Sisters of Treason (19 page)

Juno rips off her rosary too now, flinging it towards the skirting, where Stan grabs hold of it, shaking it as if it is a rat he’s caught. Am I the only one to notice Katherine slumped in the window seat with her face in her hands? I sit myself next to her.

“
You
didn’t want to be named, surely?” I ask.

“Of course not,” she replies, slightly choked, as if she might be holding off tears. “I should make a useless queen . . . Imagine. They’d have my head off in days.” A tart little laugh escapes with
this. And we are both silent for a moment; I am thinking of Jane, of course, and I suppose she must be too.

“So you are safe,” I say after a while, briefly taking her hand in mine. It is cold and feels as fragile as the dead goldfinch one of the cats left in my bedchamber this morning.

“But Elizabeth loathes me. I have managed to make an enemy of her already, and I barely know her.”

“Then don’t go back to court,” I say.

“Do you not know me at all, Mary? I’d shrivel up and die stuck out in this place.” She sidles from the chamber with a scowl.

Maman hasn’t noticed that anything is wrong; she, Levina, and Juno have their heads together, planning a feast for this evening.

“Syllabub,” says Levina.

“Oooh yes,” Juno replies. “And comfits.”

“And marchpane, lots of it,” adds Maman, calling the steward over to fetch the cook. But just then there is a rap at the door and one of the pages enters, standing before us red-faced, looking at his knotted hands. I can hear a peal of church bells and then another farther off.

“What is it, Alfred?” Maman asks. “Have you something to tell us?” More bells add to the sound, closer this time; it must be the church in the village.

“Yes, my lady.” It seems that he is having trouble getting the words out and we all watch him wring his hands, until eventually he mumbles with a blush, “Word from London. The Queen is dead, God rest her soul.” Another messenger must have arrived with word, on the tail of the first. Alfred makes the sign of the cross, and I wonder momentarily if he is one of the true Catholics, or if he is just so accustomed to the gesture, as we all are now, that it has become second nature.

“Mon Dieu!”
exclaims Maman. “So it is over.”

We are all silent. This news has been ten days in the coming.

“Thank the Lord,” murmurs Levina. “There will be no more burnings.”

“Mary and I were girls together, you know . . .” Maman stops, as if thinking back to the past. “I feel not a drop of sadness, not after Jane. How power corrupts.” She flops into a chair, resting her chin on her upturned palm. “And all those souls . . .” She doesn’t finish, but each one of us knows she is talking of the burnings.

The page is standing twisting his cap in his hands. “Oh, Alfred,” says Maman, suddenly remembering he is there. “You had better get the chaplain to ring the bells.”

“My lady, there is something else,” he mumbles, looking at his feet.

“Yes?” says Maman.

“Cardinal Pole . . . he is gone too.”

“The Cardinal? On the same day?”

“That is what I have been told to announce, my lady.”

“How odd,” says Maman, shaking her head. “I suppose they shall be together, then. Thank you, Alfred; off you go and see that the bells are rung.”

I am wondering where they will be together, the Queen and the Cardinal, if they will be in the burning fires of Hell for rejecting the new faith, or if they will be in purgatory because that is what they believe in. I try to imagine a world where the truth is what you believe in most.

Alfred turns on his heel with a mumbled, “Yes, my lady,” glad to get away, I should think.

“Where is Kitty?” bursts out Juno, breaking the silence.

“She was upset. I think you should look for her,” I say.

“Why did you not tell me?” Juno seems genuinely concerned as she scoops up Katherine’s favorite dog and leaves the room.

“What will you do, Veena?” Maman is asking. “Will George and Marcus return now? You
shall
stay in England?”

“England is my home really, Frances,” she replies. “I am settled here;
and
the court is my living. Elizabeth knows me well enough from the days we were together in Katherine Parr’s household.”

“It may well work to your advantage,” says Maman.

“Indeed,” she replies. “Cecil has already sounded me out to see if I intend to remain at court.”

“I am glad of that,” says Maman. “I could not bear to lose you, Veena. I suppose Cecil will be her chief advisor.”

“Doubtless,” says Levina.

“He is some kind of cousin of mine. Well, only distantly, by marriage. He used to work for the Seymours, you know.”

“It’ll be to their advantage too, then.”

“I’m glad I will not be called on to go to court,” says Maman. “My days of all that are over,
finis
. I have Stokes now, who has brought me to a better place.” The two women share a smile. “And Mary.” She looks over to me, meeting my eyes. “
You
would not want to be at court, would you, Mouse?”

“No, Maman,” I reply. I imagine the peaceful life we will lead here at Beaumanor or even at Bradgate. “Do you think Bradgate will be returned to us, now things are different?”

“It is unlikely.” I can see that it is something Maman doesn’t want to talk of. I conjure up Bradgate in my mind, mapping out its corridors, walking through the great rooms. Jane is there, indelibly in my memory, reading at the window seat, strolling in the park, kneeling in the chapel, and I feel the chill of sadness creep beneath my skin.

“What is that look?” asks Maman.

“Nothing,” I say, forcing my smile to return. “Nothing would please me more than to stay wherever
you
are, Maman. You know I am happiest away from court.”

“We must try and persuade Katherine to remain with us,” she says. “Though I suppose she will have to sit vigil. She is one of the Queen’s women, after all.”

“She will not like that,” says Levina, then adding, “Are you aware of the Hertford boy?”

“Juno’s brother? There is always one boy or another with Katherine.”

“I believe it is quite serious.”

“I suppose if it comes to it,” says Maman thoughtfully, “he wouldn’t make a
bad
match. He has a good enough pedigree. Do you know him, Veena?”

“Seen him about. Very like his sister—you might even think them twins, though I believe they are not.”

“I like
her
. So if he is anything like his sister in temperament, all will be well.”

“He has a reputation for ambition,” Levina adds.

“A dose of ambition is a necessary thing for a boy,” Maman says, “particularly one such as he, whose family has taken a fall. But it is something to remain aware of nonetheless. After all, Katherine is no common-or-garden girl. I wouldn’t want her falling into some kind of marriage trap with a suitor who merely wants to hoist himself up.” Maman seems to be thinking aloud. “That Tudor blood of ours can be more a curse than a blessing. Though Hertford is high enough up already, has a little royal blood of his own, and I’m sure Elizabeth will grant him back his titles. She always had a soft spot for that family.”

Levina emits a cynical burst of laughter, with Maman joining in, and I sense there is a subtext that I am not party to. “
I
should have to suffer the mother if they married. She is a poisonous creature, completely insupportable—we used to call her Stanhope, which she loathed.”

“I hear she is much mellowed these days,” adds Levina.

“Married her steward, didn’t she? That must have brought her down a peg or two.” They both laugh at this. “Indeed, haven’t we all come down in the world? Well, perhaps not you, Veena.”

Watching the two of them gossiping happily, I realize that I have never seen Maman so content. A warm feeling floods through me, for I am part of it.

III

Queen Elizabeth

January 1559

The Tower of London

Katherine

It was bad enough having to spend night after night on my knees in the chapel at St. James’s, with the Queen’s dead body and the smell of the embalmers’ unguents making my eyes smart. We were supposed to pray for the Queen’s soul, so she will not be long in purgatory—though according to Maman there is no such place, and now the Queen is gone we no longer have to pretend there is. But nonetheless I was there and it was my duty to pray, along with the Queen’s other ladies. It put the shivers up me, being at such close proximity to a dead person. I had to concentrate very hard to keep my mind from thinking about what happens when we are gone. Just the thought of it makes me want to shut my eyes, press my fingers into my ears, hum a happy tune, and pretend there is no such thing as death.

The chapel was cold as a grave, and when we were not praying for the Queen’s soul, we had to make-believe that a wooden figurine, all got up in Her Majesty’s clothes, was the Queen herself. We had to serve food to it, curtsy to it, dress it, wash it, as if it were really she, and even sing psalms to it. Then there was the Queen’s interminable funeral, with the corpse in its box and the doll sitting beside it wearing the crown on its wooden head.

That was bad, but believe it or not, this is worse. I have been herded with a great crowd of courtiers into the keep at the Tower, to celebrate the new Queen’s state entry into London. It is so cold I can no longer feel my feet and flurries of snow are blowing about
my cheeks, making them sting. I have on my very best emerald-green gown, but no one can see it, for I am wrapped up against the weather and dare not even open my cloak an inch to show my jeweled forepart, for fear of freezing to death.

It would be more bearable if Juno were with me, but she has been called as one of Elizabeth’s ladies, so I never see her anymore as she is so busy with her duties in the privy chamber, where I am no longer admitted. And when Juno is done with the Queen, she cannot stay awake long enough to listen to the events of my day, which are so few and so dull as to hardly merit recounting. She is in the White Tower now, preparing to take her place at the front of the procession; her brother is there too. I have barely seen him either. Even Maman is not here. Surely if
she
were here we would be taking our rightful place as the Queen’s closest royal cousins. But Maman is ailing, though I suspect she feigns it so she can stay away, and Mary wasn’t even invited. So I stand jostled among strangers here in the shadow of the Tower. Thoughts of Father and Jane mill about my head: I wonder if they once trod on the place where I now stand, if it is the spot where Jane lost her life five years past. Which window did Father look out of imagining his escape, and did he think of me when pondering his death?

I push those thoughts away, for I can feel tears nudging at the backs of my eyes. The crowd surges and I am drawn back with it, my silk-slippered foot landing in a puddle of icy water. I suppose the Queen has come out and the procession will begin, but I can see nothing of it above the heads. I try and imagine Juno in her new scarlet livery. Who partners her? Does she wish it were me?

“Her hair is like spun copper,” cries someone. They must mean the Queen. It is true, her hair
is
beautiful, and I suppose she wears it loose for the best effect. I would, if it were I processing into London to accept the crown. I know what she is wearing, for it was Juno and I who took Mary Tudor’s coronation gown off the wooden figurine and delivered it to the seamstress to be altered for her sister.

I can just about see the top of the canopied litter in which she sits. Behind her Robert Dudley, who is my brother-in-law, for what it’s worth, swings onto his horse. Once mounted, his chiseled face and curled dark locks are easily visible above the heads. He has a look of triumph about him, an arrogance, as if he is party to something of which no one else is aware, but then all the Dudleys are like that. I remember Guildford the day he married Jane—the day I married Harry Herbert—he had the same expression on his face; that father of theirs wore it then too. They all look as if the world is theirs for the taking. The thought flits through my mind that were I still married to Harry Herbert, I would be up there in the Queen’s train. Dudley’s horse tosses its head. It is no wonder, given the splendid look of him, that Elizabeth has made Robert Dudley her Master of Horse. They are filled to bursting with ambition, those Dudleys.

I am pushed with the crowd towards the Tower’s wall and there find a step from where I find I have a better view; I can see a white palfrey, the Queen’s, I suppose. Dudley has it on a halter, its bridle oiled to a sheen, its mane crimped. And I catch a glimpse of Elizabeth herself; she looks at Dudley, her eyes spending longer than they should wandering up and down the length of him—I know that look; it speaks of desire. There is a sea of scarlet—all the pages and grooms who are helping the Queen’s ladies onto their horses. Thirty-nine ladies. I know this for everyone has been talking of it; it is a vast number—and
I
am not one of them. I question how it will be arranged with an uneven number, whether there will be a trio or a single at the back. Up they swing onto their red velvet saddles and come into line behind Dudley. I spot Juno and wave but she doesn’t see me; I am invisible in the crowds.

Once the riders have set off behind the Queen’s litter, the rest of us are herded into a line of chariots. Mine at least is furnished with a cushion, for there are some who must jiggle on the cobbles with nothing to sit on but a plank of wood. It takes an age but we follow on eventually, passing by the whooping crowds, people
lining the streets, leaning out of windows, perched atop walls, to catch a glimpse of the new Queen.

“She has picked up a baby and kissed it upon the cheek,” squeals Lady Something-or-other, who is next to me. None of us can see anything at all, not Lady Something-or-other, nor her plump daughter, nor the elderly man opposite, whose beard is so dense his mouth cannot be seen. We are all relying on word being passed back down the train. “She has shaken the hand of a tailor and accepted a spray of rosemary from a supplicant.” Lady Something-or-other is beside herself.