The Boleyn Reckoning (30 page)

“The princess is well,” Walsingham assured them. “In body, if not in spirit.”

“Then why are you here?” Minuette asked. “Elizabeth would not have sent you for something trivial. She is taking care to keep away from us.”

Did Elizabeth’s self-protective distance bother Minuette? Dominic wondered. He had not dared ask. But she sounded without resentment and, in the end, Minuette was more practical than sentimental.

“Her Royal Highness had news she did not dare commit to paper and it could not wait for a more roundabout messenger. Lady Mary has been tried for high treason for the assassination of Lord Rochford and the arming of the Catholic rebels in the North. She has been convicted and sentenced to death.”

If he had guessed for a hundred years, Dominic would never have guessed this. He saw his own shock mirrored in his wife’s face, but her eyes were also deeply sad. “Why?” she asked, and whether she was speaking to Walsingham or Dominic or herself was unclear.

“Her Highness wished you to know, so that you might be prepared for any … repercussions that might follow.”

“He won’t really do it, will he?” Dominic asked, and he was definitely asking his wife. “William would not execute a woman.” But even as he said it, he remembered Jane Boleyn and the council’s cynical law that had allowed the execution of an insane woman.

It was the first time the king’s name had been spoken aloud at Wynfield and a slight shiver passed through the air as though a barrier had been crossed once and for all. The storm is breaking, Dominic realized.

“The William we knew would not do such a thing,” Minuette said slowly. “But the William our betrayal has created …” She faltered.

Walsingham cleared his throat. “I’ll be on my way immediately, but I have one more message from the princess. She urges that, if possible, you find a way to leave England before spring. She cannot predict which direction the king’s armies will march when campaigning season begins.”

“He will march where the rebels are,” Dominic said. “Tell Elizabeth we understand.”

Which was not the same thing as agreeing. For himself, the time of flight had passed. He would live or die in England, come what may.

The specifics of how he would live or die, he had yet to decide. Dominic had told himself he must discuss it with Minuette, but this was not something she could decide for him. And he did not want her to. His wife had made the only possible choice for her in telling William the truth. He must make his own choice about taking arms against his king.

Robert Dudley rode to the Tower of London on the icy morning of February 18. Never again would he willingly enter the Tower from the river; the Water Gate was tainted forever by the sick memory of being deposited there in the dead of night with his brothers, uncertain if any of them would ever leave the precincts alive. He would be delighted never to lay eyes on the Tower again, and would have been tempted to say no to William’s orders, but Elizabeth had asked this of him as well.

She had asked him to watch her sister die at her brother’s hand and to tell her about it afterward.

What is happening to England? Robert wondered as he left his horse in the outer precincts and walked into the inner courtyard. The green was covered in a thin rime of frost and a heavier layer of mud churned up through the winter grass. At the north end of the White Tower, with the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula and
Tower Green to one side, a low scaffold had been built so the spectators might clearly see Mary’s end. As the daughter of a king, she would not be exposed to the boisterous crowds outside the Tower walls. Today’s witnesses would number no more than two hundred; enough to see the king’s justice and spread word of it far and wide.

Robert watched Lord Burghley exit the Queen’s Lodging, where Mary had been returned after her conviction to live out her last days in relative comfort. Robert did not envy the man his position. As Lord Chancellor, Burghley’d had the task of informing Mary just an hour ago that she would die today. Robert wondered how she’d taken the news. Did she fight? Did she beg? He hoped not. He’d known Mary Tudor since he was a little boy, and though he did not like her in the slightest and thought her very dangerous, he did not relish the thought of standing by while a woman he knew had to be dragged to her death.

He should have known better. Mary’s hallmark had always been her dignity—that, and her faith. Both stood her in good stead on her last day. When she emerged from the Queen’s Lodging with two weeping attendants behind her, her own face was pale but perfectly composed. She was dressed as richly as Robert had ever seen her: cloth-of-gold gown, elaborately belled sleeves, all impeccably embroidered and finished until she looked rather like a stiff doll. She carried a rosary in her hands and Robert could see her fingers moving ceaselessly along the jet beads. It was the only sign of tension she betrayed.

The witnesses were nearly silent as Mary processed to the foot of the scaffold. There she stood waiting for someone to offer their hand. Lord Burghley complied and she thanked him when she stood on the scaffold beside the single priest William had allowed his sister. The executioner waited quietly to the side. Her ladies
hovered at the foot of the steps while Lord Burghley courteously asked Mary if she would like to speak to the crowd.

She considered, seeming to rake each individual member with her sharp and unforgiving eyes. Robert nearly shuddered when she looked him over, but her expression never wavered: somewhere between righteousness and contempt.

“Those come for to see me die,” she spoke at last, in an even voice, “I wish you joy of it. If my death serves to restore but one lost soul to God’s true fold, I myself rejoice greatly. And for the king, my brother, I do thank God for granting England a king and with my last breath I pray for his salvation and that of all his people.”

Trust Mary to turn her final words into a tractate on religion, Robert thought. Mary’s ladies joined her on the scaffold now and helped their mistress remove the heavy, elaborate overgown (why ruin good fabric with blood? he thought cynically) so that she suddenly looked older and harmless, an aging woman in a kirtle that was less than flattering. Then they removed Mary’s stiff French hood, revealing that her abundant red hair had been severely coiled beneath a simple coif of white linen. Robert felt his stomach knot and wished it had occurred to him to drink heavily before this. For certain he would drink after.

Mary kissed her rosary and gave it to the priest who stood by and now offered his final murmured blessing. She allowed one of her ladies to blindfold her and then kissed them both and sent them off the scaffold. Robert felt each beat of his heart pressing hard against his chest, as though a drum were keeping count of the rising tension as Mary made the sign of the cross and then, only slightly less than graceful, knelt to the block, using her hands to position herself.

The executioner was quick and clean—before Robert could
blink the ax had swung and Mary’s head dropped and rolled to the edge of the scaffold. There was a murmur from the crowd, but no outcry. Committed Protestants, all of them, and thus not too shattered to see the end of England’s royal Catholic figurehead. Robert squeezed his eyes shut and imagined he could taste the tang of the blood. Against the backdrop of his eyelids he saw the ax fall once more, only this time it was his father’s head that rolled …

He opened his eyes and watched while attendants gently carried Mary and her cloth-draped head into the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula for hasty interment. Time to report to Elizabeth. And ask her how in the name of Heaven and its angels she meant to stop her brother from destroying his own country.

Because there was another reason those watching today had been subdued, besides simple respect. Everyone in England knew that the young Duke of Norfolk was gathering an army in the North and East. All it needed for civil war to flare was a spark—like that caused by the execution of the woman who loyal Catholics were convinced had been England’s rightful ruler.

Not for the first time, Robert cursed Dominic Courtenay soundly and thoroughly. Without him, he didn’t think there was any man left in England able to talk sense into William. It was up to Elizabeth now to keep the country from tearing itself to pieces.

For a precious three weeks there was peace at Wynfield. Fragile and dearly bought, but Minuette soaked up every moment with her husband, knowing each day that brought them nearer to spring also brought them nearer to the edge of no return. They still did not discuss William freely, but the ice had been broken by Walsingham’s news and so they were able to talk about Elizabeth and Lord Burghley and Norfolk and the possibility of Continental involvement in any Catholic uprising.

She did not know what Dominic would do. She knew he received missives from Norfolk’s camp, nearly every day as time went on, and she knew he was deeply conflicted. She kept her own counsel, as her husband had always allowed her to do, and gave him her tacit approval to do whatever he felt he must. She would not make his choices for him.

But then two things happened on top of each other, within twenty-four hours in the first week of March. First, Harrington brought word from a visit to Stratford-upon-Avon that Mary Tudor had been executed inside the Tower of London. Minuette wept when she heard it, and not only for the lonely, bitter, royal woman whom Minuette had known and, if not liked, at least respected. Her tears were also for William, and for the nightmares he must be living through now without anyone to comfort him.

The very next morning, just two hours after dawn, Renaud LeClerc appeared at Wynfield Mote.

Carrie woke her to the news that Dominic and Renaud were speaking together in the hall. “Renaud LeClerc?” Minuette asked, disbelieving. “Are you sure?”

But of course Carrie was sure; she had met him during their stay in France. Minuette hastily dressed in a guest-appropriate gown of richly dyed green, like the starkness of evergreens in the frigid winter, and descended into the hall where Dominic and Renaud sat in two chairs before the enormous medieval fireplace, locked in intense conversation.

Renaud rose when he saw her, Dominic half a beat behind. “It is a great pleasure to meet you again,” the Frenchman said, kissing the hand she offered. “And especially to meet you as Madame Courtenay. I had not dared hope Dominic would be so fortunate.”

“Is he fortunate?” she asked tartly. “The price has been high.”

“No price is too high for love.”

“Thus speaks the Frenchman who is
not
estranged from his king.” No need to be coy; they all knew where they stood. And Minuette didn’t need to be told why Renaud was there.

He told her anyway. “I come,
madame
, with an offer of passage to France and a promise of safety in my country.”

“Did you not take a great risk in coming here? I thought the last time you were on this island you got an arrow in the back.”

“Last time I did not take care to disguise my coming. A single man with a good weapon arm can pass anywhere with relative ease.”

But to cross the Channel in winter was not a matter of relative ease. It argued Renaud’s deep seriousness of purpose. “Your king wants Dominic in his army,” she said bluntly.

Renaud shook his head. “This is my offer, not my king’s, and it is one of friendship, not calculation. There is no expectation on my part or that of my masters. Only safe haven and a place to be free.”

Minuette looked between Renaud and her husband. Dominic’s face was unreadable; an expression she was long familiar with. His eyes flicked to her for a moment and she froze, for he registered her with only the greatest detachment. She bit down on the inside of her cheek so as not to react, but before it could become unbearable there was a flare from Dominic and she knew that he had not retreated wholly.

“I need to speak to my wife,” Dominic said. “Do you mind waiting here?”

Renaud smiled and indicated the wine, bread, and cheese that Mistress Holly had provided. “I am comfortable. Take your time—but not too much.”

Minuette led Dominic into a ground-floor chamber at the back of the house that had been her father’s study. It still held his collection of books and Minuette had a few memories of playing on the
floor while her father studied.
What do we do?
she offered up silently.

It was the question Dominic put to her with a single word. “Well?”

Minuette circled the room restlessly until she came to the window, where she paused and stared at her mother’s rose garden. The bare stems were black outlines against the soil, with no sign of the buds that would spring forth in a few months’ time. “My answer is simple: I go where you go.”

“That is not an answer.”

“I made my choice when I married you, Dominic. I do not promise that I will allow you to make all my choices for me,” she smiled at him briefly, “but on this matter, the choice is yours.” Because it is you who will be giving up the most, she thought. I am half French, but you are wholly English and wholly loyal.

“What if my choice is for you to go, and myself to stay?”

She whirled away from the window, shocked. “You would not ask that of me!”

“And if I did? Would you go?”

“Absolutely not, under any circumstances.”

“What if you were with child again?”

“I am not.”

“You could be, at any time now. And if you were—”

“Stop it! We could do this forever. What if William marches on Wynfield next month, what if Norfolk sweeps in and cuts down the king’s army, what if the Spanish land in retaliation for Mary, what if the sweating sickness sweeps through here and kills us both? I will not make decisions based on fears that may never come to pass or things that we cannot control.”

Dominic took her hands in his, studying her face with an expression that was not at all detached. “I cannot leave England, Minuette. Whatever happens, must happen here.”

“I agree.”

He wrapped her in his arms and she allowed herself to relax into him, marveling that she could feel happy at such a disastrous time. Dominic kissed her cheek, then allowed his mouth to trail down her jaw to the hollow of her throat. With reluctance, he pulled back and said, “We’ll see Renaud safely off.”