The Boleyn Reckoning (47 page)

“It is not like you to speak so guardedly.”

“With Your Majesty’s permission, I would like to travel to her home in Cumbria and examine matters for myself before I speak further.”

Elizabeth waved her permission. “Please do. I will speak with you on your return.”

In the event, Walsingham did not return. It was Elizabeth who traveled to meet him, despite the fact that it was already November and for no one else would she have set forth on this journey without specific information. But Walsingham had never failed her, and so when he wrote,
You will wish to see this for yourself
, she believed him.

Perhaps the best part of being queen was not having to explain oneself to all and sundry. Elizabeth gave her orders, left Burghley to run things in London, and rode the long way north to Cumbria. She took her time, visiting overnight with several noble families, and arrived at the windswept, desolate, absolutely depressing Lakehill House on a grim November afternoon.

Walsingham met her in the hall. “Mistress Percy has been sent to Kenilworth with the Howard family,” he told her. “I thought it best when I discovered the secret she’d been keeping at the king’s behest.”

“William had her keeping secrets? I would have thought Eleanor incapable of discretion.”

“Not where her own interests are concerned. I can show you the cell below where he was kept later, but for now he is in the family wing. He likes open windows and open doors, and I cannot say I blame him.”

“Who?”

But Walsingham would not say. Growing impatient, Elizabeth followed him through the hall and up the stairs to a low-roofed corridor off which several doors opened. The one at the far end was not shut. Walsingham rapped lightly on the door frame and then stepped back to allow Elizabeth entry.

A man sat with his back to her, looking out the window onto the bleak landscape beyond. For a moment she thought the man hadn’t heard her entrance, but then he turned his head and Elizabeth felt herself spin into dizziness.

Gaunt and shadowed, his black hair cropped ruthlessly short and more heavily bearded than he’d ever been, but unmistakably Dominic Courtenay.

He looked at her without interest, perhaps even without recognition, while Elizabeth’s mind put together the pieces of the past shaken loose into a new picture. Robert had attended his execution, but Dominic had been beaten, she remembered. And blindfolded. And his tongue had been cut out so that he—or someone else—might not speak.

William had gone to great lengths to spirit Dominic away privately to a hell of his own imagining.

A harsh voice came from him, hardly recognizable in tone or attitude. “Now will someone tell me what is going on?”

He stood up and faced her, and Elizabeth saw with a jolt to her stomach that his left hand was gone, the arm ending in a neatly bandaged square of cream linen. What had William done?

But before she could speak, Walsingham said behind her, “Your Majesty—”

“Majesty?” Dominic interrupted, and narrowed his eyes. “What does he mean?”

Feeling more vulnerable than she had in many months, Elizabeth met Dominic’s emerald-green gaze and said, “The king is dead.”

She didn’t know what reaction she expected, but it wasn’t the bitter laughter that ensued. With a bow that was half mocking, half savage, Dominic said, “Long live the queen.”

Dominic was glad enough to leave Lakehill House, though “glad” was a strong word for an emotion that was muffled and distant. It had been hard enough to adjust to being pulled out of his prison cell by Walsingham, told only that Eleanor was gone and he was safe … to have Elizabeth appear and discover that she was queen and William was dead was almost more than his mind could take.

Was it comedy, he wondered, or tragedy—that he lived and the king was dead? Dominic didn’t know how to feel about any of it … except that his hand ached. The left hand. The one the promised ax had struck off rather than his head. Dominic knew enough of events from Walsingham to be certain the taking of his hand had been Eleanor’s idea, after William’s death.

As he rode south from Cumbria in a closed carriage with Elizabeth, Dominic wondered why Eleanor had not simply killed him. But he knew the answer to that—Eleanor might be vengeful but
she was also a survivor. She would not have risked Elizabeth discovering that she had killed a man once held dear by the new Crown. Probably she had tried to blame the loss of Dominic’s hand on William as well.

And why not? Dominic thought savagely. William so thoroughly stripped me of everything that mattered—might as well hate him for the loss of my hand as well.

Except, even now, he couldn’t quite hate William. Fury, yes. A desire to beat William as thoroughly as the king had battered him. A wish to have William at his feet, begging for mercy … even now, Dominic’s instinct would be for mercy.

If it were not for Minuette. Her death was the one blow Dominic could never forgive his friend. Surely this was why William had left him alive—to be eaten up by guilt and grief until death would be a sought-after release.
Just like a king. Leaving me to finish his dirty work
.

Three days out of Cumbria, Dominic finally asked, “Where are we going?”

“Where would you like to go?”

To the past … “Where is she buried?” he asked abruptly. “At the Tower?”

There was a long, fraught silence. Then Elizabeth said, “No, she is returned to Wynfield Mote.”

“Then I will go to Wynfield.”

The next day, after more long hours of silence, Elizabeth asked him, “Why do you think Walsingham didn’t tell you about William’s death when he found you? And didn’t tell me that you were alive until I saw with my own eyes?”

Dominic shrugged, uninterested.

“I think maybe he wanted the pleasure of seeing my face when we both learned the truth.”

The last day’s approach to Wynfield was exquisitely painful, for
Dominic knew every mile of that road. He knew that there were things he needed to ask and to do. Did Minuette’s son truly live? Was he in Elizabeth’s keeping? But all Dominic could think of was lying down next to his wife’s grave and allowing himself to finally rest.

He saw the evidence of building where new cottages had been erected in stone and thatch. The fields had been turned over for winter, ready for new planting next spring. Elizabeth had done her best to restore the damage her brother had wrought here.

And the house itself … the walls were the same, a few streaks still showing where smoke had left its mark, but the roof was rebuilt and the moat filled. Dominic closed his eyes and remembered riding in here another November, three years ago today.

Our wedding day, Dominic … one body and two souls … for to deserve everlasting life, whatsoever that they have done here before
.

It had been far easier to return than Minuette had feared. Lucette had adored the crossing of the Channel, wailing when taken below and burbling with delight on deck with the sea and sky surrounding her. Renaud had accompanied them to the French coast, and offered Minuette a final hug and word of advice.

“To live for your daughter is a fine thing. But you are very young as yet, and to live for yourself also would not be a sin.”

“And would you live for yourself if Nicole were gone?” she asked.

With that ineffable French shrug, Renaud answered, “Who can say? Farewell,
Madame
Courtenay. May your life be long and happy.”

Returning to Wynfield was mostly happy, for Elizabeth had extended herself and the estate cottages were tidy and snug and already half filled. Some of the families burnt out the previous year had gone elsewhere, to family or London, but Minuette discovered
that the surrounding community had done much to care for those left behind. Emma Hadley, Alyce de Clare’s sister, who had always treated Minuette with mingled envy and dislike, had provided house room and work for a widow and her young children, and Wynfield’s steward, Asherton, had remained in the area determined to put things right as soon as he could.

It was almost a relief that the interior of the house was new, for it felt as though it were a place for her and Lucette to move forward rather than looking back. But still Minuette rejected the larger space of her parents’ former bedchamber for her own smaller one where she and Dominic had always lain together.

On November 17, Minuette was in her mother’s rose garden with Carrie and Lucette. Some of the rosebushes had not survived the heat of the fires, but new roots had been planted alongside a few hardy remnants of the original garden. The two women were entertaining themselves with the child’s first faltering attempts to walk. She could stand nearly steady as long as she held onto someone’s fingers, but she was so plump that her balance was all wrong every time she took a step. Minuette supposed it wasn’t very kind to laugh so joyously whenever Lucette sat sharply down, but her creased frown of indignation was delicious.

She and Carrie were laughing when she heard horses approaching, and a few moments later, Harrington’s deep voice called out, “Royal standard.”

Crimson and azure, lions and lilies … time spun through memories but swiftly righted itself. “Her Majesty,” Minuette said. “This is unexpected. Carrie, alert Mistress Holly as gently as possible. I don’t want my housekeeper dropping dead of shock.”

She scooped Lucette into her arms and waited at the edge of the roses, not inclined to welcome the queen too warmly until she knew what was wanted. She was a little surprised that Elizabeth came in a carriage rather than on horseback, but her friend appeared
perfectly upright and healthy when she was handed out of the interior. Elizabeth had always dressed well, but there was something indefinably weightier about her deep-red gown and ivory kirtle that better suited a queen than a mere princess. The intricate coils of her red-gold hair were another symbol of position, as though Elizabeth were using her body itself to proclaim her status.

Elizabeth nodded in greeting but did not move toward her friend, and Minuette was just thinking crossly that really, standing on one’s dignity could go too far, when a man stepped out of the carriage behind Elizabeth.

She would have known him in her sleep, or her dreams, from his scent alone, or the quality of his stillness, or the sharp line of his jaw. Only when Lucette let out an aggrieved wail did Minuette realize she was squeezing the breath out of both of them.

“Dominic,” she whispered, and in the way he stood, she realized that he was as shocked as she was.

And then they moved, both at once, and Minuette knew that she had finally, absolutely, come home.

Elizabeth stayed one night at Wynfield, a matter of hours in which Minuette despaired of Mistress Holly’s nerves. But Elizabeth, like her brother, had a gift with the common people that set them at ease and made them love her. Perhaps almost worship her.

Minuette rose alone to bid Elizabeth farewell at dawn. Without Dominic to care for in his uncertain state of health, Elizabeth would ride rather than take the carriage. Minuette embraced her in the courtyard. “Thank you,” she said with all the fervor of her grateful soul.

With a gaze that took in the building work around them, Elizabeth asked, “I trust you are content with the work done here?”

“You have been very generous.”

“And if I were to ask you for something in return?”

“It would depend on what was asked.”

“I could use good men and women at my court.”

Minuette was silent as she chose carefully each word of her response. “You will be a wonderful queen, Elizabeth, and I will never be able to thank you for my own safety and Dominic’s return. But we are finished with royalty and courts.”

Her friend smiled ruefully, as though she’d known the answer. “May I at least crave your presence at the coronation? I do not
think I can take those vows without my dearest friend to anchor me. You are all I have left, Minuette.”

Minuette knew she was being manipulated, but all the ties of loyalty and long friendship tugged at her. “I will come to the coronation. On the condition that you promise, afterward, to let us be.”

Only then did Elizabeth’s eyes—blue like her father’s and her brother’s—harden. “Your daughter is lovely, Minuette. And her eyes are blue.”

That was a mistake, Your Majesty, Minuette thought. I have grown almost as hard as you these last years.

She allowed Elizabeth to see all the implacability and fierceness of her mother-love, and with a chilliness that would have done Anne Boleyn proud, spoke only one word. “Don’t.”

Elizabeth would not apologize; her nod was as close as she would come. “Goodbye, Minuette.”

“Farewell, Your Majesty.”

Minuette did not stay to see the queen depart. Her husband and her daughter awaited, and nothing on earth mattered more.