Sisters of Treason (45 page)

“I want to hate you, but find I cannot,” I whisper, unable to understand why all of a sudden I feel only the swell of love in me. “I am glad you have been truthful.”

“I am so very ashamed,” he says, in a voice so filled with sorrow it would make even the hardest heart weep. “How can you love a spineless recreant such as me?”

“I do love you, and I do forgive you.” I search myself for any residue of ill feeling at his treatment of me, but there is none—it is gone. “This is Cecil’s doing. That man—” I stop. There are no words to describe my loathing of Cecil.

“I am so very sorry, Kitty, that you have had to bear all this alone. You have never deserved . . . I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .”

I stop his jumbled words with a kiss, and we lie together in each other’s arms, eventually falling asleep—a deep and dreamless sleep, such as I haven’t had in months.

We are woken to the sound of the key turning. It is Ball, warning us that Lady Warner is on her way up, so Hertford slips off across the walkway to his own chamber not a dozen yards away. It is as if we were simply an ordinary couple in our own house and I make a silent prayer of thanks for the safe return of my own dear husband.

•  •  •

“What is it you look at out there each evening?” asks Nan, when Lady Warner is gone and I am gazing out of the window.

“I like to see the lights on the river barges and imagine where they are going.”

“Do you think you will ever be allowed to leave this place?”

“If the Queen shows me mercy,” I say, but I wonder about that myself; each and every hour I wonder how this situation will end. Sometimes I dare imagine myself, with Hertford and our infant and Mary all together somewhere. Sometimes it is Canon Row, sometimes Beaumanor, sometimes just some nondescript place that is a setting for our family. Nan joins me at the window.

“Look,” I say. “See that ship. Perhaps it hails from the Indies.” We watch the shadow of a vast craft moving like a ghost on the water, torches casting circles of yellow light on its deck, shadowy men moving about in the dark.

“I cannot imagine traveling so far,” she says. “I have never left London in my life.”

“What, never?” I am suddenly struck by the difference in our lives. I hadn’t thought to ask her about hers, and I don’t talk of mine, for fear of saying the wrong thing and it reaching the Queen’s ears.

“Well, once I went to a fair up at Islington.” She says “Islington” as if it is another country.

I, who have spent my twenty-one years traveling from one place to another, cannot imagine such a small life, where Islington seems as far as the stars. I think there can be no harm in describing some of the great royal palaces in which I have lived. I watch her eyes widen as I recount the banquets and festivities and how the court moves from place to place in a great train, with the most beautiful horses to be found and an army of liveried guards. “Surely you have seen the royal progress pass through the streets or on the river barges?” I say.

“Oh, I have,” she replies. Her eyes are wide, as if the memory of it is as vivid as the real thing. “At the coronation parade I was dressed as a shepherdess in the Cheapside pageant.”

“I remember that pageant.”

“So you must have seen me.” Nan’s voice is breathy with excitement.

“And you me.” I return her smile, but I am thinking of the humiliation
of sitting in the chariot at the rear end of the parade, when I should have been riding up near the Queen.

“Is something wrong?” she asks.

Then I feel it—a pain like a steel belt tightening about my belly. “Oh, Nan,” I say. “I think this infant is knocking at the door.”

I am engulfed with fear now, unable to imagine how it is possible for this baby to find its way out of me. Nan pales, as if someone has dropped a bag of flour over her head. “Go and fetch Lady Warner,” I say, trying to control the quaver in my voice. “And ask that she send for the midwife.”

As Nan leaves, I stand in the doorway. “My baby is coming,” I say to Ball.

His face lights up. “An infant is a blessing wherever it arrives in the world, my lady, and this one may well be the next King of England.”

It is not that I have never thought it before, that I might one day be the mother of a king. It is just that I hadn’t fully entertained it. But now I do. Why not? Stranger things have happened, and was Elizabeth herself not once incarcerated in this very room?

December 1561

Westminster

Levina

“I managed to see her, Mary.” The two women are in a corner of the great hall, heads together; Levina speaks in a low voice. “One of her guards is an old colleague of my husband’s and managed to get me in there for a brief hour. Pretended I was the midwife’s woman, there to administer to the baby’s colic.”

“How did you find her?”

“Surprisingly well. She is so very delighted with her little Lord Beauchamp she seems to forget where she is. And she is comfortably
housed opposite her husband’s prison. Told me the guards allowed him to visit her secretly from time to time.”

Levina had been horrified to hear of Katherine’s imprisonment, and dismayed it had taken the news so long to reach her in Bruges. She had left immediately but had had to wait an interminable time for a crossing, as the weather was unseasonably stormy.

“So she has friends in there.”

“Warner and his wife are kind, she says, and there is a pair of guards who support her cause, as well as the lieutenant’s deputy. But they have warned her to trust no one, not even her servant girl, Nan, who seemed entirely benign, I must say. I had to make a great show of mixing tinctures for the baby, until the girl left on an errand.”

“One wonders what kind of friends . . .” Mary looks thoughtful, worried. “Whether they are political.”

“Yes, it would create all kinds of problems were she to become the focus of a serious cause.”

“And now she has a son. What do
you
think the Queen will do?”

“Impossible to say.” Levina doesn’t repeat some of the things she has heard; the word
execution
has been whispered about, but just because people say things, it doesn’t mean they are true. It would seem the Queen is convinced that Katherine’s marriage was part of a plot to overthrow her. “What is her attitude with
you
, Mary?”

“I am kept at a distance,” Mary says, visibly drooping like a flower that wants for water.

“Katherine asked that I make you this. Said you would want an image of your nephew.” Levina slides something out from the folds of her gown, slipping it furtively into Mary’s hand. Mary half opens her palm. In it is a limning of her sister with the infant Lord Beauchamp in her arms, strikingly like his mother. His little hand is tucked into her furred neckline—a touchingly intimate gesture—and hanging from Katherine’s dress is a tiny limning of Hertford; it is a family portrait of sorts.

Mary gazes at the image for some time in silence and Levina thinks she might weep, for her face has a crumpled look about it.

“Did
you
give her that look of serenity or did you find her thus?” she asks eventually.

“She truly did wear an air of contentment.”

“Oh Kitty—ever buoyant,” says Mary. “To think I have a nephew.”

“Keep the limning hidden.” Levina folds her own hand about Mary’s so the tiny portrait is concealed. “The last thing we want is the reformers getting hold of it and using it as an emblem for their cause. That would raise the Queen’s hackles. There is already too much talk in the streets of this baby as Elizabeth’s heir.”

“The Queen denies the boy’s legitimacy. It would be for the best if he’s deemed illegitimate in the law . . . Oh, I don’t know, Veena. I just want them released from that place. I can’t get Jane out of my head.”

“I know, I know.” Levina is thinking about how England has waited so long for a rightful male heir and now he has arrived, legitimate, of the blood, next in line according to the eighth Henry’s decree, and the Queen does all she can to deny him. Levina has stopped trying to understand Elizabeth’s actions. But the reformers have a strong voice and a stronger case and they will do anything to prevent the Catholic Mary of Scotland from being named.

She curses herself inwardly for having left, for not being here when she was most needed. She may have found a way to do something, but she knows really that it would have been futile. And her trip was all for nothing; George refused to return and now her promise to Frances is shattered. She cannot get Jane’s fate out of her mind. History seems to repeat itself relentlessly and none of them can do anything to prevent it.

Dudley, dressed in gold, marches through the chamber with a pair of henchmen and a skewbald hound at his heels; the women curtsy as he passes. Levina is reminded, with a twinge of longing, of Hero who died in Bruges. She misses her faithful companion, but he was an old boy. Dudley has a new spring in his step. The
rumor is that Cecil hangs by a thread, that the Queen suspects he had a part in Katherine’s secret marriage, that it was a plot of Cecil’s making. It certainly looks suspicious, the way the reformers are jumping on this infant as their cause, and Cecil is the one who least wants the Scottish Queen named. The Queen resolutely sticks to her middle way, refusing either faction the upper hand. Levina remembers the fears of Mary Tudor’s reign. Then at least you knew your enemy, now it is impossible to tell who is on which side in a world where two lovesick young things, tying themselves together in secret, can be deemed a treasonous plot and put their very lives at risk. With Cecil’s star waning, Dudley’s is on the rise again; it is like some infernal seesaw.

“Smug devil,” whispers Mary, nudging her head in Dudley’s direction. “Still thinks himself in with a chance.”

“Would she wed him?” asks Levina.

“No. I think she will wed no one.”

“Truly?” Levina cannot imagine Elizabeth, that passionate girl she remembers, without a bedfellow.

“She will not share her power, I think.”

“You may be right.” Levina is impressed by Mary’s astuteness.

“Stay awhile, Veena, I know Peggy should like to see you.”

“Peggy is back at court?” Levina is glad to hear this; at least it means Mary has a friend here.

“Arrived of late.”

“I should like to, but I must return home. I have been away so long and there is much that needs arranging. The servants have let the house fall into a terrible state.”

“Did your husband return with you?” asks Mary.

“Alas, no,” Levina replies, trying not to think of all that, of George and his passion for this Lotte. He was cold in the face of Levina’s impassioned pleas, refused to return with her, and angry that she was returning for Katherine Grey’s sake. It served as proof, he said, that his grievance was not unfounded. She had managed to resist pointing out that this absence of leave from
his guard’s duties, this affair of his, was all funded from the wages of her own labor, and that her income—their income—depended upon her alliances at court. Though how she managed to stay silent on that point is a mystery, for she was brimming with rage. Now she just misses him and considers taking up Mary’s invitation to stay awhile, not returning to her empty house at Ludgate, without even Hero’s company, but she must.

“I shall walk with you to the gates.”

The main entrance is crowded with an army of servants arriving with stacks of linens and plateware to set up the hall for dinner; some have begun moving the boards and benches to the center of the room. The women decide to take the route through the privy chamber, and as they pass, several of the ladies call out in greeting to Levina, saying how she has been missed. Mary hangs back by the window and Levina notices her strumming her fingers over the bars of a birdcage and remarks a certain shiftiness about her.

“What were you doing with the birdcage?” she asks, as they leave by the back corridor.

“I left the lovebirds’ door unfastened,” she says. “I can’t bear to see them shut away like that. At least now they can fly about the palace for a while.”

Levina laughs, saying, “You are a rebel at heart, Mary Grey.”

“It is my little game. I have seen those poor creatures dragged from pillar to post in that cage. Come summer I plan to set them free near an open window. What think you to that?”

“I think the poor creatures might end up fodder for the hawks if they don’t succumb to the cold once winter arrives. They are very far from home, Mary.”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. The world is cruel for the little creatures.”

Levina wonders if Mary includes herself among those creatures.

“Ah well, at least they shall have a glimpse of freedom up among the beams of the great hall, until they are recaptured.”

In the base court they come across the Sergeant Porter, who
stops them with a greeting. Levina is reminded that the last time she saw this man was the day she chased Katherine all the way to Hertford’s house at Canon Row. How she had berated herself for her silliness on finding the place empty. She thought her imagination had run away with her, but it turned out her instincts were right, for that was the day Katherine married. She is reminded of the two windblown figures on the bleak stretch of winter sand, disappearing up the Westminster steps, wondering how things might have been different if she had managed somehow to prevent the wedding.

“What news of Mistress Keyes?”

“I am afraid to say she . . .” He stops, looks to the cobbles.

“Why did you say nothing, Keyes?” Mary has brought both hands up to her face in shock. “Gone?”

He nods. “You had so much else to worry about, my lady.”

“But I am your friend.” She touches his arm briefly, something she rarely does, except to those who are particularly close. “I am so very sorry. Is there anything I can do to—” She stops, looking him straight in the eye. “You should have told me.” Mary seems filled with resignation, as if she is only now realizing that nothing will bring back the dead. “I am your friend, Keyes.”

Levina is struck by the way Mary always finds sympathy for the sufferings of others, even when her own are so great.