The Boleyn Reckoning (46 page)

For all that, her voice had a new edge to it, like broken glass stroked across his skin. “I’ve had word. Your fate has been consigned into my hands. Now what,” she wondered softly, studying him as she might a dog, “shall I do with you?”

Seriously, Will? Dominic thought. You cannot even finish me off yourself, but must leave me to her?

Her eyes traveled his body, still chained but now wearing the rough homespun brought to him by the mute servant some time ago. His hair was a tangle to his shoulders and crawling with various
unsavory life forms, and his beard itched awfully. Most of him itched.

“It would not do for you to meet your fate looking quite so revolting,” Eleanor continued. “I shall send a man to clean you. And then … the ax, I think. Is that not what you have been waiting for all these months? Do you even know how long?”

His voice was rough from disuse, though he’d made himself speak aloud in the emptiness of his cell as often as he could stand. “Just kill me, bitch, and be done with it.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Well, well, well … who would have guessed the oh-so honourable Dominic Courtenay had it in him to say such things? But then, we all have our darker sides.”

She left then, but was as good as her word. The mute servant returned, this time with another man who looked marginally more intelligent if just as uninterested. They stripped Dominic—undoing the wrist chains one at a time—and scrubbed him harshly and methodically and sluiced away more dirt and filth than Dominic cared to think about. His hair they simply cut, ruthlessly cropping it, and though they didn’t shave the beard completely they at least made it manageable. Dominic was ashamed to admit what a difference it made, to feel clean.

And then he waited, dressed not in homespun but in soft hose and clean linen that had probably belonged to Giles Howard at some point, and waited for the promised deliverance of the ax.

Elizabeth sent Walsingham as her envoy to Pontefract, dispatching him with a curt written message rather than speaking to him.

And then she waited.

The previously glorious early summer weather had turned violent on the day of the battle, and Elizabeth felt the heavens mirroring her own internal struggle. She could not stay still, but she would not leave Hatfield. She would not go to Pontefract. She would not go to London. As long as she remained at Hatfield, time seemed suspended and all that had come before and all that might follow after were held in the balance of one man’s breath and one sister’s choice.

When the weather forced her indoors, Elizabeth paced through the confines of her favorite home and thought back to the deaths of those she’d loved. Her father, always larger than life, who might have been terrifying in his tempers if his affections had not been
just as wide and deep; Elizabeth had been thirteen when Henry died, and she well remembered the keen sense of loss that filled the very air of England. Then her mother, four years ago, with whom Elizabeth had sat until her last hour, watching the vibrant Anne fade with every painful breath until her vital spirit slipped free of her injured body.

She thought of Dominic, whom she had perhaps not realized she loved until too late, for he was the very embodiment of self-effacement, and one tended not to notice him until he was gone. The last time she’d seen him had been the day he’d fled court with Minuette, to escape William’s reach for a time. But in the end the king had his revenge on the scaffold.

And Robert … her last memory of Robert Dudley was three days after Dominic’s execution, when she asked him to risk his life for Minuette, to escort her friend from the Tower to safety in France. He had taken Elizabeth’s hand in his and kissed it, not as a friend or a would-be lover, but as a subject. And he had said:
I serve at your pleasure, Elizabeth, and I am your man until the last day of my life
.

After two weeks of storms and flooding, the sun made a feeble return, like a new colt trying out its legs. Elizabeth had heard nothing from Burghley for two days when, on June 28, horsemen riding fast approached Hatfield.

Elizabeth met them outside, dressed in a gown that hinted at childhood in pale blue and white, her hair dressed high at the crown and left to hang to her waist. She noted Lord Burghley at once, but it was the nobles of the privy council who took center stage.

Not a duke—for Rochford and Dominic were dead, and Norfolk imprisoned—but the Earls of Pembroke and Oxford stepped forward of the others and were the first to kneel.

“Your Majesty.”

She could not have told who spoke those words first, but they were repeated as the remaining men—and her own few ladies—also knelt to offer homage to their new monarch.

My brother is dead, she thought. And John Dee was right.

Elizabeth the queen.

She had practiced her response and spoke without faltering. “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

August in the Loire Valley was a succession of sunny days that were a continuous astonishment to the English guests. Minuette took advantage of the weather and spent hours each day in the gardens with Lucette and Carrie. Harrington had made himself useful around the estate, and with France at temporary peace with Spain and refraining from pushing the advantage lost by Norfolk, Renaud was home much of the time. Minuette watched him with his sons, old enough now to be taught the beginnings of swordplay, and remembered Dominic and William testing themselves against
each other all the years of childhood. Nicolas was the image of his father in both face and temperament, and at nine years old was already a serious horseman. Seven-year-old Julien had his mother’s happy temperament and a wide streak of mischief that Carrie said knowledgeably was a common trait of second sons.

The boys were too old to be interested in babies, and too young to care about their English guests. But wherever Lucette was, so was Renaud and Nicole’s daughter, Charlotte. The girl was three years old and absolutely enchanted with baby Lucie. Charlotte kept up a constant stream of lisping French babble directed Lucette’s way and today was no exception. While Minuette deadheaded roses, Charlotte informed Lucette that “next summer, when you are big, we shall go to the river for a picnic.”

It was Carrie, who had picked up quite a lot of French this year, who said to Minuette, “Shall we be here next summer?”

She had told Carrie and Harrington of Elizabeth’s letter, and then avoided the subject for weeks. But it had to be broached, and sooner rather than later if they meant to sail home before winter.

Minuette continued removing the brown-spotted and faded roses as she considered her answer. Or, more properly, how to phrase the answer.

“I will not go to London,” she said finally. “But I should like to go home. Lucette is English, and I want her to know her people. And where better than Wynfield?”

She looked at Carrie’s dear, faithful face. “I’ll speak to Renaud. Let Harrington know that we will prepare to cross the Channel in September.”

And though she meant to avoid political entanglements in future, there was one more favour she would ask the new queen: if possible, to discover where Dominic was buried and to have his body reinterred at the old chapel near Wynfield where they had been married.

The first months of Elizabeth’s reign passed swiftly, as she accustomed herself to the trappings of power as well as to the realities. Lord Burghley she named her chancellor, and when Archbishop Cranmer died of causes incident to age in late September, Elizabeth appointed Matthew Parker Archbishop of Canterbury. Parker had been Anne Boleyn’s chaplain during the early years of her marriage and it gave Elizabeth pleasure to bestow a favour. Not that she didn’t expect him to work hard and at her command. He and Burghley between them were busy planning her coronation. Elizabeth had insisted on consulting John Dee as to the date, and at his advice settled upon January 15. Though it was a long stretch to wait, Elizabeth would be glad to leave 1558 behind and begin her official reign in a new year.

It was mid-October when Walsingham asked for a private audience as soon as convenient. He had been out and about through England, no doubt checking with his spies that all was well and keeping abreast of those who protested her succession either because she was a woman or because she was Protestant or both. She expected him to deliver a report on the state of her kingdom, but he had something more personal to say.

“I was approached in the North by Eleanor Percy, lately sister-in-law to the Duke of Norfolk.”

“Don’t tell me Eleanor wished to plead for the duke? She has no feeling for the family she was born into, let alone that of her ill-chosen marriage.”

“No, Your Majesty. She said that she has endeavored to contact you and has heard nothing in reply.”

“If she wants to know what I intend to do about the child of hers that William recognized, she will simply have to wait. Unless she would prefer me to decide immediately that the child will be
removed from all contact with her as long as I am paying for her upkeep.”

“It is not the child she spoke of.” Walsingham sounded unusually diffident. Almost hesitant.

“Whatever is it that you cannot say directly, Walsingham?”

“It seems, if she is to be believed, that the late king visited her in Cumbria several times in the last year of his life.”

Elizabeth remembered William’s absences in the North and frowned. “So? She is not claiming another child, is she?”

“No. She is not precisely claiming anything—hinting, rather, no doubt hoping to extract various promises from Your Majesty in return for …” Walsingham shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps in return for nothing.”