Free The Lady of Misrule by Suzannah Dunn Page A

well practised at keeping out of trouble. I’d grown up a little girl in a big house, the last daughter by a long way,accustomed to slipping by unseen, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Jane, though, heiress of a family with the strongest of royal connections; perhaps she felt that she couldn’t keep out of trouble if she tried, and so had nothing to lose.
    Not many days after I’d seen the one of the Dudley brothers sobbing, I watched the tall, fair Dudley brothers’ lookalike loping across the green with a lute. ‘Who is that?’ I wondered aloud, not so much asking as venting an inexplicable impatience with him. Something about him irritated me. Or everything: the capering with canines, the lording it about with that lute.
    It wasn’t a question, but it would get an answer because Goose was in our room and she had an answer to everything. Sure enough, she was past me to the window in a trice. ‘Ohhh,’ as if she had a treat in store for me: ’that, Lady Loopy-Lou, is Edward Courtenay.’
    To my amazement, Jane was up from the table and across the room: the first time I’d seen her show an interest in anything but books, and even more extraordinarily, she and Goose were suddenly a team, subjecting that young man to dual scrutiny.
    â€˜So that’s him,’ Jane breathed.
    But, ‘ Who?’
    She didn’t relinquish him, spoke to the window. ‘Edward Courtenay.’
    No, but, ‘ Who is Edward Courtenay?’
    Which then made me the object of curiosity: both girls turning wide-eyed – incredulous – to me.
    But how on earth would I know? Whoever he was, down there with his fancy lute, he hadn’t figured in Suffolk.
    Goose started to gabble, ‘Oh, but he’s been here years and years, he’s been a prisoner here since long before I came, back in the days of the old King.’ She’d got that wrong, though, because back then he’d have been a boy. ‘Since he was a boy,’ she said.
    â€˜But why?’ That was horrific. ‘What did he do?’
    Jane shook her head: it wasn’t what he’d done, ‘It’s who he is,’ at which I almost laughed, despite it being anything but laughable, because we were going in circles. ‘Yes, but who is he?’
    â€˜ Some one,’ said Goose, turning away, leaving him be, happy to have the details beyond her.
    Jane knew, though. ‘Plantagenet heir; heir to the house of York.’
    A possible rival claimant to the throne.
    Was Jane here because of what she did – of what was done in her name – or because of who she was?
    Goose was back to her sweeping. ‘Too young, though, he was. His father –’ she shrugged, fair enough ‘– but you can’t do that to a kid, can you,’, which was when I realised she was talking about an execution: Edward Courtenay’s father, executed, but his son held here in the Tower.
    Settling herself back down at the table, Jane said, ‘But now he’s going to be free.’
    â€˜Is he?’ I wanted to hear more of that. He might well have irritated me, but I couldn’t begrudge him his long-overdue freedom.
    Goose flexed her eyebrows. ‘Oh, very much a man of the Mass, that one.’
    So, he’d be one of the new Queen’s men.
    Jane said, ‘She’ll wait, though, until she gets here, then make something of it.’ His release, his pardoning: the new Queen would do it with some ceremony. It surprised me to hear such a worldly, even cynical observation from Jane.
    â€˜How long,’ I heard myself asking even as I couldn’t quite bear to ask, ‘how long has he been here?’
    Jane didn’t look up. ‘He was ten.’
    He looked to me as if he were well into his twenties. I tried to remember myself at ten but it was an impossibly long time ago, a lifetime ago.
    Goose said cheerily, ‘Been spoiled rotten by the bishop,