Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (43 page)

“I pray it is not so.”

“Do you pray as Catholic or Protestant, since your family made great show of going to mass when my sister was queen?” Elizabeth had walked that treacherous rope with more subtlety, claiming that she wished to learn Catholic ways, yet managing to avoid ever attending the mass. I had to admire her for her craftiness.

The minstrel returned, his lute restrung, his oiled beard shining. Elizabeth’s attention shifted—she had found more pleasurable game to hunt.

“Do not let this sojourn of yours interfere with your duties, Lady Mary,” she said, motioning the musician to draw near. “I will not tolerate laxity on your part.”

“I should think you would be glad to be rid of me.”

“Of you? Yes. But I take pleasure in seeing one of my proud Grey cousins hold the basin that I spit in after I wash my teeth. Now, get out of my sight!”

I bowed, backing from the chamber, hating her as I had never hated her before.

As I crossed Whitehall’s courtyard, I crashed into a fortress of muscle and sinew. A black staff of office clattered to the ground. Pain throbbed in my skull, but a giant’s hands caught me, then steadied me with a gentle chuckle.

“Forgive a clumsy dolt, my lady. I nearly trampled you.” The voice was deeper than any I had ever heard.

“Do not concern yourself. I am used to being overlooked.” I used my forearm to nudge my headdress back into place. I had seen the owner of that remarkable voice at the gate at Whitehall at his post as sergeant porter, though we had only shared the vaguest acknowledgments there. Dismissing this encounter, I started on my way.

“Pause for a moment, I beg you,” he bade me.

I did as he asked. What business might he have with me? The sergeant porter was responsible for the security of the whole palace and, because of that, for the safety of the queen herself. Turning, I observed the man more carefully. I had always felt small, but he towered above me like some giant from legend. His face was unlike the aristocratic features of the courtiers, seeming hewn with a woodsman’s ax. Oaken and strong, he was like one of the Myrmidons lining the road to Bradgate.

“Are you not Lady Mary Grey?” he asked.

The power in his form made me strain to my full height. Pain bored through my back. My hunched shoulder pulled awkwardly, doubtless making me look absurd. I let my spine fall into its accustomed curve. I tried to preserve my dignity by infusing my voice with my mother’s haughtiness. I might be twisted in body, but I was royal and as such far better than he.

“I am Lady Mary. What is your name, sir?”

“Thomas Keyes, at your service.” He bowed. The shaggy fall of hair across his brow reminded me of the largest dog in the stables, the one boys threw things at when the animal could not reach them.

The strangeness of our sizes made me feel a kinship with this man. “You are as monstrous tall as I am small, Thomas Keyes. You cannot tell me people do not torment you.”

“I tower so far above them, I have to strain to catch what they say. I only listen to those I wish to hear.” He gave a wry smile as he retrieved his black staff. I did not want to find him charming. “I find myself anxious to listen to you.”

“You will get a crick in your neck leaning down so far.”

“It is a risk I am willing to take. I have been wishing to speak to you for some time, but you always elude me.”

This Thomas Keyes seemed sincere, but his interest in me made no sense. “I cannot imagine what you have to say. People speak to me as seldom as possible these days.”

“Perhaps they are afraid of you,” he said.

I laughed in surprise. “Afraid of me?”

“You go about with a most forbidding expression on your face. What’s more, they fear talking to you would incur the queen’s anger. That does not mean they feel no sympathy for your sister and Lord Hertford. Or for you.”

“The Greys of Suffolk do not need their pity.”

“That empathy will prove your most useful tool in freeing your sister. Even Queen Mary dared not execute one who held the people’s hearts. Elizabeth might never have survived, let alone taken the throne, were it not for those who felt sorry for her. Some people still marvel that Queen Mary did not name your sister her heir.”

He might have stabbed me with a halberd, his words lanced so deep. How many times had I raked over those last tortured days of Cousin Mary’s life in my mind? If I had not interfered, would Kat be queen, beyond Elizabeth’s touch? Was I responsible for this calamity that had befallen my sister, just as I had endangered Jane when I sent Cousin Mary the feather in warning?

“My lady, I did not mean to upset you. I only wish you to know that it grieved me to hear of your trouble and that there are others who feel the same. All will be well as soon as the priest who performed the marriage can be found. He must be, with all the effort Lord Hertford has spent.”

Edward Seymour still felt like a glass shard in my palm. I told myself it was because he had gotten Kat with child. Deep in my twisted back I knew better—I loathed him because Kat loved him more than me. “Lord Hertford can be no use in the Tower.”

“He has given his servant the task. Mr. Glynne is a friend of mine, and he is moving heaven and earth to find the clergyman. Lord Hertford is determined the queen will not be able to label the wee one a bastard for long.”

“The queen cannot find the word so objectionable, since she is a bastard herself.”

“It is dangerous to say so.” Keyes looked around, to reassure himself no passerby could overhear us. “You must be cautious and take heart, my lady. Let public opinion press the queen to let your sister and her husband go. News of the marriage scandal has swept across England—why, I admitted a merchant from Northumbria into Whitehall three days past, and he spoke of the lovers as if they were Guinevere and Lancelot. A woman should be married, he insisted. Katherine Hertford had shown herself a trueborn daughter of royalty, wedding an English nobleman—an honorable one, as serious-minded as his revered father. Would God show Her Majesty such good sense as to follow her example.”

Hope unfurled in my heart. “The traveler said that?”

“He is not the only one who thinks so. Be brave. Good will come of this yet.”

“Little good has ever come to us Greys by way of our Tudor cousins.”

“Babies have a way of softening even the hardest hearts. I know. My wife gave me four wee ones before she died—they are my four treasures, back on my farm in Kent. There will come a time when the queen will no longer be able to resist seeing your sister’s babe with her own eyes. Once she does … well. I have never met a woman who did not melt at the sight of new life.”

I tried to imagine Elizabeth becoming dewy-eyed over a babe, as Cousin Mary had been wont to do. “I do not think this queen has the heart of a woman, any more than I do.”

Keyes raised one bushy eyebrow. “I wager a fine blue ribbon that you are wrong.”

His teasing made me uncomfortable. Why was he being kind to me? It made no sense.

“You must come and talk to me again, if you will,” he said.

“Why? You wish to tell all my secrets to the queen?”

He looked so wounded, I could not doubt him. “No decent man would betray a confidence.”

“Men of court do so all the time.”

“A few, perhaps. More strive to be honorable, I think.”

I stared at him, seeing that he believed it. “Have you banged your head into so many lintels it has addled your brain?” He laughed, a booming, lovely sound. I smiled for the first time since the guards had taken Kat away. “Thomas Keyes, you think too well of the world.”

“Lady Mary, you think too ill of it. Hope is the only thing that makes life worth living.”

Did Thomas Keyes work some magic? Scrape a hole in the parched soil of my heart and plant a seed there? I only know I felt a greening inside me, tiny fragile tendrils reaching out of my darkness toward his light.

I tried to do as Thomas did, not listen to the whispers from the darkest reaches inside me. In bearing a son, Kat had already done what one king and five queens had failed to do, including the queen’s own mother and Elizabeth herself.

Would the babe soften the queen’s cold heart, as Thomas said? Or was the birth of little Edward, Lord Beauchamp, a crime Elizabeth Tudor could never forgive?

I
n all the years since Jane’s head fell on Tower Green, I had loathed entering the Tower of London’s gates. Now, knowing that Kat could not leave the fortress walls, that old horror turned new.

I followed the guard to a heavy door, heard the sharp yap of one of Kat’s beloved dogs, then the squall of a babe. It startled me. Why, I did not know, for had I not come to see my sister’s son? Yet as the turnkey unlocked her cell, opening the door to give me passage inside, it took all my will to step into the dimly lit room.

It smelled a trifle sour from the leavings of dogs and the babe’s soiled breechclouts, and I expected to see my beauty-loving sister fairly pining away. But Kat looked better than I could have dreamed.

She sat upon a threadbare cushion, one hand lifting her breast from her bodice. She barely noticed the flurry at her door, she was so intent on the babe pressed to her nipple.

The squalling stopped, and I heard greedy, sucking noises. Satisfied, Kat looked up to see who had come. She looked pale from lack of fresh air, but there was something powerful about her that heartened me.

“Mary! It is so good to see you! I was afraid you would never come.” She stopped, looked awkward. “Not because you were angry with me, but rather, I know this place has memories that still give you nightmares.”

“I brought food, some small comforts for you and the babe.”

“Your generosity has made such a difference these past weeks. I will send some of this bounty to Ned right away.” She looked so delighted, I could not take offense.

“I suppose it would be a sin to let my brother-in-law starve. I still blame him for getting you with child. It was a brainless thing to do.”

“You always were the slowest to forgive anyone who slighted Jane or me,” she said with a tenderness that made my throat ache. “I imagine you will not be able to stay angry at Ned once you meet your nephew. Come. Draw close.”

I concentrated on keeping my eyes stone dry. “I can see him well enough from here.”

Kat beckoned me. “You did not come all this way to peep at him from a distance.”

I did not tell her I had not come to look at Lord Beauchamp at all. It was Kat I was desperate to see. But I could never resist Kat when she was in this kind of mood—her voice musical and so warm, it drew me as a cheery blaze draws chilblained hands.

Reluctantly, I edged nearer. Did the babe see my movement? He turned his head toward me, the nipple popping out of his mouth. His wizened little face crumpled in a scowl so much like my lady mother’s, he surprised a laugh from me. At the sound he set up a howl loud enough to crack mortar.

“That’s a Seymour for you,” I said. “I suppose I affronted his dignity.”

“He is only hungry. Do you not think he looks a bit like Father?” Kat said, fastening the babe’s mouth to her breast once more. “I keep imagining how puffed up with pride he would have been, swaggering about, bragging to all his hunting friends. He would have set the master of the horse to training the boy’s first pony without delay.”

I could not help thinking Father would have been less amused if he had known Mother would marry his horse master.

“What does Hertford think of his son?” I asked, wishing to erase the grief that suddenly shadowed Kat’s face.

Her expression altered just as I hoped it would, and she smiled. “My husband says our Edward is almost as beautiful as I am. Or at least that is what George James told me.”

“Who is George James?”

“The guard who offered to show the babe to Ned the day after he was born. I cannot tell you what I felt when the door closed behind James and my son. I spent a hellish hour afraid I would never see little Edward again. But as you see, James returned my treasure to me.” She looked up at me, suddenly eager. “Would you like to hold him, Mary?”

“I do not think that would be a good idea.” I thrust my hands behind my back as if I feared she would force the infant upon me. “Babes cry when they look at me. I think my face scares them.” I changed the subject to distract her. “Kat, I met someone today—spoke with him, really. He is sergeant porter at Whitehall, so I have seen him many times before.”

“Thomas Keyes. He and Mr. Glynne are friends. During the months Ned and I were trying to steal away to be together after our marriage, Keyes was quite kind.”

“I like him less now than I did a moment ago. Even so, he told me something I must pass on to you. Even the queen dared not execute one who held the people’s hearts. There are many who feel sympathy for your cause and Ned’s. Keyes says that sympathy will put pressure on the queen to free you. I wish I was as sure.”

“The queen will release us in time, Mary. Have no fear. Great Uncle Henry was far more terrible than his bastard daughter could ever be, and he forgave our grandmother.”

I did not mention all those, like Thomas More, who suffered the ax instead of receiving the king’s forgiveness.

“Ned and I will be showing our little babe the roses and Hanworth come summer. I would stake my life on it.”

I edged nearer the small, mewling bundle in Kat’s arms. “Perhaps I will try to hold him, but you must rescue him at once if he does not like it.”

He did like it. He stared at me with solemn, slate-blue eyes. When next I visited, he grasped my finger. Come December, I brought silver bells to tie about his chubby ankles. He kicked, jingling in delight. Even the Spanish ambassador sent gifts of oranges and spice cakes, asking me to remember him to my sister.

By springtime I would have given my cunning nephew the heart from my chest should he have reached for it. But there was one trinket I would not part with: a sky-blue ribbon that had mysteriously turned up at my door, one end tied to a miniature golden key.

The day I found it, I marched up to the sergeant porter at his post, feeling more out of balance than I ever had in my life. “This is your doing!” I accused. “My sister is still imprisoned. You have not lost or won any wager.”