I dreaded to think it. Queen Catherine did nothing to earn his vexation. It isn’t a crime to give birth to a daughter. Yes, I know a king needed an heir, but a strong-willed daughter could do much as queen.

  Aye, me. I did worry over the Princess Mary. She must be as sorely hurt by it as much as her mother. I miss our evenings together in the withdrawing room, when Henry would sit in the big chair, I at his feet on a cushion, playing the lute or some other instrument, Queen Catherine in another chair doing her sewing and tapping time to the music with her foot, Princess Mary sitting upon the floor with her dolls. Such happy times.

  I miss our family.

  Ah well. A jester could only do so much. It only meant more time with Nosewise to teach him some tricks. That would take my mind off it.

  Little Nosewise got to know me and I found him to be a quick study. He could stand on his hind legs and jump forward. It was a useful trick, and I spent some time fashioning him a hat, very like the king’s favorite, feathers and all.

  It was late when I tried to practice my songs. I thought little Nosewise would sleep by now, but it seemed he was my greatest critic for, wide awake, he howled at each strum of my lute. ‘You disagreeable hound! Though it’s funny some of the time, the rest of the time it’s plainly annoying.’

  He sat before me, tongue lolling, mouth open in an irresistible smile. ‘Oh, you charmer.’ I scooped him up, gave his muzzle a kiss, and set him down. ‘I suppose it’s time to walk you again. Let’s get the leash.’ He’d already learned what that meant. He ran in circles, yipping and jumping, so that I could scarce get it attached to his collar.

  ‘Becalm yourself, dog. I’d not have you piddle on my floor. Save that for the king!’

  We walked the quiet corridors of Greenwich when all were in their beds. I thought of Gonzalo, my cod twitching. I gave it a squeeze as Nosewise and I reached the courtyard. The passing thought to venture nigh his window titillated before I crushed it underfoot. It wouldn’t do for me to seek him out without an invitation. I knew my place. But it galled nonetheless. Perhaps I could be eased with a visit to a male servant. Edward always welcomed me there. Though some deemed me frivolous and ugly – for I could not be called beauteous, not as Henry was beauteous, what with my silly face and crooked back – but there were a few who loved this fool just as he was. Perhaps they were more calculating, cannier, surmising the coin I made and the place I took up at court. Truly, it didn’t matter to me.

  Marion might welcome me, though it had been over a fortnight since the last time. I had a soft spot in my heart for her. The bastard daughter of a courtier who spent her time sewing for others, Marion was my bosom companion, the only woman I had fallen in love with.

  After Nosewise had done his business on King Henry’s carefully coifed lawn, I decided to try out the tricks we’d learned.

  Nosewise was only shin-high to me. He was a mix from several different breeds, so I was told. But the hound-keeper said he’d not get much bigger than he was. He had the face of a hunting terrier only furrier all over, like he had a mustache, and he was mostly light brown, with a dark spot on his back.

  I raised my hand and gave it a quick jerk, and Nosewise was up on his hind legs. I tossed him a little sliver of crust from a pork pie I had in my pouch and he snapped it down. Next, I twirled my arm and he ran in circles. ‘Good boy, little hound,’ I said, and tossed him another bit of crust.

  I decided to let him run and took off the leash. ‘Off with you! Pretend you are on the hunt.’ And damn me if he didn’t, streaking down the lawn and onto the gravel path, deep into the darkness. I could hear him distantly, scrabbling about over the gravel and into the brush of the gardens. He growled and wrestled with some shrubbery before scrambling off in some other direction.

  I yawned and rolled my head on my shoulders. It had been a long day, full of this and that. My constant vigilance to be available to Henry meant that my leisure was stymied. Even a session in the latrine needed to be hurried lest the king be delayed in his entertainments. Henry could be at his stool for as long as he liked, but the jester must not.

  It was a silly life indeed, full of its rewards, but also full of its strangeness. I could have stayed in the employ of Master Fermor, though I did not take to the wool trade. Or, perhaps even become a gentleman … Bah! This life made more sense to me. And that in itself was the most absurd of all.

  Nosewise growled, barked, and made a nuisance of himself outside someone’s darkened window. ‘Nosewise!’ I hissed into the dark, for I could not see him. ‘Come here! Where have you got to?’ Had he got hold of a rat? I shook the leash, but that did not bring him running. He continued to growl and I followed the sound. And there he was, standing in a slice of moonlight and barking at the lawn.

  ‘That’s no way to treat the king’s grass, you cur.’ But when I got closer, I sensed something strange. In an alcove of hedges and beside a bench there appeared a great lump of something. At first, I thought it might be a pile of branches and twigs left behind by the gardeners.

  When I got closer, it wasn’t the leavings of hedges, but a man. I sputtered a laugh, for he appeared to be lying on his side on the wet grass. ‘What, sirrah, are you doing there?’ I said, my voice seeming too loud and echoing into the garden from off the stone walls. But nearly the moment the words left my lips, I knew that man would not, could not speak.

  I rushed forward and knelt beside him. It was Gonzalo! I recoiled. Those lips I had so recently kissed were slack and cold. Those eyes that had gazed so merrily at me were glassy and still. His dark hair was wet with dew and slapped against my hands as I held his head, painting my palms with a tangle of damascene.

  I passed my hands over his body, felt no quickening. ‘What … what …?’ I couldn’t seem to speak, to form the thought. My throat was hot and clenched, crawled up behind my eyes and stung them. I glanced around, looking for help. There was none.

  Nosewise whimpered behind me as if in mourning for my loss. Indeed, I might have whimpered too. Because for once in my life, I knew not what to do. I cradled him, rocked him, whispered a prayer over him. Any chance that a priest might bless him had expired.

  But when his head tilted back, I could clearly see in the moonlight that his throat had been slit. And what I had taken for dew-wet grass … was blood. Tankards and tankards of blood.

  TWO

  I puked. I’d never seen the like before. His neck was split from ear to ear and it gaped like a macabre smile. He was soaked in crimson all down his doublet and coat. The fur at his lapels was wet and matted with it.

  Somehow, I was able to raise the hue and cry and they came running from all over the palace. First the guards with their spears. They stood over us and stared, until I roused one of them and demanded he get help. Then more came, and finally some courtiers, bearing burning cressets.

  The next was a blur. I answered their questions as honestly as I could. I stood away from the … the body, clutching Nosewise to my chest. I tried not to look at the corpse as they carried it away. And soon the chamberlain came and questioned me again. He wanted to take me to the sheriffs, but someone had the presence of mind to remind all and sundry that I was the king’s and that they’d need ask his permission before taking me away.

  ‘Anyone can clearly see he had naught to do with it,’ said one courtier, and thank God he was believed, even though I was covered in blood. In Gonzalo’s blood.

  I was let go and I trudged back through the darkened corridors to my chambers, with Nosewise clenched in my arms. I thought of lovely Gonzalo and his lovely hands and his lovely mouth, who would tease me no more. When had it happened? At what hour had been his murder, for it plainly was that. He was wet with blood but also with dew, so he had been outside since at least nightfall. And his body was loose, not stiff as bodies became when dead. How long did that take?

  I remembered my father’s farm – a sprawling estate in Shropshire with its green plains and humble manor house. I walked the grange and found a cow once. It had been alive only that morning, but poorly. It had died on the hill and lain there all night. Its legs stuck out before it, as if it were carved stone and someone had merely toppled the strange statue. But as I had observed it, the limbs eventually loosened again. So, by that vision of a cow so long ago, I reckoned that either Gonzalo had just died hours ago, or over twelve. It seemed unlikely that he would have gone unnoticed, lying there as he was in a courtyard. It must have been mere hours.

  And why had they done it? Why kill him?

  I consoled myself by hugging the dog until I got to my chamber. And by then there was a cadre of maids and manservants milling there, waiting for me.

  ‘Will!’ cried one of the kitchen boys. ‘We heard you found a body.’

  I scrubbed my hair, dappled with wet. I didn’t want to talk, only longed for my bed. I opened my chamber and sent Nosewise in as the others followed, before leaning on the closed door. ‘I did, God help me.’

  ‘Who was it?’ asked one of the laundresses with whom I used to tumble before I met Marion. Alice was her name.

  ‘The imperial ambassador’s man.’

  They exchanged looks with one another. ‘Who’d want to kill him?’ asked one of the cocks, with whom I’d also tumbled from time to time; Edward. ‘I’ll wager it was a duel!’

  ‘It wasn’t a duel,’ I said, and even now I could not get the look of him out of my head. ‘He was murdered.’

  There were exclamations all around. They wanted to ask more questions. I wanted to be rid of them. ‘It’s late,’ said Marion, pushing her way through the crowd. Because she was the daughter of a courtier her orders held weight. And thank God for that. ‘Can’t you see how vexed is our Will? Surely your masters and mistresses will be awakened early because of it. You’d best go to bed.’

  I was grateful to her. She had a good head on her shoulders, did Marion. She shooed them all away and remained when all was silent in the passage again. ‘Do you need anything, Will?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing but a little peace.’

  ‘And you shall have it.’ She leaned in and planted a pecking kiss to my cheek, gave me a nod, and turned to leave. But I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward me. She held me close, a safe, warm presence, before she pushed me back. It was then she saw my doublet.

  ‘God’s wounds! Look at the state of you! We must get these off.’

  She pushed me into my chamber and closed and barred the door. I stood there like a child as she unlaced the doublet, untied the points at my hose, and peeled it all away, the material already stiffening with the drying blood. She said nothing, only glanced at my face from time to time. She folded it and set it aside. ‘Hose, too,’ she said, in her no-nonsense tone.

  She poured water from the jug into the washtub I used for bathing and laid the doublet and hose within. ‘There’s no amount of brushing these stains. They’ll have to soak. Then I’ll get at it with powders and lye.’

  ‘How do you know as much as a laundress?’

  She sighed as she unpinned and removed her sleeves, rubbed the wet material together and finally left it alone in the rosy water. ‘You know as well as I do that I must often make do.’

  ‘But your father is Yeoman of the Records.’

  ‘And little he is paid for it. He shares what he can with me, gives me my allowance, but he has a household to maintain. Clerks and servants. And an image before the king, too. As long as I am thrifty, he can stay in the king’s company. You of all people know that, Will.’

  I did. Only those in the finest array – be they lord or lowly courtier – can gain the king’s presence. He did not like to look upon those of poorer garb. Marion was an exception. For even though the woolens she wore were modest, she was a master at embroidery and that was what elevated her mere woolens to something more sumptuous. She was a prize, was my Marion. She was therefore allowed to be part of the company of maids of honor, first for Queen Catherine … and now Lady Nan. She did most of the work, but she also taught the ladies new stitches who wanted to learn.

  ‘Your father is an important man,’ said I, ‘and Harry knows it.’

  ‘Well, God willing he stays in his position. You know how he worries so.’

  I had disrobed enough times in her sight that I didn’t cringe at it. I divested myself of the blood-stained chemise – which she took and lowered into the bath – and stood before her in only my braies.

  She clucked her tongue at the water blushed with blood. ‘I’ll wash all these myself.’

  I was about to object, but then thought better of it. It would be best that no laundress saw them as they were.

  ‘You are the most forlorn fellow I have ever seen,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘For a jester.’ Even though it was late and the others had been in their shifts, Marion still wore her small French hood that cradled her auburn hair and covered her ears, with its modest biliment edge of gold-threaded embroidery. It might have been the only one she owned, for I never saw her with another. She was no rich courtier’s daughter to be wearing pearls or gems on her person. Her kirtle with its low, square neckline was made of bombazine, and her only ornament hung on her girdle of embroidered fabric; a bone needle case, inlaid with ebony. ‘Shall I stay with you tonight?’

  I felt the fool asking her to … but then again, I was a fool. ‘If it would content you.’

  She said nothing more. She laid out my night-shift on the small bed, and set to preparing various things about the chamber; banking the fire, opening the window a crack the way I liked it, even seeing to Nosewise that he had his water in a bowl. I slowly began to dress and I watched her out of the edge of my eye. Her face did not betray her heritage with a blunt nose and small eyes. Instead, it was every bit as noble as her father’s, with an elegantly sloped nose and wide expressive eyes and the rusty hair so admired in court. Her skin was properly pale and not in the least tanned by work in the sun, nor were her hands blistered and raw from rough scrubbing of floors or laundry. They were long-fingered and genteel, as was Marion’s manner. She should have been a noble, but she never complained.

  She unpinned the black veil from her headdress first and then laid both aside, unpinning and shaking out her long, straight tresses. I always thought she was the prettiest maid, with a proper blush to her cheeks and lips, those two buds that twisted when she heard tales of my exploits but were also always ready with a kiss, even after hearing of my more intimate exploits, for she knew me well, better than anyone. Better than any man.

  She folded the sleeves and then undid the laces at the side of her bodice, stiff with buckram and, once having loosened them, she shimmied out of her kirtle, underdress, and petticoats, letting them cascade to the floor in a soft whoosh. Only in her shift, she gathered them up in a heap and set them on a chair, laying it out as if it were a second skin. But the thought of dead skin made me shiver, and I quickly climbed into my bed.

  The jingle of Nosewise’s collar traipsed through the room before he leaped to the bed, curled into a ball, and slept against my side nearest the wall.

  Marion fussed with her shift a bit before dousing the candle. Darkness swept into the room, with just the faint glow from the hearth lighting her profile and outlining bench, chair, and coffer. She climbed in beside me, gathered me in her arms as I laid my head upon her bosom, and sighed. ‘I worry about you,’ she said after a time.

  ‘I worry about me too.’

  ‘Oh, Will. How did such a thing happen?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t believe it. It was only last night that we …’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘He was so sweet to me, Marion. You would have liked him.’

  ‘Did you talk to him today?’

  ‘No. I doubt I would have seen him again. He’s an important man. Was …’

  ‘You’re a butterfly, aren’t you? Fluttering from here to there, from man to woman.’

  ‘Only to you, Fair Marion. Only back to you.’

  She resettled, holding me close. I inhaled her scent of sweet marjoram and rosewater. ‘You love me. And I love you. Why do we not settle together?’ she asked.

  ‘Because even though you are a bastard, your father would never agree to you marrying the king’s fool.’

  She sighed again. ‘Aye, I know. But it’s also so you can have your men.’

  ‘If I married you, I’d still have men.’

  She slapped my head and I muffled an ‘Ouch’ before she tugged me close again. ‘I wonder if I’d be a good enough wife to let you.’

  ‘Would you? That is sweet. I don’t love them. I only love you.’

  ‘Then you must like about them what I like about them.’

  I reached up and kissed her softly. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’ve never understood your ways, but I have no argument for it. Especially …’

  She fell silent, but I finished her words for her. ‘As long as I come back to you. And I always shall.’

  We said nothing more that night. She was gently breathing after a time, but I stayed awake, watching the red coals glow and radiate. Even so, she was a comfort, her warm presence, her arms about me. I needed it just then. For I could not help but run the thought over and over in my mind: How the devil am I to be merry for the king in the morning?

  But merry I had to be. For the king must never know that I had aught to do with the dead man or that I even found him, though word might have gotten back to him already. I hoped not.

  It must have been quite late when I finally dropped off, for Marion had left sometime before I awakened, and the clothes that had been bloody the night before lay draped over some chairs set near the fire, damp but clean. Fortunately, I had several changes of clothes.

  I prepared a pig bladder full of air on a stick with which I planned to harry the men of court, but Henry told the court to subdue themselves in deference to the Spanish and imperial ambassador’s mourning. And then Harry gave me the eye, and by that I knew that he knew I had found the corpse.