Wolf Bride (26 page)

‘Have you ever seen Her Majesty the queen privy with Mark Smeaton?’

‘I have not, sir.’

‘But you know him? He is a Flemish musician. Considered a great favourite with the queen’s ladies, I am told.’

‘I have never spoken with the gentleman, sir, though I know his face. Master Smeaton is a fair-spoken gentleman, and plays his lute very sweetly. However, I never saw him closeted with the Queen’s Grace, nor did I ever hear him petition the queen for any special favour or attention.’

‘Indeed?’

Her face stiff with outrage, Eloise looked back at the king’s advisor. ‘Her Majesty would never suffer such an act of impertinence from one of her servants.’

‘Very well.’ Cromwell’s voice was shrewd. ‘What of Sir Henry Norris, then? He was a frequent visitor to the queen’s privy chambers, I have been told. Perhaps you saw him there once or twice yourself.’

Eloise’s steady look faltered, her heightened colour suddenly fading. Wolf drew a sharp breath, watching her intently.

‘Sir Henry Norris?’ she repeated.

‘That is the gentleman, yes. You are acquainted with him?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And did you ever see Sir Henry alone with the queen?’

‘I . . .’ Eloise looked across at Wolf. He felt sick and his heart began to thud with sudden warning. Was his wife about to betray herself and the queen? Then she licked her lips, shaking her head. Her voice was subdued. ‘No, sir. I have never seen Sir Henry alone with the queen.’

‘Nor with any of these gentlemen?’ Cromwell sounded ruffled now. No doubt the king’s advisor had hoped to bully her into an admission, but Eloise was proving more resilient than he had anticipated. Impatiently, he began to read out the names of those other unfortunate men accused of adultery with the queen. ‘Sir Francis Weston, Sir William Brereton, Sir Richard Page, Sir Thomas Wyatt, or perhaps Lord Rochford, the queen’s brother?’

‘I know many of those gentlemen by name and by sight, sir, but I have barely spoken to any of them myself.’

Cromwell’s gaze sharpened on her face. ‘Barely?’

‘I may have conversed a few times with Sir Thomas at court,’ she admitted slowly, then drew a deep breath. Wolf wondered if she was recalling his advice not to incriminate herself in any way. ‘But I have never been alone with him.’

‘Nor seen him alone with the queen?’

‘No, sir.’

He looked at her speculatively. ‘You are acquainted with young Simon Thetford of Norfolk though, is that not true?’

With a start, Wolf remembered the fair youth who had tried so determinedly to seduce Eloise below his window the day they met at court. His name had been Simon. He was sure she had been a virgin at her first bedding. Yet he had often wondered how far that lad had pushed his charms with Eloise; was he now to discover it before Cromwell, that cold-tongued son of a commoner whose rise to prominence at court had astonished and unnerved so many?

Steeling himself for humiliation, Wolf let one hand drop to the dagger he had tucked into his belt before accompanying Eloise here.

He had not been permitted to wear his sword at this interrogation. No doubt they feared a soldierly man like himself might be tempted to use it in his wife’s defence. But it made him feel better to fondle its hilt lovingly, his eyes on Cromwell’s face, willing the man to glance his way.

Look at me, you smug bastard, and leave my wife alone. I could have your throat slit before you’d taken two paces to summon the guards.

Eloise too looked shocked at this last name, produced out of nowhere like a jongleur’s trick to dazzle the onlookers.

She clasped her hands together more tightly, and her voice shook for the first time as she answered the king’s advisor. ‘S . . . Simon?’

Cromwell nodded and sat back, shooting a triumphant look in Wolf’s direction, as though her guilty reaction was precisely what he had hoped to see at the mention of that name. His brief glance took in Wolf’s tense stance, then the hand resting so significantly on the dagger hilt. But he did not back down, turning back to Eloise with a satisfied half-smile.

‘You would not wish to see that young gentleman executed, I am convinced. Yet his name has been suggested to us as one of the queen’s lovers.’

She stared, shaking her head. ‘No, no. Not Simon. I know him; he would never . . .’

‘You admit to knowing this young man privately?’

Too late she saw the trap he had set for her. Eloise drew back visibly, and Wolf saw her trying to school her expression. Her voice was only a thread of sound. ‘No, my lord.’

‘Come, my lady, there is no shame in such an admission. Your husband is an understanding man, and one of the king’s fiercest friends. He would not wish you to perjure your immortal soul just to spare his blushes.’ He paused, his narrowed gaze moving back and forth between the two of them. There was a long silence in the shadowy room as he waited for an answer that did not come. His fingers drummed lightly on the table. ‘You seem pale, Lady Wolf, and you have not yet answered my question. Are you unwell?’

Cromwell clicked his fingers. A shuffling servant appeared from behind a screen and handed her a cup of wine. Her inquisitor waited a moment while Eloise drank, as though out of deference to her sex, or perhaps the presence of her husband in the same room. Then he began his questioning again, prodding her towards the only answer he wanted to hear.

‘This Simon is a comely fellow, and of noble birth too. He would have made a good match, by all accounts. Indeed, until your recent marriage to Lord Wolf here, it is whispered that you and Simon Thetford were often private together. A young man like that would have no qualms spending time alone with any lady of the court, even with Her Majesty, if an invitation was issued.’

His wife’s cheeks grew hot with rage and embarrassment at this deliberate slur.

Watching her suffer and unable to do anything to prevent it, Wolf ground his teeth, wishing he could throttle the damn man where he sat. But that would merely result in his execution for murder, leaving Eloise widowed and defenceless.

‘That is not true, my lord,’ she replied clearly, and his respect for her grew when he saw how she faced down her interrogator. Her courage remained undaunted, despite the shock she had registered at the sound of her former suitor’s name. ‘I do not know whose was the voice that whispered such wicked falsehoods, but I urge you to lend that testimony no credence. I was a maid when I married his lordship, as I am sure Lord Wolf will testify.’

Cromwell glanced at Wolf, as though seriously expecting him to stand forth at this point in proceedings and give him a detailed description of their wedding night.

Resisting the urge to use his dagger on the man instead, Wolf silently nodded his agreement that she had been a maid, and almost snarled when Cromwell shrugged and turned his back, making his disbelief plain.

Doggedly, Eloise continued her own testimony, though her colour was still high and she was refusing to look at Wolf.

‘Sir,’ she said, addressing Cromwell directly, her voice steady again, ‘before my marriage I was never private with any man. And to the best of my knowledge, neither was Her Majesty Queen Anne. I do not know how I can help you further in this matter, beyond what has already been said, and I pray you will excuse me. For I never saw Her Majesty spend time alone with Master Smeaton, nor Sir Thomas Wyatt, nor Sir Henry, nor with any of the other gentlemen whose names you have mentioned here today. And that is the truth, before God Almighty.’

Wolf relaxed his hand on his dagger, seeing the defeat in Cromwell’s face. That was one hurdle they had cleared, he thought cautiously. But this was King Henry’s court, and nothing was ever simple here. There would be other tests to come, and from what he had learned since their arrival, the king himself would be the greatest hurdle of them all.

He only hoped Eloise could forgive him for what was ahead.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Eloise saw Wolf move, suddenly pushing away from the wall he had been leaning against throughout her interrogation, and limp to the door before Cromwell had even dismissed her. She watched her husband go in a flutter of panic, not helped by the scribe’s knowing smirk as he bade her sign her name below her testimony on the sheet. He had not spoken throughout the long questioning, yet just to see his dark head at the back of the room, and feel his gaze on her face whenever she struggled with a response, had been a kind of reassurance.

Where was Wolf going?

Had those last terrible questions, the ones about Simon’s supposed intimacies, been too much for him?

It touched his honour, the malicious accusation that she had not been a maid when they married. After all, if that rumour was believed, any heir she bore him within the first year of their marriage would always be considered suspect.

It was all she could do not to scream with frustration. Who had told Cromwell such a vile lie? Unless she had given the other ladies cause to believe her so much in love with Simon that she would anticipate a wedding ceremony . . .

Guilt made her blush, remembering how she had failed to hide her interest in Simon. Nonetheless, with Cromwell’s sharp gaze on her face, she signed her name with as bold a flourish as she could manage, then curtseyed to her tormenter before leaving.

It was dark by the time Eloise was finally escorted back to their apartments by one of Cromwell’s aged servants. The chilly palace corridors were lit by flaming torches that flickered in a spring breeze as she hurried past them, almost outstripping the old man who had been instructed to accompany her, too eager to reach the safety of her own chambers to wait for him.

It was late, and most of the courtiers seemed to have finished dining and retired to their own chambers. Nevertheless, as she passed through one of the empty state rooms, Eloise thought she heard whispers and felt hostile eyes watching her through doorways and from behind screens. Yet whenever she whirled in sudden anger, there was nobody there, only a chill breeze flapping at the wall tapestries and the old man smiling contemptuously.

When she reached her rooms, Wolf was not there either. She dismissed her escort and stood in the deserted apartment a moment, terribly lost without him.

‘Where are you, Wolf?’ she whispered, staring blindly at the one candle left burning against the darkness.

Then she shook herself, shocked by how feeble-minded she had become since her marriage, how incapable she had grown of independent thought and action.

‘Come on,’ she told herself fiercely, pressing her nails into her palms, letting the sharp sting wake her spirit. ‘You are not weak; you can weather this.’

Mary had lit a small fire in the bedchamber and was waiting there, asleep by the hearth, when she stumbled in. She undressed Eloise by candlelight, wide-eyed at all these strange happenings and the frightening atmosphere at court.

‘I am glad you are come back, my lady,’ the maid admitted in an innocently candid manner. She unpinned Eloise’s elaborately coiled hair, then reached for the wide-toothed comb. ‘So you are not to be arrested, then?’

Eloise frowned. ‘God’s blood, Mary, keep a discreet tongue in your head!’

Mary bit her lip, then began to comb out her hair with a long stroke that was not quite steady. ‘Forgive me, my lady.’

Eloise stood thinking for a while, her eyes on the soft gold of a deerskin rug at her feet.

‘Mary, who told you I might be arrested?’

The girl shrugged, looking away uneasily. Eloise stared at her. There was something wrong, something Mary was not saying.

‘I don’t know, my lady,’ she whispered. ‘Just something they were saying in the servants’ hall.’

‘But I have done nothing wrong,’ she exclaimed angrily, ‘and nor has the queen.’

‘Of course not, my lady.’

Forcing herself to breathe more calmly, Eloise gestured Mary to bring a fresh nightrail and her woollen bed stockings from the chest. As Mary dressed her, she sternly reminded herself how vital it was to remain unflustered in front of her serving maid, whose loyalty to the Wolf household might soon be swayed if she fell from favour at court. Besides, it would only give the gossips more fuel for their vicious insinuations if she lost her temper and said something she ought to have kept to herself. And that would be a betrayal of Wolf’s trust.

Assuming she still had his trust, that was.

‘Sir Thomas Cromwell wished to ask me questions about Her Majesty,’ she continued smoothly, more collected now. ‘I answered them truthfully, and now it is done.’

Mary hesitated, turning down the embroidered covers on the bed. ‘I am glad it is over, my lady.’

Eloise managed a wobbling smile at this small gesture of support, and was horrified to find that tears were not far off.

‘You may go to bed now, Mary,’ she told the girl, determined to do the same herself. ‘Try to get some rest; I am unlikely to need you again tonight. It has been a long day.’

It was hard to wait until Mary had curtseyed and closed the door before Eloise could finally give in to her agony. Her eyes were stinging and she had an ache in her chest that was nothing to do with fatigue, and all to do with Wolf’s unexplained absence. What she needed was to curl up in bed and cry herself to sleep. If sleep would come after such a day . . .