The Boleyn Reckoning (9 page)

“I did it for Jonathan’s sake, and the child’s. I would never want William to turn away from his own daughter.”

“No matter how much you despise her mother?” Eleanor murmured. “Did you know that the king had only one condition before allowing my brother to take her? William insisted that her name be changed.”

Startled, Minuette asked, “Why?”

With another shrug, Eleanor said, “No doubt, after he gets sons on you, he plans to have at least one legitimate daughter. I imagine he wishes to save the royal names for such an event. He told Jonathan he did not want the girl called Anne any longer. Perhaps he thinks it an insult to his mother, though I wager Anne Boleyn would have understood me well enough.”

“So the poor girl is simply going to be called something else? Will that not confuse her?”

“She is only two years old. I have decided on Nora, so that whenever William speaks his daughter’s name he will have cause to remember her mother. It is a small price to pay for the king’s favour.”

It disturbed Minuette deeply, the thought of the little girl being passed around and renamed like a dog or a horse. Had William given any thought to Anne—Nora—beyond providing her an allowance?

Forehead creased, Eleanor asked, “It truly bothers you, doesn’t it? I don’t understand why. You have got what you wanted … for now. But I do not think you will hold it long.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Minuette always instinctively argued with Eleanor, whether she believed in her own position or not.

With a patient sigh, as though speaking to a slow child, Eleanor answered, “I know you despise me and think William is all that is good and perfect. But he is not. What he needs, though he may not know it, is a woman as hard as he is. You? He will tear the heart right out of you, if only you were not so eager to do it for him. Your love will not help William, it only weakens him, and one day he will have cause to hate you for it.”

Could one’s blood actually run cold? Minuette thought numbly. Because hers seemed to be trailing ice beneath her skin. Forcing contempt into her expression and disinterest to her voice, she asked, “What is your point? Besides insulting me.”

“Insulting you is not a sufficient point? Oh, very well, I suppose I wished to offer you another warning. Although I knew about the monkshood—and did not especially mind—I was not the instigator of that act. You may think yourself safe while I am locked away, but I am not the one you should fear, Mistress Wyatt. I am a survivor, which means I know when to change the game and how
to play it to my advantage. I also know when I am beaten. You do not even know who you are playing against.”

“How, precisely, do
you
know so much? There’s not a man at court would dare risk being in touch with you just now.”

Eleanor gave a lazy smile and shook her head. “I may prefer men in the whole, but if you want to know anything, ask the women. Rochford’s intelligence networks have nothing on servants and women.”

“I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me against whom I am playing?” Minuette could not deny the flicker of fear, but headier than that was the knowledge that here was a woman she could bargain with.

“Not without fair payment.”

After appearing to consider, Minuette said, “I can have you released. As you said, I have the ear of the king and I will bring you to his attention. Provided you give me the means to clear you from the attempt on my life,” she warned. “William will not let you go as long as he believes you tried to kill me.”

“Who would have thought,” Eleanor countered musingly, “that the golden girl of the court could play in the mud with the rest of us? I can tell you who instigated the poison attempt, as well as the incident with the adder. And I believe there was something nasty found in your chamber in France?”

It was those last words that convinced Minuette that Eleanor was speaking the truth. She had told not a soul, not even Dominic, of the dead rat and the incendiary drawing that had been slipped into her French chamber in the dead of night last summer. Eleanor had not been in France.

But the woman she served had been.

“Lady Rochford,” Minuette said, only partly disbelieving. She had spent all this time looking at which men might be behind Eleanor, and neglected the obvious woman.

A wicked little smile lit Eleanor’s face. “I believe there are any number of things I could tell you about Lady Rochford. Her husband, for all his reticence, is inclined to talk in bed.”

Minuette blinked once, and swallowed a laugh that verged on hysterical. Eleanor and Lord Rochford? Well, well, well … She could do anything with this information: go straight to William, or share it with Elizabeth and get her measured advice, or tell Dominic and share his distaste.

But she had a much better use for it. Minuette had never felt so kindly to Eleanor, for she had just given her a new piece in the game, and she knew precisely how to play it.

Dominic did not investigate Robert’s chest until he’d returned to court. Elizabeth insisted on being present, naturally, and brought Walsingham with her. The three of them alone—Minuette was busy showing herself at William’s side while they went riding, and Dominic shoved away a forcible sense of loss that they were not all together as they should be.

The chest was packed with books and papers of all sorts, mostly mathematical in nature. Robert’s academic interests, which were genuine and deep, tended to the scientific more than the literary. They scanned each page with a rising sense of impatience, but without wanting to miss anything obvious.

When they had cleared the inoffensive material openly packed in the trunk, they turned to removing the false bottom. It was Walsingham who found the catch first—it was ingeniously well-constructed—and he and Dominic removed the wooden partition that revealed a cavity that ran the length and width of the trunk but only two inches deep. There were papers here as well, mostly in Robert’s handwriting and all in Latin. The three of them took turns reading in silence.

After three-quarters of an hour Elizabeth let out a sigh and said pragmatically, “Most of this would not be accepted as evidence. It is only Robert’s accounting of what he claims passed between him and Rochford.”

“It is very detailed,” Dominic pointed out. “Dates, places, times—all things that can be checked. Circumstantially, it is an intriguing account and I can find nothing false in how he fits things together. It is all logical.”

“Logic is not the same as evidence.”

Walsingham broke in. “These are useful evidence.” He held two letters in his hand, creased from delivery and concealment, but the broken seals unmistakably the personal badge of the Duke of Rochford: the maroon background signifying patience and the serpents a token of wisdom.

Dominic rubbed his eyes, not needing to reread the letters. The brief missives were burned into his brain.
I will deliver the document into your hands alone. Keep it on your person at all times until you know where to hide it
, read the first, dated the day before Robert had set off for Framlingham in November 1554. Where the false Penitent’s Confession had been hidden in the Lady Chapel specifically for Minuette to find.

The second note read:
If you cannot uncover anything unsavory about the girl, then you can create it. Your talents as a seducer are well known. Perhaps you should turn them to her undoing. Surely you are gifted enough to do so without my niece’s knowledge
.

“They are evidence,” Elizabeth agreed. “But not conclusive. The girl my uncle speaks of is not necessarily Minuette. He could be challenging Robert to seduce almost any woman. And the document he writes of in the first letter is not named as the Penitent’s Confession.”

Dominic tried to ignore the thought of Robert eyeing Minuette
as amorous prey. With a nod to Walsingham, he said, “It is enough to justify questions. And to question the Lord Chancellor, we must go through the king. It’s time William knows it all.”

“Agreed.” Elizabeth took the offending letters from Walsingham and offered them to Dominic. “You or I?”

“Both of us, I think. But we’ll inform Minuette first—she’ll be needed to steady William when he finds out.”

“How does this end, Dominic?” Elizabeth looked troubled. “Is it wise to bring down one more of the stable voices of England’s government?”

“It is always wise to speak the truth,” Dominic said, though he felt more than a twinge at his own lies. “William cannot rule without the necessary information. And the knowledge that his Lord Chancellor has maneuvered to bring down his two greatest opponents is very necessary information. What happens after will be up to William.”

Dominic was sure that what happened next would be Rochford’s arrest. Because if Northumberland hadn’t set his son to distract Minuette on that fateful afternoon last year while her necklace was poisoned, then it could only have been Rochford.

There could be no mercy for that.

Despite the brave words confided to her diary, Minuette’s nerves were pitched to an extreme as she approached Lord Rochford’s privy chamber at Greenwich Palace. She had sent him a note asking for a private meeting, and he obliged her relatively quickly. She wished she had Fidelis with her; the enormous Irish wolfhound Dominic had given her for Christmas one year was almost as steadying a presence as Dominic himself. But Fidelis had remained at Wynfield Mote these last six months, the country manor where Minuette had lived as a small child. With the upheaval of William’s illness she had not bothered to have the dog returned to court. Surely Fidelis preferred the open sky and fields of the country.

Minuette was received by Rochford’s attendants with professional courtesy and soon found herself alone with the Lord Chancellor. “Thank you for seeing me, Your Grace,” she said, accepting the seat he indicated across the wide desk from where he regarded her coolly.

“Can I refuse to meet with a woman so dear to the king’s heart?” Rochford’s tone was all mockery and dislike, and his keen dark eyes—so like his sister, Anne’s—pierced through her. Minuette used his contempt to strengthen her resolve.

“I have come to do you a favour,” she said.

“I do not think your position is quite so strong that I need worry yet about favours from you.”

Perversely, the difficult reception calmed Minuette’s nerves, and
she let her instincts guide her. She was no stranger to political sparring—she had been trained by Anne Boleyn herself. “Do you know what Lord Exeter was doing in the North?”

“Visiting Amy Dudley at Kenilworth.”

“Do you know why?”

“It is no great supposition that my niece would like her favorite released from the Tower. No doubt Lord Exeter is doing her bidding.”

“By visiting Robert’s wife?” Minuette laughed in genuine surprise. “If you believe that, you are a fool.”

The dark eyes narrowed and one hand beat a restless pattern on the desk. “What do you want, Mistress Wyatt?”

“Lord Exeter returned from Kenilworth with a chest of Robert Dudley’s papers and letters. Robert claims to have evidence that you were the mastermind behind the Duke of Norfolk’s disgrace and the Penitent’s Confession.”

“Seeing as his father has been executed in part for that affair, of course Robert Dudley would look to save his own name—and neck.”

“Dominic believes him, and so does Elizabeth. Who do you think William is going to believe?”

“There is no proof.” Was that a flicker of concern in his expression?

Minuette leaned forward confidingly. “There doesn’t have to be. William is persuadable. They will bring him to believe it. You are going to fall, Lord Rochford.” She let that hang for a few heartbeats, then added gently, “How far you fall? That might be up to me.”

“You think you have that kind of power?”

“I know I do. If you preempt the revelations—if you go to William first and tell him the truth—if you have all the Dudley sons released from the Tower …” Minuette drew a deep breath, momentarily
dizzy with her own daring. “Then I will persuade the king to mercy on your behalf.”

She counted it success that he didn’t immediately dismiss her. He leaned back in his chair, studying her over his steepled fingers. Minuette had always thought of Rochford as ageless, but now she noted the streaks of silver in his hair and the thinness of the skin beneath his eyes. “Why would you do that?”

“Because you know even less than you think you do. And because a time is coming when I will need all the friends I can get.”

“You think I will be your friend for this?”

“I think you will owe me, and you are a man who pays his debts. There is only one requirement—you must convince William that you had nothing to do with my poisoning.”

His face grew dark. “The monkshood? I was not behind that.”

“You arrested a man who has since been executed for painting my pendant with monkshood. How could you have known the perpetrator if you were not behind the attempt?”

“It was a useful event for my cause, for I could lay it at Northumberland’s feet. That is all. I had nothing else to do with the matter.”

“It is no secret that you would do anything to remove me from the king’s attention.”

Rochford put his elbows on the desk and fixed her in his sight. “Trust me in this, Mistress Wyatt—if I wanted you dead, you would
be
dead.”