“She need not be alone,” Mother Anne said. “You always take Richard with you. Or one of the apprentices.”

“She should have a woman companion,” Father muttered. “Better yet, what the Spaniards call a duenna.”

Offended by the very idea that I should need a nursemaid, I nearly gave away our presence. Bridget grabbed hold of my arm. Then Mother Anne began speaking again, so softly that I had to strain to catch her words.

“The girl is a great deal of trouble,” she said.

“That is scarce Audrey’s fault. Nor is it her doing that the king has no queen. So long as His Grace remains unwed, few women live at court. I cannot ignore the king’s wishes, but I dislike exposing an impressionable young girl to unsavory influences.”

“I suppose I can spare Lucy,” Mother Anne said.

“Lucy would be no help at all.” The tiring maid Elizabeth, Bridget, Muriel, and I shared was a great lump of a girl and slow-witted besides. “Nor would any of our other maidservants. They are either too young or too inexperienced, even your Nell.”

Nell had been with Mother Anne since her own girlhood and was getting on in years. Her fingers were gnarled with age and her knees pained her when she walked.

“Perhaps one of the other girls might accompany Audrey as a companion,” Mother Anne suggested. “Elizabeth is old enough to take on such a responsibility.”

Beside me, Bridget began to mutter softly. She’d hated it when I had gone to court and she had not. That Elizabeth might go, too, infuriated her.

“She also lacks the necessary experience. Bad enough,” father grumbled, “to let one of my innocent daughters stray so near to the dangerous undercurrents at court.”

That image put me in mind of the roiling waters of the Thames, but I knew that was not what Father meant. Although he’d moved off again, I caught a little of what he said next, enough to understand that he was speaking of certain crimes committed against women.

Father and Mother Anne did not say much more of interest. Mother Anne suggested hiring a respectable London matron to accompany me to court and to this Father agreed. Then they left the hall for their bedchamber.

Bridget and I waited until we heard their door close before we slipped quietly back to our own bedchamber and into the bed we shared. Pocket had not moved, nor had Muriel or Elizabeth, although the latter was snoring softly. Bridget was not speaking to me, but she managed another pinch or two before she settled down to sleep.

I lay awake, for I had much to ponder. It seemed I was to return to court and that it was the king himself who wanted me there. At first, I could not imagine why he should be interested in my doings but, after mulling over this question for a time, I settled on the only possible explanation. The answer was obvious once I thought of it. His Grace wished to ask me how Pocket was faring in his new home.












6



Father need not have worried. It was some time before King Henry summoned him to court again. Soon after our encounter in the garden at Whitehall, the king departed for his hunting lodge at Royston. His Grace fell ill while there. After he recovered, in July, he embarked on his annual progress, traveling far away from London so that he might visit other parts of the realm and be seen by his subjects in those distant shires. It was November before he returned to any of the royal palaces situated near London.

In preparation for Yuletide, the king needed new clothes. With great reluctance, Father took me with him to Greenwich. I met the king at the tiltyard, where he was overseeing construction of a new seating gallery. I duly reported on Pocket’s health and well-being, but His Grace did not seem much interested. After a few minutes, he strode off to speak with two of the knights who had been practicing at the quintain.

Father said, consolingly, “King Henry has a great many very important matters on his mind.”

“I thought he would want to know that Pocket is nearly full grown now.” He stood almost nine inches tall at the shoulder.

Father sighed, but made no further excuses for His Grace. He escorted me back to his workroom and left me there with Mistress Yerdeley, an old woman who lived near us in Watling Street. She’d been hired to accompany me to court and watch over me when Father could not. She sat on the window seat with her sewing, nodding agreeably as he repeated his instructions for what must have been the twentieth time.

“Audrey is not to leave the workroom. No one is to come into the workroom that you do not know. You are not to answer impertinent questions about your charge. And you, Audrey, are not to speak to anyone you have not already met.”

We both promised to obey him, but ten minutes after he left, Mistress Yerdeley was sound asleep, her head resting against the windowpane. I soon grew bored with staying in one place. The mending Mother Anne had sent with me held no allure. I had been taught the rudiments of reading but I had no books. Since Father’s apprentice had gone with him to the king’s fitting, I did not even have anyone to talk to.

I went to the door and opened it. No one was in sight but, in the distance, I heard singing. The music had the familiar cadence of a hymn and I reasoned that it must be coming from a chapel. How dangerous, I asked myself, could it be to listen to choristers rehearse? Certain of my logic, I followed the marvelous sound of those voices.

The Chapel Royal is not a place. It moves with the court. The singers of the Chapel Royal are of two sorts: the children of the chapel—a dozen boy choristers who lodge with the Master of the Chapel—and the gentlemen ordinary of the choir. Both groups perform sacred music for church services, but they also sing secular songs to entertain the king.

On this cold December day, the gentlemen were rehearsing. As was appropriate, they were in the chapel where the king worshipped. No one noticed me creep in. I was small enough to be almost invisible and my plain, dark garments blended nicely with the shadows.

Hidden behind a pillar, I stayed very still and listened to them practice. I was moved to tears by some of the hymns and awed by others. I do not know how long I lingered there, but I did not leave until the choristers finished their practice for the day and began to disperse. Only then did I make my way back to Father’s workroom.

I saw no one along the way except one yeoman of the guard and he ignored me. Mistress Yerdeley still slept, only waking a few minutes before Father returned to collect us and take us back to London.












7

1539

I accompanied Father to court a number of times during the months that followed. I saw the king briefly during each visit. On these occasions, His Grace would invariably ask after my welfare and that of Pocket. I took to bringing the little dog with me, since he fit easily into a carrying pouch. This amused King Henry but did not change the pattern of our meetings.

Mistress Yerdeley continued in her role as my companion and I continued, the moment she drifted off to sleep, to slip away to the chapel in the hope of finding choristers rehearsing. Although I remained hidden, I was soon able to recognize individuals, especially among the adult singers. These gentlemen took turns playing the organ to accompany their fellows. Some of them also composed music. As I watched and listened, I learned some of their names but I also began to absorb bits of the instruction that was given to the boy choristers in plainchant and harmony. I have always had a good ear for music. Without even thinking about it, I committed to memory almost every tune I heard.

There was one hymn I particularly liked, although I did not try to reproduce the lyrics. The words were Latin and I did not understand that language. Instead I substituted nonsense syllables into the tune. On a cold early December day just a year after my first encounter with the choristers, I was tra-la-la-ing to this piece as I returned to Father’s workroom.

A bellow of rage from within stopped me dead in my tracks. I broke off singing in mid-verse. A moment later I was running toward the door, for I had recognized the king’s voice. He was berating Father for losing me.

“I am here!” I cried.

King Henry stood in the middle of the workroom. He turned a fearsome glare on me, causing me to skid to a stop, throat dry and heart pounding. The yeomen of the guard and the other minions who always accompanied His Grace had ranged themselves along the walls, as far away from the king’s wrath as they could manage to be without actually fleeing the workroom.

From the expression on old Mistress Yerdeley’s face—pure terror—as she cowered in a corner, she had been the first to feel the lash of royal anger. Father looked only slightly less shaken, but he was quick to rush to my side. Pocket, showing his mettle, stuck his head out from beneath a bench and let out one of his baying barks before retreating to safety once more.

“Here she is now, Your Grace!” Father said in a loud voice. “Safe and sound. But where have you been, Audrey? Have I not told you that you must not roam about the palace alone?”

“Leave the girl be, Malte!”

The king’s command was law. Father dropped back. Belatedly, I remembered to curtsey.

“Rise, Audrey.” His Grace no longer sounded angry and when I dared look at him again, I saw that his face wore a rueful smile. Slowly it dawned on me that the king’s fury had not been because I was absent from the workroom when I should have been waiting obediently for Father to return, but because he, like Father, had been genuinely concerned for my safety.