Betrayal in the Tudor Court (45 page)

Mirabella glanced at the girl, her bright blue eyes sparkling with youth, her red curls glossy, infused with a lustre from within. Tragedy hadn’t dulled her yet. She had yet to be robbed of her joy and beauty.

“How do you mean, child?” Mirabella asked, grateful for any distraction from the words of the princess’s letter that stood bold before her mind’s eye, quite intact from the flames.

“Well …” The girl grew guarded, shifting her eyes fore and aft. “What type of miracle are you supposing to obtain?”

Mirabella laughed at this. Imagine! A servant girl the purveyor of miracles! Her heart sank. Yet a miracle had once been bestowed upon the humble son of a carpenter. … Mirabella yielded herself to the intrigue. She could play this game.

“All right … supposing I wanted a love potion?” she quipped, her tone rich with false cheer.

“Ah …” Nan’s smile was conspiratorial. “To inspire Master Cahill to fall in love with you?”

Mirabella scowled. “What do you mean? Master Cahill is my husband and—”

“Pardon me, missus, how often have you seen a married couple truly in love?” Nan challenged her.

Cecily and her father, Mirabella thought with a sigh. Cecily and Alec … but then they were not married. But nonetheless, Cecily never had to fear not being able to inspire the love of a man. The heat of anger replaced that of the wine and she trembled.

“Are you well?” the girl asked.

“Quite,” Mirabella snapped. She drew in a deep breath, expelling it slowly, willing some modicum of patience to return to her. “Right, then. So. A love potion. Tell me about love potions.”

The girl laughed, a sound that rang slightly derisive. Mirabella bowed her head, embarrassed.

“My lady, it is my belief that none exist,” Nan told her. “Though there are enough potions for every other ailment. There are potions for warts, for relieving the curse of our sex, for burns, and for wounds. But love can only come from God and potions are from man.”

The words shamed Mirabella. That a servant, and a young one at that, could be so in tune to the misguided pursuit of man to be loved when love itself was ordained by God and no other. Love could not be forced—how aware was she of that! It could not be coerced. When the blessing of love was bestowed, it was chosen by the true Cupid—God. From His divine bow Love’s Arrow was driven straight to the heart, and there was nothing to be done. It could not be fought against, it could not be ruled over, it could not be contained. But what of the love that was unreturned? Was it some curse then, some punishment she was meant to endure, to love alone, to find that the object of such emotion was unable and unwilling to withdraw the arrow from her breast?

But is it love?

Mirabella flinched. The gentle whisper in her mind belonged to Sister Julia, her mother, her mother who died for love.

If not love, then what?
Mirabella wondered back.

Control. Revenge.

Mirabella shook her head. No! She brought a hand to her temple, as if to massage away the inner conversation.

“My lady, are you certain you are well?” the servant girl asked, cocking her head to regard her mistress in puzzlement.

Mirabella started. She had forgotten the girl. “I said I was and I am, am I not?”

Nan shrugged. “You would know.”

But Mirabella did not know. When was the last time she was truly well? When she was a child with Cecily, running down the snow-covered trail to the cloister, or before her arrival, before she ever set about on this quest for the oneness with God that eluded her at every turn? Indeed, was she ever well?

Mirabella shook off the thoughts with a shudder, exasperated. “I have kept you long enough from your work, Nan. Dismissed.”

The girl rose in a flurry of skirts to obey her mistress but stopped short of the door, turning.

“If I may say, my lady, though there is no love potion that can be relied upon, there are ways to spark forth a man’s desire, if that is perhaps what you mean by love. …”

Mirabella’s heart thudded. If she could not have Alec’s love, could she settle for his desire, for his caress, his kisses, his embrace?

There was no meditating on the answer.

She regarded Nan, a saviour in servant’s garb.

“What do I need to do?”

Nan smiled, looking down at her cup of wine, which now swirled with possibilities.

23

T
he morning of 20 February dawned cool and crisp. It was a historical day, the day of new beginnings for England, the coronation of boy-king Edward VI. Alec, who had worked alongside Cranmer with tireless devotion to help make this day possible, stood among the throng that awaited the child’s arrival at Westminster Abbey, his heart swollen with pride. Mirabella stood beside him, her natural intensity traded for a strange benevolence of late. Alec cast a sidelong glance at the woman who had become his wife. For the first time he was able to regard her without the usual churning of resentment in his gut. She was an attractive woman; this he had known since she was a girl. Yet at thirty-three her rich dark hair remained untouched by time, her skin was smooth, her figure, unmarred from childbearing, remained trim. Alec could admit that, in her rich green velvet gown with slashed sleeves to reveal fitted undersleeves of pale yellow, his adversary was indeed quite beautiful. A wave of pity overcame him as her life played out before his mind’s eye—bastard daughter of an earl and a nun, betrayed all her life long by secrets intended to protect, and forever steered by a lost cause. On peculiar instinct, Alec reached out to her, wrapping an arm about her shoulders and drawing her close, as if in that quick embrace he could gather the girl and not the woman Mirabella to him, the girl he had known when first he came to Sumerton.

Mirabella started at the touch, then tipped her head to him. Her green eyes swam with a mingling of shock and … he could not discern the emotions. A plea, perhaps. Tears knotted a painful lump in his throat. God, what they had come to. …

Mirabella leaned her head against his shoulder a moment, before he withdrew his arm to point at the entourage that bore the young Edward.

“He comes!” Alec exclaimed. A rush of excitement flushed his tingling cheeks. The tears in his throat vanished as he watched the grand procession.

Under his canopy, the boy was accompanied by the premier gentlemen in the land. The Earl of Shrewsbury and Bishop of Durham walked beside him, followed by the ever-present John Dudley and Edward’s beloved uncle, famed rake Thomas Seymour, who carried his train.

Alec watched them file into the abbey, where after his anointing the boy would later climb seven stairs to the dais and sit on the throne, fitted with extra cushions to compensate for his unimposing size.

Cranmer, Alec noted with an inner chuckle, appeared a font of calm after three weeks of being hassled and harried and hoping this day would eclipse every coronation before and after. As he began his address, Alec was tempted to mouth along the words. He had read and reread the nervous archbishop’s epistle, reassuring the man that the people and young king would indeed receive his message with the desired effect.

Alec’s heart lifted at what he considered by far to be the most compelling part of the speech. Cranmer’s voice thundered forth with confidence and authority.

“Your Majesty is God’s vicegerent and Christ’s vicar within your own dominions, and to see, with your predecessor Josiah, God truly worshipped, and idolatry destroyed, the tyranny of the bishops of Rome banished from your subjects, and images removed. These acts be signs of a second Josiah, who reformed the church of God in his days. You are to reward virtue, to revenge sin, to justify the innocent, to relieve the poor, to procure peace, to repress violence, and to execute justice throughout your realms. …”

No stronger message to the papists could have been sent. Edward, the “Second Josiah”, had come to reform the Church, to bring about a new closeness with God sans the shiny distractions of Rome. Under the reign of Edward, a new era would begin, that of a purer faith, one that called its practitioners directly to a personal relationship with God without the intervention of others. A faith infused with straightforward simplicity.

At his side Alec felt Mirabella grow rigid. He regarded her a moment. Her eyes were hard, her jaw set. It was evident that Cranmer’s message, a warning to Mirabella no doubt, had been absorbed. Alec shook his head, dismissing unpleasant analysis in favour of watching the coronation proceed.

Crowned with the imperial crown and that of Saint Edward, the young king was at last fitted with his own, one light enough for his head. He was given Saint Edward’s staff, the orb and spurs, and the sceptre, which could only be held with help from the Earl of Shrewsbury. The child, though maintaining a regal dignity expected of him, betrayed his youth with his wide eyes as he bit his lip under the weight of the various accoutrements. To his good fortune, he was relieved of them soon enough.

The lord protector, Duke of Somerset, knelt before him first, then a reverent Cranmer. Each man kissed on the cheek the boy who carried their every hope and ambition, after which the nobility knelt before him together, where Somerset declared their allegiance.

It was done. It was formal, written in the heavens and the earth.

Edward, the at once neglected and pampered son of mad Henry VIII, was King of all England.

The celebrating commenced in earnest at Westminster Hall, decorated and freshened for the occasion. The walls were draped with cloths of arras, the hall and stairs covered in rich carpets of crimson, filling the place with festive grandeur. The guests competed with both the hall and one another, their attire sparkling with jewels of every imagining, soft furs, rich brocades, and velvets. Colour and life emanated from every corner; the revelry was contagious.

As Alec and Mirabella took to their table among the lowest gentry present, they watched the nobility serve the king course after course only so the entire assembly could move to Whitehall for more feasting and drinking.

By the beginning of the masque, which featured a blatant mockery against the Bishop of Rome, Mirabella’s Pope, Alec was tipsy from toasts and drowsy from overeating. Beside him Mirabella sat, unable to disguise the pain that contorted her expression as she witnessed her faith ridiculed for the pleasure of the court. For the second time that day, Alec was stirred to pity. He leaned toward her, resting a hand on hers.

“Would you like to return to Sumerton Place?” he asked in soft tones. Though he relished the triumph of the Church of England, he still could not will himself to throw it completely in Mirabella’s face, no matter her sins against him.

Mirabella turned toward him, her eyes lit with tears, and nodded. She appeared a child of thirteen again, vulnerable and afraid, compelling Alec to take her hand in his and lead her from the hall.

“You mean you are accompanying me?” she asked him, mystified.

“I am exhausted,” Alec confessed. “Besides, there are to be revels all week.”

“Yes, then,” Mirabella said, squeezing his hand. “Let us remove to Sumerton Place, to home.”

Alec in truth was more than ready. He must have taken in too much wine. His limbs were weak and quavering; he stumbled a bit as he walked, and, for some unfathomable reason, he could not stop laughing.

It had been an effort, but one that had paid off in Alec’s response to what Mirabella had sprinkled at great discretion in his wine at Whitehall. The concoction she procured from the servant girl Nan, which could prove deadly if administered incorrectly, contained caraway, lovage, and mint, along with its most potent ingredient, something called nightshade. The Italians called it belladonna and used it for increasing the beauty of the eyes, among other things.

Tonight it would be among other things.

She willed herself not to think of anything beyond what lay in the moment. She would not allow guilt, that tool of the devil, to creep in.

She led a dizzy Alec to his chambers.

“Really I am rather embarrassed,” he confessed as Mirabella turned down the bedclothes. He flopped unceremoniously against his pillows. “I did not think I took in so much.”