“Have you not guessed?” He snickered into his tankard. “He went by the title the Earl of Richmond when he was in exile, but by the time his legitimate children were born, he was King Henry the Seventh. A pity he could not have married your grandmother,” he added sourly. “If he had, I’d be king of England now.”
“This cannot be true.” King Henry VII my grandfather? King Henry VIII and Mary and Margaret my uncle and aunts? No wonder Maman had hesitated to burden me with her secret.
“Why not?” Suddenly belligerent, Uncle half-rose from his chair. “The old king refused to acknowledge me in public, but he knew who I was. Why else bring me with him to England when I was but a boy?”
Staring at his face, I suddenly saw King Henry’s features there. The eyes were a different color, brown not blue, but they were deep set like the late king’s. Uncle Rowland also had the same long thin nose, high cheekbones, and thin lips. All he lacked was a wart on his cheek and he’d have been the image of his father.
“He should have acknowledged you!”
“Oh, aye. He should have.” He subsided, drank, and let out a gusty sigh. “He did not dare. Think back, Jane. You were only a child, but you remember Perkin Warbeck. There were other challenges to the throne. Even if he’d been married to your grandmother, he’d not have wanted his English subjects to know. Especially if he’d married her! Another potential challenge to the throne? God forbid!”
His voice full of bitterness and resentment, he rambled on about “this godforsaken outpost” and how little he had to show for his royal blood.
“Be grateful,” I snapped when I could bear no more. “Royal blood is a deadly inheritance, and well you know it.” Imposters were not the only ones King Henry—my grandfather—had executed. If Uncle’s secret ever came out, he risked the same fate. My hand crept to my throat and I swallowed hard. “When old King Henry was alive, I often felt I was not quite servant, not quite family. Now I know why.”
“For all the good it will do you!”
“Does…does the present King Henry know about you? About me?”
Uncle shook his head, but his gaze had once more fixed on my broken arm. “How were you injured?”
“A fall down a flight of stairs at Greenwich. An accident.”
“Are you certain of that? There are others who know about us. Not the king, but people who might wish to eliminate us all the same.”
“There was no one nearby when I fell who could possibly mean me any harm.”
“You were alone? Mayhap a thin rope, stretched across the top of the stairs—?”
“I was talking to a young man. A friend.”
For the first time, I wondered what had become of Ivo Jumelle. I had not seen him again after my fall. I assumed he’d gone for help, but for all I knew, he’d run off in a panic.
“Never be certain of anything, Jane.”
“You have had too much to drink, Uncle. You grow fanciful.”
“I drink to forget that I live in fear for my life.” He suited action to words. “I am safe only here, far from court.”
“Who at court would wish you harm?”
“I have enemies. Those who fear I might one day try to claim the throne.”
He had enemies because of his temper, I thought, not because he was Henry Tudor’s bastard son. It was the Tudor temper, I realized. Thank God I had not inherited that!
“What enemies?” I asked after Uncle had taken another swallow. “Who knows your secret?”
“Our secret now! Knowledge is no boon, Jane. It will make you more vulnerable to harm.”
“Nonsense,” I said brusquely. “It is ignorance that puts me in danger, if there is any danger. I ask again—who knows?”
“Brandon,” he muttered. “Your great and mighty Duke of Suffolk, God rot him.”
“Charles Brandon? How could he? He wasn’t even born when King Henry the Seventh took the throne.”
“His uncle was one of the king’s men in Brittany. Sir Thomas Brandon knew. I am certain he told his nephew. That’s why the younger Brandon came sniffing around you, years ago, before he married that London widow.”
What Uncle said made a discouraging kind of sense. Learning our family secret could account for Charles Brandon’s sudden interest in me. He had been looking for a wealthy bride. It had not taken him long to realize I would be of no use to him, I thought ruefully. If my heritage were known, whatever man I married, whatever children I bore, risked being perceived as threats to the Crown. At the king’s whim, we could be showered with lands and titles or imprisoned in the Tower as traitors. On the other hand, as long as no one knew I was King Henry VII’s granddaughter, I would never have any inheritance at all. No wonder Brandon had abandoned his courtship!
“Did anyone else know?” I asked.
His eyes were bleary when he looked at me. “Anyone who was with the young Henry Tudor during his exile in Brittany.”
“They all knew you were his son?”
“They all suspected. How could they not? I looked a great deal like him.”
“That is not proof of anything,” I said. “Ned Neville and King Henry the Eighth look much alike, but Ned is not the king’s brother.”
Uncle quaffed more ale. “She was murdered, you know. Your mother.”
“Murdered? No. That is not possible.”
“Murder has been done before to secure the Crown. I have had a long time to think about it. I did not realize it then, but now I am certain that she was killed because she was King Henry’s daughter.”
If what he’d already told me had been difficult to accept, this defied belief. “Who do you think killed my mother?” I demanded.
“The king’s mother was responsible.”
“Elizabeth of York?” Confused, I struggled to follow his logic.
“Not our present king’s mother. I mean my father’s mother—Margaret Beaufort, the old Countess of Richmond. It was at Collyweston that your mother died. The countess’s house.” Uncle wagged a finger at me. “I see that skeptical look, but I know what I know. Someone told the countess that her son had fathered a daughter in Brittany and that your mother was that child. Mayhap she thought King Henry had married our mother. Mayhap she just wished to eliminate even the slightest threat to the succession. Whatever drove her, she had your mother poisoned at Collyweston.”
“But…but Maman was her granddaughter!”
He seemed so convinced his accusation was true that I began to wonder if he was right. Shortly after my mother’s death, the countess had become much more pious, even wearing a hair shirt next to her skin. Had she been seeking forgiveness for the sin of murder?
“If she killed Maman, why did she not seek you out and kill you, too?” I asked, fixing on the biggest flaw in my uncle’s theory.
“It is not easy to kill a trained knight.”
It is with poison, I thought. Then another realization struck me.
“Surely if what you say is true, she’d have ordered me slain, as well.”
“Not so long as you were ignorant of your heritage.”
“So you have been protecting me all these years?”
He winced at the skepticism in my voice, then forced a laugh. “Think what you will. I know what I know.”
I tried to convince myself that this was a tale told by a drunkard, an invention. Except for the part about King Henry being my grandfather. The more I looked at Uncle Rowland’s face, the more I knew that much was true.
I sank back down on the bench, too confused to think of any other questions to ask. We sat there in silence, save for the sound of Uncle lifting the tankard and swallowing. And then a question did occur to me.
“How did she know? The Countess of Richmond—who told her about Maman?”