The Boleyn Deceit (44 page)

He meant Jane Grey, and every man there knew it. William’s second cousin, granddaughter of Henry VIII’s beloved younger sister, impeccably bred and outstandingly educated. And Protestant in every bone and breath of her body and desire of her heart.

William wondered how many of his council marked his careful choice of words in answer. “I assure you that an English bride is never far from my consideration.”

Let them read that as they wished. Let Rochford glare all he wanted. William was tired of deception. He could almost bless Henri for sending Renaud LeClerc and his troops across the border, for they had made the first play to unravel the treaty, and now the next was in reach.

He was glad, though, to dismiss the privy council for today. Unusually for him, he had a headache and he clearly hadn’t shaken off the effects of weeks of riding and campaigning. All he wanted to do was sleep.

By nightfall William was burning with fever.

Dominic stayed at Wynfield for three weeks. News filtered through to Minuette’s home readily enough, mostly from Elizabeth but also letters from diplomats and clerics and others who found her a useful contact or else simply liked her. Through them all, Dominic followed the course of the brief Scottish campaign. He was relieved both by Renaud’s diplomatic pulling back of the French troops and by William’s restraint in not pressing the matter to the full. The response was bloody enough to send a message, but calculated enough to make it possible for the treaty to be preserved. William was leaving it to the French to decide what the next move would be. Which made Dominic proud, somewhere beneath his overwhelming disillusion.

After that first night, he and Minuette did not discuss William. He knew it was only a temporary reprieve, that the world would force itself upon them once more and they would have to decide together how to meet it, but for three weeks he could almost pretend that his life would always go on like this: a quiet country manor, a placid household, and an adored wife.

The pretense came to a cruel end with word that Parliament would be meeting in mid-December specifically to pass an Act of Attainder against Northumberland. Minuette read aloud Elizabeth’s letter, announcing it in language so formal and stilted the princess might have been writing of someone she’d never met. Minuette sighed heavily as she laid the letter aside.

“Will you go straight to court from here?” she asked Dominic. “Or make at least a short visit to Tiverton?”

“I think I shall have to go to Tiverton, if only not to make myself an utter liar. It’s where William will send for me. When he does, then I will return to court. Not before.” He hesitated, then said, “I’m surprised he hasn’t sent for you yet.”

“Like you, I will go when he sends for me. And then …” She left it for him to finish.

“And then we will tell him.”

She moved onto his lap and rested her head on his shoulder. “When will you leave for Tiverton?”

If he didn’t go at once, he might never go. “Tomorrow,” he answered.

“Then we shall make good memories tonight,” she whispered, before kissing him in a way that ensured she was all he could think of.

That dizzying sense of pleasure lasted through the night. An hour after dawn he was just managing to struggle into his hose and doublet, Minuette watching him from the bed with a mischievous smile, when someone knocked loudly on the door.

“Who is it?” Minuette called. Though no doubt the household knew all about where Dominic spent his nights, they were careful to preserve the fiction by not letting anyone see them together in Minuette’s chamber.

“It’s Carrie,” came the reply, in a tight and worried voice. “An urgent letter for you has come from Her Highness.”

Minuette shared a look with Dominic, then got out of bed and threw on a night robe. She opened the door. “Thank you, Carrie.”

Dominic could see the letter was short, just a couple of lines, but they were enough to make the light drain from his wife’s face. “What is it?” he asked, crossing the room to her.

She thrust Elizabeth’s letter at him, a simple and devastating message in untidy handwriting.

William has smallpox. His condition is grave. Come at once.

By the time Minuette and Dominic reached her at Hampton Court on December 11—more than a week since she’d sent her desperate note—Elizabeth felt as though she’d lived through months of despair and nightmares. There were moments when she could almost believe that none of this was happening, since she had not seen William for herself. After the debacle at Dudley Castle, she had returned to Hatfield and stayed there, raging over Robert’s betrayal, until her uncle sent for her. Rochford had written only that William was somewhat ill—it wasn’t until she’d arrived at Whitehall that she discovered how truly serious it was.

Rochford hadn’t let her even enter the palace walls. When she’d remonstrated, he pulled her into a near-embrace that allowed him to whisper in her ear. “It’s smallpox. The rash appeared last night. You must be kept elsewhere.”

Because smallpox was contagious, as deadly as it was swift. So she had traveled on to Hampton Court and sent a rider with a message to Minuette. When Dominic appeared at Hampton Court with Minuette, she was glad of it. Although she briefly wondered how the two of them had managed to arrive together when he’d been in the west, at Tiverton.

But there were larger problems at hand. “How is he?” Minuette asked at once, even as Elizabeth greeted them.

“The sores are widespread and have begun to form larger patches.”

Minuette paled. Smallpox was bad enough, but in those cases where the pustules combined into large patches, mortality was especially high.

“Is he awake?” Dominic asked roughly.

“Not from what I hear. They won’t let me … I haven’t seen him. All I know is what my uncle writes to me twice daily. He will certainly be scarred. It could hardly be otherwise.”

But it could be otherwise. He could be dead. That was why they wouldn’t let Elizabeth see him, why she hadn’t even been allowed inside Whitehall. William was king, and she was his heir.

For days now Elizabeth had been haunted by a guilty memory: John Dee telling her last Christmas that her hand was not only a woman’s hand, but a ruler’s. He had held her palm in his and Elizabeth had been mesmerized by his hints of knowledge, had felt that there were promises in his eyes and a word just out of her reach—

Queen.

Dominic broke her introspective despair with practicality. “I’ll go straight on to Whitehall and write you myself.”

“I want to go with you,” Minuette said.

“Absolutely not,” Dominic said firmly. “Elizabeth needs you. And William would never forgive me for exposing you to smallpox.”

“What about your exposure?”

“I am the King’s Shadow. It’s my job to stand by him whatever peril he is in.”

He shared one last look with Minuette, the two of them seemingly having an entirely wordless conversation that left Elizabeth feeling like an intruder.

Dominic, surprisingly, hugged Elizabeth before he left. “I’ll stay with him,” he promised her. “Until he is better.”

And if he is never better? Elizabeth thought desolately. Will you stand by me if William dies?

Whitehall Palace had become a crypt. Dominic felt it on the rare occasions he left the sickroom, as though the very walls were anticipating the worst. The corridors were hushed and
conversations were conducted in whispers and sidelong glances. Rochford might be putting out daily updates on the king’s health, but everyone in the palace knew they were fictions. William was not “somewhat indisposed” or “suffering from an injury in battle.”

Plainly stated, Will was dying.

Dominic had seen it immediately, shocked speechless by William’s appearance. The pustules were bad enough, crowded thick and foul across the king’s chest and his limbs and especially his face. He did not look like William at all—the sharp features of his handsome face submerged in oozing sores. But worse even than that had been the limp body and sunken eyes. It was as though William had already given up.

Dominic set about changing that, sitting by the bedside and keeping up an almost constant stream of chatter to his friend. It was the most words he’d ever strung together at any one time in his life, and he wished William would wake up enough to say something sarcastic.
Death makes you talkative?
perhaps, or
Can’t you speak of something interesting like women?

For endless hours Dominic ignored the many others in the bedchamber and talked about last year’s battle in France and their shared childhoods in the schoolroom and the tiltyard. He talked battle tactics and history and recalled pranks that William and Minuette had inflicted on the rest of them.

The physicians did whatever they could do—which was precious little—and Rochford was a constant presence as well, watching his nephew from beneath hooded eyes. Early in the hours of December 13, as William’s breath grew desperately shallow, Rochford tried to send him out.

“Go get some rest, Courtenay.” Rochford in private always called him by the name he’d used since Dominic’s childhood.

“I’m fine.”

“There’s nothing you can do. You heard the
physicians—either he will recover or he won’t. We are all of us in God’s hands, and I cannot believe God is ready to take William just yet. Not when we need him.”

Dominic wished he could read God’s intentions as well as Rochford seemed to. In any case, he shook his head. “I’m staying.”

With a shrug, Rochford replied, “As you will. I’ll snatch an hour’s sleep myself, then.”

So in the darkest hours of the night, with only two physicians and a handful of men attending to William’s physical needs, Dominic finally was able to say what all his words had been leading up to.

He touched William’s swollen hand and leaned over the bed. “I don’t know if this is what you need to hear, William, but if it is, I say it gladly. About Renaud—about the choices you made in my name—”

Intended assassination, an arrow in the back, a wife taken in secret
 … “You are my king, but you are also my friend. And so I forgive you, Will. And I’m sorry.”

And please,
he added silently,
please live long enough for me to make things right. Don’t let my last act in your service have been a betrayal.

As dawn edged a chilly entrance into wintry morning, William opened his eyes.

26 December 1555

R
OBERT
D
UDLEY WAS
confined in Beauchamp Tower, a forbidding medieval square building that looked every bit the defensive wall for which it had been built three hundred years earlier. He wasn’t sure where his brothers and father were being held, for his guards were under orders to give nothing away. Not even his charm had any effect on their reticence.

When Dominic walked into his cell, Robert raised one very dramatic eyebrow. “Either I am about to be pardoned or about to be dead,” he remarked wryly. “Which is it?”

“I am here on my own account,” Dominic answered. “Not the king’s.”

“Ah. I had thought … So my messages are not getting through.”

“You’ve been sending messages?”

“Not successfully, it would seem. If they’ve been intercepted, I’m surprised you don’t know about it.”

“The court has been somewhat occupied this last month.”

“William’s smallpox?”

When Dominic looked surprised, Robert said, “Everyone
knows. Though perhaps not quite how bad it was?” he asked thoughtfully. That would explain why the Act of Attainder against his father hadn’t come through yet. The court would not have risked Parliament meeting if the king’s life was truly in danger. And if William had been seriously ill, then Elizabeth must have been frantic.

Robert couldn’t stand not being near her to give whatever help he could. Which was why he had to get himself out of the Tower. He had assumed, when he was arrested, that it would be simple.

But then, he had never guessed that he was being used to bring down his own father.