Queenbreaker: Perseverance (The Queenbreaker Trilogy Book 1) (30 page)

His
insouciance did not fool me. My fingertips brushed the hand that held the ring.

“So,
is this your farewell?”

His
sardonic smile fell away. “It should be,” he murmured. “If I were wise, it
would be.”

Yes.
He should abandon me. He should run back to Oxford, marry little Dorothy
Neville, and forget the name Mary Shelton. That was wisdom.
 

“What
do you mean to do?” My voice and heartbeat hovered just above a whisper.

John
straightened his shoulders and smiled his discordant smile. “
Perseverantia omnia vincit
,” he said.
“When my father goes back to Oxford for the summer, we shall do what we like at
Windsor.”

Greenwich
Palace, Greenwich

July
1533

I
knotted the last stitch and carefully tore the thread with my teeth. It was the
best blackwork I’d ever done. I could not wait to see it ‘round John’s neck.

“Urian
needs a romp.”

Shocked
to hear her voice directed toward myself, I did not at first grasp what she’d
said. Mariah had not spoken a word to me since I’d joined her household.

“I
beg your pardon, my lady,” I said.

Mariah
waved Urian’s leash. “I said that Urian needs more of a romp today. I thought a
walk to the Duke’s Tower would suit. I would like your company.”

She
did not wait for my answer, but turned and walked toward the Watching Chamber.
Mary Wyatt, seated across from me in the sewing circle, gaped.

“You
should go. I think,” she said, stunned as I was by Mariah’s invitation. The two
ladies seated between us nodded their agreement.

It
was the very last thing I wanted to do. But Madge watched me from across the
chamber, even as she flirted with Brereton.

I
set the collar on my stool and went after Mariah. I caught her up at the bottom
of the halpace and followed her outside. We crossed the Inner Courtyard and
entered the long privy gallery that went by the tiltyard. We turned east to
walk through the orchard and Great Garden. We stopped in neither.

We
finally passed through the south gatehouse into the open fields behind the
palace grounds. Half the court enjoyed the fine weather. I spotted Weston and
Sir Henry Norris racing their horses away from the palace. Urian lunged for
some butterflies hovering above the path. Mariah slapped his flank with the end
of the leash and turned his head toward the hill. I shielded my eyes with a
hand and looked up to the Duke’s Tower. I remembered the interminable walk to
chase Urian with Joan and prayed she did not truly mean to go there.

“It
would be a long walk in our skirts, my lady,” I said. “Should we not keep to
the palace grounds?”

Mariah
looked me in the eye, smiled, and dropped Urian’s leash. He shot away, rangy
limbs pumping straight up the hill.

“We
need this time to reach an understanding,” Mariah said and resumed walking.
“Keep up, Mistress Shelton.”

Mariah
sounded too much like her father to disobey. I jogged after her.

“I
know the Queen has set you to spy on me.”

“I-I
don’t—“

“Enough,”
she snapped. “Your denials are as pathetic as your dress. My father offended
the Queen so she wants him humiliated.”

My
mind raced to find a response and failed.

“That
is only part of Anne’s desire,” Mariah continued. “She knows my father’s mind.
He would see Fitzroy succeed when the King dies.”

I
couldn’t stop my hand crossing myself. It was treason to speak of the King’s
death.

Mariah
noticed and laughed. “Country bred fool. The King is mortal. ‘Tis no sin to
speak the fact.”

She
forged ahead as the field met the base of the hill. She lifted her skirts in
both hands and started to climb. “Anne’s soothsayers are mortal too. The stars
are fickle. She may never give the King a son. She may die in childbed, the
child with her or bear another useless girl.”

I
stumbled on a loose piece of earth, started to fall. Mariah grabbed my wrist.
Her fingertips were pin-sharp.

“Anne
makes plans within plans. You, me, we are all her playthings. For ourselves we
do not matter.”

I
steadied myself. Mariah released me. “She may rule England, but she cannot rule
me. I will fly free of her.” A breeze wrapped the ends of her auburn hair
against her arm. “And you are going to help me.”

I
licked my lips. “I-I can only serve the Queen.”

Mariah’s
sanguine smile shot down the sun. “So long as she never sees your thoughts on how
she became Queen.”

My
lungs hardened. “What do you mean?”

She
tilted her head to a shallow, taunting angle. “ ‘If Anne is not a whore then
how did she win the King? No man gives so much for so little…’ “

The
hill shifted under my feet.

Mariah’s
smile deepened til her dimple appeared. “You and my father share the same
opinion.”

I snatched
a sip of air. “My lady, I never said such a thing.”

Mariah shook her head. “No, you wrote it. I have the letters.
All of them where you name Anne whore and such.
She will see
your entire family thrown out of England.”

My
family. I’d thought Norfolk the worst punishment imaginable. But true exile
abroad, our lands forfeit…all for some hasty words written to Tom Clere.

He gave her my letters!

This
was worse than his cronies laughing at my professions of love. I had written
things I’d overheard Mother say to
Father
in one of
their private times. I had been angry, enraged by Anne’s ignoring my expensive
gift
;
furious to be left behind when the rest of the
world—my world in the person of Tom Clere—went to Calais. I had to
explain—surely Mariah must understand so much passion.

“My
lady, I-I was rash—it was written in a moment of upset—I did not
mean to insult the Queen—“

Mariah’s
stark adamantine eyes pierced my heart. “I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t care
about you or any Shelton. If you want to keep those letters from Anne, you will
do whatever I tell you. Do you understand?”

She
turned and resumed the climb to the tower. But the earth held me fast.

My
back wanted to bend and roll down the hill straight into the river.

I
had perfect understanding. Mariah Howard had me like a cat by its scruff. I
dangled helpless from her vicious little claw. Rapid bursts of heat and cold
confounded my skin. I shivered and sweltered all at once. I was trapped.
By my own reckless, foolish words.
And Tom
Clere’s connivance.

What do I do?

The
Queen expected me to bring her proof that Mariah had a lover. Mariah knew the
Queen’s mind. So did that mean it was true? If so, could I learn his name and
barter it for my letters? Mariah must value that secret above the chance to
ruin me. She must. I would.

I
looked back up the hill. Mariah’s figure grew smaller and smaller the higher
she climbed. At each determined step, my panic grew. In a few moments, she
would leave me behind.
 
My chest
worked for air. I needed to pray. I needed to cry, but I could not draw breath.
Why had God placed me here? Between the Queen and Mariah Howard? How could I
serve them both and survive?

John’s
defiant voice breathed at my ear—
pereverantia
omnia vincit
.

“I
must outlast them.”

I
hiked my skirts and ran. Winded, I caught Mariah just as she crested the hill.
The bleak shadow of Duke Humphrey’s Tower fell over us.

“What
w-would you have me do?”

Tower
Hill, London

July
1533

Yellow cap. Grey plume. Yellow cap. Grey
plume. Yellow cap. Grey plume. Yellow cap, gre—

The
crowd screamed as the next villain was hauled onto the scaffold.

Yellow
cap, grey plume.
Yellow cap, grey
plume.
Yellow cap, grey plume.

I
recited it like catechism, clinging to the simple words in the midst of chaos.

Half
of London crowded Tower Hill to watch five men, guilty of debasing the King’s
coinage receive, their reward. Mariah had considered it the perfect setting for
my rendez-vous with the messenger from France.

“You
cannot go to the execution as yourself,” Mariah had sighed that morning as she
dressed me for my task. Just after Mass, she had taken me to a little house her
father kept in Greenwich town. I was surprised by its modesty. Though it stood
three stories, it was old with shutters instead of glass windows. Lady Frances
was already within Mariah’s bedchamber when we arrived. She sat in a window
seat, teasing a kitten with a bit of ribbon, watching Mariah make me over.

“And
ladies always go incognito,” Frances put in.

“But
why must I go as a boy?”

Mariah’s
relentless eyes spotted a flaw in my costume. She pulled my bonnet lower on my
forehead.

“No
one must know you.”

“But
why a Scot?”

“Because
that is what the messenger expects.” She examined me with the same hard eye
Madge brought to the task. “Your plain face carries it off,” she said. “If we
cut your hair no one would suspect you’re not a boy.”

Frances
giggled.

Witch.

She
arranged the brown, white and sky blue tartan over my shoulder.

“Whose
plaid is this?” I asked.

“Clan
Douglas,” she said and tightened my belt.

“Lady
Margaret’s family,” I said. “Does she know what purpose you put it to?”

Mariah
quit her examination. “You have brothers, yes?” she asked, ignoring my question.

“Three.”

Mariah
nodded. “Just ape their habits—spit, scratch, and the like. No one
expects graceful manners from a Scot.”

My God. Do I piss against the wall too?

“A
wherry with the Howard badge will be at Tower Wharf til half-past noon,” Mariah
said. “The villains die before noon, so you have more than enough time to reach
it. Do not be late.” She tied a purse to my belt and sent me on my way.

I
snuck from the house under a dark mantle with a deep hood and walked to the
public water stairs. I hired a wherry to land me at Westminster Stairs.

The
stairs at Westminster were choked with folk come to see the execution. It took
the wherry twice as long to land. I tossed the rower a silver penny for his
trouble. He thanked me then when I’d stepped out of his craft, spat in the
river, muttering, “Bloody Scots.”

I
hurried up the stairs, pretending I hadn’t heard, and was instantly swept up by
the tide of Londoners surging toward Tower Hill.

My
feet slowed as the enormity of walking the streets of London on my own seized
me.

I’d
never walked in public alone, not even in Norfolk. I had freedom of movement
about the court, but no anonymity. People knew me now. I must guard my
behaviour; remain circumspect at all times. But here, amidst the multitudes of
London, I could scratch and spit and hire a whore if I wished, and no one would
stop me, question me, forbid me. A simple change of clothes granted me the
prerogative.

For
an instant, my costume tempted me to approach Shelton House and test its worth
against the gate porter. But my parents were at home, and since Mother could
see through walls…

Get Mariah’s message and get back to
court. This is not a jaunt through Greenwich forest.

No,
it was a minor treason. If Mariah “flew free” as she put it, and somehow
toppled Anne’s plans for her, I would share her punishment.

I
grasped the pommel of the dirk buckled at my hip, as a wary Scot walking the
streets of London would do, and soon arrived at Tower Hill.

Iron
gray clouds clung to the skyline. I smelled the rain soon to fall even above
the rank odors of unwashed flesh, urine, and spoilt meat until I reached the
seething crowd at Tower Hill.

I
had never attended an execution. Executions were entertainment, a bloodsport
more rare than bearbaiting or cockfighting, and infinitely more profound.

I
worked my way closer to the scaffold, but not so close that I might be sprayed
with blood when the felon’s head was axed.

I
found a place behind three ripe fishwives and lost my taste for carp after five
minutes downwind of them. But it shielded me from the stench of vomit, shit,
and blood emanating from the place of execution. Two men had already been
dispatched before I’d arrived. Hanged, drawn and quartered for coining. Their
body parts were piled in a handcart parked beside the scaffold. Black flies,
and filthy, hollow-eyed children swarmed it.

My
stomach rolled.

Yellow
cap, grey plume.
Yellow cap, grey
plume.
Yellow cap, grey plume.

“Pasties!
Pasties! Three a pence!”

“Here!”
One of the fishwives waved the man over. He saw my good cloth and waggled one
of the greasy, steaming things under my nose.

“Jesus
God.” My stomach closed itself for business. The man laughed, showing a mouth
half-empty of teeth.

“I’ve
a special pastie for you, young sir,” he said, shoving a greasy ball in my
hand. He pushed through the crowd, crying his disgusting victuals without
demanding payment.

What
I thought was rotted meat proved a wad of balled parchment. I pulled it open by
my fingernails.

St. Peter

That
was all.

It
was not Mariah’s hand. I did not know Frances’s, but it seemed too masculine to
be hers. Something had gone wrong.

I
pushed my way back through the crowd, heart pumping, scanning the crowd for
grey plumes and yellow caps.

Where
in God’s name was the messenger? We were supposed to meet at noon just before
the executions commenced.

Cannonfire
rocked the air. The crowd screamed, then erupted in boisterous laughter at
their own alarm. Smoke rose above the Tower. The breeze carried it east over
the silver cupolas adorning the White Tower.

God.

St.
Peter.

The
chapel?

It
was the only thing that made any sense of the note. I pushed my way back
through the crowd as a boy would do and walked south from Tower Hill to the
nearest gatehouse. Those Londoners bored with the execution wandered in to see
the King’s menagerie. I made as if this was my purpose too.

Some
of the green and gold bunting hung for Anne’s coronation festivities five weeks
ago still decorated the Coldwater Gate. I hurried past it and north toward the
Jewel House. A company of Tower guard drilled on the Green. I looked up as the
chapel bell rang.

Who rang the bell that night?

I
had forgotten it. The chaotic night and subsequent court festivities had
completely driven it out of mind. Clere must have met someone in the chapel. They
must have rung the bell to warn him he was being followed.
By
me.
If I had not been so overjoyed to see him again, I might have
learned their identity.

“It
was probably one of his whores,” I muttered.

“Are
you well, Mistress Shelton?”

I
almost ran into her. Mrs. Stonor’s fresh blue eyes gleamed with concern.

“Your
pardon,” I gasped. “I did not mean to run you down.”

Mrs.
Stonor chuckled. “Can a dove run down a milk cow?”

The
warmth of her smile loosened some of my fear. Mrs. Stonor squeezed my wrist.

“You
make a handsome lad, my dear.” Deep lines plowed her forehead as she frowned.
“But you look troubled, I think.”

I
shook my head. “I am well, thank you. I only came to see my brother Tom.”

Mrs.
Stonor smiled. “Master Shelton is with Serjeant Stonor, counting the King’s new
coins. Why don’t you come along with me while we wait on them.”

Without
my answer, she put her arm through mine and steered us toward the chapel.

“I
am changing the altar cloth today. A pair of young arms would be a help.”

“Gladly.”
She put a basket over my arm that proved heavier than it looked.

Mrs.
Stonor’s head bobbed in time with her steps. “Are you enjoying court life,
child?”

“Very
much.”

Mrs.
Stonor glanced at me. “I know it is sin to say to say otherwise, but in my day
I sometimes found it taxing.”

“How
so?”

“The
flirting,” she said with a little giggle. “That was the burden of my pretty
face.”

I
had to smile.

“Ah,
there it is,” she said. “I knew you had one.”

We
reached the steps to the chapel and Mrs. Stonor stopped.

“My
mind,” she said. “I’ve forgotten the beeswax. Just settle yourself inside, my
dear. I won’t be long.”

I
paused inside the doorway. The chapel appeared empty. The font stood to my
right. I dashed a bit of holy water at my forehead just in case a priest was about,
and approached the altar. I set the basket down where Mrs. Stonor could not
miss it.

“Thank
God the old harpy’s losing her wits.”

I
spun too fast and knocked over the basket. The altar cloth fell out. I snatched
it up before any dirt could adhere, and a small ceramic jar rolled out.
 

“Beeswax,”
I said.

My
breath stopped as someone grabbed my hand.

“We’ll
have to run.”

_______________

Tom
Clere led me out of the Tower by a tiny postern gate. We reached public streets
and started a winding journey through a maze of narrow lanes. We passed crowds
of leering apprentices, gossiping dames, and cold-eyed men who wore too many
daggers on their belts to be about honest trade. I squeezed the hilt of my
dirk.

We
arrived at an alehouse. A faded sign painted with two unicorns hung above the
door. I halted, one foot on the doorstep.

“I
cannot go in there.”

Clere
frowned, but withdrew his hand from the door. “Why not?”

I
ducked my head, aware of the dockside patrons, sailors and whores flowing by
us.

“Sheltons
do not…frequent such places.”

Clere
rubbed his chin. “Your mother is not here, and I will not tell her.”

His
mockery set my feet. “I will not enter such a lewd house of my own
accord—not with you.”

Clere
sighed and opened the door. “I think God would approve you conducting yourself
inside before that cutpurse by the wall falls on us.”

I
glanced behind us and saw the man. Rail-thin, flat-faced and cold like a
hundred others in the streets. I would never know him to point him out to the
City Watch.

“Fine,”
I growled and followed him inside.

He
took my elbow, guided me to a filthy table far from the fire. A matron with
gray hair stamped two copper mugs in front of us without a word and left.

“Mrs.
Stonor,” I said. “How did she know we were meeting?”

Clere’s
frown deepened. “She has a fearsome nose for intrigue. Don’t believe the
kindliness—she is deep in Spanish Katherine’s cause.”

“As
you are deep in Mariah’s,” I bit out. “Was this the price for your heiress?”

“Mariah
had naught to do with…that.” Clere’s eyes flickered. “How are you working for
Mariah?”

I
reared back, astonished. “You know exactly how. You gave her my letters.”

Clere
frowned. “What letters?”

“Stop
playing the fool! The letters I sent you in France. The ones where I—“ I
dropped my voice—“I criticized the Queen somewhat.”
 

“That’s
impossible. I burned the—“ Clere’s frown melted to dazed confusion.

“You
could not have burned them—she quoted them to my face!”

He
scrubbed his face a moment, clearing away the bewildered look. His eyes
sharpened. “Listen to me—you need to leave court. Say you’re ill and go
home to Norfolk.”

“What?”
I gasped. “Are you a mad person?”

Clere’s
hand reached for mine, but stopped and folded itself against the table. “Mary,
you don’t understand—you won’t survive this when it comes out.”

“When
what comes out?” I leaned toward him. “What is Mariah doing?”