Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (3 page)

“Bow to the will of God?” Northumberland smiled. “It should not be difficult to convince His Majesty to resolve the situation as we wish—not with eternal damnation hanging over the boy’s head. That is what he will face if he allows his Catholic sister to succeed him on the throne and lead England back to the evils of popery—the worshipping of saints’ bones that are really pigs’ knuckles and indulgences for sale by greedy priests, any sin forgiven if enough money is paid to the church. Worse still, servitude to Rome and a foreign pope who cares little for the welfare of this island. No. We cannot allow a return to that slavery. As to your fear that Edward will thwart our plans before all is prepared, do not underestimate my resourcefulness, Suffolk. I have certain assurances from the woman I have hired to see to His Majesty’s comfort.”

I chewed my lip. Edward … His Majesty … they were speaking of my cousin, the king. I had barely formed the thought when my father gave a snort of disgust.

“Comfort? Last we spoke, you said Edward coughs up blood. There is no telling how soon he may die.”

“Careful!” Northumberland looked around the room. I held my breath, fearing he might see me with his demon powers. “It is treason to predict the death of a king.”

“It may be, but I have seen enough consumption to know when the end is near.” Father lifted a gilt ewer and poured two goblets of wine. Never had I seen my father perform such a lowly task for himself. Strange, not even Father’s most trusted servant was near. “As for treason,” Father said, offering a goblet to his guest, “there are many in this kingdom who would call the business we do tomorrow the work of traitors.”

What business? I frowned. Tomorrow there could be no business at all. The day would be spent in celebration of two weddings. Jane’s to Guilford Dudley, Northumberland’s youngest son, and Kat’s to the Earl of Pembroke’s lad. My chest ached whenever I thought of it. Two sisters lost in one day. Me, left behind.

My musings were drowned out by Northumberland. “Ignorant crofters might object to what we do, but many Englishmen would say we pull the realm back from the brink of hell. If the Catholics regain power, what do you think will happen to those who took the chalices from their churches and turned abbeys into country manors? Men like you and me, Suffolk? It is our duty to protect England’s simple people from their own ignorance. Your daughters will give us the power to see it done. First Jane and Katherine, then Mary.”

At the sound of my name, I closed my hands into fists. My nails scraped the rough back of the tapestry. I held my breath in terror.

“Leave Mary out of it,” Father said. “No nobleman will wed someone like her—even if she does carry the blood of the royal Tudors in her veins.”

“I think you underestimate the power of ambition. We will gamble with her in addition to the others.” Northumberland’s smile chilled me. “So the game begins. What is your stake to be, Suffolk?”

Father grasped his ivory dice, then cast them upon the table. “I wager three maids for a crown.”

Chapter Two

J
ANE
15
YEARS OLD
S
UFFOLK
H
OUSE
, L
ONDON
M
AY
24, 1553

perched on the edge of my stool as if the slightest sound could send me fleeing, my bed robe a ghostly pool on the rush-strewn floor.
There is nowhere on earth I can run to. No safe place to hide
. The words chased through my mind as I set the bright bead eyes of the poppet I was stitching. But no matter how many times I repeated the grim truth, it could not tamp down the panic that battered my self-control.

I drove my silver needle through the cloth, determined to finish the gift I had been working on through the sleepless nights that had hollowed bruised circles under my eyes.

The needle stuck my finger, but there was no one to hear my gasp of pain. It was my own choice, I reasoned. I had wanted to be alone. As long as I could remember, solitude had provided the sanctuary I loved best, walling my world apart from my parents’ with concentration they could not penetrate. Solitude was the one gift my nurse, Mrs. Ellen, could grant me on this terrible night of waiting. A few hours of peace before the madness tomorrow. Time to pluck up my courage for what was to come.

The marriage vows, God’s decree that Guilford Dudley should become my master, able to take away anything I treasured, command my every waking hour, force me into his bed whenever he wished to avail himself of my body. I shuddered.

Why had I been condemned to this fate? Once I had looked toward my wedding day as something far different. A hope that I might escape the prison of my parents’ anger.

Your life will not always be like this
, Bess of Hardwick, my mother’s favorite lady-in-waiting, had promised after a blow bruised my cheek.
Be brave, Jane. One day you will leave the duke and duchess’s care. Pray God will give you a kind husband. Imagine what it will be like to have someone who loves you and will tenderly care for you
.

My heart constricted with grief at Bess’s words. I did not have to imagine such love. I had experienced it the year I turned ten and became maid of honor to the widow of King Henry VIII. Catherine Parr had bestowed all the caresses that my mother had never given me. The lady scholar had wed three old men out of duty but had finally married for love—Sir Thomas Seymour, who filled her house at Chelsea with excitement.

I could still feel the dowager queen’s tender grasp as she pressed my palm to the swell where her babe grew. I closed my eyes, my mistress’s voice preserved in my memory like honey put away for winter.

“Can you feel my little knave kick, Jane?” Catherine Parr’s face shone. “I vow I love him already. But you look troubled, child. What is wrong?”

“What if the babe is a girl?” I dared asked. “Will you be disappointed?”

The dowager queen cradled my face between her palms, and for a moment Catherine Parr looked younger than her thirty-six years. “It is true my husband wants an heir, and it would bring me joy to give him one. But if I am blessed with a little maid half as bright and brave and loving as you, I will cherish her above all the boys in Christendom.”

I remembered the lump in my throat, the guilt heavy in the pit of my stomach. “I wish you were my mother,” I had confided.

The dowager queen enfolded my hand in hers. “I wish I were your mother too.”

A
sound outside the door startled me, and I dropped my sewing as the portal creaked open. Firelight shone on the familiar shape of my youngest sister. Tiny Mary’s crooked back made her appear even more painfully dwarfed beneath the weight of a head that might have graced a normal-sized eight-year-old girl were it not for the mismatched eyes. Shadows made the thick, clumsily shaped bones in her face seem even more pronounced. Mary’s reddish-brown hair reflected the firelight, and her uneven gait made her shadow jerk across the wall, her eyes as penetrating as some pagan spirit older than time.

“Mary, you gave me a fright!” I nudged the fallen poppet under my stool so the girl could not see it. “You should be in bed.”

Mary shifted, her rumpled cloak blotted out by some object I could not identify. “Did you not guess I would come? You always slipped into my chamber to comfort me when I had a wicked dream.”

“We are not dreaming, Mary.”

“That is why I had to make a plan.” Mary raised the object she grasped into the light, and I could discern a cloth bundle full of mysterious protrusions. “I even brought books, though it made the sack heavy to carry.”

As I tried to puzzle out my sister’s thoughts, Mary limped toward the trunks filled with bridal finery, everything I owned in readiness to be hauled away tomorrow.

“You cannot come with me once I am wed, Mary. Remember. I explained to you.”

“I am not going with you. You are to come with me. We are running away.”

The words echoed my own desperate instincts. Memories swirled in my mind from the day Mary was born. I could still taste my fear that my father might kill my broken sister the way he had drowned a crippled puppy that Kat’s favorite spaniel had whelped.

I remembered braving my mother’s lying-in chamber, scooping Mary from the cradle, the memory of the pup flailing against Father’s grasp pouring resolve into my limbs.

Father dares not hurt the baby
, I had told my mother.
Murder is a sin
.

My mother rose from the bed. I could see the wild light in her face, horror that she’d borne a babe so cursed.
How would you stop my lord if he did decide to destroy her? You, a girl just seven years old?

I would take Mary, run away
.

My mother’s laugh still haunted my nightmares.
Where would you go? You’re a princess of the blood. No one would dare take you in
.

That truth was even more certain now that I was a maid ripe to wed. There was no escape for me. Not tonight. Not ever. Shoving the memory back, I turned to my sister. “I cannot run away, Mary. It is impossible.”

“Of course it is possible. That is the only way you can escape from that terrible man. I heard such things, Jane, with Father and the devil talking.”

“The devil?” Gooseflesh prickled my nape.

“That man Northumberland.”

“Mary, you must not call him that!”

“Why not? You called him the devil. He
is
evil, like you say. I went to Father’s chamber to see for myself.”

“Never say you spied upon Father and His Grace of Northumberland!”

“I hid behind Saint Lucy and listened. Father said he would wager you and Kat and me and some people might call it treason. The king is dying, and the wicked man is going to make him do something bad.”

“Make who? Father?”

“No, the king. Cousin Edward has to do what Northumberland says, or else there’ll be eternal damnation. The devil can do that, Jane.”

I grasped Mary by the arms. Her bundle fell in a clatter. “You must never say such things again! No matter what happens. There are already dangerous rumors regarding the Dudleys. God knows what Northumberland might do if someone hears you.”

“But it is the truth.” Mary looked bewildered. “God wants me to tell the truth. Isn’t that what you always tell me?”

“Yes, but sometimes the truth is too dangerous to speak aloud.”

“That is why we have to run away!” Mary insisted. “We will go to Hanworth and find Edward Seymour. You promised to marry him before you even met that popinjay Guilford Dudley. Marry Edward instead.”

Shame jabbed me. I pictured Edward in the horrible days after Northumberland seized power and trumped up charges to have his father, the Duke of Somerset, executed. What must it have been like for Edward? He had been part of the most powerful family in England—son of the lord protector, cousin to the king. Now he was fatherless, an outcast.

I could imagine Edward’s humiliation when he received the message bearing my father’s seal: the heir of a traitor was no fit husband for a princess of the blood. Lady Jane Grey was to marry the son of the man who condemned Edward’s father. We were not a love match, Edward and me, to wound hearts, but that did not make the severing of the bond a painless one. I had not even written Edward a farewell or told him I had tried to fight my parents’ will and honor our betrothal. In the end, what did it matter? The deed was done.

Mary dug her elbow into my side to get my attention. “Why can we not go to Edward? You liked him.” It was true. He had been kind to his adoring sisters those few times our families had been together and soberly applied himself to his studies, passionate about the reforms to aid the simple people that had earned his father the hatred of the self-serving Dudleys. “Besides,” Mary insisted, “Edward’s father did not have evil eyes. I know that for certain.”

“How? You never met the Duke of Somerset.”

“No. But Hettie Appleyard called him the Good Duke. Her sister got a cloth dipped in his blood to help make cures and things.”

“He was beheaded, Mary.”

Mary made a face. “I know he was beheaded. The devil duke is the one who made them do the chopping.”

“Northumberland ordered the execution. A headsman swung the ax and our own lord father—” I spun away. Of course Henry Grey had allied himself with the powerful Dudleys. What boon had Northumberland dangled as a reward for such loyalty? I wish I knew. I drew a steadying breath, searching for a way to explain. “Mary, all the Seymours are in disgrace. Edward’s father died a traitor. His lands were forfeit to the crown, his titles stripped. Edward is a pauper with his mother and sisters to care for, one step away from being thrown in the Tower himself. He could not help me even if he wanted to.”

Something in my tone struck Mary. The child leaned against me. Never would she wrap her arms around anyone in an embrace. Like a wild creature, she did not trust affection, wary when I even drew close. We stayed there a long time, the only sound in the chamber emanating from the hearth—crackling apple wood being devoured by the flames.