The Boleyn King (39 page)

8 February 1547
“YOU WILL NOT tell me what I can and cannot do with my own son!”

If there was one thing to which George Boleyn was accustomed, it was his sister’s temper. Anne had never been known for her retiring personality, which was just as well or she would never have caught Henry’s eye.

And if she had not become the wife of one king and the mother of the next, George would still be a minor gentleman of enormous ambition and small fortune. That meant that he did not match Anne’s anger. “I am not telling you, the council is. The council that Henry’s will put in place.”

“My son is king now.”

“In name and spiritual right, yes. But he is ten years old, Anne. In practice, it is the regency council that will rule England until William is of age.”

A regency council that had pointedly excluded Anne. There had been child kings before in England, and often their mothers had been central to the organization surrounding them. But Henry, for all his flaws, had always had very good political instincts and he had known that even after all this time passions ran high against his wife. Anne could not be allowed anywhere near her son except in the most limited maternal capacity.

George Boleyn was another matter. He was not just a member of the regency council—he was Lord Protector of England until his nephew turned eighteen or until the other lords could throw him out. He would not give them any opportunity to do so.

“You are mother of the king of England,” he said in a softer voice, gentling Anne into listening. “William loves you and that will never change. I know that you would not jeopardize his position for misplaced pride. You would not risk the Catholics combining against him.”

“They would not dare!” But her protest was half-hearted. They would dare all too well, for in their eyes Henry had left only one legitimate child—the Lady Mary who was as stubborn and righteous as her mother before her. Henry’s son or not, religion made William’s position as a boy king precarious.

George took his sister’s hands in his. “We have won, Anne. We have broken the chains of Catholic tyranny and opened the way to a new world. William is the promise of all we hoped and dreamed. I will not let him fail.”

As well as a formidable temper, Anne had a formidable mind and she knew he was right. That didn’t stop her saying caustically, “And yet you will allow Norfolk a seat on the council despite his attainder. If Henry had lived just one day longer, the Duke of Norfolk would be dead.”

“But Henry didn’t live one day longer and to further punish the duke now would only enrage the Catholics. Don’t worry about him—I prefer my enemies close enough to control. Besides, he is William’s great-uncle. Pride will stay his hand for now.”

Anne shook herself free of George and said fiercely, “You had better be right. And you had better be my voice on that council. William is my son, no one else’s. Don’t you forget it.”

“I won’t.”

But even as George kissed his sister on the forehead, he thought
But if William is to be what we want, the world will need to think of him only as Henry’s son. It is a king I am creating now, whatever the cost
.

CHAPTER ONE

Greenwich Palace
21 December 1554

I have but a few minutes before Carrie must dress me for tonight’s festivities. Christmas is nearly here, but tonight’s celebration is rather more pagan. There is to be an eclipse of the moon, and coming as it does on the winter solstice when darkness claims its longest reign, even the most devout are unsettled
.

So why not dance and drink and throw our merriment into the dark as a challenge?

Also, there is a visitor at court. His name is John Dee and he is reputed one of the finest minds of the age. He has come to court in Northumberland’s company and William has commanded him to give a private reading of our stars. Only the four of us—for it would not do to let our secrets, past or future, slip into wider circulation
.

Despite the cold, every courtyard at Greenwich was filled and more. No one wanted to miss the rare and possibly apocalyptic sight of the moon vanishing into blackness before their eyes. Minuette had barely room to shiver beneath her fur-lined cloak, so closely were people packed on this terrace overlooking the Thames.

She had managed to keep away from the royal party; below her she saw moonlight glinting off Elizabeth’s red-gold hair. William stood near his sister, surrounded as always by men and women. While everyone else’s eyes turned to the heavens, Minuette’s sought for a familiar figure in what little light the torches threw. She rather hoped she didn’t find Dominic standing near William.

A whisper ran collectively through the crowd, transmitting itself more to Minuette’s body than her ear. She looked up and saw the edge of the moon’s circle eaten away. Despite herself, she felt her pulse quicken and wondered what terrible things this might portend.

More terrible than a star’s violent fall?
The voice in her head was Dominic’s, an echo of his impatient skepticism.

Minuette fingered the pendant encircling her neck, tracing the shape of the filigreed star, and smiled to herself.
This night is not a portent of doom
, she assured herself,
but a sign of great wonder. And that I can believe
.

She watched the blackness bite away at the moon until it was half-covered and still moving relentlessly onward. There were murmurs around her, some nervous laughter, and the movement of all crowds that made her focus on balance as they swayed around her.

A hand came from behind, anchoring her waist. And then, after much too long, another hand until she was encircled. Minuette made herself keep her eyes open, made herself stand straight and not lean back into the comforting weight behind her. Or perhaps comforting was not the right word—for her heart was erratic and her breath skipped.

Although she could count on two hands the times Dominic had touched her since the night of her betrothal (eight), her body knew him instantly, as though it had been waiting for this part of her all her life.

Only in the dark did he dare to touch her, for only in the dark could they remain unseen. No one must know, not yet. Not a single whisper must cross the court while William threw himself at Minuette’s feet, offering his hand, his throne, and his country to her. It would take time for his infatuation to die and until it did, no one must suspect either William’s passion or Dominic’s love.

So Minuette laughed and played and worked and flirted as though everything were normal—as though her William had not lost his mind and thought himself in love with her—as though her own heart was not fluttering madly inside a cage, wanting only to wing itself to Dominic—as though she had no secrets and everything was as it had been before. She saw Dominic every day and behaved toward him the same as always: playful and young and oh-so-slightly resentful of his lectures.

And then, like tonight, he would touch her, and she thought she might weep with wanting to turn into him and cling.

Instead, she kept her eyes open and directed at the sky as the moon’s last sliver gave up its fight and slid into nothing.

Gasps went up from the crowd and in that covering moment of intense focus elsewhere, Minuette felt Dominic’s mouth alight softly just below her left ear and linger. She did close her eyes then, and swayed back slightly, and for a moment his arms tightened around her waist and they both forgot where they were and who and in a moment she would turn and their lips would meet and she might die if she waited any longer—

A great cheer exploded around and below them and Minuette’s eyes flew open to see the moon pulling itself away from the darkness. By the tightness of Dominic’s grip on her waist, she knew his frustration. But he was—always had been—the disciplined one.

Within seconds, she was standing alone once more, only warm cheeks and quick breathing to betray what no one had seen.

What no one must ever see.

Greenwich Palace had always been a dwelling of pleasure and luxury, of laughter and flirtation, of light and merriment. Situated on the Thames five miles east of London, close enough to the city for easy access yet far enough to be well out of the crowds and squalor and illness. The last two King Henry’s had expanded the complex, Elizabeth’s grandfather facing it in red brick and her father adding a banqueting hall and enormous tiltyard. Her father had been born here, as had Elizabeth herself. A beautiful palace for a beautiful night.

Even on this shortest night of the year, the palace blazed with candlelight and what heat the fires and braziers failed to provide was made up for by the great press of bodies. Men and women dressed in their finest, drinking and dancing and circling around their king as though he were the center of their world.

But what happens to that world
, Elizabeth wondered,
when the center fails to hold?

She ignored the chatter of voices directed at her and watched her younger brother, worried and angry with herself for worrying. When William had returned from France last month, he’d poured out to his sister his ardent love for Minuette along with his plans to marry her, and ever since Elizabeth had carried a thread of anxiety that made itself felt at the most inconvenient times.
It’s not as though he’s being open
, she told herself firmly.
He’s behaving precisely as a young king of eighteen should behave
. Dressed in crimson and gold, he flirted with every female in sight (and even a man or two), he drank (but not so heavily as to lose control of his tongue), and he carried on several layers of conversation with the French ambassador at once.

And he had not been nearer to Minuette than ten feet all evening.

Elizabeth, being determinedly talked at by a persistent young cleric, swung her gaze to where her chief lady-in-waiting held court of her own, surrounded by a gaggle of men, young and old, who were clearly besotted by her honey-light hair and her graceful height and the even more appealing knowledge that she was an orphan in the care and keeping of the royal court. With the influence she held in her relationships to Elizabeth and William, Minuette would have drawn an equal crowd even if she had been pockmarked and fat. But the men would not then have been eyeing her with quite the same expression in their eyes.

A voice, very near and very familiar, broke her distraction. “How long,” Robert Dudley said conversationally as he cut out the disappointed and ignored cleric, “is your brother going to continue baiting the French ambassador? William has the treaty he wanted—why make the poor man suffer?”

“Because he can,” Elizabeth said tartly. “And you do the same—only with less care. Everyone knows your father continues to grumble about peace with France. How hard it is for him to swallow, a pact with the devil Catholics.”

He waited a moment to answer. “My father has moved on to other concerns. He’s not one to fight a losing battle.”

“As fine a commentary on the Dudleys as I’ve ever heard.”

Robert raised his eyebrows and lowered his voice that half step that made Elizabeth’s blood warm. “We choose our battles with care—political, religious … personal.”

His voice returned to its normal tones and he changed the subject deftly. “Are you looking forward to tonight’s audience? I imagine Dr. Dee has found it difficult to read your stars, complex as you are.”

She gave him a withering look. “I am exceedingly skeptical, seeing as this Dr. Dee comes from your father’s household. No doubt you have whispered to him all the things you most want him to say of me.”

“You wound my integrity,” Robert said, hand on heart. But his voice was serious when he went on. “John Dee is not the sort of man to be persuaded by anything but his own intellect and the truth of what he sees in the heavens. I promise you, Elizabeth, whatever he tells you tonight will be as near as you will get to hearing God’s own words. I only wish I could be there.”

An hour later, as Elizabeth and Minuette slipped discreetly away from the festivities, she wished Robert were with her as well. She understood the need for privacy—anything that approached foretelling a royal’s future was dangerous and though William had commanded the audience that didn’t mean he wanted everyone at court to hear about it—but it was beginning to wear on her being just the four of them all the time. “The Holy Quartet” Robert called them, and not entirely in jest. And now that William took every opportunity of quartet-privacy to fawn over Minuette, Elizabeth’s patience grew thinner with each day.

They wound through increasingly depopulated corridors until they came to one only partially lit by two smoking torches, its brick walls chilly and bare. There was a single guard wearing the royal badge at a discreet distance from the closed door behind which waited their guest, not near enough to overhear but only to keep the curious away.

Elizabeth opened the door to the east room herself, breath quickening with the rare feeling of unexpectedness. She was not at all certain what was going to happen in the next hour, and she found the sensation unexpectedly delightful.

The room showed signs of a hasty attempt at comfort, from the deep fireplace blazing with light and warmth to the four cushioned chairs ranged along one side of a waxed wood table. Across the table was a single high-backed wooden chair; the man in it rose to his feet and bowed. “Dr. Dee,” Elizabeth said. “Welcome to court.”