Joanna Hickson - First of the Tudors

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2016

Copyright © Joanna Hickson 2016

Cover design: Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Cover illustration © Chris Cooper-Smith / Alamy

Joanna Hickson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008139704

Ebook Edition © December 2016 ISBN: 9780008139711

Version: 2018-09-24

For my gorgeous granddaughter Lyra Joanna Second of the Ashtons Conceived, gestated and delivered Along the same timeline as First of the Tudors

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Family Tree

Maps

Part One: Brothers to the King

Chapter 1: Jasper

Chapter 2: Jane

Chapter 3: Jasper

Chapter 4: Jasper

Chapter 5: Jasper

Part Two : The Tudor Earls

Chapter 6: Jane

Chapter 7: Jasper

Chapter 8: Jasper

Chapter 9: Jasper

Chapter 10: Jasper

Chapter 11: Jasper

Chapter 12: Jane

Chapter 13: Jane

Chapter 14: Jane

Chapter 15: Jasper

Chapter 16: Jane

Chapter 17: Jane

Chapter 18: Jasper

Chapter 19: Jane

Chapter 20: Jasper

Chapter 21: Jane

Chapter 22: Jane

Part Three: Hostilities

Chapter 23: Jasper

Chapter 24: Jasper

Chapter 25: Jasper

Chapter 26: Jane

Chapter 27: Jasper

Chapter 28: Jane

Chapter 29: Jasper

Part Four: Two Crowned Kings

Chapter 30: Jane

Chapter 31: Jane

Chapter 32: Jasper

Chapter 33: Jasper

Chapter 34: Jane

Chapter 35: Jane

Chapter 36: Jane

Chapter 37: Jasper

Chapter 38: Jasper

Chapter 39: Jasper

Part Five: The Return

Chapter 40: Jane

Chapter 41: Jasper

Chapter 42: Jasper

Chapter 43: Jasper

Chapter 44: Jane

Chapter 45: Jasper

Chapter 46: Jane

Chapter 47: Jasper

Glossary

Welsh Words and Names

Author’s Notes

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading Tudor Trilogy

About the Author

Also by Joanna Hickson

About the Publisher

FLASHES OF IRIDESCENCE GLEAMED like fireflies in the gloom of the small tower chamber. I stared at the river of fabric as it settled in graceful waves across the bed. It was the intense blue of a noon sky, yet it glittered with the gold of midnight stars. ‘Do you think she will like it?’ Edmund asked.

I took a deep breath, hesitating to prick my brother’s bubble. ‘Yes – and no,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’ Indignation raised the timbre of his voice. ‘Jesu Jas, a gown fashioned of such fabric would make any female feel like a queen!’

My hackles rose. I hated Edmund calling me Jas and had told him so on numerous occasions, yet still he persisted. It was a boyhood nickname and we were no longer boys but squires in the service of the king, soon to become knights. My name was Jasper. I had stopped calling him Ed on the day we came to court.

‘But she is not a queen and there are sumptuary laws. Our sister could be royally fined for wearing a gown made from such fabric. You know its use is restricted to royalty, archbishops and the effigies of saints.’

I touched the cloth, admiring its shimmer as the slight movement stirred it into life; it was soft and sinuous under my fingers. I imagined the deft fingers that had wound the fine gold wire around the warp fibres with infinite skill and patience. Edmund was right; wearing it would make anyone feel illustrious. Cloth of gold! Just how had Edmund come up with the huge price it commanded?

Edmund drew himself up to his six-foot height. ‘The daughter of a queen may wear what she likes. They would not dare to fine her.’

Exasperated, I flicked the fabric so that it rippled, like a sudden flurry on a calm lake. ‘Your head is in the clouds, brother. Come back to earth. Our sister lives in Tun Lane, London. Nobody knows what we know. In her world she is not Margaret, just Meg, and she is about to marry the man of her choice who is not a prince but a lawyer. She will be a wife and, God willing, a mother. She is happy, with a warm home and enough money for her needs. Whatever you dream for your own future, do not wish it on her.’

Irritably Edmund twitched the length of fabric into his arms, gathering it in like a shield against reality. ‘I know what she is – what she has chosen to remain – but she is still the daughter of a queen, the granddaughter of a king, and I will give her the honour of royal raiment, even if she never wears it.’

I shrugged. ‘So be it but you have wasted your money. And do not dare to reveal her true birth by so much as a whisper at the wedding or you will win Mette’s enduring wrath – and mine too for that matter.’

My brother paused in his careful folding of the cloth-of-gold. ‘Mette – is she still alive then?’

Unlike me, Edmund no longer went to The House of the Vine in Tun Lane where our sister had lived since the death of our royal mother fourteen years ago. In recent years he had acquired what I considered an exaggerated sense of rank and the refuse-strewn back streets of London offended him.

‘Of course she is alive. You know she is. She always asks after you, as does our sister.’ Mette was Meg’s foster mother, the faithful servant into whose care our own mother had entrusted her little daughter on her deathbed, hoping she might enjoy the happy childhood she herself had not known. Our mother was one of many children of the sixth King Charles of France and the ravages of the king’s madness had had consequences for them all in the fierce struggle for power that resulted. Now Meg was to marry her foster brother William, who had recently qualified as a lawyer at the Middle Temple. A spring wedding at St Mildred’s church.