Sisters of Treason (48 page)

Mary slaps a fist to her knee in a rare show of frustration, sending the box of embroidery threads crashing to the floor.

“If it wasn’t for the refuge of Keyes’s rooms, I think I would—” She stops.

“I know.” Levina pats her hand. She is grateful for Keyes; he is a compassionate man. Levina had worried at first that there had been some kind of ulterior motive behind his kindness to Mary, a political agenda of one sort or another, but it seems that he simply likes her company. Levina has watched him carefully and sees the way he springs to life when he is with her. It is nothing sinister; if anything he seems protective, and God knows Mary needs protectors these days.

The bell rings and they file up for chapel, following the Queen out. Levina stands, and sits, and kneels, and repeats the priest’s words, and listens to the choir, and the interminable sermon—though she hears none of it. She had once thought that the world would be put to rights, if only they could all practice their religion
in the way they wished without fear of persecution. Elizabeth gave that to England but it hasn’t put an end to the dangerous machinations of the differing factions. The Queen likes to play them off against one another and sits on a fence of her own making. How naive Levina was to have thought the world so straightforward. Now she feels too distanced from her faith to make any sense of it. She looks to the front of the chapel where the Queen kneels at her prayer stand; even from behind she can see the anger still simmering in the set of her shoulders and wonders what her next move will be. It is impossible to predict. Hertford will be hauled before the Star Chamber, no doubt. She doesn’t dare think beyond that.

August 1563

The Tower of London

Katherine

There is a single window in my chamber that looks over an inner court. This has been my entire world these last seven months: a square of sky, a cobbled area, a flower bed sometimes bright with pansies, a bald patch of grass where daily I watch my dogs scamper when they are taken down for exercise. I may not go there, for I am kept tightly these days. I know not where my husband is housed, will not allow myself to imagine him in a lightless dungeon or worse, preferring instead to pretend he is still in his round tower room with a view of the river. Pretending has become more difficult and my optimism has shrunk to nothing these days.

Beech is stomping up and down between my two rooms wearing an old red cap of mine in imitation of a yeoman guard; the dogs follow him in a wagging pack but even the sight of that cannot bring a smile to my face. That is all he knows, guards and keys and a mother who clings to her sanity by a thread. My mind keeps turning, without permission, to Edward Courtenay, who it is said
spent his entire youth shut away in this place because of his Plantagenet blood, then to the famous princes of a hundred years ago. Those boys entered this place and never left; no one knows to this day what became of them. Some say murdered by their uncle. Their fates were written in their blood, as was Jane’s, as is mine, and I have passed the curse of it onto my sweet boys. My boys who have never known what freedom is.

I can hear baby Tom crying in the inner chamber. The nurse is fussing, calling me in to feed him, her voice cold and polite, all emotion erased by correctness. There is no wet nurse; I suppose it is meant as punishment that I must nourish my own infant, but the truth is, it is one of the sole joys I have left, though it is tinted by other, darker things. Hertford is gone, Nan is gone, Warner and his wife gone, Ball and Chain gone, and no explanation; no more letters are smuggled in and out. I have a rota of maids and nurses and guards who will not look me in the eye. I fear that I am already good as dead, my babies too—perhaps it would be better if we were. Sometimes I deliberately prick my finger with my embroidery needle to see if there is any blood in me. There is, of course, and I watch it pool on my skin like a jewel. I imagine bleeding myself, from the fat blue vein in the crook of my arm, as I bled the night before my wedding, until I am emptied altogether of cursed blood and can begin again.

Tom’s cries become more urgent. I am not moved. I will not allow myself to love Tom as I love Beech, for when I fell in love with my firstborn, I imagined a life for him, full and perfect. But now it is clear that will not be, and I cannot bear to love Tom too and see his little life similarly sucked dry of pleasure. Or, worse, watch him wrenched from me and disappeared like those princes.

Beech, tired of his marching, drops into my lap. I lift off the red cap and bury my nose in his soft hair. He smells like his father and the strings of my heart are stretched to breaking.

“Baby Tom cry, Mama,” he lisps. “He hungry.” He stands and pulls at my hand until I heave myself up, walking with him through
to the other chamber and my waiting infant. The maid is in a huff, pacing the room, jigging him up and down, exasperated with his howling. I sit on my bedraggled chair, which has been chewed and shredded by the pets, opening my shift. Tom is plonked on my lap and instantly his mouth searches out my breast. He latches on, causing the momentary sharp sting that makes me hold my breath, as my milk drops down. I try not to look at him but cannot help it and feel my heart melt a little with the bittersweet intimacy. Beech watches from the side of his eye; I smile at him, to remind him that it is him I love. He twiddles the rings on my fingers, the pointed diamond, the knot of secret might, and searches for the limning that always hangs from a ribbon about my neck.

“Papa.” He strokes the surface of the glass with little fingers, then looking at me with his head tilted to one side says, “Mama cry.”

“No, Beech,” I say. “I’m not crying. I have sore eyes, that’s all.” I thought I had cried myself dry long ago.

He climbs up onto my lap, negotiating his way around his baby brother, stretching up to put a wet kiss beside my eye. “Better now,” he says.

“Yes, all better,” I tell him. Tom has had his fill and is lolling drunkenly in my arms, his mouth swollen with sucking. I fear if I look too long at him I will fall under his spell, so I place him gently in his cradle.

I can hear the nurse talking to the guards outside, their low voices rumbling. She comes back in, glancing over at me before gathering the dirty linens. A foul stench drifts over from the slop bucket in the far corner; it hasn’t been emptied today, which is unusual.

“Where is the slop boy?” I ask.

“Plague,” she says, and I see then that what I had thought was sullenness in her face is fear.

“There is plague in London?” She looks at me as if I am a fool. “I am told nothing in here,” I add.

“Fifteen thousand souls taken in the city alone.”

“Fifteen thousand?” I am horrified, cannot believe what I am hearing. Then think of Mary and Hertford, wondering if they are safe.

“My husband?” I say.

The woman shrugs, and I search her face to see if she is hiding something from me, but her look is blank, revealing nothing.

I rap on the door for the guards. It is opened and I shout, “Has the court left?”

“Months ago,” one of them says. “We’d all be gone if we had a place to go to.”

“And my husband, is he stricken? My sister, is she with the court?”

The girl slides out with her pile of linens, looking at me askance, as if I am a lunatic.

“I would not be at liberty to relate news of your kin, even were I to know it.”

The door is shut in my face and I am alone once more. Surely, I try to reason with myself, I would have been informed if my sister had died, or my husband. My head spins and I feel the danger pressing on my boys and me. It is a mother’s job to protect her children but I cannot. We are in here, unable to leave, the slop boy plague-ridden already and who next—one of the maids, one of the guards, one of my boys? Perhaps it would be better if we were taken by the plague, all three of us together, but what of Hertford?

They say it is the worst kind of death, the plague, and I cannot help my imagination from running away with me, showing me images of my husband in agony, fighting for his life in a cell somewhere. My breath is short, shallow, and I feel panic rise up in me like a flame set to kindling. Opening the window, I heave in lungfuls of air in an attempt to steady myself. But I will not be steadied and it is as if another woman is inside me shouting.

“Hertford, my Hertford, my Hertford, my love.”

Beech, thinking it a game, joins in, “Papa, Papa, Papa,” falling into laughter when he becomes breathless from shouting. I look
down, imagining grabbing his little hand and jumping from the edge, flying, falling—I am above the river pool, above the smooth stone slabs.

“My Lady.” It is a voice behind me, one of the guards. I continue shouting until I am hoarse—I cannot stop myself. He takes my arm; I struggle a little but know there is no point. “The lieutenant is here to see you.”

“Warner?” I ask, feeling a sliver of hope slip between the edges of my panic.

“Not Warner, no.”

Of course, Warner is gone.

The lieutenant is hovering by the door of my chamber, with a woman standing behind him.

I hold Beech’s sweaty little paw tight in my hand.

“You are to be moved,” he says, not bothering with a greeting.

“To where?” I make a list in my head of all the possible places: a dungeon; another room like this; house arrest somewhere in the country; back to court—no, he said “moved” not “released.”

“I cannot say, my lady. But you are to gather your things and be ready to leave within the hour. The infant will go with you, and the older boy with his father.”

“Hertford lives?” I cry.

“Why would you think otherwise?” says the lieutenant, and I wonder if my mind is not breaking apart, for I believed his death as if I had seen it with my own eyes. But now I know Hertford is safe I am confronted by the other thing I have been told: Beech is to be separated from me. The woman takes Beech’s hand and moves for the door.

“NOOOO!” I shriek, grabbing at his sleeve.

“Mama.” His little face is scribbled over with bewildered fear. “Mama, come?”

The lieutenant pulls me away, holding me tight with one hand and slamming the door with his other. I can hear Beech’s screams as he is carried down the steps, each shrill note gouging out a piece
of me. I collapse to the floor sobbing, feeling the full force of my loss as if a great weight has landed on me and knocked all the love from my heart.

“I am sorry, my lady,” the guard is saying. “It is the Queen’s command.”

August 1563

Windsor Castle

Mary

It is pitch-black and I can hear the Queen tossing and turning in the bed. The court is in disarray owing to the plague, and lately I have often been required to spend the night with her—a duty I do not relish. These last months I have been perplexed by the warmth Elizabeth has shown me. Perhaps she feels it atones for what she has done to my sister. But there is no pleasure in it for me, and I have no choice but to accept her attentions, bear these interminable nights in the royal bedchamber. But it did give me the chance to plead Katherine’s cause when plague struck in London and beg that she be removed to a safer place. It has been done—I can scarce believe it. She is on her way to Pyrgo, which is surely better than the Tower. Though I remember well enough how Uncle John treated her last time we were there, that dreadful summer before she was arrested. I hope he finds a way to muster up a little sympathy for his least favorite niece.

I am not supposed to be aware that the Queen has fulfilled my request. Does she think if I know one thing has been granted me that I shall get above myself and ask for more? I am not such a fool. It was Keyes who got word to me that they were to be moved: Hertford and Beech to Hanworth and baby Tom to Pyrgo with his mother. While I am glad they are away from the infected area, I know the separation will be as torture to Katherine, who could hardly even bear an hour parted from her favorite dog. I think of
my nephews, wondering constantly what they are like, trying to get a sense of them; but they inhabit my thoughts like specters, and I cannot imagine up any substance to them.

Keyes’s letter was smuggled through, in spite of nothing or no one being allowed entry from London for fear of infection. Even the barges are prevented from passing by on the river, and visiting delegates must wait in quarantine a full four weeks before they are admitted to court. I fret for Keyes, who was required to stay behind at Westminster, though he tells me he keeps at a safe distance from strangers. I miss the sanctuary of his chambers, our games of chess and whiling away our precious spare time in conversation. He has become a stalwart presence in my life. I pray for his safety and am thankful, at least, that Levina is safely here at Windsor with the court.

“Mary? Wake up.” I feel the Queen’s hand shaking at my shoulder. “Wake up. I cannot sleep.”

“I am awake, madam. Can I be of service to you?”

“Fetch a candle.”

I drag myself out of the truckle and fumble for my gown, pulling it over my shift and, unable to find my slippers, make for the door barefooted. Outside, both guards have dropped off. They are exhausted from working double shifts as their number is depleted by the plague. One has his head back at an uncomfortable angle against the wall—chin up, snoring loudly—the other is slumped on a stool. His eyes half open as I appear and he hastily pulls himself to his feet, smoothing down his livery and straightening his cap.

“Have you a taper?” I ask.

He makes a little bow and digs about in a carton, finding one, lighting it for me, only then seeming to notice my naked feet and blushing hotly as if he is surprised to discover that I have ten toes like any other woman.

Back in the bedchamber I can hear the Queen relieving herself in the pot. I light some candles, pull aside the hangings, and plump her pillows. When she is done, she flops down on the bed with a loud exhalation, and I notice in the dim light how drawn and haggard
she has become, with dark circles about her eyes as if she has been punched.