“What will happen to her, Your Grace?” she whispered.
“Mistress Park and her husband have agreed to go live with her for a time at one of my smaller manors. I will send her tutors, and one day we can find her a suitable true husband,” Elizabeth answered. “None will need to know who she truly is, so she can have the freedom to find her own path. Perhaps one day she will be able to forget all this. Time can truly be a great healer, especially to one so young.”
Kate thought of Tom Seymour and Queen Catherine, of young Princess Elizabeth, caught up in things she couldn’t yet understand, feelings she couldn’t yet fathom. “Has it helped to heal you?”
Elizabeth frowned, yet she said nothing. She took Kate’s arm and led her out of the small chamber where Lady Mary slept so fitfully. “I know I need not say this, Kate, not to you. But you do know that no matter what Master Finsley’s delusions were, Lady Mary could not have been the child of my father.”
Kate nodded. She had told the queen all that she had learned of Gerald Finsley’s actions, his attempt to convince the Spanish that Lady Mary could be the true heiress to the English throne, using the music as his “proof.”
“I do know that, Your Grace. But I still feel so very foolish.”
“Why foolish, Kate?”
“I could not see Master Finsley’s true intentions. I think I was blinded by my childhood memories of him and his sister. It took me much too long to see what was really his scheme.”
Elizabeth stopped next to the window at the end of the quiet corridor. She was silent for a long moment, as if her thoughts were very far away, and Kate studied the scene in the garden below. She glimpsed Rob walking with some of his actors, their brilliantly colored cloaks shimmering in the winter twilight. Kate suddenly found herself wanting to run down to him, to dance and laugh and revel in Christmas, and forget what she had seen.
But there was never any forgetting. She had learned that too well in her time at court.
“I hope that you will never lose that tenderheartedness, my Kate,” the queen said softly. She, too, watched the actors, her dark eyes wistful. “Too many people here are hardened, their souls made brittle by what they have done to survive in this world. Perhaps I am the same way, and it makes me hard and suspicious. I need people around me who can remind me of the merry things in life. The important things.”
“Important things, Your Grace?”
“Things like music, as I am sure you know well, Kate. Dancing, laughter. Family.”
Kate gave a wry laugh. Family seemed to be what had led so many people astray this Christmas season. Master Finsley thought his wife, and therefore he, should be part of a royal family. The queen’s family schemed and planned behind her back—Lady Catherine for love, Mary, Queen of Scots, for more thrones. “Surely family has caused its share of problems.”
“Especially of late? Aye,” Elizabeth answered. “But such trials show us who we can trust. And teach us to take joy where we can, aye? So—let us have dancing tonight, and celebrate that it is Christmas once again.”
Kate looked once more to Rob, whose golden hair shimmered in the emerging moonlight, whose laughter she was sure she could still hear. He looked up and caught her watching, and waved with a small smile just for her. “Aye, Your Grace. Let us have dancing indeed. . . .”
EPILOGUE
Twelfth Night
“Here comes I, old Father Christmas!” proclaimed the figure who strode across the stage of the great hall, his green velvet robes and false white beard flapping about to the merriment of the audience. “Christmas comes but once a year, but when it does it brings good cheer. Roast beef and plum pudding, and plenty of good English beer! Last Christmastide I turned the spit, I burnt my finger and can’t find of it . . .”
Kate laughed along with the rest of the court as Father Christmas leaped about. She was happy to see the play for once from the audience side. She sat beside her father on one of the tiered benches that rose behind the queen’s tall-backed chair. Queen Elizabeth smiled and waved her feather fan as her maids, arrayed around her in their bright satins, giggled.
Kate scanned the audience to take in the various groups in attendance. Lord Halton was there with the other Scots, though Lord Macintosh seemed to have absented himself. As had Bishop de Quadra, who claimed a slight illness. But every English family at court had crowded into the room, and the merriment seemed to burn even higher, warmer, after all that had happened to try to mar their holiday.
Lady Catherine sat with her friends and dogs on the other side of the queen, her pretty face still a bit pale against her black-and-pearl headdress, but Lord Hertford’s “rescue” seemed to have revived her spirits, for she laughed with everyone else. She waved happily at Kate, and made her little spaniel wave its paw.
Kate waved back, and slipped her hand onto her father’s arm. He smiled down at her, though she feared that he, unlike Lady Catherine, looked more wearied by the sorrows of finding out his friend’s treachery. His eyes seemed a bit faded under his fine black velvet cap.
“I am certain I should not say it, Kate,” her father whispered, “not with all the strangeness we have seen of late, but tonight is surely one of the finest Christmases I can remember.”
“Is it, Father?” she whispered back. “Despite—everything?”
Matthew sighed. “Gerald Finsley was once my friend. ’Tis true. We both served Queen Catherine, whose learning and grace we admired so much. But anyone can be changed, twisted, by courtly ambition. They can be blinded by the sparkle around them so they no longer see to the core of truth. Human understanding and love are worth a caravel full of gold and emeralds. Your mother taught me that.”
Kate studied the crowd as they laughed at the players’ antics. It was a beautiful sight indeed. In the blazing light of the Yule log, the jewels of the queen’s court glittered like a thousand stars, ropes of pearls, diamonds, and emeralds against bright velvets and rich furs. The crowd clustered around the queen, who was brighter than all the rest in her cloth of gold-and-white satin, her red hair piled high and wound with strands of rubies and topaz.
Elizabeth laughed behind her fan, and reached out to take one of her favorite cherry suckets from a bowl Robert Dudley held out to her. He whispered something in her ear, and she actually blushed, then tapped his arm with her fan. Robert’s sister, the queen’s lady-in-waiting Mary Sidney smiled, but several people frowned and muttered at the sight.
Kate realized her father was very right—she was in danger of being drawn too far into this world to turn back. Not because she longed for jewels or for the estates and titles that royal favor could bring—though she thought those might be nice enough. But because here, at the very center of the deceptive hive that buzzed around the queen, she felt as if she could be of good use.
She had work to do—her father and mother’s legacy of music, aye, but also the vital work of keeping Queen Elizabeth safe and her throne secure. Without Elizabeth, England would be in terrible danger of being tossed back into chaos and darkness, as it had been too often in days gone by.
Kate knew well she was only one person, one young, inexperienced woman, who was still fumbling her way through the maze of court life. Yet every pair of eyes was needed to help guard the queen, and surely she could learn more ways to be of help.
If Elizabeth had never become queen, Kate knew she would have stayed in the country with her father, perhaps married a farmer or a village shopkeeper, helped run his business and home, had children she could teach a little music to. Not a bad life at all, and one that would surely have promised more contentment than a courtly career. But it was not a life that could ever contain all the things she was just realizing she had in herself.
“You taught me that as well, Father, and I promise I shall never forget,” she said, squeezing his hand. “Courtly life does have its attractions for me, I admit, but not of the treasure sort. I am learni
ng my way here.”
“And you are learning it exceedingly well. You have the queen’s trust. I am proud of you—as your mother would be.”
Kate felt tears prickle behind her eyes, and she blinked them away. This was no night for tears. “So, tell me. Why is this a good Christmas after all?”
“Because I am with my daughter, of course! Any moment I have with my Kate is a good one.” Matthew looked toward the stage, where Father Christmas had been joined by a chorus of angels, who danced in twining circles around him as they sang their final song. “But I must know one thing, my dearest, before I can go back contented to my little cottage.”
“What is that, Father?”
“I must know whether you have forgiven me for keeping the truth about your mother’s family from you. I meant no harm, truly. It merely seemed to be Eleanor’s secret to keep. And I had to protect you.”
Kate nodded. Secrets were the court’s most valuable currency, and some connections were better unknown. “I know. To be a Boleyn was not a safe thing for a long time. Of course I forgive you, Father. I did long ago. You were truly only taking care of me.” And, unlike Gerald Finsley’s protestations that he was only trying to “take care of” Mary Seymour, or Tom Seymour’s “protection” of a young Princess Elizabeth, her father’s actions, his secrets, had been for the best in the end, Kate knew well.
She kissed his bearded cheek. “You have been the best of fathers. Surely Mother would be proud of you, as well. We have taken care of each other rather well all these years, I think.”
Tears shimmered in his eyes, and it made Kate want to cry all over again. “Yet I will not be here forever. I do not want you to be alone, my Kate. I want you to find happiness such as I had with your mother.” He gently touched the pretty little lute-shaped pendant she wore uncovered now, held on a string of seed pearls and garnet beads that had been the queen’s Christmas gift. “This is a charming piece indeed, and most thoughtful. From Queen Elizabeth?”
Kate opened her mouth to tell her father about Rob, but something held her back. Her tiny secret hopes and ideas, that perhaps she had found someone who could truly understand her as her parents had understood each other, were still only her own.
At least for a little longer. She glanced at Rob where he stood by the edge of the stage, and found he watched her as well. How very handsome he looked that night, smiling his charming, careless grin, his hair shining like the summer sun against his violet velvet doublet. Yet she knew there was so much behind his beauty. There was a passion for art and life, a sense of adventure, that called out to her own.
But aye—that was her own secret for the moment. As was the letter she had received from Anthony that morning, asking if he could see her when next he came to London. She wondered, probably with far too much curiosity, what he wished to tell her. And what she would say in return. She could see why matters of the heart drove ladies like Catherine Grey, and even the queen, to distraction. They were even more baffling than deciphering Platonic musical codes.
She smiled at her father, and nodded.
The play came to an end in a show of silver sparkles and sweets tossed out into the audience. The queen’s ladies rushed for them, and the actors lined up to take their bows. Elizabeth leaped to her feet, applauding, something she never did, and her astonished courtiers scrambled to follow her lead.
“I declare, my friends, that this has been the merriest night of Yule revelries I can yet remember,” she said. “Now, while we still have the light of our Yule log, and plenty of wine and ‘good English beer,’ let us dance and make merry. Robin?”
Robert Dudley held out his arm to the queen, and led her from her chair as servants scurried to move the benches and musicians took their places in the gallery. In the light of the snapping, flaring Yule log, everything looked perfect.
For the moment.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
One of my very favorite things about the Elizabethan period (and there are many!) is the great number and variety of strong-willed and passionate women. Queen Elizabeth, of course, along with her mother and stepmothers, her cousins (Margaret Lennox; the Grey sisters; Mary, Queen of Scots), not to mention ladies of other countries such as Marie of Guise and Catherine de Medici, are all examples of the strong women I admire so much. The Grey sisters, ladies Jane, Catherine, and Mary, and their mother, Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, are fascinating and tragically sad in equal measure, and I loved getting to know Lady Catherine better in this story.
Not everyone (not even everyone who was a Tudor!) had an ambition to wear a crown in the 1500s, and this included the Grey daughters, though sadly their birth pushed them toward the throne anyway. Lady Jane’s story is very well known—scholarly, brilliantly bookish beyond her years, dedicated to the New Learning of the Protestant church. But her younger sister, Lady Catherine, isn’t quite as widely known. She was the “beautiful” daughter, the counterpart of Lady Jane—charming and known for loving a good party. Her ambitions were to be a wife (to a man of suitable estate), and have a family, to live a romance like the ones in the French poems she would rather read than the serious philosophies and sciences her sister loved.
Catherine was born in 1540, and was the second daughter of Frances Brandon, who was the daughter of the famously beautiful younger sister of King Henry VIII, Mary Tudor (the French Queen, as she was always known, though she was married to the elderly French king for only a couple of months), and her husband, the Duke of Suffolk. Catherine was married off in 1553 in a political match to the son of the Earl of Pembroke (in the same lavish ceremony that married Lady Jane to Guildford Dudley). The marriage was annulled the next year, after the death of Edward VI and the collapse of the scheme to make Jane queen. Lady Jane and the Grey girls’ father were executed, and Lady Frances was left to find a way to remake her position at court and take care of her two remaining daughters. Somehow she managed to do this impossible task very well. They were reconciled to Queen Mary, who gave them high positions at court, but Queen Elizabeth mistrusted and disliked them, especially Catherine. Elizabeth refused the desire of many (including her chief secretary, Sir William Cecil) to name Lady Catherine as her heir.
Catherine’s best friend was Lady Jane Seymour, the daughter of the former Protector of England in the reign of Edward VI, Lord Somerset, and his equally formidable duchess Anne (another strong Elizabethan-era lady!). Catherine soon fell deeply in love with Jane’s handsome, if unreliable, brother, Edward, Lord Hertford. Hertford seemed to return her passionate feelings, and the two were secretly married in December 1560 (about a year after Murder at Whitehall takes place). There were some rumors, especially in the summer of 1559, that Lady Catherine was becoming too friendly with the Spanish, and it’s now known that the Spanish actually had some hopes of kidnapping her and bringing her to Spain, where she could marry a Spanish nobleman and eventually take over the English throne, though the extent of Lady Catherine’s own involvement in the half-baked plan isn’t known.
After Lord Hertford and Lady Catherine’s hasty wedding (for which Lady Jane found the priest and was the only witness), the Queen sent Lord Hertford to France. After he left, Lady Catherine realized she was pregnant. She managed to hide it for many months, but of course that couldn’t go on forever! When the pregnancy was discovered, and the secret wedding revealed, Queen Elizabeth was furious. Lord Hertford was summoned back to England, the couple was sent to the Tower, the marriage declared invalid, and the baby boy, Edward, rendered illegitimate. (By this time Lady Jane had died and the priest could not be found.) Even the walls of the Tower couldn’t keep the Hertfords apart, though, and the next year another son, Thomas, was born.
Lady Catherine was sent away to the country under house arrest, and died of consumption at age twenty-seven in 1568 (or of a broken heart at being parted from the family she had longed for). Lord Hertford was eventually released from prison and later married again and regained his place at co
urt, though when he died he was buried with Catherine. Her sister, Lady Mary Grey, plagued with a deformed spine since birth, also went on to make a secret, disastrous marriage. But that’s a story for another time!
Although Queen Anne is my favorite of Henry VIII’s wives, I’ve always had a soft spot for Queen Catherine Parr. She had a rather astonishing life. Catherine Parr was raised by a strong, intelligent widowed mother, Maud Parr, lady-in-waiting to wife number one, Catherine of Aragon (who was possibly Catherine Parr’s godmother). Maud had spirit, but not much money, and most of it went to securing a marriage for her son to the greatest heiress in England (a marriage that—spoiler alert—also did not go well). Catherine was married twice before she married the king, first to Sir Edward Burrough, who died very young, and then to John Neville, Lord Latimer, a widower twice her age with extensive landholdings in the isolated north. The marriage seems to have been reasonably happy, though, and Catherine raised his two children as her own. After his death, she joined the household of Princess Mary, where she caught the eye of King Henry. Henry had recently “lost” his unfortunate fifth wife, the young, pretty, giddy Catherine Howard, and was looking for someone steady and dignified. The widowed Lady Latimer, unfortunately for her, seemed to fit the bill, and the fact that she was being courted by Sir Thomas Seymour made no difference. Catherine married the king on July 12, 1543.
She was well suited to the role of queen, charming and stylish but also well read and practical. Even diplomats from France and hostile Spain sang her praises, and she brought Henry’s three children together as a family for the first time. She especially encouraged young Princess Elizabeth, who had been mostly ignored up to that point, in her educational endeavors. But she also became deeply interested in the Protestant faith and the New Learning, as Lady Jane Grey had, and gathered a group of like-minded women around her for studies and discussion. She talked about her studies at length with anyone who would listen. She was the first English queen to publish works under her own name. These included works of prayers and philosophy (including The Lamentations of a Sinner in 1547). Needless to say, this did not sit well with the more conservative courtiers, including Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. (It’s true that one of Queen Catherine’s best friends, the pert Duchess of Suffolk, named her spaniel “Gardiner.”) Her increasing “radicalism” also did not sit well with her husband.
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