To leave the progress and travel to Fyfield, I was obliged to ask permission from the queen’s chamberlain to visit “an old friend.” To my relief, he made no difficulty about my going. As far as the chamberlain was concerned, my absence meant he had one less body to provide with food and shelter. I borrowed a groom and horses for Nan and myself from Harry Guildford and set out over wretched rural roads.
I had not written to say I was coming. I was not certain Lady Catherine could read, and I wanted my business kept private. That meant I could not be certain she would be at home when I arrived. I could, at least, be certain of her hospitality. Country landowners always kept open house for gently born travelers. I was made welcome as soon as I identified myself, and within an hour of my arrival was sitting in the parlor with my hostess.
Lady Catherine’s slender figure had become plump since I’d last seen her, but she was still pretty, and she had an air of placid contentment about her. She waved me toward a stool near her chair and ordered her hovering maidservant to bring barley water and comfits.
“It is rare that anyone from court comes to visit me here at Fyfield,” she remarked.
“The king is on progress and staying nearby.”
She chuckled. “Not so very close or I should have been obliged to house excess courtiers.”
I smiled at her observation, thinking it must be a great imposition to have the king visit. No one would dare tell him they did not want his company, but being his host entailed considerable expense. There was food and drink and entertainment while the king was in residence and then the cost to clean up the mess the court left behind.
“Is it curiosity that brought you to me, Mistress Popyncourt? Did you wish to see what had become of me?”
“Curiosity, yes, but not about you. Or, not only about you.”
“Mistress Popyncourt,” Lady Catherine repeated, abandoning a piece of fine embroidery for the collar of a shirt to peer into my face. “I remember you now. You serve the Lady Mary, do you not?”
“I did, madam, but when she went to France to marry King Louis, I became one of the queen’s maids of honor.”
Her eyebrows, already arched, shot higher. “A bit long in the tooth for a maid, are you not?”
“And you, madam, are much younger than I expected.” She could have been no more than fifteen or sixteen when she wed Perkin Warbeck. Either that or the country air was exceptionally beneficial to preserving a youthful appearance.
“You left the progress to travel here on your own,” she observed. “Why?”
“You knew my mother. Lady Lovell told me that you befriended her when she first came to England.”
“Say rather that she befriended me.” Lady Catherine’s unlined face showed no emotion, but her eyes lost their welcoming gleam. “You were a child in those days, but you must have known how incensed the court was by my first husband’s ingratitude. He’d dared try to escape his velvet shackles.”
Uncertain how to respond, I held my silence. I had seen Perkin Warbeck after his capture. I remembered that he’d tried to escape a second time and had been executed for it. Even if she had not loved him, he had been her husband. She’d shared his defeat and his disgrace.
After a moment, Lady Catherine continued speaking. “My first marriage lasted four years. I wed in good faith, and Richard, as I called him, believing he was the prince he claimed to be, was a gentle and loving husband. I accepted that we could never live again as man and wife after our capture. I even understood the reasons when King Henry ordered his death. But there was always a part of me that wondered what my life would have been like had he been what he claimed, if he had won the support of his people and deposed the upstart Tudor king.”
“You would have been queen of England.”
Her smile was sad. “Most of the time, I am convinced I had a lucky escape.”
“There do seem to be…drawbacks to being wedded to a king.” Thinking of the Lady Mary, of the Lady Margaret, and of Queen Catherine of Aragon, I sighed.
The maid returned bearing a heavy tray.
“The queen is again with child,” I said as she set out food and drink. “A babe that, God willing, will be born in February.” King Henry had already taken Bessie Blount back into his bed.
The door closed behind the servant with a solid thunk. Lady Catherine reached for a seed cake. Our eyes met as she took the first bite. She chewed thoughtfully, then took another. “What do you want to know about your mother?”
“She died only months after coming to court. I had been separated from her, sent to the royal nursery at Eltham. No one I have talked to seems to have known her well enough to tell me how she spent her last days.”
“And you want to learn more.” She pondered this, consuming the second seed cake. “Well, I will tell you what I can recall, but I do not believe it will be of much help to you.”
“I understand that it was a long time ago, that memories—”
“Oh, I recall that year well enough! How could I not. Everyone regarded me with suspicion, and yet I was obliged to go along on progress with the rest of the court.”
“Maman died at Collyweston.”
“The Countess of Richmond’s house.” Lady Catherine nodded, looking thoughtful. “Oh, yes. I remember the king’s mother well. She traveled with the court most of that summer. We left London in late July, as I recall, and stopped first at Stratford Abbey.”
She closed her eyes, the better to let her mind drift back to that time.
“We visited Havering, and were at Sir James Tyrell’s house, and at Mr. Bardwell’s. Those were in Essex.” She frowned. “One or two fine old castles, and then on to Bury St. Edmunds. Thetford. Buckingham Castle. Norwich. Sir William Boleyn’s place in Norfolk. Blickling Hall, I believe it is called. Then Walsingham and King’s Lynn. We visited Sir Edmund Bedingfield’s widow at Oxburgh Hall. Newmarket. Ely. Cambridge. Huntingdon. Peterborough.” She ticked the towns off on her fingers, one by one.
“You have an excellent memory.” Impatient, I fought the urge to tell her to skip ahead to Collyweston.
“At times I think memories are all I have left to me.” Her eyes popped open and she trilled a light, self-deprecating laugh. “You must not feel pity for me. I am quite content to live in the country. Here I am ruler of my own little domain.” She reached for a third seed cake.
“What of Collyweston?” I prompted her.
“That was the next stop. The king stayed three days, then went on to Drayton in Leicestershire and one or two other places. Queen Elizabeth and her ladies remained at the Countess of Richmond’s house for two more days before joining King Henry at Great Harrowden in Northamptonshire.”
“And my mother succumbed to her illness during that five-day stay?”
“Your mother fell ill and died right after the king left his mother’s house.”
My breath caught in my throat. My surprise must have shown on my face, because Lady Catherine narrowed her eyes at me. “You were told something different,” she murmured. “What was it?”
“That my mother was dying even before she came to England, wasting away from some illness no one could cure.”
“Nonsense. There was nothing wrong with her that I could see. She was cheerful and energetic in spite of the rigors of being on a royal progress. She had begun to make friends with some of the other ladies, and she even seemed to have won the approval of the king’s mother.”
“The Countess of Richmond took note of her?”
“She did, and was most distressed when your mother died.” Lady Catherine frowned. “A bad mushroom, someone said. Food poisoning.” She shrugged.