Sisters of Treason (2 page)

“Come,” Levina says, grasping her upper arm, leading her out, back into the wind and the waiting scaffold where a few more have gathered, though still it could not be called a crowd.

They appear then, Brydges first, ashen-faced, after him the Catholic man who was unable to convert her, both with their eyes cast down. And there she is, bold and straight, her psalter held open before her, lips moving in prayer, flanked by her two women who are barely holding back their tears. The scene engraves itself on Levina’s mind: the jet black of Jane’s dress against the drab stone of the Tower behind; the way the wind lifts the edges of everything, suggesting flight; the almost weeping ladies, their gowns lurid splashes of color; the exact pallor of Brydges’s skin; the look of solemn serenity on Jane’s face. She is compelled to render this in paint. A great gust of wind sends a branch of a nearby tree crashing to the ground, close enough to Bonner and his acolytes to make them jump back and scatter. She wonders how many are wishing, as she is, that it had struck a softer target.

Jane Grey mounts the few steps and stands before the onlookers to speak. She is close enough that were Levina to reach up she could touch the edge of her skirts, but the wind takes the girl’s words and only snippets reach them. “I do wash my hands thereof in innocency . . .” She makes the action, rubbing those small hands together. “I die a true Christian woman and that I do look to be saved by no other mean, but only by the mercy of God.” She is cleaving to the new faith to the last, and Levina wishes that she had a pinch of this girl’s unassailable fortitude.

When Jane is done she shrugs off her gown, handing it to her women, and unties her hood. As she pulls it away from her head her hair looses itself from its ribbons and flies up, beautifully, as if it will lift her to the heavens. She turns to the headsman. Levina
supposes he is begging her forgiveness; she cannot hear their exchange. But his face is utterly stricken—even the executioner is horrified by this, then. It is only Jane who seems entirely composed.

Jane then takes the blindfold from one of her ladies and, refusing help with a small shake of her head, wraps it about her eyes, then drops to her knees, pressing her hands together swiftly and mouthing out a prayer. All of a sudden, the prayer finished, her composure seems to fall away as she flounders blindly, reaching for the block, unable to find it in her sightless state. Levina is reminded of a newborn animal, eyes still welded shut, seeking, in desperation, its source of succor.

Everybody watches her but nobody moves to help. All are paralyzed with horror at the sight of this young girl groping for something solid in a dark world. There is barely a sound; even the wind has dropped to a deathly hush, as if Heaven holds its breath. Still Jane seeks for the block, arms flailing now in space. Levina can bear it no longer and scrambles up onto the platform, guiding those cold little hands, a child’s hands really, to the place; tears sting at her eyelids as she clambers back down to Frances, who is blanched with shock.

Then it is done, in a flash of steel and a brilliant crimson spurt. Frances collapses into Levina, who holds her upright and covers her eyes for her as the executioner holds up Jane Grey’s head by the hair, to prove his job is done. Levina doesn’t know why she looks up then, but what she sees when she does is not reality; it is a scene conjured in her imagination: the Queen in the place of that headsman, her fingers twisted through the bloody hair of her young cousin, her face placid, oblivious to the spill of gore over her dress. The gathering is silent, save for the desperate gusting wind, which has started up again as if in protest.

Levina steps to the side and vomits into the gutter.

I

Queen Mary

July 1554

The Bishop’s Palace, Winchester

Mary

“Sit still, Mary Grey,” says Mistress Poyntz, her voice as firm as her fingers. “You do fidget so.”

She is tugging my hair too tightly into its ribbons. I want to shout at her to stop, to not touch me.

“There,” she adds, pushing my hood over my head and tying it beneath my chin. It covers my ears. I can hear the sound of the sea, like in the big shell we used to listen to at Bradgate. I wonder what has become of that shell now Bradgate is no longer our home. “Magdalen will help you into your gown.” She gives me a little shove towards the dark-haired girl, who offers a sideways look and a scowl.

“But I have not yet—” begins Magdalen.

“Do as I say, please,” says Mistress Poyntz, her voice firm as the brace beneath my kirtle. The girl rolls her eyes, then swaps a look with Cousin Margaret beside her.

We are surrounded by mess: trunks spill out gowns; hoods balance on sills; jewels hang carelessly from the edges of things, and the air is clogged with the reek of a dozen different perfumes. You can barely move without getting an elbow in the eye, so cramped are we, with girls clambering over each other to reach their affairs. Maman is almost as cramped as we are, sharing with five other ladies, but at least their room has a door. The maids’ chamber, where fourteen of us bedded down last night, is really only a curtained-off area at the end of a corridor. All morning Mistress Poyntz has
been shooing off the Peeping Toms, who hope to catch a glimpse of the older girls dressing.

I hand my gown to Magdalen, who holds it up, saying with a smirk, “How does
this
fit?” She dangles it from the tips of her fingers, away from her body.

“This part,” I explain, pointing at the high collar that has been specially tailored to fit my shape, “goes up around here.”

“Over your hump?” Magdalen says with a snort of laughter.

I must not cry. What would my sister Jane have done, I ask myself.
Be stoic, Mouse
, she would have said.
Let no one see what you are truly feeling
.

“I don’t know why the Queen would want such a creature at her wedding,” Magdalen whispers to Cousin Margaret, not so quiet that I can’t hear.

I fear I will cry and make things worse, so I think up a picture of Jane. I remember her saying once:
God has chosen to make you a certain way and it cannot be without reason. In His eyes you are perfect—in mine too
. But I know I am not perfect; I am so hunched about the shoulders and crooked at the spine, I look as if I have been hung by the scruff on a hook for too long. And I am small as an infant of five, despite being almost twice that age.
Besides, it is what is in here that matters
; in my mind’s eye Jane presses a fist to her heart.

“Mary Grey has more right to attend the Queen’s wedding than you,” says Jane Dormer, who is the Queen’s favored maid. “She is full of royal blood.”

Magdalen mutters, “But what a misshapen package,” and begins lacing me into my gown with a huff.

My sister’s life was the price of this wedding; it was the Queen’s doing. Though it has been one hundred and sixty-four days since she was killed (I mark each day in my book of hours), the feeling of loss has not begun to wane—I think it never shall. I am like the tree struck by lightning in the park at Bradgate, its insides burned right away, black and empty.

It is a sin to hate the Queen as I do—a treasonous sin. But I
cannot help the hatred welling in me.
Do not let others see what you are feeling
, Jane would have said.

“There,” says Magdalen, turning away. “You are done.”

She has laced me in so tightly I feel like a wood pigeon stuffed and stitched for roasting.

“Will Elizabeth attend the wedding?” asks Cousin Margaret.

“Of course not,” replies Magdalen. “She is locked up at Woodstock.”

“Poor thing,” says Jane Dormer, and a thick silence drops. Perhaps they are all thinking about my sister Jane and what can happen to girls who are too close to the throne. Elizabeth’s portrait used to hang in the long gallery at Whitehall, but now there is just a dark square on the paneling where it used to be.

A thought worries at me, that my sister Katherine might now be one of those girls on the brink of the throne.

“Someone told me Elizabeth may not even walk alone in the gardens without a guard,” whispers Magdalen.

“Enough of that tittle-tattle,” says Mistress Poyntz. “Where is your sister?”

“Katherine?” I ask, not knowing whom she addresses—the place is full of sisters.

“Do you have another sis—” she stops herself. I suppose she is remembering that my other sister is dead. She smiles at me now, with a tilted head, and runs a hand over my shoulders, saying, “This dress is well cut, Mary. It gives you a fine shape.” Her voice is singsong, as if she is talking to an infant.

I can see the distaste behind her smile and the way she wipes the hand that has touched me over her skirts, as if to clean it. I say nothing, so she sends Jane Dormer off to seek out Katherine, who is likely up to no good.

I notice my sister Jane’s Greek New Testament among a pile of Katherine’s things and take it out to the corridor, opening it to the letter written in the inside cover, not reading, just looking at Jane’s fine hand. I do not need to read it, for it is carved on my heart:

It is the book, dear sister, of the law of the Lord. It is the testament and last will, which he bequeathed unto us wretches, which shall lead you to the path of eternal joy. And if you have a good mind to read it, it shall bring you to an immortal and everlasting life. It shall teach you to live and learn you to die.

I have tried to understand why there was no letter for me. Why Jane should have written to Katherine, encouraging her to read this book, when I know for a fact that Katherine can barely read Greek at all. It is I who knows that language; it is I who used to listen to Jane read from her Greek Bible each day, while Katherine chased her puppies around the gardens and made eyes at father’s pages. I tell myself that Jane must have thought I had no need of guidance. But, though I know it is shameful and a sin besides, I am brimming with silent envy of Katherine, not because she is beautiful as a summer meadow and I am twisted as an espaliered fruit tree, but for being the one Jane chose to write to.

“Mary, shall we walk a little?” It is Peggy Willoughby, who takes my hand and leads me out into the cloisters that run around a garden. It has been raining heavily, and everything has that fresh loamy scent of summer downpours. We perch on a stone bench under cover, taking care not to get our gowns wet, for the water would mark the silk and make trouble for us with Mistress Poyntz. We are the youngest; Peggy, who is a ward of Maman’s, is just a year older than me, but is more than a head taller as I am so very small. She is fair with a snub nose and round dewy eyes, but her upper lip is divided in two and she has an odd manner of speaking.

“What do you think he will be like?” asks Peggy. She is talking of the Queen’s intended, the Spanish Prince Felipe; it is all anyone has spoken of in the maids’ chamber for days.

I shrug. “You have seen the painting.”

We have all seen the painting hung at Whitehall, how the hooded eyes follow you, wherever you stand. It puts the shivers up me just thinking of it. He wears polished black armor, gilded
here and there, and his stockings are whiter than swansdown. Katherine and Cousin Margaret had stood before the painting as it was being hung, nudging each other. “Look at his fine legs, so slim,” Cousin Margaret had said. “And the codpiece,” Katherine had added, sparking off muffled giggles.

“But what I meant,” says Peggy, “is will he bring the
Inquisition
with him, as some say he will?” She says the word
Inquisition
as if it is hot and must be spat out before it burns her tongue.

“Ah, that,” I say. “Nobody knows.”

“What exactly is the
Inquisition
?”

“I do not really know, Peggy,” I say. This is a lie; I
do
know, for Maman has explained it. It is when people are hounded and burned alive for their beliefs. But I do not want to frighten Peggy, for she is already given to nightmares, and if she had an inkling of the terror that Maman says is knocking at England’s door, she would never sleep a wink. “As long as we are good Catholics, we have nothing to fear.”

Her hand moves to the rosary that hangs from her girdle. Peggy is as much a Catholic as I, which is to say not at all, but we must appear as such, for our lives depend on it. So Maman says.

“Is that why the Queen does not allow Elizabeth to court? Because she won’t accept the Catholic faith?”

“How would I know?” I say, remembering my dead sister and wondering if Elizabeth will end up the same way and then Katherine too. But I swallow down that thought before it takes hold.

“You don’t know anything.”

That she should think this is exactly my intention, for the truth of it is, I know far too much. This is because I listen to all the things most adults think me incapable of understanding. I know that the Spanish ambassador wants rid of Elizabeth like he wanted rid of Jane. I know too that the Queen cannot quite yet bring herself to condemn her sister. But then we had all thought that about Jane, for Jane was one of the Queen’s favorite cousins. This makes me aware that though there is much I know, there is much more I
don’t. But another thing I do know is that England doesn’t want this Spanish wedding, and fears greatly what it will bring. “Would you help me loosen my dress?” I ask Peggy, changing the subject. “It is intolerably tight.”

Peggy unties me a little, easing the ache in my back. I watch a blackbird pecking at something with its buttercup beak, hopping over the cobbles on legs so thin it is a marvel they can support its body. As it flits off, taking to the sky, I am reminded of Forget-me-not, the Queen’s blue parakeet, a magnificent creature condemned to spend its life scratching about in a cage, mimicking words it doesn’t understand.

“Do you ever imagine that animals have souls?” I ask.

“I do not,”
she answers me. “It is ungodly to think of such things.”

I want to ask if she ever wonders if God exists at all. She would be appalled that I ever had such a thought in me. She would surely feel compelled to tell, if only to save me from myself. I imagine Mistress Poyntz’s horrified face. Who knows what might happen then. I am forming the belief that faith cannot be true until you have questioned it fully. But such ideas are heresy. That I know. I can feel Jane tapping at the edges of my mind. Did she ever question her faith? If she did she never said it. No, I think Jane believed as Katherine loves, in a way that is built on rock, like that house in the Bible.