Kate Emerson's Secrets of the Tudor Cour - By Kate Emerson Page 0,2

time we dressed and broke our fast with bread and ale, a great to-do had arisen in the innyard. Together, as the bell in a nearby church tower rang out the hour of ten, we stepped out onto the low-railed gallery beyond the window and looked down.

A man had been placed in the stocks. His long yellow hair was dirty, and his fine clothing rumpled and soiled, but he still had the look of someone important. It was difficult to tell his age. He slumped like an old man and, since I was only eight, almost everyone seemed ancient to me. In fact, he was no older than my mother, and she was just twenty-four.

The crowd, noisy and jostling, swelled as we watched. They jeered at the prisoner and called him names. He had been put on public display as punishment for some crime. I understood that much. What continued to puzzle me was the strangeness of the scaffold.

“Who is he?” I asked. “What did he do?”

I spoke in French, in the high, ringing voice of childhood. A man in a lawyer’s robe looked up, suspicion writ large upon his swarthy, ill-favored countenance. Those few words had drawn attention to us. Worse, they had marked us as foreigners. Maman hastily retreated into the chamber, pulling me after her, and closed the shutters.

“Who is he?” I asked again.

“Perkin Warbeck,” she answered. “The pretender the soldiers were looking for in Dover.”

The noise outside our window increased as the day wore on until finally, at just past three of the clock, Warbeck was taken away under heavy guard. A scant quarter of an hour afterward, my uncle arrived.

“You have grown up, Rowland,” my mother said as she hugged her twin hard. “But I would have known you anywhere. You have the look of our father.”

She had not seen her brother since they were nine. Within three years Rowland’s leaving home, Henry Tudor had become King Henry VII of England.

“And you, my dear sister,” Rowland Velville said courteously, “have a most pleasing countenance.”

“Jeanne,” she said, turning to me, “this is your uncle, Master Rowland Velville.”

“Sir Rowland,” he corrected her, sparing one hard stare for me.

I studied the two of them while they talked quietly together, fascinated by their similarities. Both were blessed with thick brown hair and large, deep-set brown eyes. I shared their coloring, but my eyes have golden flecks. I was extraordinarily pleased with that small difference. I did not want to be just like anyone else, not even my beloved mother.

My uncle’s nose was large, long, and thin. My mother’s, too, was thin, but much smaller. Mine was the smallest of all—a “button,” Maman called it. Uncle was of above-average height. Maman came up to his shoulder. Both of them were slender, as was I.

Having given her brother a brief account of our journey, Maman described the scene we had witnessed in the innyard. “Poor man,” she said, meaning Perkin Warbeck.

“Do not waste your sympathy!” Uncle sounded so angry that I took a quick step away from him. “He is naught but an imposter, a commoner’s son impersonating royalty.”

Maman’s brow furrowed. “I know that, Rowland. What I do not understand is why he would try to escape. The rebellion ended months ago. We heard about it at the French court, including how King Henry forgave Warbeck for leading it.”

“Your information is remarkably accurate.”

“Any tale of the English court soon reaches the ears of the king of France. No doubt the English king has similar sources who report on every rumor that comes out of the court of France.”

“If he does, I am not privy to what they tell him. He has never confided in me.”

Maman looked relieved to hear it.

“King Henry does not always reward those who deserve it.”

“He has been generous to you. You have been made a knight.”

“An honor long overdue.” He sounded bitter. “And there were no lands to go with it. He takes more care for the future of this fellow Warbeck! As soon as the pretender admitted that he was an imposter, the king gave him leave to remain at court. He was under light guard but was treated like a guest. Warbeck’s wife fared even better. She has been appointed as one of Queen Elizabeth’s ladies and is accorded her full dignity as the daughter of a Scottish nobleman.”

“Lady Catherine Gordon,” Maman murmured. “Poor girl. She thought she’d married a king and ended up with a mere commoner.”

“Warbeck will be lodged in the Tower of