Courting Dragons


 Contents
 Cover
 Also by Jeri Westerson
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Dedication
 Epigraph
 Glossary
 Chapter One
 Chapter Two
 Chapter Three
 Chapter Four
 Chapter Five
 Chapter Six
 Chapter Seven
 Chapter Eight
 Chapter Nine
 Chapter Ten
 Chapter Eleven
 Chapter Twelve
 Chapter Thirteen
 Chapter Fourteen
 Chapter Fifteen
 Chapter Sixteen
 Chapter Seventeen
 Chapter Eighteen
 Chapter Nineteen
 Chapter Twenty
 Chapter Twenty-One
 Chapter Twenty-Two
 Chapter Twenty-Three
 Afterword
 COURTING DRAGONS
 
 Jeri Westerson
 
 
 
 Also by Jeri Westerson
 The Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series
 VEIL OF LIES
 SERPENT IN THE THORNS
 THE DEMON’S PARCHMENT
 TROUBLED BONES
 BLOOD LANCE
 SHADOW OF THE ALCHEMIST
 CUP OF BLOOD
 THE SILENCE OF STONES *
 A MAIDEN WEEPING *
 SEASON OF BLOOD *
 THE DEEPEST GRAVE *
 TRAITOR’S CODEX *
 SWORD OF SHADOWS *
 SPITEFUL BONES *
 THE DEADLIEST SIN *
 Other titles
 THOUGH HEAVEN FALL
 ROSES IN THE TEMPEST
 * available from Severn House
 For Craig, because he’s a fool for love.
 And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.
 Isaiah 34:13
 GLOSSARY
 Battlement – defensive architecture on the upper walls of a castle.
 Bauson – badger.
 Bench-whistler – idler.
 Beshrew – to invoke evil upon. To blame as the cause of misfortune.
 Biliments – the decorated border of a French hood.
 Bodkin – a dagger.
 Bring-a-waste – an insulting term.
 Buckram – a stiffened fabric as a precursor to a corset.
 Close stool – a small cabinet with a padded seat for a chamber pot.
 Cock lorel – rogue, reprobate.
 Cod – a man’s genitals.
 Crenellation – wall on the roof of a castle or palace as a battlement with alternating upward projections and gaps through which arrows or other weapons of war can be launched outward.
 Cross-biter – a swindler or trickster.
 Doublet – an inner close-fitting coat worn under a fuller, longer coat.
 Embrasure – the open part of an alternating crenellation on a battlement.
 French hood – not actually a hood, but more of a headband for women where a cloth veil is attached to the back.
 Galapines – food preparers.
 Hartichoak – artichoke.
 Hose – for men, stockings attached to a pant, the whole akin to tights, which ties to the bottom hem of the doublet with laces called ‘points’, with the codpiece attached to the front.
 Jesu – archaic form of the name Jesus, pronounced zhay-ZOO.
 Kennel hood – headgear for women, so-called because of its resemblance to a dog kennel, with its pointed, roof-like top. A cloth veil would be pinned to the back.
 Kirtle – a fitted bodice with a skirt, an overdress that split in the front at the skirt to allow the underskirt to show through.
 Lady-in-waiting – the senior attendants of a noble lady or queen, usually married.
 Maid of honor – the younger member of a noble woman’s or queen’s attendants, unmarried.
 Manchet – a small loaf of bread, round like a roll.
 Marry – an interjection expressing surprise, outrage, etc., now archaic. Probably a variant of ‘St Mary!’
 Merlon – the upward-projecting parts of a crenellated battlement.
 Motley – distinctive clothing of a jester, with bells attached, and a hood or foolish hat with bells.
 Mummery – a highly stylized play, usually with a religious theme.
 Nef – saltcellar.
 Parapet – low protective wall along a AFTERWORD
 Will Somers was Henry VIII’s real court jester. He came from Shropshire to Henry’s court in 1525 at about twenty years old, and stayed there the rest of his life, through all of Henry’s wives, through Edward VI’s brief reign, through Mary I’s, and into Elizabeth I’s. He was beloved by the whole family and loyal to the last. A jester could get away with quips no other courtier could. It was understood. They were allowed to. Oh, they could be beaten or kicked for it as other men in high places treated their fools, but the most that could happen was being sacked from the job.
 Little else is known about him. How old he was exactly, if he ever married, or anything else. And no, we don’t know if he had a dog though there is a painting with him and a dog. There is also a painting of him with a monkey. I’m sure we’ll see that creature in later volumes.
 A man who could be anywhere in court, privy to some of the court’s highest secrets? What better person could there be as an amateur sleuth?
 Henry was a difficult man to parse. There is the outer Henry, the one most of us see in history books or depicted for good or ill in dramas – a vain, vicious man, and absolute monarch, single-minded in his need for a male heir. But as with most people, there is the inner Henry, a much more complicated individual. He was staunchly religious, even being called Fidei Defensor, ‘Defender of the Faith’, by Pope Leo X. He wrote treatises on the Catholic religion, and even against Martin Luther and his Protestantism. That soon waned when Henry’s ‘Great Matter’ – that of his divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon – could find no foothold in Rome. Henry had received a papal dispensation specifically to marry Catherine in the first place because she had first been married to Henry’s older brother Arthur, who died not long thereafter. But Catherine couldn’t give Henry a son as heir, and this became what he felt was an obstacle to a successful reign; that he couldn’t leave a king after him, only a woman to be queen. (And why