Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (34 page)

Three days later he was gone. I hid my tears from the duchess, but the look of relief on her face grated like grit in a wound. I could barely even speak of my loss to Jane, though she tried her best to comfort me. I had grieved over Henry, but this loss was different, as if some part of me—some piece of bone or sinew—were missing. I imagined seeing Ned again, speaking to him, making him understand. But I had seen the resolution in his face, the pride I had wounded, the sense of honor unyielding as stone.

Hanworth seemed to turn from high summer to winter the day Ned rode away. I carried winter inside me. When I received word from court that the danger of the sweat had passed, I was grateful. We maids were ordered to return in all haste to wait upon the queen.

Chapter Twenty-five

M
ARY
13
YEARS OLD
O
CTOBER
1558

t was hard to stay silent when the Norns were weaving, spirit ladies shaping even the queen’s fate in this darkened chamber where my cousin waited for a child that would never come. Her eyes gleamed wild like wet clay, and her fingers worked feverishly on a tiny gown. She pricked herself with her needle again and again, spotting the fine linen with her blood.

Cousin Mary would have poured out the last drop within her if it would quicken the bulge in her belly. Her ladies, her midwife, as well as her husband, who was far from England, all feared the babe was a chimera conjured by her frantic need. They feared she would cling to the belief that the child was only late, as she did before. Those who loved Queen Mary best cringed because she would have to face the humiliation of leaving her confinement chamber a second time, looking like a misguided fool to the world.

I wished that that was the worst injury fate meant to deal her, but I knew different. I stole up to her while she was dozing in her chair. When no one was looking, I pressed my palm against her belly just as I had done once before.

The doctors and midwife were wrong to think nothing grew inside her. Cousin Mary was growing death.

S
T
. J
AMES’S
P
ALACE
N
OVEMBER
1558

The devil did not need to jab at Cousin Mary with hot irons and fiery brands, not when she was so apt at torturing herself. In the time since we ladies reunited at court after the danger of the sweating sickness receded, Her Majesty’s condition went from bad to worse. Now, here at her palace of St. James, no one could deny the end was near.

Kat could not bear to see the queen’s suffering. My sister ever had a tender heart, but since her summer with the Seymours, the slightest brush with life’s roughness has scraped her raw, making her bleed inside. She would not tell me what hurt her. She would not confide in me anything at all. Sometimes she looked as if she almost hated me—for the letter I wrote about Ned Seymour, I would guess. I did not mind so very much. Even when Kat and Lord Hertford were both at court, they barely spoke. I was glad. If the truth about Edward Seymour’s motives hurt her now, at least it was a private wound, not the public shame I believed he had in store for her. Kat had borne too much of that already watching the downfall of Jane and our father.

She was reliving that time as she watched courtiers who once fawned at the queen’s feet melt away from Mary’s presence to swear their loyalty to the banished Elizabeth. How it pained Kat to see allegiances shift yet again. Was there no one in our world who would stand loyal? To a child? To a queen? To a wife? A religion? A cause? Was everyone like grass blades in the wind, blown this way, then another? Willing to sell themselves for royal favor, personal gain, or merely to hold on to wealth, position, their lives?

Cousin Mary groaned, and I watched my sister turn her face away and press her hand to her mouth to keep from retching. The thing inside Cousin Mary had grown teeth and claws that tore at her stomach. Sometimes I watched her swollen belly and feared that the thing would split her open like an overripe peach, exposing all that was rotting.

“Forgive me … God forgive me … I have failed Holy Mother Church …” Her Majesty wept, the sound half drowned out by the priests that droned their prayers all around her. I wished I could make them go away. They reminded her of every sin and failure.

“I must … must … rally.” She clutched her favorite lady’s hand so tight that Susan Clarincieux bled where fingernails cut. “Anne Boleyn’s bastard must not … take throne. Protestant whore … destroyed
mi madre.
” She grimaced in anguish. “Cannot let … enemies win. Elizabeth just like … her mother. Black-eyed whore … know she whored with Thomas Seymour … could never—never prove it. Could have … rid of her, like her mother. Why did I not … execute her? I do not know why.”

I did. The people would not have stood by and let the daughter of their king die. They had saved Mary’s life, and now they protected Elizabeth’s.

“Majesty, you must not torment yourself,” Lady Susan pleaded, her voice hoarse with offering comfort. “It does not matter anymore.”

“Of course it matters! She will lead England to hell with her heresy. All those souls. My subjects’ souls … they will be lost. God … hold me … accountable …”

She let loose a wail that made the small hairs on my arms stand on end. Kat’s shoulders quivered, and I knew she was crying. Every lady save Susan buried their tears in their hands. I could not endure it another moment.

I nudged Lady Susan. She looked over, quite hopeful of being relieved, but when she saw it was only me, her face fell. “I would take a turn at my cousin’s side,” I said softly.

Lady Susan frowned. “I cannot leave her to the ministrations of one so young. And strange.”

“Cousin Mary,” I said. I reached out to her with my heart, willing her to answer.

“How dare you speak so to Her Majesty!” Clarincieux blustered, but the queen looked at me.

“M-Mary … little friend … sorry … so sorry … one more … sin. Promise broken. Jane … Lady Jane … Forgive me, M-Mary …,” the queen gasped.

“I do.”

“Call my council. Call Cecil. I will tell them …”

Did she not know? Many had melted away, riding to Lady Elizabeth, to court her favor. Kat and I had watched them go, remembering how many of the same men had slipped from London’s Tower when Jane was queen, riding off to join Mary’s cause.

“Drink, cousin. Rest.” I pressed a goblet of watered wine to her lips.

“Cannot—cannot. Must save … people from damnation. Make your sister queen.”

My hand shook. Wine splashed the queen’s hand, the liquid thin red. It transformed before my eyes into rivers of blood flooding from Jane’s ax-severed neck.

“What did Your Majesty say?” I heard Lady Susan ask. But before she could discern it, I elbowed a ewer from the table. It clattered to the floor, its contents spattering gowns and prayer books. Women and servants flew about to bring the room back to order, the lot of them scolding, calling me clumsy. I did not care. I had won a few precious moments to speak to the queen alone, or as privately as would ever be possible in this life.

The queen’s voice rasped like an iron blade dragged through pebbles. “You will see what a fine queen your sister will be, Mary,” the queen insisted, oblivious to the confusion around her. “Katherine found the true faith while I guided her. I comfort myself she will keep it once I am gone.”

Would she? I pictured my sister at mass, reciting the prayers Jane had died rather than speak, observing the rituals Jane considered superstitious nonsense, bowing to the Host as if it were alive, honoring the priests Jane saw as corrupt. Had Kat come to believe the Catholic tenets, or was she merely trying to survive, as our mother instructed? In the end, did it matter? One thing Cousin Mary and her husband had accomplished was to cleave England’s people into two distinct groups who hated each other with alarming passion.

Horrifying scenes played out in my imagination—God at war in England once again, Reformers and Catholics who had once been friends butchering each other with pike and ax and flame. Making Kat queen during such turmoil would only heat that ocean of hatred to scalding. The people would not care that she was no bastard and so was more fitting to ascend to England’s throne. They would not care that she was rightful heir not only by Queen Mary’s declaration but by her brother King Edward’s devise for succession as well. The country folk, the town folk would demand King Henry’s daughter—the child who looked more like His Majesty than any of his others, the beautiful, red-haired young princess who was worlds different from the shriveled, disillusioned woman who had brought a Spaniard to sit upon a consort’s throne, the queen who had lost Calais and rekindled Smithfield’s terrible flames.

I did not like Cousin Elizabeth, and God knew she recoiled from my deformity. But if Kat took the crown and Elizabeth had to win it from her, I knew Elizabeth would take Kat’s head. I had to try to stop it.

“Cousin Mary, I beg you, do not—do not put Kat in danger. Do not force me to gamble another sister.”

“Gamble … I have wagered much. Your mother … Frances … she told me long ago to name Katherine.”

“But our lady mother does not love me or Kat as you do.”

“Mother … always love … her children.” Wistfulness softened the pain-whitened line of her lips. “If I had children … would love them.”

I sought a way to comfort her, to draw her mind from the poison that thoughts of Elizabeth released in her. “They are waiting for you in heaven, cousin. Your children.” It was not a lie. If heaven were bliss and God were kind, surely he would give Cousin Mary a child to hold.

“Can you not hear them?” I asked her. “Listen.
Tir-a-lira.
” I hummed the melody under my breath.

My cousin’s eyes widened. “Music … sounds like angels.”

“Can you see them? Tell me, cousin. Are they pretty?”

“G-golden hair … pretty. Not … like me. Not … like you, little Mary. K-Katherine … pretty. Pretty, pretty queen.”

Tears burned my eyes. “You must not take her from me. I cannot see her die. I beg you, if you ever loved me at all.”

“Poor … ugly creature. No husband … love you.”

Was she speaking of me or of herself? I did not know.

On the seventh day of November a somber delegation from Parliament came to her bedside, reminding me of black crows come to pick a corpse clean. They pressed her to name her successor.

I stood there, feeling Jane’s ax hover over us again. I thought of my mother, how angry she would be if Kat were not named queen. I looked at Kat, wondering if she would hate me even more because I had begged the queen not to choose her. I held my breath, wondering if the cousin I loved had the strength to do what I asked of her.

Her Majesty’s face contorted in an agony that cut deeper than the disease growing inside her. She locked her eyes on my desperate countenance and forced from her lips the most difficult words she would ever speak: “I name the Lady Elizabeth heir.”

Chapter Twenty-six

K
AT
Q
UEEN
E
LIZABETH’S COURT
1559

he last time coronation bells rang through the streets of London and a new queen mounted the English throne, I was the daughter of a traitor and the sister of the girl forced to steal the crown. I was the cast-off bride of a husband I loved and the disgraced child of a duchess who married her master of the horse. My burden of misfortunes grew so weighty during those dark days that I was certain no other season in my life could be more unbearable than that first year Mary Tudor was queen. But I would gladly have traded those early days under the old queen for the far more sprightly court of my cousin Elizabeth.

Queen Mary had not wished to wound my sisters and me, though she did so to gain a husband and keep her crown. Elizabeth cut with a subtler blade, but she left her marks on purpose, making certain they were visible to any courtier with eyes. From the moment I watched the Earls of Pembroke and Arundel gallop through the gates toward Hatfield carrying the ring of state taken from Queen Mary’s dead finger, a flood of bitterness welled up inside me. Anne Boleyn’s bastard would be queen.