She looped her hand through his arm, her long white fingers so much like her mother’s. As they exited the gallery and began to encounter those who bowed and curtsied at their passing, he added softly, “You should watch your expressions while in church. Your dislike of Latimer is plain to be seen.”
Born to unearth secrets indeed.
9 January 1555
Greenwich Palace
Since Christmas, William has become a bit more attentive to me in public. He says that, considering how close we have always been as friends, it is actually more suspicious to ignore one another. So he has begun to dance with me more than once in an evening and he has summoned me to play chess with him twice. At least we did actually play chess—I was afraid the game was only an excuse. But apparently Dominic told him sternly that he could not be completely alone with me, so we played in his privy chamber with four or five others in attendance.
Dominic was not among them.
15 January 1555
Whitehall Palace
The court has moved to London for a parliamentary session called by William. They are being asked to ratify the French treaty and William’s betrothal to the young Elisabeth de France. For the first time I can remember, I feel confined by the city. Whitehall is sprawling and enormous and yet I feel as though I cannot take a deep breath here. There are too many people, too much time spent pretending, and too little as myself.
There are rumours that the Earl of Surrey will be pardoned. When I asked William, he said that I should not bother myself with unpleasant details. I almost laughed aloud, thinking he was teasing, but he meant it. Love, it appears, does odd things to men. William seems incapable of remembering that we once told each other everything, that he would always complain to me about his uncle or his councilors or the intricacies of politics and that I not only kept up but added my own insights.
As for Dominic…it seems love has made him mute.
27 January 1555
Whitehall
Parliament has ratified the French treaty and composed a most gracious statement to William about his betrothal. Everyone seems in good humour now that we are at peace and the question of the king’s marriage is settled.
Little do they know. After William beat me tonight at chess, he whispered, for my ears alone, “I cannot wait to claim my chosen queen. Then my people’s good wishes will truly have meaning.”
On the first of February, Dominic took a boat from Whitehall Palace to the Tower of London to interrogate the Earl of Surrey. As the boatman brought them alongside the Tower’s water gate, Dominic wished he’d chosen to ride instead. He detested this entrance, smacking as it did of political prisoners arriving in the dead of night.
“Just an entrance, milord,” Harrington said.
How did Harrington always know what he was thinking? He had inherited the large and quiet man from his time working for Lord Rochford. Dominic never quite knew how to describe what Harrington did—Man-at-arms? Steward? Personal secretary?—but he had quickly grown to depend on him with a trust and reliance he didn’t offer most men. It was a pleasure to work with someone who seemed to respect him personally and not simply for his title and position.
And Harrington was right—the river gate was merely a convenient entrance when arriving by water. The Lieutenant of the Tower greeted them at the top of the steps and, at Dominic’s request, led them first to the torture chambers. Dominic had been in them only once before—last year, while being trained by Lord Rochford. The Lord Chancellor had required Dominic to see things for himself, but that was one sight he wished he could forget: the man strapped by wrists and ankles to the rack, his joints torn from their sockets from being rolled in opposite directions. Dominic didn’t even remember what the man had been accused of.
Today, mercifully, the rack was empty and the only one in the chamber was the man who usually operated it, a heavyset, powerful man named Sutton. He didn’t seem to recall Dominic from last year, but his interest sharpened when he heard his title.
“Exeter, is it? You one of the Holland family?”
“No, I’m a Courtenay.”
“Titles change with the wind these days. The last Duke of Exeter was a Holland, he was constable of the Tower in 1447.” Sutton said it fondly, as though recalling someone he’d known personally. “He it was who brought this to England.” He laid a hand on the rack and added, “The Duke of Exeter’s daughter, she’s called. Did you know that?”
Dominic had not, and wished he didn’t know it now. “I’m not a duke,” he said brusquely. “Do you remember the Earl of Surrey’s interrogation?”
“’Course I remember him. First time I’ve had a titled gentleman down here.”
“What answers did he give?” Dominic had already spoken to the interrogators themselves, but he wanted the word of a man who had no political interest in the proceedings. Only a physical one.
“I don’t pay much mind to what they say,” the man replied. “But him…they weren’t as anxious to get answers as I’d have thought. Usually they press a man to the edge, and well over it, to get him to say what they need. He was a gentleman right enough, held up better than some who collapse the moment they see the rack. He just kept saying no to whatever they asked.”
And that tallied with what the interrogators had reported: the Earl of Surrey had steadfastly and continuously asserted his innocence in whatever plots his grandfather might have had in hand.
Sutton continued, not unkindly, “If it eases your conscience, milord, I was gentle with him. Only turned the rollers three times, not enough to damage anything permanently. He’ll heal right up.”
Dominic could not bring himself to more than nod before gladly, gratefully, escaping. Though it was bitingly cold and wet outdoors, the air was vastly cleaner than whatever guilt and pain and despair had been trapped in that ghastly chamber.
