Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (10 page)

How could I know that peace would never again touch my sister? Or that when next I saw Bradgate, my whole world would lie in shatters around me?

Chapter Five

J
ANE
D
UDLEY
15
YEARS OLD
T
HE FORMER ABBEY AT
S
HEEN
, S
URREY
L
ATE
J
UNE
1553

t is said that the monks King Henry drove from England could concoct poisons that ate at your sanity and carved the flesh from your bones until you were nothing but a skeleton rattling in a sheath of skin. But I was not being poisoned. Not by some phantom monk, not by His Grace of Northumberland. Or so my lady mother raged at me during those terrible days when she came to Sheen to demand I get well.

Even in my weakest moments, I believed that her redoubtable will might have the power to order death’s retreat. Or was it my own fear of her that drove me to squeeze down more spoonfuls of gruel? Take a few more steps so I could gain enough strength that she would leave me in peace?

I must resist the dark thoughts born of the fever that held me in its fist. That was what Mrs. Ellen told me when I awakened in the middle of the night soaked with sweat—from nightmares now, not illness. I cannot say which is worse. In the flickering light from her candle, I watched rose petals drown in the bowl of cool water she brought to bathe my face. I was drowning as well. Drowning in this strange twilight world, in this place that was once an abbey. I was a wife who was no wife, my lord husband as blessedly absent as the monks who once lived here. My wedding seemed like an evil dream, or was it something more menacing now? Had my obvious repugnance toward Guilford made my marriage a mistake that Northumberland intended to rectify by using the powder in the vial that Kat saw?

It made no sense to poison me when Northumberland could just annul the union, reason argued. But logic had been burned away by fever and fear.

Mrs. Ellen tasted any morsel that touched my lips. She ran bare fingers over my books, my chemises, and my slippers. “Look, sweet lamb. These cannot be poisoned. Am I not still hale and hearty?”

True though her claim was, I would have given much to have my sister Mary’s keen ears and strange intuitions to unravel this encroaching sense of doom. Mary—so young and yet somehow older than the standing stones—as if she sneaked through a crack that linked the distant pagan past with the present.

What a sinful thing to think about my own sister. It was the kind of thing others might gossip about, but I knew Mary better than anyone in the world. I should have been her champion, her shield. Yet here in this place I could not seem to leash my bleak imaginings or wall them out with books. I could not even
read
, God help me, my mind not able to string two thoughts together save the sense that Northumberland was determined to destroy me.

Was I losing my reason? I stared into the polished silver looking glass that I seldom bothered with in the past. The face that stared back at me was sharp with bone and splotchy where patches of skin peeled away. My hair, once thick and shining was so thin in places that glimpses of white scalp showed through. One morn I even caught my lady mother looking dismayed as she brushed a handful of the lost strands from my pillow.

I could not quell the twinge that I felt over my new appearance. I was never a beauty like Kat, but neither was I unpleasant to look at, until now. Mary’s image rose in my mind again. I could almost hear her comfort me.
You would grow accustomed to being ugly in time. But you will not look so forever
.

“Thank God,” I whispered, then cringed as if my little sister had heard me. I picked at a loose thread on my claret-colored bed gown with fingernails so ragged I snagged the fabric. I pressed my folded arms against my stomach. To think such unchristian thoughts made me determined that today would be different.

Though Mrs. Ellen had urged me to go out into the gardens for days now, I had refused—only creeping about the old abbey’s chambers since my fever began. I had been gaining a little strength. Perhaps today we could venture to the end of the garden. Only once I was well enough to travel could I leave this haunted place. Spurred by that thought, I went in search of Mrs. Ellen.

An hour earlier, I had left her in the next room, dozing by the fire after so many sleepless nights watching over me. I knew I was selfish to wake her, but I could not bear to remain in the night-shaded corridors of my own mind.

“Mrs. Ellen,” I began as I went through the open door. “I wish to go walk—”

Her favorite chair was abandoned. The tambour she had been stitching on before she fell asleep had been dumped in a hasty tangle onto a table. Strange that she would leave without telling me while I was in such a fragile condition.

I looked farther, my steps a bit steadier than they had been the day before. When my flustered nurse came rushing around the corner, I was so startled I nearly lost my footing. “My lady, your lord husband awaits your pleasure below stairs.”

My stomach pitched like a storm-tossed wherry, carrying me back to the worst hours of my illness. For a moment I felt as if I might vomit again. “My husband?” I echoed, stalling in an effort to gather my scattered wits.

Mrs. Ellen nodded so hard, her drawn work coif nearly slipped off her head. “Lord Guilford Dudley comes on important business from the Duke of Northumberland.”

My hands shook as the duke’s image rose in my mind, his eyes as piercing as hot irons, ruthlessness seeming to scream from every angle in his face. Perhaps Mary had been right to call him the devil duke, for he seemed invincible, his will impossible to resist. Despite my lady mother’s protests to the contrary, I feared I had already experienced what he would do to one who defied him.

“I must see Lord Guilford.” It was no question. Rather, a summoning up of my courage. Far better to face the cub than the lion. “What kind of business did His Grace of Northumberland send Lord Guilford here about?”

Mrs. Ellen gave a nervous shake of her head. “I do not know, but your lord’s face is set as if it will be unpleasant and he is downing a quantity of wine.”

Dread tightened around my middle. I wanted to flee back to my bed, burrow beneath the coverlets, and pretend I was racked with fever again. Surely if Guilford believed he would be in danger of catching my illness, he would eschew the abbey and me. But I squared my shoulders, taught by hard experience to face troublesome news with at least an appearance of calm. When I entered the hall, I found Guilford sprawled in a chair that was formed in two bog-oak sections crossed like an X. His sword and buckler had been tossed upon the table before him. A loaf of manchet bread sat on a board, a dagger buried in its crusty belly. A ewer I surmised had held the wine Mrs. Ellen claimed he had drunk lay on its side, while Guilford scowled moodily into his empty goblet.

Features Kat would have called handsome seemed anything but that to me. Straw-colored hair tumbled over his forehead, his green velvet doublet dusty and crumpled from travel. It was impossible that this man was my husband, some part of my mind insisted wildly. I did not know him. What little I did know, I did not like.

Still, I forced myself to move toward him. “My lord,” I said, dropping into a curtsy. “This visit is most unexpected.”

“I notice you do not call it a pleasure. No sense lying, eh, Jane?”

I stepped into the light from a nearby window and could tell when his eyes truly focused on me. “You are even ghastlier pale than you were at the wedding.”

My cheeks burned. I stared at a crown worked into the wooden panel behind his head. The wood was much lighter there, new marked since King Henry had seized the abbeys. “I have been ill,” I said.

“I heard something of it from my father. I have never seen him in such a temper.”

“Because I did not die?”
from the poison he gave me
, I added to myself.

“No. He seemed most irate at the thought that I might become a widower so soon.”

What sense would that make if he were truly attempting to kill me?
My temples throbbed as I tried to unravel that mystery.

“Fortunately,” Guilford continued, “His Grace assures me you are no longer in danger of the malaise.”

“God willing.”

“It is my lord father I am more concerned with at present. He has set our duty before us and says we cannot delay.”

My stomach quivered as I guessed what that “duty” must be. My eyes slid closed for a moment.
Please, God
, I begged silently,
let it not be so
.

“We are to bed, wife,” Guilford said, “though from your expression you dislike the idea as much as I do. Let us get the thing over with.” He gave an unpleasant laugh.

My cheeks felt afire. “What is so amusing?”

“I was just thinking that if Henry Herbert and I had been gambling the day of our marriages, there is no doubt who won this hand. If His Grace unlocked their bedchamber door along with ours, that beautiful sister of yours will be capering with joy.”

Had the duke done so? I wondered. Kat
would
be happy if Northumberland had given them leave to bed together. The youth she had bound herself to looked at her as if she had painted the heavens blue, while my husband looked as revolted as I felt at the idea of his drawing near me.

“You know Herbert and your sister attempted to sneak into bed together at Durham House though my father forbade it.”

I remembered Kat’s stricken face next morning, her whispered caution.
I saw the duke with some kind of white powder in a glass vial. I broke it, and he acted so strangely. Tied a cloth over his face and swept the powder up with parchment so he would not touch it. Jane, I think it was poison
. What else could it be?

“Eager little filly, your sister.” Guilford’s voice brought me back to the present. “Ripe for the mounting, damn Henry Herbert’s hide. You were nothing like her before and now.” He surveyed me up and down. I could feel every patch of raw skin, the hot, dark bruises under my fever-hollowed eyes. “I would wager you were relieved by the reprieve on our wedding night, wife. But God is not rescuing us a second time. He and my father decree it is time to consummate our marriage. We must endure it the best we can.” He pushed himself to his feet.

“Please, my lord. You can see I am not strong enough for—for—”

“You would not be any better equipped for bed sport if you slept for a hundred years. The best luck we can hope for is that I get you with child at once. Produce a son, and I can seek my pleasures in fairer harbors, while you can go back to being a drab little nun.”

Outrage poured strength into my feeble limbs. “How dare you compare me to those superstitious Catholic—”

“Just accompany me to the bedchamber and submit like a godly wife. We must get heirs with the Dudley name.”

“But why now? What harm can it do to wait until tomorrow?”

His eyes took on an implacable gleam. “I do not
wish
to wait until tomorrow. My father does not
wish
us to wait until tomorrow.”

“My lord, I—” I scrambled to think of some reply, some way to drive that alarming expression from his face.

“
Your
wishes are of no consequence, Jane. Did your precious tutor neglect to teach you that in your infernal books?” He closed the gap between us and seized my arm, forcing me to the chamber I had left a short while ago. Once in the room, he shut the door, closing off escape.

I cried out as he dragged me full against him, his mouth crushing mine so hard I tasted blood—his or mine, I could not tell. He pushed me backward until my legs collided with the side of the bed. I cried out as the hard wooden edge bruised me. Guilford tumbled me backward, bearing his body down on mine, his hands fumbling at my breast. I tried to push him away, but he grabbed my wrists and pinned them above my head. “Lie still. You are only making things worse for yourself. I’ll bind you to the bedposts to make you submit if I must.”

The idea of being humiliated thus was more than I could bear. I crushed my eyes shut as he wrenched up my nightgown and forced my legs apart.

Something hard and blunt jabbed at me, tearing fragile skin on either side of its target. I tried not to cry out, but my misery only moved Guilford to frenzy. He drove inside me, shoving and groping and grunting. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt. Tears poured down my cheeks, and I prayed it would be over. Suddenly he gave one last, savage thrust, and arched back his head with a guttural cry. He collapsed atop me, so heavy I could not breathe.

I pushed at his shoulders, and he rolled off me. Cold air struck my naked limbs, chilled the disgusting wetness between my thighs.

Bruised inside my body and deeper still in my soul, I slid from the bed, dragging the sheet with me. He did not bother to protest. He sprawled on his back and flung one arm across his eyes. In the hours that followed, I watched him snore, slack-mouthed and half-drunk. Hated him. At length he woke, pushed himself upright. For just an instant some emotion darted in his eyes as he noticed me, huddled in misery, wrapped up in a bloodstained sheet. Regret? Embarrassment? Or simply distaste? I would never know. Naked, he rose from the bed. That part of him that had caused me so much pain shriveled. I wanted to retch into the chamber pot. My skin felt soiled by our coupling, as if filth had been ground into me, down to my very bones.