Sisters of Treason (15 page)

April 1558

Hampton Court

Mary

A swift trills above. I look up and catch it with my eye, a sharp black
W
up high in the blue, announcing spring. I have watched the back of the lad carrying my litter for the best part of four days now; it is straight and strong and muscular. I imagine my own shape and ask myself what lads like him think when they see me. Pity, I suppose, or disgust; it is always one or the other. This one was so very kind, helping me efficiently up into the seat, arranging the cushions for me, avoiding my eye carefully, embarrassed, probably, by my oddness. But then as he picked up the shafts he turned and threw me a wide, sunny smile. Perhaps he was pleased by the small size of the load that he was to carry all the way to Hampton Court from Beaumanor, for though I have passed my thirteenth birthday I am still no larger than I was three years ago.

There are marks on the wall at Beaumanor, in Maman’s garderobe, where she measured Peggy and me—“As a memory,” she said. Peggy was leaving for Elizabeth’s household at Hatfield. At five feet, Peggy had grown a good dozen inches taller than I, and needed a set of new gowns, for she could not be seen in Elizabeth’s entourage with her hems skimming her ankles. I have had a letter since from her describing life there, “all the grandeur of court and much gaiety that suits not my quiet disposition, and her maids are unkind.” Elizabeth, she says, “largely ignores me,” and is a “force of nature,” which conjures up an image in my mind of her atop a great mountain stirring up the winds.

The litter rolls about. The journey seems endless; my body aches and if I don’t keep my gaze fixed ahead I find myself beset with
nausea. I watch the round chestnut rump of Levina’s horse, which moves at a rolling gait behind the pair of grooms, up ahead for our protection. Beyond them all I catch a first glimpse of the red turrets and chimneys of Hampton Court, feeling a twist of unease bore into me at the thought of being near the Queen again. I wonder if I will be able to keep up the façade of the devout Catholic girl under her scrutiny, remembering what occurred the last time I was at court. Nothing came of it, but the fear lingers. And I am called back to court for the first time in three years. Maman had successfully managed to keep me away, and I thought myself happily forgotten. But the Queen had unexpectedly expressed a need for me in the absence of my sister, who is nursing Juno Seymour, so Levina came to Beaumanor to deliver some portraits and accompany me back. As we left, Maman wore a painted smile, but it didn’t fool me.

“Nearly there, Mary,” calls Levina, turning in her saddle and pointing towards the palace. Her horse shakes its bridle and snorts. She has a leather bag strapped tightly across her shoulder, which she touches repeatedly, as if to ensure that it is still there, and I wonder what precious item it contains that merits so much care.

The guards wave us through and we clatter into Base Court, a place I remember brimming with life. But today it is empty and the clop of our horses’ hooves against the cobbles echoes about the walls. Levina dismounts, handing her horse to a groom. A porter offers to carry her bag, taking the strap, but she snatches it back, too quickly, hugging it to her body.

I am helped out of the litter, lifted by the armpits and deposited on the ground. I thank the lads, offering each of them a penny, and follow Levina into the gloom of the building, up the stone steps to the great hall. There is no one there either, save for a couple of scullions stoking the fire and a few kitchen staff clearing away the remains of dinner.

“Where is everyone?” I ask. “It is like a morgue in here.”

“Many have had the influenza, and others, like your sister, are
sent to nurse them,” Levina replies. “Most”—she lowers her voice and pauses as a page trots past—“most are glad of an excuse to get away.”

My fear begins to take hold. She must read my expression for she says brightly, “We shall continue with your portrait while you are here. It will provide a pleasant distraction.” We move on into the gallery, towards the Queen’s rooms. “I should warn you,” she says, whispering, “you will find the Queen quite diminished. She has not been well.” I nod in response. “She still believes herself with child, though she is not, so if she says anything to you about it, agree and smile. That is the best way.”

A group of councillors is leaving as we arrive at the Queen’s rooms, among them Uncle Arundel, who asks after Maman and her husband. He says the name Stokes with his mouth pursed in distaste. Maman wouldn’t give two figs for his disapproval; she used to say Arundel was “insufferably arrogant and not particularly gifted.” The men pad off down the gallery and an usher I do not recognize announces us.

It is true, the Queen is frail, thinner than ever, her skin papery and lined, her eyes puffed up. Susan Clarencieux and Frideswide Sturley are next to her and there are one or two ladies in the window alcove; that is all. Even Jane Dormer is absent. Susan glances up from her sewing with a haunted look and nods in our direction.

“Our little Mary Grey,” says the Queen, opening her arms out, coming to life suddenly. “We
are
pleased to have you back.” She pats her knee, and I am obliged to clamber up on to it as I used to, though I am a young woman, now, thirteen years old. I feel, beneath my fear, the old residue of hate rise up in me, like smoke from a greenwood fire. “What news have you of your dear Maman?”

I swallow my feelings and begin to tell her of life at Beaumanor and Maman’s happiness and that though she was with child a few months ago she lost it early and is quite recovered now. The Queen looks wistful, placing a hand on her own belly. I fear for a moment she might cry, and worry that I have reminded her of something
she would rather forget. But Cardinal Pole is announced then and her attention is turned.

The Cardinal hobbles towards us on a stick; he seems to have aged a decade in these last three years. The Queen shoos away the other women, but I am left abandoned on the royal lap, wondering about the way my life goes in circles like a pattern at the border of a tapestry. The Cardinal collapses into the seat beside us with a great wheezing sigh, taking the Queen’s hand in his.

“We suppose, Cardinal, that our Privy Council has pressed you to discuss the naming of our heir.” Her voice is low, so as not to be overheard, though neither of them seems to have considered
my
ears. I may as well be a wooden puppet. “They think you best placed to prize it out of us, no?”

“Madam—” he begins to speak, but she talks over him.

“Will it be
our
sister, who it seems has half of England in the palm of her heretic hand, or
her
sister”—she taps me on the head—“the daughter of a traitor? Or would you prefer that Scottish cousin, who is wed to France?”

I am struck now by the Queen’s frailty. It had not occurred to me before that her time on this earth is drawing to a close. She is not so old, but she is so very sunken-eyed and wraithlike. Though Maman has talked often of the perilous position my sister could find herself in were she named as heir, particularly now Elizabeth’s popularity is so great, it is only in this moment that I begin to understand the true danger of the situation—that history may well be on the brink of repeating itself. I want to say something, but can think of nothing. What would Jane say?
We must not question God’s plan for us
.

“Madam,” the Cardinal says once more. “It is not the question of the succession that I come to you about. It is Bonner. He has planned to burn a dozen heretics at Smithfield on the morrow.”

The Queen’s face lights up. “England will be cleansed further.” She shakes the Cardinal’s hand up and down in what I can only suppose is excitement. “We will yet be saved, Cardinal. We will yet be saved.”

“I fear the people, madam. There have been riots in the city and I am afraid that this . . .” He pauses. “Such a public occasion, and so many of them.” He stops and wipes the flat of a palm over his eyes slowly, as if they are sore. “It might set off something that cannot be quelled. The people—your people, madam—are full of anger.”

“No!” The Queen’s eyes are wide open now, and the fire in the hearth is reflected in them, giving her a saturnine look that sends a shiver through me. “We shall not pardon them, if that is what you are after, Cardinal. We shall start wondering if
you
are not a heretic yourself. There have been rumors . . .” She leaves this hanging, and there is an uncomfortable silence between them. I can’t help but be glad her suspicion is aimed towards him rather than me on this occasion.

“Madam,” he says eventually, in a voice so full of pain he seems on the brink of tears, “
my
beliefs are not in doubt, I assure you of that. I cleave to the Catholic faith; it has been my life’s work.”

“
You
shall not stand in the way of England’s salvation, Cardinal. The more witnesses to the burnings, the better. England will be purged of sin and it will please God then to give us an heir. We thank God for Bonner every day.
He
is the only one of our churchmen who has any mettle.”

I can see that the Cardinal wants to add something, but the Queen has half turned away from him and is running her fingers over the wisps of hair that have escaped my hood. He looks stricken. The Queen starts humming; it is a psalm, but she cannot quite manage to find the right key. Eventually the Cardinal gets down on one knee, kissing her hand before taking his leave. While they were talking I had noticed some kind of disturbance on the other side of the chamber, the few ladies gathered in a circle over something. Now Susan Clarencieux breaks out of the huddle and approaches.

“Your Highness.” Her face is grim. “I am afraid Forget-me-not has . . . He has—”

“Spit it out, Susan,” says the Queen.

“He is dead, Your Highness. Poisoned.”

“Oh!” says the Queen quietly, looking down at her hands, which are knotted together. “Poisoned? How so?”

“There are fragments of nightshade root among his seed.”

“We were given that bird near on thirty years ago,” she says, slumping in her chair. “Someone must hate us greatly.”

All
I
can think is that it was not much of an existence. Thirty years incarcerated in a cage and carted from palace to palace, with just that gilded prison to scratch about in and only the art of mimicry to amuse itself—a life akin to one of Dante’s circles of Hell.

Susan nudges me off the Queen’s lap and then, sliding in beside her, holds her, like a child, rocking back and forth, while she sobs. I wonder how it is she can be so very grief stricken over the poor parrot and yet able to condemn so many to the flames with such fervor. Her faith seems to have made her quite mad. I go over to where Levina is making arrangements for the parrot to be removed.

“Come,” she says to me, as the sad little carcass is carried off by one of the pages. “There is a chamber set aside for me here where the light is good and I can make some sketches of you.”

Levina

The April light falls over Mary’s black dress, revealing unexpected colors. As with the plumage of a jackdaw, iridescent hints of blue and purple slide across the surface of the inky satin. Levina and Mary have been silent for some time, lost in their own thoughts. Levina is sure her things have been searched since she left for Beaumanor. She can tell from the pattern of dust on the floor and a sense that things have been minutely shifted. Thankfully, she had the foresight to take the latest set of papers with her. She touches
her hand to the satchel she wears, reassured to feel the rolled shape beneath the leather—more accounts and images of terrible events committed in the name of the Catholic Church, a seemingly endless catalogue of horror. Her mind buzzes with thoughts of how she will find a way to get them to the courier. They cannot stay here at the palace, it is too dangerous; people are watching her.

Mary moves slightly and the light catches her differently. Levina’s sketch refuses to take shape. Her head is too full of thoughts. She wonders how George and Marcus are faring in Bruges, remembering the argument she had had with her husband the night before they left. It was a month ago; he had reserved a passage for the three of them and sprung it on her.

“You are my wife. You are subject to me!” he had shouted, when she complained that he had no right. She simply refused to go, and they had slung angry insults at each other until George stormed out with the words, “How could you put a family of traitors before your own?”

Those words have echoed about her head ever since, and she has swung between fury and understanding. She didn’t sleep and heard him return in the dead of night, finding him, in the morning, sprawled unconscious across his bed, fully clothed and stinking of ale.

She had tried to make amends as they were leaving, but George wouldn’t look at her. She remembers his back turned in the doorway as she embraced Marcus, feeling that painful pull of separation a mother knows when a child leaves, but glad, all the same, he was leaving for a safer place. Taking his arm, she walked with him into the yard. George then swung himself onto his mare, kicked her into a trot, and left, without so much as a farewell. Riven with doubt, Levina had written that evening a long letter of heartfelt apology. He has not yet replied, though she consoles herself with the knowledge that because of the war there are delays to traffic across the Channel. But a place has hollowed out inside her, filled now with regret.

The house in Ludgate felt cavernous and empty without them, and she rattled around like a pea in a pan. Byrne breathed down her neck, ensuring she was at Mass, dropping in at the house when she least expected it, looking over at her in church with that unsettling smile.

“Where did you say your husband had gone?” Byrne had asked her at their last encounter. “Geneva?”

“It is Bruges, where we are from.” Levina knew he was fishing. Geneva is where the papers end up.

“Why do you not join him? A woman without a man’s protection is at risk.” He elongated the
s
sound as if emitting poisoned gas into the air.