The Minstrel's Lady

The Minstrel's Lady was the winner of the 2017 e-festival of words, best romance.

Rose and her boyfriend, Robbie, are travelling minstrels. Robbie plays the lute while Rose sings and they make a nice little living going about the county with their act.

But they hope for better things. They have a friend at court, a friend named Mark Smeaton, a minstrel like them who has found favour with the Queen.

Mark has written, inviting his old friends to London. He has done well at the palace and he is sure they can do just as well.

But they arrive at a time when the Queen is out of favour with the King. The May day celebrations bring our minstrels a nice little pile of coins, but when they hear that their friend Mark has been arrested, for adultery with the Queen, they decide it would be safer to leave, to go home.

A storm breaks out as their coach is crossing the bridge and the bridge collapses into the Thames. When Rose wakes up in a nearby tavern, she remembers nothing, but there are expensive clothes in a travelling box in her room and when an earl turns up, telling her she is Madeleine, a woman he has married by proxy, she has no reason to doubt him.

A word about this tale. Although I like to make my stories as historically accurate as possible, I have discovered since writing this one that marriage by proxy was not legal in England, except for royalty. But I don't want to change the tale, so please forgive this little hiccup.

Minstrel's lady a novel of Tudor times

Rose was a product of my imagination. I have always thought that Mark Smeaton, as man known to boast, didn't realise the danger of admitting that he slept with Queen Anne Boleyn.

He was an uneducated minstrel who was giving Anne music lessons as well as singing to her. She is known to have told him that he could not expect to be treated the same as her other friends, as he was 'but a lowly fellow'.

That sounds pretentious to our modern ears, but class was very important back then. Perhaps Mark thought it was a compliment to be suspected of being the Queen's lover. Perhaps he wanted to get revenge on her for talking to him in that tone. Perhaps he was simply terrified and said whatever Thomas Cromwell wanted to hear.

It is likely Mark was tortured. It was allowed to torture a common bloke like him, but not to torture a nobleman. That is how much class meant.

Whatever his reasons, we do know his confession was mostly all lies. He confessed to have carnal relations with the Queen in various places and on various dates when it was known she was not in those places. But being determined to rid himself of her, I doubt that would have deterred the King.

We will never know Mark's reasons, but it occurred to me that, although he was but 'a lowly fellow' feeling himself more important than he was, he must have had friends himself.

That is where the idea came from. I hope you enjoy reading The Minstrel's Lady. Click on the picture or click here to buy.

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Copyright 2022 by Margaret Brazear