Chapter Six #2
Still, he said it more bluntly than William had expected. “Your Majesty, you must send Mistress Wyatt away.”
“Must?” William could not keep the flash of anger out of that word, although he knew it made him sound like a petulant child.
With effort, he managed to repress the other hasty words that sprang to mind. Instead, he continued, “You oversee my government, Lord Rochford, not my court. Keep to administration and leave personal matters to me.”
“There are no personal matters where kings are concerned. Particularly not a king’s marriage.”
“The council approved my betrothal to Elisabeth de France.” William bent over and snapped off several tulips in particularly pleasing shades of cream and pink. They would look very well in Minuette’s hands.
“Your betrothal is why we are preparing to receive French envoys in ten days’ time.
They will be here for a month, including Elisabeth de France’s uncle, and they must go back to Henri convinced of your intent in this matter.
You cannot hope to have Mistress Wyatt at your side every moment of every day without causing insult to the French.
Even if she were no more than your mistress—”
“If?”
Rochford regarded him coolly. “Have you forgotten I once served your father? I know the look of the Tudors when they are still anticipating their desires. You’ve not had the girl yet. And she’s shrewd enough to make certain you don’t until she has what she wants.”
“As shrewd as my mother, then.”
“We are not discussing your mother.”
“Aren’t we? How many people lined up to say precisely the same things to my father? If he had listened to them, you would be nothing more than a country gentleman of limited means.”
“And you would never have been born.” Rochford waved his hand in an impatient gesture.
“That is not the point. As your chancellor, I see to England’s interests.
Your position is not as secure as you would like, Your Majesty.
That is why I support Elisabeth de France.
In spite of my distaste for the Papists, a Catholic father-in-law will be a useful tie.
With any luck, useful enough to keep plotting to a minimum. ”
“You overestimate the appeal of the plotters. I’m popular with my people. And no one seriously wants a woman ruling England.”
“You are popular,” Rochford agreed in a more measured tone. “You might be able to pull it off. But not without splitting the nobility of England right down the center. The rifts your father created are still echoing. You are meant to close those rifts, not widen them.”
“I will be patient and careful, Uncle. I will do nothing in haste that might injure our security. But,” William added, “my marriage will be, in the end, my own choice.”
“Unless you are prepared to break the treaty at once and lose what you have gained, I would advise that, for the duration of the envoys’ visit, you give no cause for discontent. If you will not send Mistress Wyatt away, at least make her presence less prominent.”
William turned his back on Rochford and tossed away the tulips—he had crushed the stems in his displeasure. “I’ll consider it.”
All through the endless afternoon of meetings and audiences that followed, William did consider it.
He was skilled at listening with half his attention and even replied sensibly when necessary, while the rest of his mind churned over the conversation with his uncle.
Rochford had been wise enough to disengage for the moment, but William was under no illusions that this was the end of it. They would fight this battle again.
When the last applicant for position had bowed humbly away, William returned to the privy garden and walked alone among the bravest of the spring flowers.
It had rained since this morning: the ground was damp, but the sky was beginning to clear and the newness of the air eased a little of his tension.
His uncle was right. He’d known it from the moment Rochford had given his measured advice. England could not afford to break with France yet, not with the treasury depleted, the last harvests poor, and the Catholics held at bay by promises and hopes.
On the other hand, William had just spent two weeks without Minuette at court and had not liked it at all. He would not send her away, so he would simply have to grit his teeth and be as publicly indifferent to her as possible while the French were here.
It won’t kill me not to touch her, he decided, as long as I can still look at her.
Two days after Dominic’s investiture as Duke of Exeter, Minuette went walking with her stepfather along the river gardens at Richmond as the noon sun peeked through the clouds with a fickle promise of warmth.
Fidelis accompanied her, as he nearly always did these days.
Large dogs were required to remain in the stable precincts at court, but William had made an exception for Fidelis.
She liked that the enormous hound gave her a measure of gravity, and it meant that few approached her rashly.
Stephen Howard shook his head when he saw them together.
“Are you certain he’s not a hellhound?” he asked. “He’s looking at me quite suspiciously.”
“Intelligent dog.”
He sighed. “Must we always spar when we meet, daughter?”
“I am not your daughter.”
“Temper, temper … do you really want to risk me leaving court without telling you what I’ve learned?”
Since this kind of sparring could go on for hours, Minuette surrendered. “Very well. What have you learned?”
“Precious little. Every trail seems to wander into mist as soon as it’s looked at twice. For instance, I have a correspondent on the Continent who claims that the Spanish navy never set sail for England last autumn.”
“But Lord Rochford said—”
“Rochford has his intelligence and I have mine. Who is to say whose is correct? It may be that his agents wanted him to believe the navy was on the move.”
“Or your agents want you to believe that it wasn’t,” she retorted. “How is one supposed to divine fact from all this?”
He nodded. “Good girl. You have learned the first rule of politics—there is no fact, only interpretation. And that depends entirely on who is doing the interpreting.”
“Well, you and I know the Penitent’s Confession was a slanderous fraud. That is fact. And Alyce de Clare’s death is another fact.”
Howard shook his head. “I wonder, Minuette: if Alyce de Clare had been merely a nameless lady-in-waiting, if she had not been your friend, would you still be so eager to make inquiries? You will make yourself sick caring so much about others. Her family seems content to let it lie—why not you?”
Minuette told the truth with perhaps more force than necessary. “Precisely because her family—and everyone else—is content to let it lie. I failed to help Alyce when I might have. All I can offer her now is the truth.”
Howard shook his head. “You are stubborn and self-righteous, rarely an attractive combination.”
“Then why are you helping me?”
He paused along the path to look out at the Thames, and Minuette instinctively held her tongue as he considered. Finally, he said, “Do you know when it was I fell in love with your mother?”
“No.”
“I first saw her at court in 1528. She was attending Anne at the time, just twenty-one and the loveliest, merriest girl I’d ever seen. Like most men, I suppose, I appreciated her and thought she would be pleasant in … well, you can imagine the thoughts of a man dutifully but not lovingly married.”
“Is this supposed to make me think better of you?” Minuette asked caustically. The last thing she needed was to hear her stepfather wax poetic on her mother’s physical charms.
Howard smiled wickedly in a manner that reminded her of William at his most mischievous. “Don’t fear, our private encounters will remain locked in my memory. But the thing is, that’s not when I loved her.”
“Is there a point to this?” It seemed unfair to Minuette that her stepfather should be alive to talk about his love for her mother when she would never be able to hear her own father do the same.
“The point is, Minuette, that the day I fell in love with your mother was not the day I first fantasized about her but rather the day on which she cursed me soundly for being rude to a serving maid. The girl had spilled something on me—Wine? Fish sauce? I honestly can’t remember—but I told the chit off with more cruelty than was warranted and your mother overheard.
I will never forget Marie’s fierceness in defending someone who was not in a position to defend herself.
An instinct she most clearly bequeathed to you. ”
With a pensive sigh, as though relinquishing a moment he wished he could hold onto, Howard turned away from the river.
He addressed Minuette briskly. “And that is why I am helping you. Yes, Alyce de Clare’s mysterious death while engaged in spying on Queen Anne is definitely a fact.
As is her pregnancy at the time of her death.
As you have pointed out, Alyce did not get herself with child.
I am working on that list of men you gave me, but people’s memories are hard to pin down two years after the fact, especially when I cannot tell them why I am asking.
That is not to say I do not have ideas, but I will be specific only when I have something more solid than supposition to offer. ”
“Thank you.”
“May I ask you something?”
Warily, she nodded.
“Does anyone else know of your continuing queries into Alyce de Clare’s death?”
“Yes, of course. Princess Elizabeth has been most helpful to me.” No need to specify that her help had included securing something so outlandish as a star chart from John Dee.
“But not the king or his newest duke?”
“Do you mean Dominic? They are both of them far too busy with other matters. I will not bother them until I have something more solid than supposition to offer.”