The Boleyn Reckoning: A Novel (The Boleyn Trilogy) Read online

  It was Elizabeth who said, “Thank you, Uncle.”

  That stirred her brother enough to say flatly, “You may go. Lord Exeter will return the order to you shortly.”

  Rochford gave them all a long, hard look—lingering with disapproval on Minuette seated so near the king that she was almost beneath the royal canopy of estate. As William intended her to be. There was a time when Minuette would have looked uneasy at Rochford’s fierce attention, but today she merely matched the chancellor’s stare with one of her own. It almost made Elizabeth smile. Minuette might look demure and innocent—in her gown of white and amber and with her honey-gold hair artfully arranged with jeweled combs—but her devotion to William was absolute. She would not be cowed from doing what she thought best.

  And Rochford, for all his concern, was not ready to bring his discontent to open argument. Elizabeth knew it was coming—this inner circle of just the four of them could not be allowed to last much longer—but for today the Lord Chancellor held his tongue. He left them alone.

  They had always been exceptionally close: the “Holy Quartet,” Robert Dudley had named them. But since his brush with death, William had kept his sister, his love, and his friend even tighter around him. Was it for comfort? Elizabeth wondered. Or protection?

  Alone with those few he trusted absolutely, William stretched out his long legs in a gesture that made the tightness in Elizabeth’s shoulders ease. She rejoiced with every moment that spoke of William as he had been before.

  “Sentenced to be hanged, disemboweled, and quartered,” William said to Dominic, of Northumberland’s fate. “I’ll commute that to beheading, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “You have nothing else to plead?”

  Elizabeth tightened again. They had not told William of Robert Dudley’s plea to see her, of his claim that another man had as much to do with Northumberland’s fall as his own actions. But despite their silence, William knew Dominic very well. Clearly he sensed there was more than just the usual caution behind his friend’s reserve.

  But Dominic did not hesitate. “Northumberland held Elizabeth and Minuette against their will in Dudley Castle. He raised an army that could only have been meant to be used against you. I have nothing to plead for him.”

  William nodded, then stood and crossed to the table where pen and ink waited. The Duke of Northumberland must die. The three of them watched as he signed in swift, bold strokes—Henry Rex. His father’s name. His ruling name.

  He handed the signed order to Dominic, as always entrusting his closest friend to see his will carried out. Of all of them, Dominic appeared the least changed by William’s recent near-death. Reserved, loyal, darkly watchful … only now and again did Elizabeth see Dominic’s green eyes gleam with emotions she could not always name. The gleam today seemed to her one of approval or possibly, like herself, relief that William had taken another step to returning to himself.

  As though he read their minds and wished to increase their happiness, William said abruptly, “I’ve settled on Easter for our return to London. We’ll spend it at Whitehall and celebrate lavishly. Masques, tournaments, riding through the streets to Westminster Abbey for service …”

  Elizabeth added tartly, still trying to gauge when and how to speak to her brother as before, “All elaborately designed to set people’s minds at rest and give them reason to rejoice in their brilliant king.”

  Through everything—Rochford’s report, William signing Northumberland’s death—Minuette had not moved and her expression had not altered. Another change: that the girl once so bright and merry and easily read now kept her own counsel to a frightening degree. Everything she did seemed calculated for William’s sake.

  At last she stood and walked to William, facing the king without touching him. There was something poignant, almost painful about the pairing, an indefinable twinge that set Elizabeth’s heart wringing, as Minuette smiled gravely and said to William, “The people are waiting to rejoice in their brilliant and handsome king.”

  William flinched slightly and kept himself angled a little away from Minuette’s gaze. Keeping his left side turned always to the shadows.

  The smallpox, which had covered his face and chest and arms wholly, had not scarred so thoroughly. Indeed, he had healed almost cleanly, and if one looked at him from the right, one saw only the perfect face with which he’d been born. But on the left, the sores had left a brushstroke of scars behind, like a brush swept carelessly across a canvas.

  Minuette was the only one who dared speak of it openly, or to touch. She did so now, resting her hand on William’s ruined cheek, which was only partially covered by his newly grown beard. “The people love you, Will, as we do. The rejoicing will be honest. What matters more than that you are still here?”

  Only Minuette could make William smile these days. He did so now, and Elizabeth thought if only her brother could be brought to smile more, to be himself more, to quit brooding on the scars, that people would hardly notice them. We see what we expect to see, she thought. Will must make people expect to see only the king and all will be well.

  Minuette slipped into Richmond’s Newe Park well after dark, shivering in the glooming fog. Only when William retired for the night did he release her from his presence, and then only because he intended to drink heavily before bed. Minuette knew she would have to deal with the drinking at some point, but for now she was only too glad to have the night hours for her husband. The dark was their ally. Their only ally these days.

  It was all supposed to have been finished by now. They had wed secretly (and illegally and, according to the Protestants, heretically) last November, with every intention of confessing to the king at Christmas. Then William had been stricken with smallpox. And in the space of days when they feared for his life, plans and confessions had fallen to the wayside.

  But not their marriage. And not our love, Minuette thought as Dominic wrapped her in a fierce embrace, his cloak enfolding them both. As she knew every line of his body in the dark, she also responded to his every thought and desire before they were ever expressed, and so their kiss was not so much one of welcome after a long day of secrecy but a kindling of their longed-for marriage bed. Minuette had come to think of herself in these last weeks as one of the marble statues she might come across in the palace or garden. Lovely and impeccable and unfeeling, confined to an ordained form and unable to move at will.

  But every time she came into Dominic’s arms, the marble shattered and she was a woman again: warmed and passionate and imperfectly real. Before their marriage, Minuette had thought Dominic cold in his behavior, frustrated by the control that left her bewildered and wondering if he wanted her at all. Their weeks at Wynfield Mote as husband and wife had broken that illusion forever and so, even though they could not abandon themselves completely at court, the memory of his hands tracing every inch of her body before following the path with his mouth heated her blood. Tonight she could almost feel that her palms rested on Dominic’s bare chest and not the black wool of his doublet.

  At last, much too soon, they drew apart just enough to breathe. Minuette let herself rest in Dominic’s embrace, his cloak sheltering them both from the petulant wind of too-early spring. Her only peace in an increasingly turbulent world.

  “What will happen to his sons?” she asked quietly. She did not need to specify Northumberland’s four sons; Dominic read her these days with an ease that went beyond familiarity to the almost uncanny.

  “It is the duke himself people hate. His sons will remain in prison for now, but I suspect they will be safe. Not their lands or titles, though—there will not be another Duke of Northumberland for a long time. But I think John Dudley would count the title well lost if it saves his sons.”

  “Does he still expect to be pardoned?”

  She felt Dominic’s shrug. “I suppose I will find out when I deliver the order tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry it has to be you.”

  “Better me than
Rochford. At least I will not gloat quite so openly.”

  She drew a little away, so she could see his face—or at least its outlines—as she asked, “What are you going to do about Robert’s accusations?”

  “When am I going to tell Will about them, do you mean? One step at a time, my love. First let’s get him back into the world. Spring is upon us, which means campaigning, which means we’ll find out if the French intend to continue their aggressions. I’m watching Rochford, but honestly, after destroying Norfolk and Northumberland, who is left for the man to bring down?”

  “You,” Minuette answered softly but firmly. “And me. Rochford does not trust your influence with the king, and he despises me heartily.” She hesitated over the next part, for she knew her husband’s mind, but one of them had to be practical. “Do you never think that, rather than being our enemy, we could turn Rochford to our best ally?”

  Against William, she meant, or at least the king’s anger. Because William was going to be angry. He was going to be furious when he found out they had married behind his back. While Minuette was secretly betrothed to William himself.

  She often wondered what she could have done differently. How had they come to this, the lies and the betrayals? But she and Dominic had made their choices and they could not be unmade. All that could be done now was to mitigate the damage. And for that, they would need allies.

  Elizabeth was the obvious choice, but Minuette would not burden her friend with this when she had been so worried about her brother. Besides, the princess had her own touchy royal pride and might not be entirely understanding. But Rochford was, above all, practical. Combined with the fact that he wanted nothing more than to ensure his nephew did not marry a common girl for love alone, and the chancellor seemed the perfect choice to counsel and aid them.

  If only Dominic could be persuaded.

  She read his resistance in the hard lines of his chest and shoulders and was not surprised when he shook his head. “I do not trust Rochford in the least. And I will not attempt to ally myself with a man who may be a traitor simply because it is convenient for me.”

  There had been no real chance of a different response. Where Rochford’s core principle was practicality, Dominic’s was honour. He would never use a man he despised simply because it could benefit him. Minuette had not really expected him to agree. She had only proposed it so he could not accuse her later of acting without consulting him first.

  She could never regret having married Dominic, secret and hurried as it had been. But from the moment William’s eyes had opened and his slow recovery began, Minuette had felt a great pressure that spoke of unavoidable disaster. She didn’t know what form it would take or when it would strike, but every choice she made each day seemed designed only to delay the flood that threatened to overwhelm them all.

  Once, she’d been confident in her ability to find a solution that would preserve not only themselves as individuals, but their friendships. Now her confidence was gone and when she wept, which was often, it was for a tangle of troubles far beyond her abilities to solve.

  At such times there was a terrible whisper in her head, poisonous and treasonous. If only William had not survived …

  She buried herself in Dominic’s arms once more to shut out that thought. William had survived and she was glad of it, and if there were terrible prices to be paid in future she would pay without faltering.

  “It will be all right,” Dominic whispered, his hands stroking her hair. “It shall all come right in the end.”

  And there was a measure of how the world had upended itself: that Dominic had all the confidence and she all the doubt.

  “After the execution, I will speak to Robert again,” Dominic continued. “Perhaps his father’s death will loosen his tongue and he’ll provide evidence against Rochford.”

  And whether he does or not, Minuette thought, I shall have to make my own choice about whether to approach Rochford.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE DUKE OF Northumberland met his end with more grace and less defiance than Dominic had expected. When Dominic had told him there would be no pardon, only commutation to beheading, Northumberland had gone unnervingly still as if channeling his anger for a rant against the king. But by the time the duke was led out of the Tower on the morning of March 21, he was composed. He asked, and was granted, the customary right to speak to those assembled. He approached the railing of the scaffold and delivered a moving speech.

  “Good people, all you that be here present to see me die … I am a wretched sinner, and have deserved to die, and most justly am condemned to die by law. And yet this act wherefore I die was not altogether of me, as it is thought, but I was procured and induced thereunto by others. I was, I say, induced thereunto by others, howbeit God forbid that I should name any man unto you. I will name no man unto you, and therefore I beseech you look not for it.”

  Which was as good as saying, Hunt down the man who sent me to this bloody end. Dominic tried to judge the mood of the crowd, to see how many had taken seriously Northumberland’s claim of further conspiracies, but failed. At the moment they seemed wholly focused on watching the duke die.

  After a brief but seemingly genuine praise of the king and a prayer for God’s blessings upon him and England, Northumberland concluded, “I could, good people, rehearse much more but you know I have another thing to do whereunto I must prepare me, for the time draweth away.”

  It was that sense of irony and humour that Dominic admired and he felt his stomach rise at what the man’s pride had brought him to. Northumberland was blindfolded and knelt at the block, speaking softly so that even Dominic, at the front, almost missed it. He thought Northumberland’s words were, “I have deserved a thousand deaths.”

  As he knelt, the blindfold slipped and so did the duke’s composure. Northumberland fumbled to move the blindfold back into place, and the executioner, almost at the same moment, swung the ax. Mercifully, it was a clean blow.

  Dominic stayed long enough to see the head, respectfully covered, and the body carried into the Tower chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula. Now was the time to speak to Robert Dudley once more, for Beauchamp Tower edged the Tower green and he could have seen his father take his last walk. Robert would be edgy and angry and grieving, and Dominic intended to twist every one of those emotions to his advantage in pressing for information.

  “Lord Exeter.” A man fell into step beside Dominic as he crossed the green, a man it took him a moment to identify. A wide forehead narrowing to a pointed, goateed chin, the narrowness echoed by a long nose, and watchful, careful eyes … Dominic remembered those eyes, observing him on their return journey from France last summer. Francis Walsingham, the intelligencer whom Elizabeth had hired into her household.

  “What can I do for you, Walsingham?”

  “I wondered if I might attend on Lord Robert with you.”

  “What makes you think I’m going to see Robert Dudley?”

  The slow, intelligent gaze of a man who knows far more than he says … “May I accompany you?”

  “Why?”

  “Her Highness wishes it.”

  “Does Her Highness know that she wishes it?” Dominic asked suspiciously.

  At that, Walsingham smiled. “Those who work for royalty must learn to anticipate what our patrons wish before they themselves know it.”

  Dominic’s first instinct was to send him on his impertinent way, but truth be told, the man was not wrong. Was not his own visit to Robert anticipating what William would wish if—when—he knew about Robert’s insinuations? Besides, Walsingham was canny, and Dominic was not so proud as to think he could not benefit from another canny man’s advice.

  With a sharp nod, Dominic said, “Come on, then.”

  Robert knew who was coming to see him long before he heard footsteps on the stairs. Dominic was the only one who bothered to see him these days—other than the guards and occasionally the Constable of the Tower—and he would have bet everything he owned that
Dominic’s sense of duty would bring him here today.

  That is, Robert would have bet if he stilled owned anything to gamble with. But he and his brothers had been attainted right along with their father. No land, no titles, no rights in blood to pass anything on to children … not that Robert had really had much to begin with. The courtesy title of Lord Robert came only from his father’s position; he’d held almost nothing in his own right, and certainly he had no children.

  The real problem with attainder was what came after it. Without the status of a gentleman, Robert could be tortured if the king wished it. And William might wish it. Or rather, Elizabeth might and William often granted his sister’s wishes. After the debacle at Dudley Castle with Amy, not to mention Elizabeth’s imprisonment, her pride was stung. And there was nothing more righteous than the Tudor pride.

  Sometimes, in the dark of night, Robert wondered what he might say if it came to torture. The truth? Or whatever lie would be most convenient? He supposed it would depend on who was asking the questions. And on how hard they pressed.

  When it came right down to it, torture or not, Robert preferred Dominic asking the questions. The man was infuriatingly good and lacked imagination and his devotion to duty was exhausting … but Dominic was honest, a quality Robert was in desperate need of.

  The door opened and Robert turned from the window where he had watched his father being led out across the green to the scaffold on Tower Hill. The range of Tower buildings had not allowed him to see his father’s death, but he had been able to hear the general tenor of the crowd. He was dressed more for warmth than fashion, and he felt a moment’s envy at Dominic’s easy grace as he strode across the bare wood floor. Not that he was fashionable, but he had that indefinable air of belonging in the very centers of power—whether in palace or prison cell—all the more noticeable for his being unconscious of it.