He flushes at the snub. ‘And after your marriage to the king? Master Culpeper was a regular visitor to your rooms?’
‘Of course,’ she says grandly. ‘The king visits me every day. His companions come too.’
‘And during the progress...?’
I drop my hand to her shoulder. She feels like carved stone; she is stiff with fear. There is no way to tell her that nobody knows anything – they cannot know anything. If they knew about Lincoln and Pontefract and York, they would have sent a black barge from the Tower. This is an arrow shot into darkness by an archer of the second rank.
‘What?’ she shrieks. She leaps from the chair before I can stop her and stands before him, a diminutive beauty, puffed up like an angry goldfinch. ‘What?’ she demands.
‘You locked your door,’ he stammers.
As if I can see the privy council inquiry papers in my inner eye, I imagine Anthony Denny’s carefully worded submission: that he tapped on the door of the queen’s bedroom, and I told him that she was asleep, and he went away again.
‘Of course we did!’ I interrupt. ‘In strange houses? In the north of the kingdom? We locked it every night.’
‘At York?’ he remarks.
I know from this that the council has not spoken to our chamberers or maids-of-honour. Lucy Luffkyn has not told that she tried the locked door at Pontefract with an armful of clean linen and was scolded.
‘Of course,’ I repeat. ‘Do you not remember the confusion? The border lords? The pilgrims seeking pardon?’
‘But when Anthony Denny came to announce the king’s coming, the door was locked against him and the lights were out...’ he says.
‘He never told me!’ Kitty counters.
‘No, Your Majesty, you were asleep,’ I tell her. ‘I answered the knock and he told me to let you sleep.’
Kitty turns to Sir Thomas, her eyebrows raised. She lets the silence hang.
‘Very well,’ he says and bows low and goes from the room.
The door closes, we hear the sound of his riding boots on the stone pavers as he retreats.
Kitty falls into my arms and I hug her. ‘And that’s all he’s got,’ I say triumphantly. ‘You did that beautifully. Just right. They’ve got nothing on Culpeper. They’ve got nothing more than that one night when Denny came to your door. Never confess anything. Never say anything about Thomas. They have no evidence. You did very well – but if they come back, and I cannot be with you, never say a word.’
‘Nor you,’ her joy at besting Wriothesley dies away. Her eyes darken with fear and her face pales. ‘Nor you, Jane. Swear you will never say anything. Swear on your life that wild horses won’t drag it from you.’
Even in our danger, I laugh at the exaggerated language of children’s tales. ‘My dear, “wild horses” have nothing to do with it. But I swear. We will never admit to anything, and Thomas won’t either. We are safe.’
We spend the rest of the morning with one of the maids reading from the great Bible while we sew shirts for the poor. Kitty’s needlework has been as neglected as her scholarly education, and the shirt she is hemming will have to be laundered before it is given to an almsman – it is stained with her blood from pinpricks. I am at peace; I have no objection to sitting here sewing. I think we have won and are certain to be released from the rooms tomorrow. The king will come back and command that no one is to ever speak of this time – his terrible ordeal – and it will be as if it never was.
Sir Edward Baynton is announced before dinner, and I glance at Kitty’s sister Isabel and see from her guilty expression that this was planned, that she knew her husband was coming. I will get hold of her before dinner and remind her of where their interest lies: withKitty, not with the old lords who have failed in their conspiracy against her.
‘Your Grace, your household is to move in a few days,’ he says, bowing.
Kitty’s face lights up. ‘Are we going to Whitehall to join the king?’
‘No,’ he says steadily, with the air of a man getting through a speech he has rehearsed. ‘Your Grace is to go to Syon Abbey, and there is no room at the abbey for all your ladies. You are to take my lady wife, your sister Isabel, and three other ladies-in-waiting.’
‘I don’t want to go to Syon,’ Kitty says, like a disappointed child. ‘I don’t want to go there.’
Syon Abbey seems to have become the resort for royal ladies under a cloud. It’s where Lady Margaret Douglas was sent when she was in disgrace; it signals the king’s disapproval – but not condemnation. It is a discreet place for a punitive visit – but not a prison for interrogation. Royal ladies are detained – but not under arrest. Lady Margaret Douglas came back to court from Syon Abbey without a mark on her reputation. They must be pursuing a signed denial of the precontract and not simply forgetting all about it if they send us to wait at Syon.
‘It is His Majesty’s will,’ Sir Edward says heavily. I can almost see him cranking open the doors of a heavy and obvious trap. ‘Are you refusing to obey your husband?’
‘Of course not.’ She slips into a pretty curtsey at the mention of his name. ‘Please tell His Majesty that whatever he wishes, I will do, of course, and that I will not know an hour of happiness until I see him again.’
Sir Edward’s disappointment at his inability to entrap his own sister-in-law is embarrassingly evident to everyone, including his quicker-witted wife.
