Traitor's Kiss (8 page)

When my thoughts torment me, as they have done since childhood, I turn to music and dancing. My spirits rose at the thought of Christmastide.

We would go to Greenwich Palace, a small palace on the south bank of the Thames, built to receive visitors who sailed into Gravesend from Europe. This is where my father was born and died. This is where I was born. It is my favourite palace.

Then, too late, I remembered. It would be a sombre celebration: no music, no dancing, no gambling, no cockfights or bear baiting, for it would almost be the first anniversary of my father's death.

Well, I would wear white and silver again for Robert Dudley and we would dance together in our minds.

Chapter Seven

“You should not be living with a woman who has dishonoured our father's name,” Mary protested. Her deep voice carried to the painted ceiling. “You should have come to live with me when I invited you. Living with her will damage your reputation.”

“But Mary, Lady Catherine is one of your closest friends. Don't you miss her?”

She shook her head.

It
had
been a sombre Christmastide at Greenwich Palace. On this last and twelfth night, people were quarrelsome after so long together without their usual distractions. Robert Dudley, ill with a fever, had already gone home.

“She has betrayed our father's memory by marrying so soon after his death and without the King's permission,” Mary went on. “That is treason. And if she had been with child, whose baby would it have been?” She flopped like an overblown rose in her red damask dress and rubies. Together we made a true Tudor rose, the white against the red.

“But she isn't, so it doesn't matter,” I said. “Our little brother wants her to be happy.”

“But he does not want
me
to be happy,” she complained. “He forbids me so much – my rosary, my Mass, my crucifix.” She winced. Looking down, I saw that she clutched her crucifix: so encrusted with rubies that Christ's blood seemed to seep from her hand. “And he expects me to eat in the same room as
him
.” She looked towards Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, seated in the corner of the room. “Do you know why his cheeks are so plump for such an old man?”

“No. Does he eat too much?”

“The devil lives inside his mouth and speaks for him. He mocks God's mystery.”

“No, Mary, he makes God's words plain for all to understand,” I replied. “Thanks to him, people will soon be able to read the
Book of Common Prayer
in English instead of Latin… Well…those who can read.”

Now Mary frowned at me as she had frowned every day for the twelve days of Christmastide, even when we had exchanged gifts. She had grown sadder and stouter in the months since Edward's coronation. She must have been at a forbidden Mass, for her faded auburn hair gave off the smell of incense, like the man in Chelsea Woods.

“And
you
are different,” she said. “I liked you best before.”

“Before
what
?”

“Before you grew to look like…
her
…that woman who stole my father from my mother. I have been watching you this last week. When you laugh and flash your eyes, men – I mean, Robert Dudley…Thomas Seymour – come running. Do they come running for me? No.
Jamás.
I am too kind, too gentle. I—”

Anger feeds upon anger. Now I spoke with equal rage. “Do you think that men want to kiss a woman whose lips reek constantly of God's blood?” I cried. “Why don't you pray to God as we do? And – perhaps you've forgotten? – my mother has a name. She's called Anne. Anne Boleyn. She was the Queen of England and she gave birth to me
here
.”

Behind us, Thomas Seymour was chuckling.

“I know. I was there… A princess of seventeen, forced to watch my father's
puta
…” She broke off, crying, and ran from the Great Hall.

“In vino veritas
,” my stepfather said. “It seems that she's drunk on God's blood.”

Concerned, I followed Mary up the staircase into the gloom of the first floor, into my birthing room: the Chamber of the Wise Virgins. The pungent smell of camphor hit me. Dust dulled the curtains and the bright colours of the tapestries.

My father had wanted no wise virgin daughter, but a son.

I gave up the Pope for this,
he had said.

Mary had lifted a small candle from the wall bracket outside the door. Now it lit a chair, a table and an enormous bed, shrouded with purple silk – the bed where my mother had laboured for many hours. I had seen it many times, but the sight still tightened my throat.

My sister was clutching her stomach. She had not seen me behind her. “It was here that the
puta
spawned her daughter, Elizabeth –
infanta del diablo
– and I was forced to watch its birth and if I had the chance I would have snuffed out its life…” I had never heard such words spill from her lips and I hoped that I had misunderstood her Spanish. She paused to open a small velvet bag, to take out a piece of lace; a narrow bottle; a lock of hair.

Her relics. Her past.

“The whore sold her body to sit on the throne of
Inglaterra
; but she sat there for only three years…”

I stood spellbound. Yet my heart filled with pity for her, for her mother had died only months before mine. “Maria, Maria,” I called softly. Her voice trailed away. I went and embraced her gently, felt her bones under my fingers. “Hush, Mary. What's made you to speak like this tonight? You've never blamed me for…what my mother did.”

“The sight of
you
,” she spat.

She pulled the stopper from the bottle and held it to my nose. I recoiled. “It is poison,” she whispered, “like the one that turned my mother's heart black, that poor heart that loved your father too much.” She forced the bottle to my nostrils. It reeked of filthy water. “The witch whore sent it to her. I never saw my mother before she died. That witch would not permit it.”

I stroked her hand, full of pity for her ravaged face. Then I gently pushed the bottle away. “Mary, we both know what it's like to be called bastards, and neglected because we were not princes,” I said. “We both have mothers whose lives were in danger from the moment they gave birth to daughters…and we both let our mothers rule us from the grave.”

“How could our mothers be the
same
?” she spat at me. She held up the slender candle to my face. “You think that the crown will sit upon your head, sister, if dear Edward dies, just because you share the same faith. But it will be
mine
. I have worn Christ's crown of thorns all my adult life and my head throbs with pain. My grandmother was the Queen of Spain. My mother was the Queen of England. I shall be
Maria Regina.
You are a
bastarda
.” She hissed the word. “That whore was never married to my father.
She
signed a document to confess it…
She
made you a
bastarda
.”

I ceased to hear any more. It was not the last word that took my breath away – I had been declared illegitimate after my mother's death – but I did not know that my own mother had signed away my name.

“No…no…no…” I muttered.

“Oh,
si, si, si
,” she shouted, triumphant. Her voice hissed like the candle. “In God's eyes, you will always be a
bastarda
. GO. Go and hide away in the dark.”

I went straight to Archbishop Cranmer. “Please, Your Grace, help me,” I whispered.

As he laid his hands on my head, his voluminous sleeves enclosed me like heavenly clouds. I let my body soften. “God is here, child,” he intoned. “He is helping you.”

I removed his hands, held them so tight that he winced. “I need
your
help,” I insisted. I had never dared to question him about my mother. “You were with my mother in the Tower at her last communion. Did she say anything about me?”

“She spoke to God, not to me.”

“Your Grace, you are my godfather. Tell me the truth. Did she sign anything before she died?”

He avoided my desperate eyes. “I was shocked by the accusations against her,” he said.

“I don't mean that.” My voice rose. His attendants closed in, but he waved them back. “The old faith keeps man in a state of awe and ignorance. The new faith lets us hear the truth with our own ears, not a priest's. You are translating our prayer book from Latin into English so that soon everybody can understand what happens when we pray. Yet you cannot tell me the truth. It is a simple question: did she sign away my royal name?”

He glanced at my brother, who was taking his place at the head of the table, his lopsided shoulders scarcely supporting his head with its heavy crown.

“I…I can't…” He began to gently push me away from him with his foot, as you do a beggar.

“Take care, Your Grace, let me make it as plain as your prayer book. My brother looks unwell tonight, don't you think? He often does. And my poor tutor, Master Grindal, burns with fever. What will you do when my sister Mary sits on the throne? Do you think she will forgive you, banning her Mass, smashing her statues and saints, forcing her followers into the woods? She will have those trees chopped down to make your wood pile and you will burn on Tower Hill long before you get to hell.”

His attendants would have handled me as roughly as a common beggar, but he signalled them to leave me, as he did. “May God protect you, Your Grace,” he whispered, “and lead you to the truth.”

Only Alys could do that. But without Francis, I did not know where she was. And if I found out, could I trust her now? Or did she seek to put her son on the throne of England?

Chapter Eight

I went down to the river, watching the winter's day deepen into dusk from the water steps. Usually this is my favourite time of the year, when all is icy sheen on land and water. The Thames shimmered under its thin crust of ice. Beyond, barges jostled for space at the moorings, their bargemen huddled over warming ale.

The Romans called it Tamesis, the dark river. In my mind it was now the river of the dead.

The clouds thinned and parted. A full moon spilled its glorious light onto the water. I fancied that the moon was my mother's head floating free. She used to look at me with love and kiss me all the time and cool my feet in the fountain…I remember it all now…so why did she choose, at the last moment, to annul her marriage to my father and leave me without a royal name?

I stared into the glittering water that could take me to Alys, taking care not to fall in, for I knew that the weight of my furs would drag me down to the mud.
She
could tell me the secrets of my mother's soul, as no perfume could.

“It wouldn't be worth the trouble of throwing yourself in, for I'd pull you out,” a voice said. It was a gentle voice with a French accent. “It would be rich pickings for me though – a Princess.”

So silently had his little boat drifted to the water steps that I smelled Francis before I saw him – the stench of death and decay that I had smelled when I first met him. He held up his lantern with bare hands that were clawed with cold. His pinched face flared with sores.

“The river always gives up its dead, however long it takes,” he said. “And when you float to the surface your body's bloated with stinking water and your eye sockets scuttle with crabs…”

Part of me had longed to see him again, for nobody but his mother could tell me what I wanted to know. And part of me was consumed by anger that he had dared to show his face again. I glanced towards the guards at the top of the water steps. They would not move unless I commanded them, although they watched my every move. “If you do not tell me who you really are, I shall have you arrested now,” I said. “I only have to shout
one
word –
treason
– and they'll take you to the Tower.”