Many people were leaving Amboise in the wake of the king’s death. “Where are they all going in such a hurry?” I asked as I rode on a pillion behind Maman, clinging tightly to her waist.
“To Blois, to the new king.”
“Is that where we are going?”
“No, my darling. Please be silent, Jeanne.”
She was my mother, and she sounded as if she might be about to cry, so I obeyed her.
Once free of the town, she avoided the main roads. When I’d made journeys with my father in the past, we’d spend our nights in private houses, mostly the country manors belonging to his friends. But Maman chose to take rooms in obscure inns, or lodge in the guest quarters of religious houses. It was not as pleasant a way to travel. The beds were often lumpy and sometimes full of fleas.
Maman said I must not speak to anyone, and she rarely did so herself. We both wore plain wool cloaks with the hoods pulled up to hide our faces. It was almost as if she feared being recognized as a lady of the French court.
Our journey took two months, but at last we reached the Pale of Calais, on the north coast of France. Maman reined in our horse and breathed an audible sigh. “We are on English soil now, Jeanne. This land belongs to King Henry the Seventh of England.” I was puzzled by her obvious relief at having left our country, but I dared not ask why.
A few days later, we had a rough sail across the treacherous body of water the English called the Narrow Seas, finally arriving in the town of Dover. It was the twelfth day of June, two days after Trinity Sunday, and the English port was in an uproar. The authorities were searching for an escaped prisoner who had been held under light guard at the English king’s palace of Westminster. His name was Perkin Warbeck—and he was a pretender to the throne.
My mother was much troubled by this news. She had met Perkin Warbeck years before when he visited the French court of King Charles. At the time he claimed to be the true king of England and had been seeking help from our king to overthrow England’s Henry VII.
Although I was by nature a curious child, I had little interest in the furious search for Warbeck. I was too caught up in the novel sights and sounds of our trip as we traveled overland to London. Everything was new and different—the language, the clothes, even the crops. We traveled for the better part of three days through the English countryside before we reached the city.
In London, we took a room at the King’s Head, an inn in Cheapside, and Maman sent word of our arrival to her twin brother, Rowland Velville, whom she had not seen in many years, not since he had left home to serve as a page for an English exile named Henry Tudor. That done, we settled in to wait for him.
Our chamber looked out upon the innyard. To pass the time, I watched the arrivals and departures of guests and the ostlers at work. Servants crisscrossed the open space dozens of times a day on errands. Deliveries were made. Horses were led to stabling. Once I saw a young woman, cloaked and hooded, creep stealthily from her room to another. It was a noisy, busy place, but all that activity provided a welcome distraction. We had no idea how long we would have to remain where we were.
On the third morning of our stay, the eighteenth day of June, I was awakened by the sound of hammering. I slipped out of bed, shivering a little in my shift, and went to the window. From that vantage point I had a clear view of a half dozen men constructing the oddest bit of scaffolding I had ever seen. It was made entirely of empty wine pipes and hogsheads of wine.
When it was completed, the men secured a heavy wooden object to the top. I blinked, bemused, but I was certain I was not mistaken. I had seen stocks before. Even in France, those who committed certain crimes were made to sit in them while passersby threw refuse and insults their way.
“Jeanne, come away from there!”
I turned to find my mother sitting up in bed, her face all flushed from sleep. I thought her surpassing beautiful and ran to her, clambering up beside her to give her a hug and a kiss. I loved the feel of Maman’s skin, which was soft as flower petals and smelled of rose water.
“What is all that hammering?” she asked.
“Some men built a scaffold out of wine pipes and hogsheads and put stocks on top of it. Is the innyard like a marketplace? Do you think it is the custom to punish criminals at the King’s Head?”
“I think only very special prisoners would merit such treatment. We must dress, and quickly.” Her face, always pale, had turned white as the finest parchment. I did not understand what was wrong, but I was afraid.
We had to play tiring maid to each other, having brought no servants with us from France. I laced Maman into a pale gold bodice and kirtle and helped her don the long rose-colored gown that went over it. We did have fine clothing, and Maman had taken special pains to pack our best. The fabrics were still new and smelled sweet and the colors were rich and vibrant.
By the time we dressed and broke our fast with bread and ale, a great to-do had arisen in the innyard. Together, as the bell in a nearby church tower rang out the hour of ten, we stepped out onto the low-railed gallery beyond the window and looked down.
A man had been placed in the stocks. His long yellow hair was dirty, and his fine clothing rumpled and soiled, but he still had the look of someone important. It was difficult to tell his age. He slumped like an old man and, since I was only eight, almost everyone seemed ancient to me. In fact, he was no older than my mother, and she was just twenty-four.
The crowd, noisy and jostling, swelled as we watched. They jeered at the prisoner and called him names. He had been put on public display as punishment for some crime. I understood that much. What continued to puzzle me was the strangeness of the scaffold.
“Who is he?” I asked. “What did he do?”
I spoke in French, in the high, ringing voice of childhood. A man in a lawyer’s robe looked up, suspicion writ large upon his swarthy, ill-favored countenance. Those few words had drawn attention to us. Worse, they had marked us as foreigners. Maman hastily retreated into the chamber, pulling me after her, and closed the shutters.
“Who is he?” I asked again.
“Perkin Warbeck,” she answered. “The pretender the soldiers were looking for in Dover.”
The noise outside our window increased as the day wore on until finally, at just past three of the clock, Warbeck was taken away under heavy guard. A scant quarter of an hour afterward, my uncle arrived.
“You have grown up, Rowland,” my mother said as she hugged her twin hard. “But I would have known you anywhere. You have the look of our father.”
She had not seen her brother since they were nine. Within three years Rowland’s leaving home, Henry Tudor had become King Henry VII of England.
“And you, my dear sister,” Rowland Velville said courteously, “have a most pleasing countenance.”
“Jeanne,” she said, turning to me, “this is your uncle, Master Rowland Velville.”
“Sir Rowland,” he corrected her, sparing one hard stare for me.
I studied the two of them while they talked quietly together, fascinated by their similarities. Both were blessed with thick brown hair and large, deep-set brown eyes. I shared their coloring, but my eyes have golden flecks. I was extraordinarily pleased with that small difference. I did not want to be just like anyone else, not even my beloved mother.
My uncle’s nose was large, long, and thin. My mother’s, too, was thin, but much smaller. Mine was the smallest of all—a “button,” Maman called it. Uncle was of above-average height. Maman came up to his shoulder. Both of them were slender, as was I.
Having given her brother a brief account of our journey, Maman described the scene we had witnessed in the innyard. “Poor man,” she said, meaning Perkin Warbeck.
“Do not waste your sympathy!” Uncle sounded so angry that I took a quick step away from him. “He is naught but an imposter, a commoner’s son impersonating royalty.”