Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (16 page)

At Bradgate we had hidden behind stout walls, Father sending a messenger on a desperate ride to fetch our military uncle, Sir Thomas Grey, so he could aid our defense. But the king could not spare him. With Bradgate under siege and no rescue to come, I had insisted the men who kept Father’s hounds bring all my pets in from the stable, the rabbits, the spaniel puppies, the squirrel I liked to lead about on a thin gold chain. I was afraid the peasants would eat them.

Little Mary observed that Father looked as if he feared the rebels might eat us instead. Father had been sore relieved once the king set loose Lord John Dudley, his most ruthless soldier, upon the rebels. So had the rest of my family.

In the weeks that followed, the man who would become Duke of Northumberland had taught the miscreants their place. He proved even more energetic in defense of the lords’ property than Pembroke had been. Dudley’s army swept across the North like a flaming scourge, crushing the Catholic rebels. Five thousand five hundred of them had died before it was over. He had drawn and quartered the leaders, then hung a man from every village that had joined the uprising. That part had been unpleasant to think about. It had taken a long while to put it out of my mind. But what else could the king and his councilors do to quell such riotous behavior?

No one with the slightest sense could have expected the crown to behave any other way. But now the crowd was looking at me as if I were a monster who had fixed the nooses around the rebels’ necks. Hurt stung me at the injustice. I wanted to tell them I had nothing to do with Pembroke or Northumberland’s actions. It was unfair to blame me. But there was no point in defending myself. They were already fleeing as best they were able.

I could feel their alarm as they hastened on their way. Faces angled away from us, veils drawn over women’s faces, the men pulling hoods up or dragging caps down, to obscure their identities.

I tilted up my chin, determined to show them that I did not care what they thought of me, but I caught flashes of sullen glares and dark frowns as the crowd bustled past us. Henry pulled me deeper into the coach and swung the leather curtain down between us and the world beyond.

“Do not worry, sweetheart,” he said, taking my hand. “My father and His Grace of Northumberland will know what to do about such an outcry. They have hunted down malcontents before. They will find out who that troublemaker is and make him rue the day he dared speak against his queen.”

I should have been glad that the lad who had shouted defiance would be taken to task for his outburst. Yet … had he not spoken aloud a question that had troubled me as well? I could not help but cringe inwardly. I knew rebellion must be stomped out before such kindling scattered to set the countryside aflame. Edward Seymour’s father, the Good Duke of Somerset, had proved how dangerous mercy could be. He had nearly allowed civil war to erupt over the prayer book because he cast pardons to rebels too freely. But what would be the young apprentice’s fate if Northumberland got him in his grip?

“Henry, what will happen to that lad?” Maud asked.

“They will pillory him, then cleave off his ears,” my husband said calmly, as if he were discussing a cook plucking the feathers from a grouse.

Maud nodded with a satisfaction that made me uncomfortable. I could hear my mother’s complaint:
Katherine, how are you to survive if you cannot even bear to see a horse suffer the lash?
The horses had seldom committed any crime worthy of such punishment, but the rebellious boy had done so. I should not have minded so very much.

I remembered the hunted sensation that gripped me on my wedding night when Northumberland had looked at me across the poison-strewn floor. Part of me could not help hoping the blunt-tongued peasant boy would be swifter than the men determined to run him to ground.

“Come, love,” Henry coaxed. “Put this unpleasantness out of your mind. I want my wife glowing with happiness when we reach court. Think of the coronation, the masques and banquets and balls. You, as the queen’s own sister, will be the most admired of all.” Creases formed between Henry’s brows. How unhappy it made him to see me upset!

I made a valiant effort to curve my lips, but no matter how hard I tried to join in the talk of the delights awaiting us, I could not share Maud and Henry’s pleasure. My day was ruined. I was not even sure all my new gowns and the promise of marchpane subtleties and champions clashing in the joust would be worth this journey, now that everything was layered with images of sullen faces and echoes of fear from the prayer book rebellion.

If only Henry could order the coachman to turn around, take us back home. Everything had been happy then, and pretty and bright, where not even the forbidding stone walls of Baynard’s Castle could cast shadows over my joy. But the lad who had cried out for Queen Mary had overlaid the Grey family’s ascent to the highest rank in the land with an image different from Jane being queen. I was haunted by the punishment that awaited him—the white hot blade slicing away the shell of his ear, letting it fall to the straw as he screamed in pain.

I burrowed into Henry’s arms, and he stroked my hair with his warm, rough fingers.
Try to forget, Kat
, I told myself as the coach lumbered toward Westminster Palace.
Whatever ill consequences fate deals to people like that boy, it cannot touch you. You will always be just what little Mary claims: the luckiest girl in the world
.

Chapter Ten

J
ANE
J
ULY
10, 1553

he royal barge drove against the current of the Thames like a gilt arrow, its target the Tower of London, the domes of its White Tower pointing heavenward, reminding me to keep my eyes fixed on God. My mother, father, and husband clustered as near my seat beneath the cloth of estate as was allowed, the bright-hued costumes of my ladies-in-waiting a fantastical whirl of color before my eyes. Even the crowds that lined the riverbank to glimpse their new ruler seemed fashioned by some strange dream.

My face nearly cracked from the effort it took to seal a smile on my face. The glare from the summer sun on water burned my weary eyes. How long had it been since I had slept? I wondered. Would I ever sleep soundly again?

I had spent my first night in the royal bed curled in the smallest space I could, relieved my queenship gave me the power to banish my husband to another room but wishing I dared summon my sister Mary to keep vigil with me. Yet I dreaded the questions she might ask about that other Mary, her favorite cousin who was now fleeing before Robert Dudley’s troops. In the past, I had rarely sought to avoid Mary’s blunt probing. But now I was queen. I could not bring myself to betray emotions anyone might interpret as a sign of doubt or fear. Not even to myself.

In that elegantly appointed bedchamber I discovered an unexpected truth about my new situation. I had always cherished quiet time, safe with my books. But now I was alone in a way I never had been before. I would remain isolated forever, in spite of the fawning courtiers who would rush to satisfy my slightest whim.

I had seen the havoc a crown could wreak upon its wearer. My mistress Catherine Parr had struggled under its weight when she realized Thomas Seymour’s love for her rank was greater than his affection for her person. My cousin Edward had been swallowed up in a sea of people grabbing for favors—the most avaricious of all his own uncles. My family would be more ruthless still. I must determine how to keep them at bay.

I would have no quiet interlude to sort out my new life, the way I liked to pick apart the knots of confusion in my mind. I sensed this new journey would be that of a leaf being whisked down a spring-gorged stream. I could only hope not to drown.

Even Kat’s much-wished-for presence failed to ease my nervousness. Since she joined me at Westminster this morning, she had seemed withdrawn, the barrier between us more prominent than ever before. Even as she took up her duties as lady of the bedchamber, her hands were like those of a stranger. When she helped me don the gown that the keeper of the royal wardrobe had spread out upon the vast gold-paneled bed, Kat should have been entranced by the beauty of the dress, sneaking touches to test the softness of the lush green velvet when no one was looking, tracing the pattern of gold printed upon my skirts. Ever drawn to anything that sparkled, my magpie sister should have found my clothes irresistible, bathed as they were in the wan trickle of morning sunlight from the window.

But Kat had barely seemed aware of the velvet sleeves that swept nearly to the floor, giving way to a train that would prove as heavy as it was rich. Even the jeweled headdress that glowed pearly white beside it could not tempt her. When Mrs. Ellen, who knew of Kat’s passion for clothes, offered her the honor of putting the gleaming crescent in place, Kat said she would likely get it crooked and went to fold my recently shed garments away.

Kat’s response made my head ache even before I felt the weight that the French hood would cause in my temples. But there was no avoiding the discomfort, especially as a queen. The raiment I must wear in the days to follow was set out as precisely as the cuts in the linenfold paneling that decked the chamber.

In truth, all that would befall me until my coronation had been ruled in specific instructions by my great-grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, in her book
Liber regalis
, which she had written to document the pageantry that must attend the crowning of a Tudor monarch.

I explained it to my littlest sister when she joined Kat and me this morning. “See, Mary. I must board the royal barge and process before all my subjects until I reach the Tower of London, just as all Tudor queens did before their coronation.”

Indeed, Uncle Henry’s queens went there to put crowns on their heads—or to have their heads taken off their shoulders
.

I had heard enough of Mary’s pronouncements to guess what she might say. But she only pressed white lips together, looking so afraid it startled me. Mary—forever the boldest of we three—had barely spoken to me since the banquet when Northumberland had warned that someone had betrayed me.

I had made an effort to soothe her. “You must not worry about what the duke said last night. The traitor will be discovered and thrown in the Tower where he belongs.” I laid my hand on Mary’s shoulder. It was a mistake. She rarely liked to be touched. This time she sprang away from me as if my hand were a poker just drawn from the flames.

I fought sharp pain at her rejection, admitting to myself that the caress would have provided me with as much comfort as I had hoped it would give Mary.

I looked at where my sisters had drawn together upon boarding the barge. The two sat as far away from me as possible, yet so close to each other on their pile of cushions that their shoulders brushed. Had I slighted them somehow to drive them away? I was sure Kat would feel a stab of jealousy at my rise to the throne. Yet surely not Mary …

I had been longing for my sisters since we parted at Durham House. Now I wondered if it would be harder to have them close by, yet unreachable.

I wish this part were over—all the pageantry, the ceremony, the celebration
.

I did not like the feel of so many gazes trained upon me, could not shake the familiar dread that I might reveal some flaw in my speech, my appearance, my actions, display one of the traits that my lady mother abhorred, expose my lack of fitness as a queen before, not only my attendants, but people who were now my subjects.

I peered at the blur of faces and wondered if my own painfully concealed awkwardness had been caught by these onlookers, a contagion like the plague. They seemed more subdued than I remembered when Edward inherited the throne.

Little wonder they had rejoiced then, I reasoned. King Henry had been aged and ill and waxed cruel in his declining years, while Edward had been young, full of promise to all of the evangelical faith, a Josiah who would found a New Jerusalem.

Or perhaps these people felt the same way as the malcontent at the crossroads by St. Paul’s cross in the incident Bishop Ridley had reported witnessing. The youth who had cried out for Lady Mary.

My smile faltered, and it took all my effort not to rub where my jaw ached. I could imagine Lady Mary’s face when she learned her throne had been usurped. The lines a lifetime of betrayal had etched in her features would carve deeper still. Where was my cousin now? Fleeing across the northern counties, searching for haven among the papists who dwelled there? I must not let pity make me fail to do what must be done to prevent England’s return to the evils of Catholicism.

That was what my rise to the throne was destined to prevent. Eagerness flickered to life, then took hold in me, and I could not help but be glad to be named queen. I would have the chance to put my years of study to use for England’s betterment. Almost from the cradle my parents, and later Queen Catherine Parr, had schooled me to be a worthy consort to my cousin Edward. But now I would be queen, the bearer of royal Tudor blood.