The Boleyn Deceit: A Novel (Ann Boleyn Trilogy)

by Andersen, Laura

  Dominic set about changing that, sitting by the bedside and keeping up an almost constant stream of chatter to his friend. It was the most words he’d ever strung together at any one time in his life, and he wished William would wake up enough to say something sarcastic. Death makes you talkative? perhaps, or Can’t you speak of something interesting like women?

  For endless hours Dominic ignored the many others in the bedchamber and talked about last year’s battle in France and their shared childhoods in the schoolroom and the tiltyard. He talked battle tactics and history and recalled pranks that William and Minuette had inflicted on the rest of them.

  The physicians did whatever they could do—which was precious little—and Rochford was a constant presence as well, watching his nephew from beneath hooded eyes. Early in the hours of December 13, as William’s breath grew desperately shallow, Rochford tried to send him out.

  “Go get some rest, Courtenay.” Rochford in private always called him by the name he’d used since Dominic’s childhood.

  “I’m fine.”

  “There’s nothing you can do. You heard the physicians—either he will recover or he won’t. We are all of us in God’s hands, and I cannot believe God is ready to take William just yet. Not when we need him.”

  Dominic wished he could read God’s intentions as well as Rochford seemed to. In any case, he shook his head. “I’m staying.”

  With a shrug, Rochford replied, “As you will. I’ll snatch an hour’s sleep myself, then.”

  So in the darkest hours of the night, with only two physicians and a handful of men attending to William’s physical needs, Dominic finally was able to say what all his words had been leading up to.

  He touched William’s swollen hand and leaned over the bed. “I don’t know if this is what you need to hear, William, but if it is, I say it gladly. About Renaud—about the choices you made in my name—”

  Intended assassination, an arrow in the back, a wife taken in secret … “You are my king, but you are also my friend. And so I forgive you, Will. And I’m sorry.”

  And please, he added silently, please live long enough for me to make things right. Don’t let my last act in your service have been a betrayal.

  As dawn edged a chilly entrance into wintry morning, William opened his eyes.

  INTERLUDE

  26 December 1555

  ROBERT DUDLEY WAS confined in Beauchamp Tower, a forbidding medieval square building that looked every bit the defensive wall for which it had been built three hundred years earlier. He wasn’t sure where his brothers and father were being held, for his guards were under orders to give nothing away. Not even his charm had any effect on their reticence.

  When Dominic walked into his cell, Robert raised one very dramatic eyebrow. “Either I am about to be pardoned or about to be dead,” he remarked wryly. “Which is it?”

  “I am here on my own account,” Dominic answered. “Not the king’s.”

  “Ah. I had thought … So my messages are not getting through.”

  “You’ve been sending messages?”

  “Not successfully, it would seem. If they’ve been intercepted, I’m surprised you don’t know about it.”

  “The court has been somewhat occupied this last month.”

  “William’s smallpox?”

  When Dominic looked surprised, Robert said, “Everyone knows. Though perhaps not quite how bad it was?” he asked thoughtfully. That would explain why the Act of Attainder against his father hadn’t come through yet. The court would not have risked Parliament meeting if the king’s life was truly in danger. And if William had been seriously ill, then Elizabeth must have been frantic.

  Robert couldn’t stand not being near her to give whatever help he could. Which was why he had to get himself out of the Tower. He had assumed, when he was arrested, that it would be simple.

  But then, he had never guessed that he was being used to bring down his own father.

  But now Dominic was here, and he at least was honest. “Did you know that I have not been asked a single question during my confinement? Not one.” Robert sat on the cold stone ledge beneath the cell’s single window. Dominic remained on his feet in the middle of the room, not that there were many options. The cell was no more than six paces in any direction. It held only a bed, a table, and a single chair.

  “I think your father has been the more immediate priority.”

  “No doubt. Best get him out of the way before uncomfortable questions might be posed. You don’t find it revealing that the council plans to convict by attainder and not in an open trial?”

  “What are you implying?”

  That a trial might have exposed the flaws in my father’s supposed treason. That the case against him might have fallen apart like the case against Norfolk. That there’s a reason I’ve been locked up with no one asking me anything …

  “I need to talk to someone,” Robert replied. “I have information that the king needs to know.”

  “What information?” Dominic hardened his voice.

  “Ask yourself this—is it not revealing that in just over a year’s time, two of the finest men in this kingdom, two of England’s senior peers, have been disgraced and killed?”

  “Norfolk died a natural death. And your father is not dead.”

  “Not yet. And Norfolk’s death resulted from a most unnatural arrest for an act of which he was innocent.”

  “Innocently set up by your father’s plots. Northumberland wanted the Catholics crushed and went to great lengths to arrange the fraudulent Penitent’s Confession and then have you plant it in Norfolk’s home. Someone should have warned your father that playing with fire always leads to burning yourself in the end.”

  “Someone was playing with fire, all right, and my father made his share of rash and desperate decisions. But look around you, Dominic, and tell me: Who is left standing? What voices remain to whisper in the king’s ear?”

  Distaste bloomed in Dominic’s eyes. “I assume you are not accusing me.”

  Robert laughed wholeheartedly. “As if you are capable of such deceit. No, Dominic, I am not accusing you of masterminding the downfall of two of England’s most powerful families.”

  Robert would not say the name aloud, but let it hang in the air between them—Rochford.

  He knew he had been understood when Dominic said slowly, “A man accused will say anything—and a man as clever as you will say it convincingly.”

  “A man as clever as me will also have evidence.”

  “Tell me.”

  After a long, considering pause, Robert shook his head. “Not you.”

  “There’s no way the king will speak to you in person.”

  “I don’t want to speak to the king. I want to speak to Elizabeth.”

  It was Dominic’s turn to laugh. “Never.”

  Robert leaned forward, as serious as he’d ever been. “If you do not want William and his kingdom at the mercy of a liar, you will make it happen. Bring me Elizabeth—and I will deliver you a traitor.”

  For

  Sandra Lee Lindsay,

  1942–2006.

  You loved me enough to let me go.

  Thank you.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book was written in the immediate aftermath of a two-thousand-mile cross-country move. When not immersed in fictional Tudor worlds, I was drowning in boxes and school registration forms and impossibly winding New England roads and stark moments of homesickness for friends and family. And also the unexpected, lovely flashes of new beauties and new friends and new worlds.

  Thanks to new friends who love books (we might be small, but we’re opinionated!): Roz Hawk, Janelle Holt, Brenna Palkki, Patty Helsingius, Michelle McKay, Mira Pazolli. And to all my sisters from Waltham to Maynard: I know all of you by name. And you seem not to mind me too much, even if I do read trashy magazines.

  A million hugs to my first and dearest new friend with an old soul: Debbie Ramsay. You (and Bill, Marina, Sasha, an
d Lise) are the best gift of our new lives.

  Thanks to Kate Miciak: the third time’s the charm, and how charmed my life is to have you as my editor! You make everything about my books inexpressibly better, even if I can’t seem to add enough description the first time around.

  A thousand thanks to Tamar Rydzinski, the most unflappable human being I’ve ever known. It’s a wonderful trait in an agent, and one I wistfully admire from the depths of my high-strung temperament.

  And always and ever my family: I’d like to say that all that pizza and cereal you ate contributed to this book, but we all know you’d be eating that way even if I weren’t writing. Domestic I am not. But no wife and mother could love more fiercely (if at times sarcastically) than I love you.

  BY LAURA ANDERSEN

  The Boleyn King

  The Boleyn Deceit

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  LAURA ANDERSEN is married with four children, and possesses a constant sense of having forgotten something important. She has a B.A. in English (with an emphasis in British history), which she puts to use by reading everything she can lay her hands on.

  www.lauraandersenbooks.com

  THE BOLEYN DECEIT

  Laura Andersen

  A READER’S GUIDE

  LETTER FROM ELIZABETH TUDOR TO MINUETTE WYATT

  14 November 1554

  Whitehall Palace

  My dearest friend,

  Well, Minuette, it is not often that I am taken by surprise. Before this summer, I would have hazarded that I knew you as perfectly as I know any person on earth. It is only since I came across you and William at Hever the night of my mother’s death that I have begun to wonder what secrets you might be keeping. But even my imagination could not have conjured the truth.

  My brother came to see me tonight, after the victory banquet from which he so conspicuously disappeared with your hand in his. When William appeared in my chambers he was at his most imperious, dismissing my attendants without pretending to wait for my orders. And when we faced each other alone across my privy chamber, he told me that you and he are betrothed.

  William was shining with joy and I took my cue from that, smothering the practical questions that came effortlessly to mind. I hugged him and I congratulated him on having had the sense to fall in love with a woman worthy of everything he could offer and I let him ramble on about you for some time. As well as I know you, it was a revelation to hear you spoken of by a man in love.

  But I will not lie to you, Minuette. For one thing, I may never give you this letter. I suspect I am writing solely for the solace of my own mind, to work out the tangle of hopes and emotions and ambitions within me. And so I will be honest: with each praise William sang, my concern grew. There was one moment when I thought that, if I closed my eyes, it would be my father I heard, singing my mother’s praises. One would suppose that such a thought would have cheered me—for their love turned out well enough. But all I could think was that lightning does not strike twice. Though William’s obstacles appear less severe than my father’s—at least he has neither wife nor royal child to contend with—they are obstacles nonetheless. I do you the credit of believing you are not unaware of them.

  But Minuette, what most worries me is the change in William. My ever-practical, hardheaded brother is prepared to dismiss every ambition and scrap of counsel to have you. William, who has never had any illusions where women were concerned, who carelessly married off Eleanor in order to enjoy her without complication, has made of you an angel of worship, like a saint on a pedestal.

  And yet, for all my concern, perhaps that is precisely where his future wife belongs. For make no mistake, Minuette, to be a queen consort is to be a symbol more than an individual. The primary task of a consort may be straightforward—to bear a royal son—but straightforward is not the same as simple. You lived with my mother too long to believe that.

  To be a king is to be born favoured of God and man and to live for one’s people as much, if not more so, than for oneself. To be a queen consort is to live for one’s husband and children. And until very recently, the only path to queenship has been to marry a king.

  I remember the first time that point was brought home. I was quite young—only four or five—when my father joined me in a pleasure barge on the Thames as we progressed from Greenwich to Richmond. He was in a playful mood that day, and when I asked him why I had to study so many subjects, he told me about his sisters, Margaret and Mary, who had been queens of Scotland and France respectively. (Though Mary, it is well noted, was a French queen for such a brief time as to be hardly worth mentioning.)

  “You are a daughter and sister of kings as they were,” he noted. “And someday you will likely be a queen yourself. Where would you like to be queen of when you are grown, my sweet? France? Spain?” (I know now he was being optimistic—neither country was likely to offer for the questionably legitimate daughter of a heretic king at the time. How circumstances have changed!)

  I remember perfectly what I answered, as well as I recall the play of sunlight on the water, the green of trees and grass along the riverbanks, the scent of summer flowers and sun-warmed fields. “I should like to be Queen of England,” I said, in the decisive way that only a young child can manage. “For no country is greater than ours.”

  My father laughed, and in memory I can hear the irony in it. “I’m afraid England is out of even your reach,” he said. “As God has given you a brother, He has also given England a king. Your queenship must be elsewhere.”

  And so, Minuette, I admit the uncomfortable truth that a part of me envies you, for you will hold the only title I covet: Queen of England. Not that I envy you the position of a king’s wife. I will tell you whom I truly envy: Mary Stuart, who has it in her reach to discover the difference between being a queen by right of her husband and queen in her own right.

  For Mary has been Queen Regnant of Scotland since she was six days old—though all the world struggles to understand what that truly means. For much of her life, the young queen has not even been in her kingdom but at the French court, being groomed to marry the future King of France. It seems Scotland is so eager to escape the indignities of a female ruler that they will submit to a foreign king rather than endure it. I wonder if they will ever come to regret that bargain.

  Only once in English history has a woman come near to holding power as Queen Regnant, rather than a consort. Four hundred years ago lived Matilda, granddaughter of the Conqueror and herself Holy Roman Empress (through one of those advantageous marriages expected of royal daughters). She was the only surviving child of King Henry I, and that wily king brought his own feudal lords together in order to swear fealty to his daughter before his death. Do you know it is said that there was a tussle between two men over their precedence in swearing said fealty? Robert of Gloucester (bastard son of the king and thus ineligible for the throne) vied against his cousin, Stephen (nephew to the king through his mother), in order to be the first to proclaim their loyalty to Matilda’s royal rights.

  Ironic, for—despite his sworn vow—Stephen made a dash for the crown just after Henry’s death and had himself anointed king before Matilda could cross the Channel and take her place as queen. Many years of bloody civil war ensued as Matilda and her supporters—her half brother, Robert, foremost among them—fought to force Stephen from the throne he had ungraciously and perhaps illegally seized. In the end, the matter was only settled when the aging Stephen agreed to make Matilda’s son, Henry of Anjou, his heir.

  And thus ended the first inglorious attempt of an English queen to rule in her own right.

  Closer to home, I confess it is an issue I have been forced by my position—and yes, perhaps my temperament as well—to consider. After all, I would never have been born if my father had been content to allow his throne to pass to a daughter. Instead, Mary would hold power today and there would never have been a reformation of English religion. But the great Henry VIII could not endure the thought of his carefully crafted power
being passed into a woman’s hands, and so he upset popes and emperors and his own marriage in order to secure a male heir.

  Though it is worth noting that, in the end, my father’s will dictated that should William die before leaving a royal heir of his own, the crown was to pass to me. Henry Tudor’s pride in his blood, it seems, was only slightly less than his need for a son.

  And so, God forbid, if William were to die before leaving a marriage-born child of his own, I would succeed to England’s throne. You know me too well for me to waste time asserting that it is an honour I dream not of. For I have dreams, Minuette, though none of them center on the loss of a brother who has been dear to me since the moment he first curled his infant hand around my finger. But life is uncertain, and to study the history of kings is to know that preparation is never to be scoffed at.

  And so two words wind through my dreams and occasionally into my waking hours: What if? What if I am called upon to rule England?

  I do not think it arrogance to believe that I am as qualified as William. Have we not had the same education, shared the same tutors and lessons? And we all know I am by nature more suited to the intellectual demands of the position. Where does my brother outshine me?

  The answer to that is stark: on the battlefield. For though I ride and hunt as well as any man, I do not wield weapons and I may not ride to war. The Great Seal of England depicts the ruler in two states: dispensing justice on one side, on the other mounted on horseback with sword unsheathed to defend the kingdom. Though an extraordinary woman may find her way to fulfill the first, how is she to perform the second? A role, by the way, that William has shown himself so perfectly fitted for on the fields of France this summer.