Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (25 page)

“Your Majesty, we are not worthy.”

“It is a new beginning for me and for England. I choose to extend the same opportunity to your family.” She looked stern for a moment. “I pray the Greys will not give me reason to regret my leniency.”

“Jane is family.” It took all my courage to say it.

“Mary!” Mother warned. “Do not be difficult! Do you wish to anger Her Majesty?”

But the queen did not seem angry. “Mary is my goddaughter, and as such has a special claim on my heart. Perhaps you would withdraw along with the rest of court so that Mary and I can have some private conversation about the matter that concerns her.”

“Your Majesty is kind to indulge my youngest, but—”

“Mary and I have always shared a unique understanding, have we not, little friend?”

“We once did, but I cannot be a friend to someone who will cut off my sister’s head.”

Shocked whispers welled up around me. The queen’s favorites were outraged. I held my breath, knowing how reckless I had been, but I would not take the words back. After a moment the new queen spoke.

“Cousin Frances, Lady Katherine, all the rest of you—away, as I commanded.” The queen clapped her hands, and the waves of skirts and colorful doublets receded, leaving a wide space between the two of us and the rest of the people. I could tell they wanted to hear what we were saying, but they could not without being noticed by the queen. When you are grown up, it is harder to hide behind tapestries or slip under tables unseen.

“Little Mary, will you not rise from your knees?” the queen asked in a voice gentle in spite of its gruff timbre. “They must ache after the blow they struck against the stone.”

I pushed myself up to my feet. My knees wobbled, but not from pain.

My cousin drew the feather against her palm. “I remember when we were together at Bradgate. You snatched a feather like this one from the jaws of a fox. It was very brave.”

I hung my head, unable to meet her eyes.

“Now you see what has happened because the fox’s prey escaped. Perhaps you regret you gave warning.”

So I had caused this disaster. It was all my fault.

The queen seemed to sense my distress. “What have people told you about Jane and me? Be honest.”

“You can cut off Jane’s head whenever you like. That is what the judges said.”

“Yes. But I will tell you something, just between the two of us. To cut off your sister’s head, I would have to sign a death warrant. I will not sign.”

I lifted my head so I could look at her, and I saw her smile. “You will not?”

“I promise you. What your sister did was very wrong.”

“It was not Jane’s fault! She did not want the crown! Northumberland made her—”

“The duke has been condemned for his crimes, and he will pay for separating me from my brother, costing the poor boy his very soul. Northumberland has jeopardized the soul of England with his heretical ideas. He will die on the block. What say you to that?”

“My tutor said that when your father King Henry had Cromwell’s head chopped off, the executioner missed and had to strike three times before it was done. I would not care if the headsman chopped Northumberland a hundred times after the bad things he did to you. But I think Northumberland hurt my sister Jane most of all.”

“That does not change the fact that she took what God intended to be mine. Yet all is righted now. Northumberland will sate the peoples’ need for retribution. You and your parents are once again beloved family.”

“It is Jane I care about.”

“Yes, Jane.” Cousin Mary’s lips looked prim, and I remembered how Jane had made her angry over bowing to the Host. Maybe Kat was right, and Jane should not have made a scene. “People only need to forget your sister’s part in this affair. In time I will release Jane from her cell and she can return to Bradgate. She will not be able to stay at court, but she will be free. Will you like that, little friend?”

“More than anything. You would really do that?”

“The bird you saved would be very ungrateful indeed if it hurt someone you loved.”

I wanted to embrace her, as Kat would have. But I was not my sister.

The corners of Cousin Mary’s mouth turned down. “I had hoped to wipe all of the worry from your face. You look as if something is still troubling you. What is it?”

“I am afraid someone will tell Jane and Kat that I sent the feather and they will not love me. I know my parents would not, and I do not mind that so very much, but my sisters …”

“No one but you and I know the truth. I will not tell our secret. You can trust me.”

I did not trust easily. I had overheard too many lies from my hiding places in the shadows, had suffered too many cruelties from those who could taunt me. I had even worked my own acts of wickedness with headstrong abandon—stolen trinkets for my little hoard and spun falsehoods just for the excitement of deceiving the rest of the world. But when I looked into the queen’s pale eyes that day, I believed Mary Tudor with my whole heart.

Jane was safe. The ax that had filled my nightmares would not cleave off her head. She would not even spend the rest of her life locked in a cell with rats, like the prisoners the jailer’s son had shown me after I paid him with a small seed pearl from my coffer.

Jane would walk out of the Tower’s terrible gates one day and wander among the Myrmidons again. She would sit on a tussock of moss by the stream and read by the light of a candle in her chamber until Mrs. Ellen scolded that she would study herself blind.

“Cousin Ma—” I began, then realized my mistake. “Your Majesty, I promise I will be a good lady-in-waiting. I will take care of you the way you will take care of Jane.” I hesitated, then said in a breathless rush: “I will love you.”

How often had I heard other children fling out that promise, heedless as butterflies in hot summer sun? But to me it felt as if I had flung myself from a precipice.

My cousin must have sensed what courage it took to speak my love for her aloud. She cupped my cheek with her palm. The warmth washed through me. “Little Mary, neither of us has been happy for a long time. Let us try to find joy in our new life. Who knows? Perhaps a year or two from now time will wipe all memory of the Tower from your sister’s mind, and I will be wed to a husband and have a child of my own on the way.”

“I will pray for it every day,” I said, with a fervor I had never known.

Contrary God. Of all my awkward childhood prayers, why was that the one he chose to answer?

Chapter Seventeen

K
AT
G
REENWICH
P
ALACE
N
OVEMBER
1553

s September passed, then October, I thought that I would die of losing Henry. Come fall, pain stalked my new life at court until I pined like heroines in the tales of chivalry that Jane chided me for loving too much. The humiliation burned almost worse than the heartache. The whispers and mocking glances the other ladies cast me when the queen was not watching tormented me nearly as much as the shock of seeing Henry again.

Six times in the months since our marriage was severed, I had turned a corner and stumbled upon him. I had had to look into his green eyes, see his face—so familiar, and yet so changed from the bold youth I had married just a few months ago. Trapped in the queen’s pavilion with her other ladies-in-waiting, I watched Henry ride in a tournament without asking for my favor, then perform the role of King David in a biblical masque. Through leaden days that dragged on forever, I tried to live with the shame of the annulment and the stain of my family’s treason—forgiven though it was.

But the incident that seared itself most deeply into my heart came during the queen’s coronation, with all its pageantry and glory. That was the last time that I hoped. For what? Courage from the man who had been my husband but had never dared to be my lover? Regret from the father-in-law who had cast me away like a soiled slipper? Hope that the rise in my standing with the new queen might spark a change of heart in the Earl of Pembroke, so he would allow Henry and me to be together again?

What made that chill November day when Mary Tudor processed through the streets of London so different from the others? All the nobles attended the queen in order of importance, and the ladies nearest Her Majesty ranked highest in all the land. The queen traveled first in her white-draped litter, next Anne of Cleves and the Lady Elizabeth.

Behind those two ladies I rode, swathed in a red velvet gown finer than any I had ever owned. I felt some measure of pride returning, as the queen signaled to all the country that she loved me and valued me, as she often said, like a daughter.

It was inevitable at such an assemblage that I would encounter the other person, besides my parents, who had claimed to love me in that way—my former father-in-law, who had once spoiled me, then kicked me aside.

Pembroke made his bow to me with grave attention as we waited to enter the banqueting hall for the coronation feast. He betrayed only for a moment that smile I now hated—so knowing, as if he had kept count of every tear I had shed over his treachery.

“Lady Katherine,” he said, making a show of kissing my hand, “you are as beautiful as ever, I see. How fares your family?”

I wanted to scratch the smugness from his face. “My sister Mary and my parents are somewhere in the company where you can ask them yourself. As for the Lady Jane, she has not left the Tower except for her trial, as well you know. You attended the proceedings where she was condemned, I was told.”

“I am flattered that you cared to keep track of my whereabouts.” Pembroke straightened the gold lace edging his cuff. “It has been a busy season for trials—and for executions—most notably the traitor Northumberland.”

I was glad the devil duke was dead. He could never again poison lives with ambition, which was far more lethal than his vials of white powder. The one question that remained was whether the dose that his plotting had fed Jane would prove fatal. I shivered, making ready to excuse myself and vanish back into the crowd.

Pembroke stepped in front of me. “I was there when Northumberland died. A witness for the crown. He was a most dangerous traitor.”

“I remember when you were his ally.”

“Both the Herbert and the Grey families must be grateful for the queen’s understanding. But when there is upheaval like this, the simple folk’s bloodlust must be satisfied. Ten thousand people came to see Northumberland die. Had not the queen’s halberdiers held them at bay, I believe the crowd would have ripped him to shreds with their bare hands. I suppose Queen Mary wished His Grace to reach purgatory in one piece—Dudley being a devout Catholic when he met his end. It was quite a triumph for England’s papists, his conversion to the true faith.”

“I wonder if the act was worth it to the duke in the end. It did not save his life.”

Turning traitor to his faith had not won Northumberland a pardon from the queen, but it
had
destroyed his reputation among the reformers in England, all of whom now regarded Northumberland with disgust.

“His Grace had much to answer for,” Pembroke intoned. “Did you hear what he said on the scaffold? ‘I have deserved a thousand deaths.’ ”

“Unfortunately, England will have to satisfy itself with only one,” I said, thinking of Jane still imprisoned in a cold Tower cell. “Would he could suffer them all instead of leaving the prospect of one to my sister.”

Pembroke chuckled. “I had forgotten how amusing you could be. Doubtless you have bewitched many a young man since your return to court. You entranced my son during your stay at Baynard’s Castle, but the lad has learned much about court during the months since the queen took her throne. He is warier now. You remember Henry, I trust?”

“I was his wife!” I snapped, thinking he was trying to make a fool of me. “Of course I remember—” At that moment I realized he had actually summoned Henry to approach us.

Reluctance slowed Henry’s long-legged stride as he came forward and bowed. He did not look as handsome as I remembered: his mouth was a little less decided, his jaw a trifle softer, his eyes thinner of emotion, like a pool of rain upon a hollowed stone.

“My lady.” Henry pressed one hand to his blue gallant doublet. I remembered how that hand had caressed my cheek. His voice caught, and I felt an answering jolt in my own chest. Was Henry thinking of the times he had touched me? Kissed me? Had he yearned for me in the time we had been parted?

I was certain he must have. He wanted a stolen moment with me as much as I wanted one with him, but how could he approach me with his father always so near? Perhaps he was just waiting for his chance to catch me alone. Surely in the midst of a coronation crowd, he would be able to leave Pembroke’s side.

My heart nearly hammered its way out of my chest as I pictured the meeting to come. Henry would draw me into the shadows and kiss me. We would speak of our hopes for the future, our desolation at losing each other. We would say the farewells Pembroke had denied us when he swept me from his household in such haste.