Prisoner of the Queen (Tales From the Tudor Court) (43 page)

“My lady, no, do not get out of bed
. It is too soon,” the nursemaid said, holding out her hand.

“I must write a letter.”
I tried to stand, but my legs couldn’t hold me, and pain radiated through my feminine parts.

“Your labor was intense
, my lady. There was some tearing. You must rest.”

“I have to write…” I trailed off, sitting back down and then
lying, hoping the sting between my legs would recede.

“Must you write now?
’Tis well past midnight and not yet close to dawn.”

My days and nights seemed to have blended together
, and it wasn’t until that moment that I gazed around my room and noticed that the only light came from a few candles, and the windows, which were usually covered with blinds, had no slits of light peering through.

I yawned loudly and curled up
on my side. “It can wait until morning, I suppose.”

I closed my eyes and drifted into a restless sleep
in which my husband and baby were taken and I sat in a darkened room, coughing, sick and alone.

I awoke the next morning
, covered in sweat, and tears streaked down my face. My maids fussed around me, thinking I might be sick with childbirth fever. I pushed them away, begged for parchment and ink and wrote a letter to the queen, begging her, my tears smearing the ink. Then I wrote a letter to Ned, lamenting our situation and questioning how we might escape this place.

“The
chief warder will read your letter before it’s sent,” Mrs. Helen warned, eyeing the rolled parchment in her hand.

“Burn it,” I ordered her, my voice gravelly.

Mrs. Helen nodded, and I watched her toss the parchment into the fire. It crackled and hissed as my plea to my husband turned to ash.

“I am to visit with some friends later in the week. I shall make sure a message to Lord Hertford is
delivered.”

I looked up sharply. “How?”

“Do not fret, my darling. I shall seek out the duchess.”

I nodded
, and when all the maids finally stopped wiping my brow and shoving herbals down my throat, I took out the circlet ring Ned gave me on our wedding day, opened up the links and read his words of love and comfort:

As circles five by art compact show but one ring: in sight,

So trust uniteth faithful minds with knot of: secret might,

Whose force to break (but greedy Death) no evil: possesseth power,

As time and sequels well shall prove; my ring can: say no more.

A week later…

Elizabeth arrived alone, cloaked in black and a simple gown beneath, as though she hoped no one would guess who she was.
I had not expected to ever see her within these walls. The queen never visited the Tower, not since she’d been imprisoned there, the memories too painful. Did she not realize I felt that same pain? My sister had been imprisoned here. Murdered here. The way her lips quivered on the verge of a smile, I got the sense she enjoyed seeing me suffer.

“Kitty-Kat,” she drawled.

“Why have you come?”

Elizabeth looked taken aback by my blunt question
. I watched a flicker of question cross her countenance and realized, I’d never quite shown her the real me.

“Why would I not?”

“Does this place not hold memories you’d rather forget?” I couldn’t help myself. “Do you not see the irony? You inflict on me the same pain that you yourself experienced. We are much more alike than you realize. Both of us unjustly imprisoned.”

“Unjust?” Elizabeth sputtered. “Quite the opposite in your case. It has been a long time coming for you, Kat.”

I could only shake my head, words unable to form on my tongue. Was she so stubborn?

“Give me the marriage license. I would see with mine own eyes that the deed was done, now that you
have brought a bastard into the world.”

“
There is none, Majesty.” I glanced about my Tower prison room, hoping the spot I’d hidden the jointure document would not be discovered. ’Twas not a license, but could be close enough to be seen as proof of our being wedded. Why I should not want her to see it, I did not yet know, but there was something in her tone, in her eyes, that warned me against presenting it to her. I feared she may burn it.

“You do not have
one?” she repeated. “How could you marry without a special license signed and approved by the archbishop?”

“
Perhaps we did, and I left it at Hertford House, after the fact. I cannot recall…” My fingers trembled, and I hid them in the folds of my skirts.

The
queen glowered. “If indeed there ever was one. Who can bear witness?”

I shook my head, sadness filling my heart and making it heavy. “My lord husband
’s sister, Lady Jane, was our only witness.”

“And she is dead.” Elizabeth stated the fact as flippantly as one would announce stewed beef was
for supper.

I nodded.

“The priest’s name?”

“I do not recall, save for he was
a common priest walking along Canon Row.”

Elizabeth visibly gritted her teeth.
“For shame, you married like a common harlot when you have royal blood in your veins. ’Tis heinous. Nevertheless, I shall send men out to locate him.”

Fear snaked around my spine, but I nodded my as
sent, as I really did not have a choice in the matter. I prayed she did not mean to do the man harm.

“
You and your Lord Hertford shall languish and rot together forever, until the truth be told to me. To think you could plot against me.”

My eyes widened. “Together?”

She barked out a short, bitter laugh. “Certainly not. Together behind the walls of the Tower, rotting in his bed of fornication and you in yours. He’ll get nowhere near your skirts, Kitty-Kat.”

I pressed my lips together to keep from crying out at the wrench in my heart her coldness rendered.

“Did you honestly think I would let you remain together? Your marriage shall be deemed invalid, your child a bastard. And for good reason! I’ll be damned if I will have an heir whose lineage was the cause of my own mother’s undoing. Your bastard’s grandsire testified against my mother.”

Elizabeth rarely spoke of her mother, and never of her demise.
I thought she’d made it a point never to speak of her for fear of bringing anger and bridled hatred to the surface once more. But I realized, as I never had before, that Ned’s presence must remind her that his own aunt had been the one to replace her mother. Her mother had been beheaded because of the king’s lust for Jane Seymour, and now here I was, flaunting Seymour lust once more beneath her nose.

The look in Queen Elizabeth
’s eye was feral, angry. I bit the inside of my cheek hard, drawing blood, and dared my knees to quake, lest they give away how deeply her wrath affected me. And just as suddenly as my fear of her enveloped me, something inside snapped.

I met her gaze without wavering, let her see the true Katherine Grey, if only once. “You think a marriage before God and a child born of it a scandal, what of you and the rumors regarding your stepfather, Lord Sudeley? What of the whispers of your own pregnant belly?” Elizabeth’s mouth fell open but I did not let her speak. “You feel I fe
ll in love unsuitably and yet you romp alone in your room with a man who may have killed his wife and openly flirts with anything wearing a skirt.” I stepped forward, drawing my shoulders square, though I did not come quite close to her height. “You and I are no different, cousin, save for the fact I had the courage to love while you force everyone to share your lonely bed and dry out with you.”

By the time I was done, my breathing was erratic, my heart pounding and dizziness threaten
ed to drop me to the floor. Somehow, I managed to summon the courage to continue standing.

“How dare you?”
Elizabeth spat, her lips thinned. Her fingers clenched at her sides as if she itched to strike me.

I sw
allowed hard, having seen her so unhinged before, and waited for her to slap at my face.

I bowed my head, but did not speak
, the fight gone from me. She still had the upper hand and because I’d lost my temper, would most likely imprison me behind these walls until God lifted me up into heaven.

There was nothing I could say to make my decisions seem right in her eyes. Nothing I could do to draw back the venomous words I’d spoken. Elizabeth was not a forgiving woman.
She would not understand. She did not choose to love, or to marry. The one she wanted was forever forbidden her—especially after the suspicious death of his wife. ’Twas that event that had sealed her fate, and Elizabeth vowed never to marry. She did not express an interest in being a mother. She would never understand why I had chosen those things over her own affections.

“Have you nothing to say?” H
er voice was shrill.

I opened my mouth but nothing came out, only a shuddering breath.

“Speak!” Elizabeth’s voice boomed from the rafters.

“Most gracious Majesty
—” I had to apologize for having spoken so offensively to her. Had to salvage whatever small speck of respect she had for me. If only so my child could see the light of the sun on his face and not the shadows of the tower walls.

“Do not use flattering words on me, dear cousin, for I shall not be gracious to you in this respect. You have poisoned my court with your wantonness and given your sacred body of royal blood to a man I have not approved of. Now you flaunt your Satan child in front of me.
I had thought you a silly, witless, parentless girl. Now I see you for what you truly are. You are filled with the devil, Katherine Grey.”

I raised my eyes to Elizabeth
’s, imploring her for understanding and mercy. “I am no devil, and my child is not an evil thing, my queen, but an innocent child born of love.”

The queen
’s lips curled menacingly. “Love, you say? Is that the reason for you to spread your legs and threaten
my
realm? After all I have done for you? You were fully aware of my plans to adopt you as my own child, my plans for your marriage alliance to the Scots earl, and you have tossed
my
love to the wind, with nary a care for my feelings.” Tears welled in Elizabeth’s eyes.

W
hile I was hurt by her words, her actions, and angry at her for being so selfish and lashing out at me for falling in love, I, too, felt sorry for her. Did she truly believe that she loved me? Elizabeth had no idea what love was.

“I
must beseech your forgiveness, Your Majesty.” My words were not filled with the conviction they should be. I knelt before her, gaze on her feet, praying she would press her hand to my head. The stone floor cut through my gown, angering my knees, and my womb contracted painfully at the position so soon after giving birth.

“I cannot forgive you for
your outburst, nor for committing treason against my crown. Mayhap it is that you are no better than your sister, Jane, the usurper.” She spat the latter words in a way that showed she still harbored so much anger at Jane for having been her rival when they were children.

Jane had told me on many an occasion how Elizabeth was jealous of her relationship with the
dowager queen, the only mother figure Elizabeth ever had, and until that moment, I had thought it mostly an exaggeration on Jane’s part. But now I could see it was not. Elizabeth felt deeply on the matter, and her anger ran thick in her veins, perhaps not something I could ever soothe. Not even the death of Jane mollified Elizabeth.

I shook my head slowly, placed my hands over m
y heart and gazed into her eyes, seeking to appease her. “Majesty, I am always your servant and seek no more power than what you would give me to serve you.”

“But you have betrayed me!”
England’s anointed monarch looked so much the lion then. I dared to hope she would see reason someday, though I knew today she would not.

“
I spoke out of turn. A childish rant, but I did not mean a word of it,” I lied. “’Tis true I fell in love and followed my heart. ’Tis a fact I married without permission and have been blessed with a child out of that union, but I never did seek to hurt you or betray you.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes heavenward. “I expected more from you, sweet Katherine. I had thought you different than the rest. You were my heir!”
She bellowed the last.

I sucked in a breath.

“You shall linger here in the Tower as my prisoner. You shall think about what horrors you have brought upon my realm with your wicked ways, your fornicating. Your bastard shall languish with you, and pray that he succumbs to an early death, for I will see to it that he remains in this Tower for all eternity. Just as the two princes destined to haunt these halls, so shall the fruit of your womb.”

Chapter Twenty
-One