Sisters of Treason (43 page)

“You shall discover that she knows nothing,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him. Then I turn to Warner. “I shall wait until Hertford is here before I explain myself.”

“Oh dear,” is his reply. The deputy sighs loudly and closes his ledger with a slap, unfolding himself from the stool.

“But Hertford will come back,” I say. “He will tell you everything you need to know.” I sound confident but I wonder, thinking of Hertford’s long silence, if he has spirited himself away and will never be found.

“He has been recalled, my lady.”

He makes for the door, rapping at it with the hilt of his sword. It is opened by Ball—that is the name I have given to my guard; the other one I have named Chain. I smile at him; he returns it briefly. I think Ball feels sorry for me. Warner too, though I believe his pity for me is smaller by far than is his fear of the Queen but the deputy—it is clear as day what
he
thinks of me.

“You understand, my lady, I shall have to question you again,” says Warner, as he departs.

“Indeed,” I reply. “But my answers will always be the same.”

Later Lady Warner comes and sits with me, sewing clothes for my infant, little togs that touch my heart with their smallness. I imagine the baby who tosses and turns inside me, his miniature hands, miniature feet, miniature rosebud pout. When I picture him—for in my mind he has never been anything but a boy—his eyes are amber and his skin golden like his father’s, and he has a soft, pale fuzz upon his head that I will kiss gently, breathing in his milky scent.

“You must love Hertford greatly,” Lady Warner says.

“I do.”

“Tell me of him. How was your wedding?”

I start to speak, but then stop, noticing the eagerness in her demeanor. Her husband has surely sent her to draw the truth out of me. “Would you be kind and pass me the white thread, Lady Warner,” I say.

September 1561

Westminster

Mary

I look out at the Thames from Keyes’s rooms above the watergate, thinking of Katherine downriver, glad to be near her once more. A hastily scrawled note was smuggled out to me yesterday. In it she described her lodgings and the parapet from which she watches the river traffic pass. She told me I was not to worry, that she was in good health, Hertford was on his way and all would be made right. So she has found her optimism once more. I feared greatly that she was sliding into insanity, that she might try to harm herself, or worse, but this letter has reassured me a little. It is something of a miracle, my sister’s ability to hope for the best. But I cannot erase the forlorn look she wore leaving Ipswich under guard three weeks ago.

I left the court on its way to Hertford Castle, where the Queen was to receive the Scottish envoy. Peggy had sent word that she was returning to Whitehall, so I begged leave to join her and was surprised to have it granted. I could not have borne another hour in that company. The Queen appeared thin and worn and she would not look me in the eye; nor did she say anything, just dismissed me with a nod of the head. It was not an opportunity to plead Katherine’s part.

She sent a consignment of guards—for my protection, or so
I was told—and Dorothy Stafford, one of her inner circle, to accompany me. To spy on the traitor’s sister, I suppose. But Dorothy is a gentle soul, beset by a crippling shyness, and though she is a good deal older than me, we found an unlikely affinity growing between us on the journey. Katherine was not mentioned, though she inhabited my thoughts and Dorothy’s too, I think, for once, in the darkness of a bedchamber we shared along the route, she said, “I do not agree with what has been done.” To say more than that, or to put a name to it, would have been folly.

The first person we encountered at the palace gates was Keyes, and I cannot describe how my heavy heart was lifted on seeing him. His face was full of concern; he had clearly heard the news. I suppose the entire country has heard the news of Lady Katherine Grey’s grave misdemeanor and her incarceration in the Tower. If I did not know it to be the truth, I would never believe that all my close family save Maman should end up in such a place. I pray night and day that Katherine will not meet the same fate as Jane and Father—it does not bear thinking of.

“I have been ordered to keep a close eye on you,” Keyes told me, as he helped me dismount. Upon which we shared a smile. Elizabeth cannot know of our friendship then, which means there remains a corner of my life that has avoided scrutiny. Keyes has propped me up like a pillar these last days, and his modest rooms, a short walk from Whitehall, have become a refuge away from the vast echoing chambers of the Palace. There I can at least pretend, for an hour or so at a time, to have something like an ordinary existence.

We are gathered there in that lazy part of the afternoon when little occurs, glad that the court remains away and we have no duties to perform. Peggy and Dorothy are taking it in turn to read from a book of poems and Dorothy’s brother Walter is strumming on a lute. It is a tune Katherine was particularly fond of, and the music conjures up a stream of memories from happier times. But
when I think about it even the happiest times were shot through with one kind of sadness or another.

I am playing a game of chess with Keyes by the window, but I am not concentrating; I am watching the riverboats move back and forth on the murky swell and wondering about my sister.

“It is your move, my lady,” says Keyes. I look at the board, exchanging a smile with him. There is little I can do to save myself at this point; I have not been concentrating and Keyes has my king at bay.

“The game is yours, Keyes,” I say. “I am sorry not to have been a better opponent.”

“I say we play a round of primero,” suggests Peggy.

“Me too,” adds Walter, placing his lute on the table. “Did you hear about Arundel losing near on a hundred guineas to the Queen at primero?”

“I did,” says Keyes. “He stormed from the palace in a murderous temper, kicked a hole in one of the mounting blocks. I saw it myself.”

“He is not the only man to have lost such a sum to the Queen,” laughs Peggy. “All us ladies know better than to find ourselves playing with her. She makes an appalling fuss if she loses—so they all feel obliged to let her win and then they are done for.”

“And find themselves on their stockinged knees begging for another estate from her, in order that they are able to pay their debts, I suppose,” says Walter, which even musters a laugh from me. They do their best to keep my spirits up.

We gather about the table and Keyes shuffles, flipping the cards about with the deftness of a juggler, despite the size of his hands. I watch his warm eyes dart about the company, occasionally meeting mine, feeling grateful that he welcomes us so freely to his rooms. Soon the court will return, we will be required to pass most of our waking hours in the privy chamber and I shall be in need of this sanctuary all the more.

We play swiftly and without speaking, save to call our suits or declare ourselves. Peggy, who has amassed a large heap of pennies, is eventually proclaimed victorious and we gather our things to leave. There is much to prepare for the Queen’s arrival, but as we make to go Keyes holds me back, saying there is something he needs to tell me.

“In confidence,” he says. So I bid the others to go on ahead, never mind that it is not entirely correct for me, a maid, to be left alone with him. Nobody imagines there is the remotest risk that
my
virtue could be compromised.

“If I may be so bold, my lady.” He seems doubtful, as if he fears he is overstepping his station, and I am reminded of Stokes, who had been such a kind husband to Maman. It is not the first time I have remarked a similarity, not a physical resemblance, though they are both big men; it is more a particular air they have in common, a surprising gentleness. “It is about your sister.”

“Go on,” I say. I stand on a stool and we lean side by side on the windowsill looking out. The afternoon sun falls in shafts across the water, transforming it from the murky depths of earlier into something of beauty, twinkling and light-struck.

“I have news of the Queen’s interview with the Scottish ambassador.”

“What has that to do with Katherine?”

“The Queen has intimated—and I have this on good authority—that she may well not be averse to the Scottish Queen’s claim. She falls well short of actually naming her as heir, but it takes the focus away from your sister.”

“How is it you know so much of all this?”

“It is my business to know. The security of this place depends upon it. I listen and I watch; and being a person of no consequence, few notice me. I may be large in size but I am quite inconspicuous.”

It strikes me that Keyes and I have something in common—the art of invisibility.

“I still don’t see how this truly helps Katherine.”

“Without an heir of her body, the Queen will have to name a successor eventually; if she chooses Mary of Scotland, most of the Privy Council will unite on it. They so desire stability. And it will take the wind out of any plots that would see Lady Katherine on the throne. Your sister is fast becoming the reformers’ cause.”

“The reformers’ cause?” I repeat like a parrot. I had been so wrapped up with Katherine’s pregnancy, her transgression, her sanity, fear of the Queen’s wrath, all the immediate dangers, that of late I have forgotten to think about what else might be behind all this, or who might wish to take advantage. “What do you know of that?”

He lowers his voice further still. “I know the Queen suspects Cecil of being the puppet master behind your sister’s wedding. Everyone knows Cecil would do anything to keep the Scottish Queen off the throne. That is why Lady Katherine is undergoing such a questioning.”

I hadn’t thought they would question her, believing she had told them all they needed to know. But of course they would. It is more than I can bear to imagine my sister, huge with child, being interrogated in that place. I look down at the water below and my own dormant suspicions begin to waken; I try to think back, recall the facts, but all I can remember is Katherine running barefoot over the wet grass at Sheen to greet Hertford and Juno, he lifting her in his arms, the very image of love.

“It is a love match,” I say.

“But what it
is
, is less important that what it
seems
, my lady.”

“Yes, of course.” I should know well enough that people are more swayed by how things appear than how they truly are. “But I don’t understand,” I say. “I don’t know what you think I can do to make a difference.”

“Lady Katherine is imprisoned because she has a legitimate
claim to the throne, and the Queen is well aware that if your sister births a son her own position could be under threat.”

I don’t know why he is telling me what I already know only too well.

“Perhaps you could find the opportunity,” he continues, “to provoke a discussion with the Queen about primogeniture. I believe she has a great respect for the notion.” He places a hand on the sill; mine looks tiny, a puppet’s hand, beside it. “Mary of Scotland may not have been in King Henry’s succession,” he continues, “but she
is
from the senior line of your family.”

“I know, I know.” It puts me in mind of that great family tree at Bradgate, its golden branches, the women hanging from them like fruits, ripe for the picking. “But Mary of Scotland wasn’t English-born, and she is Catholic. The Queen would never be convinced that
I
, of all people, would champion a Catholic.”

“That is neither here nor there, my lady.” He brings his hands together now, as if in prayer. “You would not be championing Catholicism, you would simply be on the side of tradition, the divine right—primogeniture being part of that.”

“To what ends?”

“It would serve to demonstrate your own lack of ambition and that could only be good for your sister . . . And yourself.” His logic is starting to make a certain sense.

“It is unlikely I will get the chance; the Queen can barely look at me, let alone give me her ear.” As I articulate this, it seems hopeless—everything hopeless.

“If you bide your time, my lady, the opportunity may well arise.”

“Perhaps.” I shrug. “Why do you do this for me, Keyes?”

“I don’t want to see you come to harm,” is his reply. But I feel that there is something he is not saying, something beneath his words, something in the clumsy way he adds, “You—your family doesn’t—you don’t deserve to have more . . .” He appears unable to finish, but eventually mumbles, “More tragedy visited upon you.”

“Tragedy,” I say, as I leave the room. “We Greys are used to it.” I do not mean for my words to sound so full of bitterness—I do not want Keyes to think me bitter.

September 1561

The Tower of London

Katherine

Warner comes each day, his deputy always behind him like a shadow, and each day I say I have nothing more to tell him. This routine has gone on for a good three weeks now; time is measured in the swell of my belly. I feel Warner’s frustration building as the deputy huffs and tuts in the background—I’m sure
he
would willingly use the rack on me. But they would not use coercion on a woman with child, of that I am sure. Lady Warner comes to sit with me each day too, but she only tried to tease the truth from me the once; we have never strayed into that territory again. So I sit and sew with her, or chat with Nan, always careful, even though Nan seems such an artless girl; or I stand on the parapet walkway, watching the riverboats pass. I do not let myself think of the future and I try not to dwell on the whereabouts of Hertford or what has become of him, for if my thoughts do stray to that place I know I shall never find a way to return.

But if I inspect the far reaches of my being, the quiet place behind my fears, I know my Hertford lives, that I am not abandoned. I can feel him drawing nearer as the moon pulls the tides. He will come and all will be explained and then we will be free—that is the only future I allow in my thoughts. Time creeps slowly here with so little to do, and I wish I were more inclined to bookish pursuits like Mary. I try my hand at poetry, but find I have little talent for it, though happily Warner has procured me a lute. I play and sing with Nan, who has a high reedy voice that is not unpleasant.