Secrets of the Tudor Court (35 page)

In an instant I have lost complete control over this conversation. Once again, perhaps as it has always been, it is all in Norfolk’s masterful hands. Nothing I have said has had any effect on him. How could I have dared hope to reach him? I am nothing to him; I have always been nothing to him. Nothing but a means to his glorious end.

I stare at the little instrument of death for a long moment, making no move to retrieve it. Surely even Norfolk does not expect that I would dare take my life out of God’s hands, and in front of him.

My heart leaps when, with a sound between growl and agonized cry, Norfolk takes hold of my shoulders and throws me to the floor, using his own weight to pin me down. He is a slight man but I am smaller yet, and am crushed beneath him. I cannot breathe. I gasp in terror. One hand grips my chin, the tips of his fingers bearing into my flesh so hard I know they will leave bruises. His face is inches from mine. I hear the whir of metal slice through air, feel the cool point of his dagger at my throat.

“Do it, Mary,” he tells me. “You would rather slit your own throat than be queen of England? Then do it. Right now.”

I blink several times. I must keep my wits. I must stay calm. With great effort I force my breathing to become regular.

His breath is hot on my face.
“Do it.”

I squeeze my eyes shut a long moment, reopening them in the vain hope that the scene has changed, that this is not real. But the horrifying reality is staring me in the face, large black eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring.

I make no move toward the dagger. I cannot. As much as I may want to, I cannot end my life. I do not know if this makes me a coward. I do not know what distinguishes bravery from cowardice any longer. I have not known for a very long time.

“What’s this—you cannot do it?” he taunts. “You cannot do it, Mary?”

“No!” I cry. “I cannot do it!”

He presses the dagger hard against my throat. It bites into my flesh like the prick of a thick needle. I am too horrified to gasp.

“Then I shall!” Norfolk hisses. “Do you think I cannot?” he asks me. “I am a soldier, Mary. I have lived by executing orders that would turn your insides out. Do you know what I have done in my life? I have raped women, then run them through after taking my pleasure. I savored every execution after the Pilgrimage of Grace; in fact I mourned that I could not kill more of the bastard rebels! I have burned down houses with entire families inside. The screams of the children, Mary, still ring in my ears.” His voice has lost its calm. For the first time he registers real emotion. He speaks in a frenzied rush, his words tumbling out in an agitated tangent. “And, yes, I looked into Anne Boleyn’s eyes as I pronounced her death sentence. I watched the soldiers drag sweet little Kitty away to the Tower, screaming and writhing in their arms. I watched all this and
I have no regrets.
I do my duty by king, country—but first, always, by the Howards—by me.” He offers up a strangled laugh. “When it is no longer prudent to ally myself to one, I ally myself to another. I have ended more lives with my sword and my word than I can even count. One more, especially one as insignificant as yours, will make no difference to me.”

I swallow my tears of horror as I listen to his list of evils. I keep my eyes focused on his face, his tormented face. His chest is heaving as he draws his tears inward, just as I have for the entirety of my life. I take a breath, daring to bring my trembling hand to his cheek where a tear has managed to escape. I wipe it away with my thumb. I stroke his hair. I trace his jawline, then run my fingers across his trembling lips. I do not understand either of us at this moment. We have been swallowed up in wickedness and deceit for so long that neither of us knows who we are, what to do. Like hawks freed from their mews we soar, viewing a ravaged land without boundaries. Love is twisted. It is as though the insanity of King Henry has seeped into our minds and souls like water from a poisoned well.

I pull him to me, pressing my lips to his in what I wish to convey as…what? A kiss of forgiveness? Or is it that I am grasping vainly for one moment of love between us, any kind of love? I try to convey chastity, holiness. But we are as far from those two things as people can be. The kiss translates nothing but our mutual urgency and confusion.

I pull away. Tears pave icy trails down my temples, pooling on his priceless rug. “Do your duty, then,” I tell him, keeping my voice soft and low. As I speak I continue to trace his face, every feature; memorizing the man who is both my mortal enemy and greatest love. “And I will watch you,” I whisper. Each word is deliberate. “I will not close my eyes, nor utter a sound. I will watch you, my father, run me through. As my life ebbs away I will gaze into your face until at last I am swallowed up in the blackness of your eyes, those eyes I first looked into with so much trust when you held me aloft as a wee babe. And when I am dead, then you will close them.” I draw in a shuddering breath. “I forgive you and pray for your vexed soul. You are a tortured creature and I pity you. But you are my father and have all of my respect.” I pause, waiting for him to move or speak. “You may commence,” I say at last.

Norfolk presses the blade to my neck. Then, with a slight whimper, throws it from him. It lands on the other side of the room with a clank. He collapses on top of me, emitting wracking, broken sobs. Whether it is because he has failed in carrying out something he has said he would do without compunction, or because he actually regrets his actions, I do not know. I will never know.

I wrap my arms about him, drawing in a deep breath. His heart races against mine.

And I am alive.

True to my word, I have disengaged myself from any plot concerning the removal of our current queen. If Norfolk bears any regret over our last encounter, he shows it in his avoidance of me. No more am I sought out at meals and entertainments. No more does he parade me before His Majesty. No more does he see me alone.

It seems I may have won this battle.

I am not fool enough to believe he and Gardiner have ceased in their plotting altogether, however; if a woman cannot be procured to take Cat’s place, they will find another way to undo her, and that way is so easy for them that it is a marvel they even bothered with me at all.

For that way is heresy.

I hear them, Gardiner and Norfolk, discussing it in his privy chamber one late night when I thought I might reach out to him, but prudently decided against it in favor of eavesdropping. The guards do not suspect me, little Mary Fitzroy, to be anything but his stupid, devoted daughter, waiting in his presence chamber for a word. It is so easy it frightens me; indeed, I am unaccustomed to things going so well.

It only takes two words, threaded together with Gardiner’s malicious chuckle: “Queen Catherine…heretic.”

It is enough for me. I excuse myself, telling the guards I will come back another time as the hour is late and I am tired.

There is no chance I will find sleep. I lie awake until the next day, when I take it upon myself to warn Her Majesty about it as we are reading in her apartments. Her household has dwindled somewhat, I have noticed. Not as many ladies flock to her as they used to. The silence of her apartments echoes of unhappy times when other queens were abandoned at the end of their reigns. I shiver at the memories.

“Your Majesty, may I see you in private?” I ask, a strange sense of panic gripping me at once.

Noting the urgency in my tone, the queen rises, setting her book aside and ushering me into her adjoining bedchamber.

“What is it, Lady Richmond?” Her tone is guarded. She does not trust me anymore, I realize. But then to trust a Howard is a foolish thing and this Queen Catherine is far from foolish.

I swallow tears. “You must know, Your Majesty…you must know—” I wring my hands. “A plot is being wrought against you. I do not know the exact nature of it except to say that I believe they hope to have you arrested for heresy.”

Cat laughs. “Of course they do,” she says. “It was only a matter of time. It is Gardiner, of course.”

I nod. “Yes.”

“And Norfolk?”

I hesitate. My heart is pounding. I want to—God knows I want to—but I will not. I will not implicate him. “No…I do not believe he is involved.”

Cat cups my cheek with her hand. “God bless your devotion, child, misguided though it may be. You are still loyal enough to me to be worthy of my regard.” Tears light her eyes. “I was certain…” She averts her head.

“Your Majesty?”

She sighs. “You know, Lady Mary, when I watched you dance that night in your beautiful green gown I thought…” She returns her eyes to me. “I thought I was looking upon the next queen of England.”

I shiver. “Never, Your Majesty,” I reassure her with vehemence, clasping her hands in mine. “Never.”

Cat draws me into an embrace. “God bless you, little Mary,” she whispers.

I cannot thank her. I cannot speak past the tears rising in my throat.

Wasn’t it my Anne who always called me little Mary?

My brother Henry, Lord Surrey, has returned to court after a visit to France. He is in fine form, as outspoken as ever, but this is a trait I decide to excuse, knowing we are all lacking in one way or another and are very unlikely to change. Instead I find I am thrilled to see him, and exchange with him a long embrace, hoping that despite our past, relations might be mended between us.

Surrey does not seem to hold any grudges. It is a happy reunion. In his presence I forget for the briefest of moments the tension of this court, the fear I have on my queen’s behalf, the regret that twists my gut whenever I think of my father. Now there is only my dear brother, and I concentrate on him. He updates me on Frances and the children and entertains me with his poetry, inquiring as to whether I have composed any.

“There is one,” I tell him. My heart is pounding. It is a poem I thought never to share with another soul. But this man, this great poet, my lord brother, is of my blood. Perhaps in finding one person to share my innermost being with, I will begin to heal from what has seemed to be a wound as persistent and festering as the king’s rotting leg.

Surrey and I sit alone in the gardens. I have retrieved my little silver casket of treasures, reading him one poem, then another, till at last I arrive at my opus. Surrey wraps his arm about me in a manner so casual and filled with familiarity that tears sting my eyes.

I lean my head on his shoulder and begin to read “O Happy Dames.” As I read I think of my Cedric, how much he loved the first verse, how he was denied hearing the rest. How it was one of his only requests that I finish that poem. I think of the melody he set to it. I think of the sea, my love’s watery grave…

“O happy dames that may embrace

The fruit of your delight;

Help to bewail the woeful case,

And eke the heavy plight,

Of me, that wonted to rejoice

The fortune of my pleasant choice:

Good ladies! help me to fill my mourning voice.

“In ship freight with remembrance

Of thoughts and pleasures past,

He sails that hath in governance

My life while it will last;

With scalding sighs, for lack of gale,

Furthering his hope, that is his sail,

Toward me, the sweet port of his avail.

“Alas! How oft in dreams I see

Those eyes that were my food;

Which sometime so delighted me,

That yet they do me good:

Wherewith I wake with his return,

Whose absent flame did make me burn:

But when I find the lack, Lord! How I mourn.

“When other lovers in arms across,

Rejoice their chief delight;

Drowned in tears, to mourn my loss,

I stand the bitter night

In my window, where I may see

Before the winds how the clouds flee:

Lo! What a mariner love hath made of me.

“And in green waves when the salt flood

Doth rise by rage of wind;

A thousand fancies in that mood

Assail my restless mind.

Alas! Now drencheth my sweet foe,

That with the spoil of my heart did go,

And left me; but, alas! why did he so?