Sisters of Treason (47 page)

“It is a pity you are not a man; we have sore need of someone like you on our council.” She laughs as she says this, has said things like it before. But then she adds, “I believe you might be the single soul in this blighted place who understands the difficulty of being . . .” she pauses, eventually whispering, “of being me,” before slumping backwards. “You will never know what it is to bear a child.”

I wonder if she somehow knows she is destined to remain childless too.

“I will not,” I reply.

It is a moment of strange intimacy, and I allow myself to imagine finding a way to persuade her to pardon my sister. But she thumps her hand down on the arm of her chair, causing Ippolyta to flinch, saying, “And yet you are from traitor stock! Through and through.” There it is, the sting in her tail. I suppose she will hate me all the more for having allowed me a glimpse of her tender side.

Then she seems to gather herself, speaking loudly so the room can hear. “Tell the dwarf we shall call her Linnet for her songbird voice, and Mary, find her some proper clothes; we cannot have her dressed in this manner, if she is not to be a laughingstock.”

I take Ippolyta by the hand, glad to get away, taking the back steps as a shorter route to the maids’ chambers, stumbling upon Levina and the Hilliard boy. She has cornered him where the stairs turn and is whispering angrily. They do not see us watching them.

“You have abused my trust, Nicholas, inveigled your way into my life, and you now seek to destroy those I care for. Shame on you.”

“But Mistress Teerlinc, with all respect, I support her cause.”

“You have no understanding of her plight, you . . . you imbecile.” She strikes him hard across the cheek. He turns his face away, only now seeing us, spitting a gob of bloody saliva onto the flags.

“Veena,” I say gently. She turns; anger has distorted her features, making her almost unrecognizable. “Leave him be.”

She steps back, seeming shocked by her actions. He slides away, saying, “I have nothing to apologize for.”

October 1562

The Tower of London

Katherine

I am playing peekaboo with little Beech on the bed; Hercules thinks he is playing too, but he understands the principles of the game even less than Beech and is getting bored already, gnawing at the bedpost. My husband is reading Mary’s letter out loud one more time, before we throw it on the fire.

“ ‘The bad news is that, with the Guise family causing such bloodshed against the Huguenots in France, the Queen has turned away from Mary of Scotland once more. She can’t be seen to support such monstrous acts; the Scottish Queen is half Guise, after all.’ ”

I am not really listening. I do not want more “bad news” and I couldn’t care less what the Queen is or isn’t doing, unless she means to set us free. I have lived a full year of my life in this place now and it is enough; the Queen has made her point.

“When was it that my sister got to such politicking?”

“This is good for our cause, Kitty,” Hertford is saying.

“Then why does Mary call it ‘bad news’?”

“She seems to think we are more likely to be freed if . . . Oh, never mind.” He sighs, dropping his arms to his sides in resignation.

“If what?”

“If we are not championed by the reformers; if we are not a threat.”

“She is right,” I say. “Do you not dream of living somewhere quietly together?” I murmur, close in to his ear. There was a time I couldn’t have borne the idea of living away from court, but I find I am much changed by motherhood and love—and incarceration,
I suppose. “Imagine how happy we would be.” But a splinter of me is thinking, too, of the idea of being mother to the King. However much I reason it away it is still there, poking at my mind.

“We shall have more than that, Kitty,” he says.

“Perhaps.” I look at Beech’s dimpled smile and the way he places his pudgy fingers over his eyes so he can peep between them. I grab his fat hand and pop it into my mouth to make him giggle. The sound is infectious.

“Come and sit with me,” I say. “We have precious little time together. And we can do nothing to change things anyway. I want to feel you close. Look at your son. Is he not irresistible?”

“It is you who is irresistible.” His voice is husky with lust, and he slips his hand into the front of my dress.

“My heart,” I laugh, “you cannot.”

“I know, I know,” he says. “But there is no harm in a kiss.” He runs his lips over my throat and then onto my mouth, gripping my hand with his. Beech complains, trying to unlace our fingers.

“He is jealous,” I say.

“
I
am the jealous one,” he replies. “
He
has you all the time. He sleeps with you every night. And I have to make do with an empty bed and a snatched hour with my own love, but once a month.”

“When we are released—”

“I love you, my sweet Kitty,” he interrupts.

“If you love me truly, then you should wish obscurity on me.”

Then I feel it, as if a tadpole is swimming in my belly, the new infant growing in there. I had known the minute the nausea set in this time, wondering how it was possible that I didn’t know the time before. But to feel the quickening—there is the proof. “Our baby moves.”

“Let me feel.” He presses his hands to my stomach but the little fellow has stopped his swimming. “She will not be able to deny this one’s legitimacy now that we have sworn our marriage before an entire council of clergy, even the Archbishop.”

“Who cares about all that? It is enough that I have you and baby
Beech and this little stranger.” I point to my belly. I will not let myself dwell on the fact of where we all are, and I will not let myself think about the Queen.

The key scrapes in the lock and Hertford leaps from the bed, making for the parapet door, but it is only Ball.

“What is it?” I ask.

“There is news.” He seems excited, barely able to hold himself together.

“What sort of news?” says Hertford, moving towards him. I feel my baby flutter again and I am spinning with joy, so much so I’m finding it hard to listen.

“The Queen is at death’s door.”

Hertford says nothing, nor do I.

“Smallpox,” Ball adds.

Hertford walks over to him, slapping him on the back. “Truly?”

“Truly.”

“Well, God just may be smiling on us. How bad is it?”

“They say she may not last the night.”

Hertford’s grin is like the sun and I wonder if it is right to feel so pleased about the fact that the Queen is dying, if perhaps God might be angered. But I
am
pleased nonetheless.

“The servant is on her way up, my lord,” adds Ball. “You must be gone.”

I can hear Nan’s footsteps clearly, before Ball closes the door and turns the lock.

“Kitty, our prayers have been answered.” Hertford takes hold of me, engulfing me in his arms.

“Will we be freed?” I ask, my voice muffled in the folds of his clothes.

“More than that,” he says, as he lets me go and makes for the door. His eyes are gleaming in a way I haven’t seen before and he seems for a moment unfamiliar, a stranger, his features differently configured so I cannot quite recognize him. But then he blows me a kiss, eyes shut, lips pursed, palm up, and it is my sweet husband
standing before me once more. Then he is gone; I am wrenched by his parting and pick up little Beech, glad to feel the warmth of his body against mine. He begins to tease the ribbons of my dress with his fat fingers and I can feel tears gathering—I suppose them to be tears of relief.

January 1563

Whitehall

Levina

The Queen is incandescent with rage, and the reason is being whispered about the privy chamber: Katherine Grey is about to birth another baby. Levina wonders how the poor girl fares now she is kept under close lock and key. Sir Edward Warner has been replaced and they say Katherine has been moved to different quarters, but it is hard to get any news out. Lord alone knows what will become of her now. How they had hoped, as the Queen’s life lay in the balance. Levina can’t help questioning why God chose to spare her from the smallpox, remembering clearly how it was three months ago, the deathly hush over the court, everyone awaiting the announcement. But she rallied—she is tough as an old broiling fowl and has been in bad humor since. Levina admonishes herself silently for allowing such treasonous and ungodly thoughts to inhabit her.

She and Mary sit with a huddle of women near the hearth, where the Queen is in whispered conversation with Lady Knollys. Most are sewing, some are reading, leaning in close to the candles, others gossiping quietly. The weather is so icy their backs are left cold and occasionally one or other of them gets up and paces, rubbing her hands together to generate a little more warmth. Levina wraps her shawl tightly around her, looking to the window where she can see icicles a yard long hanging from the eaves opposite. The winter light is so dim she finds it hard to see well enough
for the fine stitchwork. She supposes it is all the portraits she has painted, the minuscule details worked with a three-hair brush, the tiny resin jewels, the almost invisible hatched shading, that has given her the eyes of an old woman. Lizzie Mansfield begins to strum at a lute, rather badly; Dorothy Stafford is attempting to teach her a new tune, eventually taking the instrument from her and demonstrating, beautifully, how it should be played.

Levina looks around at the company. Some old faces have gone, and new ones arrived, but little changes. Elizabeth simmers angrily in her velvet dress, a rich azure blue that serves to enhance the flame tresses of hair that escape from her coif. But she is gaunt and pale and rendered paler still by the white paint she rubs into her skin and the crude rouged circles on her cheeks that have a vaguely comical effect. She looks like an awful, white-faced parody of her coronation painting. It seems no one is prepared to tell her the truth and some have even begun to rub the same stuff into their faces as a kind of perverse homage or show of allegiance—both, perhaps. It is the smallpox that has taken its toll on Elizabeth’s beauty. She has lost the fresh bloom of youth, and the hard edge that was always there, even when she was a child, that gave her an attractive robust air has crystallized into something akin to bitterness. Her mouth, set in a scowl now, turns down naturally, and her face has begun to shape itself around it. Levina knows that face so very well, has scrutinized each line of it, can see the toll time and circumstance will continue to have upon it.

She counts on her fingers, working out the Queen’s age—she will be thirty this year, not as old as she looks. She calculates other ages: Katherine is twenty-three; Mary soon eighteen—goodness, she is no longer a girl. How is it that time appears to crawl and then you turn round and it is all used up? She herself is forty-three, an age she never imagined reaching as a child. The Queen continues her murmuring with Lady Knollys. Levina tries to hear what is said, but she is seated too far away to hear properly above the sound of the lute. Then Elizabeth bursts out, loud enough for the
entire company to hear, “There are some who seem bent on showing England how fertile they are, how easily they can produce sons. It is a slight on
me
, is it not?” She is talking of Katherine; that much is clear. “I will not have such disobedience—it is treason, I say.”

Mary starts at the word
treason
—it is hardly surprising—then settles back to her sewing with an air of blighted resignation. She must have hoped for the Queen’s death more than any of them, though she never spoke of it. Levina watches as Mary’s deft fingers stitch a pattern of hollyhocks along a border of fabric, pulling the needle through the cloth and back efficiently, her expression returning to intense concentration. Mary has learned to show a blank face to the world, has become quite the expert at it.

But now she sighs deeply and whispers to Levina, “I don’t think I can bear any more of this.” She drops her sewing to her lap and pinches the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger as if she is in pain, then continues, too quietly to be overheard, “I remember, Veena, before Maman died, she warned us that she”—she swivels her eyes slightly in the direction of the Queen—“was . . . What was the word she used? That she was ‘more artful’ than her sister. It was impossible to comprehend at the time. The old Queen had committed such monstrous acts it was hard to see how she could be worse, but now I see what Maman meant by it.”

“Yes,” says Levina. “It is futile to even try and imagine what she will do next.” Levina is reminded, when she says this, of the old King Henry as he was at the end—his daughter is equally mutable. In moments of clarity she can see Elizabeth’s fear; fear that she will make the wrong choice. Her judgment is clouded by it, making her unable to see that no decision can sometimes be worse than a bad decision, even to the point that she doubts her own judgment, her trust swinging back and forth from Cecil to Dudley like a game of tennis.

“What do you think will happen to Katherine?” mutters Mary. “Oh, I know, no one can answer that, not even she.” Her eyes glance once more in Elizabeth’s direction and she suddenly seems so very
small and young. Levina remembers her promise to Frances; the promise founded on Jane’s terrible death that has bound her, that has disintegrated her marriage, kept her at court. Her sense of failure crowds in—she may be a fair success as an artist, but that only serves to mask the extent to which she feels she has failed as a human being.

Now Foxe’s book is published in English and fanning the flames of the reformers even more. She thinks of her own involvement in that book. How passionate she had been then about spreading the word of the new religion—all those smuggled drawings, the terrible risks she had taken. She had wanted to make sense of Jane Grey’s appalling death and the only way seemed to be to make a martyr of her. All those deaths, Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer, Jane; the list is endless—all for what? There is no making sense of any of it. She explores her soul and can no longer find even the last vestiges of grace there. Her faith hangs on a thread and that frightens her, for she has always felt God in her life.