Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (51 page)

My husband—that giant of a man, strong as any oak, kind and healing as spring rain—had died, his body broken by his long, harsh captivity.

I hugged myself tight, trying to remember what it had felt like in Thomas’s arms, trying to reconcile myself to the fact that those too-brief memories were all I would ever have of Thomas Keyes. I could not breathe, imagining a world without him in it.

Had he thought of me when he lay dying? Did he blame me for his ruin? Or had he thought of me with the love and longing forever lodged in my own heart?

I closed my eyes to hide my tears from Lord Cobham. Had I killed Thomas Keyes, surely as I had been party to my sisters’ deaths? Was I doomed to damn everyone I dared love?

The dowager duchess stared down at the letter that informed me of Thomas’s passing. I saw the glob of pressed red wax bearing the royal seal. “You are free, Mary,” the older woman said.

“Free?” I echoed. That word had little meaning without Thomas in the world. What use was freedom?

“Where will you go?” she asked. “To Bradgate? I imagine your stepfather would make room for you there.”

I hesitated, uncertain, thinking of that palace of my childhood where the Myrmidons stood guard and the brook once laughed between its banks at three wayward sisters. I had heard that the steward had pollarded the tops of the oaks leading up the drive, reminding all who saw them of my sister Jane’s execution: the beheading of an innocent. But Bradgate belonged to Adrian Stokes now, and to my sisters’ ghosts.

If I could not bear to go to Bradgate, where was I to retreat to? I nibbled at my bottom lip. I had no parents, no sisters, no husband. Kat’s sons were with the Seymours. They had no need of me. Besides, even if the Seymours welcomed me—which was not assured—my presence could only remind the queen of the link between our families and delay whatever mercy she might extend to the boys and Ned now that Kat was dead.

But two days later when a legacy arrived for me, I knew where I must go.

Father could not hold a pen to write you himself
,

Cecily Keyes had written,

but he wished to send you this
.

I clutched the bundle of linen that Thomas had sent me—the shirt his daughter had made for him that long ago Christmas day. I pressed the folds to my face, breathed in the lingering scent that was Thomas Keyes’s alone.

Father wanted you to know he loved you very much. He said you were a most formidable lady and wise and funny and kind
.

“I do not feel like I am any of those things, Thomas,” I whispered aloud.

It is very sad here without him
,

the girl finished.

Roger is angry all the time, and Tamkin cries when he thinks no one can hear him. Margaret will not speak at all anymore
.

I stared at the script, so carefully formed by what must be Cecily’s hand. I handed the note to the dowager duchess. “You asked where I was going to go now I am free,” I said as she read it. “I am going to the first real home I have ever had. I am going to Thomas’s farm, where I can mother his children.”

The dowager duchess stared at me, alarmed. “You cannot mean that! A farm hovel is not a home! You have had the best of homes all your life! Lived in palaces! This Keyes was a commoner, imprisoned all these years. His property must have fallen to ruin.”

“All the more reason for me to go, since his troubles came from wedding me.”

“He made his own choice. A foolhardy one, but his own nonetheless. This is a stupid course you are choosing—rushing off to a place you have never seen. What do you expect to do once you are in Kent? You know nothing about the workings of a farm.”

Her objections to my plans only strengthened my determination to carry them out. “Thomas must have had a steward of some kind tending the place in his absence. What he does not know, the children can teach me.”

“You are a stranger to those children. Besides, what do you know of mothering?”

It was true, I thought with a deep surge of fear. What did I know of mothering? I had wanted children as desperately as my cousin Mary had, one more yearning that we shared. But I had had little hope of realizing that dream until Thomas.

My own mother was such a hard woman. I remembered her raging at the three of us:
Why did God not grant me sons? Daughters are worth little enough. And you, Mary—you are good for nothing at all!

You were wrong, Mother
. That simple certainty poured through me like warm honey.
Wrong about all of us and especially about me
. I smiled.
I will go to Kent and love my husband’s children enough for both mother and father. I will tell them what a miracle Thomas Keyes was in my life
.

“Mary!” the dowager duchess snapped. “You did not answer me! What do you know about how to be a mother?”

I looked up at her, at all her ladies-in-waiting gaping at us from across the room. I did not care who else I might have to confront. “I know how to love. Thomas Keyes taught me that that is enough.”

K
ENT
J
UNE
1573

No one warned me that being a mother breaks your heart as well as heals it, but I welcomed the pain. It showed me I was alive when so many I loved lay dead, beyond feeling this strange brew of fear and hope and frustration and delight.

It was a slow business, winning the children’s trust—each one wary in their own way. They watched me, some with Thomas’s eyes, some with those of that other woman he once loved. I envy her—his bed, his babes, the exhausting days and worrisome nights when it seemed the crops might fail or the stone fences needed shoring up. What would it have been like to lie in Thomas’s strong arms, my head pillowed on his chest, listening to the rumble of his deep voice as he calmed my fears?

I wished I could calm his children’s anxiety half as well.
In time, sweetheart
, I could almost hear him say.
You cannot rush the heart
. Then Kat’s voice, her hand outstretched to a nest of motherless kittens:
Stay very still or you will scare them. Let the babes come to you
.

But as patient as I had been in three months at the farm, Thomas’s children and I seemed no closer to understanding one another. Cecily, at sixteen years old, had been grateful for the help with household chores too heavy for her thin shoulders, but she treated me as if I were still a guest. Roger insisted they could manage on their own, and stomped about the property, trying to fill Thomas’s boots. Tamkin was the nearest to accepting me, the gangly, sweet-faced boy so like his father. At times I could even coax him to smile. Margaret pained me more than all the rest. The girl seemed far younger than her eleven years, but she had never known a mother’s love and had reason to fear a world that had imprisoned her father. She spoke only to Tamkin, whispering in his ear.

But today I hoped to change that. After a springtime of hard work, they had earned a day to set their cares aside. I promised an outing like the ones Thomas described—taking a basket of food to a meadow by the stream where they could catch trout.

It would have been perfect, if only God had cooperated with my plan. Instead He sent rumbling thunder and rain thudding onto the cottage’s thatched roof.

“The whole day is ruined,” Roger complained as we gathered for breakfast, the boy looking so disappointed it surprised me. “We might as well go clean out the barn.”

Bracing myself, I climbed onto the high stool Thomas had had a carpenter make sometime during our courtship, so when I finally was able to go to the farm, I could sit comfortably at the table. His gesture touched me, as it always did. That simple kindness proved he had imagined a future for us.

As I settled into my place, I saw a bright splash of color beside my plate, a wreath of flowers woven by a child’s hand.

“How beautiful!” I gasped.

“Father said you were a princess,” Tamkin said. “A princess should have a crown. I wish it was the finest in all the world.”

“It is.” I thought of crowns of gold and the terrible price they had cost my sisters. “I will keep it forever.”

Tamkin beamed.

“Do not tell him you will keep it,” Roger said. “People do not keep silly things forever.”

“I keep things I treasure.”

“A flower crown?” Cecily asked, disbelieving. “It will get dry and crumble all away.”

“I will still keep it. I have a special place where I keep the things I love most.”

“May I see it?” Tamkin leaned forward, eager.

“Why would you want to?” Roger asked. “There is nothing any good to see anyway. Not if she’s putting things like this in it.” Roger flicked the crown, and a shower of petals drifted to the table.

An idea struck me. “Perhaps you could all decide for yourself if my little store has anything good in it. At least it will while away the time on this rainy day.”

I went to my room and retrieved the Thief’s Coffer. I brought it to the table.

Cecily gasped at the finely wrought surface. Roger brushed dust from its edge with a bit of a sneer, while Tamkin hovered over it as if I were about to reveal all the mysteries of the Orient. Even Margaret seemed interested, though as always, she hung back, biting her fingernails. With great ceremony I opened the coffer’s lid.

Roger eyed my hoard in contempt. “What is special about that tangle of stuff?”

“Everything in this box has a story connected to it. I have saved them up since I was younger than Margaret is now.”

“The stories cannot be very interesting,” Roger said as Tamkin reached out to touch the iridescent feather. “It is not as if you have knights in there or dragons.”

“There are stories of queens and kings and the Tower of London. Stories of love and of sorrow and of strength. There are stories about your father tucked in here too.”

“Will you tell us Father’s stories?” Cecily asked.

I felt in the depths of the coffer until I found the hard, smooth oval of Thomas’s true love mirror. “Your father gave me this when—”

I had barely begun when Roger snatched the feather from beneath Tamkin’s hand. “Tell about this. Where did this come from?”

I chose my words carefully, hoping to pique their interest. “It came from the garden in Bradgate Hall. I tried to trade it to Queen Mary for my sister Jane’s life.”

“A feather?” Roger scoffed. He and Tamkin began to scuffle.

“Me first! I was the one who had it first!”

“She did not finish telling about the mirror,” Cecily complained, trying to elbow her brothers out of her way. At that instant I noticed Margaret in the noisome crowd. She looked so small, so lost, forgotten, as I had so often been. Gently but firmly I brushed the other children away.

“Margaret, you are the only one not shoving. I will let you choose something from my box, and I will tell its story first.” For a moment I expected her to shake her head and back away, unwilling to be part of the game. But the little girl crept forward, eyes big.

“Lady Mary, you must not let Margaret go first!” Roger insisted. “She is littlest.”

“I was the youngest in my family, too,” I said, in the soft way Kat might have spoken to her sons. “It is hard to be the small one, is it not, Margaret?”

Margaret nodded and edged a little closer. I pretended not to notice, not wanting to startle her. “Choose something, and I will tell you a story,” I urged.

Margaret leaned against me as she carefully examined my treasures—the first time she had willingly drawn so close to me. After long minutes her attention fixed on a rag-stuffed figure from the chest. She did not speak—she only pointed to the poppet Jane had sewn for me on the eve of her wedding to Guilford Dudley.

“My sister Jane gave me this one day when I was very worried,” I began.

“Jane should have been the one who was worried. She got her head cut off,” Roger said. He gave a grunt of pain as Cecily kicked him in the leg.

“You must not say that! Father would not like it.”

Tamkin piped up. “Margaret worries all the time.”

“Only since Father died.” Cecily stroked her sister’s hair. I remembered times when Jane and Kat tried to do the same thing to me. Why had I not allowed myself the magic of that touch? They might be vexed with me, might wish to be left alone, but when I grew sad or scared of hurt, they had wanted to offer comfort.

“Perhaps Margaret is lonely. I know I was much of the time. Jennet helped me feel safe even when Jane was in a Tower cell and the world was falling apart, when rebel armies were at London’s gates and I could hear explosions in the distance. Jennet even carried my sister’s last wish to me when she was beyond my reach in a world where I could not follow.”

“What wish was that?” Cecily asked.

“That she wanted me to be happy,” I said, touching Jennet’s red-stitched smile.

Tamkin frowned. “I think Jennet is bored living in that coffer,” he said. “You are a lady and have no time to pay proper attention to her. Maybe Margaret could tend her.”

Even as he said the words, I felt a frisson of panic and wanted to thrust the poppet behind my back as I had when my mother threatened to take her away. But Margaret’s eyes grew wide.

Thomas’s daughter looked as if she did not believe I would give Jennet to her. I squeezed the familiar soft cloth body one last time, then gently laid Jennet in Margaret’s arms. The little girl cuddled it to her breast.

Tamkin was right, I knew in that instant. Jennet had looked abandoned, lifeless in the coffer. In Margaret’s arms she was precious again. What if my coffer did not preserve treasures, as I thought, but trapped them in a kind of shell, cut off from light and life?

Perhaps it was time to let go of the things I had hoarded like a dragon in one of the legends Kat loved. Not the objects, really—Kat’s wedding caul, Thomas’s mirror, all the little stolen pearls I snipped from ladies’ gowns—but the guilt I saved with them and the hurt that made me feel ugly and small.