The Boleyn Reckoning (41 page)

“If we’re lucky, those women will also be able to slip away during Howard’s distraction. But if they are caught, then we need you in a position to speak with authority. Ideally, we need the king to leave London and its closer environs. You must be the one Lord Burghley seeks out for advice in the matter.”

“Then Minuette and her maid are put on a ship for France, where Renaud LeClerc will be waiting for them.”

Walsingham gave a single nod.

Elizabeth closed her eyes, imagining all the things that could go wrong. Imagining William’s reaction when he discovered Minuette had flown. She had no illusions—her brother would know it was her. But she would not be cowed by William.

Walsingham had just one question. “Shall I travel with them, Your Highness?”

“No. I have someone else in mind for that.”

Robert would do it, without a second thought. And she would tell him not to return to England until she could assure him he would not be touched by William’s wrath.

“We cannot leave it too long, Your Highness. Mistress Courtenay’s condition …”

Elizabeth knew very well how swiftly they needed to move. Minuette was only six weeks away from giving birth. “If William shows no sign of leaving London within a week, I will manufacture
a reason for him to do so,” she said, with more confidence than she felt. Being a conspirator sat uneasily on her, even when she was confident of her rightness.

But events seemed determined to draw her into conspiracy, for the very day after Dominic’s execution, Walsingham brought Elizabeth a letter from a Low Countries merchant resident in London. The letter was from Philip of Spain.

Elizabeth watched the dangerous letter burn, as surely Philip had meant her to do, and as the Spanish king’s words turned to ash, other words echoed in her ears.
What did you see?
she’d asked John Dee years ago.

You will command men and guide nations … This is the hand of a woman, Your Highness. But it is also the hand of a ruler
.

She sat alone long into the night, wondering precisely what God meant her to do.

William burned with fever for two days after his final visit to Minuette. When he arose on the third day, he didn’t delay more than an hour before leaving Whitehall and London far behind. Jane was at Richmond Palace, being well-coddled for the duration of her royal pregnancy, but it was not west that he headed. It was north. He took six guards with him and no personal attendants. Only Lord Burghley had been told his destination: the manor house in Cumbria he had bestowed as a wedding gift upon the late Giles Howard.

Burghley assumed he was following Eleanor, who had returned north as soon as delivering her devastating testimony at Minuette’s trial. And so he was going to see her—for who better to wipe the taint of his failure with Minuette from his mind and body?

But even his Lord Chancellor did not know all his secrets.

It took seven solid days of riding to reach Lakehill House just south of the market town of Kendal. The manor was medieval in its lines and history, and thus well fortified. William had never
been there before. For a moment he found himself comparing it to Wynfield Mote. Where Minuette’s home had radiated warmth and good cheer, Lakehill House lowered against the sullen grey of the skies. Its moat was not mainly decorative, the greasy black water itself seeming to shout “keep away” to any unwary travelers.

Perfect.

William sent an outrider ahead of him, so Eleanor had half a day’s warning of his arrival. As always, his mistress’s preparations were impeccable. The guards were directed into the care of her steward, an iron-faced northerner who scarcely could be bothered to bow to William. Fair enough—this job required taciturn and uninterested tongues.

“Would you care to take refreshment first?” Eleanor purred, slipping her hand through his arm as they walked alone into the hall. She looked like a rich and contented wife in her jewel-toned blue gown, hair neatly confined beneath a hood. But her eyes couldn’t be wifely if they tried; William felt her calculation as she led him inside. The interior of the manor, at least, was elegantly furnished and decorated, even ostentatious. “Or you could visit Nora. She chatters like a little bird, you’d be enchanted.”

“She is here?” William pulled up sharply, shaken at the news. “Why has she left your brother?”

“You said I might have her with me if you could trust me.”

“Send her away,” William ordered. “Back to Jonathan, at once. I don’t want her here this winter.” Not with the darkness he himself had imported. Far better his daughter be with the infuriatingly loyal Jonathan Percy.

Eleanor bit her bottom lip, a gesture William remembered well, and changed the subject. “Your bedchamber is ready for you.”
And so am I
she did not need to add. Everything about her shouted it.

He stopped abruptly and kissed her hard in the middle of the reception hall. Her response was immediate and reassuring. But
Eleanor, though a pleasant distraction, was not his primary purpose in coming here.

When her caresses had sated the edges of his temper, William stepped away. “You know what I want. Business before pleasure.”

Although this business would also be pleasurable. Very much so.

Eleanor led him to the oldest part of the house, to a round tower that looked uninhabitable above the ground floor. But there was an oak door, six inches thick and with a sturdy iron lock and bolt, that led to a flight of steps descending into blackness. They each carried a lantern, Eleanor going first, her voice floating up to him as they went down.

“Fortunately, the servants here are not much interested in anything beyond themselves and what they’re paid. And I have a reputation as being somewhat … what’s the word?
Erratic
in my tastes and habits. I imagine they think I have a lover chained down here, what with my being the only one in attendance.”

William ignored her, for he had the fanciful notion that he could feel the man waiting below, could track the mind and emotions—tightly reined, no doubt, but perhaps the fiercer for it.

It would be a long time before William broke down that fierceness.

Eleanor reached the last step and William followed her down a short length of corridor with four iron-gated doors opening off it, two on each side. Only the last one on the right-hand side was barred shut. A dim light radiated from a single torch set in the wall outside the dungeon door.

William stepped up to the door and raised the lantern so his face could be clearly seen. “Hello, Dominic.”

Dominic blinked against the strong light, not surprised by the familiar voice. “Hello, William. Come for another round?”

He had been very surprised indeed when he had come back
to consciousness all those days ago in a tightly closed, jolting carriage that had made him retch with the constant motion and aftereffects of his beating. Why wasn’t he dead? William had gotten his satisfaction—why not then hand him off for the public pain and humiliation of his execution?

He’d been in so much pain, slipping in and out of consciousness for days of rough travel, that he couldn’t concentrate on why. He’d begun to put fragments together, suspicions, but only when the coach stopped for the final time and he’d been hooded before being marched along and down stone floors and he was chained to the wall of his new prison did he finally grasp it.

William wasn’t finished with him yet. For the space of an hour Dominic wondered where he was, who William had enlisted in this secret. For secret he had surely kept it—he would not want Minuette having hope. William wanted her desperate and alone and sunk in grief.

When Eleanor Percy appeared, looking angelic with her light hair and exquisite cream-coloured gown, Dominic had been startled enough to exclaim, “Son of a bitch.”

“Close, but it’s a daughter I have. Though a son will surely follow, a son with a royal father. Pity your bitch wasn’t so smart.”

The chains brought him up well short of the iron door. It was the only time he lost control. After that he didn’t speak to Eleanor at all when she appeared twice a day to bring him food.

He’d wondered how long William would be able to keep away. By his count it was nine days now since his supposed death. And here was the king, looking at him as though he were a specimen in a menagerie.

“Can’t you deal with the waste?” William said sharply to Eleanor.

“By myself? Do I look like a maidservant?”

“Fine. There must be someone in your household without the
wits to put together two words. Have them do it. And get him some water to wash himself. Now.”

Eleanor had learned submission, or at least how to approximate it. She took her lantern and walked away. Only when her light could not be seen did Dominic speak.

“Suddenly concerned about my condition?”

“There’s no need to make an animal out of you.”

“Because it’s more fun if I remain the gentleman?”

Was that a jolt of hurt in William’s eyes? Probably just disgust, Dominic decided. To keep William from broaching the subject first, he asked abruptly, “How was my execution? Sufficiently brutal, I suppose. How long did it take you to find a man who looked enough like me to pass at a distance?”

“Not long. You’re tall and black-haired—who ever looked at you enough to see beyond that?” William studied him. “Aren’t you going to ask me about Minuette?”

Not for anything in this world would Dominic speak of her to William. Because he couldn’t trust his mouth to keep his mind’s intention, he kept it firmly shut.

William shook his head at Dominic’s stubborn silence but didn’t try to break it. Was he going to beat him again? Dominic didn’t much care, although his previous injuries were finally beginning to heal, slowed by darkness and cold and solitude.

Slow, shuffling footsteps followed Eleanor’s quicker ones. A young man came behind her, carrying a bucket of water and with the undoubted look of a child in an adult’s body. Eleanor unlocked the iron door herself, and gestured sharply for the man to put the water inside and shove it with his foot. Then he picked up the foul bucket of waste and retreated with it.

“Anything else, my lord?” Eleanor asked mockingly, and Dominic felt a great longing to wrap his hands around her neck and squeeze hard.

He kept his eyes on the king, wishing he could read the face he had once known better than his own. What was he thinking?

Curtly, William said, “I’ll be back. When Minuette’s child is born, I’ll return and report. Surely you’ll be interested in the outcome. Almost as interested as I am.”

Then he walked away, leaving Eleanor to scramble after him.

Dominic let out his breath and sank down with his back to the wall. He put his aching head in his hands and wondered how long a man could last in such a place without either dying or going mad.

W
HEN
C
ARRIE WHISPERED
in Minuette’s ear that there was a plan devised for escape, a way out of the Tower—that she needed to be ready to fake an early labor the moment she was told to—she was almost too numb with grief to care. Something essential in her nature had been broken, and if there was still a tiny flame of reason and hope left, it was buried so far that she’d lost sight of it. All she could manage was to keep breathing and that was labor enough.

“What does it matter?” she heard herself say, surprised she could manage even that much. Dominic had been dead for three days. All she wanted was to join him.

Carrie was not cowed. “This matters,” she’d hissed fiercely, laying her hand on Minuette’s heavily rounded stomach. As if in agreement, the child gave a series of urgent kicks just then, so that Carrie’s hand moved with it.