The Boleyn King (31 page)

They stopped briefly at an inn just four miles from the castle. Minuette tried to spark conversation with Carrie as they walked around the inn yard to stretch their legs.

“I’m beginning to remember the road,” Minuette remarked. “I wasn’t sure that I would after so many years.”

Carrie said nothing.

“It must be even more familiar to you,” Minuette prodded. “You were here nearly two years with my mother.”

“So I was,” she said at last.

“I hope you remember your way around the castle. I have only vague memories of a bewildering array of walls and towers and corridors.” Even as she said it, an image sparked in her head of a particular corridor and a room opening off it—old stone, cold and empty. Or nearly empty …

The image vanished as Carrie said sharply, “I remember that one should not wander alone. Promise me that, mistress. The castle cannot be trusted, no more than those inside it.”

It was the first negative comment she had ever heard Carrie utter. The surprise of it stayed with Minuette as they remounted and rode the last miles to Framlingham.

The flint walls rose out of the surrounding fields like a shield piercing the low sky. Minuette felt she was seeing it with doubled eyes—one set here and now, approaching on horseback with the might of the Lord Chancellor at her back, the other set those of a six-year-old girl seeing her mother’s new home and knowing it would never be hers.

By the time they reached the walls the gates were open, alerted by the guards on the wall walks. Unlike most castles of its age, Framlingham had no keep, depending instead on its formidable curtain walls and towers to defend the sprawl of domestic buildings across the courtyards. They were greeted by men in the red, gold, and blue badges of Norfolk, and a soberly dressed man introduced himself as steward and offered to take Minuette to her room.

“I’ll do it,” drawled a voice Minuette had hoped not to hear. It seemed her stepfather was at the family residence as well.

She allowed him to lead her with a hand tucked through his arm into a wing that jutted at a sharp angle from an outer castle wall. “Near Her Highness,” Howard said. “At her request. You don’t mind that we use her title, do you?”

“Would it matter if I did?”

“You might report it.”

“Do you think William does not know what your family calls her?”

They reached a door that Howard opened. “Yours,” he said, and dropped her hand. “I think William knows what we call her. I think he doesn’t care. Perhaps he should.”

“Dear me,” she said sweetly. “Do you have something to report?”

He gave her a somewhat savage smile. “You’re in Norfolk territory now. I won’t do your spying for you. However, I will give you one piece of advice.”

“Yes?” She expected a warning about the duke or Mary’s temper, or even a repeat of Carrie’s advice not to go wandering alone.

“My nephew Giles and his wife are in residence. They’ve spoken of you, both of them. From their words, I’m not sure which one is the greater danger—but I tell you this: you have enemies here, girl. And I don’t mean political. Their enmity is personal. I would take care if I were you.”

He walked away, whistling as he went.

Dominic was surprised when he arrived, as summoned, to find William alone. The king had been in Rouen for two weeks now, and their encounters had been all business, surrounded by councilors and soldiers and diplomats. He had tried not to take it personally—he knew how critical this treaty was—but there had been a mean part of him that had wondered if William as an unfettered king meant no more Will as his friend.

Tonight William looked to be his friend. He had discarded the heavy jewels and jerkin and sat in an armchair with his legs stretched out and a cup in one hand. He nodded to the table, where another cup and a jug of ale sat. “Help yourself.”

Dominic filled the cup, then sat in a matching chair at an angle to William’s. “You look tired,” he commented.

William laughed. “You are the worst courtier ever. Sitting alone with your king, and the first words out of your mouth are a criticism, or possibly an insult.”

His tone made Dominic’s shoulders ease. He sighed and leaned back in a similar pose. “I’ve missed you.”

“Hmmm.” William looked into the fire, necessary in the October chill. “I’ve been … busy. Distracted.”

“Yes, I’m impressed. I never thought to see you quite so dedicated to work.”

“Your lessons,” William said. “You’re a better teacher than you thought.”

There was more than tiredness there, more than the distraction of politics. Dominic knew William through and through, and there was something bothering him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I have a favour to ask.”

“Anything, you know that.” Why did William sound so hesitant? If he wanted, he could command Dominic to anything.

“I want you to return to England. Immediately.”

Even as he said, “May I ask why?” he was thinking,
He really doesn’t want to be anywhere near me. What has he done?

Finally William met his eyes. “Because I cannot go, and you are the only one I trust for this.”

“Mary?” he hazarded. “Is she still with Norfolk?”

“At Framlingham, yes. My uncle wrote to me, says there’s possible movement by the emperor’s fleet.”

“Maneuvering to get her out of the country.”

“Right.”

Dominic ran a hand through his hair. “Troubling, yes, but Rochford is much better suited to this than I am. Why send me back to court?”

“Not to court. To Framlingham.”

“Will, you’re not making any sense.”

“Mary is at Framlingham, with the Duke of Norfolk.”

“I don’t know what you want me to do.”

William went on as though Dominic had not spoken. “Giles and Eleanor are also there—”

“So you want me to get your mistress safely away in case of trouble?”

“—and so is Minuette. It appears my uncle sent her there.”

Blank silence settled in his chest with a weight that stopped his breath. He was surprised by how calm he sounded. “What in the name of God is Minuette doing in the same house as Giles Howard?”

“Rochford sent her to look for the Penitent’s Confession.”

Dominic was on his feet before he knew it, ready to wrap his hands around someone’s neck. Rochford’s, preferably. “Has he lost his mind? He has no right to put her in danger. What was he thinking, launching Minuette into a world where men kill to keep their secrets? You must get her out of there, now—”

“Why do you think I’m sending you?” William shoved the chair back and was on his feet as well, staring him down.

Dominic forced himself to breathe slowly. “Right. I’m sorry, I was just …”

“Worried. So am I. Ride light; get to Le Havre as fast as you can. I’ll send letters to free a ship for you. When you land, don’t head to London. Go straight on to Framlingham.”

“How much danger is she in?”

William turned away, so all Dominic could see were his shoulders, braced tight. “Just get her out of there.”

“I will.”

He was halfway down the corridor when he heard footsteps. He stopped and let William catch him up.

“Will you give her a message for me?” William asked. He sounded, once again, unusually diffident.

“Of course.”

“Tell her …” He paused, and in his eyes Dominic saw something hovering, something that his friend seemed almost ready to share. But he just smiled and said, “Tell her I have missed her.”

When she was six years old, Minuette had spent the week of her mother’s wedding at Framlingham, lost and unhappy and missing Elizabeth fiercely. She had been assigned a nursemaid, a girl who had taken to her job less than enthusiastically and from whom Minuette had slipped away more than once to wander around the castle on her own. Now that she had returned twelve years later, Minuette found herself ignoring Carrie’s advice not to venture out alone and began retracing her steps—and her memories—through the maze of the castle.

Today, a week after her arrival, Minuette returned to the northeast tower, a place she had last been on the day before her mother’s wedding. As it had been then, it was still room after empty room, some furnished with odds and ends but many more with only dust and the occasional mouse nest. Minuette remembered tracing her name several times in the grime of a low windowsill before deciding to go in search of her mother, who had promised that her daughter might sit with her while she finished the embroidery on Minuette’s dress for the wedding.

She followed the trail of memory along the echoing corridor to where, all those years ago, a sound had caught her attention—an almost laugh that turned into a sigh. Curiosity had led her then to the half-open door ahead of her. She would never dream of walking into a royal room uninvited, but she had no such inhibitions in this house. Standing in the gap where the door had been left ajar, she looked in.

Her mother stood with her back against the far wall, eyes closed and skirts in an untidy heap. Her arms were locked around the neck of the man before her. Frozen in fascination and disgust, Minuette watched until the man groaned and buried his head against her mother’s chest.

The moment her mother opened her eyes she let out a little cry, and the man pulled away from her and turned around. Minuette stared at her almost stepfather, waiting for a roar of words or even a slap. But when he moved, it was only to adjust his clothing and, surprisingly, he laughed.

“How long before some man has you against a wall, sweetheart?”

Minuette had run away then, back to her own quiet corner of the nursery, and when her mother tried to talk to her later she had kept her face still and nodded submissively that yes, she understood that some things were between grown-ups. She had attended the wedding the next day and gone gladly back to Hatfield afterward, burying the memory so deep she had forgotten it until now.

As Minuette stood in that still-empty room all these years later, she knew it wasn’t just Framlingham that had stirred up the memory. It had been coming at her for months, pricked into life by the nasty words of Alyce de Clare’s sister:
It was the younger Howard she’d always had her eye on
. And Queen Anne’s ramblings:
Go to your Henry. I know what it is to love a dangerous man
. And Hever, where a man had indeed had her up against a wall and she had not stopped him.

Minuette walked out of the empty room, not sure if her melancholy was caused by the fact that her mother was dead and thus could never explain her complexities to Minuette or if it was her own complicated emotions that were haunting her.

That uncertainty continued to stalk her over the next week, alternating only with her violent wish to be elsewhere. She did not like Framlingham, she did not like spying on Lady Mary, and she most definitely did not like being in the same place as Giles and Eleanor Howard. At least Eleanor had not brought her daughter along. That would have been one indignity too many for Minuette to bear. But still, every waking hour was tense and unhappy and every sleeping hour filled with fragmented dreams. She did not think she had truly rested at all since leaving Hatfield.

The only saving grace were the letters. Elizabeth wrote daily, and today she had forwarded five letters that Dominic had sent from France. His letters were like him: practical, steady, a rock of sense in the waves of turmoil. She wished she could ask him what to do—about Giles and Eleanor, about her mother’s mysterious heart, about Mary’s intentions—but the last thing she wanted him to know was where she was. He would be angry if he knew—probably with her for letting herself be manipulated into such a situation.

As Minuette tried to compose a letter to Dominic one afternoon, Carrie asked abruptly, “Should you be doing something that you are afraid to tell Lord Exeter about?”

Not entirely truthfully, Minuette said, “I am not afraid of Lord Exeter. I am doing what I have been asked to do, and there is nothing wrong in that.”

“There is something wrong in it,” Carrie said. “And if you will not see it, then I will see it for you.”

As Carrie did not know the whole of why they were there, Minuette was curious. “What do you think is wrong?” she asked.

With a startling fierceness, Carrie said, “You do not belong at Framlingham, nor anywhere near the Howards. Why do you think your mother wouldn’t have you with her when she married Lord Stephen? She wanted you kept safe, and there’s no safety in this nest of vipers.”

“Carrie—”

“She hated the old duke and she hated Framlingham. This is where she died, and heaven knows I would never have come back here but for you.”

Minuette let Carrie’s breathing even out and her high colour fade to normal before she asked, “And Lord Stephen? Did my mother hate her husband as well?”

“No,” Carrie said grudgingly. “But that doesn’t mean she was comfortable with him. Whatever she felt, it wasn’t simple.”

A woman’s voice drifted from the open doorway. “Dear, dear, such venom. If I were you, Mistress Wyatt, I would slap your maid for such words.”

“You are not me,” Minuette said coolly, dismissing Carrie with a nod. When they were alone, she asked Eleanor, “What do you want?”

Eleanor perched on the edge of the table and plucked up one of Dominic’s letters. “ ‘William is working hard,’ ” she read, “ ‘which both surprises and pleases me. I am pressing for a quick finish, for I desperately miss England. No later than mid-November, we are promised. I send my good wishes always … Dominic.’ ”

Minuette concentrated on keeping her temper, for there was no William here to back her. Eleanor seemed a great favorite of the Duke of Norfolk, and Minuette was a guest in his home—a guest whose mission was to determine if he was about to commit treason.

“William has not written you?” Eleanor asked, a little too casually.

“I did not expect him to,” Minuette replied.
I will miss you
, he’d said. She shoved that memory away.

“Really? I thought the two of you were such … friends.” She stood up with that annoying feline assuredness and said, “He has written to me.”

Not for anything in the world would Minuette ask what William had written, but she felt a strong flash of jealousy. After Hever, added to their years of friendship … 
It doesn’t matter
, she told herself.
It’s not as though I want William to be in love with me
.

She stood as well, snatched back the letter that Eleanor still held, and said, “I am expected by the Lady Mary. You will excuse me.”

“Of course.” But Eleanor didn’t move. “Have you had any word from Jonathan recently?”

Minuette had to calculate quickly in her mind—was it likely that Jonathan would have told Eleanor about her refusal? Surely not. He was kind but not stupid. This was nothing more than Eleanor fishing for information.

“I have not heard from Jonathan,” she said. “I understood that he is to stay in Lord Exeter’s service until the treaty is done.”

“Did Lord Exeter tell you that?”

If Eleanor wouldn’t leave, then Minuette would. She walked to the open door without bothering to answer, but Eleanor called after her. “Do you not wish to know why William wrote to me?”

Not if it were my last wish on earth
, Minuette thought. She had just entered the corridor when Eleanor added, “He sent his congratulations. I am once more with child.”

To the end of her days, she would count it to her credit that she did not react outwardly. She did not turn or exclaim or falter in her escape. But neither did she come to her surroundings until she was outdoors, in the massive enclosed courtyard. She had to stop to draw breath, to blink furiously up at the sky, to will herself not to cry.
It’s nothing to do with me
, she thought.
It doesn’t matter
. Who could even say that this child was William’s? Eleanor had been married more than a year now, after all.

The tightness of her body eased. And just in time, for Lady Mary was walking in her direction. As she approached Minuette, she waved off the two ladies who attended her. “Will you walk with me?” she asked.

“Yes, my lady,” Minuette said, falling into step with her. Mary wore a cloak over her dark blue dress, and Minuette realized she was cold, having dashed outside without any thought to the October temperatures. But “wait while I fetch a cloak” was not something one said to royalty, not even dispossessed royalty. Her light wool kirtle would have to suffice.

She waited, as one did, for Mary to launch a topic. The French treaty again, worrying away at William’s matrimonial options, continued probing for cracks in the king’s council …

“Are you a true Catholic, Mistress Wyatt?”

“I beg your pardon, my lady?”

Mary turned her handsome, severe face to her. “I have not seen you at service above three times since you came to Framlingham. As you appear in all other aspects to be well, I must wonder if you are, in your heart, a believer.”

How could she possibly answer? Those words meant something different depending on who asked them. From Mary, they meant
Do you believe in the supremacy of the Pope? Do you believe my father was wrong in claiming that supremacy? Do you believe that those who disagree are heretics?