Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (40 page)

“But would not Lord Hertford be an asset to the crown? An English earl with Plantagenet blood in his veins?”

“He would be too great an asset. We have many a stormy sea to navigate before the difficulty is settled. The queen would fear that, even without the added complication of Dudley as potential king, her subjects might rise up and topple her crown in your favor.” I felt light-headed, as if I were dancing too long in the heat.

Cecil guided me to a chair and helped me sit down. “The prospect of a crown is a great burden, I know. Especially after what happened to your sister,” he soothed. “But it is one that destiny has chosen you to bear. That is why I had to send Lord Hertford to the continent. I warned him to keep away from you, but he did not heed my words. Removing the temptation was the only way to keep you—and through you, the whole kingdom—safe. Do you understand?”

“I do,” I breathed, my heart sinking. “Why did you not share this with me sooner?”

“As a father, I have discovered that even the most biddable of daughters grows headstrong in matters of the heart. Nothing tempts a woman more than a forbidden love. I confess I feared you might do something rash.”

“Marry Lord Hertford,” I whispered.

Cecil gave a strained laugh. “Your grandmother, the dowager queen of France, wed Charles Brandon in defiance of rank and of her brother’s will.”

“But all ended well for them,” I soothed myself.

“It would not end so for you. The fate of a kingdom did not turn on your grandmother. It turns upon you.”

Late that night I curled up in my bed, my wits frayed with confusion. Had Cecil told Ned his reasons for separating us? Had the secretary spoken of crowns and plotting, religious wars, and the fate of England hanging in the balance?

If Ned had known all that, had he wed me in hopes of sharing the crown Cecil spoke of? Mary’s warnings that summer at Hanworth whispered in my head.

No. I could not believe Ned would use me thus. More truthful—I did not want to.

April passed, then May, the spring lambs fattening on the hills. June came, rife with preparations for the queen’s progress. Carts were loaded, gowns and jewels packed carefully in chests, their lids peaked so the rain would run off them. I packed as well—my gowns and my jewels and the dread that haunted me night and day.

Come July, I lay in the bath, my linen shift clinging wet to my stomach, my breasts feeling heavy. Was it dropsy, perhaps? Some swelling from jolting across the roads? Was I growing stout as my mother had done when she was most unhappy?

I pressed my palms against my middle to force the swell back to its usual shape. My heart stopped as something strange happened. There, inside me, something—some
one
—kicked me with a force that shattered my world.

A babe—it could only be a babe—was fighting its way to life in my womb.

Chapter Twenty-nine

K
AT
I
PSWICH
A
UGUST
1561

right-garbed dancers whirled about the flower-decked hall in the volte, and at their center Lord Robert Dudley tossed the queen high in the air. As his hands gripped Her Majesty’s slender waist, I was grateful that my claim of a weak ankle excused me from such pursuits for the present. For if any man touched me thus in a dance, my secret would be betrayed.

When Jane, Mary, and I were children, we made skiffs out of bark at Bradgate. We would choose broad-leaf sails and thread them through with masts of twigs, then set our little crafts adrift to challenge the current. Jane’s was painstakingly done, Mary’s clumsy because she was youngest. Mine was burdened with flower-blossomed ladies and acorn-helmeted knights, my masts streaming with bright petal pennons. Laden with adornments, it was always first to overbalance or crash against the rocks.

Now I was that fragile vessel, plunging through the foam. The stones thrust out of the water ahead of me, and I knew they would dash me to bits, but I could not change course any more than the flower-people of my childhood could have.

I could not even wail in fear. All I could do was hunch over my writing desk day after day, pen clenched in hand as I scratched out desperate letters:

My dearest husband
,
Return to England if you love me. You vowed you would not leave me to face the queen’s wrath alone
.

As I watched Her Majesty dance with Dudley, I fought the urge to curve my arm over my belly, to feel the terror and wonder of the life within me pushing its elbows and feet against my womb. I had spent hours alone, my flesh bared as I watched in horrified fascination as the bulge moved, its rump and spine shifting against its prison. Ned’s babe and mine. Even with my gift of imagination, I could not pretend it away any longer.

In my letter I pleaded for Ned to return to my side, but I feared he had deserted me. What else could this silence mean? Even had he returned, he could have denied our marriage. His sister, our only witness, lay dead, and I did not even know the name of the priest who wed us. The paper Ned gave me proclaiming me his wife, deeding me property and monies should he die—that paper had vanished. I prayed the queen’s spies or some other scheming courtier had not gotten hold of it. I searched people’s faces in dread, my nerves raked across a knife’s blade. Even if no one else knew yet about my marriage, soon no power in heaven or on earth would be able to shield me from the consequences of my folly.

I finally understood what Jane suffered—the days slipping past in the Tower, her steps toward the block, the space between ax and life dwindling. She had had no way to halt the march of time. I was on a march of my own now and could see no end but disaster.

“My Lady Katherine?”

I stiffened, startled at de Quadra’s greeting, his voice heavy with the accents of Spain. “Ambassador,” I said with a nod.

“Forgive me, but you do not look altogether well. I hope you are not ill?”

I made a futile attempt to draw in my stomach, then fluffed my petticoats instead. “I am quite well.”

“I miss seeing you partnered in the dance. You are quite the most graceful of all the queen’s ladies and, might I add, the most beautiful. No wonder the queen does not seek out your company, as she does those who are not so blessed.”

There was a time such praise would have pleased me. This time I did not even trouble to reply.

De Quadra cleared his throat. “The queen and her master of the horse dance quite beautifully together, yet so few of your countrymen seem pleased by the display.”

“Perhaps the pheasant served at the banquet did not agree with their stomachs.” I searched for a more effective way to deflect his probing, wishing he would go away.

“I would say the partner whom the queen has chosen is disagreeable to the company. Robert Dudley has many enemies. My master counts himself among them, despite Dudley’s recent efforts to win his favor. Anyone at court must know who champions their cause and who opposes it. You, my lady, have friends among my people. My master remembers your loyalty to his cousin, Queen Mary, when she was upon the throne.”

I cast a nervous look at the dancers, but they were still too involved in each other to notice de Quadra’s attentions to me. “The late queen was very kind and gracious.”

De Quadra stroked his black beard with one hand. “You will forgive me if I submit that this queen is made of far different stuff. Elizabeth Tudor will not easily forgive the fact that your birth is more royal than her own, or that it does not carry the stain of bastardy. There are those who predict her time on the throne is dwindling.”

Alarm cut even more sharply through my veins. “It is treason to say so,” I told him. “I pray, as all true subjects must, that Her Majesty will live a long, fruitful life.”

“With Dudley as a husband?” de Quadra scoffed. “Anyone may see the passion in Elizabeth Tudor’s eyes when she looks at him. Her parents defied the pope and certain hell to consummate their love. How many of your king’s own friends and loyal advisers perished in flame or by the headsman’s ax to clear the path to their marriage? Is it so hard to imagine, then, that their daughter might risk all to wed a man whom her people hate?” De Quadra’s lip curled in derision.

“It is not proper for you to say so.”

“I will tell you this, my lady,” de Quadra said. “If the queen does not choose him, she will not choose anyone, and if Her Majesty does not marry, she cannot bear a son.”

“England needs a prince,” I said.

“Indeed, but not one tainted with Dudley blood. England will not have it. The wolves are already dividing into factions, competing for power as they sense the queen may be sinking. They will soon turn on each other. You saw firsthand what such a dangerous climate can lead to.”

“It is not kind of you to remind me of circumstances that were so painful.”

“I do not wish to pain you. I only wish to reassure you that you will have powerful friends when things grow complicated, as they are bound to do. You have only to say the word, and all the resources at my disposal will be at your service.”

To have Spain, with all its power and influence, seeking my favor—how proud my lord father would have been. At that instant my babe kicked, and I wondered what de Quadra would say if he knew I carried the child of my husband—Lord Hertford, whose father had brought the reformed religion to England.

Had not Cecil claimed that Spain hoped for a marriage between the Catholic Scots queen and the Habsburg heir? The tangle made my head ache, my stomach clench with fear.

A black-robed figure came toward us—William Cecil, appearing less than pleased. Had he guessed the tenor of our conversation? Or was he merely determined to let de Quadra know that I belonged to him on this vast chessboard that was court? I did not wish to remain long enough to find out.

“I beg you will forgive me, ambassador,” I said. “I find this heat oppressive.”

“Go, then. Rest. Your health is very dear to me.”

At that moment Cecil drew near us. He stopped and bowed. “Lady Katherine, Ambassador de Quadra, how fare you on this hot August night?”

“Lady Katherine was just preparing to withdraw,” de Quadra answered for me. “She is feeling a touch unwell.”

“I am not,” I said too hastily, terrified Cecil might insist upon sending a physician to examine me. “I find the heat oppressive. That is all.”

Suddenly I felt cold to my spine. Someone was watching me. The dance was over, the participants were leaving the floor—all save the queen. She was looking at me as I stood between the two powerful men, suspicion and enmity in her black Boleyn eyes.

What did she see? Plots to steal her throne? Men vying for the favors of a woman who might be her heir? She had been in my position once—she knew how fickle even a seemingly loyal councilor could be.

“Forgive me, gentlemen. I will leave you to argue among yourselves.” I curtsied, then fled to my chambers.

I was pacing my small room when I heard a timid knock on my door. Mary slipped in, her face illuminated by the candle she held, her eyes dark with remorse and worry.

“Kat, I have been wishing for a moment to speak to you,” she said, crossing to the table where my writing desk lay open. “I need to tell you I am sorry the Seymours are gone.”

I stared at her in surprise and anguish. “I do not believe you. You never liked them.”

“I
did
wish I could make them disappear.” She picked up a wafer of sealing wax that I had stamped with the Grey family unicorn, then torn off when I tossed that letter to Ned aside, determined to phrase something more insistently. Mary rubbed her finger against the hard wax as if by touch she could discover the right words to soothe me. “I thought that if there were no more Seymours at court, you would talk to me, but you do not. If I had real magic, I would make them come back for you.”

“Jane is dead, and Ned—Ned is far away in France or Spain.”

“I do not care where he is. He does not write you. You send him so many letters and cry over them. It is like Henry Herbert. Do not let him see how deeply he wounds you.”

My cheeks burned, and I wondered who else might have noticed my tears. “Mary, do not—”

“Kat, I must say things this time, even if you do not wish to hear them. You are like one of the fairy maids or ladies in the Arthur legends—you are too fine to grieve over any silly man. I cannot bear to see Ned Seymour make you look a fool.”

“You wish me to confide in you, yet you call me a fool? You dare bring up Henry Herbert and how I humiliated myself over him?” That long-ago shame seemed as nothing compared to what I faced now.

“I know I am not good at charming people out of their dismals, as you are, or able to unravel any problem, as Jane was. But I am the only sister you have, and I want to help.”

She looked so small and tender, strangely young. Mary, who had seemed old and wizened from the time she was a babe. “You cannot help me, Mary,” I said, more gently than I had spoken to her in a very long time.

“If
I
cannot help you, Kat, you must find someone who
can
.”