Jeane Westin Read online

  That night as Kate helped prepare the queen for her bed, she asked for a month’s leave.

  “Pish!” Elizabeth said, catching Kate’s hand in a strong grip. “You ask the impossible, Lady Grey. We are moving the court to my warmer palace of Richmond in two days’ time, and as mistress of the robes, you must be at your work . . . if you would continue in it.”

  “Of course, if you wish it, Majesty,” Kate said, sinking to the floor, her face turned away, holding back thoughts that Elizabeth would never forgive.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Better beggar woman and single, than queen and married.”

  —Elizabeth Regina

  February 4, 1562

  Whitehall/Richmond

  Twenty-four rowers dipped their oars into the Thames, pulling the royal barge smoothly away from the water stairs at Whitehall. The morning mist rose and the winter sun shone on the gray river. Kate leaned back against the cushions in the rear cabin, smiling to herself: Even the weather, which had been all blustery wind and snow, bowed to Elizabeth of England.

  She was out of the queen’s sight, needing to rest from the labor of the frantic packing of everything in Her Majesty’s apartments for removal to Richmond Palace: a thousand gowns, and twice as many oversleeves, jewels, pictures, her huge bed and all the royal apartment’s furnishings. Catching the tide on the flood, the barge was moving with some speed upriver, the lap and surge of the water against the craft lulling Kate into a deeper rest.

  They sailed past Westminster Abbey and the Star Chamber and were soon in more open country. It was a false spring day, warmer than it would be for weeks ahead, but it brought eager husbandmen into their fields to clear and plow furrows, preparing the earth for seed. Parish bells rang out their greeting as villagers came to the water’s edge to kneel. They shouted, “God save Her Majesty!” and pushed their children to the front to see their queen.

  Kate heard Elizabeth’s cheerful reply to them: “God save you all, my good people!”

  Elizabeth was always at her happiest in public, while in private she was too often melancholy. In spite of her strength and majesty, the queen seemed happy only when she could display those qualities to her subjects. Otherwise, she was again the lonely, withdrawn princess banished to country houses, surrounded by tutors and nurses, some of whom reported her every word to her enemies.

  Staring through the many-paned, leaded window with its jewel-tone roundels, Kate felt some of the same loneliness until at last she caught a glimpse of Ned. She had known him as a woman for less than a month and yet she counted a day without seeing him as one of miserable hours. Could love rekindle so fast, or had it been smol dering all these years, a love that could mean her undoing and his? And though it felt to her as anything right should feel, could it be the devil’s doing, tempting her to trouble?

  She shook off the fleeting sense of apprehension as she watched Ned riding with other nobles alongside the river as guards for the queen’s lumbering wagons. All four hundred of them were packed to overflowing. As the wagons, coaches and gentlemen came fully into her view, it had not been difficult to espy Ned. He sat a richly caparisoned horse of at least seventeen hands and spirited, prancing about as well as had his master at the masque that night he’d come back into her life. Kate softly hummed the tune of the gavotte they’d danced, clutching a pillow she should be embroidering. Ned was everywhere in her mind. She flushed with the memory of his most recent stolen kiss. And in the queen’s own jewel closet!

  Yesterday, she’d passed the guards and walked into the closet to retrieve a brooch for Her Majesty. She’d expected to find the jewel room empty, but found Ned instead. “What are you—”

  “My lady Grey, I am doing what any man in love would do.” He’d spoken formally, bowing, his brown eyes shining with warmth that did little to reduce her anxiety.

  “Not in this court, my lord,” she whispered. “Are you run mad? This will reach the queen before I return to her apartments.”

  “I have bribed the guards.”

  “They are not loyal to you. If they do not tell the queen, they will tell it in the postern guardhouse tonight and—”

  “—and they will not receive the second and larger part of their bribe.”

  He stepped closer to her.

  “Do you always think of everything?”

  He reached for her. “No, I have not always been such a seer. For long years, I thought I’d lost you, seeking you in other women and never finding you. But, Kate . . .” He swallowed compulsively twice. “I had to see if you yet thought of me in the same way as—”

  “—two nights ago at Jane’s supper, when you kissed a queen’s lady without permission while escorting her to her room?” she said, in a futile attempt to sound severe. “Or this morning in the stables?” she added quietly. “Or yesterday, in the garden maze?”

  “I cannot resist a yew hedge.”

  She closed her eyes, remembering him as a boy on the brink of manhood, but with a man’s needs already upon him. He touched her cheek and she opened her eyes to find his face very close.

  “Kate, I always find it surer to kiss first in hopes of permission for another.” His humor faded suddenly to anguish. “We should not play at such love games, Kate. I’m too far gone for such.”

  He had come so close his breath brushed her cheek when he withdrew the womanly miniature of her that he carried in his doublet. “Kate, please, a lock of your hair.” He tapped on the back of the portrait locket and it sprang open.

  She pretended alarm, teasing him. “So you can take the lock to a necromancer and have me bewitched?”

  His arms had wrapped tight about her. “Turn and turn about. I am completely under your spell.”

  She felt safe in his strong arms, safe to do as she wanted and not always to do as she was bidden. His hands had slid to her buttocks and pulled her into him. She wanted to go farther . . . such a short distance . . . and close the last gap. Although she was near to losing any resistance, fear told her to back away from him. “How can I believe a lord who is so easily bewitched by a small portrait?” she asked, trying to speak lightly.

  Edward had dropped his hands and stepped back, his brows drawn together in hurt by her mistrust. “You think all I see is your beauty?”

  “What other?” She could not stay her curiosity.

  He raised the miniature, looking into it . . . inside it. “I saw utter loneliness and yet compassion. I saw a longing for gentleness and laughter, a true laughter not prompted by any command. I see the girl of long ago who wanted to fly free.”

  She drew nearer to him. “You saw all that in my face?”

  “That and more, or I would not have come to you. I see all those things now, or I would not remain here.”

  “Ned, you are mad.” Standing on her toes, she kissed him.

  “Most mad.” He’d grinned, and, withdrawing his jeweled dagger, he’d cut a small reddish blond curl that had escaped her hood.

  The lap of water against the barge pulled Kate back to the moment, and she looked about the cabin for fear that someone would see her trembling with the memory of his body pressed against hers. The other ladies, even the observant Lady Saintloe, were busy with their embroidery, occupied as Kate should be, yet this morning she could not force her fingers to their task.

  She sought the warmth of the memory of his kiss again and again, wondering at the need for her body to repeat the heat of it, linger over it, and amazed that she could call up the stir of what she’d felt in the candled shadows of the queen’s jewel closet. It had been the same for years after they’d been forced apart by their fathers. Was this to be her life, all lived in remembrance?

  “Her Majesty requires your presence, my lady.” A gentleman usher spoke loudly in front of Kate.

  She was aware from the heavy emphasis on each word that they were being repeated, and now she must hurry. Could Elizabeth see through the barge walls and read a maid’s mind? She couldn’t smile at such a witchy thought. The quee
n was not in any part a fool, and surely she and Ned would give themselves away to her. Although Elizabeth had said nothing to Kate about denying Ned’s earlier petition to court her, this queen did not forget.

  Ned was a strong man in a court that feared strong men. Every man was less than the queen here, a queen who was more than a woman. One forgot that at the peril of one’s head. She must warn him again to have exceeding care, and heed that warning herself.

  Kate stepped out onto the gilded, painted deck strewn with herbs and boughs, the many oars splashing in rhythm. “Yes, Your Majesty,” she said, drawing her cloak closer against the river air.

  The queen looked young and excited, happy to be on the move, her light complexion dewy and glowing from the river mist. She had removed her hood, her hair a red-gold cloud about her shoulders. “My lady Katherine, we wish you to read to us.” The queen pointed to Plutarch’s Lives that she’d just translated from the Greek into Latin into English, weeks of enjoyable winter evenings for the queen.

  “Of course, Your Grace.” Kate opened the English translation slowly, thankful she would not have to test her Latin before Elizabeth. Her pious sister, Jane, had been the scholar.

  As she began to read, the barge sailed around a bend in the river and into an explosion, a puff of smoke rising from the bank. An oarsman screamed and fell from his bench to the deck, bleeding and clutching at the splintered bone in his arm.

  “Assassin!” As the cry was out of her mouth, Kate moved to shield the queen, only to be shoved aside by the sergeant of her guard, his sword drawn.

  “To arms!” The cry went up from every throat.

  Ned! Was he in danger? In the whirl of action on deck, Kate gripped the railing and saw both Dudley and Edward leap from their horses on the riverbank into the cold water and wade toward a fowler’s boat in the reedy shallows. They grabbed the man’s fowling piece and dragged him roughly from his boat to the shore.

  Although the sergeant begged the queen not to pull to shore in case rebellion lurked there, the queen laughed. “Pish! A queen of England does not cower before her fowlers.” She added prudently, “But we have a care for our servants, so bring the wretch here. And bring our two wet lords, who have saved our life.” A boat set out immediately.

  But Kate saw that Ned had not waited. He was swimming strongly for the barge.

  The queen stood and went to the wounded oarsman, kneeling beside him, careless of her gown and person as he groaned on the deck in a startling amount of blood. “Come, good fellows,” she commanded the cringing oarsmen, who seemed to be without wits, “bandage and tend this brave man who took a bullet into his own body for his sovereign. We will have our royal physician tend him when we arrive at Richmond, and he shall have a pension of a hundred . . . of fifty a year.” She made comforting sounds to the oarsman, whose pain seemed somewhat relieved by his queen’s words, then stood and returned to her pavilion with the cheers of her rowers resounding on both sides.

  Kate knew Ned would arrive momentarily, but she couldn’t help watching Elizabeth, guessing that the tale of kindness to her wounded servant would be told and retold in London, adding to the adoration of her. Kate believed that the queen, without thought of popularity, had truly meant to comfort the man, though she would not overprotest the good results to her reputation.

  Ned pulled himself up over the rail, water sluicing from him, as the queen returned to her throne under the canopy. He spoke to Elizabeth, but he was looking at Kate with relief. “Thank God you are safe, Majesty.”

  Kate, her eyes wide with warning, went immediately to Elizabeth’s side.

  “Quite safe, my lord,” the queen replied sharply.

  A set of dripping wet hose came over the side, and Robert Dudley followed. “Bess?” His worried gaze swept her and observed the bloodied rower. “Jesu be praised,” he said, and hauled a terrified fowler, like a large bag of grain, up and over the rail, throwing him prostrate on the deck before Elizabeth. The fowler pressed his cheek against the wood, and Kate could see him wishing to plunge through the deck to the better death of drowning. He knew very well what he faced for endangering the queen.

  “Up on your knees,” the queen commanded. “Look at your sovereign!”

  The man, whose stained leather jerkin pointed to a morning ill spent over a wine flask, opened and shut his mouth like a giant gawping fish.

  “Did you mean to kill your queen?” Elizabeth asked sternly.

  The fowler, still struck dumb, could only shake his head and make gargling noises.

  “You have endangered our person, master fowler, which is treason under England’s law.”

  Robert Dudley picked up the limp man by the clothes on his back. “The penalty is death, rogue.”

  At last the fowler found his voice. “Nay! Yer Majesty, I be never bringin’ harm to ye. As I hope for heaven, ’tis God’s whole truth.”

  Ned yelled to make even Kate jump: “You shot at the queen’s barge!”

  “Nay, not so, good lord. The gun fired—” More gargling noises.

  The queen raised a hand. “Hold, my lord of Hertford. The man is beyond his tongue with fright.” She leaned forward. “You were hunting our swans, Master Fowler.” It wasn’t a question. This queen knew.

  He hung his head. “Aye, Yer Majesty.”

  Lord Dudley frowned. “Your Grace, he deserves a traitor’s death for his carelessness alone.”

  The queen laughed aloud, showing no fright, nor had she ever. “If we were to hang all our careless people, we would have no tree limbs vacant in our realm. We will show mercy. Fine him his boat and fowling piece and give him a time in Bridewell Prison to regret his desire to take my swans and sell their feathers. We think, then, in future he will not be so good a patron of his wine merchant.” She laughed and waved the stumbling fowler away into the sergeant’s custody. Surely he would count his great good fortune for the rest of his days.

  Kate admired the queen’s forbearing humor. Her father would have had the man racked all night and hanged for a traitor the very next morning at Tyburn, cut down alive, drawn and quartered, his last tortured sight that of his own entrails roasting on a brazier.

  Ned carefully avoided looking in Kate’s direction, and she turned from him. As he was going over the rail, back to his escort duty, they both looked away at the same time in the same direction and she saw him suppress a grin. How could they avoid all contact under Elizabeth’s gaze when they were both serving her? How long could a lady sworn to her service hide what she felt at every sight of a man? Kate sensed she was trapped like a bear at a baiting, tied on a short lead to a stake while a pack of dangerous mastiffs circled.

  Soon enough, to Kate’s relief, they rounded another curve in the river and saw the magical, faerie-wrought, onion-domed and crenellated towers and cupolas of Richmond immediately ahead. Kate had been there many times, but the beauty of this palace always thrilled her. Rich water meadows, green and teeming with heron, surrounded the brick-and-stone mass—a most perfect place to be in a new spring, far from the plagues and odors of London. She knew that its gardens and enclosed walks offered cover for lovers, and she shivered with imagination more than the chill air surrounding the great fountain in the entry quadrangle.

  Elizabeth was welcomed as they walked through the high stone entrance in the curtain wall. The first wagons were already being unloaded.

  “Majesty,” the palace chamberlain said, kneeling with all the household, the carver, cup bearer, porters and chaplains behind him. “While your apartments are readied, your privy kitchen has laid a dinner in the great hall.”

  “We thank you for this welcome, but we will first to our chapel, and take our meal in our chambers later. An eventful trip, Master Chamberlain, our life saved by the hand of almighty God. It is our Lord in heaven who must be shown our gratitude first.”

  As Elizabeth went in procession to her chapel to praise God for protecting her from the fools in her kingdom, Kate, with the other ladies, rushed away to see that the
queen’s apartment furnishings were arranged exactly as they had been at Whitehall.

  The Earl of Hertford dismounted just inside the curtain wall, amidst ordered chaos. The Lord Steward directed porters to unpack wagons, grooms struggled with all manner of chests in every direction and stable boys led sweating horses away. “Mind you, boy, walk him out, rub him down well with straw and hold the cold water. And,” Edward added as the boy took the reins, “only water from the cistern house, not water from the river flowing under the main jakes.”

  Dudley tossed the boy his reins, slapping his horse on the rump. “My horse will have the same and the best stall. Tell the stable master that I’ll be down to see to the queen’s mounts as soon as I have eaten and changed clothes.”

  Edward dismissed Dudley’s high-handed behavior. It was a typical test to Edward’s greater rank, but he wouldn’t be provoked, not today. He needed Dudley’s influence with the queen, and soon. He did not know how long he could force himself to honor Kate’s virginity. Their last kisses in the jewel closet had told him that and more; they had shown him her willingness. “My lord, I would have urgent speech with you on a private matter.”

  Dudley looked interested, but Edward thought it a shrewd interest. “Come to my apartment with me and we will talk privately while I change. I must attend the queen after chapel and see that she wants for nothing. Like her father before her, Bess does not tolerate waiting.”

  Edward followed Robert into a large brick building off an inner garden courtyard and down a labyrinth of halls barely passable amidst a flood of goods moving toward the queen’s apartments.

  When they were inside Lord Robert’s rooms, Edward waited for Dudley’s servant to bring fresh clothing and then he could wait no longer. “I must have your help, Robert.”

  Dudley put up a hand to stop further speech until he had dismissed his servant and the door was shut behind him. “If this is about Lady Katherine Grey, I beg you to go no further.”