The Queene's Cure (19 page)

“I do indeed. But I tell you, the queen who sits the throne now has been more generous in the furnishing of this chamber than the queen who sent me here.” Elizabeth slowly walked the small circuit of the room she used to pace, noting the Turkish carpet on the floor, the
velvet padded chair and footstool from the storage rooms at Blackfriars.

“And I do thank you,” Katherine said, her voice low, “that my son resides with me and my Lord Hertford nearby.”

“Though you have not cohabited with him.”

“Oh, no, Your Grace,” Katherine assured her, wrapping her cloak closer and walking to the single window with its leaded casement set slightly ajar as if she suddenly needed fresh air. “Forgive my question,” Katherine blurted, “but why have you come in person when I know you cannot abide this place?”

“To inquire after your health, cousin.”

“My health?” she asked, blanching. “You know?”

“Were you tended by Dr. Pascal or Dr. Caius?”

“You have spoken with them?”

Elizabeth nodded, studying the girl. In the short time she had been here, Katherine Grey had gone from defiance to distress and now absolute panic, though she sought to hide it.

“They both tended me, Your Grace, and both confirmed the—the diagnosis. I supposed, if pressed, your kindly lord lieutenant would tell you they both visited me.”

“Kindly, is he? But let's not stray from the doctors. Did they come together or at separate times?”

Katherine had begun to tremble, though she held her cloak closed in a vain attempt to hide any sign of it. The
girl had always been of overindulged, volatile temperament, but she had a Tudor backbone of steel. Mayhap she was simply afraid for her gaoler, who had obviously summoned and admitted the doctors and risked allowing pets. Or now that she had a young son, mayhap Katherine feared for his sake.

“They are both approved men of your Royal College of Physicians and came when they could, and I was—in need,” Katherine said. Her eyes did not meet Elizabeth's, and she was all too obviously picking her words warily. “And, of late, I have been sore in need. Please, Your Most Gracious Majesty,” she cried, her voice rising, “punish me if you must, but do not harm my children!”

“But I have seen to it that your heir was christened and titled Viscount Beauchamp,” Elizabeth began to argue before what the woman had said sank in.
“Children?”
she demanded.

Katherine nearly fell back against the wall. Again she shifted her cloak closer. And then the queen knew. Knew the so-called unknown or untold malady from which this deceitful wretch was suffering. Knew that the “kindly” Lord Lieutenant of the Tower had let more than dogs and a monkey into these rooms to amuse and comfort the pretty and beguiling Katherine Grey. After all, her husband's cell was in this very tower.

“It—cannot be!” the queen whispered, more to herself than to the cowering girl. “I came to inform you that you may come back to court—if you would promise
to behave—and you have not behaved but have defied and betrayed me yet again!”

She leaped at the girl, ripping her hands and cloak wide. Katherine wore but meager petticoats in here. Her belly was barely showing, but it was more than what overeating or a disease like the dropsy would do to a twenty-two-year-old, one nearly as trim as the queen herself.

“You stupid, little fool!” Elizabeth shouted, pounding her fists on the windowsill instead of on Katherine. “You're with child again when that was what gave you away and caused all this before. Do you never learn or think? You're breeding another heir when one is sorely needed elsewhere! Now traitors will doubly flock to you.”

Despite the royal raving, the girl looked so much a Tudor at that moment—for of her three Grey cousins, Katherine had always resembled her most closely—that Elizabeth almost pitied the chit. But had she not fathomed yet that Tudor blood in one's veins meant duty and denial, not giving into one's passions, and especially not with men?

Wanting to both cuff and cuddle the stupid girl, Elizabeth shoved her back into her seat and hovered over her, leaning slightly forward with her hands on the arms of the chair.

“I want answers from you, Katherine, and now. Since both the Papists Pascal and Caius have lived abroad, did
they act as your go-betweens with foreign or Catholic contacts?”

“N-no, Your Grace, but who am I to read what was in their hearts?”

“ 'S blood, forget hearts and think with your head! When Pascal and Caius were here, did they suggest that you cohabit with Edward Seymour? Did they urge it? Bribe the lieutenant to allow it?”

“No, of course not.”

Elizabeth slapped her once across the cheek. “Look into my eyes when you answer my questions and recall that I am your queen. I am not your sweet coz anymore, not some fond, romantic soul you can convince with tears and sighs and meanderings. I am sick to death of public talk I should loose you and Lord Hertford because of the sad story of your love. And yet I came here to do just that, to bring you back to court.”

“You did? Truly?”

“All the better to keep an eye on you, but now you've ruined even that.”

“I insist you take us back. You must!”

“I intended for just you and your son to return. But Katherine,” Elizabeth countered, her voice deadly cold, “we both know, for those who continually defy and endanger their queen, that the view outside this window used to include a scaffold for others of our blood and their husbands too, and orphaned heirs can be fostered out or even reared at court.”

Katherine gulped audibly and slumped back in the chair. She gazed into the eyes of her queen as if facing a hovering hawk about to swoop for the kill.

“I—I believe that the doctors,” Katherine whispered, “perhaps Dr. Pascal, spoke with the lord lieutenant about how distraught I was, Your Grace. The doctor said that my husband's company would be a far better tonic for me than any medicine ever would.”

Tears like a fountain ran from the girl's cornflower blue eyes and dripped off her chin. But Elizabeth hardened her heart as she always had when it meant her survival, even when she most wanted to comfort. Her throne, her life, her realm could be at stake if there was a plot afoot.

“And,” Katherine choked out, her words half smothered by her sobs, “it was Dr. Caius who suggested the molding be made of me for a statue, ere something happen to me in here, so my son—now two heirs—would have a remembrance of me … and … What? Why are you looking at me that way?” she cried, cowering even more. “I am telling you God's truth, so you have pity on me and my own.”

“A molding made? Explain yourself. A—a plaster death ma—a life mask?”

“Yes, I guess so,” the girl admitted, nodding wildly as she teetered on the edge of hysteria. “Dr. Caius had a friend of his visiting from somewhere in Italy do it. Someone who knew that clever Italian doctor who
taught anatomy there—Dr. Caius's teacher—the one who stole the bodies to make death masks and take them apart.”

“Take them apart? The masks or the bodies?”

“The bodies. To learn more about the human form to make better treatments and cures. I think he called it dissolution.”

“Dissection,” Elizabeth said. “But stealing bodies is only one step from killing them first.”

“What?” the girl cried, looking totally appalled. “I swear by all that's true, he said nothing of killing anyone, only healing. And I thought a painted mask would be a sweet and charming thing, like at the masques with music at court, even like that one your fool Topside staged before I was sent here. And who would not want a fine sculpted bust made of themselves?”

“ 'S blood,” the queen clipped out, bracing herself on the carved arms of the chair. “Caius may,” she whispered to herself, “have used that life mask for the effigy mask. You resemble me closely enough, but I knew there was something slightly off in the face.”

“My face? Death mask? Please, Your Grace,” she cried as the queen straightened and stepped away, “I swear I shall never defy you again, nor allow foreign elements to cling to any hopes that I might heed—”

“Foreign elements indeed—Papist ones! From Italy perhaps, such as Dr. Caius's visitor, or from Spain,
someone who brought pet dogs as a little gift. Or that deceitful dog that is your husband!”

As Elizabeth started away, Katherine threw herself at her, going to her knees, then her stomach, but catching only her hems. “I beg you, Your Majesty, do not harm my husband or those I love! Though I bore a son and would bear another heir, do not blame me for being just a woman—”

The queen stepped back and pulled her skirts free, though Katherine's nails ripped her hem. “You, like me, cousin Katherine, can never afford to be
just
a woman. You are of royal blood but have not learned yet that the price of your willful desires and conniving must be paid. Do not fear I will take your life nor harm your husband or your children, though you and he must go separate ways, far away from London this time. You may keep the new babe with you, as the heir goes with your husband. And you will answer every question put to you by a cross-questioner who will be here on the morrow. So, stand up for your babe and for your Tudor blood, for we will never meet again.”

Katherine's gasp and smothered sobs were the only sounds in the room as Elizabeth turned away and knocked once on the door. Her guards opened it immediately. She lifted her skirts to avoid tripping over the dragging hem. On the stairway down she saw Cecil coming up. Mayhap he had heard their raised voices, but they exchanged a glance that said it all:
Nothing goes as
planned.
Her guards fell in behind her as she passed Sir Edward Warner, who bowed so low she could barely get past him on the stairs.

“For allowing dogs, monkeys, husbands, and spies through that door, you are now the retired Lord Lieutenant of the Tower of London,” she informed him. “Be ever grateful you are not the newest tenant here. Be gone to your rural home by nightfall and never return.”

“And Lady Hertford?” Cecil whispered as he followed her down the twist of staircase.

“She's fingered John Caius, Pascal too, to a lesser degree. Send for them both to be brought to Whitehall— separately. As for the lady, I shall never see her again. Never.”

She could tell by the sound of his steps that Cecil had stopped walking for a moment. Then she heard him hurrying to catch up as she left the Bell Tower and cut across the cobbled courtyard.

“And I shall never see this godforsaken place again,” she shouted so loudly that her voice echoed off the cold stone walls.

THE NINTH

T
HE SIDNEYS AND LORD ROBERT ARE HERE TO SPEAK
with you,” Kat announced as she entered Elizabeth's privy chamber late that afternoon. “Send them in,” the queen said and threw down her quill.

Cecil and three of his secretaries yet hovered over the table strewn with bills, grants, warrants, and decrees, which she'd been reading and signing. Though rattled from her visit to the Tower earlier today, Elizabeth had sat through two meetings with ambassadors and one
with Parliamentary advisers to accomplish the nation's business this long afternoon.