Elizabeth, who had not been to Syon House before, had to admit it was impressive. Approached through a park that was in detail, if not size, nearly the equal of royal grounds, the house itself had been built by Northumberland in the Italian style in the years since King Henry’s death. Once Sion Abbey, dedicated to the Bridgettine nuns, Northumberland had laid out his house over the foundations of the abbey church.
Despite its grandeur, Elizabeth felt a faint apprehension as she studied the rectangular, flat-fronted house. The nuns of twenty years ago had not taken lightly to their dispossession: indeed, their confessor protested so vigorously that he had been executed and his body hung on the abbey gates as a warning to other recalcitrant Catholics.
Had William had those memories in mind when he sent Mary here? Elizabeth would not put it past her brother to layer message upon message. A royal abbey, dissolved by royal command and given into the hands of a committed Protestant, now housing the most devoted Catholic in England.
John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, waited for them in the echoing hall, the floor laid with glazed tiles of green and blue, patterned in swirls like moving water. Six years older than Robert, he looked more like their sturdy and rough-edged father than did his younger brother. But there was a certain similarity in his expressions and turn of speech that reminded Elizabeth of Robert.
John greeted Elizabeth and Minuette courteously and briefly, managing to convey his regrets that they would not be guests at Syon House without touching on Guildford’s crimes or his father’s current precarious position. Then he escorted them directly to Mary in the wing of Syon House set aside for her use.
Elizabeth thought that her sister could hardly complain at being ill-used in her house arrest, considering the lavish appointments of her chambers. As Syon House was considerably newer than most royal palaces, the rooms were bright and airy, high windows giving on to views of the lavish gardens just beginning to show spangled hints of colour from early blooming crocus and daffodils.
The fact remained that, however opulently gilded, Syon House was a prison, with the Earl of Warwick on guard to ensure Mary did not slip away into rebellious hands or receive any visitors who might be looking to stir up trouble. But how was that significantly different from anywhere Mary lived? She was always at William’s mercy. This was just a particularly stark reminder of that fact.
As the elder sister, Mary did not deign to rise when Elizabeth and Minuette entered. Seated in an intricately carved chair before a blazing fire, Mary Tudor did not look like a figurehead for rebellion. Though elegantly dressed and impeccable in her manner and bearing, Mary was aging rapidly. Thirty-eight this year, Elizabeth mused, and wearing that somber dark brown overdress and starched hood, looking even older. Her dark red hair was still thick, but her high, broad forehead showed new lines. The once-sharp jawline that narrowed to a pointed chin was growing soft and blurred.
One thing that never changed was the surety of Mary’s birth and position. She still held a grudge against the younger sister who had usurped her title as Princess of Wales so many years ago. Never mind that William had come along soon after and supplanted them both—it was Elizabeth whom Mary had always disliked.
Not that she would betray it in words. “Welcome, sister,” Mary said. “I am grateful to be remembered by my family.”
“Have you been comfortable?” Elizabeth asked politely. Of course she had; William would never allow less.
Mary sniffed. “I would prefer to be allowed to go home. I do not see why I cannot stay at Beaulieu.”
“Do you not? I would have thought events at Framlingham were self-evident. The Crown cannot risk a foreign power interfering in your life.”
Mary’s hands moved restlessly on the arms of her chair, her jeweled rings sending flashes of blue and red and green into the shadows. “I have answered the king’s questions—if they were truly his. More likely it is my enemies who conspire to blacken me to the king. If the Duke of Norfolk was involved in a plot against the king, I had no knowledge of it and so I have stated. Is my word not good enough?”
Talking to Mary was always an exercise in patience. She was intelligent and educated, but she had little sense of irony and none at all of humour. And always she would be blinded by her obsession with what she saw as England’s heresy.
Which meant Elizabeth could run rings around her when she chose. But today she wasn’t here for entertainment; she was here for information. She damped down her normal impulse to dazzle Mary with her youth and beauty, and aimed for honesty rather than cleverness.
“Tell me, dear sister: if the Duke of Norfolk had said, ‘There are Spanish ships waiting to take you to the emperor, you need only ride out a few miles…’ would you not have gone? You came so close five years ago.”
In 1550, Mary had indeed come close to escaping England in that very way—a ride to the east coast and Spanish ships waiting for her. In the end it had been her own indecision that cost her the chance. She had simply waited too long trying to divine what God meant her to do.
“And that is why I am punished now,” Mary said flatly. “Kept in this house of that heretic, Northumberland. It is insulting, and now you are come to mock.”
Minuette intervened. “No, my lady, never to mock. The king’s affections will always be inclined to leniency, but you cannot allow yourself to be used by those of evil intent.”
Elizabeth sat back and watched her sister and her friend regard each other. Mary had no cause to love Minuette after what had happened at Framlingham, but there was something gentle about Minuette that could disarm the most suspicious. Today she looked like an angel in her pale blue gown and white underskirt, a bright counterpoint of hope to Mary’s dark and fading appearance.
“I might give the same advice to my brother,” Mary challenged Minuette. “He should take care to whom he listens, for heretics will never counsel honestly.”
“We are not here to debate religion.”
“And clearly you are not here for affection’s sake, so why are you here?” Mary flung this question at her sister.
Elizabeth grudgingly admired Mary’s bluntness and replied in kind. “Do you believe that Norfolk intended open rebellion against the king?”
This time Mary didn’t respond immediately. After a considered pause, she said, “If he did, I had no knowledge, and that, I think, makes it unlikely. The duke would have needed me for such a move, and it is unlikely he could have kept it secret from me for so long. I had heard nothing of rebellion.”
“What had you heard?”
“That there might exist a document of interest to the Catholic cause.”
The Penitent’s Confession. Elizabeth would have to speak cautiously here. “And had you heard that such a document was in Norfolk’s hands?”
“No.” Mary spoke definitely. “He did not have whatever he thought this document was. He was searching for it, tracking rumours and gossip that always turned to nothing in the end.”
