Free The Queen's Governess by Karen Harper Page A

dreadful.
    Crooking his little finger with Anne’s ring at her—perhaps at us all—Henry Tudor announced, “I prefer to be shooting at the butts today anyway. Poet Wyatt, I leave you to your own games, but beware putting that locket back on your neck. Lockets and necks can be delicate things . . .”
    Perhaps he swore or muttered else, I know not. I only knew that I had something to tell as well as take to Cromwell at last, not that it was privy information, but that it had ramifications. The king was still jealous of Anne’s past suitor Wyatt, mayhap of Henry Percy, too.
    “Devil take Wyatt, we’ll all suffer from the king’s bad temper for that foolish affront,” Tom groused. “Tonight then,” he said in my ear, heating its shell and lobe with his warm breath, “when the moon is full, during the dancing. I will be at the very start of the maze so you won’t get lost within—it is I who am lost in admiration for you, mistress.”
    I knew full well his pretty words were mere bombast, but I treasured them anyway. I was glad to see him dart away with the others, for I had my own business—Cromwell and my lady’s business—to attend to.
     
     
     
    As I hurried back to the Lady Anne’s apartments, I rehearsed what I would tell the guards at her door: that she had sent me to fetch a handkerchief she’d left within. But no one stood watch. Her bedchamber door was unlocked and, surprised at that, I darted in. Perhaps those guards who trailed her today had come from here. The yeomen looked alike to me in their caps and red and gold garb, especially standing behind their big halberds that were half lance and half battle-ax.
    I noted for the first time that the embroidered stool on which I had sat was adorned with the white falcon and tree stump of Anne’s badge. I knelt and felt underneath, pricking my hand with one of the pins that held the note in place. I pulled the missive out and squeezed a drop of blood from my finger. Anne was a fine seamstress, so could she not be more careful with pins?
    “Blast it!” I clipped out, doubly angry with myself. Not only had I gotten a blot of blood on the note, but I was beginning to take up the courtiers’ custom of swearing. My mother had hated cursing, and I tried to honor her memory by avoiding it.
    I decided to put the missive, which was sealed with wax, down my bodice, but I noticed that the twice-folded parchment had a single scribbled line on the outside: For the hind of my heart, it read.
    I frowned, staring at that. A hind was a female deer. Surely, I could not have taken the wrong note. I had no intention of making a mistake and annoying the lady or Cromwell. Without breaking the seal, I squeezed the folds of the note so it belled open and I could read the signature. I turned toward the window light and read the last few lines of what appeared to be a poem, a sonnet, which was all the rage for courtiers to write to their ladyloves:
    ... graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about,
“ Noli me tangere , for Caesar’s I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.”
    It was signed simply but boldly TW.
    Thomas Wyatt? He was leaving her love sonnets in her bedchamber? Was he mad? And now I knew a dangerous secret.
    I reread the lines I could see. Noli me tangere meant “Do not touch me” in Latin, and it was obvious that Caesar was the king. Were Wyatt and Anne playing an even more dangerous game than his flaunting her old locket and winning at bowls? Could he have been sneaking up those secret stairways from outside she had mentioned?
    Panicked now, I got on my knees, put one ear clear into the rush mat and saw another letter pinned on the far side, one more neatly placed. I put Wyatt’s back and took the other. I was shaking to think of the power I held now—knowledge that could harm Anne, however much in thrall she seemed to hold the king, knowledge that could change a poet’s life and maybe mine. It was