Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (27 page)

“No one could doubt it is so.”

“Indeed. Do not try my patience further.”

“No, Majesty. I will try to deserve your mercy.”

“Whether you will is up to God to decide.” The queen smiled. “God did decide in the battle between us, cousin. In my favor.”

The words stung. I started to speak but remembered Kat’s wordless plea and bit the inside of my lip. The queen obviously observed it. “So you have learned a little wisdom in your time as guest of Mr. Partridge. That is good. I will allow you a few moments of private conversation with your sisters. You may join them and withdraw to a privy chamber.”

I curtsied, then backed out of the room to where my sisters were waiting. My guard followed us to a closet, a tiny room with a small fire burning. The instant he closed the door leaving us alone, Kat hugged me so tight, she squeezed the breath from my lungs. I could feel her bones, sharper through the material of her gown.

It was one of those she had worn for the wedding festivities when she had been round-limbed and blooming. Now it hung on her much-thinner frame, the roses bleached from her cheeks, her eyes smudged with heartache. Had she worried herself into such a state over me? Or had Pembroke done what I feared and annulled her marriage to Henry?

“Jane! Did all go well?” she asked. “I was so afraid you would do something foolhardy, like arguing religion with the queen!”

“I managed to avoid it, but it took effort. It was hard enough to be so rejected by the English people. Even from the Tower I could hear the cheers and see the bonfires dotting the city, and my guards took great glee in recounting tales of the celebrations at Mary’s coronation. To hear from her that God cast me aside was even more painful. I know it is not true. The faithful must always endure great tribulations before winning salvation.”

“This is not about salvation, Jane! It is about survival. What did the queen say?”

“She has promised that someday she will set me free.”

Mary piped up. “I knew Cousin Mary would. She promised because of the feather.”

I was too relieved to question Mary’s queer pronouncement. “I cannot fathom why she has done it. To promise to spare me the ax is one thing. But to release me? I feared the best fate I could ever hope for was to spend the rest of my life a prisoner, as Edward Courtenay would have, if Mary had never come to the throne.”

Called the last sprig of the white rose of Lancaster, Courtenay had been jailed by Henry VIII because he was a danger to the Tudor dynasty. He had been released along with Catholic Bishop Gardiner the moment Mary Tudor was named queen.

“To be set free seems unimaginable.” I felt a twinge, remembering the talk I had had with Father the night I first learned I was to be queen. I would not have been so merciful to my cousin—or so reckless. But there could be little danger to the queen now. People, both Catholic and reformed faith, had wanted her to wear the crown.

“I am so glad you are all right. Being in the Tower will not be so terrible, now I know I will walk free someday.”

“Now there is nothing more to fear. We are all safe. Mother was even given precedence over Lady Elizabeth in a procession. You should have seen her face! We have survived, Jane. You have the queen’s word she will release you from that terrible place. All will be well.”

“All except for Henry Herbert being a cowardly knave,” Mary said.

“Mary!”

“Well, it is true. He has made Kat cry.”

Kat held up her hand, bare of its nuptial ring. “You were right, Jane. As always.”

“I am sorry for it.” I could have said that she would heal, love again. With such a warm heart, she could not help it. But I knew Kat would not appreciate her pain being discounted. She would be happy again in her own time. My guard returned, and I bade my sisters goodbye. Kat with a warm hug, Mary a briefer, fiercer one.

I did not think, until the bargemen were rowing me back to the Tower, about the family I had not seen. My mother, who was so much in the queen’s favor that she had taken precedence even over Lady Elizabeth, could have seen me if she wished.

Still, my mother had not come.

Chapter Nineteen

K
AT
W
INCHESTER
P
ALACE
D
ECEMBER
1553

mbassadors from France and the Holy Roman Empire paraded through our days, using every opportunity to put forth the matches for Queen Mary that would benefit their own countries most.

Bishop Gardiner and the Frenchman de Noailles nattered on about the importance of wedding an Englishman. The man they most favored was Edward Courtenay. Even after fifteen years imprisoned in the Tower he looked the romantic hero—young and pretty, with royal blood flowing in his veins. To link the houses of Lancaster and Tudor could only strengthen England—or so Courtenay’s most devoted patron, Bishop Gardiner, claimed.

The union might have been perfect were it not for the tales that the Spanish ambassador carried of Courtenay’s revelry in Southwark’s brothels. Such stories repelled Queen Mary, and I could not blame her, though at times I wondered what such women did that men found so fascinating—and whether Henry had ever sampled such pleasures.

Renard, ambassador for the Holy Roman Empire, spent every moment in the queen’s company maligning Courtenay for weakness and vice while extolling the virtues of Prince Philip of Spain, a widower of sober temperament and proven responsibility. He was even the son of the queen’s cousin, Charles V, who had threatened Northumberland with war should the princess be harmed. But to wed a foreigner was to give another empire a foothold on English shores—a prospect that terrified any right-thinking Englishman.

Queen Mary shifted from one inclination to the next. I could scarce blame her. The kingdom seemed caught in some strange twilight between the old world and the new: the Catholic faith, which was still outlawed, pitted against reformers, whom the queen had forbidden to preach; her life as neglected spinster changing to that of a woman sought after as wife.

Even as distressed as I was over my own concerns, I felt ire at the injustice dealt her. It did not seem fair that she was unable to enjoy the attention men now paid her. The warmer the queen became toward Prince Philip’s suit, the louder the rumbles of discontent grew, until Spanish emissaries were pelted with snowballs by angry apprentices. The queen’s fury at the insult only increased the unrest.

Gossip caught fire, people fearing that England would become a mere vassal of Spain and that the Inquisition would be carried to English shores along with Philip’s nuptial ring.

The threat of Catholic retribution was no small matter since the queen’s patience with reformers was running out. Many claimed it was only a matter of time until the fires of Smithfield consumed the flesh of heretics once more. I tried to quell my terror that, in spite of Queen Mary’s promise, Jane might be one of the first to die. If not for accepting the crown, then for championing beliefs the queen deplored.

My little sister insisted the queen would not sign Jane’s death warrant. I wanted to believe her. The queen loved us, after all, at least little Mary and me. As for Jane … Jane had spent her time writing to her reformer friends in Switzerland about the evils of popery when she might have put her efforts to better use being pleasant to the queen, more docile, more contrite. Less stubborn, less determined. Less … herself.

But it was hard to stay angry over Jane’s recalcitrance when I was so sad and weary and it took all my energy to appear cheerful to my royal cousin as she simpered over her favorite suitor like any Cupid-struck maid.

“Is Prince Philip not the most handsome man you have ever seen, Cousin Katherine?” The queen drew me to the portrait that had arrived toward the end of November. Painted by the great Titian himself, it hung in a place of honor. A stiff-looking man of twenty-six with pale hair and cold blue eyes peered from the canvas, his jaw thrusting out so far, it seemed almost as if the artist made a mistake. But even that blemish was not as disturbing to me as the hint of a suspicious nature in the prince’s expression.

“It is good you find the prince appealing,” I said, trying not to offend her should she choose this man to be her husband. “The other ladies have commented on how well he looks.” I was not in agreement. I wondered if the queen was able to read my thoughts.

She gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “Beautiful as you are, I am sure you have had many comely youths court you, but I am thirty-eight years old and have never felt the first pangs of love.” I tried not to wince at how desperate she seemed, but she saw and must have imagined I was thinking of Henry.

“Forgive me, sweet cousin. The fact that you are pretty does not save you from suffering pain. I know Pembroke’s son is often in your mind. When the youth comes to court, I have seen the way you still look at him. Even as much as I favor you, Pembroke refuses to reinstate the match between you. The earl believes you will drive a wedge between him and his son as punishment because he insisted on the annulment. Nothing I can say will convince him otherwise. You must let his son go.”

“What passed between Pembroke and me matters less than the fact that Henry would not fight for me. Should not a person be willing to fight for someone they love so much?”

“Obedience is a woman’s lot and a man’s duty. There will be another lover devoted to you someday. But for me …” She looked at the portrait as if she had drunk the strongest love potion ever brewed. “This is my last chance for conjugal happiness. Some of my ladies warn that the difference in our ages and in our faces and forms will build barriers between us. I feared the same. But Prince Philip writes that he would sooner have a Godly wife than a woman who has only her youth to recommend her.”

She pressed her hand to her breast. The faraway look in her eyes only made the queen look foolish. I felt embarrassed for her, but what could I say? “Do you think me ridiculous, Katherine?” she asked.

I looked away. “Unless you take that risk, you can never hope to win the prize.”

“Well and wisely spoken. I wish my sister, the Lady Elizabeth, had some measure of your grace. I have seen her examining the portrait of my betrothed with a speculative air that irritates me greatly. I know she is measuring herself against Philip and imagining she is more suited to match him in face and form. She fancies that once my Spanish bridegroom arrives, he will regret which sister he will be marrying.”

I scoffed at the very idea: “No prince of royal blood would want to mix his lineage with that of a bastard.” Once Cousin Mary had been easy to wound on this subject, but there was no danger in speaking bluntly now. Although her father had drafted an act to declare her illegitimate, no one else had ever considered Mary Tudor a bastard. Unless you counted his queens who would benefit from her disinheritance, and ministers like Northumberland who hated the Catholic faith. Mary had gone to Parliament and legally erased even that slight stain from her name.

But anyone with eyes could see the scars that the comparison with Elizabeth had left her. Bastard though Elizabeth was, she was also young and pretty. She wielded an appeal to men that Mary never had. The queen’s insecurities were reflected in her eyes. I groped for words to soothe her. “When my sister was at Chelsea with the dowager queen, she said the Lady Elizabeth acted in a way most unseemly with Thomas Seymour.”

I mentioned my sister whenever I could to raise her in the queen’s good graces. Often I had felt a softening in Queen Mary when I did so. Today the queen grew restless.

“It will be a good thing for the kingdom once I am safely wed and brought to bed of a Catholic prince. Any question of the Lady Elizabeth inheriting will then be quashed. The true religion will be restored in England again. People will see for themselves what a good thing this Spanish marriage is for the country. They will thank me for it.”

“I hope so, Majesty.” No one could mistake the temper of the land. It grew more hostile to a wedding between England and Spain every day. Bishop Gardiner had even dared to serve the queen with a petition signed by members of both the Lords and the Commons begging her to eschew a foreign prince in favor of an English marriage. There was even talk of rebellion. So dangerous had feelings against the Spanish become that the queen, in an effort to silence public outcry, had issued a proclamation forbidding unlawful assemblies and lewd words.

I feared how swiftly people’s loyalty could change. The queen’s kindness to me in the past months made me dread the disillusionment that would afflict her as people withdrew their love. “Majesty, I hope that you are right and people accept the marriage you desire—”

She cut in with a sternness that startled me, “My subjects must bow to my will. It is my divine right to choose.”

“Your Majesty, sometimes even if it is your right to choose, it is best to be … gentle.” The queen frowned, but I rushed on. “This matter with the Spanish reminds me of taming a horse to the bridle. No one disputes the animal must go where the rider tells it to, but if you rein it in a way so hasty it hurts its mouth, the horse will fight you.”