At first I did not realize that my identity, too, was the object of speculation. Several of the queen’s ladies stared openly at me as I danced. I’d forgotten I was supposed to be pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman.
I tried to change my movements, to make my steps bigger and less graceful, but it was too late. A glance at Queen Catherine told me that she, too, had recognized me as a female. When King Henry was not looking, she glared at me with venom in her eyes.
My heart sank. The queen had set ideas about what sort of women were permitted to live at court. She disapproved of lewd behavior and clearly thought me a creature of low station and even lower repute. I was grateful the visor concealed my face.
The dancing continued for another hour. I was relieved to be allowed to depart still unmasked but I spent the next few days expecting at any moment to be banished from court. Nothing happened. As far as anyone knew, the queen never asked who had played Maid Marian. She did, however, take a renewed interest in the morals of the court.
A short time after our morning invasion of her chamber, Queen Catherine convinced her husband that the reputation of his innocent young sister—Mary was then not quite fifteen—must be protected. He agreed. Henceforth, he decreed, Mary was to be shielded from the bawdier aspects of court life. He had no intention of restricting the antics of the high-spirited young men who were his boon companions, but it cost him nothing to put the Lady Mary’s household out of bounds. Not just the princess, but all the ladies who served her were, therefore, protected from temptation.
I told myself I should be grateful that we had not been sent away to rusticate at some distant country manor. At least we were still at court and able to attend all the pageants, tournaments, dances, and hunts.
JUST BEFORE MY twenty-first birthday, Queen Catherine gave birth to a son. Her first pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage, but now King Henry had an heir, yet another Prince Henry.
As master of revels, Harry Guildford was responsible for producing a pageant to celebrate the christening and, as he often had during the year and a half of the reign, he asked me for suggestions. The result was a great success, but Harry had another reason to be pleased with himself. He confided his news to me as we were supervising the removal of the pageant wagons afterward.
“The king has approved my betrothal to Meg Bryan, Jane. We are to wed sometime next year.”
“I am happy for you, Harry.” I knew Meg only in passing, but she seemed pleasant enough. She was eighteen, a slender girl of middling height with thick, dark brown hair and widely spaced, deep brown eyes. Her mother was one of the queen’s ladies and her father was the vice-chamberlain of Queen Catherine’s household. Meg and her younger sister, Elizabeth, had no official standing at court, but they had shared their parents’ quarters since the beginning of the reign and attended all the dances and tournaments.
“I feared her father might object. Because of what mine did,” Harry confessed.
“Sir Richard was pardoned,” I reminded him. “Besides, it is how you are regarded at court that matters now and everyone knows that you are one of the king’s oldest and dearest friends.”
“Oldest, mayhap, but no longer his favorite. Charles Brandon has usurped that honor. It is a good thing Brandon has no interest in Meg or he’d have had her instead of me.”
“I should think any father would object to that!” Harry’s mother had been right all those years ago. We had not heard the last of Charles Brandon’s irregular matrimonial history. Because of his earlier betrothal to Anne Browne, his marriage to Lady Mortimer had been annulled. After that he’d finally married his longtime mistress, but Anne Browne, poor lady, had died soon after giving birth to Brandon’s daughter.
“Will you befriend Meg, Jane?” Harry asked. “Talk to her about me while I am gone so she will not be tempted to flirt with any other man?”
I stared at him, perplexed. “Gone? Where are you going?”
He grinned at me. “Did I not tell you? I am to leave for Spain at the end of next month on an embassy to King Ferdinand.”
I had to force myself to smile. “That is a great honor, Harry.” One that would take him away from England for many months.
“Say rather a great challenge. Queen Catherine’s father is a treacherous man. Sometimes he has been England’s friend and other times he has plotted against us. I do not think he can be trusted at all and yet I must treat with him to maintain our alliance.”
“You have had a great deal of practice dealing with difficult monarchs,” I reminded him.
“Indeed I have,” he agreed. “But you have not given me your answer. Will you spend time with Meg while I’m gone? I have already told her that you are one of my closest friends.”
“I will be happy to,” I said, although I had my doubts even then. For some reason the other girls among the children of honor had never taken to me, and I had always felt more comfortable spending my free time with the boys. That preference had not changed over the years. The only female confidante I had ever had was the Lady Mary.
I had every intention of keeping my promise, but only a few days after Harry left for Spain, the infant Prince of Wales suddenly died. The entire court went into mourning, eliminating all entertainments at which I might encounter Meg Bryan by chance. Eventually, I sought her out in her lodgings, but only her sister, Elizabeth, was there.
“Will you tell your sister I would like to speak with her about Harry Guildford?” I asked.
Elizabeth paused between stitches in her needlework to smile sweetly at me. She was fifteen and the beauty of the Bryan family. She had bright, chestnut-colored hair, delicate features, and an air of innocence about her. “Meg does not want to talk to you, especially about Harry.”
“Why not?” I blurted out, too surprised by the young woman’s blunt statement to be any more subtle than she was.
“You are Harry’s…friend.” Her tone insinuated that we were more than that. Elizabeth was not so innocent as she appeared.
“He is like a brother to me.”
Her eyebrows lifted in disbelief.
If Elizabeth thought I was Harry’s mistress, clearly Meg did, too. I was at a loss as to how to convince either of them otherwise. “Harry and I have spent many long hours together,” I said, “planning masques and pageants.”
“Why would he want your help?” Elizabeth asked.
“We are old friends.”
“So you said.” She jabbed her needle into the cloth and I had the uneasy suspicion that she’d have liked to stab me with it. I admired her loyalty to her sister, but it was both frustrating and insulting to be condemned without a hearing.
I never did manage to have a conversation with Meg. In the end I gave up trying.
AFTER A LONG sojourn in Spain, Harry came safely home. On the twenty-fifth day of April in the year of our Lord fifteen hundred and twelve, he wed Meg Bryan. The king himself attended the ceremony and so did his sister. Meg would no doubt have preferred that I not be there, but I came as the Lady Mary’s waiting gentlewoman and she could hardly send me away.
Harry’s embassy to Spain resulted in an alliance to invade France and reclaim territory there that had once been ruled by England. The English fleet sailed a week after Harry’s wedding. He went with it as captain of the Sovereign.
For the first time in years, I found myself remembering France and my life there. I knew that the French were not the monsters the English believed them to be. Guy Dunois had been a sweet, amiable boy, every bit as much my friend as Harry Guildford later became. My governess, although I had by then forgotten her name, had been kind to me. Even Queen Anne of Brittany, the one time I had been presented to her, had kissed me and made much of me. Anne was still queen of France. She had taken King Louis XII, King Charles’s successor, as her second husband.