Chapter Twelve The Ghost in the Room
Chapter Twelve
The Ghost in the Room
The city of London’s nine o’clock curfew was mostly for noise control.
In a city this large, with blacksmiths and carpenters and coopers and stoneworkers and all manner of others engaged in noisy occupations, there needed to be some hours of quiet, when a person could reliably sleep or have a moment of peaceful prayer.
Even the city’s church bells ceased to toll after nine, not commencing again until morning.
There were also the inns and taverns to think of, and the way poor and middling people alike would drink to excess if given the chance, would stay up carousing and fighting and gambling.
Never mind that the nobility did these very same things, and at any hour they pleased.
Anne herself had thrown many a party that extended deep into the evening hours, even into the early morning hours, drunken guests bellowing in the courtyards, shouting oaths at the stars.
But nobody would call the constable on Hampton Court Palace, or Whitehall Palace, or the Tower of London.
Anne had hosted loud, frolicking parties at each of these royal residencies.
In fact, Anne had invited Kingston to many a rowdy evening, a few of which he’d attended.
This familiarity no doubt led to the ease with which she spoke to him during her imprisonment, the defensive explanations she gave to him for the accusations against her, her professions of innocence, the demands she made to be allowed to speak directly to Henry—surely, she could talk sense into him—all of which were used as evidence against her at trial.
Even so, the city of London and its lord mayor, with whom Anne had also attended festive gatherings lasting late into the night, could countenance no noise or activity past nine from its common people, so Anne and Alice had perhaps half an hour to be off the street.
It was as the two exited the bridge’s north gate that a woman in a silk gown, busy scolding her lady’s maid for almost dropping a parcel containing a porcelain bowl, walked right into Anne.
“Merde!” the woman exclaimed. She eyed Anne and Alice, in their commoner’s gowns.
“Watch where you are going!” The woman spoke with a French accent.
Maybe a diplomat’s wife, maybe a French lord’s, though nobody Anne recognized, so she must not be that important.
Haughty enough to expect the right of way on a public street, to expect others to clear a path for her.
Before she could remember herself, that she was not the living queen but rather the dead queen pretending to be a commoner, Anne replied, “You watch where you’re going, and how you speak to me.
” Alice tugged at her sleeve, her look imploring Anne to quiet down and walk away, for wasn’t she hiding from her husband, didn’t she want to remain hidden?
“Watch how I speak to you?” the woman asked, stepping back as though she’d been slapped.
Her lady’s maid behind her shook her head in dismay.
“You forget your place. What are you, a shopkeeper’s wife?
” She paused, looking at the two bedraggled women who had wandered off London Bridge just before curfew, no parcels in hand, no evidence of having been on the bridge to shop, or for any other discernible purpose.
“Or perhaps you have other wares to sell?”
“Excuse me?” Anne replied. “What did you say to me?”
“Putain?” the woman asked. “Prostitution is illegal in London. Shall I call the guard?”
Anne took a step closer. “Go ahead,” she said, her dead breath in the woman’s face, “and see how it ends. For you are in a fine enough gown”—she pinched the gown’s silk fabric between her fingers—“but you wear it poorly, as though it is not yours but someone else’s.
Who’s to say you didn’t borrow it from an older sister, or a better-off cousin, who will surely be upset to find it missing.
And you stroll off the bridge at a late hour too, imperiling the honor of your lady’s maid.
Peut-être que vous êtes des putains? Peut-être que vous la vendez? ”
The woman looked around herself, unsure, then grabbed her maid’s hand and hurried away.
Anne and Alice stood for a moment, watching the woman go. “What did you say to her?” Alice asked. “How did you make her leave? I thought she’d get us arrested.”
“I accused her of being a prostitute, and moreover of selling her maid into prostitution.”
Alice grinned. “You are a sly one, Lady Anne, and clever.”
Anne felt a blush rise in her face. She was glad to have impressed Alice, but she needed to watch herself.
“Where did you learn to speak French?” Alice continued.
“I lived in France for ten years,” she said, then caught herself and finished, “raised and educated in the house of an aunt.” She had almost said that she’d been a demoiselle at the French court. Careful, be careful.
“Hm,” Alice said, and Anne couldn’t tell whether the “hm” was approving or disapproving, yet she felt Alice reappraising her, changing her calculation of who she was.
“Mysterious woman, you are,” Alice added, tilting her head to the side, considering.
Behind her, the sun dipped below the western horizon, slashing the sky in garnet and gold.
“Now, let us make haste. Which way to your lord’s manor? ”
Anne placed her hand on Alice’s arm, the lie she was about to tell building.
“The thing is,” Anne began, “I’ve remembered my lord has some pounds locked away for safekeeping at the Tower mint.
” Alice’s look changed from contemplative to suspicious.
Anne could feel a distance wedging between them, her and this smart, kind woman she’d been so happy to win over only moments ago.
She continued, hurrying to try to fill the lie in with details, to make it more believable.
“For he is friends with the king, and the king has allowed him to keep some of his riches at the Tower.”
“Your husband is friends with the king?” Alice asked. “Why did you not say so before, when I asked if you’d been to the execution of the queen?”
“I didn’t think it was necessary information,” Anne replied.
Alice huffed. “Necessary information,” she mumbled. “What is your lord husband’s name, Lady Anne?”
Anne thought for a moment, panicked, then blurted out the first name that came to mind. “Charles Brandon.”
“Charles Brandon!” exclaimed Alice, for even she recognized the name of the king of England’s best friend. “Your lord is Charles Brandon?”
Anne nodded.
What an odious lie. Anne had detested Charles Brandon since she was a child, when he had come with Henry to visit the archduchess at Mechelen.
Henry and Brandon, young men in their twenties then, had stayed up into the early morning playing cards with Margaret.
All three had been terribly drunk, Anne knew, because she had stayed up late too, hiding in the shadows of the great hall.
After much carousing, Brandon had proposed to Margaret, and she’d jokingly accepted.
Brandon had demanded a ring to seal the betrothal, and Margaret had given one, not imagining that Brandon would keep it even after the night’s revelry had worn off but also that he’d parade it all over London, besmirching Margaret’s good name, until she had to send armed men to threaten him and get it back.
When Anne encountered Brandon again at the English court a decade later, he had scandalized everyone by running off with the king’s own sister, Mary Tudor, and marrying her in secret.
Only Charles Brandon could get away with this level of deception, and he did; Henry forgave him after a short while and welcomed him back to court.
Henry’s sister passed away a few years ago, and Brandon, nearly fifty, married his ward, a fourteen-year-old girl who had been engaged to his son, a fact Anne found repugnant.
But she didn’t expect Alice would know these latter details, and so, she thought, she could be safe in this lie, repulsive though it was.
Anne couldn’t imagine being married to a scoundrel like Brandon, and could never understand why Henry had been so partial to him.
Didn’t he know that a person was defined by the company they kept?
Although, perhaps, in the case of Charles Brandon, that was the point.
Perhaps, like Charles Brandon, Henry was a self-serving womanizer, which was why he liked Brandon’s company.
Perhaps Anne had simply failed to see Henry clearly, completely.
“No,” replied Alice, shaking her head. “You’re not being truthful with me. That cannot be.”
“I am,” Anne insisted.
“You’re telling me,” Alice said, “that this whole time, I’ve been cavorting with the runaway wife of one of the most powerful men in England?”
“Cavorting? I’d hardly say we’ve been cavorting.”
A man pulling a cart loaded with produce looked over his shoulder at them.
Alice lowered her voice. “I will be punished, my lady,” she hissed. “I will be jailed.”
“Weren’t you just in jail?” Anne asked.
“ ’Tis low of you to bring that up, my lady. Every working woman in Southwark ends up in the Clink from time to time. We pay the jailer’s bribe and are released. ’Tis of no consequence.”
“You shall not be arrested,” Anne whispered, pulling Alice’s arm to lead her down Thames Street. A few red-coated guards stumbled in front of them, drunk and heading back to the Tower for the evening. Anne and Alice followed them, though at a far enough distance that they couldn’t be overheard.
“How are you even going to get in?” Alice asked. “Surely the Tower is well-defended and closed to runaway wives.”
“Lower your voice,” Anne replied. “I can hear you are skeptical, but you need to trust me.”