The King's Curse Read online

  It is not till the court goes to breakfast that I can walk beside Montague and appear to be talking quietly together, a mother and her son. “What’s Tommy Howard done?”

  “He’s seduced the Scottish queen’s daughter, your former ward: Lady Margaret Douglas. They married in secret at Easter.”

  “Lady Margaret!” I exclaim. I have rarely seen her since she left my charge to serve Anne Boleyn. For a moment all I can feel is relief that the princess is not threatened by fresh trouble, but then I think of the pretty girl who was in my keeping, but lost at court. “She would never have done anything which did not befit a princess,” I say fiercely. “She was our princess’s lady-in-waiting, and she is the daughter of Margaret Tudor. Don’t tell me that she has made a secret marriage to a commoner without permission!”

  “I do tell you that,” Montague says flatly.

  “Married to Tom Howard? In secret? How did the king find out?”

  “Everyone is saying that the duke told him. Would Norfolk betray his own half brother?”

  “Yes,” I say instantly. “Because he can’t risk having the king think that there was a plot to marry another royal heir into the Howard family. He’s got Henry Fitzroy in his family already; what does it look like if the family traps another Tudor heir?”

  “To the king, it looks like they are readying to usurp the throne,” Montague says grimly.

  “Better for us that he suspects the Howards than Plantagenets,” I remark. “But what’s going to happen to Lady Margaret? Is the king very angry?”

  “He’s furious. Worse than I would have expected. And angry with Henry Fitzroy’s wife, Mary Howard, who helped them to meet.”

  “How could they be so foolish?” I shake my head. “Lady Margaret knows that anyone courting her is putting himself close to the throne. These days, nobody knows how close. If Princess Elizabeth is declared a bastard and Princess Mary is not restored, then Lady Margaret is third in line for the throne, after her mother and brother.”

  “She knows it now,” Montague says. “The king says that the Duke of Norfolk has put traitorous division into the realm.”

  “He used the word traitor?”

  “He did.”

  “But wait,” I say. “Wait, Montague, let me think.” I take a few steps away from him, and then I come back. “Think for a moment. Why didn’t the Duke of Norfolk snap her up? As you say, if the king denies the princesses then Lady Margaret is in line for the throne. Why didn’t Norfolk take advantage of this secret marriage to get the heir to the throne into his family? Why didn’t he encourage it and keep it secret?”

  Montague is about to answer as I lay out the plot for him. “Norfolk must be absolutely certain that the king is going to name Henry Fitzroy as his heir—and so make Mary Howard his daughter as Queen of England. Otherwise, he’d have supported the marriage and kept it secret as another useful royal connection.”

  “Dangerous words,” Montague says so quietly that I can hardly hear him.

  “Norfolk would never have betrayed his brother for anything less than a better chance at the throne—his daughter, married to the king’s heir,” I breathe. “Norfolk would be looking for the greatest opportunity for himself and his family. He knows that is not Lady Margaret. He must be absolutely sure that Henry Fitzroy will be named as heir.”

  “And so?” Montague says. “What does this mean for us?”

  I can feel myself grow cold as I realize. “It means that you are right and we must get the princess out of the country,” I say. “The king is never going to restore her. And she stands in his way. She is in danger if she stands in his way. Anyone who obstructs him is always in danger.”

  I am with the young Queen Jane in her presence chamber, waiting demurely beside her throne as hundreds of people make their bow to her and ask for one favor or another. Jane looks rather blank at this sudden explosion of interest in her health and well-being. Everyone offers a small gift that she takes and then hands to one of her ladies, who puts it on a table behind her. Every now and then she glances at me, to see that I am watching and approving the conduct of her ladies and the decorum of her room. Gently, I nod. Despite the expenses of the princess’s household I am still the wealthiest woman at court in my own right, with the greatest title in my own right, and by far the oldest. I am sixty-two years old and Jane is the sixth queen whom I have seen on this throne. She is right to glance at me with her shy pale blue gaze and confirm that she is doing everything correctly.

  She has started her reign with a terrible error. Lady Margaret Douglas should never have been allowed to meet in secret with Tom Howard. Mary Howard, the young duchess married to Henry Fitzroy, should never have been allowed to encourage them. Queen Jane, stepping up to a throne which was still warm from the frightened sweat of the last incumbent, dazzled by her own rise, did not watch the behavior of her new court, did not know what was happening. But now Tom is in the Tower charged with treason and Lady Margaret is confined to her rooms and the king is furious with everyone.

  “No, she’s arrested, she’s in the Tower too,” Jane Boleyn tells me cheerfully.

  I feel the familiar plummet of my heart at the thought of the Tower. “Lady Margaret? On what charge?”

  “Treason.”

  That word, from Jane Boleyn, is like a sentence of death.

  “How can she be charged with treason when all she did was marry a young man for love?” I ask reasonably. “Folly, yes. Disobedience, yes. And of course the king is offended. Rightly so. But how is it treason?”

  Jane Boleyn lowers her eyes. “It’s treason if the king says it is so,” she states. “And he says they are guilty. And the punishment is death.”

  I am badly shaken. If the king can accuse his beloved niece of treason and put her in the Tower under a sentence of death, he can certainly charge his daughter too. Especially when he calls her his bastard daughter and sends his worst men to threaten her with violence. I am going to the king’s rooms to confer with Montague when I hear the tramp of soldiers’ feet behind me.

  For a moment I think I will faint with fear, and I flinch back against the wall and feel the cold stone, cold as a cell in the Tower, against my back. I wait, my heart pounding as they go by, two dozen yeomen of the guard in the bright Tudor livery, marching in step through the corridors of Greenwich Palace heading to the king’s presence chamber.

  As soon as they are past me, I am afraid for Montague. I breathe: “My son,” and I go quickly behind the soldiers as they tramp up the stairs to the king’s rooms where the great door to the presence chamber swings open and they go in, two abreast, menacingly strong.

  The room is crowded but the king is not there. The throne is empty; he is inside, in his privy chamber, the door closed on his court. He will not witness the arrest. If there are cries and weeping, he will not be disturbed. As I look round the busy room, I see with relief that Montague is not here either; he is probably inside with the king.

  The soldiers are not here for my son. Instead, the officer walks confidently to Sir Anthony Browne, the king’s favorite, his trusted Master of Horse, and asks him, politely enough, to come with them. Anthony gets to his feet from where he has been lounging at the window, smiles like the courtier he is, and asks negligently: “Why, whatever is the charge?”

  “Treason,” comes the quiet reply, and everyone who is near to Anthony seems to melt away.

  The officer looks around a court that is suddenly stunned into shocked silence. “Sir Francis Bryan!” he calls.

  “Here,” Sir Francis says. He steps forward, and the men he was with slide back, as if they do not know him now, as if they have never known him. He smiles, his black eye patch looking blindly around the court and seeing no friends. “How may I be of service to you, Officer? Do you need my assistance?”

  “You may come with me,” the officer says with a sort of grim humor. “For you are under arrest also.”

  “I?” Francis Bryan says, cousin to this queen, cousin to the former quee