Queenbreaker: Perseverance (The Queenbreaker Trilogy Book 1) (14 page)

“Of
course not,” I snapped. “Why would you think it?”

Her
eyes cooled. “Everyone saw him pull you into the alcove.” Her thick eyebrows
wriggled. “Bess won’t be pleased. She put a silver mark on it.”

“Bess
can go hang. Help me with my laces.”

Joan
bounced off the bed and joined me before the mirror. She started on my left
sleeve.

“You
missed it, Joan,” I said. “There was a row in the Queen’s Privy Chamber.”

Joan
squealed. “When? I only just left.”

“Not
a quarter hour ago. The Duke of Norfolk insulted the Queen.”

Joan
sucked her teeth. “Did you hear what they said?”

“How
could I not? I was in the Privy Chamber when it happened.”

Joan’s
eyes bulged again. “You were not!”

“Oh,
I was.”

“Well,
then tell me—“

A
shrill cry from the other side of the door silenced Joan. The door banged open.
Bess stepped over a squirming pile of brown. Marshall’s maid scrambled to the
other side of the hallway, hand clutching her jaw.

“We
don’t need a watchdog,” Bess snarled and slammed the door on her.

Joan
and I took a step back as Bess swung around.

“He
threw me out without a by your leave.” She fell on the stool at our shared
dressing table, tearing the rings off her fingers and throwing them against the
mirror.

“I
wait the whole night to dine, and then he throws me out like slops to the sty.”

I
traded a cautious look with Joan. She shook her head and retreated to the bed.
I approached Bess, soft-footed as a doe lest I spook her. The mirror showed
ragged tear tracks against her powdered cheeks, eyelashes matted together in
bristling black clumps.

“I
warned him not to press her. I told him her mood was too chancy.” She tossed
her last ring at the mirror. “But no—he must have his answer
tonight—for the keepership of a deer park! A deer park! God in Heaven,
why can’t a man listen?”

Neither
Joan nor I had an answer to that. I pretended to clear my throat.

“Shall
I take down your hair?” I murmured.

Bess
shook her head. “No. I came to fix my face and then I’m off.”

“To
where?” Joan asked.

Bess
opened the powder pot. “London.” She shook out a brush and dabbed it against
the lead powder. “On the Queen’s errand.”

“Really?”
Joan crept out of bed and joined me to watch Bess’s toilette. Mrs. Marshall
forbade the Maidens the use of cosmetics, but Bess was more than a Maiden. She
was the Duke’s whore and could
do
as she liked. For
the first time, I wondered if being a rich man’s whore was truly so bad a sin.

“Really.”
Bess mimicked Joan’s tremulous voice to perfection. Her eyes slanted at me in
the mirror. “Did you tup Weston?”

“Bess!”
Joan gasped. She retreated to the bed again.

Bess
turned around, a venal smirk stretching her naked lips. “Madge took my wager.
Tell the truth and I’ll give you half.”

Flames
beat against the top of my skull.

Madge wagered on my virtue? What a witch.

True,
she bet I would keep it, but still. She owed me better as family. What if my
parents learned of Weston’s attentions? My reputation was my chief possession.
Rumor alone could destroy it. Mrs. Marshall was right. I was a fool. But that
did not make me a whore.

“I
am not light, Mistress Holland,” I said.

Bess
gave a short-lived brittle laugh. “Oh, lambkin. Time cures all things: pork,
the itch, heartache, and innocence.”

She
turned back to finish her face. The knowing cant of her head irked me too much
to let her take the last word.

“Not
mine,” I declared. “I will keep it til I marry.”

Bess’s
eyes swept me in the mirror. “And the same for you, Lady Joan?” she asked.

Joan
looked like a rabbit caught between the snare and the snake. “It would not be
well done otherwise…” her voice trailed away.

Bess
cackled like a Southwark fishwife. “Little lambs. What a stew your families
have dropped you into. No girl goes to the marriage bed untouched. Not at
court. Not if she’s smart.”

“Why
is that so wise?” I challenged. “A girl could fall with child and end up a nun
if she’s lucky.”

Bess
wagged her finger. “Clever girls avoid those traps, lambkin. Never fear. Your
friend Bess is here to point you away from them.”

Joan
sat up on the bed. “And why should you help us with such…things?”

Bess
put down the little pot of lip color and examined her reflection.

“Because
you never know who might rise above the dunghill, Lady Joan.
”
Bess smacked her lips and turned around. Every mark of distress had been drawn
away. She looked as bright and fresh as a new spring day. “And, I like you. And
even you Mistress Shelton.” She presented us each a pretty painted smile. “You
remind me of how far I’ve come, and how far I’ve yet to go.”

She
surged to her feet, radiating her particular breezy confidence. “I am off. Tell
Marshall to call off her dog or the Duke will hear of it.”

She
brushed by, humming a little French chanson, her violet scent extending an
overripe farewell.

“Wait!”
Joan cried. “What is the Queen’s errand?”

Bess’s
hand paused on the door.

“Put
it out of your mind, lambkin,” she said over her shoulder. “The Queen’s
business is not for you.”

Greenwich
Palace, Greenwich

June
1533

Bess
did not return in time for morning Mass. Joan and I saved her seat nonetheless
so Marshall would not put someone between us. We whispered through the sermon,
anxious to reach the Queen’s apartments and learn the result of last night’s
tumult.

We
arrived to find the sewing circle already full; a lady or maiden squeezed in
every scrap of space between the stools. I grabbed Joan’s arm and squirmed us
through. The ladies complained til they saw it was I and subsided. The voice
holding forth belonged to Madge. Our connection provided me scope for rudeness.

The
instant Madge saw us her tone swaggered even more than it had done.

“It
was near dawn before the Queen could be brought to take her bed. The King did
not leave her side a single moment.”

“And
Norfolk?” a gentleman on the fringe, but a head taller than the ladies in front
of him, asked.

Madge
cocked her head. “The King is inclined to send him from court.”

Low-pitched
murmurs broke out from all sides.

“Will
he not apologize?” Mary Wyatt asked.

Madge
let her voice fall. “The King sent a message to ask it of him.”

“And?”
Mrs. Coffyn prompted.

“The
Duke sent him back with nothing to satisfy the King.” Madge adjusted the edge
of her saffron colored sleeve. “He told the King he was too unwell to come and
deliver such words to Her Grace.”

Mrs.
Coffyn pulled at her lower lip. “I heard he beat Mistress Holland in his
pique.”

“Well,
my sister is here,”
Madge
said. “What do you say to
that?”

The
crowd’s eyes landed on my head like an anvil. The weight took my breath. And
before I could gather it, Joan spoke.

“Oh,
no. Bess is well. We saw her last night before she went to London.”

A
groan near escaped me. I stepped on Joan’s foot, but the damage was done.

“Why
did she go to London in the middle of the night?”

“Did
the Duke dismiss her?”

“Was
she alone?”

“Did
she go to the Duke’s London house?”

“Does
the Queen know?”

I
stepped on Joan’s foot again and seized the last question.

“We
do not know.”

Mrs.
Coffyn’s gruff laugh defied me. “Oh, I’d bet my firstborn you do, but it won’t
be heard for free.”

More
joined her laughter as others bade me tell them the truth. I felt the bodies
behind me set like brickwork. I would not be allowed to wriggle free. My ears
hummed. Desperation reduced my options to one. I cast my eyes at Madge. But
Madge, engrossed with adjusting her other sleeve, never looked up.

“Mary
Shelton!” The cajoling ceased as Mary Carey entered the Presence Chamber. The
crowd had no choice but to release me. I left Joan behind. She’d made the mess;
she’d have to suffer it.

Cousin
Mary drew me back down the passageway, into the Watching Chamber. The waspish
droning fell away and resumed as a cacophony of criers calling her name. Cousin
Mary’s unreadable smile never wavered, and she did not stop no matter how hard
they beseeched her. We went out down the halpace steps then out to the Inner
Courtyard. The fresh air had never tasted so sweet. I gulped deep breaths til
my mind revived.

“Better?”
she asked.

I
nodded, savoring the friendly breeze.

“Wolves
are better mannered,” she chuckled. “Madge should not have exposed you to that.
The mob is ruthless for gossip.”

“It
was Joan’s fault,” I said. “She’s a sheep-headed ninny.”

Cousin
Mary grinned. “Oh, do not be too
cross
. She is a sweet
thing, and she is a friend to you.”

“She
is,” I admitted. “One of my few.”

Cousin
Mary sighed. “It is always so at the beginning.”

I
peered at her profile as she studied the sky. “Was it so for Anne—I mean
the Queen?”

She
let her head slide toward her shoulder. “As I remember it, no. Anne had friends
the moment her foot touched the water stairs. Her first admirers were among the
gentlemen.

And
still are.

“Bess
went to London on the Queen’s business,” she said. Startled at her change in
direction, I hesitated. But it was only Cousin Mary. And since she already knew
of Bess’s departure, perhaps she knew its purpose.

“She
never told us what it was about,” I said.

Cousin
Mary nodded. “She would not. Bess understands discretion. What hour did she
leave?”

I lowered my
voice even though the courtyard was near empty. “Near midnight, I would guess.”

She
sighed. “Poor thing. A long night’s work for so little reward.”

“Reward?”

She
glanced at me, still smiling. “It was cold last night. I know she had no fur
when she left.”

I
conjured my last image of Bess in my mind’s eye. “No, she did not. She didn’t
even take her cloak.”

Cousin
Mary clucked. “She’ll catch her death. Ah, well. With the Duke in foul temper,
she’ll have time to rest.”

I
pitched my voice even lower. “Madge said he’s claiming illness to avoid
apologizing to the Queen.”

She
shrugged. “It does not matter. The Queen would not accept it.”

My
lips popped. “Why not?”

“An
ancient grudge. Uncle Norfolk helped Cardinal Wolsey browbeat Henry Percy into
forsaking Anne. He bade our father send her to a nunnery, but pretended
satisfaction when she was exiled back to Hever instead. He almost kept her from
returning to court a year later, but Mother got her way.”

Henry
Percy. We knew the story from Semmonet, though she hadn’t wished to tell it. It
had been the greatest scandal in our family til Anne caught the King’s eye.
That event had reduced Anne’s first scandal to quaintness.

Anne
and Percy had played Pass-the-Time as young people at court were meant to do.
When it turned to love, Semmonet did not know, but soon thereafter the Cardinal
discovered the two had made promises, despite the fact that Percy’s father
planned to marry him to Lady Mary Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury’s daughter.

The
Cardinal separated them. He publicly harangued Percy into admitting his folly
to contract marriage with a mere knight’s daughter, and without the King’s
permission. He brought in the Duke of Norfolk to do the same. Percy’s father
arrived from Northumberland and that was the end of it. Until years later Lady
Mary Talbot decided she wanted to divorce her husband. She claimed a pre-contract
existed between Anne and Percy that made her own marriage with Percy invalid.

If
she had made the claim before the world knew the King meant to marry Anne, she
might have succeeded. But Anne insisted the contract did not exist and demanded
the King investigate. He did so. Percy, his wife’s chief witness, denied it
too.

And
that really was the end of it.

The
King wed Anne, and Lady Mary Talbot moved out of that great dour fortress of
Alnwick Castle, seat of the Percys, back to her father’s house.

Percy
had no children. And without a divorce or his wife’s death he would never get
them. That made Joan Percy’s father, the Earl’s younger brother, the heir to
Northumberland.

“It
reminds me of the passion she had against Cardinal Wolsey.” Cousin Mary sighed.
“The tirades and the tears she used to make.” She shook her head, discarding
the memory. “Some things never alter. They only calcify. Poor Uncle Norfolk. He
used the one word she will not tolerate.”

I
dropped my eyes as I heard him again saying putain with a lavish sneer.

“How
could he dare?” I said in a small voice.

Cousin
Mary folded her hands, as though she might pray on the spot. “He is Norfolk.
And we are supposed to be just the poor relations. Anne ignored that, and once
she is crowned she won’t ever let him forget he said it.”

She
wiped her hands against her damask skirt. “Ah well, at least the news is good
for you. The Queen’s affray has made the court forget all about your moment
with Weston in the alcove.”

“He
stole my apple,” I said.

Cousin
Mary’s eyes widened.

“M-my
prop—,” I stammered. “For the play—the golden apple.”

She
giggled, tapped my chin with her forefinger. “Peace, coz. I know your meaning.”
She put her arm through mine and turned us back toward the palace doors.
“Weston is devious. If he had any interest in politics he might outdo
Cromwell.” She put her other hand over my arm. “But he likes the ladies. And
too many of poor quality.”

I
stiffened. Weston liked me. Was I poor quality for being a knight’s daughter?

Cousin
Mary, oblivious to my pique, pulled me even closer so that our skirts fought
for air.

“Never
let him kiss you, Mary. Weston visits the stews. He’ll give you the pox.”