IN A
TREACHEROUS
COURT
Gallery Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Michelle Diener
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
First Gallery Books trade paperback edition August 2011
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Designed by Jaime Putorti
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Diener, Michelle.
In a Treacherous Court / Michelle Diener.—1st Gallery Books trade paperback ed.
p. cm.
1. Henry VIII, King of England, 1491–1547—Fiction. 2. Courts and courtiers—Fiction. 3. Great Britain—History—Henry VIII, 1509–1547—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9619.4.D54I45 2011
823′.92—dc22
2010045543
ISBN 978-1-4391-9708-0
ISBN 978-1-4391-9710-3 (ebook)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is my first published work and there have been many, many people along the way who have contributed to this moment. I offer apologies in advance for anyone I may forget.
First, I wish to thank my editor, Micki Nuding; her editorial assistant, Danielle Poiesz; and the rest of the team at Gallery Books, as well as my amazing agent, Marlene Stringer, for their enthusiasm and belief in this book. Thanks to them, this was all possible.
My critique partners, Edie Ramer and Liz Kreger, encouraged me, supported me, and told me when things needed to be cut or changed and when things were wonderful. I can only say thank you, although it doesn’t seem enough.
My sister, Jo, has been my avid beta reader for years, and her enthusiasm and suggestions helped make this book better. Thank you.
From my original writing group, Allison Brennan, Karin Tabke, Maya Banks, Amy Knupp, Janette Kenny, and La-Donna Paulette gave me advice, help, and encouragement back when I was just starting to write seriously. Thank you for all your support.
I would also like to thank Julia Dekenah, Inge Tessendorf, Bridget Ryan, Frieda Lloyd, Amanda wilson, Tabitha Yngstrom, Anna Suggitt, Kim Foster, and Fiona Cadogan for their support, enthusiasm, and encouragement of my writing journey. You are all good friends who lent me an ear when I needed it.
Thanks also to my book groups in Vredendal, Cape Town, and Australia. You were always supportive and encouraging. Thank you.
Thanks also to Mom, Dean, Lorna, Grant, and Shannon for their love and support of my dreams and goals through the years.
There have been many other people who have helped me on my journey, from my writing associations and from other walks of life. I can’t mention you all, but thank you.
To my husband, who supported me and never once thought I wouldn’t achieve my dreams, and to my children, who have learned to repeat themselves with good grace when their mother is so deep in her work she doesn’t hear them the first time.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
About the Author
IN A
TREACHEROUS
COURT
1
The Chiefe Conditions and Qualities in a Courtier: To be well borne and of a good stocke.
Of the Chief Conditions and Qualityes in a Waytyng Gentylwoman: To be well born and of a good house.
—The Courtyer of Count Baldessar Castilio divided into foure bookes. Very necessary and profitatable for yonge Gentilmen and Gentilwomen abiding in Court, Palaice or Place, done into Englyshe by Thomas Hoby.
FEBRUARY 1525
I am the Keeper of Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell.” John Parker spoke through gritted teeth.
The shipping clerk who’d questioned his right to be on the quay backed away, stammering, and Parker got a grip on his annoyance. He wasn’t used to being challenged these days. He’d forgotten it brought out his temper.
His anger would have been hotter had the clerk let him through unquestioned, though. The King’s goods needed ample protection.
The clerk sidled off and disappeared into the thick mist. Still irritated, Parker scuffed his boot against a wharf pole and reflected that no good deed went unpunished.
The fog pressed all around, obscuring the merchants waiting along with him for the ship from the Netherlands. Their voices rose and fell in the swirling white, in tandem with the waves against the pier.
This was what arse-licking brought you: a fog-shrouded evening freezing your balls off, waiting to meet some nancy painter who would probably smell of garlic and pick his nose all the way back to London.
He thought of the Italian crossbows he’d taken delivery of earlier, the real reason for his business here, and felt an almost physical pang at being unable to unpack the beauties tonight.
The tread of a heavy boot thudded close by, muffled in the thick fog, and Parker turned toward it, his hand going under his cloak to his sword. He kept silent, listening intently when the footsteps stopped. His senses sharpened, honed from years of watching his own and the King’s back, and he crept forward, soundless as the swirling fog.
A face loomed out of the white and Parker closed the distance, the rush of adrenaline in his blood.
“Ahhh.” The man started back in terror, his cry of fear harsh and loud. His empty hands rose in surrender, and Parker relaxed, sliding the sword he didn’t remember drawing back into its scabbard.
“Yes?”
It was another clerk, a black-robed, poxy-looking fellow. He rubbed shaking hands against his cloak. “Are you the King’s man?”
“Aye.” He was the King’s man, all right. God help him.
“I have news of the ship from the Netherlands.” The shipping clerk paused a moment, and to speed him up, Parker began drawing his sword again. “It put in northeast of here, at Deal,” the man gasped. “There has been some trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
The clerk shrugged. “Don’t know.”
Parker supposed he should be grateful the captain had the sense to keep whatever trouble plagued the King’s ship away from the prying eyes and gossiping tongues here at Dover.
He faced northward and caught a glimpse of a lantern farther along the shore, a weak beacon in the bitter-cold dusk. He reached deep within for the strength to care enough to do the King’s business.
“I’ll fetch my horse.”
Susanna sat in the captain’s cabin, a mug of wine cradled in her hands, staring into the dark red liquid as if it somehow held the answers.
Illogical though it might be, she could not bring herself to put the cup to her lips after seeing Master Harvey cough up so much blood. With a shudder, she put the cup on the table and pushed it away.
“Aye, it takes you like that sometimes.” Dr. Pettigrew rose from his bench and went to stand beside the tiny window facing the docks. “Less and less as the years get on, though.”
He spoke in French for her benefit, although her English was fluent enough, and Susanna thought he sounded sad. But a doctor must get used to death, surely?
“Here comes the King’s man,” he murmured, leaning closer to the thick, distorted circle of glass and looking out into the dark of early evening.
As he stepped back from the window, Susanna caught a flash of movement outside, the wave of a lantern, and heard the tread of authority on the gangplank.
“Thank God,” she said. Pettigrew only lifted a white, bushy brow, as if he was not so sure they should be relieved.
Susanna stood. She felt too vulnerable in the low chair, and she and Pettigrew both faced the door as it opened.
The captain entered first, his face flushed by the warmth of the room after the freezing deck. Behind him came a man who was forced to duck to get through the door.
He had the hard look of a Swiss mercenary about him. His eyes were watchful, and the angles of his face showed no signs of easy living and indulgence, despite his fine clothes.
His brows were dark wings above his light eyes—gray or blue, she couldn’t tell in the dim light of the cabin, but his black hair made them seem almost luminous.
He was a devil and an angel in one, and her fingers itched to paint him.
A long moment of silence filled the room as he studied her with the same intensity.
The captain coughed. “Mistress Horenbout, this is Master Parker, the King’s Keeper of the Palace of Westminster and his Yeoman of the Crossbows. He was to meet you tonight and escort you to London. Now, of course, he will stay and attend to the … er … matter of Master Harvey.”
“And a thorny matter it is,” muttered Pettigrew, and Susanna saw the King’s man start at his words, as if he’d only just realized the doctor was in the cabin with her. He was used to noticing everything, she thought, and she’d distracted him from that. Under normal circumstances, she would be flattered. But the circumstances tonight were anything but normal.
A man lay dead. Had died in her arms.
“Master Parker.” She acknowledged him with a quick curtsy.
“Mistress Horenbout, if it pleases you, I will make arrangements for you to go ahead without me while I see to things here.”
Her lips tightened at the trace of condescension in his tone. “As you wish, sir.” She would be only too happy to get off this ship and into a warm bed.
“I will need to speak to all those who had dealings with Harvey while he was aboard, Captain.” Parker’s eyes rested thoughtfully on the doctor as Pettigrew lifted a mug of wine to his lips.
“That is what I thought,” Captain Caitlin said. “That is why I bade them wait here for you.”
Susanna watched Parker struggle to find the right meaning in the captain’s words.
“Do I take it the only people Harvey spoke with while on board are these two?”
“In fact, Doctor Pettigrew only dealt with Master Harvey once he’d started coughing up his own lungs,” Susanna said, repressing the tremble in her voice. “The only person he spoke with, or had anything to do with while on board, was me.”
She was trouble. He’d heard of these women in the Netherlands and Italy, whose fathers took them into their studios and trained them in the arts of painting and sculpture along with their brothers, but he’d never met one. It looked like he’d caught himself a fine specimen now.
She sat opposite him, alone in the captain’s cabin, and the light gleamed like fine brandy off her hair. Her face was the shape of a heart, but it was her eyes that drew him. An intriguing mix of green and hazel, they were never still, taking in everything around her. She would make a good spy.
Perhaps she was one.
Harvey certainly had been, and after closeting himself in her company aboard the ship, he had died.
Parker was no spymaster, but he was close enough to the right circles to know Harvey never came back from the Netherlands without information. Chances were he’d had something interesting to impart this time as well.
“Will you be the one to tell his wife he is dead?” she asked, breaking the silence.
“Perhaps. I’m not sure.” He leaned forward. “How do you know he was married?”
“He told me. Gave me a message for his wife if he did not make it alive across the Channel. And the few other times we met, he’d spoken of her.”
Parker’s eyes narrowed. She knew him before? He kept his voice steady. “He thought he might not make it across?”
She shook her head, blinking her eyes. Her teeth bit down on her full bottom lip. “He only just made it on board. He leaped on as the ship pulled away. The men chasing him could do nothing but watch as we sailed off.” Her eyes glittered with unspilled tears. “He gave them a most jaunty wave when we were safely out of their reach, but it was all bravado. One of them had managed to get a knife in his lung before he escaped them.”
“Did you see who was chasing him?”
Susanna nodded. “I saw them, but I didn’t know them. They were strangers to me.”
Parker let that pass. “You say you’ve met Harvey before?”
“A few times, at the palace.” Mistress Horenbout scrubbed at her eyes. “He was a cloth merchant and had business with Margaret of Austria. My father and I met him on occasion while we all waited our turn to speak with her.”
“Your father was commissioned by Her Highness?”
She nodded. “My father has been her painter for many years.”
He could hear the pride in her voice.
Time to get back to the business at hand. “What did Harvey tell you before he died?”
“I’m afraid I cannot tell you, sir.”
Parker blinked. “Cannot?” Did she mean Harvey had been unintelligible?
Susanna nodded, her face solemn. “He made me swear I would tell no one but King Henry himself.”
Parker’s lips thinned. “I am the King’s trusted yeoman. I will make sure the message reaches him.”
She shook her head. “I gave my word to a dying man. Besides, I am here at the King’s invitation. I expect to be received by him. I can tell him myself easily enough.”
She was uncomfortable defying him, he could see, but the set of her mouth was stubborn.
“The message may be urgent.” He struggled to keep his voice cool, neither pleading nor bullying. Simply stating a fact.
“Perhaps. But could you, in truth, give it to the King much before I?”
“I could ride with it tonight.”
She shook her head again and stood with the fluid grace of a swan. He pushed himself out of his own chair and towered over her. Crowded her.
“You should tell me.”
She drew in a deep breath and threw back her shoulders. “I will not be forced to act dishonorably.”
He stared at her and the silence stretched out.
She shot him a cool look and made for the door, her shoulder brushing against him. As her hair passed under his nose, he smelled rosemary. He breathed it deep into his lungs. Despite her refusal to accede to him, he couldn�
�t help the smile that broke across his face.
She most definitely did not smell of garlic, and he was sure picking her nose was the last thing on her mind.
He had just decided arse-licking did sometimes work out to be advantageous, when a crossbow bolt shattered the cabin’s window and buried itself deep in the oak door, just a whisker above Susanna Horenbout’s left shoulder.
Parker threw himself toward the window. Unless there was more than one of them, he had a few moments before the shooter could load the next bolt. But the shatter of glass had aroused attention, and some of the crew rushed down the gangplank, shouting.
Parker saw the billow of a cape as a dark figure ducked behind a warehouse, and knew the shooter was gone.
He turned back to the artist, who stood frozen, her gaze fixed on the door. The bolt still vibrated where it was embedded in the wood, and when she turned to look at him over her shoulder, her eyes were wide with shock.
“It seems someone wants Harvey’s secret to die with you, madam.”
His words made her shudder.
She regarded him with eyes as fathomless as the sea. “Then you’ll have to make sure they don’t succeed.”
2
The Chiefe Conditions and Qualities in a Courtier: To play well at fense upon all kinde of weapons.
Of the Chief Conditions and Qualityes in a Waytyng Gentylwoman: To accompany sober and quiet maners and honesty with a livelie quicknesse of wit.
He’d thought she would fuss at having a man in her chamber, but Susanna Horenbout only had eyes for the large feather bed in the center of the room and the steaming bath that sat behind a cheap wooden screen.
She staggered toward the bath and was already loosening the ties at the back of her dress before she disappeared from view.
Parker turned toward the door, and though he had checked the lock, checked it again.
He heard her sink down into the water, groaning as if relieved of an infinite burden, and again felt a smile tug at his mouth.
In a Treacherous Court Page 1