The Boleyn Reckoning (42 page)

Minuette had worked very hard to distance herself from the fact of her pregnancy. What was the point of attachment, she’d thought, when she would never know her baby, when the moment she was delivered they would take the child from her, give it into someone else’s care, and then cut off her own head? When she said to Carrie,
“What does it matter?” what she meant was:
This child will never be mine. Why care about something I can’t have?

But something about these particular kicks penetrated Minuette’s numbness and she fancied there was a touch of familiar frustration to it, like Dominic when he was irritated with her stubbornness. It was enough to start the tears, though Minuette clamped down hard. She could not afford to get lost just now, because the sharp kicks had tumbled loose her grief and only now was she beginning to understand what Carrie was telling her. That there might be a way out, for both their child and herself.

She blinked and drew a hard, cleansing breath that was far shallower than usual. This child was determined to make itself felt in every way possible, apparently. “I understand,” she said, and found to her surprise that hope was not dead yet. “I’ll be ready.”

Six days after Dominic’s death Carrie received a message with their evening meal. “Tonight,” she barely breathed out to Minuette, as though the walls themselves were straining to overhear. “You should begin now.”

It was an amateur performance at best, for Minuette had never given birth, had never even attended a birth. But she could manage to moan and cry and whimper and Carrie was good at giving slight direction with only a nod or a shake of her head. It was also useful to have such a well of unshed emotion to call upon; Minuette directed her grief and fury into giving herself and her child a chance, and there came a time when she half believed in her own performance and wondered superstitiously if she were going to curse herself and bring the child too early.

Carrie flitted in and out with water and blankets and soft words, and kept badgering the guards to send for a midwife. Hours after Minuette began her performance, when the time was creeping near midnight, the door opened. Two women were admitted,
wearing heavy woolen dresses and cloaks against the late autumn cold, one of them as large and broad as an obscenely well-fed man.

Swiftly, Minuette traded clothing with the larger woman, the garments padded out at the shoulders with extra linen so that she looked enormous all over and not just her belly. Her golden hair was plaited tightly to her head and bundled beneath a linen coif and cap. She had a moment’s memory of her escape from Dudley Castle two years ago, but tension made her jittery and unfocused.

“Now what?” she whispered to Carrie, who had remained in her own green gown, round face fiercely determined.

“We wait until we hear the sounds of a disturbance.”

“What disturbance?”

Carrie shrugged. “I wasn’t given the details.”

“How long do we wait?”

“No more than an hour. If there’s nothing, then Walsingham’s instructions were for us to leave as though I am going with one of the midwives to gather further supplies.”

Minuette looked doubtfully at the two women who would be left behind in such an event and wondered if they were prepared for the consequences. They met her gaze steadily and the larger one nodded in understanding. Minuette could only suppose Walsingham had explained the risks and made it worth their while. How much did it cost, she wondered, to get two strangers to risk their lives for hers?

It wasn’t nearly as long as an hour before there were shouts from elsewhere in the Tower. Carrie counted to five, then threw open the door and said imperiously to the guards, “She’s in a bad way. We need to get her somewhere safer to deliver than this cold Tower room!”

“She doesn’t leave.”

“That may be the king’s son she’s carrying—do you want to tell
him his babe is dead because you hadn’t the wit to act responsibly?”

The guard blinked, but was stubborn. “No leaving.”

Carrie drew breath to begin the argument that she and one of the midwives be allowed out to gather more of what they needed, Minuette sweating beneath the heavy layers of clothing on top of her already bulky body, and the two midwives shut behind the inner chamber door. But suddenly there was the sound of running feet and the next moment a man burst up the stairs and, without hesitation, drove a sword through the nearest guard. The second guard pulled his sword but wasn’t nearly fast enough. He, too, was run through.

“Well, stepdaughter,” Stephen Howard said breathlessly, pulling his bloodied sword free of the second dead guard. “You do get yourself into the most interesting of troubles.”

“What are you doing?” She couldn’t decide if she was relieved or appalled.

“Offering one last service to your mother. Don’t make it in vain—get to the Water Gate. There’s a boat, but it won’t wait long.”

Minuette couldn’t decide whether to cry or laugh and knew that she was on the verge of hysteria. Carrie was quicker, and called to the midwives to escape with them as well. Then she had Minuette by the arm and was moving her along the corridor.

Shaking her off, Minuette turned back. “Aren’t you coming?” she asked her stepfather.

“You need time and distraction, and I can give you that.”

“They’ll kill you.”

“Don’t fret for me, Minuette. I’ve lived my life and made my choices. And this way I get to take a few men down with me. It’s all to the good.”

She surprised herself—and him—by throwing herself on him in a fierce hug. He patted her back awkwardly, then kissed her forehead. “I don’t want another Wyatt woman dying in childbirth. Get yourself out of here. Take care of Marie’s grandchild.”

They made it unmolested through the precincts of the Tower, past guards who gave them only a cursory glance as they rushed toward Stephen Howard and his sword, down the icy steps of the Water Gate and into the small fishing boat where Harrington himself waited for them. Only when they were far enough up the Thames that the Tower could no longer be seen did Minuette absorb the fact that she had one more man’s death on her conscience.

She laid her hand on her stomach and prayed silently for the soul of Stephen Howard.

As soon as Elizabeth heard that Minuette and Robert Dudley were safely on a ship to France—and Heaven bless they would have fair weather long enough to cross—she left Hatfield for Whitehall. Since William would summon her the moment he heard what had happened, she might as well anticipate him. Oddly enough, in those days of waiting she found herself thinking most often of Stephen Howard, who had killed three Tower guards and led them on a merry chase before himself being trapped and mercilessly hacked down by a number of swords. She didn’t suppose William would take Howard’s death as putting an end to the matter.

It was a jittery four days before William returned with the rush and clatter of an extraordinarily angry man. Burghley must have alerted him that Elizabeth was already in residence, for he did not even bother to change out of his travel-stained riding clothes but stormed straight to her privy chamber.

“Out,” he commanded her women, and they did not even wait for Elizabeth’s permission to scurry away.

Elizabeth rose and met him on her feet, braced for a fight. She couldn’t decide if he looked more angry or more ill. How long and fast had he been riding? Burghley had told her only that he’d been in the North. Word must have caught him on the road, because he looked as though he hadn’t slept for at least two days.

His blue eyes were opaque above smudged shadows of fatigue. But his voice was as sharp as ever. “I won’t ask why. I won’t ask what you were thinking. I won’t even ask who helped you, for I have already discovered Robert Dudley’s absence. You sent her to France, I imagine? I hope saving her was worth it.”

“I was rather hoping to save you as well,” Elizabeth replied steadily. “You are not yourself, William. Executing Dominic was one thing—friend or not, he was sworn to your service and he betrayed you and that is treason. But Minuette—”

“Do not speak of her!”

“If you killed her, you would never be able to live with yourself. Let her go, Will. Be the king you are meant to be.”

For one startled, horrifying moment, she feared he would strike her. But he tightened his hand and locked it at his side. “What do you know of ruling? This is my kingdom, you will not tell me who I am or am not!”

She softened her voice. “I didn’t mean that. William, I apologize—”

“It’s too late. There are guards outside waiting to escort you out of Whitehall.”

“I don’t need to be guarded back to Hatfield.”

“You’re not returning to Hatfield. You have proven you cannot be trusted. And since you were so eager to release Minuette from the Tower … then you can take her place.”

Elizabeth was struck by a gust of dizziness. Only by sheer force of will did she keep steady on her feet. “That is not necessary.”

“I say it is.”

She would not beg. Instead, with considerable effort, she curtsied to her brother. “As it pleases Your Majesty.”

“There is nothing left can please me.”

Minuette did not cry, not precisely. Carrie encouraged her to cry, or scream, or curse, but that all seemed far too much work. Though Minuette had always been told how transparent she was in her emotions, how everything she felt was there for others to see immediately, perhaps the last years of secrets and lies had taught her concealment. Or perhaps she was only comfortable being transparent on her own terms. In any case, in the extremity of the pain Minuette closed in on herself. She knew she moaned, when it seemed as though the pain wanted to pull her under, with barely a breath or two between surges, and she seemed to be whispering things under her breath, but even she wasn’t entirely sure what she said.
Please
was in there a lot, and so was
Help
, and several times
Mother
.

It went on and on until Carrie told her the sun was just beginning to rise. “How much longer?” Minuette croaked to the French midwife who had been chattering volubly all night. She didn’t even know if she managed to speak in French, or if it was English, but the midwife patted her hand and smiled. “Good girl,” she said. “Almost.”

There seemed a longer pause than she’d had for hours, and then Minuette felt a gush of something warm. She’d heard of a woman’s waters, but this was nothing like what she’d thought. One moment she spared an almost amused thought for the mess of all this, and
then she was swept by something more terrifying even than the pain: an urge to push that was primitive in its demands.