Page 17 of The Queen’s Witch

“No, my lady. He is perfectly well. And from here, I do not return to His Majesty. He takes all care to avoid infection.”

“Good. You may go.”

The cook appeared in the doorway, followed by a serving maid. Anne closed her eyes. I said, “Mistress Anne is very tired.”

The serving girl said timidly, “My orders be to stay with my mistress. Dr. Butts said.”

“Very well,” Anne said to her. Then, eyes still closed, turned her face toward me and said, “I will consider it.”

It was all I was going to achieve for now. It was more than I had hoped.

I was not permitted to nurse Anne again. Dr. Butts sent for “a proper nurse” from, I presumed, some nearby great house. I stumbled to the kitchen. The cook inquired after Mistress Anne, and I told her the fever had broken.

“Oh, thank the good Lord!” she cried, and I saw that she was genuinely fond of Anne, who must possess more amiable qualities than I had yet seen. The cook, a kind woman, gave me a hearty breakfast and showed me a pallet in the servants’ quarters where I might sleep. I preferred the stable, which was cleaner.

Before I left the kitchen, I said humbly, “I am ignorant of all but nursing, mistress, and I have never been to London. Can you tell me who is ‘Wolsey’?”

She stared at me. “Ye truly do not know?”

“I am very ignorant,” I said, truthfully.

“Ye be ignorant indeed. Cardinal Wolsey be lord chancellor of England.”

Anne, I was told, recovered quickly. More letters and packages came from the king: a gold bracelet, a necklace of pearls. The kitchen, where I took my meals and stayed silent as a mute, knew everything and gossiped constantly. The stables buzzed with news from the court. I hoped Anne would send for me, but she did not. When Viscount Rochford and Lady Rochford returned to Hever, apparently assured that their daughter could no longer infect them, I knew I had lost all chance to see Anne again.

Still I stayed at the castle, sleeping in the hayloft with a ward set around me, fed by the cook, the only one at Hever who seemed grateful for my ministrations to Anne. I clung, too, to those last words from Anne: I will consider it. I did not know what else to do.

The first week in July, Anne came to the stable, which was in a great bustle. Three horses were saddled for her, a groom, and one of the ladies restored to Hever. Anne approached me, and I curtsied. She looked well, with no rosiness to her complexion but her hair soft and shining under a plumed hat, her riding habit of crimson velvet flattering her dark coloring.

We stood apart from the others, and she wasted no time.

“Why do you speak more like an educated person than a Norfolk peasant?”

“My . . . mother worked from childhood in a great house in Lincolnshire, and I learned to speak from her.”

“Where is your mother now?”

“Dead, my lady. As is my father.”

“Can you concoct poisons?”

I could, of course; every country child knew which plants would sicken or kill. Was this a test? I thought quickly.

“Yes, but not poisoned spells. I am still a cunning woman. If I were to have my full ceremony, which would need you . . .” Her sudden scowl made me change course. “. . . but failing that, I can detect poisons, both natural and spelled, in food and clothing and bedding.”

“Detect poison?”

“Yes,” I lied. That magick belonged to the thrice braided unless the poison was made from a few common plants that even a cunning woman could sense.

She nodded. “We leave for court tomorrow. You will go with me.”

“My lady—”

“You will be my taster. There are many at court who would do me ill, and I fear poison. I will have clothing sent to replace those rags.” She turned away.

I did not believe her. No gossip I had ever heard concerning the court—and in the last week there had been much—ever mentioned poison. There was talk, low and sometimes sniggering, of the king’s great desire to bed Anne, of her ambition to replace Queen Katherine, of a petition to Rome, of plots somehow known or perhaps merely invented by these common folk who served the great. But nothing of poison. Anne did not need a taster.

But she wished me close, in case she needed something only I could supply.