Murder at Whitehall (21 page)

“Fortunate!” Gerald shouted. “I have spent my life working for this moment, and your treachery . . .”

“Enough!” Senor Gomez's iron disdain snapped. He raised his sword in an elegant, smooth, terrible arc. “You killed Jeronimo, and yet we have been kind to you. That ends now.” He swept forward in one quick, agile movement, the dance of the practiced duelist. In only a few blurred steps, he slashed out at Gerald, almost causing the gun to drop.

Gerald's face, so furious only an instant before, melted into panic. He raised the gun in a wild arc. “I am here to make you honor your agreement! I have worked too long for this!”

Senor Gomez shoved the older man to the ground. “You are the one who made an agreement you could not honor,” he said, cold and calm. “Trying to pass off a useless girl as a rightful queen. I have managed to set things right with my uncle and the king, no thanks to you. And now I have no use for you, nor does my master King Philip. Once Lady Grey is married to a proper Spanish lord, we will make our case for a new queen of England.” He took a deep, swift lunge toward Gerald, his sword raised high before it slashed down.

The girl screamed, and the gun in Gerald's hand went off with a deafening explosion. The sharp, dark smell of burnt powder filled the air. For a moment, Kate could see nothing but a silvery haze, could hear only screams and shouts, a tangle of confusion and terror.

When the air cleared, she glimpsed Senor Gomez slumped on the ground, toppled to his side with a gaping, bleeding wound in his shoulder, the fine velvet and leather of his doublet ripped away. Gerald, too,
was wounded, swaying on his knees, the gun fallen from his limp hand. Senor Gomez's sword lay in the mud, its shining steel stained bright red. The guards looked on from the other side of the road, unsure what to do next. Lady Catherine looked completely white, as if she would faint.

So many things flashed through Kate's horrified mind—Allison Finsley leading her by her hand through the garden as a child, the queen on her golden throne, Queen Catherine Parr with her head bent over her writing, Senor Vasquez lying dead in the garden.

Instinctively, Kate ran to Gerald's side, and caught him as he fell. He was alive, barely, his chest heaving with the effort of breathing, of holding on to the light. Yet she could hear the low, humming rattle of it, a sound she had heard too much in the last year. At Hatfield, at Westminster Abbey, at Nonsuch—the death rattle.

He stared up at her with faded, half-seeing eyes. In that instant, he looked like the man she remembered from her childhood, the man who helped her with her music lessons, who laughed with her father and the Parks.

Yet he was a man who would concoct a treasonous scheme using an innocent girl as bait. What had driven him to such desperation?

“El—Eleanor?” he gasped.

“Nay, 'tis me, Kate. Eleanor's daughter. Oh, Gerald—why did you do this? My father would have helped you if you were in some trouble, given you money. . . .”

“Nay, not for money!” he cried. He clutched at her arm, surprisingly strong. “I only wanted to help—her.”

“Mary?” Kate said. “You love her?”

“Not as a wife. I am not so—foolish as that. As a daughter, though I married her to protect her. She was alone in life after Allison and I took her from the Suffolk house, where she was sore neglected. I promised Queen Catherine I would protect her babe.”

“Then she truly is Queen Catherine's child?”

“Aye, that she is, I promise on my dying vow. Allison and I raised her, we protected her, just as we promised the queen. Mary was meant to be a great lady, as her mother was.”

“Queen Catherine would never have wanted her daughter embroiled with the Spanish,” Kate whispered.

“She would have been a queen! Once Queen Catherine thought she might be pregnant with the king's child, not long before he died. It was her most precious hope. And when I realized that I alone knew Queen Catherine's code—the one she wrote in her music—I realized I could write another piece of music, one where the Queen bade me marry her daughter, at a certain time, a certain place, to keep her safe. A prophecy that could prove she was King Henry's when I showed Vasquez Catherine's letters from the days when she
thought she carried King Henry's child. I knew she was not truly the king's, of course, but I knew I could find a way to pass her off thusly. But then I couldn't find the papers, the music Queen Catherine had kept when that night she feared for her life so long ago.”

Kate thought of Queen Catherine's music lying on her desk, the one Queen Catherine had given her father for safekeeping that same night.

“The Duchess of Suffolk had no love for the child. In her household, it was easy enough to switch the baby for a peasant's dead child, and take her away to be raised by another family. Easy enough to bribe a priest to marry us. I wanted only to help her, however I could.”

“To help her with a lie?” Kate said.

“To help her with what should have been the truth!” Gerald shouted with one last burst of energy. “I worked so hard on this scheme. When I couldn't find the papers, I realized I'd have to resort to other means of procuring the throne. I tried to scare the queen into thinking her past had come back to haunt her, that she was not the true queen after all. I saw her behavior in the house of the Dowager Queen! I managed to leave the note in her royal chamber; I paid a beggar child to leave the doll at Greenwich. All for naught.”

“The queen is too courageous for such cowardly schemes to frighten her—surely you must know that,” Kate cried. “Oh, Gerald, how crazed your thoughts must have become.”

“Not crazed! 'Tis the truth—what should have been the truth,” he declared.

*   *   *

He fell back onto the ground, his eyes turning blank. Mary let out a wail and ran to his side, catching the attention of Gomez's stunned guards. They straightened to their feet, and Kate snatched up Gomez's fallen sword and held it out. She had no experience with such heavy blades, but she held the steel hilt with both hands, forcing her fingers and her mind to hold steady. Surely it had to be more reliable than a firearm that could explode in her hands at any minute.

Lady Catherine had no such doubts. She scooped up the heavy gun and waved it toward the guards. They froze in their steps.

“Your master is dead, so surely his traitorous bargains are at an end,” Kate said in her own halting Spanish. “You must let us go now.”

They still looked hesitant, but a thunder of noise in the distance seemed to make them decide. Horses' hooves pounded down the rutted road, growing louder and louder until a party of riders swung around the twist in the road, their own swords held high. At their head was Lord Hertford, and Lady Catherine cried out to him. The look on his face, sheer relief and fury, made Kate hope his feelings for Lady Catherine were true after all.

And riding just behind Lord Hertford, his own face filled with a panic and fury that even an actor's training couldn't disguise, was Rob. Kate tried to run to him, but her legs shook too much to hobble more than a few steps.

“Halt in the name of the queen!” Lord Hertford shouted.

Their Spanish captors immediately stepped back, arms raised.

“It certainly took you long enough,” Kate said. She let the heavy sword drop, and swayed with the sudden wave of exhaustion and sorrow that washed over her. She turned away from the sight of so much blood, so much life wasted, and collapsed to the ground.

“T
he poor child,” Queen Elizabeth murmured as she leaned over the bed where Lady Mary Seymour slept. She gently smoothed a wave of dark red hair from the girl's pale forehead. She had fallen into an exhausted sleep as soon as she arrived at the palace, her meager belongings fetched from the Rose and Crown. “How much she has been through.”

Kate nodded. She still felt weary herself, aching all over her bruised body from the jolting carriage ride, but surely Lady Mary felt even worse, tossed from one world to another. Considered dead since she was an infant, raised secretly in the country, married at twelve—though the girl, through her tears, had assured the queen that it was not a
real
marriage, that Master Finsley had been as a father to her. A father who had kept her in isolation, used her for his own treacherous ends, and now had left her alone in the world, without a soul to care for her.

Kate thought of her own father, the way he had held
her close when she stumbled back into the palace, his tender kiss on her forehead, and felt doubly blessed.

“What will happen to her, Your Grace?” she whispered.

“Mistress Park and her husband have agreed to go live with her for a time at one of my smaller manors. I will send her tutors, and one day we can find her a suitable true husband,” Elizabeth answered. “None will need to know who she truly is, so she can have the freedom to find her own path. Perhaps one day she will be able to forget all this. Time can truly be a great healer, especially to one so young.”

Kate thought of Tom Seymour and Queen Catherine, of young Princess Elizabeth, caught up in things she couldn't yet understand, feelings she couldn't yet fathom. “Has it helped to heal you?”

Elizabeth frowned, yet she said nothing. She took Kate's arm and led her out of the small chamber where Lady Mary slept so fitfully. “I know I need not say this, Kate, not to you. But you do know that no matter what Master Finsley's delusions were, Lady Mary could not have been the child of my father.”

Kate nodded. She had told the queen all that she had learned of Gerald Finsley's actions, his attempt to convince the Spanish that Lady Mary could be the true heiress to the English throne, using the music as his “proof.”

“I do know that, Your Grace. But I still feel so very foolish.”

“Why foolish, Kate?”

“I could not see Master Finsley's true intentions. I
think I was blinded by my childhood memories of him and his sister. It took me much too long to see what was really his scheme.”

Elizabeth stopped next to the window at the end of the quiet corridor. She was silent for a long moment, as if her thoughts were very far away, and Kate studied the scene in the garden below. She glimpsed Rob walking with some of his actors, their brilliantly colored cloaks shimmering in the winter twilight. Kate suddenly found herself wanting to run down to him, to dance and laugh and revel in Christmas, and forget what she had seen.

But there was never any forgetting. She had learned that too well in her time at court.

“I hope that you will never lose that tenderheartedness, my Kate,” the queen said softly. She, too, watched the actors, her dark eyes wistful. “Too many people here are hardened, their souls made brittle by what they have done to survive in this world. Perhaps I am the same way, and it makes me hard and suspicious. I need people around me who can remind me of the merry things in life. The important things.”

“Important things, Your Grace?”

“Things like music, as I am sure you know well, Kate. Dancing, laughter. Family.”

Kate gave a wry laugh.
Family
seemed to be what had led so many people astray this Christmas season. Master Finsley thought his wife, and therefore he, should be part of a royal family. The queen's family schemed and planned behind her back—Lady
Catherine for love, Mary, Queen of Scots, for more thrones. “Surely family has caused its share of problems.”

“Especially of late? Aye,” Elizabeth answered. “But such trials show us who we can trust. And teach us to take joy where we can, aye? So—let us have dancing tonight, and celebrate that it is Christmas once again.”

Kate looked once more to Rob, whose golden hair shimmered in the emerging moonlight, whose laughter she was sure she could still hear. He looked up and caught her watching, and waved with a small smile just for her. “Aye, Your Grace. Let us have dancing indeed. . . .”

Twelfth Night

“H
ere comes I, old Father Christmas!” proclaimed the figure who strode across the stage of the great hall, his green velvet robes and false white beard flapping about to the merriment of the audience. “Christmas comes but once a year, but when it does it brings good cheer. Roast beef and plum pudding, and plenty of good English beer! Last Christmastide I turned the spit, I burnt my finger and can't find of it . . .”

Kate laughed along with the rest of the court as Father Christmas leaped about. She was happy to see the play for once from the audience side. She sat beside her father on one of the tiered benches that rose behind the queen's tall-backed chair. Queen Elizabeth smiled and waved her feather fan as her maids, arrayed around her in their bright satins, giggled.

Kate scanned the audience to take in the various groups in attendance. Lord Halton was there with the other Scots, though Lord Macintosh seemed to have absented himself. As had Bishop de Quadra, who claimed a slight illness. But every English family at
court had crowded into the room, and the merriment seemed to burn even higher, warmer, after all that had happened to try to mar their holiday.

Lady Catherine sat with her friends and dogs on the other side of the queen, her pretty face still a bit pale against her black-and-pearl headdress, but Lord Hertford's “rescue” seemed to have revived her spirits, for she laughed with everyone else. She waved happily at Kate, and made her little spaniel wave its paw.

Kate waved back, and slipped her hand onto her father's arm. He smiled down at her, though she feared that he, unlike Lady Catherine, looked more wearied by the sorrows of finding out his friend's treachery. His eyes seemed a bit faded under his fine black velvet cap.

“I am certain I should not say it, Kate,” her father whispered, “not with all the strangeness we have seen of late, but tonight is surely one of the finest Christmases I can remember.”

“Is it, Father?” she whispered back. “Despite—everything?”

Matthew sighed. “Gerald Finsley
was
once my friend. 'Tis true. We both served Queen Catherine, whose learning and grace we admired so much. But anyone can be changed, twisted, by courtly ambition. They can be blinded by the sparkle around them so they no longer see to the core of truth. Human understanding and love are worth a caravel full of gold and emeralds. Your mother taught me that.”

Kate studied the crowd as they laughed at the players' antics. It was a beautiful sight indeed. In the
blazing light of the Yule log, the jewels of the queen's court glittered like a thousand stars, ropes of pearls, diamonds, and emeralds against bright velvets and rich furs. The crowd clustered around the queen, who was brighter than all the rest in her cloth of gold-and-white satin, her red hair piled high and wound with strands of rubies and topaz.

Elizabeth laughed behind her fan, and reached out to take one of her favorite cherry suckets from a bowl Robert Dudley held out to her. He whispered something in her ear, and she actually blushed, then tapped his arm with her fan. Robert's sister, the queen's lady-in-waiting Mary Sidney smiled, but several people frowned and muttered at the sight.

Kate realized her father was very right—she was in danger of being drawn too far into this world to turn back. Not because she longed for jewels or for the estates and titles that royal favor could bring—though she thought those might be nice enough. But because here, at the very center of the deceptive hive that buzzed around the queen, she felt as if she could be of good use.

She had work to do—her father and mother's legacy of music, aye, but also the vital work of keeping Queen Elizabeth safe and her throne secure. Without Elizabeth, England would be in terrible danger of being tossed back into chaos and darkness, as it had been too often in days gone by.

Kate knew well she was only one person, one young, inexperienced woman, who was still fumbling her way through the maze of court life. Yet every pair of eyes
was needed to help guard the queen, and surely she could learn more ways to be of help.

If Elizabeth had never become queen, Kate knew she would have stayed in the country with her father, perhaps married a farmer or a village shopkeeper, helped run his business and home, had children she could teach a little music to. Not a bad life at all, and one that would surely have promised more contentment than a courtly career. But it was not a life that could ever contain all the things she was just realizing she had in herself.

“You taught me that as well, Father, and I promise I shall never forget,” she said, squeezing his hand. “Courtly life does have its attractions for me, I admit, but not of the treasure sort. I am learning my way here.”

“And you are learning it exceedingly well. You have the queen's trust. I am proud of you—as your mother would be.”

Kate felt tears prickle behind her eyes, and she blinked them away. This was no night for tears. “So, tell me. Why is this a good Christmas after all?”

“Because I am with my daughter, of course! Any moment I have with my Kate is a good one.” Matthew looked toward the stage, where Father Christmas had been joined by a chorus of angels, who danced in
twining circles around him as they sang their final song. “But I must know one thing, my dearest, before I can go back contented to my little cottage.”

“What is that, Father?”

“I must know whether you have forgiven me for keeping the truth about your mother's family from you. I meant no harm, truly. It merely seemed to be Eleanor's secret to keep. And I had to protect you.”

Kate nodded. Secrets were the court's most valuable currency, and some connections were better unknown. “I know. To be a Boleyn was not a safe thing for a long time. Of course I forgive you, Father. I did long ago. You were truly only taking care of me.” And, unlike Gerald Finsley's protestations that he was only trying to “take care of” Mary Seymour, or Tom Seymour's “protection” of a young Princess Elizabeth, her father's actions, his secrets, had been for the best in the end, Kate knew well.

She kissed his bearded cheek. “You have been the best of fathers. Surely Mother would be proud of
you
, as well. We have taken care of each other rather well all these years, I think.”

Tears shimmered in his eyes, and it made Kate want to cry all over again. “Yet I will not be here forever. I do not want you to be alone, my Kate. I want you to find happiness such as I had with your mother.” He gently touched the pretty little lute-shaped pendant she wore uncovered now, held on a string of seed pearls and garnet beads that had been the queen's Christmas gift. “This is a charming piece indeed, and most thoughtful. From Queen Elizabeth?”

Kate opened her mouth to tell her father about Rob, but something held her back. Her tiny secret hopes and ideas, that perhaps she had found someone who could truly understand her as her parents had understood each other, were still only her own.

At least for a little longer. She glanced at Rob where he stood by the edge of the stage, and found he watched her as well. How very handsome he looked that night, smiling his charming, careless grin, his hair shining like the summer sun against his violet velvet doublet. Yet she knew there was so much behind his beauty. There was a passion for art and life, a sense of adventure, that called out to her own.

But aye—that was her own secret for the moment. As was the letter she had received from Anthony that morning, asking if he could see her when next he came to London. She wondered, probably with far too much curiosity, what he wished to tell her. And what she would say in return. She could see why matters of the heart drove ladies like Catherine Grey, and even the queen, to distraction. They were even more baffling than deciphering Platonic musical codes.

She smiled at her father, and nodded.

The play came to an end in a show of silver sparkles and sweets tossed out into the audience. The queen's ladies rushed for them, and the actors lined up to take their bows. Elizabeth leaped to her feet, applauding, something she never did, and her astonished courtiers scrambled to follow her lead.

“I declare, my friends, that this has been the merriest night of Yule revelries I can yet remember,” she said.
“Now, while we still have the light of our Yule log, and plenty of wine and ‘good English beer,' let us dance and make merry. Robin?”

Robert Dudley held out his arm to the queen, and led her from her chair as servants scurried to move the benches and musicians took their places in the gallery. In the light of the snapping, flaring Yule log, everything looked perfect.

For the moment.