The Boleyn King (9 page)

“Who did write them?”

“I don’t know, but whoever it was is no friend of yours.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because the pages were ciphered, and I broke the cipher.”

Dominic passed the translations to William, who in turn passed each one as he read it to Elizabeth and then Minuette. There was silence in their little corner until the last one had been read and given back to Dominic.

“A spy,” Elizabeth said flatly. “For whom?”

William said, “Does it matter? I appreciate your concern, Dom, but this hardly seems worth skulking in private gardens over. Alyce was asked to report on my mother’s reading habits, on those she corresponded with, on her religious devotions. It’s petty and intrusive, and if the woman were alive, I would take pleasure in dismissing her from court in the most public manner possible. But she’s dead—and no matter what you’re thinking, I don’t believe she was killed over something so petty.”

“Spying on your mother is petty?”

“You know as well as I do that my mother is not well liked. There are many with long memories who like to prick her, but what more can they do? She is the widow of one king and the mother of a second. She cannot be touched.”

Dominic sighed, and Elizabeth said sharply, “There’s something else. What have you not told us?”

From inside his doublet, Dominic pulled out another paper and, without a word of explanation, handed it to William.

The broadside hit like a sword blow. William knew about the attacks on his mother before his birth, but he had never seen the evidence with his own eyes. Fury rose like bile in his throat at the vicious words and the caricature of a naked Anne calling upon Satan to help her seduce Henry. He almost missed the words freshly scrawled across the bottom, but when he read them his chest burnt with the venom of the phrase.

Elizabeth took the broadside from him, her face paling when she read it. William wanted to pull it away before Minuette saw it, but he knew that would only make her more determined. He looked away, not wanting to see his revulsion mirrored in her eyes.

“I found it on Alyce de Clare’s body last night,” Dominic said. “Hidden away in her bodice. I suspect … The last ciphered letter, it commanded her to ‘plant this to be widely seen.’ I think the writer must have meant this.” He waved his hand at the paper Minuette held gingerly away from her.

“So no longer just reporting,” Elizabeth mused, “but acting. Alyce was about to become more than merely a pawn.”

“I knew she was in trouble,” said Minuette numbly. “I thought it was only because of the child. But this … Alyce would never have agreed to this. She may have supplied information, but planting this in public? She would not have done that. She respected Queen Anne too much.”

“Perhaps that was why she wished to speak to you, Will,” Dominic said. “She knew she was in trouble and wanted to warn you. Only she died before she could.”

Red tinged the edges of William’s vision. “Someone wants my throne,” he spat. “That’s what this is, right? Raise old questions about my parents’ marriage and my legitimacy so as to get rid of me?” A bolt of anger shot through his control. “Am I king or am I not king?” He slammed his left palm against the wooden support of the arbor. “Is this another Aylmer?” he ground out through his tight throat.

Minuette shot to her feet and pulled him around to look at her. “No,” she said decisively. “This is not at all like Aylmer.”

“And why is that?” he asked. “Because you say so?”

Elizabeth’s voice held both irritation and affection. “Because she believes so. And because Minuette is assured that whatever she believes must be true. Rather like you, Will.”

“This is not at all like Aylmer,” Minuette repeated, to Elizabeth this time. “He used his friendship to betray from within. Will learnt his lesson then—do not trust so easily. Those he trusts today are fewer, but absolute in their loyalty.”

“Absolute loyalty,” William murmured. “Is there such a thing?”

Minuette faced him. “We are absolute in our loyalty. Do you not remember what I said to you six years ago?”

Of course he remembered. He remembered it all, not just Aylmer’s betrayal and death, but the aftermath. He remembered hiding away with Minuette. In this very arbor, actually.

They had been meant to be studying Greek, but with Aylmer arrested there was no tutor expecting them. So William had commanded his guards to allow them in the garden and not to stand too near. They had allowed the first part, but there were still two guards near enough to snatch him if danger threatened.

“What is the good of being king if even my guards won’t listen to me?” William complained.

“Everyone is worried about your safety these days.”

“What is there to worry about? Aylmer is dead. This very morning.”

Minuette’s face did not change; she continued looking at him without flinching as William went on ruthlessly, “The others behind the plot were beheaded, you know. Because they were important, or at least related to those who are. But Aylmer …” He swallowed hard. “First they hung him from a gibbet. Carefully, you understand. They didn’t want to break his neck, for the rest is no fun if he’s dead. Then they laid him on a table and ripped into his stomach with hooks. He could feel every pull and thrust of it until his entrails were spilling out. Only then did they cut off his head. You must have heard the Tower bell toll—it was just this morning.”

When his voice would no longer hold, William looked down and kicked at the smooth, raked gravel of the path. He knew he should not have told all that to a girl, but whom else could he tell? His sister cut him off every time Aylmer’s name came up, and Dominic … well, William did not want Dominic to know how much this execution bothered him.

Minuette, though, always knew what to say. “It hurts because it was someone you trusted. You thought Aylmer was your friend.”

“Kings don’t have friends.” William flung out the challenge, daring her to disagree.

But he should have known he could not daunt Minuette. She laid her hands on either side of his face and drew his forehead down to kiss it. Though they were of an age, the gesture made her seem much older.

“I am your friend,” she had said simply. “I love you. Not because you’re king, but because you are Will.”

William had never forgotten that. Tonight, both so much older, he could see the same unwavering friendship in Minuette’s eyes. “Because I am Will,” he whispered to her.

Dominic interrupted, sounding slightly harried. “Protestations of loyalty and friendship are all well and good,” he said. “But what do we do next? We must tell Rochford.”

“Must we?” Elizabeth, usually so certain, actually sounded as though she wanted an answer.

Dominic rounded on her. “Oh, no,” he said. “Not you as well. One rebellious Tudor is quite enough to deal with.”

“How can I possibly be rebellious?” William asked. “I am king. I am also a loving son. The more people who see this, the greater the chance my mother will hear of it.”

“Lord Rochford would hardly tell his sister—”

“But he might tell someone who would. Besides, who can guess exactly how my uncle’s mind works? For all we know, he would find some perverse way to twist this to his own advantage. No,” William said, certainty growing. “This is ours to deal with. The four of us.”

“How?” Elizabeth asked, but William knew from her tone that she agreed. For all her scholarly gravity, his sister also liked to have her own way.

“By doing what we each do best,” said Minuette. “Elizabeth with her correspondence and knowledge of every political faction in England; William with his ability to go anywhere and ask anything he wishes and expect an answer; Dominic with his new post in Lord Rochford’s employ and his talent to make anyone nervous enough to babble simply by staring at them.”

“And what do you do best?” William teased.

“Minuette is the foil,” Elizabeth said, sounding as though she were quoting. “The lighthearted, merrymaking girl who sees far more than most give her credit for.”

Minuette laughed. “So I do. And I think there is no secret that the four of us cannot discover.”

Dominic alone looked reluctant, but William knew him well enough to see that it was partly feigned. Even he had the light of adventure in his eyes. “I will agree, with the condition that Rochford be told at once if any of the secrets we discover are immediately dangerous to William or the realm.”

“Secrets?” Minuette asked. “You think there is more than one?”

William spoke for Dominic, who met his eyes with a shared memory—a motto, of sorts, that his father had imparted to both boys often before his death. “There’s always another secret.”

CHAPTER FIVE

WILLIAM HEARD HIS mother’s voice when he was still well down the corridor from her rooms at Richmond. The court had traveled upriver the first week of July to this palace, which his grandfather had built fifty years ago. It was less than ten miles west of London and considerably more comfortable in the summer months, though that didn’t seem to have calmed his mother. The court never stayed in any one palace for long. After a month or two, the refuse of a thousand people required moving someplace new while the last place was cleaned. With the French visit looming in September, William expected they would continue to move eastward by small degrees over the next two months until they reached Dover and the sea.

His mother was shouting quite loudly. He nearly turned around when the furious shouts were punctuated by the crash of things being thrown hard against walls, but continued on with a sense of sacrifice. He had always been able to soothe her rages, and from the sound of things that skill would be appreciated today.

What had set her off this time? he wondered as he strode into the presence chamber, where most of her women were safely out of reach of the crashes that could be heard through the inner door. A bow that was slow in coming, an expression that she interpreted as disdain, a letter that did not praise her as effusively as she’d hoped … William knew all about his mother’s vanity. But he also knew her history and how hard it was for a woman as intelligent and opinionated as she was to always be second-guessed by her past. She had one of the best minds in the kingdom, but despite a long precedent of dowager queens advising their young sons, Anne had not been allowed any official role in the regency. Even the fact that her brother was regent didn’t erase the humiliation of being shut out of state affairs.

Whistling softly, William stepped into the privy chamber and surveyed the pieces of what looked to have been a matched set of pottery vases scattered around the fireplace. His mother stopped in midpace, skirts swirling around her, and he said, “Whose head shall I have off this time, Mother?”

She didn’t lose an ounce of fierceness; if anything, her face darkened. “Is it true?” she demanded.

“Is what true?”

“That you are taking your whore to France with you for the treaty signing.”

“I … what?” He didn’t know which surprised him more—that she was angry with him or that she already knew he was sleeping with Eleanor.

“The Percy slut. How could you be so stupid, William? You cannot take her to Calais without raising old stories. You know the associations that will arise.”

Of course he knew the associations. Calais was where his mother had finally succumbed wholly and where Elizabeth had been conceived, months before his parents’ secret marriage. He knew it, but that didn’t mean he wanted to think about it—especially not with his mother looking at him like that. Damn it—why couldn’t his mother be more conventional?

“I have no intention of taking Eleanor to Calais.”

That appeased his mother not at all. “She should not be at court. I would never allow a single woman in my household to conduct herself in such a way.”

“What about Alyce de Clare?” he said, and was instantly sorry. It had been six weeks since her death and they still didn’t know much at all. And having to keep his mother from finding out that Alyce had been spying on her had made the investigation even harder.

Before his mother could follow him onto that tricky ground, William added, “And in any case, Eleanor Percy is not in your household. She is in Lady Rochford’s.”

Her sniff was supremely contemptuous. “Jane Parker only has a household at court because I permit it. One word to George and he would divorce her like that.” She snapped her fingers.

William’s anger, always slower to be roused than his mother’s, began bubbling. “No, he would not divorce her at your command.”

“He most certainly—”

“It is my command that matters, not yours.”

That finally broke her tantrum. She was no less angry, but her mind was working once again. “I am your mother,” she said, as though testing the effect of it on him.

“And your brother is my regent. For yet a little while. But that time is coming to an end. He would do well to remember that.”

He would have been shocked by her slow, satisfied smile if he were not long accustomed to her various sudden moods. “And what would I do well to remember?”

Taking hold of her hands, he leaned in and kissed her cheek. “You would do well to remember that I am as you and my father made me. You can trust me, Mother.”

Which was true. He had never been going to do anything so stupid as take Eleanor to Calais. Then again, he hadn’t meant to take her to bed before he’d found her a husband, but Eleanor was … persuasive. He had thought of taking her as far as Dover, but now he knew he wouldn’t. Just because he had the right to choose didn’t mean he wanted to be yelled at by his mother. He would leave Eleanor behind and spend the next few weeks deciding whom she should marry.