The Boleyn Deceit (3 page)

William waved it away. “Of course I choose the new world. What of more … personal fates?”

Was it Elizabeth’s imagination that Dee held the image of William and Minuette’s clasped hands in his mind as he answered? “The personal and the public march together for a king. Trouble there will be, and opposition, but you will always keep your own ends in mind. You will never lose sight of what you most desire.”

William gave his catlike smile as he leaned back in his chair. “That is a future I can embrace.”

But you need hardly look to the stars to know that much of William, Elizabeth thought—or any king, for that matter. Their father had never lost sight of what he desired, and had nearly riven his kingdom for it.

Feeling more nervous than she’d expected, Elizabeth met Dee’s attention next. But his gaze was kind, almost … sorrowful?

“Your Highness,” he began, and this time he did look down at the new chart he’d turned to, as though wondering where and how to begin, “your stars were the most difficult to interpret. They are changeable, one might almost say willful.”

“Right stars, then,” William said with good humour.

Elizabeth hardly heard him, for her eyes were riveted to Dee’s. That cryptic sense she’d had earlier intensified. For a moment she felt that she was seeing the future herself. He is important to me, she realized, or will be. For a long time to come.

As though acknowledging her unspoken thoughts, Dee nodded. “Your future is veiled even to yourself, Your Highness, for the clearest eyes cannot see straight into the sun. You love deeply and your loyalty to your single love will be everlasting.”

Did he mean Robert?
Everlasting loyalty
 … but that could mean anything from eventual marriage to a lifetime of unfulfilled love.

“You will command men and guide nations,” Dee continued, and in that moment he crossed the line of discretion he had been walking so carefully before.

Suddenly alert (though probably he had been all along), Dominic laid a hand on William’s shoulder. “Beware, Doctor. Your king guides this nation.”

“And as such, he has already given Her Highness her first
command, when he named her regent earlier this year. And before another year passes,” Dee returned his gaze to Elizabeth, “you will be your brother’s voice in a foreign land.”

That did speak of marriage—one out of England. Elizabeth blinked, furious at herself for disappointment. It was hardly news. This wasn’t prophecy; this was merely stating the obvious.

But John Dee continued to stare at her and Elizabeth had a queer double feeling that she was seeing him here, now, and also seeing him some years in the future, with white hair and a pointed beard. He was going to tell her how to save England, he was about to tell her what she need do for her people …

The moment snapped and Dee cleared his throat as he turned his full attention to Dominic. He took Dominic’s measure, the only one standing, protective behind William, with one hand still on his friend’s shoulder. “The elder brother,” Dee said thoughtfully. “The first, who would be last.”

Dominic dropped his hand and said stonily, “I have no need for a star-teller. I choose my own future.”

“But you do not choose that of others—and as long as your life entwines with those you love, you are not entirely free. You are the eldest, but you have the most to learn. Lessons of honour and loyalty and, yes, of choice. Not everything in this world is as it seems. You must learn to see gray, where before you have seen only black or white. There will be pain in the learning, and danger if you will not learn to bend.”

William snorted. “There will only be pain because Dom thinks too much and makes everything more serious than it needs to be.”

“That is your calling,” Dee said to Dominic. “You are, above all, loyal, and you speak always to the king’s conscience. Who will tell him the truth if you will not?”

A pause, verging on uncomfortable, until William spoke. “Tell Dom something pleasant—how many beautiful women in his future?”

An even longer pause, then: “Only one,” Dee said tersely. “There will only ever be the one.”

Tension entered the room, on such misty feet that Elizabeth could not say where it centered. William broke it with a laugh as he stood. “Well, that’s all right, then. All we need do is identify this one beautiful woman and Dom’s future is set.”

And just like that they were finished. William went so far as to clap John Dee on the shoulder. “My thanks for an interesting diversion, Doctor. I hope you shall find our court accommodating to your intellect and talents.”

Dee bowed. “The most glittering court in Christendom, Your Majesty.”

“Ha! I’d love to see Henri’s face when he finds that the English have captured what the French could not. You are most welcome at my court, Dr. Dee, if ever you should tire of Northumberland’s household.”

Then William spoke to the rest of them. “There is still music to be had this night. Dom, if you dance with Minuette first, then no one will find it odd when I come along and steal her from you.”

“Not odd at all.” Dominic’s voice was toneless. “Dr. Dee, if you don’t mind, I will stay until you have burned those charts.”

“Of course,” Dee answered, and emptied the folio. There were only the four pages; Dr. Dee had written down his calculations, not their interpretations. Those would stay locked in his own mind. One by one he fed the pages to the flames.

“Thank you,” Dominic said. He and Minuette followed William out the door.

Elizabeth hesitated, then confronted Dr. Dee, who straightened, meeting her on that precarious equal ground that made her both nervous and approving.

“Your Highness?” He made it a question, but she would have wagered he knew what she was going to ask.

“What did you
not
say, Doctor?”

“Many things, Your Highness.”

“Why? What is so bad that it could not be told?”

“Why must it be bad? Even glorious futures do not come without cost. And as I believe I said before, this is not exact. God made the stars as he made men. Only He can read them perfectly.”

“What did you see?” Robert’s wife dead? Elizabeth married for love, as William meant to do? Civil war, as another Tudor king cast aside wisdom for desire? Elizabeth far from England for all the rest of her life as the wife of another royal? As she thought that, Elizabeth’s heart pierced with pain and she knew that would be the worst future for her of any—to leave England and never return.

Dr. Dee was silent. The hiss of the flames twisted like cords around her skin, and she had a sudden sense that there were ghosts in the room, pressing into this moment as though they’d been waiting. Her father and grandfather, of course, but even stronger was the sense of her grandmother: Elizabeth of York, whose Plantagenet blood had sealed Henry VII’s Tudor victory when they wed. What did that daughter and mother of kings want her namesake to know?

Unexpectedly, Dr. Dee took her right hand, letting her fingertips rest in his palm. “This is the hand of a woman, Your Highness. But it is also the hand of a ruler. The king, your father, spent much effort and pain to secure a worthy heir for England.
If he had been able to see beyond your woman’s body, he would have found the heart of the heir he sought.”

He pinned her with his eyes, an urgency to his gaze as though there was more he could say but wouldn’t. Elizabeth could almost feel words forming along her skin where he touched her hand, and if she stayed here another moment she would know something she had never dreamed of …

She snatched her hand away. “Goodnight, Dr. Dee.”

H
OW
, R
OBERT
D
UDLEY
wondered, does George Boleyn nose out these insalubriously private areas of every royal palace?

He doubted it was the women George took to bed who told him how to find dank cellars and tunneled-out storage spaces—Rochford was liberal in his sexual activities, but also discriminating. His type of woman might not always be a lady, but she would never be a common whore. And Robert could not imagine any woman except a desperate one being caught dead in this particularly foul-smelling section of Greenwich.

Strictly speaking, the walled yard in which he paced wasn’t part of the palace itself. It belonged to a dilapidated stone outbuilding that held a jumble of gardening equipment, which on the night before Christmas was in little danger of being used. The stench came from the Thames, running fast and foul only yards away.

What am I doing? Robert asked himself uneasily. It was a question he’d begun to pose with distressing regularity the last six weeks. Working with Rochford had promised so much, but he was beginning to wonder if it was worth it. It wasn’t so much the Duke of Norfolk’s death in disgrace that bothered him, nor
even the continued imprisonment of his grandson, the Earl of Surrey, for an almost wholly imaginary crime. Robert didn’t like the Howards and had no regrets about helping the proud Catholic family along their way to destruction.

What troubled him were particular faces and the memories attached to them: Elizabeth’s earnest faith when she’d asked him to go after Minuette for her friend’s safety; Dominic’s stubborn lies about Giles Howard’s death—also done in the interest of protecting Minuette. Her face troubled him as well, because he felt guilty for using her and he couldn’t pin her down, all of which was eminently frustrating.

But beneath the frustration was the fact that he had been lying to Elizabeth and her friends for months. All right, be honest, it was more like years. It had begun in the late autumn of 1552, when Rochford suggested Alyce de Clare as a likely instrument in their plans. Alyce had been a lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne and was thus ideally placed to report gossip and pass on carefully calculated rumours of Catholic conspiracy. She was also ambitious, which made her susceptible to flattery and promises. Robert had latched on to Alyce enthusiastically when he’d troubled to study her a little closer. Though not really beautiful, Alyce had possessed an excellent figure and a streak of something in her nature—Wildness? Calculation? Animal cunning?—that had readily appealed to him. More than once in the months of flirting and intimacy that followed, he’d guessed that Rochford knew firsthand of Alyce’s physical appeal, but he had never asked.

“Contemplating your sins, Lord Robert?”

Not only could the Lord Chancellor move almost silently, it also seemed he could read minds. His voice made Robert twitch in annoyance and surprise.

“Contemplating how many of them I can lay at your feet, my lord,” he rejoined smoothly.

“Not a one,” Rochford answered with equal smoothness. “A man’s sins are his own.”

“And you’ve made sure nothing I’ve done can be directly traced to you.”

“Of course.”

Robert sighed. “What untraceable task am I to be given next?”

“One very much to your taste and talents: I want you to attend Elizabeth assiduously this winter. Make yourself indispensable, so that my niece does not have a need that you have not anticipated. I want you in her presence chamber and her privy chamber. I want to know who else is there, and what they discuss when they are.”

“I will not spy on Elizabeth.” Robert said it flatly. “Not for anything.”

“I think that point is debatable, but it is also irrelevant. It is not Elizabeth I want you watching—it is Mistress Wyatt.”

“Minuette? Whatever for?” But Robert was afraid he very much knew what for.

“I told you she bears watching. My instincts are never wrong. It is for you to tell me why the girl makes me uneasy.”

Because she killed Giles Howard, Robert thought. But even if Rochford knew that, he didn’t think the Lord Chancellor would care. Giles Howard had been the last and least of the Duke of Norfolk’s sons and he had earned his death with his own violence. Not a matter to sharpen Rochford’s interest—so what about Minuette made the Lord Chancellor so uneasy?

“It is in your own interest as well,” Rochford said now. “Mistress Wyatt is the one who made all the fuss over Alyce de Clare’s unfortunate and untimely death. She suspected Giles Howard was responsible, but does she still? If she believes the pregnant Alyce’s tumble down the stairs is not to be laid at Giles’s feet, she
will not rest until she has found the guilty party. And you wouldn’t want her stumbling over your mistakes, would you?”

Robert most certainly didn’t want Minuette stumbling over his connection to Alyce. The first person she would tell would be Elizabeth, and their relationship was already complicated by his wife. How could he explain a pregnant mistress as well? Especially one who had died so inconveniently while spying on Elizabeth’s mother.

The damned man was so certain of Robert’s acquiescence that he didn’t even wait for it. The only satisfaction Robert could get was calling out a question as Rochford retreated. “Why on earth has the Earl of Surrey not been brought to trial? I thought your goal was to eliminate the Howard family. And yet Surrey continues to sit in the Tower without any charges being brought.”

That stopped Rochford, just long enough for him to look over his shoulder dismissively and say, “Don’t attempt to know my mind, Lord Robert. You might not like what you find.”