The Queen's Governess by Karen Harper Read Free Book Online

his spurs, so to speak, they will reside not far from where you grew up, in a fine hall, where I believe you were once a servant.”
    For the first time since I had known him, Sir Philip had a cutting edge to his voice, especially on that last word, servant . Was it my imagination that her ladyship looked down her nose at me and narrowed her eyes? Did I feel their disdain now because they deemed I was not worthy of the care they had taken for me, even if it had gotten them Dartington Hall for Arthur and his future bride? Or because their son had dared to want someone beneath his station? Or could it even be because of the interest shown in me by Cromwell, the man who had a ruffian beginning, as they had said once? If anyone was an upstart and a climber, it was he, though I did not feel contempt but kinship for that.
    I rose, curtsied and left the chamber, but I also left the door ajar and paused in the hall, leaning my back against the oaken wainscoting. It surely wasn’t my fault if the Barlows were to be displaced, I tried to buck myself up. But to go to court! Not just to London, but to court and perhaps to the household of a woman the king favored—but at the cost of his lawful queen and his marriage? This Anne Boleyn must be a powerful woman, one worth knowing and studying. Was that what I must do now to pay back and please Thomas Cromwell—study her at close range and then tell him all about it?
    I was relieved no servant or child was in the hall, for the words within floated clearly to me. “This Boleyn matter is outrageous! Insane!” Sir Philip cried. “His Grace has bedded the others without breaking down the order of things. Her Grace has managed to look askance since she bears him only dead sons and one living daughter. But the gall of this Boleyn whore does boggle the mind!”
    “She isn’t a whore if she doesn’t lie with him,” Lady Katherine protested meekly.
    “Not yet, but he’ll have her. Who would dare to gainsay the king?”
    I realized then I had much more to learn. I had longed—yes, lusted, even as poor Arthur had for me—for lovely London, but now, I was not so sure.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH
    MODBURY TO LONDON
     
     
     
    F inally, London loomed on my horizon, but not as soon as I had hoped and expected. It was a gloriously sunny day in late September 1528, and I had gone nigh mad waiting yet seven months more before the actual summons came for me to bid my Modbury hosts—for they were never quite my family—fare-thee-well and turn my face toward the desire of my dreams.
    With a good-bye letter to my father, sent through the Barlows, I had planned to leave Devon as soon as the roads cleared of snow and winter mud. But warm weather had brought much rain and worse. The sweating sickness, that oft fatal summer slayer of hundreds—which was, at least, far different from the fever Master Cromwell had suffered from—nearly carried off Mistress Boleyn, in whose household I was to live at court. No doubt, I was as relieved as her royal suitor that she had survived.
    I traveled toward London well protected by a band of twelve new-fledged Devon-born soldiers, sent by Sir Philip to serve the king. Four of the men had their wives with them, so I slept in inns or houses on the way with one of those women sharing my bed and the others on floor pallets. Much of those seven nights, as exhausted and saddle sore as I was, I lay awake, listening to whispers, sighs or snores. I was beside myself with excitement, too wild in hopes and heart to sleep.
    As we approached the great city of London through Southwark, thatched, timbered houses, three or four stories high, jutted out over us, shouldering the sky. I shuddered with excitement as we rode through the shadow of a great cathedral. How I wished I had someone with me who could name each street, each church, to tell me what the crudely painted pictures on the hanging signs indicated lay within. A tongue thrust out with a pill on the tip of it, I knew, for