Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (8 page)

In Lady Mary’s presence my father tried to act his usual hearty self, only a spot of color on each cheek hinting at his strange mood. But my mother made the skin at the nape of my neck crawl. She raced forward and grasped Cousin Mary’s hands, pretending to be overjoyed.

“So you have come to Bradgate, cousin!” my mother exclaimed. “How did you know I was pining for the sight of your face?”

“And I yours.” The princess’s voice quavered just a little.

She looked uncertain and even sadder than when last I had seen her. Her pale hazel eyes—overlarge and shortsighted—stared so fiercely, they made most people wish to step back from her in alarm. “I pray I am not inconveniencing you by arriving unexpectedly.” She gave a weak smile. “I found I could no longer keep away.”

“You are most welcome, as always, cousin. Look, our own Mary is delighted to see you again.” My mother reached around and dragged me from behind her.

The princess’s gaze found me and warmed. Her rosebud lips tipped into an expression I had never seen on my mother’s face despite the fact that she and Cousin Mary both had mouths exactly like the one Uncle Henry wore in the portrait in Bradgate’s gallery. The princess stooped in a rustle of sandalwood-scented petticoats and caressed the place where my lady mother had scratched. Lady Mary’s fingers felt overwarm but soft. “Greetings, my little friend. I see you have a new poppet since I visited last.”

I clutched Jennet tighter in my arms, certain my lady mother would snatch the doll away, perhaps even thrust Jennet in the fire, as she had threatened to do last time I carried the poppet in company.

“Daughter, let us not forget our manners,” my lady mother bade me. “Make your curtsy to the Lady Mary, and show your cousin your doll.” The joints in my knees felt rusted. I could not make them bend. Was this some kind of trick? I thrust Jennet behind my back.

“Mary.” My father’s voice cut sharp edges. “Do as your lady mother bids you.”

My cousin rushed to intervene. “Do not scold the child, Your Grace. We will look at your doll later, Mary. Will we not?”

My mother jabbed me in the back, and I nodded, then dropped into an awkward curtsy. I knew my mother would have Hettie make me practice the curtsy until my joints swelled up. “Come and break your fast after your long journey, cousin,” my mother urged.

“Yes, do,” Father said with a heartiness that sounded strained. “Then as soon as you are well fed, we shall have some fine sport in the deer park. It will be a pleasure to have the company of another lady who loves the hunt as much as my wife does! My master of the hounds spotted a magnificent stag while we were in London three weeks past.”

“Yes, London,” the princess echoed, and I could see hurt in her eyes. “I had heard something of your stay there.”

She was thinking of the weddings, I knew. My parents knew as well. My mother stiffened just a little, and my father’s eye twitched as he rushed to cover his blunder. “Few ladies sit a horse with the skill you do, Lady Mary, save Frances. Is that not so?”

“It is,” Mother said. “But do give our cousin time to refresh herself before you sweep her off to your precious park. She must be very tired.”

“I am. Tired and sick at heart and in need of my oldest friends. I have heard that His Majesty, my brother, is very ill. His Grace of Northumberland wrote to tell me that Edward’s doctors fear it will tire him too much to see me. But it causes me pain to stay away. Frances, you, of all people, know how much I love the boy. Remember when his mother died?” Lady Mary’s eyes misted. “Queen Jane Seymour, the kindest of stepmothers, who restored me to my father’s favor after all the evil Anne Boleyn did me.”

Cousin Mary had once shown me the ring her father had given her to remind her of Queen Jane’s kindness to her and the importance of being obedient to one’s father. In Latin it said:
Obedience leads to unity, unity to constancy and a quiet mind, and these are treasures of inestimable worth
.

The princess continued. “At Queen Jane’s deathbed I vowed to repay her kindness by loving Edward like my own son. It is cruel of Northumberland to keep me away.”

I dared a sidelong look at my mother, waiting for her temper to rear up, as it did anytime Jane criticized the devil duke. But to my surprise, my lady mother today seemed eager to smooth rough waters that she usually liked to stir to tempests. I wondered why.

“The king needs to preserve his strength so he might get well,” she said.

I felt puzzled. In the solar had not my lord father said “let the king die,” as if he might even be glad when Edward did? But when I thought of asking about it, my imagination filled with sharp-bladed axes and headsmen in leather hoods.
It is treason to foretell the death of a king
, my mother’s warning echoed in my head.

My mother laid her hand on the gold lions embroidered on Lady Mary’s sleeve. “No doubt His Grace of Northumberland is only doing what is best for the kingdom.”

“Perhaps.” My cousin’s cheeks reddened, and her mouth pursed smaller still. “Yet I would give much to mend the rift that his interference regarding my faith has caused between my brother and me before it is too late.”

“I am certain that Northumberland will see to it that you are summoned to Edward’s bedside when the time is right.”

“I am not so sure. The duke and I clashed mightily over my celebrating the Catholic mass in spite of the royal edicts that forbade it. He is not a man to forget such defiance. I am convinced there is only one way I might overcome this obstacle. He might consider my cause more seriously if I could find a trusted advocate who has Northumberland’s ear. You came to mind.”

I wished I could warn her to keep the pleading tone from her voice. My mother held such weakness in contempt. Cousin Mary would do better to bark commands and stomp about and say it was not wise to anger a future queen. “Will you use your influence with him on my behalf?” the princess asked.

My mother surprised me again, smiling with something that might have been tenderness in any other woman. “How can you ever doubt we would help you? Have not our families been joined since my father and mother stood against Anne Boleyn? Since before, when my own father stood as your godfather? Have you not been my most cherished friend since we were girls together? We are family. You must never think our new loyalties would overtake bonds of blood. There is no service I would not do for you.”

“Pray God it is so,” the princess said. “I fear I will need friends in the days to come more than I ever have in all my life.”

I could not unravel what she meant by that. Surely once she was queen, she would have all the friends she could want. Those who were unkind to her, she could send to the Tower, where the headsman lived. I envied her that power. So why did I see uneasiness in her face? As if somewhere in her bones she suspected something was amiss? She wanted to believe my mother’s words. I could feel just how much. But in that place inside me where lightning whispered, I knew the truth.

Whoever Lady Mary’s friends might be today or in the weeks to come, my lady mother and lord father would not be among them.

T
he next day, when I was summoned away from my lessons to spend the time with my mother and Cousin Mary, the knot of unease in the pit of my stomach tightened. I felt pulled two ways like a thread that might snap—glad of time with my kind cousin, but wary of being more in the presence of my lady mother than I could ever remember.

It was strange to be allowed into the richly appointed chamber, where sharp-eyed Bess kept the other ladies-in-waiting at their task of untangling skeins of silk, to be used in the cloths that my mother and the princess were stitching on the other side of the room. Lady Mary and my mother sat on cushions beside the arched window where they could talk as if they were alone. Alone, except for me. While the ladies were distracted, I had squeezed myself underneath a table, close enough to touch the soft, bright cloth of Lady Mary’s skirts when no one was looking, but far enough to be out of my lady mother’s reach should she regain her senses and wish to strike me for my forwardness in eavesdropping on my elders.

After a long silence Lady Mary sighed. My mother looked up from her own work, with a sharp, measuring expression in her eyes that she quickly hid away. “Is something not to your liking, cousin?” she asked. “We would do anything in our power to secure your comfort.”

I fastened the tiny new doll cap that the princess had made for me onto Jennet’s head and listened as the princess spoke. “You and Henry have been fine hosts, as always. There is nothing you can do to rectify what ails me but turn back the hands of time. Bradgate does not seem the same without the girls here. You must miss them terribly. I remember how it pained me when my mother and I were parted. I waited for her letters as a drowning person waits for breath.”

That was how I felt when I waited for a missive from Jane. But not a word had come to me in over a week. Had Jane forgotten me?

“I heard Jane and Katherine had a splendid wedding.” Cousin Mary looked down at the altar cloth she was stitching, and I could hear the hurt in her words.

“I wish you could have been there,” my mother replied. “I cannot tell you the sleepless nights Henry and I spent mourning your absence. But if we invited you, we would have had to invite Elizabeth.” Mother looked as if she smelled fouled linen. “I could not invite one sister and fail to invite the other without the whole court noticing and asking questions.”

“The difference between your relationship with Elizabeth and your bond with me is that we have been friends since we were children,” Lady Mary reproached.

“True.” My mother looked uncomfortable. “But there was the king to consider. His Majesty intended to honor the ceremony with his presence. Relations between you and your brother have been strained over religious questions for so long, and the king has been so ill, we dared not risk upsetting him. I hesitate to mention it, not wishing to vex you, but when you last met, His Majesty became overwrought. We thought it dangerous to bring you together.”

“One who loves the king as much as I, a danger to him?” Lady Mary said. “It twists my heart to think so. I wish I had not caused him one moment’s unease.”

“But your stubbornness on the question of faith raised delicate questions …”

Mary gave a strained laugh. “
Delicate
is not a word I should choose to describe my disagreement with His Majesty. I cling to the old faith, my brother the new. My greatest hope has been that once Edward reached his majority, the rift between us might mend. Perhaps when he was not under Northumberland’s thumb, we could begin again. But as things now stand …” Her eyes glistened, and I knew she was thinking that Edward would never grow up at all. “I know Northumberland is Jane’s father-in-law, yet I cannot like him, Frances. Was it at his behest that my name was stricken from the list of guests?”

My mother pressed my cousin’s hand. “Would you hate me if it were so?”

“I could never hate you. And yet while I understand your reasoning, it would have served our friendship more justly if you had explained your reservations to me but given me the chance to decide whether to attend or no. Compared to the humiliation of not being invited at all …”

I squirmed, remembering how I felt when the maids of honor asked Kat to play skittles or hoodman blind in the garden, leaving me behind. I pretended I did not care, not wanting to give them the satisfaction of knowing they hurt my feelings. But Lady Mary concealed nothing. The wound was raw on her face.

Even my lady mother had the grace to look ashamed. Was she really? I could not tell.

But Lady Mary believed her. The princess’s voice softened. “One can forgive much of a friend like you,” she said. “May God punish me if I ever forget your family’s loyalty to my mother in her travail. I must remember that even brave Charles Brandon had to kneel to Anne Boleyn when she was in power. Only after her hold on the king began to crumble was your father able to show where his true loyalties lay.”

“Surely you cannot question my loyalty to you.” I watched my mother press her hand to her heart. “Cousin, I vow—” My mother’s breath caught, as if with emotion so deep she could not speak. Only I seemed to notice she had not vowed anything at all.

Lady Mary held my mother’s other hand and squeezed it. “Forgive me for surrendering to my insecurities. I try to overcome them, but I have seen much that makes me mistrust … not you, Frances,” she rushed to amend. “It is just that the world we live in is full of shifting sands. More than once fate has come close to sucking me under.”

A sound at the door made me turn to see the most handsome of Father’s gentlemen entering the room. The maid of honor who had been Kat’s favorite giggled, but Bess shushed her, reminding her to maintain her dignity.

“A thousand pardons, Your Grace,” he addressed my mother, “but I bring a message from your lord husband.” The gentleman bowed. “His Grace begs you to wait upon him in his chamber. There is a matter regarding the new cistern he wishes your advice on.”

“I am attending to my cousin, as His Grace is well aware.” My mother pretended to take offense, but she had been watching the door from beneath her lashes for the last half hour or so as if she had been expecting Father to summon her and was growing impatient.

“Go, Frances,” Lady Mary urged. “I am an ungrateful guest. Henry mentioned there are important matters the two of you must discuss today, and here I am keeping you stitched to my side. Your husband will become most vexed with me.”

“Husbands can be demanding at times,” my mother said.

“I can only imagine.” Yearning shadowed Lady Mary’s face.

“Pray you will soon be wed and able to complain as Bess and I do,” my mother said.

“It is my dearest wish, though so far God has denied me the comfort of married life.”

Kat said the princess had been betrothed to one man after another since she was practically in the cradle. Yet time after time something had broken the alliance, be it a political snarl or the fact that Uncle Henry had ordered Parliament to declare Cousin Mary a bastard just as he had Elizabeth. Now he was dead, it seemed they would be bastards forever.