A Dangerous Inheritance (42 page)

“I’m so sorry for you, Mattie. It’s lucky he didn’t leave you with child.”

“I thank our Holy Mother for that. She must have had me under her protection that night. Oh, Lord, I was a fool.” She sighed. “Can I go to sleep now, mistress? I’m that tired.”

“Of course,” Kate said. “Good night.”

The next day she and Mattie looked for Sir James in the court. He noticed them staring at him and turned his head away. He was a handsome wight, Kate had to admit, but he looked vain with it, and too assured of his place in the world. She decided to ruffle his peacock feathers.

She did a daring and impulsive thing. She sent Mattie off on an errand, then went over to where Tyrell was standing. He leered at her.

“My Lady Katherine,” he said, bowing extravagantly.

“I heard something rather disturbing yesterday, Sir James,” she said. “It was about you.”

“My lady?” His expression was shifty now.

“Yes. It seems you took advantage of my maid and then abandoned her.” Kate was surprised at her own boldness, but reminded herself that she had every right, as Mattie’s mistress, to make a complaint.

“Who said that, my lady?”

“She told me herself when I asked about you.”

“Oh?” He looked nonplussed.

“Someone had mentioned you in connection with a different matter.” She paused; let that confound him! “I do confess, sir, that I was disappointed to hear of such dishonorable conduct.”

“She was willing enough,” Tyrell said sourly.

“I daresay she was. But she was very young, and you, sir, are a knight, and a man of years and experience. It did not become you to use her so.”

He was angry now.

Kate continued: “Unless you wish to be reported to the King my father, I would suggest you do not treat any other ladies in the same way. You know how strict he is where morality is concerned.”

“Are you threatening me, my lady?”

“Only if you conduct yourself dishonorably in the future. I must respect the example my father sets. I’m sure you can appreciate that.” She smiled sweetly.

“What is all this about?” Sir James puffed. “You say you’ve heard about me in connection with another matter. Why did you ask Mattie about me?”

Kate lowered her voice. “I heard your name mentioned in the marketplace yesterday. Someone said—and I only repeat it—that you were sent by the King to the Tower to murder his nephews.”

Tyrell gave nothing away. His face did not change. If there was a tightening around his lips, it could have been put down to indignation that people could accuse him of such things.

“You should not pay heed to gossip, my lady,” he growled.

“I did not say I heeded it, sir,” she sparred.

Tyrell gave her a hard look, as if he guessed she was testing his reactions. “Well, thank you, my lady,” he said grudgingly. Then he nodded his head in the briefest of bows and stalked off.

With the prince dead and buried, and having no need now to remain at Middleham, the Earl of Huntingdon—Kate could not yet think of him as William—rode south to attend upon the King. Having established himself and his retinue at court, he took to calling upon Kate every day, often with gifts. He never stayed long, for her manner was courteous
but cold. She could not overcome the revulsion she felt. There was nothing between them, no affection or even liking. They remained two strangers. How would they ever make a marriage?

As she lay wakeful in bed one night, after a stolen hour with John on the battlements, Kate made a disturbing connection. She remembered Mattie saying that Tyrell had gone south to London to get stuff for the investiture in York. That would have been on the King’s orders, surely. The investiture had been in September, and soon afterward rumors of the murder of the princes had begun to circulate, followed speedily by Buckingham’s rebellion. Had there been any connection between Tyrell’s trip to London and the princes’ disappearance? Had he had another, more sinister purpose than just fetching necessary stuff for the investiture?

After a sleepless night, she questioned Mattie after Mass, as they broke their fast over bread and ale.

“I reprimanded Sir James Tyrell for his treatment of you,” she said. “But I wondered … Did he say anything to you about that journey he made to London?”

“He just said he had to go to the Tower to collect stuff from the Royal Wardrobe. I can’t recall him saying anything else—oh, he said it would be a fast ride: four days each way. I remember that because I was counting them on my fingers.”

The Tower. He had been to the Tower. The realization sent shivers of ice down Kate’s spine. But again—where else would he have gone, with instructions to collect things from the Royal Wardrobe, which just happened to be housed in the Tower? His presence there did not mean that he had murdered the princes.

This is becoming an obsession
, Kate thought. Yet still there were so many unanswered questions, not the least of which was why her father had not shown the princes to the people and given the lie to the rumors that were destroying his reputation.

Again she told herself that there would be an honest reason for his not having done so. What if the boys had died natural deaths? Disease was rife in London, especially in the hot summer months, and the
elder prince had not been well. Given the widespread rumors, if her father announced now that one or both princes had died through illness, no one would believe him.

She was going round and round in circles with her arguments. Was she imagining a mystery where none existed? Did the princes still live in the Tower, as John had insisted? She wanted desperately to believe it.

Fetching writing materials, she stayed in her chamber setting down everything she knew in note form. She wrote of the rumors that were damaging to the King; the likelihood that Buckingham had known the truth about the fate of the princes, although he was dead and could not talk; that Bishop Russell had more or less said they lived yet; that Tyrell had been at the Tower, and more …

She recorded how both Brother Dominic and Bishop Russell believed that her father had been determined to seize the throne from the first, although neither of them had actually accused him of murdering his nephews. She noted how the Bishop dismissed the precontract story, yet said her father had chosen to believe it. But that did not make him a child killer. And apart from the rumors, which could have been started by any of his enemies, and the fact that no one had seen the princes since July, ten months ago, there was no evidence at all that he had destroyed his brother’s sons.

She had to know the truth about the precontract. Gathering her papers together, she tied them up with a length of hair ribbon and locked them in her chest, where they would be secure. It would not do to leave such contentious writings lying around, for she could not bear the thought of her father finding out what she was doing. She had already overstepped the mark with her questions as it was.

Locking her door behind her, just to be on the safe side, she made her way around the vast warren of the castle, hoping to find Bishop Stillington, the man who had laid evidence of the precontract before her father. She knew him by sight, a plump, aging, high-nosed cleric who seemed to be always hovering in the King’s wake. By great good fortune, she ran into him in the chapel.

“God’s blessing on you, Lady Katherine,” he said unctuously. “You are a little late for Mass, I fear.”

She curtsied. “No, Father, I heard Mass earlier. It is you I seek.”

“I?” He smiled. “If I can be of any service to such a charming young lady …” She found his manner ingratiating.

“Yes, Father. Something troubles me,” she said. “Something I overheard.”

“Tell me, child,” Stillington said, ushering her to a pew. “Tell me all about it.”

Kate assumed an air of innocence. “Father, I know well that my father became King because the young King Edward and his brother were found to be illegitimate. There was something about a precontract …”

The little Bishop’s smile had slipped somewhat. He looked uneasy. “Yes, my child, there was, and your father’s title has now been confirmed in Parliament. What can possibly be troubling you?”

“I overheard two men—I know not who, they had their backs to me—saying there was no precontract and that it was a false tale used as a pretext for my father to take the throne. In faith, I was very upset to hear such talk.” She was making, she felt, a good job of playing the damsel in distress.

Bishop Stillington appeared discomposed for a moment, then collected himself with an effort, assuming again his urbane manner of moments before. “That is a foul calumny, my lady!” he declared. “I wish you had marked the men who said it, then they should have been dealt with as they deserved. Even so, they were only repeating idle gossip.”

Kate tried to look relieved. “I am glad to hear you say that,” she said. “I thank you for your words of comfort. That lady—Dame Eleanor Butler, was it?—what happened to her?”

“She died long ago,” the Bishop said firmly. “And now, if you will excuse me, I must attend on the King your father.” And he sketched the sign of the cross over her and departed. She sat there awhile, thinking that he was not a man she would trust; certainly he had not wanted to talk about Eleanor Butler.

When she looked up, William, her betrothed, was standing in the doorway, watching her in that disconcerting way he had. “Good day, my lady,” he said stiffly, bowing. “I have been looking for you. We are summoned to wait upon the King’s Grace.”

——

Richard was seated in his closet, clad in deepest black, his only jewel the ruby and jet brooch with the drop pearl that he customarily wore on his hat. He looked shrunken, diminished by grief, his face a mask of sorrow; his voice was hoarse and his manner distant. Yet he welcomed them kindly enough, and embraced and kissed Kate.

“I have some good news for you both, which shall be a comfort to us all,” he said. “I have decided that you are to be wed before I leave this, my castle of care.”

Married now! Kate knew her distress must be visible in her face. She had thought it would not be for months yet. Desperately, she tried to compose herself, aware that everyone—her betrothed, her father, and his courtiers—was looking at her.

“Bishop Stillington has consented to perform the ceremony in the castle chapel,” the King was saying. “Given the circumstances”—his voice faltered slightly—“it will be a small wedding. But never fear, Kate, we will feast you as becomes a bride, and make merry, eh?” He gave her a weak smile, which she tried to return. She thought: In his grief, he has forgotten that I love another, and that this news of my wedding can only grieve me.

“Afterward, you will ride with the court to Durham, and thence to York,” the King informed them. “I should like to keep Kate with me for just a little longer.” He looked at her wistfully, and it was all she could do to keep from crying. “But then you must go into Wales, and guard it for me, William; guard it loyally. The Tudor skulks in Brittany, and who knows what mischief he is plotting!”

“I am Your Grace’s man unto death,” William declared, bowing.

“You will be well rewarded, I promise it. Kate, my child, the Queen is waiting to assist you with your wedding attire. Go to her now.”

Kate dipped in another curtsey. William was giving her that look again, and there was a hint of lust in his eyes that had not been there before.

Emerging from the Queen’s lodgings, weary of trying to look pleased with the fine fabrics that had been displayed before her, and of standing
still while the tailors pinned them on her, Kate turned urgently to Mattie.

“Go seek out my lord of Lincoln,” she directed her. “Bid him be in the chapel at midnight, as you love me.”

Mattie looked at her, comprehension dawning. “So that’s how it is,” she said. “You are to be wed, yet you are still seeing your young lord. Have a care, mistress!”

“I love him!” Kate said brokenly. “This will be the last time, I vow it. After that, I will belong to my husband and my life will be over. But I swear he will never have any pleasure of me!”

September 1560, Whitehall Palace

The court is an in uproar, and no wonder! Lord Robert Dudley’s un-cherished wife has been found dead, her neck broken, at the foot of a flight of stairs at Cumnor Place, near Oxford. Such a scandal has not erupted in a long time. It is all over the court, and no doubt will soon be all over Christendom too; and the word on everyone’s lips is “murder.” Tongues wag ceaselessly, and suspicion centers on Lord Robert, but fingers point secretly—and sometimes not so secretly—at Queen Elizabeth. The Dudley scandal is so sensational that it seems she may never recover from it. There is even talk that King Philip is urging her to wed Lord Robert in order to discredit her, so that he will then be able to press my claim to the throne.

But he does not know Elizabeth! I would wager a fortune on her never having allowed Robert Dudley to pass beyond caresses; and I saw for myself how dismayed she was, not only at Amy Dudley’s death, but at the realization that Lord Robert was now a free man. Him she loves: I do not doubt that; but she will never surrender her body or her autonomy as Queen.

Yet there remains talk of my marrying the Archduke Ferdinand
or—horrors—even Don Carlos. Bishop de Quadra returns to that theme whenever we meet, and I smile and profess myself flattered, yet remain noncommittal, telling him that he must seek my sovereign’s permission for my marriage. Maybe he knows I am stalling—and goodness knows, I have good reason to do so! Because at last, at long last, there is hope for my sweet Ned and me.

Only yesterday Sir William Cecil approached Ned and informed him it had been noticed that he sought me out whenever he came to Whitehall. Ned was much alarmed, for he feared Mr. Secretary was about to forbid him to see me again. But no! He asked Ned if there was goodwill between us—but Ned was so afraid of our being parted that he said there was no such thing.

Cecil told him he knew of the Spanish plot to marry me to the Archduke or Don Carlos. Ned could not hide his astonishment when Sir William said he would like to forestall that plot by arranging my marriage to a loyal Englishman. But, he added, as he saw now that there was nothing between us, he would forbear to pursue the matter further. “And good day to you, sir,” he had ended.