could tell only that she had long dark hair, loosely braided, and that she wore around her shoulders a thick woolen shawl embroidered in a pattern of deep blue and sparkling silver.
    “Stop that noise, foolish chit!” the newcomer said tartly. “You’re keeping us all awake!” She did not bother to keep her own voice low, but barked out her words as she reached swiftly under the blanket and took Alice by the hand.
    “Come with me!” she said. “I’ll give you something to put you to sleep, so we can all sleep through the night.” And pulling the weeping Alice out of bed she fairly dragged her to a door at the opposite end of the long room and, taking a key that she wore around her neck, unlocked the door.
    “You may as well come along,” she said to me as she pulled Alice through the door after her.
    We were in a small chamber furnished with two beds, a chest and a low table. It had a sloping roof and a little barred window, beneath which was a brazier full of red coals. The room smelled of smoke and of something else, something heavy and sweet. A scent I had never smelled before.
    “You are both new to this house,” the girl with the braid said. “You are Catherine, whose mother no one mentions because she was the king’s whore. And you are the sniveling Alice, whose lover has married another.”
    “What?” The shock of the girl’s words made Alice stop crying. “What did you say?”
    “I said your lover, John Brockley, the gentleman usher, has married another woman. He never told you he was betrothed, did he.”
    Alice, her eyes wide, shook her head.
    “What other woman?”
    The girl with the braid went to the wardrobe and began pouring what looked like wine into a goblet. To this she added powder from a jar and stirred the concoction.
    “It matters not. When next you see him, he will have a wife.”
    She handed the goblet to Alice.
    “Here. Drink this.”
    Alice sniffed the liquid, made a sour face, then looked at us. She flinched, but obeyed and drank the liquid in a single gulp. When she finished she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand—something we were admonished never to do—and handed the goblet back.
    I stood watching, somewhat dazed.
    “Who are you?” I asked the girl with the braid. “And how dare you speak ill of my mother?”
    She regarded me coolly. “I am Joan. My father is William Bulmer, Lord Mannering. And everyone in this household knows about your mother, the ill-famed Lady Jocasta.”
    Alice was staring at me.
    “My mother was beautiful. Others were envious of her beauty, and so they defamed her.”
    Joan smiled. “If you like,” she said. “The truth is known, whatever you may say. And besides, she is long dead.”
    I needed no reminder that my mother had been laid to rest long before, when I was a very small child, barely old enough to remember her. My memory of her was of a great sadness, of something warm and loving that had suddenly vanished from my life, leaving only sorrow behind.
    “You guard your tongue about my mother, Joan Bulmer! Or I will whip you!”
    “Indeed? I would not advise it. The last girl who struck me was found much bruised and broken, beside the malt-house door.”
    The menace in her tone made me wary. I knew little of the workings of my grandmother’s large household, but I was aware that every large noble household had its share of ruffians, its cliques, its back-stairs brawls. It had been that way in my father’s much smaller establishment. Things went on behind the backs of the stewards—deeds that were never brought to light. Sometimes quite violent deeds. Until I knew more about the ways of my grandmother’s establishment I would not provoke this brazen girl further.
    But