Queenbreaker: Perseverance (The Queenbreaker Trilogy Book 1) (43 page)

Greenwich
Palace, Greenwich

September
12th 1533

Anne’s
great Bed of State had been dismantled. She’d recovered well from Elizabeth’s
birth and returned to her proper bedchamber. Though she would not officially
return to public life til her Churching in early October, she received personal
guests in her Privy Chamber gowned in her black silk robe de chambre.

I
wore the black velvet gown she’d had cut down for me at Windsor. A petite
frisson swept me; a tremor of dread that threatened to turnout the few contents
of my stomach before I’d even set eyes upon Anne.

I will emerge either a Countess-to-be or
nothing.

Less than nothing.
My parents would not have me back under
their roof. They might not pay for my entrance to a nunnery.

God does not mean me to be nothing.

I
raised my chin as I entered the Presence Chamber. The usual coterie of ladies
was about—the gentlemen would be barred til the Churching—their
conversations accompanied by some maidens playing in place of the Queen’s
musicians. Joan Percy waved to me from the sewing circle. I nodded, but did not
stop. I went straight to the Privy Chamber doors. Mrs. Coffyn occupied Mrs.
Horsman’s usual place. Her bloodshot eyes swept me with no liking. She did not
move to open them as Mrs. Horsman would.

“I
would see the Queen,” I told her and waited for her to do her duty.

Mrs.
Coffyn’s lower lip folded. “Sit, and I will tell her.”

Sit? How long does it take to walk
through a door?

She
read the thought on my face and glowered. “Your better, the Lady Margaret
Douglas, is with the Queen. So sit or leave if you think yourself too high and
mighty to wait on her.”

Someone
sniggered and whispered our exchange to others.

My
changed fortunes had brought me low. As low as I’d been when I’d first come to
court. Such as Mrs. Coffyn could offer me insult at the Queen’s own door and
others could take amusement from it within my hearing.

“The
Queen, my cousin, expects better courtesy from her servants,” I snapped.

Mrs.
Coffyn folded her thick arms. “And I expect she wants the same from those who
claim her kinship so boldly, mistress. Sit or take yourself away.”

We’d
drawn a dozen watchers and at least as many listeners. I glared at Coffyn’s
mastiff face, gave it a disdainful, but proper nod then took myself to the
sewing circle.

“My
lord, who does she think she is?” Coffyn muttered at my back. “The Duchess of
Suffolk?” Laughter followed me to the only empty stool beside Joan.

When Anne takes my part, I’ll pay her in
kind.

Worry
lines wrinkled Joan’s forehead as I sat.

I
snatched a piece of make-work from atop the pile
;
another shapeless man’s shirt.

My
hands recalled the long hours I’d put into stitching the collar of John’s
blackwork shirt—hours that should have gone for the poor. I asked God to
forgive me for shirking the task.

I
threaded my needle and glanced at the door every five minutes. I’d near
finished a sleeve before the Privy Chamber door opened. Margot sailed out on a
breath of Anne’s laughter and Smeaton’s violin as she had the first day I’d met
her.

She
walked to the sewing circle and one of the Howard girls leapt off her stool.

Margot
smiled at her, sat, and plucked a piece of make-work from the pile. She set it
across her lap, surveyed the room then sighed. “My God, is there no one
interesting in attendance today?”

Her
gaze drifted over the rest of the chamber, the music makers,
the
view out the great bay window then settled on me.

“How
does Lord John today?”

Every
other conversation in the circle died.

I
had thought myself prepared for the question.
But not from
Margot.
She was Mariah’s confederate, and must know all.

I
raised my chin and answered her in a clear, polite voice.

“I
do not know, my lady.”

Margot
twisted a cabachon garnet ring that rode her left little finger. Mirth deepened
the blueness of her eyes.

“
Pass-the-time
is time past then,” she
sighed. “Pity. I had heard whispers a wedding might come of it.”

“Not
I, my lady,” I said as my heart slipped the noose and quickened.

The
laughter in Margot’s eyes dissolved. “Has he taken up with another maiden?”

“Oh,
no,” Joan piped in. “He gambles everyday, and hunts with the King, and we never
see him near the Queen’s apartments since—“ She broke off, lower lip
atremor as she recalled I sat beside her.

“Since
the uproar at the Christening,” Mary Wyatt finished with a disapproving sideways
look for me.

Margot
feigned surprise.
“An uproar?
Whatever was the cause?”

Everyone
in the circle glanced at me.

Margot
took up her piece of makework. Jane Seymour handed over her already threaded
needle. Margot took it with no thanks for the courtesy. Seymour hiccoughed.

“The
quarrel was over Mistress Shelton was it?” she drawled while examining where to
ply Seymour’s needle. “And now Lord John comes no more to call.” She looked up
from the shirt straight into my eyes. “I suppose you pine for him?”

I
did not flinch.

“Not
a moment, my lady,” I said, and fumed as a tiny quaver born of anger
disastrously softened my stony voice.

Joan’s
eyes teared as she took it for sentiment. Mary Wyatt patted her hand.

Margot’s
steady look pricked me.

What in God’s name does she want of me?

Margot
sighed, turning her eyes back to her work. Her needle stabbed the shirt’s thick
collar. “And you keep no tokens of his affection?”

The
ring came alive, burning the tender skin above my breastbone.

“None,”
I said with a pointed look for her hand.

Margot
nodded without looking at me. “That is well. When a man’s heart wanders away,
it is best to throw such reminders after him.”

“Oh?”
I scoffed. “Is that what you have done?”

Joan
gasped. The others froze. No one ever used such a tone to Margot. Not even the
Queen.

Margot
looked up, her face unmoved by my mockery. “Why Mary-Mary Shelton, no man has
ever presented me anything that needed returning.”

“Because
no man has ever loved you?”

Mary
Wyatt kicked my ankle. She would have done better to kick my jaw. My tongue was
full of tempests and only God could stop it storming.

Margot
lowered the make-work to her lap. The bodies around the circle leaned away from
her as though blown by a secret wind. A tiny grin darkened Margot’s lips.

“Because,
Mary-Mary Shelton, I have never loved so unwisely.”

The
tempests dissolved, taking my breath and that of our audience with them.

“Mistress
Shelton,” Mrs. Coffyn cried into the hushed chamber.

I
flung my make-work away as I fled the circle. Every eye in the chamber burned
the back of my neck. I marched to the Privy Chamber door expecting Coffyn to
throw it open.

Coffyn
held up her hand, stopping me an arms length from the door.

“The
Queen will not see you,” she announced as though she were the Chamberlain
crying the Queen’s coming. “And she says that you are no longer permitted the
Privy Chamber except by her leave.”

Oh, my God.

Someone
gasped.

I’ve been cut.

It
burned like a literal wound, an agonizing gut thrust that spilled my entrails
across the plaited mats on the floor.

And she let Coffyn be the one to do it.

Coffyn.
The Countess’s creature.
Coffyn’s piggish eyes
gleamed; a prelude of the satisfaction her patroness must feel when she heard
the news.

She
flicked her hand at me. “Do not loiter,” she barked.

I
forced myself to back away, one careful step, a second, but it was not enough
time to quiet my burning face. I turned and darted past the sewing circle for
the gallery to the Watching Chamber. I caught Joan Percy’s stricken face in the
corner of my eye. Mary Wyatt grabbed her arm as she made to follow me. Then the
tears obliterated the sight.

How
could Joan forget herself?

You never follow the fallen.

Greenwich
Palace, Greenwich

September
12th 1533

I
walked back to my chamber stuck in a grey fog of disbelief. My fall was
complete. It had needed just one slender rainy day to accomplish my ruin.

Why
had Anne turned on me so quickly? Did she blame me for the loss of the Suffolk
match? Had Mariah whispered something in her ear? Or was it straightforward
displeasure at the scene in her chambers? Surely she knew I was not the cause.
That it had been completely Fitzroy’s doing.

I
stumbled on the stairs, grabbed for the railing and missed. My hip caught the
edge of the next riser.

“Jesu!”
I cried, falling sideways to the floor.

“Mistress!”
Janet’s voice sounded above me. She came down the stairs at a run and helped me
to my feet.

“Mistress,”
Janet breathed. “Lady Mary Howard sent a message. She says you left something
behind in her lodgings. She asked that you come and fetch it straight away or
she’d…” Janet ducked her eyes. “…
throw
it down the
middens.”

Of
course she would. But I owned nothing so valuable I’d risk myself to enter her
lodgings alone.

“It
doesn’t matter, Janet,” I muttered. “I need to lie down.”

Janet
grasped my hand. “Mistress…she said if you did not come…you would regret it.”

______________

I
entered my former lodgings to find Mariah pacing her bedchamber, slapping the
bed curtains at each pass.

Lady
Frances, kneeling in the window seat, tested Persephone’s reach with a piece of
roast peacock. The falcon’s hooded head stabbed the air just short of its
prize.

“Have
your eyes opened?” Mariah snapped at me.

I
barely held my tongue.

“You’ve
neatly botched things with that scene in Anne’s chambers. Was that your plan or
John’s?”

“I-there
was no plan,” I stammered. “It was all a mistake.”

Mariah
shook her head. “You’ve undone yourself. Anne won’t have you back. You’ve
served her purpose and now that she knows it’s failed, she’ll let the tide wash
you away. Unless I help you.”

“What
are you talking about? What purpose?”

Mariah
perched on the edge of the bed, tense and watchful as Persephone. “John did not
choose you above all the maidens at court. The Queen set him on you. She said
you were disposed for such use.”

Mariah’s
precise voice stoked a fire at the back of my neck.

A
fit of coughing burst from Lady Frances. “Mayhap…mayhap you should not tell
her—“

Mariah
ignored her. “The Queen brought John back to court solely to ruin me.”

A
lightning flash of anger lit my tongue.

“Ruin
you? You’re to be a duchess. If it were me, I would go on my knees, blessing
her for what she’s done for you.”

Laughter
broke apart Mariah’s white lips. “If it were you? It was you—ninny. Grace
Lisle was not my brother’s notion.”

Confusion
stymied my tongue. “G-grace Lisle? What are you talking about?”

“My
brother did not engineer the match for his own purposes, just as John did not
target you for his. They both served Anne’s.”

Persephone
keened as if she’d struck me in the heart, not her mistress.

“Anne
made the Lisle match?” It came out a whisper. My lungs had no strength to draw
air.

“Of
course, Anne!” Mariah slapped the counterpane with both hands. “She heard tell
of your little dalliance back in Norfolk and struck it down.”
 

“Why
in God’s name would the Queen of England stoop to that?”

Mariah’s
eyes glittered, slick and unwholesome, the way they had at Windsor after she’d
dosed herself.

“Because,
fool, she won’t tolerate any of her blood kin having what she does not.”

My
hand leapt to strike her; she sounded exactly like Gabrielle. But the mad light
in her eyes transfixed me. Whatever delusion she held about Anne I must hear.

“What
may that be?” I drawled to provoke her.

“Love.”

My
ears awaited more, but she said nothing.

“Love
of what?” I demanded. “Jewels, offices, land?”

“The
love of the beloved,” Mariah murmured quoting one of John’s own lines to my
face. My stomach pitched toward the floor.

“The
King loves her beyond reason.”

“But
she does not love him.” I stared at Mariah’s smug face, knowing it must lie.

“Of
course she loves him!” I cried. “She waited six years to be his wife.”

“She
waited six years to be his Queen,” Mariah said. “She never loved the King. She
loved Henry Percy. She loves him still.”

The
words hit my ear and hung like a note struck true. Northumberland’s cheerless,
bloated face swam before my eyes. The stench of rancid ale turned my stomach.

It
was a lie.
A preposterous, ludicrous, impossible lie.
Did she think because John de Vere had so thoroughly gulled me I would prove
ready to dupe again? That it would keep me from finding another way to bring
her misdeeds to Anne?

“You’re
a liar,” I said and the knocking in my chest turned to hammering. “Anne had no
part in Tom Clere’s betrayal. She never knew of our—our friendship. Only
Surrey knew. He knew, and he is the one who ended it.”

“Surrey
ended it at Anne’s order,” Mariah said. “Tell her, Frances.”

Lady
Frances avoided Mariah’s stare by wringing the trailing edge of her left
sleeve. “Oh, ’tis true!” she snapped. “All of it. If you doubt us, ask Surrey.”

“I
do doubt you, my lady,” I bit the words out. “I doubt every word. If the Queen
wanted to end your match with Fitzroy she would simply tell the King
and—“

“Never,”
Mariah said. “After she spent so much currency with him wheedling the match in
the first place? Inducing the King to give up his desire for a French match,
enticing him to waive the dowry—No! Only the King may behave like a
vindictive fool. Anne must act with subtlety. The King did not punish my father
for his insult. He sent him off to France—a soft exile. Anne decided she
should not press the King further. She must find another way to damage him. She
chose me.”

Mariah’s
wide tormented eyes believed it. Lady Frances’ cringing back did as well. The
depth of their talent astonished me. If the theatre ever allowed women on stage
they should be the first.

“No,”
I hissed and backed away from them. “I won’t be used again.”

Mariah
leapt off the bed, eyes shadowed for the very first time with fear.

“Mary
Shelton! Attend me!” she snapped. “Give me Shelton House tomorrow night, and
you will keep your place. No one will ever know what has passed between us.”

My
heel barked the door.

“Don’t
be a fool!” she shouted as I threw it open, and ran.