The Boleyn Reckoning (37 page)

If she dwelt in that particular hell, she did not have to remember the one that had preceded it in William’s tent.

Her fear and regret made her short-tempered and she found herself apologizing to Carrie at least four times a day. It was a measure of Carrie’s own strain that she did not insist such apologies were unnecessary. She had uttered no word of reproach to her mistress, though Minuette knew how Carrie worried about Harrington, and the maid had every right to blame her for the predicament they were all in.

The guards grudgingly gave Carrie news of the royal army’s victory and Lord Norfolk’s flight, and Minuette braced herself for William’s return. Surely he meant to see her. Why else would he send her to Beaulieu rather than the Tower? But as the days, and then weeks, passed, she realized he might not intend to make her his mistress after all. Which was just as well, because her negotiation of willingness had been a onetime only offer, even if William had not violated the spirit of their agreement by burning her home.

To her dying day—which was surely not far off—she would never forget the weight of Dominic’s careful indifference as they had all ridden to Wynfield after … well, afterward. Her husband had neither looked at nor spoken to her, and every hour she was awake Minuette carried a prayer in her heart:
Lord, let him understand and forgive me
.

Let me forgive myself
.

When she became ill after her arrival at Beaulieu, Minuette thought it nothing more than nerves and solitude. But the nausea did not pass and first one month and then a second slipped by without any sign of her female courses. Carrie did not comment on her lack of bleeding. She did not have to. Only once in her life had Minuette missed her monthly bleeding—during the too-short-lived pregnancy last summer.

By the time her twenty-first birthday arrived, fourteen weeks after her last night at Wynfield with Dominic—and her hours with William in his tent—Minuette knew that God had devised the cruelest punishment of all for her sins.

She was once more with child.

On the first day of July, the guards came for Dominic in Bell Tower and the interrogations began. He knew his inquisitors, naturally, the chief among them being the increasingly aged Archbishop Cranmer. The cleric coughed a great deal and looked as though he hadn’t eaten or slept in months. Though there was awkwardness on both sides, there seemed little of malice and the questions were so random as to be meaningless. It was only after the third or fourth of these sessions that Dominic realized William hadn’t told his inquisitors what exactly he wished them to prove. Catholic collaborator? Personal treason? Attempted murder? Until William decided which course to pursue, the interrogations were mild. They served more to tell Dominic what was happening in the outside world than to fill him with foreboding.

Just at dusk on the sixth of July, Dominic sat playing dice with Harrington and two squires who had come from Tiverton and requested to stay with him, determined to prove their loyalty to a Courtenay. He knew something unusual was happening when the door opened to admit the Constable of the Tower, a man who left most duties to his lieutenant.

“Come with me.” His voice was blank with authority.

Another interrogation, then. Perhaps they were ready to get serious in their questions. When the constable didn’t lead him to the usual chamber, however, Dominic felt a flicker of worry. Would it be torture this time?

But their path did not lead to the chamber Dominic had been in twice before and still recalled with a rolling stomach. Rather,
they ended up outside a wooden door in Wakefield Tower and Dominic’s confusion increased. What the hell was he doing outside the records room? Did they expect the sight of hundreds of account books to induce him to confession?

The constable opened the door and there stood William, looking lean and hungry and with a banked fire in his eyes that set off all Dominic’s alarms.

Probably not torture. But perhaps swords at twenty paces, or daggers, or sheer, bloody hatred in hand-to-hand combat.

Dominic forced himself back to rationality. William hadn’t come here to kill him. If—when—William killed him, it would be at a safe remove, and with the widest possible audience. A nice, safe, judicial murder.

“Leave us.”

When the door was shut and they were alone, William came forward one slow step at a time, until only a dozen inches separated them. “You do not offer congratulations?”

“On what?”

“My wife.”

Dominic’s throat closed off. Wife? He couldn’t mean …

William smiled, a nasty, insinuating smile. “You don’t really think I’d take your cast-offs, do you? I have uses for Minuette, now that she’s broken in, but I could hardly make her queen. No, I’ve rewarded the Protestants for their support in recent uprisings.”

Dominic’s throat loosened enough for him to speak. “Jane Grey.”

“We’re closing ranks, Dom, isolating our enemies, striking wherever we find discontent. It’s astonishing the number of priests in this country, when one troubles to look. In even the quietest households. Such as your mother’s.”

He froze for only a moment, then with a bitter laugh, Dominic
shook his head. “What did you do with him, William? Send him out of the country? Throw him in prison?”

“Burnt him,” William answered bluntly. “Made quite a spectacle in the middle of the village. I understand your mother was somewhat distressed.”

Dominic turned away. Killing the priest who had married them … he should have seen that coming. And now his mother was bereft of the only comfort she’d known in years. Courtenay men: between them, he and his father had done a decent job of destroying his mother’s life.

“What do you want? To gloat? Why don’t we just take it as read? You won, I lost.”

William sauntered to the quartet of narrow rectangular windows set in the rounded wall. “Nice view of Water Gate. I’m sorry I couldn’t be here to watch you brought in, but the fighting, you know. Still, there are other prisoner arrivals to observe.”

In spite of himself, Dominic crossed to the window and looked down, wondering who it was William wanted him to see. His mother, raving mad? Some other of his mother’s household, brought here for no reason than because they mattered to him? Asherton dragged back from the ruins of Wynfield Mote?

From this vantage, Dominic could see clearly the Water Gate used for transportation of the most important prisoners. He’d come in this way himself, three months ago. Tonight a regiment of guards lined Water Lane, with bracketed torches casting long shadows. The constable himself stood at the top of the wooden steps leading down to the river.

A barge appeared, skillfully brought alongside the stairs by a wizened boatman. There were two cloaked women in the barge and Dominic tried to discern which might be his mother. A guard stood up, extending his hand to one of the women.

The woman stood and Dominic’s body recognized her before his mind could work it out in words. He thought he might be sick, for as the woman balanced in the small boat, the hood of her cloak fell back and a spill of golden hair gleamed in the torchlight.

For one long moment Minuette stood in the slightly swaying barge and stared at the offered hand. Then she picked up her skirts with both hands and stepped quickly, if a little clumsily, onto the first step.

William’s voice was low and vicious in his triumph. “Proud girl. What was that phrase? All eyes and legs and spirit.”

Dominic did not allow the contemptuous words to distract him from Minuette. In spite of her icy demeanor, she was frightened. He could see it in the little things: the stiffness of her movements, the way her hands clenched on the fabric of her skirt, how her eyes darted away from the constable as if looking for a way to escape. One of the guards stepped forward to take her by the arm and Dominic saw her freeze like a hunted hart. For a blinding moment, he was afraid she was going to panic. God help him, if he had to watch her dragged away screaming, he would break William’s neck.

Minuette’s hands relaxed. She stared scornfully at the guard—Dominic couldn’t see her face, but he knew from the set of her head and shoulders that her eyes blazed with scorn—until the man stepped back. The constable led the way and she followed on her own, back straight and head held high.

She was almost out of sight, ready to pass beneath the arch that led to the green around which ranged most of the Tower buildings. And then, with a suddenness that caused a guard to bump into her, she stopped walking. Absently, she shook the guard off where he had touched her shoulder and raised her head. With unerring instinct, she looked straight at Dominic.

He knew she couldn’t see him in the unlit room, or at least no
more of him than his outline. But she didn’t need more than that, maybe not even that much. She knew he was there.

With a dazzling smile, she lowered her head and walked away.

“I hope you looked well.” Venom laced William’s voice. “You’ll never see her again.”

“I didn’t expect to see her today. And I don’t need to look to remember her.” He saw her every time he closed his eyes, he felt her beneath his hands, the length of her body pressed against him that last night, even hear the beat of her heart, swifter and lighter than his own.

William’s control was beginning to slip. “It’s not as if you had her pure on your wedding night. Virgin she may have been then, but only just.”

“It was her body alone that you touched. You’ll never have more of her than that.”

“Do you not remember Wynfield and our negotiations?” William’s smile was cold with fury. “I had her in ways you are too rigidly honourable to dream. And she didn’t protest. She came to my bed willingly. With you not fifty feet away.”

Stamping hard on the images William’s words called up, Dominic said, “I’ve never doubted she came to you without force. But it wasn’t for love, either, you’ve ensured that. She came to you for pity’s sake.”

He didn’t try to avoid William’s fist. Dominic’s head snapped to the side with the impact and he rocked back on his heels.
Come on
, he urged silently.
Hit me again. Hit me until you’ve burned out all your anger and jealousy and fear
.

But William had learned his lessons well, the lessons of control and restraint that Dominic had always been so eager to teach him. That might have been a mistake, he reflected, watching William’s eyes cool and his body relax. He’s learned too well to twist and calculate, he cannot just let go.

That will be his undoing—and mine
.

William eaten alive with bitterness, Minuette held in the Tower … the situation could not possibly be worse.

And then, with a casual twist that was reminiscent of Lord Rochford at his most cruel, William announced, “And as for your pure wife, you should know one thing: she is with child. Pity she’s not quite so pure as to be certain of the father.”