Sisters of Treason (37 page)

Nicholas screws up his paper, tossing it into the log basket with the words, “More kindling for you.”

“Why did you do that?” she asks.

“I can’t get it right.” He cannot hide his annoyance.

“I thought you had something.”

“No, it lacked her capricious edge. I failed to convey whatever it was she was cooking up with that friend of hers. I could see it in the brightness of her eyes but couldn’t render it.”

“Cooking up?”

“I noticed some shared secret.”

“Those two have always got some benign trouble on the go.” Levina is impressed by his astute summing-up of Katherine, but doesn’t say it, for fear of his head swelling and that arrogant streak in him becoming insupportable.

“I can’t get her quite right.”

“You are too much of a perfectionist.”

“Is perfectionism not at the heart of what we do, Mistress Teerlinc?”

Levina wonders if it is a veiled criticism. But she will not defend her loose style of painting to this tyro, however talented he may be. He has some way to go yet before he has perfected his art.

“Perhaps,” she says. “Now help me clear all this away. I must return to Whitehall and make sure Lady Katherine is on the mend.”

“You are very close to the Grey girls,” he says.

“Yes,” she replies. “Their mother was most dear to me.”

“Bodley says Lady Katherine will likely be named the Queen’s successor. Is it true?”

“Heaven knows,” Levina says bluntly. “I doubt it. The Queen will marry and spawn a string of heirs.”

“And what of that crooked girl?” He doesn’t attempt to hide the disdain that lurks in the tone of his voice.

Levina feels her anger bubble up. “I will not have Lady Mary referred to in such a way, Master Hilliard.” She firmly closes the conversation, turning away from him to recork her pigment jars and return them to the shelf. He seems chastened by her sharp change of mood, quietly rolling up his sleeves and setting to scrubbing the work top.

Once the boy is gone Levina gathers her things, instructs the servant girl to change the bed linens, and makes for the door, bumping into George arriving home from his night shift. “Where are you off to?” His tone has a slight accusation in it.

“I won’t be long,” she says. “Just have a few errands to run.” She doesn’t mention that she is going to the palace to visit Katherine, doesn’t want to rile him. He won’t like having to play underdog
to the Grey girls yet again. She slides her hand into the folds of her gown, touching the hard shape of the phial of clove oil for Katherine’s toothache.

“You smell of paints.”

“That is nothing novel,” she replies. “Don’t I always have the scent of the workshop on me?”

“You do, you do.” She still thinks she can sense an edge of annoyance but then he adds, “Shall I walk with you a little, Veena?”

For a moment she feels him drawing close, softening inside.

“Take me as far as the river steps,” she says. “I shall be glad of the company.”

They walk arm in arm, as they used to, with Hero tucking in beside them. He moves creakily, the lithe agility of his youth gone, which makes Levina think of all the time that has passed, calculating his age in her head; he must be thirteen at least. They stop to greet Henry Carruth, who is standing in his doorway watching the world go by, discussing the news: the new French king with his Medici mother who has put the Guise family in their place; Dudley’s thwarted investiture; the restoration of the debased coinage. As they walk on, it strikes Levina that it is already two years since they lived in fear for their lives, with that monstrous Bonner breathing down their necks. How time speeds by. It is but a vague memory now, the dread of even leaving the house for all the rioting.

“We live in peaceful times, at last,” she says.

“And long may they continue,” George replies.

The houses are more densely packed down towards the river, like a mouth too full of teeth, the upper floors leaning in to each other, allowing little light to filter down to the street. In the gloom Hero has stopped, is growling at something, hackles up. They step closer, to discover that he is in a stand-off with a rat that appears to be defending a heap of rags. George grabs a brick from a stack next to a building site, lobbing it at the rat, who turns tail and disappears into the midden. Hero moves forward, burying his nose
among the rags, whimpering, distressed about something. It is then that Levina sees, with a sharp intake of breath, a human hand drop onto the ground.

“Oh Lord!” She gasps, as George turns the bundle over to find a face, once belonging to a young man, its nose quite eaten away by vermin.

“God rest his sorry soul,” says George. “It’s a while since we’ve seen one of these hereabouts. Not since the plague was last in the borough. You go on, dear; I shall see to this.”

On the wherry, she cannot get the image out of her head of that poor soul, pondering on the fact that he was someone’s son, someone’s brother. It makes her think of Marcus, out in Rome where the summers are longer, the winters milder, and as a consequence they are more afflicted with the plague. She stops herself. Those thoughts don’t do anyone any good—you could go quite mad with worry if you let your imagination run off. She looks out along the riverbank towards the turrets and banners of Whitehall Palace, rising up beyond the vast tracts of exposed sand that are scattered with river detritus. There is hardly a soul about, save for two women in the distance, bundled up against the biting wind, cloaks billowing, their ribbons flying up prettily as they pick their way along the shore. She registers something familiar in the posture of them, the impression of a physical intimacy that reminds her of Katherine and Juno. A few gulls circle noisily about a fish carcass and another wherry passes in the opposite direction, throwing up waves, making their boat rock and water splash over her skirts.

As they draw beside the Whitehall pier, Levina watches the women disappear up the Westminster steps, thinking she would like to make a painting of the scene, to capture the crisp quality of its winter palette and the black blowing shapes of their cloaks. She makes a mental image of it, storing it up for another time. Having paid the waterman and clambered from the boat, she makes her way into the palace, walking through the empty courtyard and in by the back stairs which lead to the women’s chambers.

The place is deathly quiet. She knocks gently at the door to Juno’s rooms, where Katherine is most often to be found, but no one answers, so she pushes it open to find the hearth still smoldering and a mess of clothing scattered about, but no sign of either girl, nor any of Katherine’s pets. All her instincts are telling her that something is amiss and her mind is flooded with images of the moment Katherine was taken ill, so publicly, and then of the two shapes she has just seen disappearing up the Westminster steps. Nicholas’s words echo in her head,
cooking up
. What were they cooking up? She searches for clues, rummaging through the bundles of clothes and bedding, not knowing what she seeks. Her thoughts dither and her feeling of dread expands until it fills her. She opens a book of poems, finding written in it:
Ever yours, Hertford.
And then hastily scrawled as an afterthought in a different hue of ink,
soon your husband
. Levina is then struck by the memory of the ring Katherine was wearing on a chain. How she snatched it back when asked what it was. “Nothing!” she had said, in a way that clearly meant the opposite. A question insinuates itself into her mind: Has Katherine hatched a plan to wed the Hertford boy?

She rushes out, twisting and turning through the familiar corridors, taking the steps two at a time into the courtyard and almost running at full-tilt into the huge bulk of the Sergeant Porter.

“Oh Keyes, am I glad to see you,” she says. “I’m searching for Lady Katherine Grey and her friend. Do you happen to have come upon them this morning?”

“You’ll not find them here, Mistress Teerlinc. All the Queen’s ladies are gone to Eltham, hunting.”

“But they remained behind, Lady Katherine was afflicted with a toothache.”

“Oh dear,” he says, rubbing his beard. “Lady Mary made no mention of it when the retinue left. Now
she’s
no ordinary creature.” The man pauses, seeming to think, and Levina prepares once more to defend Mary, feeling her anger begin to inflate:
creature
, indeed. “She is uncommonly kind, so very unlike most of
those noble maids. I mentioned the other day in passing that my wife was ailing and she sent a parcel of comforts for her.”

“That sounds like Lady Mary,” Levina says, surprised, pleased to hear such a thing said about Mary, who is usually the butt of so much disdain. But she is twitching with impatience. “You haven’t seen Lady Katherine?”

“She hasn’t passed through here, nor at the watergates—I’d have been made aware of it.”

“Hertford? Have you seen
him
? Was
he
among the retinue?”

“Hertford hasn’t been at court for some time, Mistress Teerlinc.”

She is trying to remember the name of the street where Hertford has his London house. She went there once to paint him. Is it Canon Row? she asks herself. “I hope you will forgive my rudeness, Keyes, for I must track down those young women before trouble finds them.”

“Anything I can do . . .” he calls out, as she hurries off.

Once out of the gates, Levina follows the road towards Canon Row at a run, arriving there quite breathless and unable to remember which house is Hertford’s. She paces up and down, panting heavily and clutching at the stitch in her side, seeking something to jog her memory and wondering, dreading, what it is she will find when she gets there. She then recognizes the lime tree by the door set back from the cobbled square at the front, and the particular style of herringbone brickwork that surrounds the windows of Hertford’s residence.

She bangs hard on the door with a fist, but there is no answer. She peers in the window but the place seems empty, even of servants, no sign of a soul. Feeling foolish, she admonishes herself for letting her imagination run away with her. Hertford is more than likely at Hanworth with his mother, and the girls are surely gone for a stroll in the long gallery at the palace, oblivious to Levina’s misplaced concern. She ought to be simply glad to know that Katherine is better and up and about, rather than running around like a madwoman letting suspicion take hold of her—that
corpse has put her in a strange mood. But the niggling worry will not leave her and she bangs at the door again, so hard this time she bruises her knuckles.

December 1560

Canon Row

Katherine

There is a loud thudding at the door. I turn to Hertford. “Who is it?” He doesn’t reply, just shakes his head, purses his lips, and squeezes my hand a little tighter.

“Where is everybody? Why doesn’t your man answer it?” asks Juno.

“I sent the servants off for the day, to give us privacy,” says Hertford.

“Even Barnaby?”

“Everyone.”

The chaplain, who is a round sort of fellow in threadbare black worsted with a crude wooden cross strung from a pewter chain about his neck, is fidgeting as if he has somewhere else to be. I wonder where Juno and Hertford procured him. From among the dozens such as he passing through London these days, I suppose. He will be back from exile abroad and seeking a position, now his faith is no longer outlawed.

“Who is banging?” I ask again.

My anxiety must tell in my voice, as Hertford says, “Fret not, Kitty. We cannot be seen from the street in these chambers.”

“You have thought of everything, Brother,” says Juno.

The racket subsides at last.

“Are we ready?” says Hertford, directing his words at the chaplain, who is shuffling through the pages of his prayer book, squinting through a magnifier.

“Ah, yes, my lord.” He looks up at us seeming to take a moment to focus, rubbing his eyes.

“Shall we kneel?” asks Hertford.

“If you wish, my lord.”

As we get down on our knees, I try to think about God and the sanctity of marriage, but all I seem to have in my head are memories of my other wedding—the splendor of Durham House; the great assembly of nobles there to witness our nuptials; my dress, more lavish than any I had worn before or since. I must not think of Jane. I look down at my mud-splashed clothes, the sand clinging to my hems, and the rings of dirt beneath my fingernails, but rather than feeling sad for it, a little laugh fizzes up in me. I lean into Hertford’s neck and whisper, “I love you,” and he brings my hand up to his mouth, pressing a kiss on it. But then a thought spins into my head:
I love you too much
.

“Never too much, Kitty, when it comes to love,” he says, and it is only then that I realize I have spoken the words aloud. Despite his reassurances I am not so sure, for I feel as if I am slipping on ice and don’t know if I will land on my behind or glide beautifully like a Dutch skater. I concentrate all my thoughts on the grip of his hand upon mine, the firmness of it, and my worry recedes a little.

The clamor at the front door resumes. We are silenced and stilled, not moving a muscle. I look at Hertford; he is clenching and unclenching his jaw. Juno begins to cough, trying to suppress it and turning red with the effort. Thankfully, the hammering abates once more.

“What ails you, Sister?” asks Hertford.

“It’s nothing,” she says as the fit subsides.

The chaplain picks up his book again, flicking the pages, scrutinizing the words, then reading from it, fumbling to hold his magnifier and turn the page at the same time. He appears not to be very familiar with the marriage ceremony. I catch Juno’s eye and
we exchange a smile. If it were not my own wedding, we would be sharing a giggle about this inept cleric.

We repeat the vows one after the other, and my heart feels as if it will burst from my breast and soar up to the sky. Hertford takes a pouch from beneath his doublet and hangs it in the air before me, as if I am a favorite puppy and it is a treat. He pulls open its neck, holding my hand palm up, tipping a ring out into it. It is made of five gold hoops interlinked, knotted and twisted about one another, like a vine.