The Boleyn Reckoning (3 page)

At last, much too soon, they drew apart just enough to breathe. Minuette let herself rest in Dominic’s embrace, his cloak sheltering them both from the petulant wind of too-early spring. Her only peace in an increasingly turbulent world.

“What will happen to his sons?” she asked quietly. She did not need to specify Northumberland’s four sons; Dominic read her
these days with an ease that went beyond familiarity to the almost uncanny.

“It is the duke himself people hate. His sons will remain in prison for now, but I suspect they will be safe. Not their lands or titles, though—there will not be another Duke of Northumberland for a long time. But I think John Dudley would count the title well lost if it saves his sons.”

“Does he still expect to be pardoned?”

She felt Dominic’s shrug. “I suppose I will find out when I deliver the order tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry it has to be you.”

“Better me than Rochford. At least I will not gloat quite so openly.”

She drew a little away, so she could see his face—or at least its outlines—as she asked, “What are you going to do about Robert’s accusations?”

“When am I going to tell Will about them, do you mean? One step at a time, my love. First let’s get him back into the world. Spring is upon us, which means campaigning, which means we’ll find out if the French intend to continue their aggressions. I’m watching Rochford, but honestly, after destroying Norfolk and Northumberland, who is left for the man to bring down?”

“You,” Minuette answered softly but firmly. “And me. Rochford does not trust your influence with the king, and he despises me heartily.” She hesitated over the next part, for she knew her husband’s mind, but one of them had to be practical. “Do you never think that, rather than being our enemy, we could turn Rochford to our best ally?”

Against William, she meant, or at least the king’s anger. Because William was going to be angry. He was going to be furious when he found out they had married behind his back. While Minuette was secretly betrothed to William himself.

She often wondered what she could have done differently. How had they come to this, the lies and the betrayals? But she and Dominic had made their choices and they could not be unmade. All that could be done now was to mitigate the damage. And for that, they would need allies.

Elizabeth was the obvious choice, but Minuette would not burden her friend with this when she had been so worried about her brother. Besides, the princess had her own touchy royal pride and might not be entirely understanding. But Rochford was, above all, practical. Combined with the fact that he wanted nothing more than to ensure his nephew did not marry a common girl for love alone, and the chancellor seemed the perfect choice to counsel and aid them.

If only Dominic could be persuaded.

She read his resistance in the hard lines of his chest and shoulders and was not surprised when he shook his head. “I do not trust Rochford in the least. And I will not attempt to ally myself with a man who may be a traitor simply because it is convenient for me.”

There had been no real chance of a different response. Where Rochford’s core principle was practicality, Dominic’s was honour. He would never use a man he despised simply because it could benefit him. Minuette had not really expected him to agree. She had only proposed it so he could not accuse her later of acting without consulting him first.

She could never regret having married Dominic, secret and hurried as it had been. But from the moment William’s eyes had opened and his slow recovery began, Minuette had felt a great pressure that spoke of unavoidable disaster. She didn’t know what form it would take or when it would strike, but every choice she made each day seemed designed only to delay the flood that threatened to overwhelm them all.

Once, she’d been confident in her ability to find a solution that
would preserve not only themselves as individuals, but their friendships. Now her confidence was gone and when she wept, which was often, it was for a tangle of troubles far beyond her abilities to solve.

At such times there was a terrible whisper in her head, poisonous and treasonous.
If only William had not survived …

She buried herself in Dominic’s arms once more to shut out that thought. William had survived and she was glad of it, and if there were terrible prices to be paid in future she would pay without faltering.

“It will be all right,” Dominic whispered, his hands stroking her hair. “It shall all come right in the end.”

And there was a measure of how the world had upended itself: that Dominic had all the confidence and she all the doubt.

“After the execution, I will speak to Robert again,” Dominic continued. “Perhaps his father’s death will loosen his tongue and he’ll provide evidence against Rochford.”

And whether he does or not, Minuette thought, I shall have to make my own choice about whether to approach Rochford.

T
HE
D
UKE OF
Northumberland met his end with more grace and less defiance than Dominic had expected. When Dominic had told him there would be no pardon, only commutation to beheading, Northumberland had gone unnervingly still as if channeling his anger for a rant against the king. But by the time the duke was led out of the Tower on the morning of March 21, he was composed. He asked, and was granted, the customary right to speak to those assembled. He approached the railing of the scaffold and delivered a moving speech.

“Good people, all you that be here present to see me die … I am a wretched sinner, and have deserved to die, and most justly am condemned to die by law. And yet this act wherefore I die was not altogether of me, as it is thought, but I was procured and induced thereunto by others. I was, I say, induced thereunto by others, howbeit God forbid that I should name any man unto you. I will name no man unto you, and therefore I beseech you look not for it.”

Which was as good as saying,
Hunt down the man who sent me to this bloody end
. Dominic tried to judge the mood of the crowd, to see how many had taken seriously Northumberland’s claim of further
conspiracies, but failed. At the moment they seemed wholly focused on watching the duke die.

After a brief but seemingly genuine praise of the king and a prayer for God’s blessings upon him and England, Northumberland concluded, “I could, good people, rehearse much more but you know I have another thing to do whereunto I must prepare me, for the time draweth away.”

It was that sense of irony and humour that Dominic admired and he felt his stomach rise at what the man’s pride had brought him to. Northumberland was blindfolded and knelt at the block, speaking softly so that even Dominic, at the front, almost missed it. He thought Northumberland’s words were, “I have deserved a thousand deaths.”

As he knelt, the blindfold slipped and so did the duke’s composure. Northumberland fumbled to move the blindfold back into place, and the executioner, almost at the same moment, swung the ax. Mercifully, it was a clean blow.

Dominic stayed long enough to see the head, respectfully covered, and the body carried into the Tower chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula. Now was the time to speak to Robert Dudley once more, for Beauchamp Tower edged the Tower green and he could have seen his father take his last walk. Robert would be edgy and angry and grieving, and Dominic intended to twist every one of those emotions to his advantage in pressing for information.

“Lord Exeter.” A man fell into step beside Dominic as he crossed the green, a man it took him a moment to identify. A wide forehead narrowing to a pointed, goateed chin, the narrowness echoed by a long nose, and watchful, careful eyes … Dominic remembered those eyes, observing him on their return journey from France last summer. Francis Walsingham, the intelligencer whom Elizabeth had hired into her household.

“What can I do for you, Walsingham?”

“I wondered if I might attend on Lord Robert with you.”

“What makes you think I’m going to see Robert Dudley?”

The slow, intelligent gaze of a man who knows far more than he says … “May I accompany you?”

“Why?”

“Her Highness wishes it.”

“Does Her Highness know that she wishes it?” Dominic asked suspiciously.

At that, Walsingham smiled. “Those who work for royalty must learn to anticipate what our patrons wish before they themselves know it.”

Dominic’s first instinct was to send him on his impertinent way, but truth be told, the man was not wrong. Was not his own visit to Robert anticipating what William would wish if—when—he knew about Robert’s insinuations? Besides, Walsingham was canny, and Dominic was not so proud as to think he could not benefit from another canny man’s advice.

With a sharp nod, Dominic said, “Come on, then.”

Robert knew who was coming to see him long before he heard footsteps on the stairs. Dominic was the only one who bothered to see him these days—other than the guards and occasionally the Constable of the Tower—and he would have bet everything he owned that Dominic’s sense of duty would bring him here today.

That is, Robert would have bet if he stilled owned anything to gamble with. But he and his brothers had been attainted right along with their father. No land, no titles, no rights in blood to pass anything on to children … not that Robert had really had much to begin with. The courtesy title of Lord Robert came only from his father’s position; he’d held almost nothing in his own right, and certainly he had no children.

The real problem with attainder was what came after it. Without the status of a gentleman, Robert could be tortured if the king wished it. And William might wish it. Or rather, Elizabeth might and William often granted his sister’s wishes. After the debacle at Dudley Castle with Amy, not to mention Elizabeth’s imprisonment, her pride was stung. And there was nothing more righteous than the Tudor pride.

Sometimes, in the dark of night, Robert wondered what he might say if it came to torture. The truth? Or whatever lie would be most convenient? He supposed it would depend on who was asking the questions. And on how hard they pressed.

When it came right down to it, torture or not, Robert preferred Dominic asking the questions. The man was infuriatingly good and lacked imagination and his devotion to duty was exhausting … but Dominic was honest, a quality Robert was in desperate need of.

The door opened and Robert turned from the window where he had watched his father being led out across the green to the scaffold on Tower Hill. The range of Tower buildings had not allowed him to see his father’s death, but he had been able to hear the general tenor of the crowd. He was dressed more for warmth than fashion, and he felt a moment’s envy at Dominic’s easy grace as he strode across the bare wood floor. Not that he was fashionable, but he had that indefinable air of belonging in the very centers of power—whether in palace or prison cell—all the more noticeable for his being unconscious of it.

Robert caught sight of a second man behind Dominic and frowned. “You’ve brought a friend. Or is it an interrogator?”

“Francis Walsingham,” the man said.

“Yes, I remember you. Came back from France with the princess. Friend of John Dee’s.”

Walsingham inclined his head in agreement.

Despite himself, Robert could not help the lift of hope in his chest. “Elizabeth sent you?”

“Her Highness,” the intelligencer answered repressively, “did not.”

“So she still won’t speak to me,” Robert murmured. Then, louder, to Dominic, “In which case, you might as well go. I’ll speak to Elizabeth, or no one.”

Dominic held his gaze, with a steadiness that Robert found unnerving. He had always thought it a simple matter to understand Dominic, but there was something new to his expression. That something new continued in the indefinable tone with which he said, “You will speak to me, or you will end as your father. Make no mistake—there are many calling for your head. And as of now, no one asking for clemency.”

“Don’t try to threaten me, you’re not cut out for it.”

“I’m not threatening, I’m telling. Your father is dead, Robert. If you try, perhaps you can smell the blood in the air. Your brother, Guildford, met the same end. You, John, Ambrose, Henry … all the remaining men of your family are held here, and there are many who hope not one of you leaves these walls alive.”

Robert felt his carefully cultivated facade of lighthearted indifference beginning to crack. He had been kept isolated since his imprisonment in November, neither allowed to see his brothers nor receive letters from the outside. Robert was a social creature and the solitude had worn on him more than he’d have thought possible. In his mix of boredom and anxiety, he had taken to carving the stone walls as so many previous prisoners had done. He stared now at his initials, carved confident and deep beneath a pattern of leaves, and admitted to himself that he had never been as sanguine as his father about the chances of mercy. Because Robert knew whose hand was behind all of this—and he knew there was no mercy in that particular hand.

During those endless nights, he had often cursed himself for ever getting involved with George Boleyn. It was true that Lord Rochford was skilled at getting what he wanted, which included manipulating people he wanted to use, but Robert knew he had been eager to be used. His ego had been flattered at working with the foremost power in England. And how could he have refused Rochford’s promise to do what he could to ensure Robert’s divorce and a chance to seriously court Elizabeth?