The Boleyn Reckoning (45 page)

“You think the king will not act?” Elizabeth swung restlessly away from the window. “I think battle will be the only thing that can still stir him. If—when—Norfolk lands, I would wager all I own that the king will ride to meet him.”

“Is that what you would counsel?”

“I do not counsel the king. But if I were to be asked my opinion, I would urge negotiation. For all his talk, the French king has not actually given Norfolk that much. Three ships, when he might as easily have offered three dozen? And talk of a French marriage has not led anywhere just yet. I think Norfolk is proudly English, and would prefer to return home. Why not make it easy for him? Offer pardon, with suitable monetary punishment upon his estates, and provide him with a Protestant bride. I thought Margaret Clifford might do. She has proved her fertility with her ill-conceived
Dudley son and is near enough to the throne to not be an insult to Norfolk.”

“A generous offer,” Burghley remarked.

“An entirely hypothetical offer,” Elizabeth countered. “But you asked what my counsel would be.”

John Dee, who had remained watchfully silent throughout all of this, stirred at last. “It is not your counsel England needs so much as your action. What does your wide view tell you, Your Highness?”

“That the king will ride to battle … and that misfortune awaits kings who fight from a position of despair rather than hope.” And that you once came near to calling me queen, she thought, and knew from John Dee’s expression that he remembered.

The air hung heavy with unspoken possibilities, perhaps even hopes. Who would dare to speak more? It was, not surprisingly, Walsingham. “It is true that despairing men are not as careful of their persons as they might be. A battlefield is a messy place. It would be best to be prepared for all ends.”

He would not ask—and if he did, she would not answer. But Elizabeth met Walsingham’s gaze and inclined her head the barest inch in acknowledgment, not only of his words, but of his thoughts.

Then she turned away from all of them, and said stiffly, “You are dismissed.”

She stood for a long time at the window, long enough that the shadows moved toward night. In those shadows she allowed herself to see William as he had once been: beloved brother, joyous friend, enthusiastic king. And with deliberation, she took every single one of those memories and locked them away into a corner of her heart.

The first intimations of fresh trouble came from the mouth of the Humber River. Three French carracks, along with five hastily
converted merchant cogs with single square sails, were sighted by coastal defenses the last week of May. William received the news in silence, knowing that his advisors thought him insensible. He was not insensible—he was just conserving his strength for what mattered. Clearly God did not intend his marriage to matter, so he saved his energy for swift vengeance against Norfolk and the Catholics he was rallying to his cause.

Burghley, faithful Crown servant that he was, continued to update him daily despite William’s outward lack of interest. And so William knew that Norfolk’s ships had withdrawn, perhaps to make a play for a landing farther south at the Howard family’s East Anglia stronghold near Framlingham. “Don’t overlook the feint,” William told Burghley, and noted the slight hesitation of surprise from the Lord Chancellor that the king was indeed paying attention.

“No, Your Majesty.”

And feint it was, for in the end Norfolk managed to land his mercenary troops along the north side of the Humber near Ravenscar. Yorkshire was well chosen, for it had been the site of the Pilgrimage of Grace twenty years ago and the old Catholic ways held strong sway. Norfolk was calculating—but William was more calculating still. And the King of England had God on his side, at least in the matter of religion.

From the depths of his retreat at Richmond, William issued a rapid list of commands. Troops ready to march north and block Norfolk from sweeping to London. Burghley to take charge of the government from Whitehall. And, finally, the figurehead his people needed. “Bring me Elizabeth,” he told Lord Burghley, and received a relieved acquiescence. You prefer her to me? he thought cynically. That is only because she is not actually monarch. It is easy to be liked when one does not have to make the hard decisions.

Elizabeth came without demur. William met her in his presence chamber at Richmond, seated on a gilded throne beneath the canopy of estate. He was dressed as though to ride out, but he wore a circlet of gold and rubies and faced Elizabeth as her king and not her brother.

“Your Majesty.” Elizabeth curtsied a precisely calculated depth and waited for William to acknowledge her.

“Rise,” he said abruptly, and leaned back as Elizabeth stood straight and square, hands folded across her skirt. She had judged her attire as nicely as he had, her gown of black and white suiting her pale skin and bright hair.

She had always been more patient than the rest of them, and that patience had not deserted her in times of crisis. She waited, apparently unruffled, and William felt a twist of old and bitter amusement at the familiarity of their positions.

“I ride out tomorrow to intercept Norfolk and his hired mercenaries,” he told her. “Fewer have flocked to him in the North than surely he had hoped. This time I will not leave the field until the Duke of Norfolk is taken or dead. This cannot be allowed to continue.”

“I agree,” she replied. “England grows weary of strife. The people must have peace.”

“Lord Burghley will assume government power in London, but it would please me if you would act as regent from Hatfield as necessary. We have had our troubles, but I do not forget whose daughter you are. The people need to have Henry’s children before their eyes.”

“I will gladly serve.”

His eyes narrowed. He leaned forward, arms resting on his knees. “Can I trust you in this, Elizabeth?”

She did not answer immediately, or indignantly. Rather, she fixed her eyes on his as though seeing deeply into him as she used
to do, and he remembered asking her once when she would teach him to read people as she did.
When you learn to control your countenance
, she had answered. He wondered if she found it harder to read him now than she once had.

Elizabeth curtsied once more, answering as she did so. “I can always be trusted to put England’s good before my personal interests.”

That phrase sat with him uneasily throughout the night. Once, she would have laughed at the notion that he could not trust her, or scoffed at his need for a spoken vow when he should be able to trust her without words … But in a world where everything else had tilted and altered, why not his sister?

The march was quick and easy, for the early June weather seemed to smile on military ventures with clear skies and dry roads. William was glad they did not have to stop and stay in any one place for long, for he did not miss the resentful mood along the way. Instead of cheers, his army was met with sullen silence and occasionally a catcall. Elizabeth had been right—his people wearied of the constant conflict. It made William all the more anxious to confront Norfolk and finish the job with the duke’s death, for what pleasure was there in ruling a country that was mocking and ungrateful?

And when he had finished with Norfolk, he would ride on to Cumbria. It was time to put an end to Dominic once and for all—perhaps, William thought, his refusal to deal with the past had caused God to destroy his present. When Norfolk was dead, and Dominic as well, then perhaps this burden of listlessness and illness would be taken from him and he could think clearly about the future of England and his own legacy.

The battle was joined at last south of the cathedral city of York. Clearly, Norfolk had not advanced as far as he’d hoped, nor had he gathered many local troops to support the small number of mercenaries.
The fighting was sharp and began under clear skies, but within an hour the clouds that had been absent for so long erupted and rain began to pour fast and hard. William was aware of being wet, but fighting allowed him a chance to escape his own head and he refused to be sidetracked or retreat. They were winning the fight, Norfolk would be taken on the field, and William at leisure to return him to the Tower or execute him on the spot. It was the nearest he had been to feeling happy in almost two years.

The blow came at him from behind, catching the side of his helmet hard enough to stun him. The second blow (a mace? a stave?) struck his shoulder and sent him fumbling for his horse’s neck. But his horse had been struck as well and went down to its knees, sending William to the ground. He shook his head to clear it, but the ringing in his ears mingled with the sounds of battle as he hefted his sword and swung round to meet his foe.

Two mercenaries on horses had managed to slip through his guards and William braced himself for a brief fight and, at the worst, a briefer surrender. No doubt they saw Norfolk’s end as well as he did and wanted to use the king’s safety to negotiate their own retreat from the field. William didn’t care about the mercenaries—let them return where they’d come from.

He almost didn’t even mind, for at least the feeling of anger and disappointment was clean and sharp. After so long of muddled emotions and even more muddled motivations, it was nearly a pleasure to at least know what he was feeling.

But the mercenaries on horseback made no move to take him and suddenly William felt himself seized from behind. Before he could grasp what was happening, there was a sharp, almost liquid pain beneath his arm and then a second, similar, piercing pain beneath his other arm, and the rational part of William’s brain supplied the information that a dagger had been carefully thrust between the plates of his armor. The last blow came to his knees,
a blunt thrust from the flat of a sword that spun him to the muddy ground, cursing and bleeding and wondering how the hell he could have been so stupid as to imagine Norfolk would fight with honour. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who’d intended to leave his enemy for dead today.

William hated being at Pontefract, but he’d been unconscious when borne from the field and the royal castle was deemed the best refuge. He’d never stayed at Pontefract before, for it was tainted by betrayal and death: the royal guardian had handed it over to the rebels during the Pilgrimage of Grace; Edward II had executed his cousin for treason at Pontefract; and most awfully, Richard II had died in its dungeons, starved to death by Henry of Lancaster.

In the first two days, William had hopes of quickly moving on, for though the wounds pained him greatly they seemed to have missed anything vital. He followed reports of Norfolk’s surrender and dispatch to London and agreed with his commanders’ decision to let the mercenaries retreat across the sea. A man who is being paid to fight will not return when the paymaster is removed.

But the pain did not ease, despite the ministrations of several physicians. And soon pain became something worse—a poison of infection spreading from the dagger wounds through his whole body, bringing with it weakness and fever. William began to drown in dreams, and whenever he emerged to wakefulness he was seized by an awful fear at the familiarity of his position. It was the smallpox
all over again: a lost, dark wandering through the blackness of his own soul.

I’m going to die
. He’d had that thought more than once during the smallpox, but Dominic’s steady voice had found him in the darkness and brought him back. There was no Dominic to save him now.

Lord Burghley came, and several hours later (or was it days? William had lost time entirely) a dark-haired, dark-eyed man whom he associated with Elizabeth.

From somewhere deep, William dredged up a name. “Walsingham,” he croaked, for the fever and pain had stolen his voice along with his strength.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Walsingham waited, as though he expected William to say something else. And William realized there was something he desperately needed to say. Needed the women to know.

“Box,” he croaked again, and was able to point so that Walsingham found the plain oak box on the table at the foot of the bed. William had carried that box with him everywhere since burning Wynfield Mote, and his attendants knew to keep it within his reach.

At a nod from William, which sent pain flaring bright and hot through his head, Walsingham opened the box and withdrew the simple linen bag that had been taken off Minuette’s maid in the camp outside Wynfield Mote.

Walsingham looked questioningly at William but did not open the bag. William knew he could feel the outline of a diary, the fluid shape of jewels, and he wanted to tell him … no, not him, it wasn’t Walsingham who needed to know … it was Minuette’s, it should return to her … but she was never coming back. And Dominic …

As William’s exhausted body slipped back into restless sleep,
Dominic’s eyes followed him, dark green and hate-filled, watching him from the squalor of the dungeon at Lakehill House.

Dominic knew he was beginning to go slightly mad as the days and weeks and months passed and William did not return to see him. What was the king doing? Leaving him to die of grief and solitude? If that were William’s plan, he should never have mentioned that Minuette’s son—possibly Dominic’s own son—lived. The thought of some part of his wife left behind—and in the king’s hands—was just sufficient in the worst hours to keep Dominic moving in both body and mind.

But then there came a stretch of days when absolutely no one came, not even the mute servant who brought his food and emptied his fetid waste bucket. Dominic passed a bad few nights when he thought that William had sent orders to let him starve in the darkness, but before despair could quite sink into his bones, Eleanor appeared.

He had not seen her since William’s last visit, for she had apparently lost interest in taunting him at the same time the king had. But she had not changed. Dominic could still see in her the lovely, scheming, utterly amoral young woman she had been when she first appeared at court and in William’s bed. Of them all, it seemed Eleanor was the least affected by the years.