As Carrie did not know the whole of why they were there, Minuette was curious. “What do you think is wrong?” she asked.
With a startling fierceness, Carrie said, “You do not belong at Framlingham, nor anywhere near the Howards. Why do you think your mother wouldn’t have you with her when she married Lord Stephen? She wanted you kept safe, and there’s no safety in this nest of vipers.”
“Carrie—”
“She hated the old duke and she hated Framlingham. This is where she died, and heaven knows I would never have come back here but for you.”
Minuette let Carrie’s breathing even out and her high colour fade to normal before she asked, “And Lord Stephen? Did my mother hate her husband as well?”
“No,” Carrie said grudgingly. “But that doesn’t mean she was comfortable with him. Whatever she felt, it wasn’t simple.”
A woman’s voice drifted from the open doorway. “Dear, dear, such venom. If I were you, Mistress Wyatt, I would slap your maid for such words.”
“You are not me,” Minuette said coolly, dismissing Carrie with a nod. When they were alone, she asked Eleanor, “What do you want?”
Eleanor perched on the edge of the table and plucked up one of Dominic’s letters. “ ‘William is working hard,’ ” she read, “ ‘which both surprises and pleases me. I am pressing for a quick finish, for I desperately miss England. No later than mid-November, we are promised. I send my good wishes always … Dominic.’ ”
Minuette concentrated on keeping her temper, for there was no William here to back her. Eleanor seemed a great favorite of the Duke of Norfolk, and Minuette was a guest in his home—a guest whose mission was to determine if he was about to commit treason.
“William has not written you?” Eleanor asked, a little too casually.
“I did not expect him to,” Minuette replied. I will miss you, he’d said. She shoved that memory away.
“Really? I thought the two of you were such … friends.” She stood up with that annoying feline assuredness and said, “He has written to me.”
Not for anything in the world would Minuette ask what William had written, but she felt a strong flash of jealousy. After Hever, added to their years of friendship … It doesn’t matter, she told herself. It’s not as though I want William to be in love with me.
She stood as well, snatched back the letter that Eleanor still held, and said, “I am expected by the Lady Mary. You will excuse me.”
“Of course.” But Eleanor didn’t move. “Have you had any word from Jonathan recently?”
Minuette had to calculate quickly in her mind—was it likely that Jonathan would have told Eleanor about her refusal? Surely not. He was kind but not stupid. This was nothing more than Eleanor fishing for information.
“I have not heard from Jonathan,” she said. “I understood that he is to stay in Lord Exeter’s service until the treaty is done.”
“Did Lord Exeter tell you that?”
If Eleanor wouldn’t leave, then Minuette would. She walked to the open door without bothering to answer, but Eleanor called after her. “Do you not wish to know why William wrote to me?”
Not if it were my last wish on earth, Minuette thought. She had just entered the corridor when Eleanor added, “He sent his congratulations. I am once more with child.”
To the end of her days, she would count it to her credit that she did not react outwardly. She did not turn or exclaim or falter in her escape. But neither did she come to her surroundings until she was outdoors, in the massive enclosed courtyard. She had to stop to draw breath, to blink furiously up at the sky, to will herself not to cry. It’s nothing to do with me, she thought. It doesn’t matter. Who could even say that this child was William’s? Eleanor had been married more than a year now, after all.
The tightness of her body eased. And just in time, for Lady Mary was walking in her direction. As she approached Minuette, she waved off the two ladies who attended her. “Will you walk with me?” she asked.
“Yes, my lady,” Minuette said, falling into step with her. Mary wore a cloak over her dark blue dress, and Minuette realized she was cold, having dashed outside without any thought to the October temperatures. But “wait while I fetch a cloak” was not something one said to royalty, not even dispossessed royalty. Her light wool kirtle would have to suffice.
She waited, as one did, for Mary to launch a topic. The French treaty again, worrying away at William’s matrimonial options, continued probing for cracks in the king’s council …
“Are you a true Catholic, Mistress Wyatt?”
“I beg your pardon, my lady?”
Mary turned her handsome, severe face to her. “I have not seen you at service above three times since you came to Framlingham. As you appear in all other aspects to be well, I must wonder if you are, in your heart, a believer.”
How could she possibly answer? Those words meant something different depending on who asked them. From Mary, they meant Do you believe in the supremacy of the Pope? Do you believe my father was wrong in claiming that supremacy? Do you believe that those who disagree are heretics?
“I am a true subject of His Majesty, the king.”
That displeased Mary. “Even kings are subject to God.”
“I did not say otherwise.” But whether that made them subject to the Pope … Theological disputes made Minuette’s head ache.
“You are subtle in your words,” Mary said. “I should expect that from one trained as you were, in the household of that woman.”
And don’t you think you might believe what you do because of your training from your mother? Minuette wondered. She thought of her mother’s rosary, left safely at Wynfield, and wondered how her beliefs might have differed if her mother had not left her at court. Perhaps all the debates have less to do with God’s will and more to do with our own experience.
Or perhaps I am wrong, and Mary is right, and I will end in hell for my support of Queen Anne. If so, she might as well be damned for her true beliefs.
“I think,” Minuette said, “that God cannot love form more than He does His children. Why must England tear itself apart over this small matter of form?”
Mary hardened, and Minuette thought she must look quite a bit like her mother just now, infallibly right and royally certain. “The saving of God’s children will never be a small matter. It is everything. And if the king will not see it …”
Every sense alert, Minuette probed, “Then what?”
“A true son of my father will shake off the evil of his councilors and do what is right.”
That left some interesting possibilities, Minuette thought. Reverse that sentence and it became If he does not shake off the evil of his councilors … then he is not a true son of my father.
The only thing staying Mary’s hand as figurehead of a rebellion was her belief in William’s paternity. Even that was a little shaky, since William had been conceived before her mother’s death and was thus, in Mary’s eyes, not legitimate. But if Mary were brought to believe that Henry had not been William’s father at all, then her righteousness would be a weapon used to set England aflame.
And that is why I am here, Minuette reminded herself. Forget Eleanor, forget insults and unpleasant memories and Carrie’s warnings and my ethical uneasiness. I have to find the Penitent’s Confession before it can be used to start a war.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ELIZABETH READ THE dispatch her uncle had handed her in private with an anger that increased with each word. When she finished the précis, she laid it down carefully on the table before her and said grimly, “Where did you get this information?”
“An intercept from the Spanish ambassador.”
“Bring him to me. Now,” Elizabeth spat.
Rochford hesitated. “I would counsel patience, Your Highness.”
“Three Spanish ships are headed to our coast. How long am I supposed to be patient—until Mary can be smuggled out? Until she shows up at the emperor’s court, or as the figure
head of an army? What are you waiting for?”
If he was offended, he didn’t let it show. “Until we can be certain of the enemy within our gates. The Spanish cannot do this without English help. Let them play it out, think that all is well, and when they are relaxed … we strike.”
Elizabeth sat back, considering. “Framlingham is not far from the coastline. Mary could easily be moved from there to a ship.”
Rochford inclined his head.
Her anger grew. “Framlingham—where you have sent Minuette. How could you? She is the least likely spy …”
“Which is why she is useful. She has already shared indications that Norfolk means to move soon.”
“I want her out. Today.”
As he met her gaze, Elizabeth felt the full weight of her uncle’s authority and years of rule. For the first time, she wondered which of them would prevail in a confrontation. Just how far would her borrowed power take her?
With a shrug, Rochford said, “The girl is not in danger. I have men nearby and she knows how to reach them.”
“Why, if there is no threat of danger?” Elizabeth challenged. She thought of what William would say if he were having this conversation, and the knowledge of his anger made her even bolder. “She is not yours to use.”
The struggle was all in the eyes, Elizabeth thought. Don’t look away, don’t show fear, don’t back down.
Rochford spoke first. “I propose a compromise. You send a man you trust to Norfolk. A man who can be trusted with the relevant information. A man Mistress Wyatt would trust as well. Give him power to determine the situation. A man inside the house itself, who can act at once if he senses the slightest danger.”
When she did not respond immediately, Rochford leaned forward and fixed her with an intent focus that reminded her forcibly of her mother. “Elizabeth, this is not a game. This is your brother’s kingdom. There are those who would take it from him by violence, and though she is your sister, Mary will allow herself to be used by such men. We must know who they are. William’s life may depend on it.”
“Whom would you suggest?”
He shook his head. “I would prefer that you choose, Your Highness. Mistress Wyatt is your friend, and I want you to be assured that whomever you send will look after her as you would wish.”
There was only one choice. “Send for Lord Robert Dudley.”
Her uncle was quick—he’d been gone only a quarter hour when Robert entered the room. He bowed in the doorway, then sauntered across to her.
“You have an assignment for me, milady?” Robert kissed Elizabeth’s hand, lingering to draw it along his cheek. Elizabeth closed her eyes, savouring the heady touch of recklessness.
All too soon, she drew her hand away and met Robert’s intimate gaze with what she hoped was a neutral one. “I do have an assignment. A critical one.”
“I’m listening.”
“I need you to go to Framlingham at once.”
“Sending me away? When I’ve only just returned from France?”
“I’m serious, Robert. Minuette is there, at my uncle’s behest. She is keeping watch for him on Mary.”
“And she’s in over her head?”
“Possibly.”
“This won’t be easy. I am my father’s son, after all. And the name of Dudley is not a welcome one in Catholic circles.”
“You are not going at Rochford’s request, you are going at mine. And I do not need you to be trusted. Rather the opposite—I would be quite glad for everyone in that house to be on their guard with you around.”
It was so easy to overlook the canny and careful man behind the lightness. But it was in full evidence now, as Robert laced his fingers together and studied her with something other than flirtation. “You think they would harm her?”
Elizabeth had asked herself that, without coming to a conclusion. “I think that Minuette is too trusting for her own good. You are to ensure that doesn’t get her into trouble.”
“Are you certain this order comes from you?”
“Why?”
A shake of his head and the mischief was back. “I want to know that you are the one who owes me, and not Rochford.” He trailed a finger down her cheek. “I’d much rather collect a debt from you.”
Minuette spent the next six days in almost constant attendance of either Lady Mary or the Howard family. Her head buzzed with gossip, her skin crawled with half-told truths, and still she was no nearer finding the Penitent’s Confession than she had been a month ago. She was beginning to wonder precisely what Rochford expected of her—to declare Framlingham under crown control and demand they turn out all their secrets for her? It might come to that, she thought blackly, in which case Rochford did not send enough men with me.
A headache sent her finally to solitude in her own room, but she couldn’t settle to anything. Finally she sent for Carrie, merely to have someone not an enemy to talk to.
Carrie took one look at her and brought Minuette a cold compress for her head and an herbal concoction for her to sip. Then she instructed her to shut her eyes.
“I will, if you’ll tell me what you’ve been doing with your days.”
“I’ve been sitting with an old woman who helped nurse your mother at the end. She’s served the Howards since she was a girl, and they’ve put her in a suite of rooms now that she’s too frail to walk much. I suppose that speaks well of them.”
Carrie said it doubtfully, as though admitting that even a snake might have some useful points, and Minuette said, “Tell me about that, about my mother’s death.”
There was a long silence, and she forced herself to keep her eyes closed, afraid to give Carrie any reason to be distracted. Finally Carrie said, “Childbed fever, it was, you know that.”
“But I don’t know what it means. How long was she ill? Did she know her baby had died? Did she ask for me?” That last question brought William to her mind, and she realized that they were all of them orphans now. Except Dominic, who might as well have been, what with his mother so far away and not always sure of who she was.
“I never liked Lord Stephen, but I will say for him that he wouldn’t leave her side. He told her himself about the baby, stayed with her when she wept. And when the fever came … he slept in a chair, when he slept at all, and he ordered us around as though he could keep death away if he just willed it hard enough.”
This was an entirely new picture of her stepfather, and yet Minuette found she could believe it.
“Pity is, she didn’t know he was there, not at the end.”
“Like Queen Anne,” Minuette murmured.
“Worse, really. Your mother … she didn’t wake at all for the last week. She lingered longer than we thought she could, never eating, never drinking, never waking. A blessing, I suppose. She didn’t know she was dying.”
Carrie’s tone changed to briskness. “At any rate, the old nurse was very good to her, and it’s little enough I can do to sit with her for a spell. She likes to talk and has no one to listen to her. Though she said the young master was a captive audience right enough last year.”
“The young master?”
“Giles Howard. She nursed him the spring before his marriage. A month they were locked up, just the two of them and someone to cook and clean. Probably he got well faster than he would have just to get away from her talking.”
Minuette’s attention was entirely caught. “Giles was ill the spring before his marriage?” She bit her lip. March of last year he had not been at home, despite what he had told the court. He had spent the month in a remote manor—so her stepfather had told her. She had assumed he’d taken Alyce there, gotten her with child that month. But what if he hadn’t?
“What month, Carrie? Do you remember?”
“Early spring, before Easter. Had the pox, he did. Family didn’t want it spread around court, so they kept it quiet.”
Minuette was left speechless. She had to admit that having the pox and being discreetly nursed sounded far more like Giles
than did sweeping Alyce de Clare off her feet and into a dangerous romance. Frankly, her opinion of Alyce rose if Giles had not been her lover.
But then who had?
For a frightening moment Minuette wondered if all this suspicion of the Howard family was her fault. But no, Rochford had his own spies. Her stepfather had clearly warned them of the Penitent’s Confession. And just because Giles hadn’t been Alyce’s lover didn’t mean it hadn’t been a Howard. There was the Earl of Surrey, after all—he was young. There was even her stepfather himself, who was not young but did have an air of dissolute charm about him.
Still, she had been so sure it was Giles.
She didn’t have long to fret about it, because just after breakfast the next morning Robert Dudley arrived at Framlingham. When he was shown in—obviously uninvited and unwanted—Minuette didn’t know whether to laugh or rage. She settled for dragging him to an out-of-the-way corner of the kitchen gardens as soon as possible.
“This is getting ridiculous,” she said. “How could there possibly be anything afoot here with people popping in and out without warning? If I were Norfolk, I would simply sit back and entertain myself while everybody runs around like headless fowl.”
“Finished?” Robert asked, and the fact that he was calm, that he did not tease her, brought Minuette back uncomfortably to earth. If Robert was serious, then something was definitely wrong.
“I’m finished. Why are you here?”
“The Spanish navy is on the move. If Mary’s going to run for it, it will be soon—possibly days. And I have a message for you from Lord Rochford. One he would not risk committing to paper.”
“What is it?”
“An informant from inside the emperor’s household says that the plan might not be to spirit away Mary—if his men are presented with evidence of the king’s illegitimacy, they are authorized to land and march on London.”
“Then they believe the evidence is here?”
Robert nodded.
Minuette sank onto the edge of a raised planting bed, thinking of Spanish soldiers on English soil. “It might already be gone,” she began, but Robert shook his head.
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