Free Royal Inheritance by Kate Emerson

clarified. I gathered from this that the poet had a son by the same name, but at the time I had never heard of either of them.
    “Wyatt is greatly to be admired,” Tom Clere said, “if only for keeping his head.”
    Nervous laughter greeted this remark.
    “I do not understand,” I whispered to Mary Shelton.
    Mistress Shelton’s shoulders tensed. Her lips flattened intoa thin, tight line. I learned much later that she had once been courted by Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder and that he’d written poems to her, even though he’d had both a wife and a mistress at the time. Still, she was, as I was to learn, the most blunt-spoken of that company and was nothing loath to fill in the gaps in my knowledge.
    “Sir Thomas Wyatt, when a young man, was in love with Anne Boleyn . . . before she married the king. He might easily have gone to the block, accused of having been one of her lovers. Together with my sister, Margaret, one of the queen’s maids of honor, I was at court to witness these events. I truly believe that it was one of Wyatt’s poems that saved his life, for King Henry took it as proof that the poet never meddled with the queen.”
    “Whoso list to hunt, I put him out of doubt; As well as I may spend his time in vain!” the Earl of Surrey recited in a low voice. “And 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. ”
    “ Noli me tangere ?” I was ignorant of foreign languages. “What does that mean?”
    “Do not touch me,” Mary Shelton translated. “And Caesar was meant to be the king. Now you, Audrey. Share something you have written.”
    I knew I did not approach within a mile of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s poetic talent. I doubted I even reached the heights of Mary Shelton’s “doggerel.” But I was emboldened by her encouraging smile.
    Because I was not accustomed to reciting verses in a normal speaking voice, I sang the words:
    The linnet in the window sings despite her cage
    when other creatures would rail and rage.
    And I, beside that same window, do peruse my page
    and wait for the one who’ll free me when I come of age.
    I faltered into silence. An unnerving pause followed.
    “Clever,” the Earl of Surrey conceded. “Although you would do better to follow Petrarch’s model and write a sonnet.”
    As if the rest of the company had only been waiting for the approval of the highest-ranking person in the chamber, they all chimed in with words of praise and helpful hints for improving my verses. For the most part, the criticism was kindly meant. More remarkable still, in spite of my youth and my inferior station in life, they treated me as an equal.
    I left Durham House that day with my heart overflowing with emotion and my mind full of new ideas. Jack Harington had introduced me to a world I’d never dreamed existed.

12
May–June 1540
    I n the weeks following my introduction to the Duchess of Richmond and her companion, Mary Shelton, I was invited on several occasions to Norfolk House in Lambeth. Father hesitated the first time but, after the Tudors, the Howards were the most powerful family in England. The Duke of Norfolk, father to the Earl of Surrey and the Duchess of Richmond, was an important and influential man. Courtiers flocked to Norfolk House, just across the Thames from Whitehall, much as they did to the royal court, seeking favor and presenting petitions.
    “You must be careful not to presume upon their friendship,” Father admonished me as Edith and I were about to set off for the river stairs, accompanied by one of his apprentices, a gangly lad named Peter. “At the same time, it would do no harm to make yourself useful to the duchess. It would be a great honor were you to be asked to enter her service.”
    “I am not a maidservant,” I protested, “nor am I in need of employment.” I knew full well how wealthy Father was.
    “Young gentlewomen are