Constant Heart (30 page)

The list of names to be added to the Garter Knighthood eventually became known early in spring. Lytham’s name was not among them. I had failed. Unfortunately, I was not the only one to know it.

“Are you mad, girl?”

“Lady de Winter.” I tried to drop a
curtsey, but she continued to advance upon me in the Presence Chamber, the ladies around us parting to let her pass as if she were Moses himself.

She came at me hissing and spitting. “I gave you Sir Thomas and you did nothing with that gift!”

I wished she would speak more quietly. “He wanted me to . . . he expected me to . . .”

“Be a courtier? Is that what you mean to say?”

“I could not—”

“Spare me your excuses! I tried to do you a favor. A very
great
favor. I had to pay him so that he would not speak of the disaster.” Finally, she stopped her advance. “What was it? Was he not comely enough?”

“Nay. I mean, aye, he was . . .”

Her eyes narrowed. She leaned toward me to peer into my own. “He was not Lytham.”

I could only shake my head.

“You suffer from a constant heart, girl! I told you love would ruin you. How can you hope to help Lytham succeed if you insist on being in love with him? He could have had a knighthood. And now he has nothing at all. What am I to do with you!”

My heart both trembled and rejoiced at the thought that she might be done with me. That she might leave me, for better or worse, to my own devices.

33

O
n May Day, while watching maids dance and observing the selection of the May Queen, I felt a quickening inside me. I n made a quick calculation. We could expect a babe in October. My thoughts traveled ahead through the months, thinking of linens to be laundered, cradles to be found, and nurses to be employed. But then, the next week, I had a flux bloody enough to keep me abed.

And after that, I felt no more movements.

I told no one. Only Joan knew my flowers were other than normal. And I instructed her to advise all who inquired that I was ill. And I was. But there was no remedy for sickness of the heart.

Distraction came from an unexpected source. Lady de Winter, no doubt guided by providence, had decided to put away her grievances. She approached me one forenoon with several of her maids-in-training in tow.

“We go to see the lions. Will you come?” Her offer was made dispassionately, as if she did not care what I might say, and she did not clutch my hand in friendship as she once had done, but she had made the offer. And I had nothing better to do.

We took several of Lytham’s and de Winter’s men with us as we rode to the Tower. When we got there, we were handed off to an attendant, who directed us toward the Lyon’s Tower. Once we got there, Lady de Winter told the man waiting at Lyon Gate what we had come to see.

“Aye. Everyone what comes here comes to see the lions. But look you first to the wolf. ’Tis the only one left in all of England . . . least of the kind what has four legs instead of two . . . if you take my meaning.”

We took his advice and observed a pale, mangy dog-of-a-beast lying in a cage in front of us. He lifted his head from his paws at our appearance, then put it back down.

The keeper walked before us into the gloom. Ahead were six cages, each one of them containing a lion. Lady de Winter, the maids, and I walked up to them, squinting to see through the dark.

They were all of them lying upon their sides, steadfast in ignoring their visitors.

The keeper lurched away from us. “I’ll have them out for ye . . . just give me . . . where did I put . . . ?”

He came back brandishing a torch. Then he slid behind the cages and pushed the flame through the bars toward a beast.

The lion leapt to its feet, snarling.

In our haste to step back, Lady de Winter and I nearly stumbled over each other.

“They hates the fire. Always gets them moving.” The keeper moved toward the other cages and drove their occupants to their feet. And then he plunged the torch into a water bucket and came to stand beside us. “They have a hundred years, the two of them here.”

“One hundred years, girl! Imagine.”

“Have they names?”

“The one here, the pale one, his name is Edward. For the King, God rest his soul.” The keeper let out a spasm of a laugh. “An’ this one here . . .” As he pointed, the other lion stretched its claws through the cage and then curled them around the bar and pulled. Its eyes were orbs of golden fire, their color not unlike those of Lady de Winter. As one person, Lady de Winter and I took another step back. “This one here, she’s Elizabeth.” He leaned toward us and whispered in an ale-soused voice, “She’s the grasping female one.” Silent laughter made his shoulders shake.

Elizabeth opened her mouth and let out a great roar.

“She don’t like it when I say that.” He pointed a gnarled finger at her. “But it’s the truth. Still, we takes good care of them. If Elizabeth dies, they say our Elizabeth will surely die too.”

I looked at him sharply. “Edward still lives even though
our
Edward is surely dead.”

He screwed up eyes and scratched his chin. “Aye, that’s a fact. I’m just telling ye what I know.”

Elizabeth roared at him again.

“But this one here’s healthy as Her Majesty’s horse. Quit your moaning, beastie. I’ll feed ye.”

“What do they eat?” I could not pretend to mask my fascination.

“Anything what moves. And sometimes even things that be dead.”

Elizabeth roared and the keeper growled back.

Elizabeth lifted a paw and batted at a bar of the cage. She shook her head to produce fantastic roars. And she kept it up for several minutes before I became aware of a strange noise. A scream that lay just under the register of the lion’s growls. It rose and fell in a manner that made the hairs at the back of my neck tingle.

Lady de Winter must have felt the same sensation. “Keeper! What beast makes that noise? Can it not be kept silent?”

“Not a beast, my lady. ’Tis a man.”

“A man?”

“Aye. In the Tower. It’s the rack what turns a man to mewling.”

“And what has he done to deserve such?”

“They don’t know. Not yet. But they will. I wish they’d get to the end of it. Drives the lions mad. ’Specially Elizabeth—the ladies have the thirst for blood. She knows there’s something out there what’s close to dead, and she wants him.”

I turned away from Lady de Winter and her maids and retched. I needed, of a sudden, bright sun and fresh air. I started back the way we had come in.

“But ye can’t go without seeing the tiger. And there’s a porcupine what has more pricks than a—”

I fled. I could not bear to hear more.

“What ails you, girl?” Lady de Winter had to lean close to be heard above the noise in the streets.

“Nothing.”

“A person then?”

“Nay.”

“A babe?”

I looked up sharp to find her staring at me. “How did you know?”

“You have the look of it about you. Your shade of pale has nothing to do with paint.”

“I have lost another.”

“And so, you will try again. And again until you have one that survives.”

“But how can . . . how do I . . .”

“How do you survive? You concentrate on the task at hand. You make yourself useful in other ways.”

“And if I cannot . . .”

She shrugged. “If you do not have one for your own self, then you can always take one.”

“Take one?”

“Aye. It is quite possible that Lytham already has a child.”

“Already has a child?” There was a ringing in my ears. A shallowness of my breath.

“Most courtiers do. And his would not be the first illegitimate child suddenly legitimized.”

“He cannot. He would have told me.”

“Would he, now? Are you certain?”

There was something in the way she asked the question that sent suspicion creeping through me. I beat it back. “He would have told me.”

“Well.
If
he does not have his own, then you could take one from elsewhere.”

“From where?”

“From the people. They seem to have enough of them. And ’tis done more often than one might think. There are many ladies in this court who have never had a babe. But their husbands all have heirs.”

“But I cannot . . . just . . .
take
one.”

“You can if you must. And why should they care? ’Tis just one more mouth to feed and they all seem to have so many.”

“I cannot—”

“You
can
do what you must. You can. You will. You cannot let yourself begin to think otherwise.”

“But if I cannot be the wife he needs . . . Lady de Winter, surely you know I am not the first of his wives.”

“Aye. I know it well. Elinor and I were maids together to the Queen.”

“And she loved him?”

“Theirs was looked upon as a love match.”

“What happened?”

She searched my eyes before she answered. “What happened was an Act of Parliament that granted him an annulment. If you want to know more than he told to obtain it, then you will have to do your asking of him.”

“Lytham?”

We were closeted within the curtains of the bed in my chamber. Marget lay beside me. I lifted myself onto my side and planted a kiss on her shoulder. “My sweet?”

“Did you love her?”

Her: Elinor. Had I loved her? I returned my head to the pillow and stared up toward the top of the bed. It was a familiar position. I had lain exactly so many nights during that marriage, though I had been absent a companion on most of them.

“Lytham?”

“You speak of Elinor?”

“Aye.”

“Nay.”

“They say you did. They say it was a love match.”

They said. How would
they
know? “Then it was a love come from hell.”

“But if you did not love her, why did you marry her?”

Oh, sweet Marget. “Who better than someone close to the Queen to advise me? Who better to take to the Queen my petitions than an old intimate?”

“Did she?”

“She tried.”

“She failed?”

“She did not fail. The Queen was generous. She leased us Brustleigh Hall. But she never gave any other sign of preferment.”

“What happened to her? How could . . . I mean to say, if the Queen approved the marriage . . .”

“How can a marriage be annulled that the Queen herself approved? The answer is, how can there be a marriage between two consenting people when one of the couple cannot be said to be in her right mind?”

“But was it . . . it was not . . . from the first?”

“It must have been.”

“You did not see it?”

“Perhaps I did not know where to look.”

“They say she loved you.”

“They can say whatever they want.”

“And are you . . . glad . . . you married me?”

“Exceedingly so.”

“I love you.”

“Hush, you now, my love.” I took her into my arms and willed the specter of the past to die.

Lytham’s explanation of his marriage to Elinor ought to have lightened my spirits. It ought to have bolstered the love that grew between us. But my strength began to desert me. I would return to my chambers after a day of doing nothing but standing and talking and be too tired to stand still more while I was being undressed.

I felt truly terrible, as if by God’s curse I had caught my death but managed, in spite of it, to live. Joan applied my paint as was her habit, but I told her to apply it in increasing layers. For though I felt awful, I did not want to proclaim such to the court. I hoped that perhaps some extra sleep, some extra paint would carry me through that season of sickness, but what I assumed was temporary soon became permanent. My strategy of employing extra paint continued through the next month and the next and on into summer.

It seemed that instead of masking my illness, each layer of ceruse added more weight to the burden of my malaise. Each dreary day turned into the next with no end in sight, and then the plague crept once more into the city.

34

L
ytham’ s explanation of his marriage to Elinor ought to have lightened my spirits. It ought to have bolstered the love that grew between us. But my strength began to desert me. I would return to my chambers after a day of doing nothing but standing and talking and be too tired to stand still more while I was being undressed.

I felt truly terrible, as if by God’ s curse I had caught my death but managed, in spite of it, to live. Joan applied my paint as was her habit, but I told her to apply it in increasing layers. For though I felt awful, I did not want to proclaim such to the court. I hoped that perhaps some extra sleep, some extra paint would carry me through that season of sickness, but what I assumed was temporary soon became permanent. My strategy of employing extra paint continued through the next month and the next and on into summer. It seemed that instead of masking my illness, each layer of ceruse added more weight to the burden of my malaise. Each dreary day turned into the next with no end in sight, and then the plague crept once more into the city.