Sisters of Treason (9 page)

“The Queen might find you a position as a lady-in-waiting,” he says.

“I would not assume such an honor, Your Grace, I am not so gently born.”

“Gently born,” he echoes. “There are many well-bred ladies who are not as finely mannered.” He pauses, casting his eyes over her, then adding, “She needs more like you about her.” With this he bends to briefly pat Hero on the head, which warms him to her minutely, then turns and exits, still leaning on the page, leaving Levina wondering if he will continue to think her such a boon when he discovers her close connection with the Greys. But perhaps
now that the Greys have been almost entirely decimated and Frances and the girls are giving a convincing impression of having returned to the fold, that connection may not be the disadvantage it once might have been.

When he is gone, Katherine Grey enters, sidling round the door. She looks puffy about the eyes and has a handkerchief bunched in her fist; Levina has noticed the girl weeping over Pembroke’s boy a good deal of late. She tries to remember what it was like to cry over a lost love, but it is hard to garner the feeling—she never was much given to grand passions. But this girl is buffeted by it.

“Can I do something for you, Katherine?” she asks.

“The Cardinal,” Katherine says, looking at the portrait. “He looks very glum.”

“Do you not find him a rather glum kind of person?”

“I do, I suppose. Must be all that praying.” She takes a jar of pigment from the box, uncorking it and holding it to the light. “What is this one called?”

“Lead-tin yellow,” Levina says.

“It is the color of lemons. That is a happy color.” As she says it her face looks fit to crumble.

“Come here, Katherine.” Levina holds out her arms, and Katherine allows herself to be wrapped into them. “There will be others,” she murmurs, stroking the girl’s hair.

“But I am so very brokenhearted. I am like those maidens in the poems, rent in two.”

Levina wants to tell her it will pass, to tell her that she will look back on this one day and it will be a nothing, but she knows she won’t be believed, for the girl’s feelings are stubbornly fixed, so she just holds her quietly for a while until Katherine says, “Maman was asking for you.”

•  •  •

Frances is in her rooms with a seamstress, poring over several bolts of fabric that are leaning up in a row against the wall.

“Veena,
ma chère
,” she says with a warm smile, “how glad I am to see you. No one is better with color. Mary needs a new gown for Cousin Margaret’s wedding.”

Levina notices Katherine’s face tighten at the mention of the marriage—it is not surprising, given the manner in which she was wrenched from her own young husband. Frances holds out a swatch of deep pink damask together with a square of buff silk. “What is your opinion of these together?”

“I think they are too much of one tone, I would rather see the buff with this.” Levina picks up a roll of dark blue velvet. “It will suit her coloring better.”

“You are right, always right.” Frances turns to the seamstress, instructing her to make a forepart in the silk and a high-necked gown in the velvet, explaining exactly how to best disguise Mary’s crookedness, by running the back seams at an angle and making the collar stiff at the nape, with a small starched half-ruff to cover the hunch of her shoulders. “You should measure her really, but she is with the Queen, and I don’t know when there will be time. Use this.” Frances hands her an old dress of Mary’s.

“Upon my word, it is no bigger than a doll’s gown,” the woman exclaims, provoking a sharp look from Frances. “Begging your pardon, my lady, I was just—”

“Yes,” interrupts Frances brusquely, turning pointedly away from the woman and to her daughter. “Now, Katherine, should you not be in the Queen’s rooms,
avec ta soeur
?” To Levina she says, “Let us take a walk while Mistress Partridge gathers all her bits and pieces. There are things to discuss.”

Poor Mistress Partridge, scurrying about, is quite cowed in the face of Frances’s firmness and efficiency. Frances can be intimidating to those who don’t know her well; people are daunted by her status alone, but it is true that she has a stoniness to her demeanor that hides the depth of kindness and loyalty she harbors, and Levina is one of the few to have seen beneath the surface.

Frances throws her a squirrel wrap. “It is cold out but the gallery is too full of prying ears. Do you mind, Veena?”

“I could do with some air,” Levina replies, as they both fold themselves into their furs.

“
Je peux imaginer
 . . . you have been painting that man. I’m sure he sucks the air out of the room.”

“True,” says Levina. “But I believe there might be more to him than meets the eye.”

“I doubt it,” Frances says with a sneer. “The fanaticism for their faith runs through those Poles like wood grain.” She pauses. “The Queen seems fond of him, but then I suppose she would be; he has brought England back to the Pope.”

She leads the way out by the back, down the narrow winding steps that run from her chambers to the east entrance. In the yard a messenger has recently arrived entirely spattered with mud, vaulting from his horse and throwing the reins to one of the grooms before scaling the steps three at a time. Levina wonders what news he is bringing—something to do with the Emperor’s war with the French, she supposes. The King is itching to get his sword bloody, but the word is that he will stay until his infant is born.

The trees in the orchard are dark against a February sky that is thick like soup. Moles have ruined half the grass, leaving great earthy mounds that the two women have to pick their way around, and Levina can feel the damp seep through her shoes. They arrive eventually at a pavilion. It is open on one side, affording a view of the palace, and has a dovecote at its top, a place where people meet for assignations in better weather, with the scent of the wildflowers and the coo-curoo of the doves to serenade them. Today it smells dank and vaguely of urine, though not enough for them to bother seeking out a better place. They settle onto the cold bench. There is an ominous scattering of white feathers on the floor—a fox must have got at one of the doves.

“I shall be glad to get away from this place,” says Frances. “I sometimes
feel the walls are closing in on me.” Levina looks at her friend. She is thin and pale and her eyes have circles, dark as bruises.

“When will you wed?”

“The spring, I suppose. It is a year since the duke . . .”

Levina nods, understanding that she means she has left a respectable time since the execution of her husband before marrying another.

“It will be a quiet affair.”

“And you will be Mistress Stokes.” She laughs at this, they both do, for they know that, though she will lose her position at court, all will still think of her as the Duchess of Suffolk and first cousin of the Queen, even when she is married to a commoner.

“They think him after my estates, but, as far as I’m concerned, he can have them all, what’s left of them—it is a small price to pay to get myself away from this
folie
.” She smiles and Levina sees the fleeting ghost of Jane in her face.

“The girls will go with you?”

“That is what I wanted to talk to you about, Veena,” she replies. “The Queen has said she wants them, well certainly Katherine, at court.”

“She fears another uprising,” Levina says, thinking out loud. “That a reform faction will champion Katherine for the throne.” She thinks, as she often has, about Katherine as queen, and it seems quite ridiculous, but then royal blood and a functioning womb is all most care about in a princess.

“The Queen feels secure with that infant in her belly, though yes . . . I suppose so.” Frances is clenching and unclenching her hands in her lap. “She has not said as much, but that must surely be the reason.”

“People do believe Katherine turned back to Catholicism, don’t they?”

“They do,
grâce à Dieu
; they think all us Greys good papists these days. But you know how it is.” Levina does indeed know how it is. “I persuaded her to let me have Mary,” she continues. “No one thinks Mary a threat, so she will come with me to Beaumanor and
will only be required occasionally. Katherine is to be given rooms of her own.”

“So she won’t be in the maids’ rooms under Mistress Poyntz’s sharp eye.” Levina is wondering if it is a good idea for the girl to be given so much freedom.

“I know. It is an honor.”

“More a curse than a blessing, I’d say.”

Frances nods. “Will you keep an eye on her, Veena? I worry so that without me she may find herself caught up in God only knows what kind of trouble. She is so very impulsive.”

“Of course I will. You know your girls are like family to me. I shall treat Katherine as if she were one of my own.”

“All this business with the Herbert boy has been such a worry. Pembroke had words with me.”

“Oh dear,” Levina says. No one would welcome “words” from Pembroke.

“He has sent the boy away. He will go to fight the French soon enough, I suppose. That will get him out of Katherine’s orbit. I must put my mind to another match for her, though it might be hard to find anyone prepared to tie themselves to the Greys at the moment.”

Levina thinks of Harry Herbert; he can only be Marcus’s age, still so far from manhood really. She can’t help but think, too, of all those English boys, courtiers’ sons, being readied to fight the Emperor’s war. She sees them in the tiltyard sometimes, scrapping like puppies, laughing, their fresh faces still smooth, their slender limbs still carrying the gawkiness of youth, trying on their swagger for size like new outfits. She can’t bear the thought of it, the things they will see, how they will suffer. “I shall make sure your Katherine stays away from trouble, Frances. That is a promise.” She meets the other woman’s eye to enforce her words.

“There is another thing,” Frances says, lowering her voice, though there is no one within earshot. She pulls a fold of paper from her sleeve, handing it to Levina. “Read it.”

“What is it?” she asks, opening it up, seeing a page of carefully
written text, casting her eye over it.
I have sent you, good sister Katherine, a book, which although it be not outwardly trimmed with gold, yet inwardly it is more worthy than precious stones
 . . . “It is Jane’s letter.”
It shall teach you to live and learn you to die
. The memory returns to Levina unbidden, of that moment: Jane blindly floundering for the block, the crimson spurt. “Oh Frances,” she says, her voice cracking.

“I copied it from Jane’s Greek New Testament.” She pauses. “I will ask something of you, Veena, but you must know that you are free to refuse. I will not judge you on it. Your friendship is dear to me.”

“Ask,” she says. “Ask me.”

“Can you get this out to Bruges somehow? Perhaps it could go hidden among a package to your family. I can have it collected there and taken on to Geneva. There is a man in that place, Foxe, who will see it is put into print.”

Levina finds herself overwhelmed with emotion and unable to reply with more than a nod.

“Veena,
merci.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you.” She pulls the other woman into an embrace. “I will
not
have her forgotten. She will shine as a beacon for the new faith. As the Catholics have their Virgin, the reformed Church shall have its martyred Jane Grey.
I
cannot speak out, but
Jane’s
voice will sing from beyond the grave.”

Levina folds the paper carefully and tucks it away beneath her gown. However much of a risk it may be to involve herself in this, she is compelled to fulfill Frances’s wish—she too needs some kind of sense to be made out of that poor child’s death.

April 1555

Hampton Court

Katherine

“Harry Herbert, Harry Herbert, Harry Herbert.” I rub the piece of gray ribbon between my fingers; it is frayed almost to nothing now,
and I haven’t seen Harry Herbert for months, nor even had a letter. I tuck the ribbon away and staunch my thoughts. If I let myself think about him for too long, it will set off all that crying again, and I have only lately managed to put the parts of me back together.

Elizabeth is here, and thank God, for we are all going out of our minds with boredom waiting for the Queen’s baby, which seems not to want to be born. There is no dancing, nor music; the Queen lolls on her bed and we are all to sit in silence about her for most of the day. Even when the weather without is fine and we could be riding or walking in the gardens, we must stay in that gloomy bedchamber straining our eyes in the candlelight, embroidering a cloth of state that will hang over the infant’s cradle, or if not stitching, then praying for the prince’s safe delivery.

But Elizabeth’s presence gives us all something to talk about: how it was the King himself who insisted she come to court; how she traveled from Woodstock in a high wind and had to shelter behind a hedge to adjust her hood which had quite blown off; how she was swollen with the dropsy and could barely manage half a dozen miles a day in her litter; how when she arrived in the outskirts of the city, all in white with two hundred riders, a great crowd came out to cheer her. When the Queen heard of it, she had us dress her in her finest loose gown and stood in profile at the balcony window so the crowds below could see her great belly.

It has been like a game of trumps: Elizabeth put down her best card and the Queen had a better one, for what is better than a royal infant? It seems now though that the Queen is refusing to play; she will not give her sister an audience. Elizabeth is confined to her rooms; they are better rooms than mine, though mine are quite good, it is true, with a view of the water gardens. No one is supposed to see Elizabeth without permission, but Cousin Margaret seems quite desperate to set her eyes on our captive cousin. I pretend I do not care one way or another, but truth be told I am easily as keen as Cousin Margaret to get a look at Elizabeth, for I have only ever seen her at a distance.