Emmie and the Tudor Queen

by Natalie Murray

  “Yeah, all good. We didn’t trade blows, so I’ll take that as a win.”

  “It was nice of him to drive you. And to stay over so we could look into things more, don’t you think?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Did he mention anything to you about Nina?” Mom dangled.

  I wasn’t exactly a fan of chitchat about Dad’s live-in girlfriend, the one he’d left Mom—and me—for.

  “No,” I said. “Should he have mentioned something?”

  “Of course not. I’m just wondering if something’s changed there. He’s taking more of an interest, don’t you think?” She sounded as naïve as a little girl, and I felt sorry for her. At the same time, snakes writhed in my stomach. I just didn’t want to see her hurt again. We’d both come so far.

  When I spoke, my voice was soft. “Mom, you’re way better than him. Don’t waste your time anymore, please. He’s not going to come back.”

  “You don’t know that! Why do you always have to say things like that?”

  I’d hit a nerve. I slid the phone down my neck, blocking out Mom’s rapid switch to an ardent defense of her and Dad’s failed marriage. If I went back to Tudor England now and never returned, would she drive herself mad over this?

  The thought of being cocooned inside Nick’s arms again melted my growing rigidity. I had to get back there. Not knowing whether he was safe on his mission in the north felt like torture.

  “Will you be coming home?” Mom said after she’d finished her diatribe about her and Dad.

  “Not right now. I was actually calling to say goodbye because I’m going away again for a bit.” My teeth pressed my bottom lip.

  I could’ve sung the national anthem in the time it took for Mom to reply. Her voice had flattened. “I don’t know what to do anymore, Emmie. I am just so tired of all this.”

  “You need to do something for yourself,” I realized out loud. “You know now that I’m okay, right? I’m not at the bottom of the river or in a ditch somewhere. So instead of wondering where I am every minute, why don’t you go out and do something fun, like a dance class or learning an instrument? Sewing is actually quite cool if you can believe that. I will come back and see you whenever I can. I think about you all the time.”

  Mom didn’t acknowledge my suggestions, but her tight swallow made clear that she’d understood the message…she had to let me go for a while.

  “Will you promise to be safe?” she said a little hoarsely.

  “Always.” I thought it best to leave out the beheadings, burning, and smallpox.

  “Oh, and Emmie?” she blurted before I could hang up. “You’ve always got a home to come back to, okay?”

  I nodded into the phone, swallowing the urge to cry. “I love you, Mom.”

  “You too, cookie.”

  After hanging up, I sat in the shower chair and breathed deeply through the familiar feeling of guilt. Among other wrongs, I’d officially rekindled the firestorm between my parents—something I’d tried for years to avoid. Now I couldn’t even be here to help Mom through it.

  Wedging my cell phone under my chin, I carefully dragged the vinyl armchair close to Susanna’s bed without making noise. A battle erupted in my mind about what to do with the phone. What if I brought it back to the sixteenth century with me? I could take photos and videos of one of the most famous periods of British history and its key characters. I’d be like scoring footage of Henry the Eighth!

  Susanna twitched on the bed, jolting me out of my stupor. Attempting something like that would not only be a betrayal of Nick’s trust, but no one would believe the images were real without proof. It would become a conspiracy theory, like Bigfoot or the faking of the Moon landing, and I’d be a laughing stock.

  All that mattered was getting back to the sixteenth century in one piece so I could make things right with Nick.

  I switched off my phone and opened Susanna’s cupboard door, unsettling a mountain of toilet rolls, latex glove packets, dog-eared paperback novels, and a couple of television remotes. The rest home staff were probably unaware of how many missing items their resident hoarder was storing. I slid my phone into the back of the top shelf and shut the cupboard door. Whether someone discovered the phone before I returned was not my biggest issue right now. Susanna Grey could wake up at any minute.

  The sleeping pill was beginning to take effect, and I sank into the armchair beside the bed. My breaths eased, and I felt warm and heavy all over. The call of Tudor England tickled the corners of my mind, enveloping me with a crushing urge to be back there in an instant.

  I placed my hand lightly over Susanna’s, cautious not to wake her. Rhythmic breaths broke through her mouth with popping sounds. She was fast asleep. I inched my fingers beneath hers until our palms touched. Holding my friend’s mom’s hand was one for the weird book, but I focused on my relaxation, silently begging for the ring to work without a struggle.

  After an imperceptible amount of time, my head crashed forward, and I woke to the soft click of my dry lips. Susanna’s hand had crept away from mine on the rest home bed, but her eyes were shut. The weight of the sleeping pill coated my bloodstream with lead. If Susanna Grey finished her afternoon snooze and got up to eat a cookie…please, please, please.

  I’d done this before…I could do it again. Come on! I berated myself like a tennis player losing a match. The pep talk worked. After a yucky dream about my friend Mia calmly watching me fall out of a plane, I rolled into the comfort of silk sheets. I was no longer sleeping upright in a stiff chair, I was…my eyes flashed open.

  Four walls of pearled netting surrounded me, carrying a stark silence I’d know anywhere. I clutched the sheets to my chest, the gentle scent of orange blossom clarifying that I was back at Hampton Court Palace. I could’ve kissed the mattress, the gilded ceiling, the paneled walls.

  The next thought flung me upward. I’d brought Susanna Grey with me!

  She stood at the leaded window, fingertips pressed to the glass like spider’s legs. Holy crap, she’s still in her hideous polyester get-up...and I’m in denim jeans.

  It was evident that no one expected me back this soon—even though it was after lunch, the fireplace hadn’t been lit and the room was an icebox. I heaved open the chest stuffed with folded undergarments, hurriedly digging out a smock with a high neck for Susanna, before tearing off my clothes and slipping a plainer smock over my shoulders. I hid my remaining sleeping pill in the tiny compartment within the blue-diamond ring that concealed the miniature portrait of Queen Elizabeth the First.

  When I pressed an ear to the crack between the doors, it returned only silence. Thank goodness my girls were out, but they could return at any moment. I had to think quickly.

  Susanna Grey’s cheeks were paler than milk. “Hi, Lady Grey,” I said as I approached her. “You need to get changed right away.”

  The urgency in my voice clearly frightened her, but she let me help her replace her shirt and trousers with the frilly smock.

  I rolled my modern clothes, Susanna’s, and that effing plastic straw into a sheet and tossed the bundle into the hearth, coughing at the chalky cloud of ash it dislodged. That was the end of the seventy-two bucks still left in my pocket.

  Susanna watched me as I lugged a fresh log onto the mound and lit it with tinder and flint. The fire kindled quickly, and the heat of the flames thawed some of my tension as I watched the clothes begin to disintegrate.

  “We need to go over how you came to be here,” I said, guiding Susanna into a wooden chair. If she began mouthing off to people about time travel and the twenty-first century—including me in it all—we could both be burned for heresy. After everything that had happened with Norfolk and his gang, I couldn’t withstand another scandal at court.

  I sat close to her, speaking slowly. “You are back at Hampton Court Palace. Your daughters are here.” Susanna blinked away tears. “You have been missing for more than four years, and what’s important is that you are back with your family. Everyt
hing else: the blue-diamond ring, the time you spent away…America…doesn’t matter anymore. If you talk about that stuff to anyone, Lady Grey, you could receive a terrible punishment.” I reflexively checked that no one was within earshot. “Let’s just say that you wandered back into court and that you have no memory of how you got here or where you’ve been. Just say you remember nothing of your disappearance and go home to your husband and your garden. Okay? Do you understand?”

  Eyes of creamy brown scanned me from head to foot. “Have mercy on me and I shall be saved,” she said hoarsely, the smock more at ease over her thin shoulders than any modern clothes I’d seen her in.

  There was fresh wine in the drawing-room, and I poured Susanna a cup before escaping to the refuge of my dressing room. I dug through the neatly folded silks, careful not to upset them, and retrieved a simple, iris-colored gown with a square neckline that I managed to tie on myself. Weaving my hair into a braid stirred a memory of my first days at Whitehall Palace. It felt like a lifetime ago.

  Back in my bedchamber, Susanna hadn’t moved. “Where may I find my daughters?” she said with faint confusion.

  “They should come back here soon,” I replied as my stomach made a hollow twist. Dinner wouldn’t be served for hours.

  I kneeled in front of her. “Do you think you can wait here while I get us something to eat? You have to promise that you won’t go anywhere, please. I want you to see your daughters first.”

  She nodded, and I trusted that she wouldn’t want to be anywhere other than the safety of my fire-warmed bedchamber at a time like this.

  Blocking thoughts about Nick’s whereabouts that threatened to send me into a panic spiral, I grabbed a cloak and braved the icy air, racing down empty corridors toward the kitchens.

  “Do you know where everybody is?” I asked one of the chefs as he piled a pewter platter with cured meats, rosemary meatballs, soft cheeses, and prune tarts.

  “There be a wrestling tournament this day at the tiltyard, my lady,” he said.

  It was a Nick Tudor trademark to stage court entertainments during his absence to keep his subjects occupied and out of trouble. The deserted corridors now made sense as I weaved my way back to my chambers, carefully balancing my tray. Making sure no one was following me, I slunk back to my rooms and bolted the door behind me.

  After the mush that Susanna had been eating at the rest home, I wasn’t sure she could handle the rich, fatty flavors of the Tudor court, but she scarfed up the spread like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. Coaxing light conversation out of her about court stuff helped ease her a bit, and after another glass of wine, she asked if she could lie down for a while.

  “Absolutely…I don’t blame you,” I replied with a yawn, and helped Susanna into Violet’s pallet bed. I tried to give her mine, but she balked and refused to take the bed of someone who was higher up in the peerage. She obviously remembered the way things worked around here, which was promising.

  An hour into her snooze, I decided that we could be waiting all afternoon for my ladies to come back and swung my cloak back over my shoulders. Sometimes the chambermaids turned up later in the day, and Alice and Violet deserved to see their mom before anyone else.

  Anxious about Susanna Grey going missing again—this time on my watch—I hurried to the northern side of court, past the Privy Orchard, and across to the tiltyard. The redbrick arena had morphed into a gambling pit, with eager punters hanging from balconies in the high towers. After a minute of scanning, I spotted Alice, Violet, Bridget, and Lucinda squashed together within the third tower. They were cheering at the sportsmen in the pit who’d tied themselves into a jumble of biceps, calves, and breeches.

  As I climbed over disgruntled nobles to reach my ladies in the fourth row, Alice saw me and clapped a hand over her mouth. I’d been gone for too short a time to make it to Worthing and back, and I told the girls it was because I ran into someone on the roads outside the palace.

  “Of whom do you speak?” said Alice, handing Bridget her pouch of sugared almonds.

  There was no way I was about to answer that in front of hundreds of drunken courtiers.

  “Why don’t you come back to my chambers and find out?” I said cryptically.

  “Emmie,” Alice blurted through a laugh, but lines filled her forehead.

  “Who could it possibly be?” said Bridget, already halfway off the bench. She couldn’t resist a mystery.

  “Sorry to be vague and to interrupt the show, but you’re going to want to see this,” I said, my stomach crunching with nerves. I could’ve cringed at myself for making it sound like I’d planned a fun surprise. For all I knew, the shock of reuniting Alice and Violet with their missing mom could send one of them into cardiac arrest.

  We headed back toward my chambers while they grilled me about this secret person. Alice’s curious smile confirmed that she had zero idea it was her mom. The best guess thrown around was the king’s sister Kit, and I swiped two fingers across my lips like a zipper, before remembering that zippers were practically as modern as Wi-Fi.

  I was relieved to find that Susanna had woken up from her nap. She was sitting in a chair in the drawing-room, playing with her hair. Her eyes flared wide as Alice followed me inside, shadowed by Violet.

  “Mother?” Violet said in a flat tone. I might’ve thought she was unaffected had it not been for her bewildered expression.

  “No, Violet, Mother is…” Alice’s usually confident voice drifted off.

  “She is here,” finished Violet.

  “Lottie?” said Susanna.

  I clutched my side, where I’d tied my kirtle too tight. “I found this lady near to the palace,” I explained, the lie burning my throat. But maybe this reunion would finally atone for all my lies to Alice. “She said her name is Susanna Grey.”

  Alice pushed past me, all her etiquette gone. “Mother?” she whispered breathlessly.

  “Alice…sweet Alice,” Susanna replied. “By God’s grace, I see now that you are a lady.”

  Susanna rose from the chair, catching both her daughters’ hands as they fell to their knees in tears. “Most blessed daughters, oh, how my heart sings at the sight of you. I know not how this has come to pass, but if you are the subjects of a dream, may I never awaken.”

  A silent cry punched my chest, and I backed into my bedchamber with Bridget and Lucinda, quietly shutting the doors so the family could reunite in private. A silent decision took shape in my head: if Susanna Grey told Alice and Violet about her time-traveling expedition and my involvement in it, I’d have no choice but to argue for her insanity.

  After a brief catch-up with Bridget and Lucinda, I asked if they could watch over things while I took a nap. My eyelids had become sheets of lead.

  As Bridget and Lucinda sat in the corner and quietly shared theories about where Susanna Grey could have been all this time, I dozed off. When I woke to the distant blast of trumpets announcing dinner, my bedchamber was empty. The robust flames in the hearth said that the fire had been tended, and there was a jug of water and a cup beside my bed. I opened the double doors leading to the drawing-room, bracing myself for what I might find.

  Girlish laughter trilled through the comfy space. Shining faces glanced at me from a cluster of fringed cushions on the floor. Alice, Violet, Lucinda, and Bridget scrambled to rise.

  “Stay where you are,” I said soothingly, crouching beside Alice on the floor. Lady Grey sat in a chair before us, like a librarian instructing an eager circle of children. In just hours, she looked ten years younger.

  “Mother was speaking of Hatfield,” Alice said a little breathlessly. “It seems the lady has been there these past years, but she keeps speaking of a moving coach with no horses and then laughs and laughs.”

  The smile slid off my face. Everyone else, however, looked more amused than concerned, including Susanna. There was color in her cheeks, and life had kindled in her eyes.

  “Lady Pembroke, we are most heartily pleased to have our mother returned
,” Violet said to me. “The lady has no memory of how she came to return to court, but we are truly thankful you brought us to her before informing the Council.”

  “They will wish to question her,” Alice added, her mouth tightening. “However, I fear our dear mother has become frantic.”

  Susanna just stared at her daughters with her narrow lips curled into a frozen smile. It was the face of someone who didn’t have a clue what was going on but felt content.

  When a single tap sounded at the doors, Lucinda welcomed a wooden trolley packed with steaming pewter serving platters. We arranged six chairs around the circular table. Over dinner, I filled the girls in on my fabricated tale about how I’d come upon Susanna wandering along the nearby River Thames, not only drumming the story into Susanna’s head, but also hopefully blocking her from telling more tales about cars or modern inventions.

  It was time to experiment with my growing influence around here, especially now that I felt sure I wanted to stay here with Nick and accept his world for what it was—provided he returned from the north with his head still on his shoulders. I erased that thought as soon as it came.

  “Alice and Violet, I’d like you to take Lady Grey home to Northamptonshire,” I said, sinking my knife into a poached pear. “As you say, there will be interest in her whereabouts for the past four years and how she ended up at court with no memory of anything. However, that’s an issue that should be discussed with her husband, Sir Thomas.” Susanna’s fingers curled into a knot as I continued. “Bridget and Lucinda will be here to attend to me in the meantime; just come back when Lady Grey has settled in. We need not trouble the king with this, and who knows when he’ll be back. You can take one of the coaches.”

  Alice and Violet looked at each other, eyes gleaming. “Bless you, Emmie,” Alice cried, abandoning her chair to hug me from behind. It was probably an outrageous way to treat an impending queen, but I’d encouraged a relaxed closeness in the privacy of my chambers, and I was thrilled to see it in effect. I was never a fan of being at court without Alice, but as one of the future queen’s maids of honour, she wouldn’t be allowed to stay away for too long. Besides, getting Susanna home safely was more important than me having my best friend at court.