Thomasina, the queen’s dwarf, follows them and makes a comical little face at me, as if to ask me where I have been. I completely ignore her. She has no right to express any curiosity about me. I don’t have to answer to her, and if she prompts an inquiry from the queen, then I will find her afterwards and tell her to mind her own tiny business.
“Lady Mary,” Elizabeth says with an unpleasant tone. I cannot think what I have done to offend her, but she is clearly displeased. “Are you honoring me with your attendance at my dressing for dinner tonight?”
I can feel Robert Dudley’s reassuring smile rather than see it. I dare not look directly anywhere but into Elizabeth’s sparkling dark eyes. “Of course, Your Majesty,” I say meekly. “And the honor is mine.”
“Remember it then,” she says nastily, and sweeps past me. I curtsey, and when I raise my head, I catch a quick sympathetic smile from Robert Dudley and a cheeky wink from Thomasina. He follows in the queen’s wake. She lingers.
“Someone’s writing a book about your sister,” she informs me. “That’s why she’s so furious with you. She’s just heard about it. Apparently, it’s going to say that your sister will be the next Queen of England. You will be sister to the queen and aunt to the next king. Fancy a dwarf just like me so close to the throne.”
“I’m nothing like you,” I say coldly.
“Oh, do you think you will be taller with a great crown on your sister’s head?” she asks, smiling. “Will her elevation make you grow? Will you rise up higher if she makes you a duchess?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” I turn away, but she catches at the skirt of my gown in her little square-palmed hand, so like my own.
“What is it?” I say crossly. “Let me go. D’you think we’re going to brawl in the yard like page boys?”
“There are some that would pay good money to see it,” she says cheerfully. “But I have always made my living as a miniature lady, never as a merry dwarf.”
“And I have never made my living at all,” I say grandly. “And my height has nothing to do with anything. I’ll thank you to let go of my gown.”
She lets me go, but her impertinent smile never falters. “There is a book indeed, Lady Mary,” she says shortly. “The scholars are putting it together, piece by piece. A page stolen from the chancery to show that your family was named as heir by Henry VIII, evidence of marriage to show that your line is legitimate, proof that all three of you, Lady Jane, Lady Katherine, and you, are English-born, Protestant, and royal.”
“Don’t you speak of Jane,” I say warningly.
“Buried in a coffin as big as a child’s!” she says jeeringly, and I turn on my heel and stride away, but I can hear her pattering after me, and she dodges around me and blocks my way.
“You want to know the rest of this,” she tells me. “Listen, for your own good. The scholars’ reports from France and Spain all name your sister Katherine as the rightful heir. The queen is furious. If it was you commissioned the report, you’d do well to warn your clerks to make themselves scarce. You could tell your uncle to take a trip to France for his health. You’d better keep your head down and stop running off to kiss the sergeant porter.”
I bite off a gasp of shock.
“I see a lot,” she adds quickly. “You know how. Nobody pays any attention to us.”
“And why would you warn me?” I demand. “When you live in her shadow?”
“Because we’re both dwarfs,” she says bluntly. “We are both small women in a very big and dangerous world. We have a sisterhood of shortness, even if you want to deny it. So I say to you—don’t offend her. She’s furious enough with your family as it is.”
She gives me a cheeky little nod of the head, as if to drive the point home, and then she turns and skips across the yard, looking like a little girl running after a teacher, and I see the door to Elizabeth’s privy stair bang behind her.
WINDSOR CASTLE,
SPRING 1564
I serve Elizabeth all through the bitingly cold spring with meticulous courtesy, and though she snaps her fingers at me for her fan, and complains that I scratch her neck when I tie her sapphire necklace, she can find nothing else to say against me.
I never even glance towards Thomasina the dwarf to thank her for the warning, and when a movement in the dance puts us side by side, I change my place if I can. I don’t acknowledge the sisterhood of tiny feet. I don’t subscribe to a stunted sorority. Of course I can recognize my features in Thomasina, in her rolling gait on her short legs, in the constant turn of her face upwards so that she can follow a conversation that is going on far above her head. I guess that her back aches like mine after a long day in the saddle, and that we both hate it when people address us as children, mistaking stature for age or wisdom. But I will never indicate that she and I are of the same mold. There is a coincidence of appearance but that is all. Should Elizabeth claim cousinhood with every redhead? Should Lady Margaret Douglas be sister to a horse? Appearance means nothing compared to breeding. I am all royal and no dwarf; I am all Grey and no pretty toy. I am an heir to the throne of England, and Thomasina is an heir of nothing more important than short bones.
But one evening, in early spring, we go to dinner and I see that William Cecil is absent, which is unusual, and Robert Dudley’s flattery and good humor are a little forced. Elizabeth bristles like a cat that has been caught in a shower of water tossed from a chamber window; everyone can see her irritability. No one but Thomasina the dwarf seems to know who has been so foolish as to cross Elizabeth, and I cannot bring myself to ask her.
When the tables are being cleared, Robert Dudley bends over the queen’s hand and I see her nod to her clerk, who gives him a sheaf of papers. He bows and takes them, and starts to leave the hall. I sidle round, against the walls, unnoticed by anyone as my head disappears behind the high-backed chairs, and I meet him just inside the great doors, and slip out when they are opened for him.
“Lady Mary,” he says, bowing to me. The doors close behind us, hiding us from the view of the court.
“Is there some trouble?” I ask him frankly.
He bends down low so that he can speak quietly to me. “Yes. Someone—I imagine the French ambassador—has put a book in the hands of the queen that supports your sister Lady Katherine’s claim to the throne.”
“Lady Hertford,” I say, giving her married title.
He scowls at me. “Lady Katherine,” he repeats. “This is not the time for you to be asserting a marriage that the queen has ruled is invalid.”
I look into the dark face of the man whose own marriage would have been ruled invalid, if his wife had not been conveniently murdered instead.
“We know the truth,” I say staunchly.
“And the authors have published what they think is their truth,” he replies evenly.
“Didn’t you commission the book?” I demand, knowing that he did.
“No,” he lies. “And those who are associated with it will suffer. The queen has issued a warrant of arrest for your uncle John Grey; for John Hales, the author; for Robert Beale, his clerk; for Edward Seymour’s stepfather, Francis Newdigate. Even for Nicholas Bacon, the lord keeper, who gave his opinion in favor of your sister.”
I go cold with shock. “My uncle arrested? The lord keeper arrested? But what about Katherine?” I clasp my hands on his sleeve. “Oh, Sir Robert! They’re not taking her back to the Tower, are they?”
“No.”
“But where is she to go, if my uncle is taken from his home? Are they leaving her there with Lady Grey? Or is she released? Oh, Sir Robert, is she released?”
“No.” He straightens up. “Lady Mary, I have to leave about Her Majesty’s business. I have to send out guards to arrest these men for questioning.”
I look up the long handsome length of him. “You, arrest them? You, who had nothing to do with the book, now arrest them?”
“Yes,” he says concisely. “As the queen commands me to do.”