Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (46 page)

“What?” I pulled free my hand, startled he would speak of something so intimate.

He flushed. “You will have a visitor tonight if I can arrange it, and I know how my wife and girls like to scrub and comb and don their best garb.”

My injured hand curled tight around the kerchief, and I did not even feel the tears in my skin opening again. I started to speak but could not squeeze the words out.

“I will not stand by and watch a sneaking little monkey wrench a bird’s feathers just because it can,” James said. “It is enough that the bird is in the cage and I cannot set it free.” He turned and walked out the door.

An hour later he let in one of the lieutenant’s scullery maids hauling two steaming coppers of water. I attacked the grime I had lost the will to wash away as time in the Tower dragged on. Then I hastened about, neatening my quarters, wishing all to be perfect when the door to my prison swung open again.

I prayed James’s courage would not falter. I prayed I had truly guessed his intention. I kept Beauchamp awake as long as I could. When his head nodded to his chest, heavy as a rose after a rain, I laid him in his bed. I waited, too nervous even to scoop one of the dogs onto my lap, my ears straining to decipher every sound beyond my locked door. The courtyard beneath my window was quiet when I heard the rasp of the key in the lock.

I sprang up from my green velvet stool, knocking it over. The clatter seemed deafening, and I felt terror it would raise an alarm, send those outside scurrying back from whence they had come. But the door swung open.

My parched eyes drank him in. Prison walls had robbed his face of color and made him appear thinner, older. But Ned closed the space between us in three long strides and swept me into his arms.

His mouth came down on mine, and it was as if we had never been apart. He looked down at our boy, tears filling his proud Seymour eyes. He touched our son’s curls and kissed him, ever so gently so as not to wake him.

“He is growing so fast,” Ned said. “What would you say if I commissioned a limning of the two of you? An image I could keep forever.”

“I would love it above all things, Ned.”

“All things?” He turned to me, and despite all the suffering Elizabeth Tudor had put us through, I saw a ghost of that wicked smile that had made my heart beat fast every time we had stolen off to make love. “It has been fourteen months since we bedded.”

“How much time do we have before James returns?”

“There would not be time enough for me to love you the way I wish if we had eternity,” Ned said, scooping me into his arms and drifting me onto the red satin quilt covering my bed. “Now will have to do.”

A
fterward we lay tangled together, my head pillowed on his bare chest, our palms fitted together, his strong fingers far longer than mine. “How I have missed you,” he said. “When will that harridan queen release us?”

I pushed myself upright, scooted around to face him. He grasped my leg where it was near him and kissed my bare ankle. But I stopped him. “I loathe speaking of things that must distress you, but there is something I dared not put into my notes.”

Ned released my ankle and sat up, his brow furrowing. “What is it?”

“My sister Mary brought a toy ship for the babe several weeks ago. It was a gift from de Quadra.”

“The Spanish ambassador? That was kind of him. But you did not write of it in your letters to me.”

“I did not dare. The gift was not meant to be kind. There was a secret compartment in it, a note hidden within.”

Worry turned Ned’s eyes dark. “Let me read it.”

“You cannot. I burned it. It was too dangerous to keep. He said that his master was ready to help us escape, take us to Spain. He said they would launch an army to take the throne from Elizabeth on my behalf.”

Ned paled.

“I do not want to take such a chance with your life or my own. In fact, I do not want to be queen at all, Ned,” I said in a rush.

He stroked his chin for a long moment, thoughtful. I dreaded what he might be feeling. “Are you certain, sweetheart? It is much to surrender and would mean leaving Elizabeth Tudor in charge of our fates. She has been no friend to you.”

“I know, but I almost feel sorry for her, when I put our babe to my breast, feel his mouth suckle fiercely, and see his little limbs growing straight and strong. I bury my nose against the crown of his head all dusted with feathery red-gold hair, and I pity my cousin the queen in her vast bed of state alone. Everyone knows she loves Robert Dudley, but will she ever have the courage to wed him and bed him and lay a son into his arms?”

“She does not deserve your sympathy, Katherine. She spares none for us. Besides, the country would never stomach a marriage between the queen and Dudley. As for de Quadra’s offer, England would not deal well with any queen connected to the Spaniards—not after what happened when your other cousin was queen.”

“Do you despise me as a coward for not grasping at the throne?”

“Of course I do not despise you,” he said, gathering me close. “I just do not know what the future might hold. God’s blood, what a tangle! Most of England believes we married as part of a plot to secure the succession on your behalf, but when it comes down to the mark, all either of us really wants is to be left in peace with each other and our babe. Can you not imagine our little fellow at the pond at Hanworth feeding crumbs to the ducks? Or on his first pony? A fine, strapping animal.”

“A gentle one to begin with.”

Ned smiled. “A gentle one, then. I have written the queen so many times, telling her we mean her no harm. She does not believe me.”

“If she could hear us now, she would have more reason to hate us than ever. We have what she will never know—love that runs deeper than ambition or rank. Have we not just proved it to each other? Vowing to choose our love above any throne.”

A soft knock on the door made Ned kiss me one last time, then garb himself. I wrapped myself in my nightgown, and we crossed to Beauchamp’s cradle, staring at his red-gold curls upon his bolster. We held hands tight until James opened the door.

Did he see the desperation in our faces at the prospect of parting? It felt as if my heart were being wrenched from my chest.

“Do not grieve overmuch, my lady,” James reassured me as Ned released my hand. “I will bring him back to you on the morrow.”

I did not fight my tears. “Thank you, oh, my dear, dear friend. Thank you.”

The next night James was as good as his word. Ned came to me again, loved me again, marveled over our little son. I could not believe our good fortune. In the end it would have been wise not to believe it. On the third night Ned came to my door. I heard him, his voice, so familiar, so precious, so heartbroken when the heavy panel remained locked between us.

“I love you, Katherine,” he told me through the door. “Never doubt I love you.”

Should I have been angry that James had lost his courage, or grateful he had given us the chance to say goodbye through the wooden panel? I could not blame him, no matter how I longed for Ned’s touch. He had all to lose and nothing to gain by what he had done.

The jailer would not even speak of it. He brought Mr. Hilliard, the artist Ned hired to paint little Beauchamp and me. He praised the sweet miniature when it was finished and carried it to Ned with a note I had written. In fact James went about his duties as if the two nights Ned and I shared had never happened.

His secret might have been safe, but for one small detail.

Ned’s seed planted itself in my womb yet again. This time I knew the signs when they came. I wrote to my husband, my love, feeling joy that I was carrying his child. But I awaited his reply as nervously as I might a summons from the queen.

The queen … she would be furious. Would Ned be angry as well, knowing the trouble this might bring to our cause?

I could scarce breathe as I opened his note of reply. I laughed, I cried, as I read of his elation. Another babe to be born of our love? How could he do anything but rejoice? But we must keep our secret between us, Ned cautioned. The efforts to acquit us could come to fruition in the coming months. The queen was bound to be furious over the child, and that could delay our freedom. Anyone else who knew of the babe could face Elizabeth’s wrath as well.

Ned understood how guilty I felt about not telling Mary about our wedding, but in this matter he was right. Much as I loathed hurting her again, it would be better if my sister could face the queen honestly and say she knew nothing of my pregnancy.

I shuddered inwardly, imagining the force of my red-haired cousin’s rage.

As if he read my fears, Ned wrote to soothe me:

You must not worry overmuch about the queen. This babe will only help our case before the people and the parliament. Perhaps I have not yet been able to find the priest who wed us before Beauchamp was born, but we both declared ourselves married before the Archbishop of Canterbury when we were interrogated after our arrest. No thinking person can declare this babe a bastard. Not even a queen
.

I pressed my hands to my belly. Surely Ned was right. Perhaps this tiny life would be the key that would finally open our prison door.

Chapter Thirty-four

M
ARY
H
AMPTON
C
OURT
O
CTOBER
1562

y old nurse, Hettie Appleyard, warned me that curses are like starveling kinsfolk—their ghosts return to torment those wicked enough to send them on their way. Perhaps that was why the queen suffered in her sickroom. Her bitter loathing and jealousy of my beautiful sister attacked her within.

Or perhaps it was but chance that Elizabeth Tudor was dying, or so her doctors said. Smallpox racked that vain woman’s body with seven days of fever. No pustules blistered—the dread disease turned inward, eating away at her strength.

Hampton Court seethed with panic, facing the prospect of war. The queen, selfish fool, had insisted that she alone be the center of England’s universe. She would brook no rival for her courtiers’ attention, refusing even to name an heir. How many times had I heard her advisers beg her to do so in the years since she had become queen? I could not say.

In the months leading up to this disaster, the argument over the succession had become all the more fierce. The council argued madly, factions trying to outmaneuver one another, while my sister languished in the Tower because of the queen’s spite. Some, like Cecil, championed Kat’s claim, but others wished to put Mary Stuart, the Scots queen, on England’s throne. A smaller number put forth the Earl of Huntingdon or the Countess of Lennox. The queen had dismissed them each in turn, but her impending death left little time for strategy to sort it out. When Elizabeth drew her last breath, chaos would reign. I wondered if some part of her hoped for just that result—for if she could not hold the scepter, no one should.

I paced outside the privy chamber with the others keeping vigil and wondered what we Greys could hope for when Elizabeth died. Might Kat be released from the Tower, where she had been imprisoned these fourteen months, even if she did not gain the throne? Or would she be in more danger than ever, the other claimants eager to steal not only the crown but her life? A bloody purge almost always obliterated those who could contest the right of a new monarch.

What was happening behind the closed doors to the queen’s sickroom? I wondered. The missive I had received from Thomas four days past quelled my usual impulse to slip in, unnoticed, and eavesdrop upon what transpired there.

You must have a care, my dear. I could not bear to lose my sweet friend
.

His sentiments were more precious to me than I could say. I thought of the hours we had spent talking and laughing in the gardens and in his rooms above the water gate at Whitehall and was glad that the queen disliked me. Let her favorites risk catching the pox, closed up with Elizabeth in that fetid room. Thomas Keyes was eager to keep me safe.

Even so, I lingered near enough to the privy chamber to watch the comings and goings of those who visited the queen and to hear what they said. When the door swung open, the queen’s council exited in a flurry, Cecil in the lead. His black robes flapped around skinny ankles, his face so pale beneath his black cap that the three warts on his nose stood out like blots of ink.

“We must have been witless to make such a promise to the queen, Cecil,” the Earl of Pembroke complained as I eased myself closer. “Declare Robert Dudley the lord protector of England? How can Her Majesty command such a thing?”

My eyes widened. Was that why I had seen Dudley in the presence chamber an hour ago with that strange mixture of grief and elation on his face? He had approached the throne, stroked it as if it were his lover. Had he always loved it more than Elizabeth herself?

“Can you imagine that popinjay strutting about making a muck of things!” Norfolk raged. “It is not to be borne.”