The Tudor Secret

Chapter Twenty-eight





“You know,” I whispered. “You have known from the start.”

“Not from the start,” Cecil said, with an air of reprove. “I only heard a rumor years ago, when I was younger than you are now—one of many scandals overheard in passing, like so much at court. I wouldn’t have paid it any mind had it not concerned Henry the Eighth’s beloved younger sister, whom so many knew as the French Queen—that headstrong princess who created an international uproar when she wed Charles of Suffolk, yet whose death at age thirty-seven caused nary a ripple.”

“It was June,” I said. A bone-deep chill enveloped me, as if I would never be warm again.

“Yes, June 1533, to be exact. King Henry had crowned Anne Boleyn in her sixth month of pregnancy, proof that God approved their union and the turmoil they’d wrought on England. Little did they know the child they awaited would be the beginning of Anne’s downfall.”

Cecil paced to the window. He stood staring out into his garden. Silence descended, laden like the pause before the opening of a well-thumbed book. Then he said quietly, “I was thirteen years old, serving as an apprentice clerk—another ambitious lad among hundreds, working my fingers to the quick. I got around; I was nimble and I knew how to keep my ears open and my mouth shut. Thus, I often heard a great deal more than my appearance suggested.”

He smiled faintly. “I was a bit like you, in fact—diligent, well-intentioned, eager to seek my advantage. When I heard the rumor, it struck me as a sign of the times that the king’s own sister had died alone, after months of seclusion in her manor at Westhorpe, allegedly having lived in terror that Anne Boleyn might discover her secret.”

The chill infiltrated my veins. I heard Stokes’s words in my head:

She was mad with fear; she begged her daughter to keep it a secret.…

“What secret?” I said, in a near-inaudible voice.

“That she was with child, of course.” Cecil turned back to me. “You must remember that many actually believed Anne Boleyn had bewitched the king. She was a strong-willed woman, with strong opinions. The common people detested her; so did most of the nobles. She had destroyed Katherine of Aragon, threatened to send Henry’s own daughter Mary to the block. Several of Henry’s oldest friends had fallen into disgrace or lost their heads because of his infatuation with her. Anne Boleyn had staked her entire future on the fact that the king’s first marriage was not valid and he had no legitimate heir. But until she gave him one, his sister’s children were next in line to the throne.”

“And Mary of Suffolk hated Anne Boleyn.…” I heard myself say.

“Indeed. She’d been vocal in her horror over Henry’s break with Rome and remained a staunch ally of Queen Katherine, who, while imprisoned under house arrest, was still very much alive. Mary had already given birth to two sons and two daughters; any living child of hers posed a threat, but one born in those precarious months while Anne awaited hers—well, let us say she had reason to fear Anne’s enmity. It was why she stayed away from court. Or it was the excuse she wanted everyone to believe.”

My hands hung limp at my sides, my dagger pointed at the floor.

“Then she died,” I said, without inflection.

“According to the rumor I heard, she died shortly after giving birth. She’d hidden her pregnancy from everyone, allegedly because she feared Anne would poison her. She was buried in haste, without ceremony. Henry didn’t display much grief; he was too excited about his queen’s impending confinement, as was everyone else. By the time Elizabeth was born, few remembered Mary of Suffolk had existed. In the next three years, her widower Charles Brandon—a man who embraced self-preservation—married his pubescent ward and sired two sons before his own demise. By then, Anne Boleyn had gone to the block and Henry had wed and lost Jane Seymour, his third wife, who gave him Edward, his coveted son. The king of course went on to wed three more times. In our world, nothing is as quickly forgotten as the dead.”

“And Mary’s last child?” I asked thickly. “What became of it?”

“Some said it was stillborn; others that it was hidden away at her dying request. Certainly, Charles of Suffolk never mentioned it—which he would have, had he known. His remaining son by Mary died the year after her; all he had left were daughters.”

“So he would have welcomed another son…?”

Cecil nodded. “Indeed. But he was abroad for most of the time before his wife’s demise, and by all accounts he and Mary were on difficult terms. Suffolk had supported the king’s quest to rid himself of Queen Katherine and marry Anne; Mary opposed it. Still, theirs was reputedly a love match, and he must have tried; she wasn’t so old that she could not conceive.… In any event, she hid her last pregnancy from him, giving out instead that she suffered from the swelling sickness. He probably never even suspected. It does beg the question of what was going through the unfortunate lady’s mind that she’d keep a child from her own husband.”

“You said she was afraid of Anne Boleyn,” I said, and I heard him step to me, so close we might have embraced. His face looked ancient, the marks of worry, of ceaseless statecraft and insomniac nights, engraved into his flesh.

“Maybe Anne wasn’t the only reason,” he said, and he started to reach out. Before he could touch me, I shifted away, though it felt more like lurching, so leaden were my limbs. The chamber closed in around us, shot through with random afternoon light and stark long shadows.

“How did you find out about me?” I asked abruptly.

“Entirely by coincidence.” His response was certain, subdued. “As I said, Henry the Eighth’s testament decreed that after his children and their heirs, his sister Mary’s issue stood next in line to the throne. So when I learned that the duchess had renounced her claim in favor of her daughter Jane Grey, I was surprised. Frances of Suffolk never renounced anything willingly in her life. Northumberland informed me she had done so in exchange for Guilford as a spouse for Jane, but not even he seemed convinced. I decided to investigate. It wasn’t long before I learned that Lady Dudley had threatened Frances with something altogether more interesting.”

I gave him a hollow smile. “Me.”

“Yes,” he said, “though I didn’t know exactly who you were at that time. I didn’t begin to put it together until I learned Lady Dudley had presented you to the duchess in the hall, where she whispered a comment about the mark of the rose. Now, that caught my attention: The Rose was Henry the Eighth’s affectionate nickname for his younger sister. You of course had already told me when we met that you were a foundling, but you also spoke of a woman you’d lost, who cared for you. I knew from Fitzpatrick of the herbalist Lady Dudley had brought to treat Edward, and so I started to put the pieces into place. It still took me time to figure it all out, but the conclusion, once I recognized it, was irresistible.”

I was floundering, fighting against the unraveling of my own self.

“And it was…?” I managed to utter. Silence ensued. For the first time, Cecil wavered, as if he debated whether or not to continue.

The cruelty of the game finally unhinged me.

“TELL ME!” My dagger clattered to the floor as I grabbed him by the doublet and rammed him hard against the wall. “Tell me this instant!”

In a low voice Cecil said, “You are the last son of Mary of Suffolk. The herbalist, Mistress Alice—the Suffolk household accounts show she had been in service to the late duchess; she attended her at Westhorpe in June of 1533. And years before, Lady Dudley had attended her as well, in France when Mary went to wed King Louis. These three women knew each other, and each was connected to you, the foundling whom Lady Dudley had brought to court to use against Frances of Suffolk.”

With a strangled sound that was part moan, part sob, I released him. I staggered back, plunged back to that day years ago when Lady Dudley had taken the book of psalms from me. I saw its frontispiece in my mind, the handwritten dedication in French in that elegant feminine script. I had not understood, though it too had been with me, all along.

A mon amie, de votre amie, Marie.

That book I had stolen and carried with me in my saddlebag belonged to my mother. She had bequeathed it to a favored attendant—a lady who accompanied her during her brief time as queen of France, a lady she must have trusted, one she had called friend.

Lady Dudley. She had betrayed my mother’s memory to further her own terrible ends.

Grabbing hold of the nearest chair, I threw it across the room. I wanted to tear the roof down about our ears, scour the walls to ashes, rip off my own skin. I spun back to him, enraged, my fists clenched and held before me.

He didn’t shift a muscle. “Strike me if you must. But it won’t return what was taken from you. I may be guilty of many things, but I did not do this. I did not steal your birthright. Lady Dudley did; she concealed it. She used and murdered your Mistress Alice for it.”

I was beyond reason. An abyss opened beneath my feet, full of horrors I did not want to see. Of Lady Dudley, I could believe anything, including this monstrous deed. But my poor Alice … How could she have left me in ignorance, all these years? How could she have not realized that, in the end, what I did not know might be the one thing used against me?

“Alice cared for me,” I heard myself whisper, as if I needed to convince myself. “She kept me safe.… They mangled her, tethered her like a beast, only to kill her in the end.”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “They did. And she endured it, out of love for you.”

I looked at him. “Is that what it was? Love?”

“Never doubt it. Mistress Alice gave her life to you. She took you from your dying mother, from the sister who wanted you dead, and brought you to the one place where she thought you’d be safe. She couldn’t have known what would occur; no one could have foreseen it, all those years ago. But she must have suspected enough about Lady Dudley to take steps to protect you. Your name alone proves it.”

I thrust out a hand. “No more. Please. I—I cannot bear it.”

“You must.” He shifted from the wall. “You must accept the treachery and the lies, and you must overcome them. Otherwise, it will be your undoing.” He paused. “She named you Brendan not because of her reverence for the saint but because it is the Latin form of the Irish name Bréanainn, which is derived from ‘prince’ in ancient Welsh. Mistress Alice gave you your legacy from the start. It has been with you all this time.”

“Then why?” Desperation edged my voice. “If Mistress Alice knew who I was, why didn’t Lady Dudley kill her the moment she brought me to her? Why did she wait so long?”

He went quiet for a moment before he said, “I can’t say. All I can think of is that she depended on Alice’s complicity. Any servant could raise you as one belonging to the lower class, and that was the illusion Lady Dudley had to create, that you belonged to no one. But servants gossip; word could get out about you. We can assume Lady Dudley knew you had to be hidden from Frances of Suffolk, and she needed someone to care for you whom she could trust. Alice would do both, so Lady Dudley took the risk that one day she might tell you the truth. At the time, there was no pressing need to do otherwise. You were still a babe; you could die, as many do. Nobody knew how the succession would resolve itself, but a secret like you could prove invaluable. Absolute silence was required—silence and the patience to wait.”

He paused, watching me. My heart pounded in my ears. There was more; I could feel it uncoiling just beneath the surface, shedding its brittle false skin.

Then Cecil added, “Of course, there is another possibility. Perhaps Lady Dudley did not kill Mistress Alice at first because she knew Alice had confided in someone else; someone who would reveal your existence should anything happen to her. If so, then between Alice and this other person, Lady Dudley found herself cornered; she did not dare act impulsively, at least not until she found her opportunity when King Edward fell ill.” He paused. “Is there anyone you can think of whom your Mistress Alice might have trusted with so dangerous a secret?”

I went still, recalling Stokes’s words: But something happened in those last hours; Mary of Suffolk must have confided in the midwife, said something that fostered her mistrust.…

And then Mary Tudor’s: Charles of Suffolk’s … squire came to see me. A stalwart man …

I wanted to bolt from the room, run as far as I could. I didn’t want to know anymore. There would be no peace for me, no hiding. I’d be condemned to search until the end of my days.

But it was already too late. I knew how Alice had protected herself: with my birthmark, which another servant caring for me would see. And I also knew whom she had confided in. Like everything else, it had been there all along, waiting for me to learn enough to see it.

I shook my head in response to Cecil’s question. “No, I don’t. And it doesn’t matter. Mistress Alice is dead.” I hardened my voice. “But I know this much: You have no proof. There is no proof. I intend to keep it that way.” I met his eyes. “If you ever tell another soul, I will kill you.”

He chuckled. “I’m relieved to hear it.” He adjusted his doublet, walked past the broken chair to his valise as if we’d been discussing the weather. “Because the revelation of your birth could create complications that would be most unfortunate for all concerned—especially you.”

Raw laughter burst from me. “Is that why Walsingham was on the leads with a dagger? Given the uncertainty surrounding the succession, I must have presented a terrible hindrance!”

“You were never a hindrance.” Cecil draped his cloak about his shoulders. “I underestimated your ingenuity perhaps, but I had no intention of letting you die, in my service or otherwise.” The gravity in his tone took me aback. “If you consider the events, you’ll see that when you first arrived here, all I had was an unfounded rumor and knowledge of an herbalist who had once served Mary of Suffolk. I couldn’t possibly have known everything beforehand.”

As if I were back in Whitehall the night of Elizabeth’s arrival, I heard that cryptic whisper: Il porte la marque de la rose.

I couldn’t rage anymore. I couldn’t fight. “Not until someone confirmed it for you,” I said. “That’s why you had Walsingham follow me, isn’t it? To see if he could catch me undressed. The mark on my skin, the mark called the rose—it would have proven everything.”

He inclined his head as though I’d offered him a compliment. “I have no further secrets from you. Now, we can work together toward a cause greater than both of us—the cause of Elizabeth, who, I assure you, will soon face a challenge far worse than any Dudley.”

“I didn’t say I wanted anything more to do with you,” I replied.

He smiled knowingly. “Then why, my dear boy, are you still here?”