The Boleyn Reckoning (44 page)

It wasn’t until the end of February that the appropriate solution presented itself. It was Lord Burghley who brought him word that Robert Dudley had been seized in Dover where he had attempted to enter the country in disguise.

William actually laughed aloud when he heard it, at the folly of the grand romantic gesture. “Did he intend to slip into the Tower and spirit away my sister?” His own words made him pause and consider.

“Your Majesty?” Lord Burghley prompted after the silence grew awkward.

It was perfect. Elizabeth had ensured William would never again lay eyes on Minuette—he would do the same for the only man his sister had ever come near to loving.

“I think I’ve had enough of Dudley follies,” William said coldly. “Like father, like son … well, this is one son who will not live longer to rise against me.”

The months Elizabeth spent in the Tower did not pass, as she might have hoped, like a vague, hazy dream. Rather, each hour was etched in lines deep and sharp upon her mind and soul and body. Her physical comfort was assured, for angry as he was, William would not see her anything less than well-clothed and fed—for his own pride, if nothing else. But Elizabeth had to school herself to the indignities of being confined at all.

At least she was allowed books and paper, though she did not bother to write many letters, knowing they would all be censored
and just as likely never delivered. She did not write to William at all, but she did write to Jane, who was allowed to maintain a correspondence with her disgraced sister-in-law. Through Jane, Elizabeth knew that William’s winter consisted of regular bouts of illness and that the physicians were uncertain of their cause.

Guilty conscience, Elizabeth decided. For William was not a monster, just an angry and lonely man who could find no rest.

Lord Burghley visited her twice in the Tower. Although Walsingham was not allowed to see her, he kept in touch with Burghley, and Elizabeth had the impression of connections being made and reinforced beneath the surface of events, like a web in the center of which sat herself.

She was beginning to grow tired of winters and the inevitable uncertainty of spring and summer with its better weather for military campaigns. How many springs now had dawned with the threat of invasion and civil war? She counted back to William’s eighteenth birthday four years ago and his victory in France. When would the cycle of vengeance end?

When Lord Burghley appeared the third time in her cell, it was mid-April 1558 and it was with news that William summoned her from prison to Hampton Court.

“A temporary reprieve?” she asked lightly, though not so lightly as she wished.

“Only the king wholly knows his own mind,” Burghley answered gravely, “but I believe he feels you have been amply punished.”

Something in his tone warned her and she narrowed her eyes. “What else has William done?” she asked sharply.

Burghley’s eyes flicked to the Tower constable who stood near enough to overhear. “The king has commanded silence on this matter. But you should prepare yourself, Your Highness.”

The constable’s expression gave away nothing except a devout
wish to be elsewhere, far out of reach of either Tudors’ temper. Elizabeth straightened her shoulders and raised her head, for she would never be caught being afraid for herself. “Then best lead me to the king that I might have my answers.”

She took nothing with her, simply walked out of the cell as solitary as she had walked into it, accompanied by men but sufficient within herself for whatever might await. Royalty was not a matter of apparel or jewels—for Elizabeth had dressed for warmth rather than fashion while in prison—but a matter of attitude. Today she wore a kirtle the shade of summer grass and a wool gown in a green so dark it almost looked black, but she carried herself as though she was arrayed for the most solemn of court ceremonies.

During the months of her imprisonment, Elizabeth had felt herself more surely her mother’s daughter than she ever had before. For a woman—even a princess—would always be at the mercy of a king, and it took a woman of no small self-possession to maintain her integrity of spirit when faced with a king’s anger. Anne Boleyn had never cowered in her life, and Elizabeth would do no less.

Her self-possession frayed as they made their way to Water Gate and she was helped into the chancellor’s barge for the river trip to Hampton Court. But it was only when the barge cut across the Thames toward the southern tower of London Bridge that Elizabeth began to suspect the truth. The southern tower of the medieval bridge had been known for one thing since William Wallace in 1305: the spikes upon which the heads of traitors were impaled.

Who was it her brother wanted her to see?

There were several heads atop the spikes, but even from the great distance below on the river, Elizabeth could see that all but one were left over from the rebellion the previous year, the heads ragged and picked at by birds. Only one looked newly dipped in tar, giving the features a gruesome aspect. She was not near enough
to distinguish individual features. It was her own imagination that made the leap, knowing her brother as she did.

Burghley confirmed it. “I’m sorry, Your Highness. Robert Dudley did not take your advice to remain in France. He was caught last week in Dover trying to reenter the country in disguise. Your brother ordered a hasty trial and execution at Dover Castle.”

Burghley, wisely, did not continue speaking. Elizabeth bit her tongue so hard it bled, but she would not make a sound. She fixed the sight of Robert’s head firmly in her mind, refusing to turn away, carrying the image with her all the way to Hampton Court.

That was a mistake, William, she thought coldly. If her brother believed he had cowed her, he was entirely wrong. She could not be cowed. She could only be hardened.

William did not summon his sister to his presence until nearly two weeks had passed. He chose to greet her outdoors, in the privy garden that held so many painful memories of Minuette. But he almost welcomed painful memories, if only to feel something—anything at all—in the long march of days that were beginning to wear on his soul. Women brought him little pleasure, and he could
not even drink to forgetfulness any longer. Anything beyond a single glass of wine made him ragingly sick, a pounding head vying with a burning stomach, and he would retch for hours until he was bringing nothing up. If he could not drink and he could not whore, all he had left was to rule.

And even that was fraught with obstacles. Lord Burghley continued to speak dispassionately, but his evenness did not conceal an iron purpose that was often opposed to William’s. The council was growing restless and impatient and William knew he should bite back hard, but he had not the patience for anything but blunt orders that, as often as not, were delayed until they didn’t matter any longer.

The changes in Elizabeth’s appearance were slight but unmistakable. A new gravity to her expression, a wariness in the very way she moved, as though suspicion had become a permanent part of her being. And so you should be suspicious, William thought scornfully. That is the life of royalty.

She curtsied so low she was almost kneeling. But her humility had its limits in her very nature, and there was a familiar tartness to her voice when he gestured to her to rise.

“It is good to set eyes on you, brother. I had almost forgotten how handsome you are.”

A subtle reproof, or a subtle jab at his scarred cheek? One could never be sure with Elizabeth. “Jane is right glad you have come,” he managed. “I hear you’ve been keeping her company as she prepares for her confinement.”

“A pity she has to retire to a closed chamber just as the weather is becoming so lovely.”

William waved away the mysterious female etiquette of childbirth. “The spring will be all the more lovely when she emerges with my son.”

He almost heard Elizabeth’s retort (
What if it’s a daughter?
) but she neatly swallowed it. “Do you have any use for me here besides entertaining your queen?”

Not when I’ve lately impaled your lover’s head upon a spike, he thought. But would not say. Not ever. Nor would his sister ever allude to it. She was, above all else, a survivor. Very much like their mother.

But the fact that she would not speak of it meant there would forever remain an unbreachable barrier between them. William felt a fresh wave of desolation at the loss of his single remaining relationship; it was no comfort to know that he had built that barrier himself.

He drew his breath sharply and said, “Try to keep out of trouble, Elizabeth. I should hate to be forced to remove you from court once more.”

She swept into another low curtsey, but he could not help seeing disdain in the lines of her body. “Heaven forbid I force the king to anything.”

He had to stalk away then or risk losing his temper openly. His head pounded and there was the strange light that preceded a period of pain and weakness and the blurriest of thoughts.

He kept to his own darkened chamber for the next three days and was still gripped with illness when Lord Burghley himself intruded to let him know that Jane had been taken by her childbirth pains a full five weeks before her expected time. William forced himself to dress and leave his bedchamber for his privy chamber, where low-voiced attendants whispered among themselves. William would listen only to Burghley himself as the day passed, fading into a lovely, spring-scented twilight that he thought hazily could only betoken good fortune. Minuette had been born more than a month early, he reminded himself—his first thought of her
in months without pain—and she had positively blossomed with health her entire life.

But when Burghley bowed low before him, he read the news on his face instantly. “The child,” William said flatly, and it was not a question.

“Your Majesty, I grieve to bring you this news, but—”

“The child is dead. Well, that is a common enough grief in this world. My queen will recover. She will bear me sons and to spare in future.” He spoke the right words instinctively, not knowing if he really believed them.

Burghley flinched. “I am sorry, Your Majesty. The queen did not survive the ordeal. Both mother and babe are gone to God.”

William had thought he was past feeling pain, but this overturning of all his plans, the efforts he had made to move forward and secure himself a future, pierced what little was left of his heart. Burghley waited, but when William did not speak, he bowed himself away.

“Wait!” William snarled after him.

Burghley halted and everyone in the chamber held still, waiting for the king’s rage.

“Was it a boy?” he ground out.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Elizabeth paced her privy chamber at Hampton Court, watched once again by Walsingham and Dee and Lord Burghley.
Am I really running a shadow council?
she sometimes asked herself.
And if I am, is that all to the bad?
Someone had to think beyond personal sorrows to the welfare of England.

Not that she didn’t truly grieve for Jane Grey and the lost prince. She had liked Jane well enough for herself, but what that loss meant to William was the true worry. He had tried to move
on, done the rational thing in marrying Jane, and God had laughed in his face. Or at least, she imagined that was how William saw it. Imagination was all she had to go on, since William had left Hampton Court for Richmond the day after Jane’s death, where he remained with orders not to be disturbed except on the most urgent business.

Burghley had come to see her at Hampton Court for the day at his own initiative, but Elizabeth would have summoned him if he hadn’t. Their minds clicked along well together, and he was the first to comment on Walsingham’s report that the French king had allotted the Duke of Norfolk three ships in which to make an exploratory thrust into England.

“Will he come ashore near Framlingham, do you think?” Burghley mused. “It’s the Howard stronghold and passions still run deep about Mary’s execution.”

“It’s likely,” Elizabeth agreed. “But we cannot overlook less obvious avenues, if only because Norfolk is smart enough to know how we’ll think.”

“So watches all along the southeast coast and nearer to Scotland as well,” Burghley offered. “I’ll give the navy orders.”

“Has the king shown any interest in this news?”

“No, Your Highness. The king shows interest in nothing. He scarcely eats at all, and if he sleeps, his face does not show it. He will answer a direct question, but only if it is repeated more than once.”

Elizabeth rose and the men followed suit, standing while she circled the chamber. “I’ve been thinking,” she said musingly, “of Henry VI. The poor, mad king whose venomous French wife cost him his throne nearly as much as his own madness. But if that Henry had not been so often ill, unable to govern, and if his wife had not been quite so openly ambitious, then there would have been no Edward IV to take his place. And without the Yorkist
Edward and his brother, Richard, to oppose, my grandfather might never have come to the throne that he filled so well.”

She stared out the tall, narrow window through which she had once watched carefully for glimpses of Robert in the courtyard below, and said, as though to herself, “Truly, God moves in mysterious ways. It is all men can do to catch a glimpse of His plan, and our own place in it.”

It was a delicate matter to read a royal mind, particularly when that mind was none too certain of itself. Elizabeth felt the minds of the three men tracing her careful threads and was not surprised that Walsingham spoke first. “Who could have guessed your father’s quest for a son, that took such a crooked path, would end in tears and grief?”

“Your Highness,” said Burghley. “The king has made no provisions for a regent since he appointed me that task last year. But you remain his heir, and the privy council supports you in such a role. If the king is too ill to act when Norfolk lands in England, you must be prepared to lead.”