The Boleyn Reckoning (10 page)

Oh yes, that she could believe. Minuette swallowed. “Eleanor Percy is not prepared to take the entire blame for the monkshood. According to her, you already know who was behind it all. And it was certainly not Northumberland. If you do not confess all to the king, Eleanor will do it for you.”

Rochford stilled, watching her like a falcon about to dive on its prey. “What were you doing speaking to Eleanor Percy?”

“Playing the game,” she retorted. “As I will continue to do, with or without your aid.”

After a long, fraught silence in which Minuette could hear faint footsteps from distant corridors, Rochford nodded once. “You surprise me, Mistress Wyatt. I had thought you incapable of such hardness.”

“I learned from your sister, did I not? Do not underestimate what I will dare for those I love.”

S
INCE
D
ECEMBER
, W
ILLIAM
had fallen into the habit of drinking alone in the last hour before bed, heavily enough to submerge his churning thoughts so that he could sleep. Otherwise he would lie awake for hours dwelling on the things he could not change, and that was certainly not healthy.

No matter which palace he was in, William’s bedchamber was always the most favoured and personal of his retreats. At Richmond or Whitehall, Greenwich or Hampton Court or Nonsuch, he always kept a handful of sentimental possessions in the privacy of his bedchamber. His mother’s English Bible and his father’s love letters to Anne. The silk ribbon Elizabeth had given him to carry on the day of his coronation. Miniatures by Henry VIII’s favorite painter, Hans Holbein, of Henry himself and Anne Boleyn.

William was pondering his mother’s face while he drank red wine and thinking that it was past time he had a portrait of Minuette when an unexpected knock came on the door.

The gentleman attending him looked askance at William. After a moment he nodded gruffly and the gentleman opened the door a little.

“Might I speak with the king?” Lord Rochford asked.

“I’m not in the mood for lectures, Uncle.” William didn’t even turn.

“I’m here to confess, not lecture.”

The unnatural humility in his uncle’s voice startled William almost as much as the words. He pivoted in his chair and squinted in the dim light to make out Rochford’s severe figure in the doorway. “Confession? I thought that was a damned heretical practice of which we do not approve.”

“Not confession to priests, but some confessions a king must hear.”

William waved him in and said to the gentleman, “Wait outside.”

When the two of them were alone in the room, William laid aside his mother’s miniature and asked, “Is this something you can say sitting down or do you require to kneel at my feet?”

“That will be for you to say.”

“But not until I know what you’re confessing, so best sit while you can.”

Rochford pulled out a chair and sat across from William. He put his hands on the table and laced his fingers together. His expression was, if anything, even more impassive than usual, but there was a tightness to his mouth that told William his uncle was in deadly earnest.

With a heavy sigh, William pushed the wine away. “I suspect I’m going to need to be sober to hear whatever this is.”

Rochford did not blink, nor did he mince words. “Northumberland was not the one who planted the Penitent’s Confession at Framlingham in 1554 and indicted Norfolk as a traitor. I was.”

Of all the confessions William might have imagined his uncle making, this one was so far removed from his immediate thoughts that he didn’t take it in at first. “What did you say?”

“The Penitent’s Confession and all that went with it two years
ago—that was neither a true plot by Norfolk, nor was it manipulated by Northumberland. That particular imaginary Catholic plot was
my
creation.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?” For a second, Rochford’s humility slipped into impatience. “To protect you and England. The Catholics might be held at bay, but only just. The end of the regency was a particularly vulnerable time. I am hated, William, I know that. Far better an imaginary plot that I controlled to bring them down than waiting for a real one that might catch us by surprise and do lasting damage.”

William shoved his chair away from the table and got to his feet. For the first time since his illness, he was seized with the urge to prowl, and his uncle stood up and watched him as he had so many times before. In the swirl of thoughts rearranging themselves in light of this information, one image blazed glaringly clear before him. “Are you telling me that
you
resurrected that broadside about my mother? You are the one who wanted that vile image seen once more? I thought your crowning virtue was devotion to your sister!”

Rochford’s face darkened in anger. “My crowning virtue is devotion to a Protestant England and protecting my sister’s children.”

“So much for your vaunted sibling love,” William went on, as though his uncle had not spoken.

“Don’t you ever question my love for Anne!”

“You pinned a knife to my bed! You called my mother an incestuous whore! What can I not question after that?”

Rochford slammed his palms on the table and glared up at William. “It is the Catholics who originated that filth and I used the lies as I saw fit! Norfolk is dead, Mary is on a tight leash, and you are well on your way to consolidating your hold on your people’s affections. I did that for
you
.”

“And what about Northumberland? He was as devoted a Protestant as could be found in England. Did you send him to his death for my sake as well?”

“He did that himself.”

“Entirely?” William’s blood cooled a little and his mind began to work more clearly.

“I didn’t mind goading him—he made himself such an easy target, what with his touchy pride and open ambitions. I admit that I was happy to cultivate doubts about the evidence against Norfolk and cast suspicion in Northumberland’s direction. But I had no idea he would be so stupid as to let his son marry Margaret Clifford—nor that his stupidity would lead him into arming men and holding your sister captive. You can hardly blame me for Northumberland’s treachery in that!”

As William’s first burst of temper lessened, he realized that his uncle had kept well away from the one crime that Rochford must know he could never forgive: the attempted murder of Minuette. Adopting Dominic’s traditional pose of crossed arms and apparently negligent leaning against a wall (it irritated William no end—hopefully Rochford would read in it the same disdain), he contemplated his uncle’s clever, lean face. “You tried to kill my future queen. Tell me why I shouldn’t drag you straight to the Tower and have your head for that.”

“Because it wasn’t me.”

“Robert Dudley was used to distract Minuette in order to give someone the opportunity to poison her necklace. If it wasn’t for his father’s sake, then I must assume Robert was under your orders.”

“Under my orders to speak with her, yes. To warn her away from you. Neither of us had anything to do with poison.”

“It was you who arrested a Northumberland man as the poisoner. Was he truly the poisoner?”

“Yes.”

“Was he truly one of Northumberland’s men?”

William had his answer in Rochford’s hesitation. “No.”

“And of course he’s been executed for his crime, so I can hardly ask him if he were taking orders from you. Convenient.”

“He didn’t take orders from me any more than he did from Northumberland. He took his orders from my wife.”

William rocked back on his heels, stunned. “Are you trying to tell me that
Lady Rochford
is an assassin? Why wouldn’t you tell me that before?”

“Because it was convenient to push Northumberland a little farther away. And because, for all her sins, she is my wife and I did not care to have a woman of my household arrested.”

“What possible reason could Jane Boleyn have for killing Minuette? Why does she care whom I love?”

“She might not care, but one of her women cares a very great deal and Jane has always been easy to persuade into malice.”

William swore long and inventively. “Eleanor.”

His uncle inclined his head in agreement. “A woman of cunning and spite, rather like my wife. The two of them together—”

“And your wife just told you this? In the intimacy of the night—except that you do not spend your nights with her. So where did you hear this?”

“In the intimacy of the night, as you said. But not from Jane.”

“You’ve been sleeping with
Eleanor
?” William let out an explosive laugh that was as much shock as amusement.

“She is quite skilled, Your Majesty.”

“You think I don’t know that? Or are we trying to dance around the fact that Eleanor was my mistress before she was yours? At least, I’ll do you the credit of assuming you waited until I was finished with her. I wouldn’t have thought her your type.”

“I do not require to respect the women I bed.”

William couldn’t decide whether to be furious with Rochford’s aplomb or to admire it. He shook his head and studied the man: impeccably dressed without ostentation, wearing his authority with ease, arrogantly sure of himself even while confessing to various crimes … in short, a man William had often longed to shake during the endless years of the regency. And now Rochford had delivered himself into his hands.

“So your confession, if I may sum it up, is that you conspired against one of the leading members of the nobility—one of your fellow members on my regency council—going so far as to create false evidence that blackened my mother’s name as well as others. And don’t think I’ve forgotten Alyce de Clare—a woman who died in the midst of doing your bidding. You further conspired to cast the guilt for those acts onto another member of the nobility, solely to consolidate your own position in the kingdom, in this case using the man’s own son against his father’s interest. And in the matter of the attempted murder of the only woman I have ever loved, you claim it was your wife’s conspiracy—without your knowledge or consent, but with your willingness to shield her afterward. Tell me,
George
, why are you confessing now?”

He had never in his life used his uncle’s given name. It made him feel more a man than anything he’d ever done, especially when Rochford flinched. When his uncle answered, his voice was stripped of its usual irony.

“Because Lord Exeter and Princess Elizabeth have an engagement with you tomorrow morning, in which they will accuse me in order to clear Robert Dudley’s name and free him from the Tower. Well, that at least is your sister’s motive. I don’t doubt Courtenay feels it his sole duty to be honest.”

“And you thought coming to me first would make me lenient?”

“I haven’t actually committed a single crime against the throne
or yourself personally. And I have now handed you the women who conspired to kill Mistress Wyatt.”

If there was one thing William could do instinctively, it was make quick decisions. There was hardly a pause before he said, “I want you away from court tonight. Don’t leave London. You may retire to Charterhouse and wait to hear from me.”

That could mean almost anything, but Rochford did not press for details. He bowed in apparently genuine submission. “As you say, Your Majesty.”

“One thing more,” William added as his uncle straightened warily. “How do you know what Dominic and Elizabeth mean to tell me tomorrow morning? I hardly think it likely they would confide in the man they mean to accuse. Are your spies that embedded in my own court?”

Rochford’s expression grew thoughtful. “No, Your Majesty. Though I knew they had each been to see Robert Dudley, I did not know how far things had gone until someone warned me.”

“Who?”

The name was the very last one William would ever have predicted. “Mistress Wyatt. She is the one who counseled me to confess before accusations could be laid.”

When his uncle had left, William sat up long into the night, drinking and pondering upon Minuette’s audacity. What did she think she was doing, meddling with a man like Rochford? Did she not know the dangers of court politics? She was not Anne Boleyn—and William was glad of it. He did not want a queen who made enemies and then broke them.

He would have to make sure Minuette understood her position in his kingdom.

Minuette waited until long after midnight, aware that Rochford had only this one night to preemptively confess and certain that
William would send for her when it was finished. Surely he would be rocked by his uncle’s lies. Surely he would want her for comfort or, less likely these days, advice.

But when the palace had grown nearly silent and no summons came, she at last allowed Carrie to undress her.

“Is everything all right?” her maid asked. Carrie’s brown eyes were as soft as always, and in the last few months she had gained a little weight, enough so that she no longer looked on the verge of illness, and regained some of the cheer Minuette remembered from her childhood.

“I hope so,” Minuette answered. “I will be up early. I am sorry to keep you so late.”

Carrie let her hand linger on Minuette’s shoulder before she gathered up her gown. “When you worry, I worry. And when you play games, I especially worry.”