The Queen's Governess

by Karen Harper

  “Unless her ladyship can find a lad in service for you to wed, you’ve managed to outprice yourself for the likes of most men round here,” Mistress Maud scolded me one day. “Too much fancy learning makes you put on airs. Your speech apes the Barlows’ and makes you stand out like a white duckling among the yellows. Besides, too many Champernownes live in these parts. They’d be the best prospects, but you’re cousins to most of them. So mayhap like a nun, you should just stay to home.”

  I was nearly nineteen then, but had kept myself so busy—and stayed so solitary when I could snatch some moments to myself—that I hadn’t given marriage a thought. Besides, Maud had managed to subtly convince me I was not, as she put it once, “fetching enough to fetch a good man.”

  Even after two children and nine years wed, Maud was still comely and knew it well. Her blond curls and blue eyes made me feel a lesser being with my unruly bounty of auburn hair and what Lady Barlow had once called my “tawny brown eyes.” I thought my face was fine enough with a straight nose and full, pert mouth, though my cheeks and nose were too oft tinged russet by the sun. But I was never one to study myself in the polished copper surface of a looking glass Maud had bought, and Lady Barlow kept such out of Sarah’s chamber.

  Then, too, Maud was slight and graceful, a far cry from my hourglass build. Lady Barlow was graceful too. I loved to watch her ride sidesaddle round the walls of Dartington Hall with her husband and son while Sarah and I waved. Someday, I vowed silently, I would learn to ride like that. In faith, even if it meant living near Maud, I’d rather read or ride than be wed—unless my husband bought me a horse and took me to live in London, that is.

  All these years, I was certain the good Lord would send me some sign that I was meant for better things than housemaid and nursemaid. I’ve since oft asked for forgiveness for this sinful thought, but then I thought the Great Creator of the world must owe me something for the loss of my mother so young. How was I to know what I deemed a gift from God for my deliverance must have come instead from the very gates of hottest hell?

  The second day that was to change my life forever, the first being the day my mother died, was the day I saw a king’s man, come clear from London. It was mid-October 1525, and the man was far more exciting than glimpses of Lord Barlow, who leased Dartington Hall from the Crown, even though it was the same fine manor that had once been owned by the Dukes of Exeter. But a man who worked for the king—or rather for King Henry’s great and powerful Cardinal Wolsey—that was splendid, despite the way I discovered the poor man. As if it were indeed a heavenly omen, I found him nearly in the same spot my mother had died, but nearer the road toward the old clapper bridge.

  “Hey, there! Mistress!” a man called out to me. “My master’s been ill with a fever, and now his horse stepped in a hole and threw him. Perchance you can summon aid.”

  I knew instantly they were not from Devon, for the man’s speech was not broad and slow but clipped, sharper. I peered round a tree and saw the other man on the ground with the one who’d called out hovering over him. Two horses stood nearby, fetlock-deep in the brightly hued tumble of fallen leaves.

  “I can’t bring him round, but he’s breathing,” the burly man said as I approached, wary at first of a trick. The man who had called out looked terrified. That and their fine mounts and the prone man’s clothes made me think he must be someone important. And yes, he was sweated up with a fever, so it seemed someone had thrown river water on his face already.

  While I kept back a bit, the man who’d called out asked, “Pray, can you help me to waken him, then fetch help?”

  My heart thudded like horses’ hooves. Again I saw my mother’s body laid out here, but I bent at the river’s edge to fill my cupped hands with water and threw it on the unconscious man’s face. A strong face, chiseled, with dark, straight eyebrows. He was clean shaven, but not a young man, mayhap in the midst of his third decade. He had a pronounced scar across his pointed chin as if he were a ruffian, but his hands were not those of a fighter or laborer. Long-fingered, he had a pronounced callus where he must have oft gripped a pen; ink circled the close-cut nails of his right hand like half-moons. Dressed in leather and brown wool, he wore a befurred cape spread out under him as if he had wings—like an angel, I thought, another celestial sign.

  I got a second double handful of water and—unlike with my mother—brought him back to life, cursing and sputtering. But when he tried to shift his position, he muttered “Araugh!” through gritted teeth.

  “Master Cromwell, should I go for help?” his man asked. He was younger, burlier, more guard than secretary.

  “Can’t—move my shoulder—without pain—araugh!” he cried, clutching at it. The cords of his neck stood out; his face went red and more sweat popped out on his forehead. “Mistress, do you live nearby? This fever’s just from something I must have eaten—not the sweat or worse. We can pay for food and shelter, till—till my man here finds a place—ah, hell’s gates, it might be broken and my writing arm, too!”

  “I live with my father and his wife nearby in humble circumstances, just across that field,” I said, gesturing. “But if you could make it a mile beyond, I’m sure the Barlows would take you in at Dartington Hall. I know the family. It’s a grand place, once the seat of the Dukes of Exeter.”

  “We were headed there—for the night. But no. Too far. Maybe on the morrow. I’ll barely make it anywhere . . . and you speak well.”

  I spoke well! My heart leaped with loyalty, even a sort of love for this stranger. So I led their horses, as sleek and well fed as those the Barlows rode, while Master Stephen—that was the only name I knew him by, even years later—assisted Master Cromwell across the field toward our house.

  One look at the men and, with assurance the fever was not dangerous, Father lodged them in his bedroom, while the pregnant Maud took my tiny room where I usually slept with the two children. That night Father stayed on a pallet before the hearth and I on the thick horse blanket that had been under Mr. Cromwell’s saddle with his fine fur-lined cape spread over me. It smelled of wind and mist and pure adventure.

  In his fever that first night, he ranted about making his way in the world. Father and I tended him, with his man’s help. By candlelight, for hours, after Father went to look in on Maud, I wiped Master Cromwell’s face with cool water and tipped a mug of ale to his parched lips. Once, when Master Stephen went into the shippon to see to their horses tethered amidst our cattle, Thomas Cromwell seized my wrist and called me wife.

  “Wife, my time has come. Through Wolsey, I shall serve the king.”

  “I’m Katherine Champernowne, Master Cromwell. Your horse threw you in Devon, and you have a fever.”

  “All my work,” he went on as if I had not spoken. “I couldn’t see why at first he wanted me to survey the abbeys this far away, but now I do. He’ll quietly close them; he’ll use their riches for the schools he’ll build in his name. His great legacy is not only ruling England for the king but his new colleges at Ipswich and Oxford.”

  “Who is that, sir?”

  “Wolsey. His Eminence, the Cardinal Wolsey!”

  It was the first time it had occurred to me that the king might reign, yet did not rule England by himself. Without anyone else to hear, it was great fun to pretend I was this man’s wife and lived in London and had a horse of my own to ride.

  “I should like to see your Cardinal Wolsey,” I told him. I knew he wasn’t hearing what I said in his delirium. How I’d like to beg him to take me with him when he went back to London. The privy desires of my heart went to my head as I told him, “I should like to see London and the king and his Spanish queen and live there too!”

  “Who would think it?” he raved on, thankfully not responding to my chatter. “I must list the abbeys for him. But don’t tell the king!”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Won’t what?” he said, looking at me, puzzled. As if his fever had broken, he was even more drenched with sweat. Since he hadn’
t really heard a thing I’d said, I told him, “I won’t tell the king that you had to put up here in the likes of a cattle- and beekeeper’s house in the depths of Devon, tended by a maid who longs to see the places you’ve been dreaming about.”

  “Dreaming? Have I?” he said, releasing his strong grip on my wrist at last. “Dreaming, I warrant, of a Devon lass. One with a quick wit. I was talking about Cardinal Wolsey’s orders, was I not?”

  I looked him straight in the eyes, eyes darker than my tawny brown ones and far deeper set, as if shadows lurked there, guarding whatever depths lay within.

  “You did, Master Cromwell, but I know how to keep a secret and am of no account in this backwater place anyway.”

  His eyes glittered with the remnants of delirium. Eagerly he drank from the cup of ale I offered him, then cleared his throat and said, “I think your father told me you can read and write.”

  “I tend the lord and lady’s daughter at the Hall, so when she and her brother are tutored, I am too, silently, but I rehearse it all well later.”

  “Clever girl. I’m exhausted now. Pain—debilitating,” he said, though I recall I didn’t know what that last word meant then and later asked Sarah. “I need to sleep, and we will talk in the morning.”

  “In the morning, if you wish, we can move you to Dartington Hall.”

  He shook his sleek, dark head. “Shoulder hurts too much. Maybe later, everything later . . .”

  He seemed instantly to sleep. But with Thomas Cromwell, I learned later to my detriment, seeming was more important than being.

  It’s true and no mistake that Thomas Cromwell was secretary and councilor to the king’s great and powerful Cardinal Wolsey. Cromwell had no broken shoulder but a severely wrenched one that had come out of its socket. Sadly, for me, he did move to Dartington Hall, where Lord Barlow’s leech put it back in place and made him a sling and dosed him with pain-deadening herbs. Maud, fat as a woolsack in her third pregnancy, was ecstatic that he’d given Father a half crown for our tending of him. For several days, I caught only glimpses of Cromwell here and there about the manor grounds with Lord Barlow. I heard Cromwell had ordered his man Stephen on to Plymouth to send word to the cardinal about why he was delayed. Secretary Cromwell did, however, come to the schoolroom to speak privily to the tutor one day and nodded to me both when he entered and when he left.

  Then, the third day after he’d departed from our house, I’d heard he’d soon be leaving. I longed to bid him farewell, but was told he had gone for a ride to test his arm. To my surprise and pleasure, he came upon me as I was walking home that day, scuffing through dry leaves, loath to leave the Hall for home. He slowed his big horse to a walk beside me.

  Before I could inquire about his arm, he asked, “Did you mean what you said, that you really long to go to London?”

  A new-fledged hope bloomed in me. “I—I didn’t know you had heard that.”

  “Then you must learn to be careful what you say, for even the walls have ears.”

  I looked up at him. He was not smiling, but had that avid, almost hungry look that I later learned was a sign he was devouring facts, information, things he somehow stowed away in that fertile, many-chambered brain of his. When I said nothing, he added, “Life is like climbing a ladder. I’m on a sturdy rung, but not one lofty enough by far. Do you catch my meaning, Mistress Champernowne?”

  “I think I do, Master Cromwell. You are an ambitious man on your way up. You have plans.”

  “Precise and pithy—I like that in you. And the fact you evidently have told no one of my babblings about visiting the monasteries hereabouts or why.”

  “Such as Buckfast and Buckland?”

  “Ah, even sharper than I thought,” he whispered, staring down at me with narrowed eyes. We had stopped. The crisp autumn wind tugged at our hair and cloaks.

  “One is Benedictine and one Cistercian, you know,” I added.

  “I do indeed. Mistress, I may rely upon your wit someday, but not in this current matter. To cut to the quick, I am building a circle of people I can trust and who trust me, people who will work for me.”

  “And for the cardinal?”

  His eyes widened again. His nostrils flared. “Yes, of course, for the cardinal through me, and so—in essence for King Henry, whom we all serve.”

  “I never thought of it that way, of serving the king. Not from here,” I admitted with a sweep of my hand at the lonely, copper-colored moors with seagulls soaring in pointless circles overhead.

  “Mistress, heed me now. Your father tells me he is distantly related to Sir Philip Champernowne of Modbury, a bit to the south, second cousins or some such. As Sir Philip is a king’s man, well-off with lands and men for the royal armies, I happen to know him and will be visiting him on my way back to London. As at Dartington Hall, Sir Philip educates his daughters with his sons and with a far finer tutor than is here.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I dared hope that he was telling me these things because it had something to do with my future, but that hope must be wide of the mark. When he dismounted—with difficulty, for I could tell his shoulder still pained him greatly—I blurted out, “How fortunate those families are.”

  “No rabbit trails now. I do not deal with ninnyhammers, so heed my words, Kat Champernowne.”

  He knew my pet name. Had my father told him that, as he had that I was literate? Rather, I could see Thomas Cromwell questioning my father, much as I’d seen him interrogate the Barlows’ tutor.

  “I have a proposal to make to you, a bargain, if you will agree,” he went on, his expression intent. I felt my face flush, but I looked him straight in the eyes. “You are a gem, mistress, but only partly polished yet and in too rude a setting. If I see to your better placement, where tutoring both in studies and in becoming a gentlewoman—and in the new Lutheran religion—is offered, I would expect you to soak it all in. Because then, when I declare the time to be ripe, I will see that you are placed with a noble family of my choosing in London, not as a servant but as a companion, a gentlewoman-in-waiting, so to speak. And then, who knows what that waiting will be for, eh?”

  For once, I had nothing to say. It was all too impossible, too wonderful. To go somewhere, to be someone—to escape Maud. To have in plain sight my box of treasures and to openly write my memories and hopes—and to serve someone deserving, someone who did not harm or kill others to climb life’s ladder as Maud had, but who only helped and served others, like Master Cromwell!

  “It is more, far more, than I could ever have hoped . . .” I stammered, so breathily that it didn’t sound like sensible, solitary me at all. “But—what is the rest of the bargain?”

  He nodded curtly. “The acquisition of information is essential for positions of power.”

  “You mean, I would inquire things of the Champernownes or of the noble London family and then write or tell you?”

  “In a way. A clever, beguiling, buxom and pretty girl with no dangerous family ties, who can read and write and move in circles of people both high and low, and—most of all—keep a confidence, is just what I will need.”

  Beguiling? Pretty? Me? But Maud had said—And what did buxom mean? [I add this note now, later, in London: buxom can mean both pliant and agreeable, as in wedding vows when the bride promises “to be buxom in both board and bed.” I suppose Cromwell could have meant that, but I later came to think he at least implied the second meaning, for I was full breasted above my supple waist and knew men’s eyes oft moved from my face to my breasts, before darting guiltily or invitingly back up again. But Thomas Cromwell seemed all business.]

  “Do we have a bargain then, mistress?”

  I nodded fervently.

  “Say it then.”

  “We have a bargain, Master Cromwell.”

  To my surprise, moving only his good arm, he took my hand—the one not holding the rolled-up pages of my story I had penned that day—and lifted it to his lips and kissed it. No man had done such before. He turned away and w
alked his horse to a tree stump he stepped on so he could mount easily, though he still grunted in pain.

  “Be patient, Mistress Champernowne. I will care for the details.”

  “How long will I be in Modbury before you summon me to London?”

  “Time and events will tell,” he said, staying his horse one moment more. “But the point is, whatever befalls, you will learn not to tell, not without my permission.” Without a backward glance, he wheeled his horse away.

  I did not realize then how many times later that would be the case. He would listen to me avidly, use me for his gain—though oft for mine too—then turn tail and move on to his next task, the next rung up his life’s ladder. I marveled at the aura of control and power that reeked from the man, but then, I hadn’t yet met the Tudors.

  The next morn I almost wondered if I had dreamed it all. But it was no dream that Maud flew into a fit of temper—despite another half crown from Cromwell’s purse that sealed the bargain with my father—when she heard I was to be sent to Sir Philip Champernowne’s household at Modbury, not as servant but as companion to his daughters.

  Maud yanked her blond curls with both hands and screamed at my father, “I don’t care one whit if the Barlows give her leave to go. I need her here. I’m about to have another babe, and I’m not young anymore!”

  Father frowned. “We’ve been promised a half crown a year—a year!—while she’s with my cousins, so you can hire a housemaid or nursemaid.”

  “In this wretched place while she goes to Modbury?” [She said that as if I were heading for Paris or already to London.] “I won’t trust just anyone with my children. I’ve done a lot for you, Hugh Champernowne, you know I have, and I need her here!”