The Boleyn Reckoning (40 page)

Minuette walked blindly away from Dominic’s farewell, her eyes so blurred with unshed tears that she could see only one step ahead of her. She would not think of that farewell, she would not think of anything, better to blink away her tears and look around her. Force herself to look at the White Tower, stark in its medieval outlines, and beyond that the outline of the chapel, and Minuette forced herself to notice and to care that it was lit from within. Who was praying at this hour?

As they reached the entrance to Beauchamp Tower, she continued to stare at the chapel entrance. Someone stood near the doorway, a cloaked figure lit from the side. The lieutenant took her arm to escort her within, and at that moment the figure moved, throwing back the enveloping hood of the cloak. Though Minuette was too far away to see clearly the face, she knew the hair, that bright red-gold hair. There was no more distinctive marker of the Tudors.

Elizabeth raised one of her long-fingered, slender hands and held it in a gesture of goodbye. Minuette gave a slight nod that she knew her friend would never see, but it was the most she could manage without collapse.

Beauchamp Tower rose above her and she was glad to mount the stairs and finally be shut behind her own door. After Carrie had helped her change, her round face creased with sympathy and shared grief, she hovered, hesitating. Minuette looked at her inquiringly.

From the bodice of her gown Carrie withdrew a square of paper, folded small and tight. “Harrington found a guard willing to bring this to you. It’s from him.”

The uncertain pronoun wasn’t in the least confusing, and Minuette grasped the precious letter tightly. She would not read it yet, but just to hold it was enough for this moment.

“Anything else, my lady?”

“No.”

As Carrie rested a kind hand on her shoulder, Minuette added, “Yes, Carrie. Don’t disturb me in the morning. I shan’t want breakfast. I shan’t want anything. I will come out when I am ready.”

Sunrise found Minuette sitting on her bed in the tiny inner chamber of her prison, leaning against the wall to balance the heaviness of the child. It all went swiftly after that. She heard the roar of the crowds outside the Tower as Dominic was taken by cart to Tower Hill. She followed him in her imagination, dry-eyed and unblinking. From the cart to the scaffold, built high so that thousands could witness a traitor’s end.

She didn’t break when her imagination conjured the ax descending swiftly to his neck. She didn’t break when the crowds cheered and the bells of the Tower began to ring. When it was over, she rose dry-eyed and retrieved Dominic’s sealed letter. She unfolded and read it where she stood.

Only then did she break. Sinking to the floor, covering her head with her arms, Minuette huddled and wept.

William came by boat from Greenwich, with only one guard and the boatman for company. Through the journey, he kept his mind blank of everything but the image that had kept him taut and uncertain and desperate for the last seven months. Minuette beneath him, her hair spread loose and gold, eyes closed …

He’d thought that having her just once would clear his blood of the feverish need for her, that afterward he would be himself again. But the burning in his brain had continued after the camp outside Wynfield, the spells of retreat when he could not bear anything but solitude and darkness.

Take me and be done with it
, she’d said to him so scornfully. Why not? He’d tell her tonight, now that Dominic could no longer live between them, that she would be his mistress whether she liked it or not.

But standing outside the door behind which she waited, William wondered if that could really undo the spell she’d woven. What if it were some kind of witchcraft? Would forcing her break it, or only seal it upon him forever? He shook his head and told himself to be reasonable. Minuette was only a woman. And he knew what to do with a woman.

He opened the door without knocking. Minuette stood in the middle of the room, braced to meet him, hands clasped beneath the great swell of the child. She was alone, as William had commanded she be. Brought up against that familiar face, studying him gravely and without a flicker of expression in her eyes, William felt a moment’s doubt. He had never taken a woman by force. Could he really begin with Minuette?

Stop thinking of her as Minuette,
he told himself.
She is a liar and a whore. She deserves what she gets
.

She did not retreat when he moved forward. She did not struggle as he ran his hands across her breasts, larger and heavier with
pregnancy. Sealing his possession of her, William bent to kiss them where they swelled and, as he had once before, pushed her up against a stone wall. He’d wondered if her late pregnancy would be an impediment to his desire, but his body was aroused and responsive. His mind, though, was unpleasantly active as well, noticing her stillness, her submissiveness, almost her lack of awareness, as though she wasn’t really there and it was only her body that he touched, not her, not the essence of who she was …

He pushed himself off her and turned away in a mix of fury and despair. He felt like throwing something or hitting something but he didn’t, he just stood with his back to her and breathed in and out until he could face her with some semblance of control.

She stood against the wall of her prison, hair tumbled and cheeks red and one lip a little swollen where possibly he’d bitten her. She didn’t look at him. In a moment, as suddenly as it had struck years before, William’s desire vanished. He felt sick.

“I’m sorry, William.”

He had to choke back a bitter laugh at that. “You’re not sorry for me, you hate me. If you’re sorry, it’s for yourself.”

“I don’t hate you, and I am sorry for you. You were my friend.”

“Kings don’t have friends.” He dropped the words like coals between them, wishing he’d learned that lesson earlier.

“We were your friends,” she whispered. “We loved you. Not because you are king, but because you are Will.”

The only way to beat back the misery that threatened was to take offense. “
We
—always
we
. Always you and Dominic. Why could you not love
me
?” He threw the words at her, wanting to hurt her, wanting to break her, wanting her to acknowledge that all of this was her fault. If only she had loved him …

Laying her hands on either side of his face, she drew it down and kissed him on the forehead. He caught at her wrists and leaned his head against hers.

He closed his eyes and, for one moment, he was back in his mother’s room at Hever. He could smell the rain, he could feel his own clothes soaking wet and Minuette’s hands clutching him as she cried. For one moment he remembered what it felt like to love her simply and completely as his friend, before desire intervened, twisting his regard for her into something tantalizing and forbidden and out of his reach.

She came to you for pity’s sake
.

He stepped back hastily. Almost he looked round, for Dominic’s voice had rung so clearly that he seemed to be in the room with them.

He threw the door wide and half stumbled down the stairs and into the chilly October night. The boat was drawn up near the western entrance, past Traitor’s Gate, past Bell Tower where Dominic had lived out his last months.

The boat slipped away from the Tower, away from ghosts and pity and everything William could not control. He sank his head into his hands and realized he was shaking.

By the time the boat reached Greenwich, William was burning with fever.

Elizabeth looked at Walsingham, the two of them quite alone at Hatfield but still speaking sotto voce just in case. “Can you do it?” she asked.

“The doing of it is not the issue—it’s the not getting caught afterward, and gaining enough time for her to reach the ship.”

“Then can you do
that
?”

Walsingham’s shrewd gaze was more unreadable than normal. “I can, with help. There is a prisoner in the Tower whom I believe could be induced to aid us in creating a distraction.”

“Minuette going into early labor and importing a flurry of necessary women is not distraction enough?”

“I meant a distraction that will take eyes
off
Mistress Courtenay rather than focusing all attention on her. Stephen Howard is in the Tower, rather forlornly forgotten by the government in the aftermath of Norfolk’s rebellion. I have been to see him, and I believe him truly interested in the welfare of his stepdaughter.”

“And in his own, no doubt. What have you promised him for his aid?”

“Nothing. It is likely that he will not live to receive any gifts.”

Elizabeth stared. “Just what sort of distraction are you contemplating?”

Walsingham didn’t bother to say aloud,
Do you really want to
know?
They knew each other well enough not to ask pointless questions.

With a shrug that was only half careless, Elizabeth ruthlessly put away concern for everyone but Minuette. This was all she could do, and she meant to succeed. “So, Minuette goes into early labor, two women enter the Tower to aid her, then two women leave, presumably in the midst of whatever distraction you have in mind for Stephen Howard. The women who are brought in will be safe?”