Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (30 page)

The queen laid the parcel on the coverlet, unwrapped it with her own hands. There, pillowed in the folds of cloth, lay Jennet. My poppet, her silk-thread hair no longer disheveled from my loving, a new gown laced about her cloth body. But it was Jennet’s face I stared at, unable to look away.

Suddenly I was back at Suffolk House the night before Jane’s wedding. Still frightened from overhearing Father and the devil duke, I had lugged a bundle, heavy with books, to Jane’s chamber, bent on urging my sister to run away. Why had Jane not run away?

I made something for you
, she had said, so solemn, then dismayed as she stared at the pale linen face.
I forgot to stitch her mouth
.

I had begged Jane not to, for it reminded me of her—how hard it was for her to say how my parents wounded her heart. They had not wanted to know what Jane was thinking, not even when she was in the Tower cell waiting to go to the block. They had not cared what Jane felt, what she wanted to say.

But my sister had managed to say something to me without using one word.

On Jennet’s face she had stitched the soft curve of a red-silk smile.

Chapter Twenty-two

K
AT
A
PRIL
1554

ather was dead, and I had not the courage of my little sister. Even knowing he had loved me best, knowing he would die alone on the scaffold on Tower Hill, I could not summon the courage to go to him. I tried to comfort myself by saying the queen herself had thwarted me, but that was not true. She warned against a trip to Tower Hill but said she had encountered the Grey family stubbornness before, and if I was determined to make the journey, she would send me in a coach with a full set of royal guards.

But stalwart as the guards might be, they could not protect me from the knowledge of my own cowardice. Or the certainty that even little Mary was far braver than me.

Nights were most fearful of all. I dared not sleep for fear of the nightmares—Father on the scaffold begging the headsman wait until he could find his “pretty maid” in the crowd, people sopping up Jane’s blood with kerchiefs, martyr’s blood for healing and good luck.

Worst still were the tales Mary sobbed out in the weeks since one of the queen’s guards carried her into the palace. I tried with all my might to blot the sight of her from my memory—dirt-smudged, half delirious, the horrific scene of Jane’s beheading burned into the backs of her eyes.

How had Mary escaped from the palace that day? Traveled all the way to the Tower? Gained entry past the guards? The queen herself had put those questions to me, yet neither of us could unravel the mystery; nor would Mary confide in us. Best to keep the matter secret, the queen bade us few who knew of Mary’s flight.

It would not do to allow enemies of the crown to learn that security about the palace had been so lax. Her hand, with its ring of state, had trembled as it touched my sleeping sister’s cheek. I suspected she was fearful for her Spanish betrothed, for many still wished the Catholic Prince Philip ill.

I could see the guilt in the queen’s gaze, sensed that Mary’s misadventure had shattered the barriers that the Spanish had erected between us, transformed Mary and me once again into the beloved little cousins she had spent Christmastide with for so many years. She knew what it was to be young and helpless, at the mercy of a parent’s folly.

A new depth of tenderness wreathed Her Majesty’s face when she laid eyes upon either of us. But as preparations for the royal nuptials set the court awhirl, I could not be grateful for her regard. How could I forget the bride-price the Spaniards had exacted? Jane was dead, yet come July, Mary and I would be expected to delight at the queen’s wedding.

Even so, a mere three weeks after my father’s execution on Friday, February 23, I had another wedding to reckon with. I would not soon forget the day in March when my mother visited me, daring to come to court despite our family’s disgrace. “There is some news you must hear from me before you learn it from someone less kindly disposed on your behalf. I am wed.”

I staggered back a step. “But Father—”

“Your father got his head cut off. No great loss since he refused to put his brains to good use when it was attached.”

Hurt sliced through me. “You must not say that!”

“It is the truth. This is what his schemes have come to: Jane dead, you and Mary servants to the woman he tried to dethrone. Me, stripped of lands, wealth, husband.”

“How can you be so cold?”

“I must be to survive. The queen is not best pleased by my marriage.” My mother actually smiled. “My new husband is Sir Adrian Stokes.”

“Your master of the horse?”

“Is that not the rank Edmund Tudor held when he wedded Henry VII’s mother? They founded our whole dynasty. My own father, Charles Brandon, was not the equal of my mother. Sir Adrian will make me a lusty husband. He pleases me well.”

“But it is only three weeks since Father died! I believed you loved him!”

“My
great love
can do us no good from the grave. But our fortunes will turn again. I intend to make certain you use the chance that you have been given to the most advantage.”

“What chance is that?”

“Her Majesty has become guardian to you and Mary. Your father is dead, a traitor, your sister executed, your mother disgraced. You are every bit as vulnerable as the queen herself was at your age. Her Majesty has great affection for you and Mary and is coming to loathe her half-sister more with each passing day.”

It was true that the queen’s patience with the Lady Elizabeth was thin. When the storm of Wyatt’s rebellion gathered, she had sent for her sister. Elizabeth pleaded illness, but the queen had not believed her. She sent her own doctors to drag her sister to court even if the girl was on her deathbed. When the doctors brought Elizabeth to London by litter, the clever princess fastened its curtains open so people could see her limbs and face swollen with dropsy. It was said the princess fainted four times on the way to the litter.

With Prince Philip’s arrival slated for July, the queen had grown ever more suspicious of the sister who would inherit, should Mary fail to bear a child.

My mother’s face looked as it did on the rent days when she counted up profits. “The reformers are already rallying about the Lady Elizabeth, and the queen would embrace any excuse to deal her Jane’s fate.”

“You would wish the Lady Elizabeth condemned to what Jane suffered?”

“Jane was innocent—she wanted none of your father’s schemes. Elizabeth is more calculating than anyone else at court, born with her parents’ thirst for plotting and power. There is something unnatural in that woman—little wonder, with her mother a witch. The queen does not forget it, nor all she and her mother suffered in Elizabeth’s name.”

“That is no surprise.” I would never forget what Jane suffered and why.

“Now there is the most wonderful news. The Lady Elizabeth is arrested, suspected of conspiring with Sir Thomas Wyatt and his rebels. She is being taken to the Tower.”

“I cannot be glad of it, no matter how much I dislike her.”

“You stupid girl! You never did have Jane’s wit. Do you not see what this means for us? Lady Elizabeth must be condemned and executed—everyone knows she was neck deep in Wyatt’s plots. As soon as the queen’s councilors present Her Majesty with proof, the queen can rid herself of Boleyn’s bastard once and for all.”

“Queen Mary execute her own sister? The guilt would eat her alive.”

“Let it. Once Elizabeth is dead, you will be heir to the crown.”

For a moment I could not speak. “The queen is to wed. She hopes to bear a child to follow her to the throne.”

“From the time Mary’s courses began, they have been a misery for her, while of all the children Katherine of Aragon bore, only Mary survived. Mary is old to have a first babe. Think what happened to Catherine Parr. No, Katherine. Mary Tudor is not made of the stuff to bear strong sons for England. You are.” My heart thudded hard against my rib cage.

“You will ingratiate yourself into Her Majesty’s favor. Show yourself to be of impeccable virtue and filled with royal graces. It should be easy enough—you ever were the most charming of creatures. Queen Mary has an ugly person’s fascination with what is beautiful, and you remind her of her aunt and namesake—my mother, the queen of France. You will take whatever opportunity fate presents to pare away Elizabeth’s footing at court.”

“Is it not dangerous? Elizabeth will hate me for it. Should she become queen—”

“You must make certain she does not become queen. Perhaps Jane was a necessary sacrifice to clear the path for you. Of all my daughters, you would wear the crown with a most becoming grace.”

That or lose my head as my sister had done.

“You are squeamish. You blame me, along with your father, for Jane’s death. But you are my daughter. In time you will think of the pretty things you would have as queen.”

I had noticed them in my early days at court, when Mary had been so certain Jane’s life would be spared. Since few ladies-in-waiting would converse with me, I had withdrawn to the queen’s chamber, helping her get dressed for the day, selecting jewelry from her coffers.

What would it be like to have all the royal wardrobe at my disposal? The brimming chests of jewels, the damasks and furs against my skin? What would it be like to be queen?

I might have cared. I might have wished for it. I might have, except that Father and Jane were dead and Henry was lost to me. This new betrayal of my lady mother’s, this scandalous marriage, would give the courtiers even more to mock me with.

“How can you wish me to chase after the crown after all it cost Jane? Father?”

“If I were the one buried under the stones at St. Peter’s, your father would be urging you in the same direction.”

“He would not want me in danger! He loved me too well.”

“Henry Grey loved power more. He would have risked anything to have a queen of England in his family. Why do you think he joined Wyatt, even knowing that if they were defeated, it would mean Jane’s death? He chose to grasp his daughter’s chance at the crown. He would seize that chance for you as well. You owe it to him, if you ever loved him.”

“You know I did! I do!” I could feel my lady mother spinning her spider’s webs around me, manipulating me as she did the threads she pulled through her tambour. Would I be stitched into the pattern she desired for me as well?

“You think on what I have said, Katherine,” my mother bade me.

“Will you see Mary before you leave?”

“The queen? I have told you, she has banished me—”

“I meant our Mary.”

“Whatever for?”

“She is most distraught. She saw Jane beheaded.”

“Perhaps that will teach her to think next time before she does something so reckless, though I doubt it. She is the most vexing little monkey.”

“What am I to tell her?”

“You may tell her what you feel best. Or tell her nothing at all. The queen’s ladies will have much to say about my marriage. I must go. Sir Adrian waits in the courtyard.”

She pinched my cheeks. “You must eat more, Katherine, and take a little air in the gardens. You do not want to lose your beauty. It is your finest asset.”

I stiffened as she kissed me, then turned and left me alone. I leaned against the wall, my cheek scraped against a stone.

“Father, I am so sad,” I whispered, knowing he could not hear me. I closed my eyes, weary, filled with despair. The world had gone mad. Was there nothing soft or gentle or lovely to bear me up above the darkness where I might breathe again?

The images Mary had cried out in her nightmares crowded into my mind, joining my own imagined scenes of the ax slamming down upon the fragile bumps of the nape of Jane’s neck. My sister—once queen—her head rolling across the straw.

Chapter Twenty-three

K
AT
17
YEARS OLD
S
UMMER
1558