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We have all played the fool once….

—Mantuanus: Eclogues

Greenwich Palace, London, April 1518

The Yeomen of the Guard, fine-looking giants armed with great swords, silver breastplates, and gilt halberds, stood to attention as Cardinal Wolsey entered the king’s state apartments with a purposeful stride. The doors to the guard room, the presence chamber, and the privy chamber were flung open, one after the other, as if blown ajar by his stormy frame of mind.

The grooms of the chamber, supervised by the sergeant of the hall, ceased their labors—scrubbing the oaken floors of leakages and dried mud, replenishing the fire pans with faggots, unfurling fresh saffron-scented rush matting, and airing the rooms before the king arose—to bow to His Grace. The ushers guarding the privy chamber announced him to the gentlemen outside the royal bedchamber, waiting to array King Henry with freshly brushed clothes, and those alerted the esquires sleeping on palliasses in the anteroom.

Richard Pace, Wolsey’s erstwhile secretary who now sedulously served the king, met him outside the bedchamber door. “Carew is back. By commandment. Too soon, after mine opinion.”

“Most unfortunate,” replied the cardinal sotto voce, an undertone he and Pace had perfected during the years the secretary was formally in his employ. “He is working against me, I know it. Keep me apprised of his utterances. Unfortunately, greater evils are descending upon us, next to which Carew is but a pesky gadfly. Mind, a thousand eyes and ears open, Pace. No detail is too small for my scrutiny.” Without further ado, he proceeded inside the royal bedchamber.

Ordinarily Wolsey would send a message to King Henry requesting a private audience to discuss state business and to inquire where his king would receive him. Not this time.

“Wolsey!” His young master, a strapping, auburn-haired man of seven and twenty summers, whom the cardinal had not seen since January, was wearing naught but his slops, having just risen, and a jolly countenance. “Good morrow, my good cardinal! How have you done since last we saw at Christmas? We have wondrous tidings, my lord!” Of a sudden the king’s cheer ebbed. “What is it, Wolsey? Why the ashen face? Tell me now!” The doors opened as a pair of knights, replacements of the night esquires, arrived to assist the king in his morning ablutions. “Out!”

With apologetic murmurings, the doors closed. The cardinal bowed humbly. “Your Majesty, I give you good day and beg Your Grace’s pardon that I need must upset—”

“Pray, to the point, my Lord Chancellor.”

“Your Majesty, I have it on good authority that some unknown evildoers are plotting against Your Grace. My Lord Bishop of Worcester, who is traveling on the continent, reports that during his visit to an astrologer the French king is wont to consult on occasion, three tall men, English, he supposed, came into the astrologer’s chamber on some mysterious errand, stayed there briefly, and then left by a secret way. Shortly thereafter my lord bishop heard that these men went to King Francis and offered to kill Your Grace for him.”

“The devil!” cried his king, outraged. “You shall find these knaves and bring them to me!”

“Yes, Your Majesty. I have already sent able men to find them. As for the second rumor.”

“God’s teeth! There is more?”

“My spy at Lyons testifies in an urgent dispatch that he has seen the pretender Richard de la Pole riding together with King Francis, deep in conversation. He relates a most disturbing tale that King Francis is determined to send assassins to Your Grace’s court to set fire by crafty and cautelous means within the house wherein Your Majesty shall be abiding, to the intent, which God forbid, to destroy His Grace’s most noble person and all other there being present. De la Pole has promised the malefactors a reward of four thousand francs.”

King Henry swore through fine, clenched teeth. “Is that all?”

“Alack, no, Your Majesty, I regret to say. Further investigation on my part suggests another assassin is on his way from an unspecified harbor with instructions to infiltrate the ranks of those coming to partake of the Order of the Garter’s celebrations and harm Your Grace’s person. This account frays me the most, for it reveals careful planning and a strong intent. As of yet, I have not been able to determine whether the sinister author of the foul plot is foreign or domestic, although I suspect he retains insidious sympathizers among Your Grace’s companions, persons desirous of usurping your rightful throne, ready to aid and abet the assassin on English soil.”

“The pox to them!” King Henry bellowed. “You must discover the subversive elements in my court, Wolsey, so that I will make an example of them for others entertaining like designs!”

“I would advise Your Majesty to restrict the numbers attending at court. Howbeit, as such measures may not be possible during the annual chapter, I have taken it upon myself to compose a list of individuals who may have sufficient cause to conspire against Your Grace.”

The king waited, his light blue eyes, inherited from his grandam’s grandsire, Prince John of Gaunt, King Edward III’s son, ablaze with royal effrontery and Plantagenet wrath.

“I suggest we make good watch on the Duke of Buckingham, my Lord Northumberland, my Lord Derby, my Lord Wiltshire, and on others whom Your Grace may think suspect.”

“Buckingham! That warmongering, bilious malcontent! He runs his domains like a kingdom within my kingdom, maintains an army twice the size of mine own, and has his henchmen kiss his ringed hand before speaking to him! I shall have him banished from court!”

“If he is the mastermind, as I suspect he is, it will be wiser to keep him close and watched.”

“Yes, of course. You are the coolheaded betwixt us, Wolsey. Apply yourself to spying on His Grace and report to me of your findings. As for Northumberland, why suspect him?”

“My Lord Northumberland was recently fined for swelling his retinue and thus exceeding the tolerable number of armed retainers. He did not like it and was heard muttering treason.”

“Pestilent traitors! I was about to tell you privily that the queen my wife is with child!”

Wolsey, unhappy bearer of bad tidings, feigned utter and joyful astonishment. “Ave Maria gratia plena! Benedictine, Your Highness! England shall rejoice to no end! Please allow me to be among the first to congratulate Your Graces.” He bowed effusively in a puddle of scarlet robes.

“I thank you for the good wishes, Cardinal. Deo gratias, I shall have a son. Alack, your news now hangs over mine own as a black cloud that eclipses all happiness.”

“My beloved king, I am aggrieved that my haunting worries have destroyed such happiness. The reasons for my mistrust, to which none are privy but Your Majesty and me, are so grave and secret that I could not, in good faith, keep still. But now I think upon it, mayhap Her Majesty, God give her health, ought to repair to a safer place until the other matter is resolved.”

The King of England planted fists on hips, his glare as formidable as his person. “We do not dance to the piping of traitors, Wolsey. You find them. I shall hang, draw, and quarter them.”

Traffic was heavy on the river Thames. Dignitaries coming to attend the opening feast of the annual chapter of the Order of the Garter poured out of spruced barges in their colorful silks and satins, gold-trimmed velvets and brocades, fur-lined cloaks, and extravagant jewels.

Sitting atop Archangel at the head of a small retinue, Michael observed officious mothers reminding their youthful daughters to smile, dance, and flirt with influential personages and do their best to attract the attention of Their Majesties. He saw courtiers renewing acquaintances and forming new alliances, making overtures at the ladies and boasting of their successes in the hunt, in money schemes, and in the tourneys of the bedchamber. Gossip spiced serious topics, such as quarrels, marriages, deaths, obtaining patronages, offices, lands, preferments, and privileges.

Michael, feeling acutely incongruous, was nevertheless aware he had one thing in common with the rest of them. He, too, had come to court in search of something.

His lord had assured him that his superior combat skills and comprehensive education would compensate for minor deficiencies, such as his not being familiar with a single soul at court, and that his presence would command attention by sheer merit. His trunks carried the richest clothes, the finest armor, premium utensils, a treasure in coin, and his secret potion. “And you have you,” his lord had said with a confident gleam in his eye. “One may lose all and regain tenfold, so long as one has faith in one’s abilities. Be true to the man you are, Michael. You may surprise yourself.”

Michael stirred his horse and retinue toward the palace courtyard, where armed guards in red and black uniform struggled to repel a swarm of petitioners begging entrance, shouting names, titles, affiliations to this and that, the mighty men of the court, as well as wide-eyed Londoners jostling for a peek at the lords and ladies of the realm, and create a path for the dignitaries to traverse. An officer assessed Michael’s flaunts, horse, and attendants, and shouted to let the great lord through. Pleased, Michael herded his small cavalcade through a whirlwind of bad odors—the fetid stench of the ragged poor mingling with the cloying perfumes of the overscented—into the chaotic middle court. Servants displaying various liveries and badges rushed hither and yon, carrying trunks, walking horses to the stables, and endeavoring not to tramp on their betters.

Michael swung off Archangel’s back and tossed the reins to his groom. His first business was with the king’s receiver. King Henry, having been crowned on St. George’s Day, considered it his official birthday. Lord Tyrone, conscious of this fact, had sent the king a precious, delicate, and very garrulous gift. A survey of the courtyard pointed Michael in the right direction, for he was not the only one who was come bearing gifts. He beckoned two of his hired porters to follow him with the canvas-wrapped cage and approached one of the clerks sitting behind a long table.

“Good-den, I am Michael Devereaux. I bring a gift for His Majesty, courtesy of the Earl of Tyrone, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.”

“Please state the contents of His Lordship’s gift, sir.”

With a flick of his wrist, Michael unveiled the cage, causing quite a stir, inside and beyond. “Gerfalcons, goshawks, peregrines, tiercels, sparrowhawks, and merlins. Two of each.”

The clerk grinned. “Like Noah’s Ark.”

Who the pox was Noah? Michael wondered as he noted with satisfaction the numerous faces crowding to have a look at the valuable items. The falcons, wearing tiny hoods and bells, their talons ribboned with red silk jesses, perched on fetter-locks and were heatedly discussing the weather. Michael was well aware the earl’s gifts surpassed all others, in market value and style. As soon as Lord Tyrone got wind that King Henry, a renowned sportsman, had built a mews at Greenwich right next to his privy lodgings, the die was cast. The king would love his new birds.

Michael returned to his retinue in good cheer. Now for his second task: lodging. He stopped an idle stable hand. “Pray, lad, who assigns quarters in the palace?”

“Your Worship will want to see Riggs of the household.” He indicated the man standing at the entrance to the palace, wearing a green badge, his nose buried in a ledger. The queue leading to Riggs was mostly composed of an influx of knights of the shire coming to pay homage to the king and hopefully to make an impression in the tournaments. Riggs turned most of them away. Not all the guests—who owned neither mansions in the Strand or near Westminster or Whitehall nor houses in the vicinity—were entitled to lodging at court for the duration of the chapter. Only those who had the patronage of powerful men, such as Michael’s protector, Lord Tyrone.

“Conn.” Michael beckoned his groom and gave him ale money. “See to Archangel.”

The stable hand raised an expectant eyebrow. When naught occurred, he muttered peevishly, “Your Worship may bestow your men-at-arms at the inn down at the wharf. Attendants sleep with their masters, grooms in the public chambers in the undercroft. Come with me, Conn. We’ll find this fine fellow a clean stall with fresh feed and get a jack of ale for us at the buttery hatch.”

Aside from Conn and Pippin, who was supervising the porters unloading his trunks, Michael had no other retainers. When he voiced his qualms about traveling without men-at-arms, his lord laughed heartily and made an enigmatic remark about unfortunate pirates and highwaymen.

Michael set off toward the sergeant of the household when the sound of glass bottles clinking brought him to a halt. He could not, however, in all fairness, upbraid the porters for mishandling the casket, for he could tell they moved it with care. Still the resounding ring fried his nerves. Journeying with delicate breakables was a nuisance. Italian glass was costly and rare because of the hassle involved in transporting it. Only the wealthy owned such pieces, and they dared not roam the countryside with boxfuls of them. It would have been sensible to empty the bottles into a barrel, but O’Hickey had insisted the physic would lose its remedial qualities if contained in a nonvitreous vessel. Michael had no choice but to adhere to the crazed graybeard’s dictate.

His increasing dependency on the medicament was another nuisance. He was able to abstain for most hours of the day, but when the drouth came upon him moments before sunrise, his body demanded instant relief and would not be denied. If only he knew how long the vile, lingering effects of the Sweat would last so that he could regulate his consumption habits for the duration of the chapter and maybe longer. He had great things to accomplish and tremendous obstacles to overcome. Good health did not ensure his success; feeling poorly would guarantee his failure.

The sudden ringing crash sent his heart plummeting to his feet. He whipped around and saw one of the porters flat on the ground, embracing the large casket to his chest. His helper stood by, looking guilty and frightened. “Your pardon, sir. The great burden slipped my hand.”

Crouching beside the casket, Michael yanked off a leather cord from around his neck and inserted a small key into the lock. “All of you, around me in a circle, backs to me, eyes ahead.”

The men clustered around him, no one daring to steal a look, not even the porter cushioning the casket. Terrified that his arsenal of dragon’s blood was destroyed, Michael lifted the lid and pushed a gentle hand beneath the batch of straw to stroke each felt-padded bottle. No cracks, no leakage. Relief surged through him—then disgust. What wretched, pitiful weakness, to be thusly enamored of a cordial! The very idea of living in a bottle’s thralldom like the Irishmen with their uisce contrasted with the principle of self-discipline and the sense of purpose his noble lord had instilled in him since boyhood. To need something was demeaning; craving something, as if his life depended on it, was torment. Once he fulfilled his pledge to the dying earl, Michael vowed, he would cleanse his mind and body of this imprecation or die trying!

He locked the casket and retied the leather cord around his neck. He looked at the sprawled porter. “How now, man? Still breathing?”

“Aye, sir.” The man smiled faintly. The casket was perched on his muscled abdomen.

Michael made a mental note to reward the man for rescuing his bottles. First, however, he should liberate him. He clasped the iron handles, braced himself, and carefully lifted the casket with the intention of placing it on the ground. He had a moment of shock. Nonplussed, he glared at the maladroit porter who had dropped the casket. Great burden his arse! Scheming laggard! Did he think to fleece him for extra coin? He hoisted the casket effortlessly and shifted it to ride on his hip. The porters staggered back, round-eyed. Fools! They never imagined he might handle the casket himself and discover how light it was. With an oath, he paced off toward the sergeant.

Someone shoved past him. “What hoa!” the man bellowed, fingering a tear in his popinjay-colored, gilt-embroidered, knops-cluttered, fur-lined sleeve. It was a fashion Michael detested. The man shot him a fuming glare. “One-trunk-inheriting, out-of-town clod! Mind your step!”

“Apologies.” Michael bowed stiffly, mindful of the bottles rattling on his hip.

“Apologize to your Maker, blockhead! I demand an angel for the damage you’ve wreaked!”

“You should not try to push by a man with a load, regardless of your eagerness to make your obeisance to the king. Find a wench to stitch you up.”

The popinjay blocked his path, his dander up. “I find this an occasion to withdraw unto some private place where we might settle our differences.”

Michael took the man’s measures. A few inches shorter, a few years older, his light fair hair shorn close to the scalp, as seemed to be the fashion with the courtiers swaggering about. His eyes were a light brown, and there was something familiar about him. “Have we met before?”

The man’s expression switched from livid to circumspect. “I do not think so!”

“Stop pothering, Walter. What is amiss?” A woman, fair and tall, wedged herself between them. She examined the rip in the eye-sore of a doublet. “Oh, it is nothing. I shall beg needle and thread from the queen’s ladies and stitch it for you.”

“There you go!” Michael smirked at the peacock.

The woman lifted light brown eyes to Michael and blinked in bewilderment. “Hello.”

The physical resemblance between her and the surly popinjay told Michael they were brother and sister. He sketched a careful bow. “My lady.”

Walter looked apoplectic. He took her arm. “Come away, Meg!”

Meg stood pat, perusing Michael with curiosity. “Pray, sir, what may I call your name?”

“Michael Devereaux, your servant, lady.” He inclined his head, liking her vivaciousness.

“Devereaux!” brother and sister exclaimed in unison.

Walter demanded sharply, “Whence are you, sir?”

“From Ireland, not that it is any of your business. I do not recall hearing your name, sir.”

Meg opened her mouth to speak. Walter shushed her curtly. Pinning Michael in his glare, he wrapped Meg’s hand around his arm and said, “Come, Margaret.”

Towed toward the palace entry, Meg called out over her shoulder, “I was pleased to make your acquaintance, Michael Devereaux. Hopefully we shall speak anon. Adieu for now!”

“Adieu,” Michael murmured, staring after her with a puzzled frown.

“Why so rude?” Meg snapped at her brother. “I wanted to know him better. He might be—”

“You are not to speak to that man again, Meg. I forbid it!” Years of humiliation, frustration, and poverty welled up in Walter with a vengeance. “You know I know best.”

“No, I do not think you do, but I am not disposed to arguing with you now.”

That was a first, he mused as they walked past Greedy Riggs. How he pitied those waiting in line for lodging, out-of-towners, nobodies, as he used to be afore securing the good lordship of the Duke of Norfolk. He remembered shabby hostels, rooms crammed with others like himself, sword arms for hire. But that was water under the bridge. Nowadays he and Meg occupied lavish chambers in Norfolk’s demesne on the Strand. He hoped His Grace would make good on his word to obtain him a knighthood of the Garter as a first step in Walter’s reclamation of his baronetcy of Chartley—which his fool of a father had lost in an act of attainder—and set his sister, recently widowed, among Queen Katherine’s ladies. Meg was sweet, attractive, and clever. As a lady-in-waiting, her prospects of making a sensible match should increase tenfold. Abruptly he let go of her arm and retracted his steps to the shadows of the entryway. Concealed behind Riggs, Walter studied the so-called Michael Devereaux. He stood in line like a mannerly lad, gazing about him, hungering for every detail. Jolthead. “How now, Riggs,” Walter murmured at the man’s back.

Riggs did not lift his eyes from the ledger, though he probably knew exactly where his next lodger should be installed. Riggs enjoyed making his betters wait, plead, and break into a sweat at his scowling. It gave him a sense of power. It also lined his pockets with coin. “I give you good day, His Grace of Norfolk’s master of the horse.” Riggs snickered. “How may I serve you?”

“See the lumbering jackanapes at the end of the line, the one carrying his own trunk? He is new to this court, an Irishman. How would you like to practice pranks on him, my treat?”

His eyes still on the same page in the ledger, Riggs opened his hand behind his back.

Walter dropped a testril into it. “Good man, Riggs.” His mood improved, he returned to his sister, and together they continued toward the king’s presence chamber.

Michael was appalled. Mean was one word to describe the space he was allotted: stark brick walls blackened with soot, an earthen floor, meagerly furnished with a truckle bed covered with a rank palliasse, straw sticking out, and a three-legged stool. An anchorite cell, in the undercroft beneath the palace, where wine barrels were stored and servants quartered in public rooms.

Michael, standing at the threshold, the trunks containing his equipage stacked one atop the other beside him, his manservant and the porters pretending not to notice his discomfiture, refused to accept this was where he would be spending his nights. “But I’m on the list! Knights of the Garter are entitled to single or double lodgings at court for the duration of the chapter.”

“Oh, I beg Your Worship’s pardon! Sir Michael, was it? Or mayhap Earl Devereaux?” The sergeant perused his ledger again. “No. I have one Master Michael Devereaux.” The ledger closed with a thud. The glint of mocking triumph in the sergeant’s eyes bellied his innocent expression.

That drew blood. “While I am not yet bestowed with the cross of St. George, I act for my noble benefactor, the Earl of Tyrone, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who is a Knight Companion and a direct issue of the first lord ever to be vested Knight of the Garter by King Edward the Third!” When Riggs shrugged, maintaining the blank stare, frustration gnawed at Michael. He knew no one at court, none he could take this up with. “I am entitled to certain perquisites!”

“Your Worship is entitled to bouche of court, logs and toadstools for fire lighting, and a bed. This is a bed.” He indicated the truckle bed nestling in the gloomy shadows of the sooty room. “Pray do not take it in a snuff, sir. I shall dispatch a lad with firewood posthaste.”

In a snuff! “Wherefore should I have need of firewood, pray? I have no fireplace!”

The sergeant stuck his head inside the cell. It came out smiling. “Aren’t you the sharp-eyed jack! I reckon Your Worship will break many a lance in the tournaments. Right. Won’t be needing logs or faggots.” He penciled a line in the ledger: Master Devereaux will do without fire. No need to bother with him.

Michael was lugubriously conscious of the fact that he was not especially fear-provoking. Pretty as a girl and fights like a girl, was Ferdinand’s favorite gibe. Nevertheless, he was a grown man and a large one at that. One thing he had learned from his nemesis was that size alone had the power to intimidate. He loomed over the nasty man. “The accommodation is unacceptable to me. I would not bestow a dog in this pothole. Why should I put up with it myself?”

The sergeant stilled for a heartbeat, but when he realized the great flaxen hound was all bark and no bite, he relaxed somewhat. “If Your Worship is discontented—”

“Supremely discontented!”

“Then I heartily recommend the Greyhound Inn. Howbeit”—he scratched his capped pate—“it may be overcharged and overcrowded, filled to capacity with foreign lords and ambassadors. It is the same everywhere this time of year. Every room snatched up by His Majesty’s illustrious knights. Perhaps after the tournaments. The games are quite brutal, for some.” He considered the men shuffling their feet nearby. “Your servants may sleep in the public chambers on this level, sir, and if the public haunts are overstuffed, you had best bestow them at the wharf.”

Michael considered relocating to a public room or to the wharf, himself. There, however, privacy would be nonexistent. How would he protect his bottles or excuse his fever fits at dawn? King Henry was reputedly terrified of death and disease. If word got out that Michael was ailing and dependent on dubious medicine, he would find himself in worse places than this room.

“Personages wishing to participate in this even’s masque may see Sir Thomas Carwarden, master of the revels. The feast of the Garter is at nightfall, the masque at midnight. Godgigoden.” Riggs fled, leaving Michael, his manservant, the porters, and a mountain of oaken trunks in the rat-infested corridor in the vaulted undercroft, standing under a smoking wall sconce.

There must be someone he could take this up with, Michael reflected in indignation. He had no intention of residing underground like a troll. Moreover, there would be no amusing dalliances in these woeful conditions. This and the fact that cleanliness would be nigh on impossible—was he expected to buck in the conduit in the courtyard?—rankled him. This being his first venture to court did not imply he was a churl and therefore undeserving of decent quarters. His attendance at the annual chapter was approved months ago. He was the legal heir to an earldom, the future de facto ruler of a country. His noble lord’s primogenitor had been King Edward’s most trusted ally in an overthrow of a usurper centuries ago, and in recognition of his invaluable contribution, his steadfastness and valor, King Edward had rewarded his friend the earldom of Tyrone and the first knighthood of the Garter. Michael’s pride rebelled at the indignity. The dark fetid cell was unfit for a servant, let alone a future earl. Evading Pippin’s gaze, he paid the porters. He was sourly tempted to try his luck at the overstuffed Greyhound Inn. Yet living at court was still in his best interest. He could hear Tyrone say: The baser the beginning, the more praiseworthy the ascent to glory shall be. So be it, Michael thought. From here the only way was up.

The downward stone steps, meanly lit and infested with rodents, spiraled hazardously under Renée’s soft leather slippers as she furtively flew after Lady Anne Hastings’s moving shadow. A truly pious lady-in-waiting who cleaved to her beads with perpetual Aves and Paternosters on her breath did not sneak into palace undercrofts like a thief in the night. Then again, according to the gossipmongers, Lady Anne had not always been a paragon of saintliness. The tattle on her was the stuff that kept tongues clacking for years. Apparently, when Anne came to court as the young bride of Sir George Hastings, she efficiently secured a position among the highest-ranking ladies in the queen’s service and wormed her way into the king’s bed. When her sister, Lady Elizabeth Stafford, a favorite of Queen Katherine’s, discovered the love intrigue, she confided the truth to their brother, the mightiest lord and high steward of England. The Duke of Buckingham, proud, cantankerous, and feudally pugnacious, spewed his profane wrath on Sir William Compton, the king’s erstwhile page and groom of the bedchamber who had negotiated the illicit assignations and had since risen to become one of the king’s minions. Compton then hastened to find refuge under the wing of his royal master. The king, one leman short and out of favor with his indignant wife over the affair, chased off the irascible Buckingham with a flea in his ear and banished Lady Elizabeth from court very harshly, with scabs on her nose, labeling her an insidious spy. The horned Sir George Hastings installed his faithless wife in a nunnery and left court thereafter.

The affair had occurred three years ago. Now Lady Anne was back from her spiritual exile, using her newfangled godliness to play up to the devout queen, and skulking in murky cellars. It was Anne’s furtive escape from the queen’s grace in the privy garden that prompted Renée to go after the lady and spy out her business. One never knew what one might uncover. A child of the court, Renée was well aware that others’ secrets were one’s best currency, to be used in various enterprises to one’s own advantage. Holding her heavy skirts high above the ground, she tiptoed in Anne’s footsteps along the convoluted, torchlit tunnels and listened for sounds.

“Anne, in here,” whispered a culture male voice, beckoning Anne into an alcove. So, Renée thought, the lady was up to her old tricks. “Did you make sure no one followed you?”

“Hello, Ned.” Anne’s tone was sulky. “What is it you wish to discuss with me so secretly?”

“Is this the greeting I get? No thanks for convincing your bitter-minded husband to take pity on you and let you out of the holy cage you have inhabited for the past three years?”

“You put me there!”

“’Twas your husband’s doing. Hastings did not appreciate the horns you put on his head.”

“It was your bloody-minded meddling that sent me to St. Mary’s! What a nightmare! Three years of my life chafing my knees on cold stone to convince a flock of spiteful, decrepit virgins I was duly, penitently reformed! I shall never forgive you for this. Never!”

Renée, curious as to the identity of the man, peeked into the alcove. Ha! She knew it!

“You expect me to look the other way when you strumpet yourself in this brothel court with the usurper of my throne? He never cared for you, Anne. Making my lady sister his whore was another means wherewith to make me eat humble pie, to bring me to heel, to demonstrate to the court and to the entire world, for that matter, that we—the Lancastrians, the White Roses, the Poles, Abergavenny, progeny of purer Plantagenet blood—are nothing! That I am nothing! And now his henchman in scarlet robes, that overreaching venomous fox! That bawd! He has stolen my rightful role of chief adviser, curtails my policies, mocks and opposes everything I do on principle. He told his king that ‘certain personages’ were behaving in a manner that was not commensurate with the dignity and honor of the council. Fah! He spits in my face and is trawling for excuses to strike against me. How I disdain his ostentation, his presumptuousness. His very presence reviles me! He insults me openly, knowing his false king would protect him from my vengeance. I have sworn to rid myself—and England!—of them both, two boars in one valley.”

“Ned!” Anne gasped, horrified. “Remember our father!”

“Our noble sire thought to play kingmaker, Anne. That was his error. He deposed a boy to make Richard of Gloucester king, and only when the deed was done, when he heard the shouts, Verus rex, Rex Ricardus! for Dickon, did it occur to him he had as much right to succeed Ned.”

“Hush, brother, ’tis high treason you speak, and I would fain be excluded from your plots. Your hatred is showing. You are dangerous to be around.” Anne made to leave.

Renée jumped back and froze. Ned’s delaying his lady sister with affectionate cajolery was not what fixed her to the spot—it was the fair-haired giant leaning against the wall beam across from her on the opposite edge of the alcove. He tipped his head in greeting, grinning lopsidedly.

Sweet Jesu, he was handsome: pleasingly proportioned, well groomed, with golden hair to his shoulders, bright eyes, and there was something very appealing about his mouth as he smiled at her. Saints, what was she thinking? She had been caught! But by whom?

Michael could not remove his eyes from the oval face and the gemlike eyes studying him in the dimness. Lavender and ambergris, her seductive fragrance misted his brain till he no longer cared what treason was being whispered inside the niche. She was young, wispy, parceled in a décolleté gown, diamonds glittering on her collarbones, glossy dark locks cascading to her waist.

Sweet tension gripped his body as she perused him with boldness, wariness, and calculation, trying to divine his identity and purpose in spying on the couple, as she was clearly doing.

Would she believe he had happened upon the intriguers by mistake? Having sent Pippin to the public haunts, locked his anchoritic dwelling—if the door hadn’t had a lock, he would never have stayed—he had gotten drattedly lost navigating the stale, dim, subterranean passageways.

“Should he die without male heir, I shall easily take the throne,” Ned was saying.

“Queen Katherine is pregnant again. Twice the sheet has come clean. Maria de Salinas says it’s a boy. The king rejoices in secret and tomcats after Bessie Blount. Her Majesty spends every waking hour before her prie-dieu, afraid of a recurrence of the last time a prince was conceived.”

Ned cursed venomously. “Who else knows of this?”

“Two, mayhap three of her closest women.”

“Then I shan’t wait. I will do it tonight, at the midnight masque, and you will help me.”

“Me?” Anne cried in fright.

“Yes, you, the lady sister of the future king of England. Hark, Anne, I was told by a worthy prognosticator, a Carthusian monk by the name of Nicholas Hopkins, that the stars are aligned in my favor. He prophesies that the usurper of my throne should have no son and that I will succeed him. Already, I have begun to amass armed fighting men on the Welsh border. I bribed several of the yeomen of the royal guard with bales of cloth of gold and silver to do my bidding when the time is ripe. And that time is now. I am high on the public’s mind in London and throughout my holdings. Anne, I tell you, the love this country has borne its king has been tempered by plague, taxes, and Henry’s inability to produce a male heir. Discontent is rife amongst the nobles as well as among the common folk, for how could anyone trust a sovereign who lets inferiors serve in the work of governing? Look at his minions. Charles Brandon, the son of a standard bearer with a vein of ambition a mile wide, wields more influence over the usurper than any of us, nobles of ancient ancestry, vessels of true Plantagenet blood. William Compton, another minion, an orphan of the court. Who is he to garner offices and rake a fortune? Abergavenny and the Poles have sworn their allegiance to me. We would rather die than be ordered as we are now.”

“Ned, our sire was attainted and decapitated for rebelling against Richard the Third. I beg you, brother, reconsider!”

High treason, Michael mouthed to his alluring cospy. She cocked an eyebrow in response, divulging none of her thoughts. Who was she? And who was this Ned, plotting to assassinate the king as if it were the solution to his quandary? The White Rose Lords were scions of the Plantagenet House of York, Michael knew, survivors of the gory civil wars that had raged between the royal houses of Lancaster and York for decades, ripping the country apart. Henry Tudor, a distant claimant to the throne on the Lancastrian side and the present king’s royal sire, had defeated the last Yorkist king, Richard III, Dickon of Gloucester, and married his niece, the best surviving Yorkist claimant, thereby uniting the two royal houses and their arms.

“Henry Tudor will meet his Maker tonight,” Ned stated decisively, “and the Right Reverend Cardinal of York will fall with him. The council disdains his grandiloquent vanity. In the taverns they say he would destroy this realm. Once I dispatch his false king, there will be no protection for the cardinal, no absolution, no quarter given to the lowborn arriviste. He will lose all his power and authority and be left exposed to suffer the vengeful hand of my wrath.”

“How will you do it? Nay, do not tell me. I do not care to know.”

Anne’s arrant dismay roused Michael’s preservation instinct. Conspirators were a volatile, desperate, highly strung lot, running a most hazardous gamble. Hadn’t Brutus talked Cassius out of running his gladius through the flighty, clever, pusillanimous Cicero during a row wherein the great agitator tried to wash out of the scheme he himself had contrived to slay Julius Caesar days before the Ides of March? Yet the one thing more dangerous than eavesdropping on the traitors hatching the plot was to come into the attention of a mysterious third party. A very pretty third party, to be sure, but dangerous just the same, for she would blab on him to her masters.

“Tonight, at the midnight masque, after the mock fighting, there will be dancing. Lure him to a dalliance in the gallery. There is a bay behind the Venus tapestry. Keep his back to the arras. Henry Tudor will meet the ignominious death of a lecher.”

So, Michael thought, as Anne continued to plead with her brother. This was to be his trial by fire. Self-preservation and prudence, badges of cowardice and lack of vision, would not have the reins of him. Bound by duty and honor, mindful of the fact that his presence had been noted by the jewel-eyed spy watching him in the shadows, he knew there was no way out. Even if he did nothing, said nothing, he was enmeshed in this to the bitter end. Fortune favors the brave.

“Choose whom you serve, dear sister—your lord brother…or Our Lady St. Mary de Pratis!”