Page 63 of The Queen’s Witch

“Do you know of such a person here at Windsor, or in London? Or better yet, at Hever?”

“No, Your Grace.” The only thrice-braided Sister I knew of was not nearby.

“Then while I am gone, find one.”

“Yes! I will!”

She said no more, bustling away to supervise her packing.

The Progress set out from Windsor on July 9, a long line of courtiers, soldiers, musicians, baggage wagons, fresh mounts, tents, and conflicted expectations. I watched from the roof as the procession left, trumpets blowing and banners waving. I spied Mark on his sorrel horse, the jaunty feather in his hat bobbing as the rouncy trotted away. Commoners lined the road, but I did not hear whether they cheered Henry or jeered at Anne.

Most courtiers and ladies had already left court for their yearly visits to families or estates. With the monarch’s departure, many of the palace servants also left, returning to Whitehall to clean, receive the harvest, and prepare for autumn. Of those left at the castle, no one cared what I did. Soldiers at the huge arched gate watched, bored, as I came and went. Most of the castle was surrounded by forest, but the market town of Windsor bordered the Thames. There I found work tending fires in a bakehouse, where poor women whose houses did not include a bake oven came to cook their bread. As in Bredham, there was no better place to hear gossip. The poor, who had so little to lose, or who perhaps had greater trust in their friends than is found at court, were often indiscreet, and I knew well how to pose as deaf and dumb.

I heard much, but not what I needed. Anne was reviled in whispers that I could overhear with the aid of a simple spell.

“She be an upstart, taking the place of good Queen Katherine.”

“She be much worse! A whore, a poisoner.”

“God sent the bad harvest ’cause of her.”

“Nay, it warn’t God—it be her! She witched the harvest, like she witched the king.”

General agreement: Anne was a witch. And then, as I knew it would, came the pronouncement from the Christian book: “‘Ye shall not suffer a witch to live.’”

“Hush, Lucy, ye fool!” An anxious look around, to see who listened to this treason. But there was only me, stolid and stupid, kneeling to put another stick of firewood under the oven and striving to hide my uneasiness. I must not have succeeded, because the woman stared hard at me. I yelped and sucked my finger as if I had burned it, and the woman, reassured, called, “Be careful, mistress,” and returned to berating Lucy.

They were indeed talking treason. Also the death of my Third.

The new religious reform was spreading rapidly in Windsor. Few could read, but all attended church, many at the magnificent Chapel of Saint George beside the castle. One Sunday, I entered the nave to glean what I could from the castle priest’s sermon—and could go no farther than the threshold.

A feeling of dread and fear swamped me. I could not go on. I recalled the north chapel at Salle years ago, which I had seldom thought of since. Something had happened here, or was happening, or would happen.

“Mistress, be ye well?” An older woman stopped beside me.

“I . . . no, I . . . I ate something bad . . .”

“Go home,” she said kindly. “Swallow a bit of soapy water to purge. The Lord will understand ye missing Mass.”

“Thank . . . ye . . .”

I backed away from the chapel, and the feeling passed. Divination, difficult even for a thrice-braided Sister, was not mine. But as Grandmother, Mother Redcap, and even Agnes Snayth had told me, my natural abilities were strong. I would not enter Henry’s magnificent cathedral again.

Word reached the servants of Windsor Castle from the servants at Whitehall that Pope Paul had issued a decree condemning Henry Tudor, king of England, as a heretic.

Talk at the bakehouse condemned the pope, not the king. The common people of Berkshire, it seemed, had no strong opposition to Henry as supreme head of the English Church. What these women did object to was the closing of the monasteries and abbeys. The churches of Windsor had housed many relics, including “a piece of the true cross.” In my years of wandering, I had heard of so many places with such claims that the original cross must have been the height of an oak. The bakehouse women were convinced that their piece of the cross was real. It had been venerated, and had also brought money to the town from the many pilgrims who now came far less frequently.

“It be that Lord Cromwell,” Bridget said, shoving her bread into the oven.

“Aye,” Lucy agreed. “The whore cursed him too.”

After a fortnight, having learned nothing of use, I left the bakehouse and looked for any sign of the Sisterhood in Windsor or in nearby Eton Slough or Chalvey, both reached by a stone bridge across the Thames.

What I found was the aftermath of a hanging.

The body of a woman, a sack over her face, hung from a tree in Eton Slough. The corpse must have been fresh; animals and birds had not yet torn through her clothing. The wooden plaque nailed to the trunk said simply, WYTCH.

Was she? Or merely a cunning woman, betrayed by her neighbors or, worse, by her own kindness in continuing to ease pain, find lost articles, remove curses from pigs? Or, had she cursed animals, a practitioner of malefic magick?