Sisters of Treason (11 page)

“Mary,” she said, the day before I left, caressing her belly with the flat of her hand. “God is showing me His gratitude for my faith, for restoring the true religion to England. Knowing that a little God-given prince germinates in me brings me more joy than I can describe.”

I cannot muster any sympathy for her; my sympathy was used up on the day Jane met her death.

Maman prays for that baby though, Spanish or not, for it will take us a step away from the throne, she says. But surely the Queen is mistaken, as no baby takes so very long to come—even I know that. Maman worries for Katherine at court, as do I, for there are signs in her letters that things are not without trouble. She has argued with Cousin Margaret, but there is nothing new in that. Worse is implied by a line in her most recent letter:
The King has taken a shine to Elizabeth, which puts the Queen in a most uneven temper. She barely acknowledges her sister. And as for Elizabeth, I do not find her one little bit friendly, given we are cousins
. She did not say more than that, but it was enough to prick Maman’s concern.

“I have known Elizabeth since she was an infant, and she is not one to get on the wrong side of,” Maman had said to me. “I hope Katherine has not spoken out of turn, for she will not gain anything from a quarrel with that girl.”

I have the impression that Maman is not at all fond of Elizabeth, but she does not speak more of it.

The pitter of rain starts up in the leaves above; a single drop lands on my throat, but our green dome protects us from the worst of the downpour. I think of the poor farmers worrying about the harvest, how glad they must have been to have a clear day at last, only to be rained upon again. People will be starving this winter, though nothing will stop the banqueting at court, the roasted fowl, dozens to a dish, the endless loaves of fine manchet bread, the marchpane fancies, the fountains of wine.

“I wonder at a world that is so unfair,” I say.

“What do you mean?” asks Peggy.

“I was thinking of the harvest, with all this rain.”

“The poor are closer to Heaven, are they not?” says Peggy, twiddling a dry leaf in her fingers.

“I’m not sure the Queen would think so,” I say, thinking of the Bible—the rich man and the eye of the needle. “Most tailor their beliefs to fit their lives.” Maman has said this many times.

“But it is different for the Queen.” Peggy lifts herself up onto her elbows. “We all have to accept God’s will. God made us this way and He placed us in this world for His own reason. It is not to question.”

“Why, then, do you think God gave you a cloven mouth?” I ask.

“
God
did not do that,” she exclaims, quite aghast that I should not know such a thing. “It is the mark of the Devil’s claw, where He tried to take me from the womb.”

“Did your mother tell you that?”

“She did not need to, it is well known what this means.” She touches the tip of her finger to her upper lip. “It means I was marked out as the Devil’s thing and it was God that saved me.”

“I suppose the Devil tried to hook me out by my shoulders, then,” I say.

“Of course,” she replies. I envy Peggy for the straightforwardness of her world, when my own thoughts and doubts tangle themselves up in one another.

“Does that mean deep down we are both evil like the third Richard?” I have been reading Sir Thomas More’s history of that wicked king, who was crookbacked like me.

“Oh no,” she exclaims, quite loudly. “We are all the more good, for God took the trouble to save us.”

“That is certainly reassuring, Peggy,” I say. “Does it say so in the Bible?” I do not say that I can think only of Leviticus, who says that none who are blemished may approach the altar, for I fear it would spoil her perfect version of things.

“It is a well-known thing,” is all she says. Somehow I love her the more for it, for not being beset by doubt, as I am. It is not God I doubt, but man’s idea of Him. How could I explain that to Peggy, or anyone? It is only Jane whom I might have been able to talk of these things with.

“The rain has stopped,” Peggy says, looking up. My eyes follow, to see blinking shafts of golden light shining through the leaves, and I wonder if Peggy sees it as a sign that God is blessing us. She gets to her feet and helps me up, leading me by the hand to where Aphrodite is nesting with her chicks. We peep over the rushes. The great swan turns to us with a furious look, then opens her puce beak and hisses sharply, sending us skittering away, through the wet grass back to the house in giggles.

“A swan has the strength to break a man’s arm, if her chicks are threatened,” gasps Peggy.

“A mother will—” I stop myself, remembering Peggy has no
mother to protect her, changing the subject. “Do you think the Queen will have this baby?”

“One thing is certain, if she does not she will want
you
back at court.”

September 1555

Greenwich

Mary

“Cardinal Pole,” says the Queen, summoning him over to where we sit, I on her knee in the place of the infant that never appeared. Peggy was right in thinking I would be called back to court. The Cardinal approaches slowly, his red robes swinging with his limp. “Sit, sit.” She pats the empty seat beside her. It is the King’s seat, and the Cardinal hesitates. “We are alone,” she adds with an encouraging nod. Her eyes are bloodshot and her skin blotched—she has been crying for days now, since the King left for the Low Countries and his war. She can be heard sobbing and moaning in her chamber at night, and everyone hovers cautiously in her presence, fearing an outburst.

The Cardinal says nothing, but casts his eyes about the chamber, where there are at least half a dozen ladies busy with one thing or another, but none looks over this way. “Besides, our husband has abandoned us for his foreign campaign.” As she says this she brings her fist down to the arm of her chair with a great puff of breath, like a bull. “Sit!”

The Cardinal, slightly cowed, finally places his large behind onto the seat beside us. The Queen is rubbing and patting at my back as if she were a wet nurse winding a baby, and I am racking my brains to think of any excuse I can possibly find to get myself away from her prodding hands, and out of the orbit of her rage.

I have been back at court for a week now. There never was a
royal infant. The whole thing is shrouded in mystery and it is not to be mentioned, or certainly not within earshot of the Queen.

“So that was that,” Katherine had said of it. “All that hushed waiting around in her darkened chamber for nothing.”

Whispers have been flying about: that the Queen had been bewitched, or that it was wind; most think she miscarried and said nothing. I am not supposed to know about these things, I am supposed to be too young, but I do know. Whatever it was or wasn’t, the Queen is quite addled with grief. This means that I am to play the poppet again. Maman has requested I stay no more than a month, but for the meantime the Queen caresses and pokes and hugs and holds me as if I were the disappeared infant itself, and with each prod my loathing grows.

Of course now there is no heir of the Queen’s body there has been a great shifting at court and endless whispered discussions about the succession. Many look to Elizabeth and there is talk of a marriage between her and Edward Courtenay, some Plantagenet boy who has disappeared abroad. Cousin Margaret is convinced
she
will be named in line, though she is the only one who thinks this. Some look to Katherine. All I can think of is Jane and what became of
her
. Maman has instructed Katherine to be discreet, to not draw attention to herself; I wonder if that is possible.

“How can I be of service, Your Majesty?” The Cardinal is hovering with his hands before him, fingers steepled.

“For goodness’ sake, if we can’t dispense with the formalities when we are alone with you, then who? Use “madam,” if you must insist on anything other than my given name.”

I want to shout,
You are not alone, I, Mary Grey, am here
, but I do not, of course.

“Madam,” he says with a fawning little dip of the head.

She grabs his hand and drops her voice to a whisper. “God is displeased with us.”

“Madam, it cannot be so, with your devotion—”

She doesn’t let him finish. “No! He has taken back our infant, His gift to us. He finds us lacking.” Her whisper is like Aphrodite’s angry hiss. “We need to show our faith more profoundly. We need your help.”

“A pilgrimage, perhaps?” suggests the Cardinal.

“No, not that.” Her whispered response is firm and I can feel the heat of her breath on the back of my neck. “A pilgrimage is to give thanks. We believe God is asking us to show our faith, like Abraham.”

I wonder which story of Abraham she means. There is only one I remember well—Abraham and Isaac. There is a tapestry at Hampton Court where the boy Isaac, openmouthed in terror, looks up at his father, who wields a knife.

“When the monasteries are reinstated—” starts the Cardinal.

“Yes, that,” she interrupts. “But what we must first do is hound every heretic from our kingdom. Then God will be pleased with us and send us an heir.”

The Cardinal says nothing, but in his face lies the question, “How?”

“We want everyone held,” she continues, speaking with such force that a shower of spit lands on my cheek. “Everyone who shows even the slightest sign of heresy. And if they will not recant they shall be burned—all of them.” The Queen’s grip on his hand is so tight now that her knuckles are a row of white stones.

The Cardinal seems horrified. “God would be pleased, madam, to see you show clemency.”

“Clemency!” There is Aphrodite’s hiss again. “Now is not the time for clemency. We want Cranmer and Latimer and Ridley to burn first and that will serve as a warning. Then we will be rid of the rest.”

“If it is Your Majesty’s wish . . .”

“It is more than our wish. We command it. We will have you speak to Bishop Gardiner . . . and Bonner. Now there is a man who understands our cause.”

“He is one of the faithful, madam.”

There has been much talk of Archbishop Cranmer of late, people wondering what the Queen plans to do with him. I know these names. Latimer was my step-grandmother’s chaplain; I remember him from infanthood, and Ridley too was often a visitor at Bradgate. These men are close to my own family. I touch my finger to my forehead and down to my heart, then one shoulder, then the other.

“Ah, little Mary,” says the Queen. “You are one of the faithful too, now that traitor father of yours has been dispensed with, and . . .” She doesn’t finish, but I suppose she means to add Jane to the list of people the world is better off without. She looks at me with a grimace of a smile, and I daren’t speak for fear I will spit out the truth—that her faith is corrupt and cruel and I would have none of it. But I manage to return her smile and bow my head in what I hope appears to be acquiescence. “You
are
one of the faithful?”

I can feel her eyes on me, as if she can see right through to my reformed soul. I daren’t speak for fear of a wobble in my voice giving me away, so I nod, clutching my rosary.

“There are many about us, Cardinal, who seem as one thing but are another. Do you think Mary here is one of those?” She pokes my shoulder hard. I flinch. “
She
and her family of traitors. Look how scared she is. What do you think she is afraid of?”

I struggle to breathe, and my heart is beating so hard she can surely hear it. I am thinking what Jane would have done—she would have told the truth and died for it.

“Shall we have Bonner question her, Cardinal? Bonner could tease a confession from a stone.”

“Madam,” says the Cardinal, placing a hand on her sleeve. She looks at it, and then at his face, and the hand again. “With all respect, she is but a child. What age are you, Mary?”

“Ten.” I am barely able to squeeze out the single syllable.

“Old enough,” murmurs the Queen.

The bell in the palace chapel rings. Blood rushes in my ears.
The Cardinal shuffles in his seat and the Queen pokes me, saying, “Run along now, Mary. We want the Cardinal to hear our confession before Mass.”

I clamber off her lap and make for the door.

“And, Mary?”

I turn to her, my heart stuck in my throat, clasping my hands tightly together so she cannot see how they tremble. Her gaze is hard and blank as a pane of glass.

“I have my eye on you.”

I curtsy, thinking that it is only a matter of moments before I will be out of the room. Clinging to that thought.

“Perhaps the Cardinal should hear your confession. You have a way of sorting the wheat from the chaff, don’t you, Cardinal?”

The idea of confessing to this man, who will surely see what heresies I harbor in my soul, makes my skin prick with fear. I hold an image of Jane firmly in my mind and think of what she would advise—
Be stoic, Mouse
—and somehow I find the courage to speak.

“That is an honor I do not merit, Your Majesty.”

“Why so?”

“The Cardinal’s great wisdom would be wasted on such as me.”

“Pah!” She waves her hand at me as if brushing away a fly. It is my sign to leave them.

Has she changed her mind? I know not.

I rush to Katherine’s rooms as fast as I can, my head spinning with thoughts of being tied to a pyre and burned alive, trying to remember the way through the labyrinthine corridors of Greenwich Palace. I arrive to find one of the pages making an attempt to gather Katherine’s overexcited pack of dogs together for their evening walk. When he is gone, I wriggle out of my overgown and lie in silence, trying to steady my breath, watching the flickering pattern of light that falls through the branches of a tree beyond the window, keeping my mind on that so as not to think about what has just happened.

There is something hard beneath the pillow and, slipping my
hand under it, I find a book. It is Jane’s Greek New Testament. I clutch it to my heart, thinking of my dead sister’s words. But it strikes me suddenly that this book might be used against us, for what Jane speaks of is heresy if you are Catholic. My head begins to spin again as I wonder how many more things we have here that might condemn us—innocent-seeming things. I open the big chest and slip the book to its very bottom beneath the clothes and blankets, resolving to take it with me to Beaumanor when I leave, which will be before too long, I hope.