The Boleyn Reckoning (20 page)

Elizabeth looked at the maid negligently, then more carefully as she noted the strain on her face. “What is it?”

“If I might speak with you alone?”

Robert took the cue and vanished gracefully, but even that didn’t seem privacy enough to Carrie. She set a rapid pace for the upstairs corridor where Minuette slept. Elizabeth felt the caress of old fear even before Carrie confirmed, “It’s her ladyship. She is ill.” Poisoned, like a year ago at court? Certainly not in Elizabeth’s home, where she knew every face of every servant and attendant. But her pace increased and Carrie must have read the question in her eyes. The maid hastened to add, “The illness is natural, but I’m beginning to grow worried. I don’t know if I can stop it myself.”

“Stop what?”

Carrie hesitated at the door to Minuette’s chamber, looking wretched. “She’s bleeding heavily.”

For one moment Elizabeth thought Minuette must have fallen from something, hit her head, perhaps. But the next moment, she knew that there was only one cause of bleeding that would make Carrie cautious in seeking help. In an instant all the pleasure of the last hours with Robert and the previous weeks with Minuette vanished and Elizabeth knew that they stood on the edge of disaster.

Elizabeth didn’t need to see the blood-soaked linen beneath Minuette to know she was right. She knew it the moment Minuette fixed her with panic-filled eyes. “Elizabeth, no one can know. Promise me, swear it, not even the servants, it will ruin us …”

Elizabeth hushed her and promised secrecy, with one exception. “We need Kat for this, Minuette. You know you can trust her. She’s known you almost as long as she’s known me—she will not speak.”

Perhaps if Minuette had been stronger she would have protested. But then, if she’d been stronger she would not have needed Kat Ashley’s help. Carrie was right, she’d lost a lot of blood. Obviously a midwife was out of the question, but Kat was both knowledgeable and discreet. She did not so much as raise an eyebrow when she was summoned, merely set to work.

It was several hours before Elizabeth drew a deep breath. Finally, the bleeding had slowed enough for Kat to pronounce herself satisfied, as long as Minuette heeded instructions and stayed in bed for at least a week. Minuette gave no sign that she’d heard her, just stared blankly at the wall. Between them, Kat and Carrie bundled the soiled linen and removed it. Elizabeth didn’t ask how they meant to get rid of it, for she had worries of her own.

The first was simply dealt with. “We must inflict some illness or injury upon you for public notice. If we said that you’d had a fall
from a horse, that would serve to keep people away and explain your convalescence at Hatfield for some time. I’ll send Robert away first thing in the morning—he can carry the news with him to court.”

Minuette continued to stare at the painted stylized lilies above the waist-high paneling of the wall and Elizabeth’s throat ached at the untouchable nature of her friend’s sorrow. “Minuette, shall I send for William?”

“No!” Minuette gasped with pain as she struggled to sit up, and Elizabeth laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. “No, you mustn’t, please, Elizabeth. You can’t tell him.”

“He’d want to be here. He wouldn’t want you grieving alone.” Even as she said it, Elizabeth wondered if that was true. William had no stomach for illness; when Minuette had been poisoned, he’d spent the night drinking alone rather than sit with her. Having had smallpox was not likely to have increased his patience for imperfect health. And no matter how inconvenient the timing of the pregnancy, he wouldn’t be happy that their first child had been lost so early.

With the air of a trapped bird, frantic in its desperation, Minuette continued to beg. “No, Will can’t know! He doesn’t know!”

Suspicion dawned in Elizabeth, and the ache in her throat spread to her chest. With gentle hands, she stroked Minuette’s hair, damp from pain and effort, away from her forehead. “He didn’t know you were pregnant?”

Minuette shook her head, her eyes clouding with tears. “Please, he can’t do anything about it. Don’t tell him. It doesn’t matter now.”

“Why didn’t you tell him before?” Certainly William would have rejoiced. Her own mother had conceived Elizabeth two months before her marriage.

“I had to be sure. And I wanted it to be …” Minuette choked back a sob that seemed to come from the depths of her empty womb. “I wanted it to be special.” With obvious effort, she got her voice under control and said simply, “You must swear to me not to tell William.”

There was nothing else to say. “I swear it.”

M
INUETTE WAS ALLOWED
to leave her bed the first week of August. King Philip’s arrival had been delayed a week—officially because of inclement weather, less officially because of Mary’s arrest—and so Elizabeth remained with her friend for another few days. The bad weather that the Spanish were (perhaps) using as a diplomatic excuse manifested itself at Hatfield in gray, lowering skies that felt more like autumn than early August.

Elizabeth was deeply concerned for Minuette, who had emerged from her chamber a different woman. Still kind and lovely, still capable of behaving as everyone expected, but the spark had been burned out of her. The vivid, joyous girl was gone, bled away with the baby she had so clearly wanted.

William was naturally alarmed when he heard of Minuette’s false injury and wanted to send his own physician to see to her. Elizabeth only averted that by a flat-out lie—she wrote her brother that Minuette was recovering nicely but had threatened hysterics at the thought of a male physician. In response, William poured out letters to his beloved, sometimes two a day, which Minuette read privately. She did not, to Elizabeth’s knowledge, write back.

On August 7, the day before Elizabeth’s departure for Dover
Castle, Dominic rode into Hatfield with a contingent of royal guards. Elizabeth had been expecting the guards—her escort to Dover—but had not expected Dominic to be in their company. “Did William send you?” she asked skeptically, wondering if her brother had asked his friend to spy out Minuette’s condition.

Dominic shook his head. “It was my idea. I thought you might like a friendly face along the way, since Minuette will not be traveling with you.”

Since when had Dominic ever gone out of his way for her? Elizabeth wondered. But she could hardly turn him away, although she felt a foreboding that she tried to smother in effusive greetings. She sent Carrie to give Minuette warning before dinner, and expected her to keep to her chamber until Dominic had left. But within thirty minutes of Dominic’s arrival, Minuette appeared, dressed in a lightweight gown of gray shading to blue on the skirt and sleeves. She would have made a fine model of a Madonna in that gown and Elizabeth hoped Dominic’s eyes were not as suspiciously keen as her own.

Minuette was very nearly herself at dinner: colour in her cheeks, laughter threaded through her voice. But Elizabeth was not a casual observer, nor was Dominic. Though he matched her conversation easily, there was a shadow of worry in his eyes. Colour hectic, laughter forced … Elizabeth’s foreboding increased. Dominic was too clever by half; if anyone could come near to guessing the truth, it would be him.

And why should that be disaster? she asked herself crossly. If they could not trust Dominic, then who could they trust?

Minuette retired straight to her chamber after dinner. It appeared Dominic might request a moment of her time, but he merely stood politely as she left the table, his dark green eyes tracking her until she was out of sight. Elizabeth braced herself for
questions she could not answer honestly about Minuette’s health, but Dominic seemed lost in his own thoughts. At last he asked her leave to walk in the gardens.

Elizabeth spent an hour reading before the dark was too complete for candlelight to overcome. Even then she was too restless for sleep, so she wrapped herself against the unseasonable summer chill and went outdoors. Her steps took her to the white garden, which was always seen to best advantage in moonlight. She felt her nerves ease as she walked among the beds of fragrant pinks and carnations, snowdrop bellflowers and wide-eyed daisies, pale roses shedding both warmth and light.

She heard a low murmur of voices from the center of the garden, then saw them: Dominic and Minuette seated together on a curved bench beneath an arbor draped in honeysuckle vines. Elizabeth should have retreated at once. Instead, she stepped off the path into deep shadow.

It was Minuette she heard, her voice low and broken. “Dominic, why? I had thought it was a sign, a gift from God to assure us we are doing right. But now … I am lost.”

“Why did you not tell me?” Dominic’s gentleness was the tone one would have used with a skittish horse or a frightened child.

Or a woman whose heart had broken.

“I wanted to be sure,” Minuette choked. “And I wanted it—” She broke off.

To be special
. Elizabeth completed the answer silently, remembering Minuette’s words when Elizabeth had asked her the same question.

No, not precisely the same question. Elizabeth had wanted to know why she had not told William.

Minuette shook with racking sobs. The tears she had choked back in front of Elizabeth, the tears unshed for days, were released in a storm of weeping. Elizabeth could see her leaning into Dominic,
clutching his doublet as if he were the only thing keeping her anchored to this world. She watched Dominic’s arms curve around Minuette’s shaking shoulders and his lips press against her hair with infinite tenderness.

It was as though the earth shifted beneath Elizabeth’s feet and the foreboding of disaster she’d felt all day rearranged itself into an unexpected and yet inevitable certainty.

Minuette had spoken only the truth. William had not known about the baby—for the simplest of reasons.

He was not the father.

It was a long time before Minuette stopped weeping. Dominic held her tight, his own chest hurting in sympathy and muscles wound tight with his utter inability to help. Only when her breath at last settled into a slight hitch did he say, “You were right, little star. We need aid. I should have listened to you and gone to Rochford before this happened.”

“I already have,” she said. She offered the revelation listlessly, as though nothing mattered any longer.

“That is why you warned him to confess,” Dominic said slowly, as understanding dawned. “You protected Rochford as best you could in exchange for his future help.”

“I went to Blickling Hall just before I came to Hatfield. Lord Rochford is preparing a way for us to take refuge in the Low Countries.” She shrugged. “I thought we were in something of a hurry.”

Dominic didn’t know how to feel at this unexpected disclosure of his wife’s plans. To leave England, to flee as a traitor and leave William utterly bereft of friends and love … but no. Will would have his sister. And his government and his armies and his Parliament. William had everything. Dominic had only Minuette.

And a lost child …

“Very well,” Dominic said. “How soon? I will take you from Hatfield this night if you wish it.” Even as he offered, he knew it wasn’t possible. He had little knowledge of the damage done to Minuette’s body, but it could not be light. It might be weeks before she could ride.

She shook her head. “No. You are needed for the Spanish.”

“To hell with the Spanish! To hell with everything—I will do whatever you need me to.”

“There is no hurry now.” The matter-of-fact words were belied by her shaky voice. “Let us finish our immediate duties. Bring King Philip and Elizabeth together, see them safely betrothed—if that is indeed the outcome—and then we will put ourselves in Rochford’s hands.”

“Do you think that entirely wise?” Dominic couldn’t help asking, long years of wariness not easily dismissed where Lord Rochford was concerned.

“He is eager to rid William of me. And if you leave England as well, then who will be left to guide the king? Rochford will use our flight to restore himself to power.”

Dominic took her chin in his hand and raised her head until he could search her face. “Are you certain this is what you wish?”

It had been ages since he’d been able to read her thoughts in her eyes, but tonight they shone clear and nearly broke his own heart. “I am so tired, Dominic. I want a life with you, with children—” She choked and took a ragged breath. “We cannot go back. We can only go on. William will never let me go. What else can we do but run? Unless you no longer find me worth it.”

He cupped her face in his hands, not entirely gentle. “How can you say that?”

If she’d had any tears left, she might have wept, but instead her words caught on dry sobs. “How can I not? I have cost you your
king, your wealth, your honour … and now your child. What could you want with a broken wife?”

Blindly trying to feel his way to what she needed to hear, Dominic said, “You are not broken, Minuette, and even if you were, I would not care except for your sake. It is you yourself I cannot do without.”