The King's Damsel (9 page)

In honor of the birth of our Lord, we had no lessons that day. There were two more masses to attend, but I expected the time
between to be spent in pleasurable pursuits. At home, Yuletide celebrations customarily lasted twelve days, all twelve filled with games and entertainment. Instead, after we ate, the princess and her ladies turned to embroidery, just as if this were an ordinary day. I looked with distaste at the needle in my hand, but I perked up when Princess Mary asked for a story.

“During the Twelve Days of Christmas in the country, Your Grace, all work save for looking after livestock is forbidden, not to begin again until Plough Monday. Even spinning is banned. People twine holly branches around their spinning wheels to keep them from being used.” I sent a pointed look at the embroidery frame and wondered if I dared do likewise with it.

“If they have no work, what do they do?” the princess asked.

“They bring in the Yule log and light it. They visit their neighbors to partake of wassail. They gather to dance and make music. Sometimes traveling minstrels entertain.”

“If the servants do no work, how do their masters eat?” Princess Mary asked. “Someone must prepare food.”

“They bake much of it in advance. There are minced pies, a traditional dish that has thirteen ingredients to represent Christ and his apostles. It always includes chopped mutton, too, in remembrance of the shepherds.”

“Last year,” Her Grace said, a faraway look in her eyes, “we ate of a large bird called a turkey. My father the king was much taken with the taste and ordered that a flock of them be raised for food on lands he owns in East Anglia.”

I had never heard of a turkey, but when the princess had described what they looked like, I had no difficulty envisioning huge numbers of these birds being walked to London from Norfolk and Suffolk, just as was the practice with other livestock. Sometimes the journey to market would begin months in advance.

“At court the king appoints a Lord of Misrule. He wears motley and organizes the most wonderful entertainments,” Her Grace continued. “I had my own Lord of Misrule one year, when I was six and spent Yuletide at Ditton. My parents were nearby, at Windsor Castle, but John Thurgood, one of my servants, was put in charge of my celebrations. Under his direction, I hosted a feast that was just like the king’s, only in miniature. I even had my own gilded and painted boar’s head. And there were mummers and morris dancers and disguisings.”

I did not understand why the princess should be denied such trappings here. Surely there was no harm in them. As the other maids of honor shared their own memories of past Yuletides, I watched Her Grace closely. She had been animated when she spoke of her parents. Now her spirits visibly drooped. I knew, from listening to the older ladies talk, that in some years Princess Mary saw her father and mother
only
at Christmas and Easter. Had she expected to join them at her father’s court this December? No wonder she looked so sad.

Her Grace was in dire need of distraction. I hesitated only a moment longer before I reached into the pouch suspended from the chain I wore around my waist and pulled out a velvet-wrapped object tied closed with a ribbon. I had taken it out of my wardrobe trunk that morning because it had been Father’s gift to me one New Year’s Day and keeping it with me made me feel closer to him. This was the first Yuletide since his death, and the first I’d been away from my stepmother.

“What have you there?” Maria asked, peering over my shoulder.

“A deck of cards, fifty-two in number.” I unwrapped my treasure, revealing the blank back of the top card. When I was certain every eye was fixed upon it, I turned it over to reveal a full-length figure painted in bright colors.

“This is the king,” I said, perhaps unnecessarily, since the man in the illustration was dressed in old-fashioned finery and wearing a crown.

The expression of delight on Princess Mary’s face made her almost pretty. The instant passed far too quickly. She was a serious child by nature. After a moment both the quick smile and the twinkle in her eyes were only a memory. “He does not look anything like my father,” she said.

“That is because this deck of cards was made in France. My father brought it back with him after he crossed the Narrow Seas to fight for Your Grace’s father in a war against the French.”

The princess fingered the painted face, marveling at the detail. “Perhaps this is King Francis, then. I may one day wed one of his sons. We were betrothed when I was barely out of swaddling clothes, but the arrangement fell into abeyance.” Even at the age of nine, Her Grace had long since learned that such alliances shifted and changed like the wind, no matter how solemn the vows that had been exchanged. Then she added, “I have never played a card game.”

Hearing the wistfulness in her voice, I at once offered to teach her the ones I knew.

Princess Mary hesitated. She actually glanced over her shoulder to make certain that the Countess of Salisbury had not yet returned from her meeting with the Bishop of Exeter, head of the council that governed Wales in the princess’s name. The other older ladies of the household were likewise absent, although I did not know where they had gone.

Aside from the princess and her maids of honor and the ever-present gentlemen ushers, gentlemen waiters, yeoman ushers, and grooms, the only other person in the presence chamber was Princess Mary’s Welsh musician. Ushers, waiters, grooms, and musician all
wore the princess’s green and blue livery. Only the highest-ranking gentlemen of the household were permitted black velvet doublets under black camlet gowns furred with black budge.

We were in luck. All of the black-clad officers were also busy elsewhere.

“May I borrow one of Your Grace’s goblets to hold the wagers?” I asked.

She nodded, looking intrigued.

“This game is called Maw, a simple trick-taking game my father taught me. Each player must put in a penny, or some marker good for an equal amount. A bit of ribbon or a pin will do.”

There was momentary confusion while everyone found something to wager. None of us had a coin on her person, not even a ha’penny. Few of us had any anywhere.

“Now we each receive five cards,” I said. “The goal is to win three or more tricks. Failing that, you try to prevent anyone else from winning that many.” I shuffled the cards and dealt.

“What happens if no one wins?” Anne asked.

“Then what is in the goblet carries over to the next game.”

“But what is a trick?” Maria wanted to know.

When I realized that I was the only one among us who had ever played a game of cards before, I grew quite puffed up with my own importance. I answered Maria’s question and went on to explain that the Ace was the card with the highest value and the Deuce the lowest and that a King outranked a Queen and a Queen was of greater value than a Jack.

“There are four suits,” I continued, using the cards in my own hand to demonstrate. “Clubs, hearts, diamonds, and spades. If the first card played, by the player to the dealer’s left, is a heart, everyone else must follow suit, unless you have no cards in that suit. Then you put down a card from any suit. The highest card in the suit that
started the hand wins the trick and the winning player takes all those cards and leads the first card of the next trick.”

I started to add that there were many variations of the game. The player who won three tricks could choose to claim the pot or lead to the fourth hand and by winning five tricks require all the players to pay a second stake. There was also such a thing as a trump. But looking at the faces surrounding me, their expressions ranging from deep concentration to baffled puzzlement, I decided to keep this first game simple.

We played for an hour, all of us sitting in a circle on the floor, even the princess, before we were caught. Fortune smiled on us that day. It was Lady Catherine who returned to the presence chamber first. Her eyes widened when she saw what we were doing, and she scolded us, but she did not confiscate my deck of cards and she did not tell Lady Salisbury.

“Do you know other card games?” the princess whispered when I stepped close to her to adjust her gown, which had become wrinkled where she’d been sitting on it.

“A great many of them,” I assured her, thinking of Primero and Pope July and One and Thirty.

“Then you will teach them to me, too, when next we have opportunity for leisure.”

As it happened, that was sooner than anyone anticipated. King Henry had not, after all, forgotten his daughter on the faraway Marches of Wales. He sent her a Lord of Misrule, with orders to provide all the delights of the Yuletide season. The fellow arrived late that afternoon and for the next twelve days, the usual regimen did not apply. We gave ourselves over to the enjoyment of the season.

On the first of January, called New Year’s Day even though the new year did not truly begin until Lady Day, the twenty-fifth of March, we exchanged gifts and gave gifts to the princess. My
second letter to Blanche had asked her to send a leaf from the holy hawthorn tree of Glastonbury in a reliquary as a New Year’s gift for the princess. It arrived that very morning, along with a message my stepmother had dictated to Sir Jasper.

I found a quiet corner to read that she was well and that she missed me. Sir Lionel Daggett had visited her both in Glastonbury and in Bristol and had been seen several times at Hartlake Manor and the other properties that made up my inheritance. I winced at that, but kept reading. Then I sat up straighter. Hugo Wynn had been allowed to remain as my steward . . . and his daughter, Griselda, had given birth to a fine, healthy girl child she’d named Winifred.

This news affected me oddly. The baby was kin to me, my niece. If she had been the product of a lawful union . . . and a boy . . . I’d have been disinherited. As matters stood, the child had no claim to my family’s estates and would be raised by her mother and grandfather in the steward’s lodgings. I might never even meet her.

That thought engendered others. I had heard nothing from Sir Lionel since he’d left me at Thornbury. That made me suddenly nervous. Was he, even now, arranging a marriage for me? I did not care for that idea. I knew I must eventually wed, but once I did, my husband would control everything I’d inherited from my father. A wife owned nothing in her own right. If she had fallen heir to land and chattel, jewelry and household goods, as I had, all that became the property of her lord and master . . . as did she.

It was fortunate, I suppose, that I did not have much time to brood on such matters. The princess required the presence of her maids of honor as she accepted offerings from all her household and half the countryside, as well. She seemed pleased by my gift.

Princess Mary gave presents, too, mostly cups and bowls of
various sizes. For each of the maids of honor, she’d chosen a more personal gift, individual rosaries blessed by her chaplain.

On Twelfth Night, the day began with a mass and ended with a feast and a mumming. It was the last celebration of the Yuletide season. The Lord of Misrule departed the next day, and soon after we moved to Battenhall Manor, located in the countryside near Worcester. The journey was a short one, only some twelve miles, but once we were settled there, Lady Salisbury’s strict regimen resumed. Once again, my stories were one of the few entertainments the princess was permitted.

As the days passed, I recounted the further adventures of Joseph of Arimathea and of King Arthur and his knights, then branched out into tales of St. Dunstan, whose body had been translated from Canterbury to Glastonbury. I also delved into the legends and lore of the Mendip Hills. I delivered these in a broad local accent that sent all the ladies off into gales of laughter.

I’d heard the speech of Somersetshire and Gloucestershire all my life, and still did every day, from Edyth. She regularly substituted
z
for
s
and
v
for
f,
dropped the
w
in
wood,
added an
h
to
egg,
and replaced the word
are
with
bist
.

“Thee bist sprack as a banty-cock, zur,” I was declaiming, as part of a story I’d heard at Hartlake Manor, when I noticed that my tiring maid had joined my audience in the presence chamber. In a sea of rapt expressions, hers alone reflected deep distress.

I faltered, recovered, and went on with my tale, but the praise and laughter at the end did not please me as much as they usually did. As soon as I was free to do so, I went looking for Edyth, who had left soon after I noticed her, her eyes glistening suspiciously in the candlelight.

I found her in the maidens’ dormitory.

“I bin looken out var thee,” she said in a choked voice.

“Edyth, you must not mind what I say to the others. They are not from these parts. I am certain, were you to hear the native accents of the counties they come from, you would find them most strange to the ear.”

“Thee’ll kill I wi’ laughing.” Edyth sniffed. “If I’d a-known, I ’ooden never a-went wi’ thee.”

“Do you want to leave?” I asked. “I can send you back to Hartlake Manor, though that would never be my choice.”

Edyth did not answer me.

I sighed. “I do beg your pardon, Edyth, for making mock of the way you speak, but we live at the princess’s court now. Even the Welsh here try to talk like the London gentry.” I smiled at her, hoping to encourage a similar expression in return. “You could learn to speak that way, too, if you did but try.”

She remained silent, but I could tell by the tilt of her head that she was listening.

I might have said more, had my fellow maids of honor not returned to our lodgings just then. I did not want to embarrass Edyth further. When she slipped out of the room a few minutes later, she was still sulking, but I could not help but notice that, afterward, whenever she was with me, she paid close attention to the way the maids of honor spoke to one another.

For my part, I no longer used dialect to elicit laughter at my tales. I realized that I had no need to do so. If the story was engrossing enough, it did not require embellishment.