Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (38 page)

“That is hardly fair.” The injustice stung deep. “Because Elizabeth was foolhardy with Dudley—with another woman’s husband—you and I, who have the right to pledge our troth, are to stay apart?”

“That is what Cecil said.”

I paced to the window. After a moment I turned toward him again. “Do you want the crown, Ned?”

“I know there are some who think I do, who would argue that any English noble must hope for such power. But I cannot see the benefit in a circle of gold when it threatens to keep me from claiming the thing I want most in the world. Kat, I read your letter a dozen times and knew I should write some cool answer, as Cecil ordered, but there was such iron in your tone, I feared I would lose you forever. Do you remember that first day at Hanworth when you stumbled across Achilles and me in the garden? I told you that Henry Herbert was a fool. If you were mine, nothing would induce me to let you go.”

“I remember.”

“I am no fool in the way Henry was. But I may prove a greater one once our dice are cast.” He closed the space between us, clasped both my hands in his. The warmth of him seeped deep beneath my skin, but all I could imagine was how devastating it would be to lose that touch forever. “Do you love me?” Ned asked.

“I do. But I cannot suffer this uncertainty. Never knowing how the winds will change.”

He kissed me, then leaned his brow against mine, both of us breathing harshly. “People claim you are the image of your grandmother, the bold French queen who wed her love without her king’s leave. They loved most truly until the day she died. Do you love me that much, Katherine?” Ned asked hoarsely. “Enough to risk Cecil’s anger and the queen’s wrath? Enough to dare whatever calamity we might face?” I nodded, my answer in my eyes.

“When next Her Majesty leaves the palace, come to my house on Cannon Row. There you will become my wife.” Ned reached inside the leather purse dangling at his waist and drew out something sparkling. A pointed diamond ring. I trembled as he slipped it on my finger. “So we are betrothed, this declared before my sister.” He gestured to where Jane waited outside the closet door. “Kat, are you afraid sweetheart?” he asked, curving his warm, strong hands over mine once again.

“Yes,” I confessed. “But I am more afraid of living without you.”

W
HITEHALL
P
ALACE
D
ECEMBER
1560

Stray flakes of snow drifted across a pewter sky the day the queen and her party left Whitehall for Eltham, lured by the prospect of several good days of hunting before the Yuletide festivities commenced. I struggled to hide my excitement at their departure—suffering “a vile toothache,” I dared not dance or laugh aloud with anticipation. No one looked forward to what might be a visit to the tooth drawer’s. Few knew that better than the queen, whose teeth were darkened and weak from the fruit suckets she loved so much.

I had claimed my jaw was swollen and begged Her Majesty to leave Lady Jane Seymour behind to keep me company. Elizabeth was happy to be rid of us both. Ned had taken his leave of court the night before, pleading some private business to attend to.

Our ruse might have gone perfectly if Mary had not come into my room bearing a foul-smelling poultice. I had just placed a cluster of almonds in the pouch of my cheek, just as one of my pet squirrels was wont to do at Bradgate.

“I heard you were in pain,” Mary said. “Hettie used this to draw the fire out.” She extended the poultice to me. I took it and pressed it to my face, knowing it was the quickest way to get her to leave. She looked at me strangely for a moment, and then I realized I had applied the poultice to the wrong side.

“Hettie always made her poultices too hot,” I attempted to explain as I slid it to the lump I had created. “I did not want to make the pain worse.”

“I see,” Mary said.

My face was heating, and I was glad the warm poultice gave me an excuse.

“We have not had a comfortable talk for a very long time,” Mary said, looking younger than her nearly sixteen years. “I thought I might stay behind.”

“No!” I exclaimed so hastily, my sister winced. “It hurts to talk, and Jane is here.”

Mary looked at my friend. The contrast between the two made me ache. Jane, despite the illness that still sometimes plagued her, was willowy and graceful, her eyes twinkling. Though Mary had grown some, and learned to manage her body with more ease, she still stooped, and even her lovely auburn hair was unable to hide the awkward angles of her face. My heart squeezed at the loneliness in Mary.

“You must watch carefully,” Mary said. “Do not let the socket grow putrid, Kat.”

“I will not. Perhaps the tooth will calm of its own volition and will not have to be drawn after all—I mean, what with this poultice you brought.”

Mary’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps.”

It shames me now to think how I hastened her away, but as Jane and I slipped from the palace and made our way down the stairs by the orchard, my sister’s worried face no longer haunted me. Instead I pictured Ned, waiting to make me his wife.

Down the steps we tripped ever so lightly. Sand from the shore of the river sifted into my slippers as we moved toward the water gate in the direction of Cannon Row. Now and then a ray of sun braved the sky, then disappeared. It was nearly ten in the morning when we reached Cannon Row, and as we hastened up the water gate, a familiar figure hurried toward us.

“I told the gentleman usher to give the servants a day off,” Ned explained. “Are you well?”

“In all my twenty years I have never been better.”

“Jane, if you would go fetch the priest I found, we will repair to the privy chambers.”

Ned led me away while my friend rustled off in a swirl of damask petticoats. The moment the chamber door closed behind us, Ned caught me in his arms and kissed me so fiercely he nearly knocked the gold wire caul from my hair. “It seems a hundred years since we vowed to meet, but it gave me time to secure something worthy of you.”

“All I want in the world is right here.” I kissed the place where his doublet covered his heart.

Footsteps approached, and we jumped apart, as guilty as a milkmaid and her shepherd lover. Jane entered with a short man of middling years. Black robes and a white collar proclaimed him an evangelical priest, while a fiery auburn beard shone against skin so fair it seemed almost alabaster. I wondered for a moment if he knew how dangerous this ceremony was, or that he might be punished for performing it.

He crossed to the bedchamber window, then turned to face us. Ned held my hand, and we stood before the holy man. He removed a leather-bound volume from his cassock and opened it, revealing the swirling black print of English script. The Book of Common Prayer. It would please my dead sister as she looked down from heaven.

I blinked sudden tears, thinking of my other wedding. Crowds of the most powerful courtiers in the land had been present, my father beaming, proud of my beauty, my mother dreaming of the crown that Northumberland had promised to put on Jane’s head.

I remembered Mary behind the pillar, kissing the back of her hand, and Jane looking as if she were Andromeda chained to a rock, waiting for the Kraken to devour her. No Perseus had come to her rescue. No, my family was not present today, but now I would have a new family. A husband and a sister-in-law, a changed life with the Seymours. Soon perhaps I would even have children, pretty babes with Ned’s smile and red-gold Tudor curls.

We spoke our vows most faithfully, but when my bridegroom drew a ring from his pocket, all else fled my mind. Five gold links fit together in a puzzle ring, each link engraved with what looked to be a line of a poem.

“I composed the lines myself,” Ned said softly, reciting them aloud:

“As circles five, by art compact, show but one ring in sight
,

So trust unites faithful minds, with knot of secret might
,

Whose force to break but greedy death, no wight possesses power

As time and sequels well shall prove, my ring can say no more.”

My eyes burned as he slid the ring onto my finger. A knot of secret might … that was a perfect way to describe the love we bore each other. Now nothing and no one—not even the queen herself—could break us apart.

Do not tempt fate
, I could almost hear Mary say.

Or God
. My sister Jane’s voice.
No one defeats the grave
.

I stifled the warnings in my mind, felt happiness instead as Jane Seymour slipped the generous sum of ten pounds to the priest and ushered him to the door.

“It is a good thing we maids are always decorating ourselves with new jewelry,” my friend said, as she crossed to a table where platters of meats lay spread. “The queen is no more likely to notice your new ring any more than she did your diamond. In any case, she will not guess its meaning.” Jane offered me a tender breast of pheasant. “Will you have a taste of this?”

“I have never been less hungry in my life,” I said, waving her away.

“For food, at least.” Jane gave me a playful shove toward the velvet-draped tester bed that stood across the chamber. “To bed with you then, Katherine Hertford! Make my brother the happiest bridegroom in England. I shall be somewhat at a loss as to what will fill my days henceforth. Your romance has kept me busy passing love notes, arranging trysts, and soothing lovers’ hurt feelings.”

“You might make a match of your own,” Ned teased. “The Earl of Arundel is most enchanted with you.”

“I am not enchanted with him! He is an old man and ugly.”

“He was not always so. When he was young, he was known to be quite handsome.”

“Like your uncle, King Henry.” Jane made a sour face. “He did not please poor Catherine Howard any more than Arundel pleases me. No, I will not have a disgusting old man groping me at the banqueting hall before the whole court! Mother told me that when Catherine Howard mounted the scaffold, she said she wished she had been Thomas Culpepper’s wife.”

A shiver worked down my spine unbidden at the thought of their forbidden love. It had been adultery. She had been a king’s wife. Had she loved Culpepper as much as I loved Ned? I wondered, as Jane left the chamber and closed the door, leaving us alone.

“You look troubled, love. What is amiss?”

“I was only thinking how lucky I am.”

Ned laughed. “We shall see what you say when we’ve spent fifty years together and I’ve lost my looks like poor Arundel.”

“I will still think you the most beautiful man in England.”

“I pray you will know I am the truest of heart. Come to bed, wife. I am half-mad with wanting you.” Ned nearly rent his clothes as he shed them, then threw himself onto the bed and opened his arms wide. I left my own garb in a puddle of fabric on the floor, then cast myself into his embrace. We shared two hours sweeter than any troubadour could spin in the most magical reaches of imagination.

He loved me well in his bedchamber in Cannon Row, and no wife ever loved her husband better.

Chapter Twenty-eight

M
ARY
16
YEARS OLD
G
REENWICH
P
ALACE
M
ARCH
1561

ebruary fled with slate-colored skies that echoed the melancholy in the maids’ lodgings. Lady Jane Seymour was sick. Whatever ailment had caused Queen Mary to send the two girls to Hanworth during her reign was back. My sister’s friend coughed flecks of blood into her kerchief and her flesh shrank to the bone, until she looked like the death’s head in a painting of hell I once saw. The physician assured us Lady Jane did not suffer from the sweat or plague, so no one need fear contagion. But I had lost Kat nonetheless.

My sister divided every moment she was not serving the queen between the Seymours—coaxing Jane to walk in the gallery on the arm of the manservant, Mr. Glynne, or stealing off with Ned Seymour, who was forever underfoot. No one thought her actions strange. It was likely Jane was dying.

If she did die, would Kat need to talk to me again? Was it wicked to hope she might? Perhaps it was the same as wishing Jane Seymour dead, and surely that was a sin. I did not mean to be selfish. I would pray very hard for Jane to get better if only Kat would pause long enough in her fussing to tell me what the strange mix of emotions boiling inside her meant. Maybe then I could shed the foreboding that had gripped me since Christmastide.

Kat wheeled between happiness and grief, secretiveness and abandon, wild recklessness and the appearance of bracing herself as if dreading one of our mother’s blows. My bones told me that danger stalked Kat now.

The queen’s Boleyn eyes darkened whenever Kat drew near her. The new Spanish ambassador, de Quadra, attended Kat with such bowing and scraping that he might as well have stuck Elizabeth with a poisonous arrow. Angering the queen would have been risky at any time, but she and the Privy Council were already at war with each other.