“The queen must have had her child,” one of Mary’s women exclaimed. “God be praised.”
Elizabeth quietly put aside her breakfast and returned to her bed. The bells continued to ring but then quite suddenly faded away.
“It was a mistake,” I passed the news to Elizabeth later that day. It had not been difficult to discover the information—the palace halls were full of the tale. “Some poor soul thought the queen had borne her child, a boy. They were so ready to believe it that the churches were ordered to ring their bells.”
“Oh, poor sister,” Elizabeth exclaimed, with a hint of genuine pity. “A cruel humiliation.”
The pity was only a hint, however. Bishop Gardiner had visited Elizabeth during these first weeks and attempted to badger her into admitting her guilt in Wyatt’s conspiracy. Elizabeth stubbornly insisted on speaking only to her sister and would admit nothing.
Gardiner, aged, stubborn, and fire-eyed, and Elizabeth, young and just as stubborn, had faced each other, neither of them with any remorse. Watching them, I worried we’d spend another year at cold, dreary Woodstock.
A few nights after we’d heard the bells, I was aroused from bed by a frightened maidservant. Wide eyes regarded me in terror over a single candle flame.
“Her Grace sends for you, miss. She is to go to the queen—now, in secret. I fear this is the last we’ll ever see of Her Grace, miss.”
I struggled to climb out of bed and dress myself, my fears mounting alongside the maid’s. Would Mary have Elizabeth murdered, here in the queen’s own house?
She might, I thought darkly. Elizabeth had arrived at Hampton Court with no announcement or pageantry, brought inside through the back gates at night. I doubted the populace at large even knew she was here.
I reached Elizabeth’s chamber and found her waiting impatiently, already dressed, with a heavy velvet cloak over her gown. A gentleman of Mary’s household stood with her, his lantern throwing a circle of warm light through the gloom.
“This is your waiting woman?” the gentleman asked abruptly.
Elizabeth sent him an irritated look, both for his impertinence and his ignorance. “She is. My sister knows of her. Shall we go, and not tease the queen’s patience?”
Elizabeth was as poised as ever, but when I went to her, she gripped my arm with panicked fingers. “Do not leave my side,” she whispered as we followed our guide out of the chamber. “I fear what this night may bring.”
The gentleman with the lantern hustled us down a staircase, out through a dark garden scented with flowers that had closed their petals for the night, and back into the palace via a door on the garden’s far side.
I had always disliked Hampton Court, which had been seized by Elizabeth’s father from the unfortunate Cardinal Wolsey. Wolsey had recklessly flaunted his beautiful manor, more sumptuous than anything Henry owned. His punishment had been the forfeiture of his house, and his life.
Henry had remodeled Hampton Court to woo Anne Boleyn. He’d ordered the intertwined initials HA to be carved on the dark wooden moldings that decorated the halls, passageways, and royal chambers.
After Anne’s downfall, workmen had hastily chiseled away the initials so that Henry could bring Jane Seymour to live here, but the work had been done so quickly that several carvings had been missed. Here and there, a lone HA remained high in the wall, a reminder of royal fickleness.
People heard ghosts at Hampton Court—the echoed screams of Catherine Howard in one gallery, a strange cold figure glimpsed stalking through another.
I had no idea if this gloomy atmosphere upset Elizabeth as we climbed the staircase to the queen’s privy chamber. She darted nervous glances toward the shadowy corners, as though expecting assassins to spring from them, and kept tight hold of me. Whether my presence reassured her, or whether she planned to thrust my body between herself and an assassin’s knife, I could not tell.
We reached the queen’s chambers without mishap and were admitted at the knock of the gentleman who’d brought us here.
Mary’s chamber was deserted except for one lady attending her—Susan Clarencieux, I recognized her as. Mary reposed in a chair near a dark window, a tapestry-draped screen behind her chair to cut the draft. Her stomach was somewhat distended under her loose gown, though not as much as I would have thought for a woman eight or nine months with child.
Mary had aged since I’d last seen her. Her cheeks were heavier, and the lines about her mouth had deepened. Her eyes showed satisfaction that she’d restored her religion to these shores at last, as well as frustration that all was still not as it should be.
With a swollen, beringed hand, Mary motioned Elizabeth to her. Susan, a stern-faced woman with iron-gray hair, detached herself from Mary to stand by me, the two of us giving the sisters a moment of privacy. Our escort disappeared from the room in evident relief, his task done.
Elizabeth knelt before Mary and bowed her head, kissing the coronation ring held out to her. Candlelight touched Elizabeth’s unbound hair, deepening its red hue.
Mary regarded Elizabeth with a sour frown. “You believe then, do you, that I wrongfully punished you?” Her deep voice rolled through the room. “Your letter to me implied as much.”
Elizabeth’s head moved slightly, but she kept it piously bowed. “I may not say so, not to Your Grace.”
“You say it, I believe, to others.”
Elizabeth remained in her posture of supplication. “I have never been, with one word or deed, unfaithful to Your Grace. I promise you that I have always been—will always be—your truest subject.”
Her beseeching words could have melted the iciest heart, but Mary’s face remained like stone. “I have heard of your behavior from Master Bedingfield, in tedious detail. Your conduct is not that of a prisoner, he tells me. You did not accept your punishment as you ought.”
