Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (42 page)

M
ARY

The queen flung things at Lord Robert’s head. Every time something crashed or shattered, the other maids jumped. They must have been glad for the heavy closed door between us, but none of them were frightened to their very marrow except me.

I could hear very little of the queen’s tirade, but I guessed who she was so angry at. Kat. It must be Kat. I had told her to go to Robert Dudley with her trouble, just as I had sent the warning feather to Princess Mary. Had it been a mistake?

Alarm surged through me anew. No, this time was different. Father was not around to tangle Kat in any of his dangerous plots. Kat was not trying to seize the crown.

Even so, I could not quell my sense of doom.

Lord Robert thrust his head out the door, called to the gentleman usher. “Her Majesty wishes you to gather together a company of her guards. They are to bring Lady Katherine Grey here.” The other ladies’ cries of surprise fed my terror. “Send word to the water gate that they will be required to escort her ladyship to the Tower.”

The Tower? I pressed my hand to my mouth, feeling as if I would retch. I cursed the awkward gait that slowed me as I left the room, my lungs feeling fit to burst. No one tried to stop me.

By the time I reached Kat’s chamber, I could barely speak. I staggered in, not even bothering to announce myself. My graceful sister stood with an awkwardness I had never seen. Her face was bleached bone white, but her body made me more terrified than ever. Her arms curled over her stomach as if to shield it, pulling the fabric tight. The bulge beneath it moved. I stared at it, horrified, understanding all too late.

“That is why you wrote to Ned Seymour all those times. The scoundrel! How dare he fill you with his bastard and then run away! I swear, I will find a way to make him pay!”

“Ned is my husband. We were wed last December. Jane Seymour helped us to—” Kat’s voice broke. “I know I did not tell you, and it must pain you—”

“I do not care about that now. I do not care about anything save … I cannot lose another sister. The queen is sending guards. You must get away from here.”

My plea died as I remembered urging Jane to flee on the eve of her wedding. She had told me that there was no place a person of royal blood could hide. My wise, practical sister. Now I was old enough to know she was right. I choked out a sob, helpless. “Oh, Kat! They are going to—” I could not say the words aloud.

Kat reached out one hand. “Mary, stay with me until they come. I am so afraid.”

I did not take the hand she offered. Instead, I did something I had never dared to do before. I stretched my stubby arms around her as far as they would go. Kat held on tight.

Too soon the tramp of boots drew near, then stopped outside the chamber door. The oaken panel swung open, revealing the red livery of Her Majesty’s guards.

“Lady Katherine Grey, I arrest you in the name of the queen. You are to be conveyed to the Tower, where you shall be questioned at Her Majesty’s pleasure.”

“No!” I put myself between the men and my sister. “I will not let you take her there!”

“Mary, there is no help for it. You must let me go.”

“But the Tower! That is where Jane—”

“I need you to be strong. You must gather my things. My—my dogs and clothes and such. You must bring them to me in the Tower.”

“I cannot go to that place again! I am sorry, Kat.”

“I understand, sweetheart. Find somebody else to carry out my errands.” She gathered me fiercely in her arms, then whispered, “You must find Ned before the queen does. You must warn him.”

“He should go to the Tower! This is his fault! If he had come back the first time you wrote him—”

“Do not blame him. Even if he has deserted me, I cannot bear to see him harmed.”

“You are too good, Kat. Too kind.”

Kat’s eyes filled with regret, as if she were counting every time she had snapped at me or shut me out of her thoughts, her life. “Too kind?” she said as she stepped toward the guards. “Oh, Mary. We both know that is not true.”

I stayed in Kat’s chamber long after the sound of marching soldiers faded to silence. When darkness came, I went to her clothing chest, took out one of the linen shifts that smelled of the dried roses she slipped among her clothes to scent them of summer. A packet of parchment tied in a ribbon tumbled to the floor. Letters. I knew I should tuck them back into their hiding place. I had no right to read them. But the queen’s servants might search Kat’s chamber, looking for evidence to use against her. What if these held something that might condemn her?

Decided, I took the missives to where a candle burned and unfolded the pieces of parchment one after another. Some of them were gossipy, affectionate letters from Jane Seymour, who shared a bond with my sister that I would never know. Others were love letters from Ned Seymour, written many months ago, the lines filled with passion and dreams, and plans laid for stolen moments together:

Send word with Jane where I dare come to you, my sweetheart, my wife. How precious that word. Wife …

Another said:

I tease Jane that she is as caught up in our romance as we are. She delights in knowing all your secrets and all of mine. She
says you were the most beautiful bride England ever saw, and I cannot deny it is true
.

Near the bottom of the stack, these words:

My love, I fear I am the most vile brother in the world. My sister is suffering so terribly, I fear for her life, but I cannot help wondering how we will manage when she is gone. There is no one in the world who loves us as Jane does. No one who understands our hearts
.

“I would have tried,” I said aloud, the pain of their rejection cutting through me, “if you had only asked me.”

I retrieved Kat’s shift where it had fallen on the floor. Tucking the rest of the letters into my stomacher, I curled up on Kat’s bed and wrapped the linen folds of the shift around me. I closed my eyes and breathed in the familiar scent of my sister.

Every night after that horrible night they led Kat away, I slept in her bed, as if in some way I could hold on to her there.

O
ne night near the end of September the door opened, startling me awake. It took long moments for me to recognize the intruder.

Ned Seymour’s aristocratic face was haggard from sleeplessness, his elegant clothes disheveled from his desperate race to reach Kat’s side. That famed Seymour pride was nowhere to be seen as he crossed to the bed.

“Love, I did not get your letters. I gained passage on a ship the instant I knew.”

“Kat is not here,” I said.

Seymour stiffened at the sound of my voice, as discordant as Kat’s was lyrical. “Lady Mary? Where is your sister?”

“They have taken her to the Tower.”

“God, no!” He staggered—from exhaustion or shock I could not tell. But as he caught hold of the edge of the door for balance, I sensed he was remembering that horrible place as I did. The suffocating walls, the locked gates. Scaffolds and straw to soak up the blood from the headsman’s work. He had attended Northumberland’s beheading, I knew. Had he gone to his father’s execution so the Good Duke would not feel so alone?

“Kat wished me to warn you that the queen knows everything. Her Majesty is furious.”

“She will get over it in time, as her father did. She will have to. Not even the queen can thwart the marriage now. Lady Katherine and I were legally wed in the eyes of the church. We will soon have a child. A child.” He echoed softly. “It hardly seems possible. When I left, her waist was slender as a willow wand.”

“She is considerably broader now and more frightened. It is a perilous thing for any woman to give birth. But to be brought to bed of a child in the Tower? That is no place for my sister to bring forth her babe.” The prospect made me sick. Catherine Parr and Queen Jane Seymour had not survived childbed even when they had had the finest care coin could buy.

“When is the babe to arrive?”

“Soon, I think.”

“I must be nearby when her time comes.” Ned Seymour gave me a weary smile. “I suspect Her Majesty can arrange that. Perhaps she will show mercy on a husband and wife and confine us together.”

I
nstead the queen imprisoned him in a separate room within Lieutenant Warner’s house—a little way from Kat’s cell. The queen insisted they were not husband and wife at all. But even with such vast power, Elizabeth Tudor could not wrest all happiness away from my sister. For in the cold Tower fortress where Jane forfeited her life, Kat gave birth. Even God seemed to give the union His blessing, some dared whisper where the queen could not hear. For how long had it been since England could rejoice in that rarest of all creatures, a hale and hearty boy born of royal Tudor blood?

Chapter Thirty-one

M
ARY
16
YEARS OLD
W
HITEHALL
P
ALACE
N
OVEMBER
1561

did not mean to be a coward, and yet I let the weeks slide past, embracing any excuse to resist returning to the scene of my living horror. Not that I had completely avoided the Tower since Jane’s death, but I had endured it with grim resignation. Kat’s imprisonment made that impossible.

I eased my guilt by dispatching gifts to my sister—rosy apples and the dogs she loved, coverlets to block the chill of the Tower’s dank walls, and a pet monkey that might distract her with its antics. When I noticed a pretty nightingale singing in a gilt cage, I sent that too, though it broke my heart, reminding me sharply of my sister. Was it the sight of that bird that made me conquer my fear? Or had I merely come to the point that I could not stomach my selfishness another day?

Kat’s babe was six weeks old when I braced myself to address the queen. I waited until a minstrel had fawned over Her Majesty’s skill on the virginal. When Elizabeth—that vain creature—was simpering over a plate of fruit suckets, I pleaded my cause.

“Majesty, I have a boon to ask,” I said. “I beg your permission to leave Whitehall tomorrow afternoon to conduct some business of a private nature.” I had hoped she would not question me further, but I was not that fortunate.

Her lips tightened in irritation. “What sort of business?”

“I wish to visit my sister.”

“I was told you have an aversion to the place ever since you sneaked out from under my sister Mary’s nose to make a nuisance of yourself at Lady Jane’s execution.”

How could she know that? I wondered. Had not Queen Mary, Kat, and I taken a vow of secrecy? Someone at Tower Green must have spied for Elizabeth. Who could that have been? I must have betrayed my unease, for Elizabeth smiled.

“The Lady Katherine has shamed the once-great house of Suffolk. There can be little to celebrate in the birth of a bastard.” She looked so prim, I wanted to slap her.

“Many born under the shadow of illegitimacy have risen to make their families and their country proud.” I kept my features scrubbed clean of scorn for her, but I could not stay entirely silent. “I
am
glad that little Lord Beauchamp will not have to labor under such an epithet, though. His parents are lawfully wed, as will be proved in time.”

“I see no priest brought forth by Hertford! As for Lady Katherine—” An avid gleam came into the queen’s eyes—I had seen it often at the bear baiting she adored. “Do you not think it strange that Lady Katherine would marry and not invite her sister to be witness? Lady Katherine told my examiners that you were not privy to the marriage until she was far gone with child. It would seem you are not her confidante.”

“That does not mean we do not love each other.”

“Do not grow overly fond of each other now. I have no intention of releasing either Lady Katherine or Lord Hertford. There is no marriage. He merely deflowered a royal virgin, like the dog he is. Do you know what the charge is for such a crime? Treason!” She banged her fist against the arm of her chair.

I hesitated to reply until I knew my voice would not shake.

The queen did not wait for my answer. “You have nothing to say to that, do you, Lady Mary? But then, it is not the first time the Greys and the Seymours have been condemned as traitors.”

“The ax has claimed victims from all the illustrious houses of England. Even Your Grace was once imprisoned. Think what a show of mercy meant to you then. Allowing me to see my sister will cost you so little.”

Elizabeth stood up, affronted. “This affair is costing me peace of mind, what with the rot people are spewing. That I—Elizabeth, queen of England—should follow your sister’s example and take a husband myself. I, follow that woman’s whorish ways!”

Anger would not get me passage into Kat’s cell. “Majesty, I wish only to see my sister, to assure myself that she is well. Childbed is a dangerous thing.”

“Yet I swear the whole country is eager to see me sacrificed upon it! Fine. Visit Hertford’s little harlot. Ask how she likes her quarters. She will likely be there until her boy is grown a man.”