Jeane Westin

by The Virgin's Daughters (v5)

  Kate breathed in deeply and cautioned herself against finding a no for every yes she thought, pulling her mind about willy-nilly until all was certain, then all was doubt. She must ever be happy and trust that God would sustain her in the right. Without that trust, the devil could enter her heart and touch her babe with evil.

  She’d grown skilled at keeping a calm face before the queen, though calm was more difficult as time passed. All Ned’s attempts to reach Cecil had been turned away by the press of official business, and Lord Dudley had dodged every effort to commit to aiding them. Why? He had helped them wed. What was his game now?

  “Come!” Elizabeth said to Kate, throwing off her cloak and opening the full parapet windows her father had installed for her mother, Anne Boleyn. Above, carved in stone, was Anne’s motto: Semper Eadem. “Always the Same.” Elizabeth had taken it for one of her own in the first year of her reign. Kate wondered if that was Elizabeth’s quiet attempt to honor the woman who had been called the Great Whore and accused of sleeping with five men, one her own brother. Her young, beautiful mother whose head had been taken off on her father’s orders to make way for another wife mere days later.

  “Look down there,” Elizabeth said, taking Kate’s arm and guiding her attention to a place in the courtyard below. “There my mother stood below my father’s windows, holding me up for him to see and begging for her life . . . to stay with me.” Her voice was a private one, soft and sad, as Kate had never heard it.

  “Do you recall that time, Majesty?” Kate asked, shocked and saddened at such an awful memory.

  “I was not three years. I remember, or was told of it. I don’t know, except that it is in my head.” The queen shrugged the moment away as if it did not matter, but Kate thought it did, more than the queen would ever say, more, perhaps, than she knew.

  As Kate stepped away from the balcony, the motto “Always the Same” took on a more ominous meaning: All traitors die. She forced herself to shake off such worry, allowing the salty, chill wind blowing from the great estuary to cleanse her mind, as it refreshed the chamber beyond the ability of sprinkled attar of roses.

  “We are tired with this business of state,” the queen announced, regal again after breathing in deeply, her eyes closed. Clapping her hands, she rushed to her painted virginals and sat before it. “Let us sing.”

  It was a command, but one Kate and the other ladies eagerly followed. As Elizabeth was a skilled musician, she was quick to take offense at a wrong note sung, but she was also happiest at her music, lifting her sweet voice above all for the space of a song without the weight of royal care.

  “What shall it be?” She was laughing, her fingers running nimbly up and down the keyboard.

  “Let us sing the song that begins, ‘Fain would I sing, but fury makes me fret,’ ” called out Mistress Ashley.

  “Much too slow and dismal, Nurse,” the queen announced.

  She did not choose new music, but an old country song Kate thought more fit for milkmaids than highborn ladies, two with the royal Tudor blood flowing in their veins and, in one instance, in her babe’s. Kate brought herself back from such reverie as the queen began to play and sing.

  “‘So to the wood went I...’ ”

  Her attending ladies joined her in their parts, Kate taking the lower voicing: “ ‘With love to live and lie...’ ” They sang the many verses of an argument between fortune and love until the last note died away.

  The queen did not remove her hands from the virginals’ keys, and Kate was resigned to sing more. But the queen did not play another song and waved all about her away, not showing her face. The words had moved her, and Kate suspected Her Majesty thought of the hunting lodge and the carefree hours of the picnic in the glen after, and of her Robin, who had made winter into spring for his Bess. Surely Elizabeth had heart enough to understand—

  No, no! Kate shook herself from that false reverie. Never think it, she commanded herself, dodging again the trap of believing that the queen’s heart was like any woman’s. Elizabeth’s heart would bleed tears for Dudley, yet when she could have him by one nod of her head, she protected her single rule as reigning queen. She was Henry VIII’s daughter, not the longed-for son for whom he’d divorced his queen and thrown down an ancient Church, but yet and all, she was a lion’s cub. She would bestride this kingdom alone, as Henry had. Yet she would keep Dudley near, trying to have it all.

  Kate’s head told her that despite all the queen’s strength and knowledge there would come no understanding for another woman of the blood royal who could not put England’s throne or its queen before her love for a man.

  Ned must reach Cecil or Dudley. And soon, before the child quickening under her breast could not be denied before the whole court.

  Ned. She must see him. This was all too much to bear alone, though bear it she did for interminable hours of service to Her Majesty until she could make her way to her chamber, thankfully no longer shared with Lady Saintloe, and then swiftly through the rush-lit halls to Jane’s apartment, where he waited.

  “Ned!” She collapsed in his arms, nearly sobbing with relief. But instead of taking her to bed, where she could reveal her secret inside the circle of his strong, warm arms and thrill to the knowledge of his son and heir, he seated her at a small table by the fire. A sparse supper was laid; a pot of syllabub nestling close to the flames simmered, filling the room with its spiced scents.

  He knelt before her. “The greatest news, sweetheart!” he said in a burst of words.

  A sheen of health and sweat shone on his face, as if he had been late at sword practice. And indeed, he wore neither ruff nor doublet, his sleeves rolled above his elbows, his light brown beard glistening, his hair damp and tightly curled, springing alive under her fingers.

  She leaned away and stared into his face, taking in his eyes flashing excitement. Had he guessed she was with child . . . his child? Did it show on her face? He was unlike other men, who were always surprised, as if they’d had no part in making a child. Yet his next words proved his mind was elsewhere.

  One word tumbling against the next, Ned spoke. “My lord Dudley is indeed our friend, Kate, though I know you doubt him. He has approached the queen for me.”

  “What?” Kate came instantly erect. These were the words she’d been hoping for. She could not doubt him, but she had just come from the queen, who’d said by no word or glance—

  “Yes, sweetheart, I am to raise a thousand men from Hertfordshire and take them into France.” Ned was near breathless as he looked for her response.

  Kate, her mind refusing to make such a complete retreat from what she’d first thought he meant, spoke haltingly. “Ned, I don’t—”

  But he was too excited to be long interrupted, his hands pressing her shoulders. “Robert has promised me that his brother, Warwick, will give me command of the men who take Calais!” He searched her face, his expression telling her that he expected her delighted surprise, even wonderment.

  The food was untouched, the syllabub gradually simmering away, a thick, milky skin forming atop the pot. She was speechless.

  Ned frowned. “Sweetheart, don’t you know what this means to us?”

  “No,” she replied dully, as unwell as if she stood outside in the unhealthy night air.

  “Say you so, Kate?” he replied, impatient with her for the first time. “It means I, Edward, Earl of Hertford, will hand Elizabeth the keys to Calais. I, Edward, will wipe away the disgrace of Calais’s loss.” He shook with determination. “Then I will be her hero of the day. She might not want to grant us marriage, but think you she could refuse me anything when all England sings my name?”

  Kate was struck dumb. His face was lit with the fever of war and glory. She’d seen this expression before on other men. It was the warrior call a man could not deny and retain that which made him a man to himself.

  He filled a plate with meat nestled in fine manchet bread, dipped under the milk skin on the pot for a cup of syllabub and placed it besid
e her. His excitement grew as he talked on, his face lit with visions of coming triumphs. All their problems would vanish, he said in a dozen ways, painting such pictures of success, scattered with such kisses on her nose and eyes and cheeks that she believed he saw victories in his mind. He was so winningly a boy with his first sword that she was at last won to his words, and believed them true. There seemed no other way to bring swift acceptance from Elizabeth. And swift it must be.

  “How long would you be in France?”

  Ned leapt to his feet, pacing the room, moving in and out of the firelight’s reach, his shadow twice that of mortal man. “Two months and possibly less. The men of Hertfordshire will flock to my banner within the week. Our English troops are in every way better than the frogs’, Kate.” He dropped down beside her again. “Think, sweetheart. In two months, we will declare ourselves openly to the queen and the country. She must accept our marriage. And then we will to Eltham and to our life.” His face glowed at the thought of home.

  “Is our parting the only way, Ned?” she said, and, leaving the food uneaten, clung to his sword arm with both hands.

  “It is the surest and fastest, sweeting, to bring us together forever. Trust me, and trust Dudley. He knows her best.”

  Kate could not stand against Ned or force him to stay by her side with the words, I am with child. She could offer no better way to win Her Majesty’s consent. Though she doubted Dudley, or anyone, knew the queen as well as they thought. Elizabeth could always surprise. But not this time, please God, Kate prayed, not this time.

  She must allow Ned his great possibility. It was a risk they both must take. Any other way and all could be too easily lost upon a queen’s whim. If the queen could be blocked by glory, then it must be done. A traitorous marriage might be worth her head, but never Ned’s, never her babe’s. She sat straighter and resolved against further questioning. “My love, when do you leave?”

  “Early on the morrow,” he said, stroking her hair, smiling at her firelit face until his smile was swallowed by desire.

  He carried her to a small truckle bed and laid her gently on the silk coverlet and fitted his long legs in beside her.

  As he stoked the flames between them with his mouth, she held her need to tell him what great thing was happening to her, to them both. And it took all her will.

  Even in the heat of the flash of fire he sent through her, she did not speak of what she knew, though it filled her throat.

  Later, after the satisfaction of desire as he held her lazily in his arms, he whispered his whole love in her ear, and still she did not tell him.

  Two months and all would be resolved. Two months. She could withstand anything for two months.

  When she slipped away to her own chamber, leaving her sleeping lord with a soft kiss on his lips, the sea coal in the hearth had lost its last glimmer and turned to ashes.

  August 1562

  Elizabeth took a fever in August as the courtiers, gentlemen, yeomen, scullery maids and all removed to Hampton Court, Cardinal Wolsey’s hasty gift to the queen’s father for daring to build a palace greater than Henry’s own.

  To Kate’s mind, Hampton Court held the most charming inner courtyards of all the royal palaces. The queen’s apartments overlooked the ordered knot and herb gardens and tree-lined cinder paths, but Elizabeth had not enjoyed them as she usually would. She’d taken to her bed even as she ordered additional troops to France.

  Kate tended Her Majesty for many hours each day, spooning broth into her reluctant mouth and cooling her with rose-water compresses. The privy bedchamber was hot and steaming. The doctors refused to allow outside air to circulate lest it carry plague or the sweating sickness. They dosed her thrice daily with a decoction of feverfew laced with honey to take away the taste of the bitter root, until the queen rebelled and would take no more.

  Every day Kate followed the dispatches from France, as the queen heard them. Kate showed no interest in Cecil’s reports, but she listened to every word while busy about her duties, ever hoping for news of Ned. Though she knew from his letters to his sister, he could not chance writing to her beyond, Remember me to my friends and the ladies of the bedchamber and tell them I am well; nonetheless she looked for her own letter with every courier.

  The news from France was endlessly bad. A full civil war had begun, with atrocities first by Catholics, then by Protestants, with English forces occasionally drawing fire from both sides. While she prayed nightly for Ned’s safe return, her prayers now included his swift return. She was near seven months gone and no longer able to hide her swollen body, except under the most elaborate farthingales. She now blessed the awkward devices, because they had hidden her swollen belly, though she could not hide her expanding waistline. She had hired a seamstress to let out her gowns, sworn her to secrecy with a gold crown, and warned her of dire consequences if she carried any word of what she knew to others.

  One morning as Kate was staring down at linen she had dropped on the floor and dreading having to bend down to retrieve it, Mistress Ashley announced, “My lady Grey, you have grown fleshy and lazy.”

  “Lady Katherine is overfond of sweets and lark pie with honey,” Lady Saintloe observed with a wry smile and calculating eye.

  She knows! Kate was sure of it. And if that lady knew, most assuredly some of the others had whispered amongst themselves. Someone would tell the queen as soon as she recovered.

  Ashley moved into the queen’s bedchamber to hover about her bed. Kate followed Saintloe to confront her. What could she offer? Money on Ned’s return? Her mother’s emerald necklace, much admired by Saintloe?

  Before Kate could make any offer, Lady Saintloe rounded on her and widened her eyes in alarm. “I see nothing, my lady, and will ever say it is so.”

  Kate drew needed breath. “Why? You are no friend to me.”

  Saintloe’s low voice went lower still. “You will lose your head, my lady, and so will your defiler—my lord of Hertford, isn’t it?—and I would not be the one who brings on such royal angers. To be near the block is to be besplattered with blood.”

  Kate’s hand leapt to her throat. “You are cruel, lady. My lord and I are married. Yet I thank you for your silence and—”

  Saintloe raised her hand to stop a flood of gratitude, her voice grating against Kate’s ears. “Harlot or wife, you are named by Henry’s will as heir to the throne of England. Marriage without the queen’s permission is treason. Think you well, lady! Which is worse in Elizabeth’s mind . . . a whore or a fertile heir?”

  Kate’s throat closed against any vain defense she could have offered.

  “No, my lady of Hertford, I want no thanks from you. I want nothing but to be a world away when the queen discovers your betrayal. Her anger will fall on all in her service, and for that I curse you, as will all the ladies. If there is sympathy in any corner of this court, Lady Katherine, be assured it will be silent.”

  There was nothing to do but walk away past the guards and into the hall. Kate thought to walk to Jane’s chambers, as she was the only person she could call friend, but it was agony to talk about Ned when she knew nothing more than that he had been assaulting one French-fortified town after another all summer.

  Nevertheless, she turned toward Jane’s rooms. Frightened by the green venom in Saintloe’s face, Kate suddenly was unable to bear her secret alone. She must confide in someone who could get word to Ned. He must return; he must!

  Jane had said nothing of her thickening middle; indeed, Kate thought her too witless to notice. She could prattle of nothing but her new position as a lady of honor who walked out with the queen to take the air. And Robert Dudley. Always Jane talked of Dudley.

  Alvarez de Quadra de Avila, the Spanish ambassador and a bishop, followed by his dark dons, some she suspected of being Jesuits in courtiers’ clothing, stopped and bowed as she neared Jane’s rooms. They were quite alone at this hour, when all were at their supper.

  Kate curtsied and sought to pass.

  “
My lady,” de Quadra said in his accented lisping English, “I have long wanted an audience.”

  Audience? “My lord ambassador, Sir William Cecil will most gladly arrange an audience with the queen when she is recovered.”

  He smiled at her deliberate misunderstanding. “How goes the queen’s health, my lady Katherine?”

  “A slight summer fever, but she will soon mend.”

  “God’s will be done.”

  “As it will.”

  He nodded. “I was speaking, my lady, of an audience with you as heir to a sickly monarch.”

  Tread softly, Kate thought, the words swimming through her head. “Sir, do not think me a dolt. It is known that Spain favors Mary, queen of Scots, or one of their own for the succession.”

  He smiled and bowed slightly. “What is known can be unknown, my lady Grey.”

  She would not respond. It would be treason to speak of such matters with the Spanish, or even the meanest scullery maid.

  He lowered his voice to a whisper, so that his retinue moved forward en masse to hear. “If you would consent to form a union with a Spanish prince, perhaps our King Philip’s son, Don Carlos—”

  Kate almost laughed, and she was sure de Quadra saw it lurking behind her mouth. Don Carlos was a notorious whore chaser who liked to whip his whores to death when he finished with them. A madman. She was sure the ambassador saw the revulsion that now flooded her face. She meant him to see it.

  “—or another prince of the blood,” he continued. “And, of course, as infanta you would embrace the true faith. It is my belief that you are not a strong dissenter.”

  For want of a fan, Kate used her hand to cool her face, uncertain whether she should walk past the man or call a yeoman guard.

  But de Quadra wasn’t finished. “The might of Spain with its fleet and armies would support you”—he leaned closer—“and the son you carry by the Earl of Hertford.”