“I’ve read the interview transcripts. He’s been racked—did you know that?”
Gentlemen were mostly spared torture, but Rochford had insisted. It did make Surrey’s denials more plausible. William ignored the underlying disapproval in Dominic’s question. “We all know how stubborn the Howards can be, particularly when their lives are at stake.”
“Surrey wasn’t at Framlingham during the Lady Mary’s residence. He had come nowhere near East Anglia for eight months. You appointed him to the northern marches and, except for the time he spent in Paris at your command, there he stayed—where, by the way, he has been remarkably effective on the border. He has ever served well and faithfully, with not a hint of his father’s radical Catholicism. I daresay I’ve never heard the man express a religious opinion before now.”
“He’ll have to if I let him live. The Catholics will force it of him. He’ll have to come down on one side or the other.”
“Will he?”
“What does that mean?”
Dominic shrugged, but the tension in his eyes belied his attempt at being casual. “As long as we force men to hold a religious opinion to the exclusion of all else in their life, England will remain unbalanced, liable to be tipped at any providential moment from one side to the other.”
“You think I would return this country to Rome?”
“Never. Which is why you will always be a target for those who would.”
“Then little has changed. Don’t worry about me, Dom. I’m young, I’m handsome, I’ve beaten the French, and I’m engaged to a Catholic princess. I’d say we’re fairly balanced just now.”
Dominic shifted restlessly in his chair, but he would not stand until William gave him permission. “If you’re thinking about balance, does that mean you would invest Surrey with the Norfolk title and lands?”
“An almost-Catholic duke against two Protestant ones? I think I shall have to.” With a grin, William added, “And perhaps another title as ballast against my uncle and Northumberland. We shall see.”
Dominic seemed uninterested in William’s hints. “Then I’ll speak to Surrey.”
Christmas at court was an exercise in furious revelry and exhausting entertainment. Dominic had never cared much for the masques, those exuberant displays of costume and dramatic theme and over-the-top allegory, though he had been forced to participate in several in earlier years. But this Christmas he had flatly refused when pressed by several comely court ladies to join the play. Minuette did not press him, though he knew she was part of it. In fact, from the accounts of the Master of Revels, it appeared she was planning the masque single-handedly. Orders had been given for multiple lengths of black fabric, both velvet and muslin; for red velvet headdresses; and for a machine that would produce thunder and lightning. It all seemed silly to Dominic. These days everything seemed silly that wasn’t directly connected to the present security of the state or the secret betrothal of Minuette and William.
But before the Christmas debauchery came Christmas worship. This part Dominic did enjoy, if only because everyone, even William, sat still and he could slip his gaze sideways almost as often as he liked and glimpse Minuette next to Elizabeth. The view of her was one he knew well and never tired of: caught in profile, the line of her brow and throat, the spill of her hair onto her shoulders beneath her sheer black hood…Dominic had done little enough praying in church these last weeks, unless God counted it worship to devour Minuette with his eyes.
She didn’t seem to mind. Although she glanced his way rarely, there was a wealth of pleasure in those flashes.
William, naturally, assumed those glances were for him.
Today’s Christmas service was full of gratitude for the nation’s safe delivery from the hands of evil councilors and the whore of Babylon who looked to enslave all the world. Dominic caught William’s brief frown as the archbishop hinted at the whore being not only the collective Catholic Church, but the individual person of William’s half sister, Mary. Though he might not have cause to trust her, the Tudors were very clannish, and William believed he alone had the right to chastise his sister. But Archbishop Cranmer deftly brought his words around to England’s king as the champion of true Christianity, and then the choir was singing and the soaring alleluias brought a shiver to even Dominic’s religiously conflicted heart.
If anyone had asked his beliefs, he would have said he believed in honour, his king, and God. In that order. Unlike his mother (who had longed to join a religious order when young), Dominic did not follow Rome and would fight to keep England from returning to the sway of papal power. But he also disliked Martin Luther and the other Continental firebrands who thought a new Earth could only come on the blood and destruction of the old one. What use was any religion, he wondered, that demanded blood? That was the Old Testament. This was the world of the New Testament—did not Christ himself command, “Ye shall love one another”?
These arguments almost never made it out of his closed mouth. He preferred to serve to his strengths, which would never be debate and theology. He was a soldier. He was sworn to his king and country and he would not dishonour that.
Except by loving the woman his king wanted.
Dominic distracted himself from that uncomfortable thought by focusing on the chapel’s choirmaster—another man who had once loved Minuette. Jonathan Percy had proposed to her just six months past, and Dominic had never been so glad as when he’d learned she had refused him. Percy had taken the rejection well enough and had even served as Dominic’s squire during the French battles, but he had always belonged here—in a royal chapel creating music for kings, both earthly and heavenly.
Dominic wondered if Percy’s continuing presence at court meant that he was truly valued as a musician, or if William’s past relationship with Percy’s twin sister had more to do with it than his talent. Eleanor Percy Howard had been married to the Duke of Norfolk’s youngest son in order for William to make her his mistress without complications. She had already borne William one child—a girl—and even now claimed to be carrying another child that she laid at William’s bed.
Of course, that claim was being made from the Tower of London, for Eleanor had been caught up in the Duke of Norfolk’s plotting, which ended in the violent death of her husband, Giles. The other women of the Howard family were being kept merely under house arrest, but Eleanor had been brought to the Tower almost a month ago. Not because of hard evidence that she’d intended treason, but because she had twice attempted to escape house arrest from the Howard estate at Framlingham. When she was caught the second time—twenty miles away from Framlingham and headed for London—she insisted, as she had all along, that she must be allowed to speak to the king.
But William, wrapped in his consuming passion for Minuette, had sent word for Eleanor to be kept in the Tower since she could not be trusted in a lesser confinement. Dominic thought that had been for Minuette’s sake, for she had always disliked Eleanor and no doubt William thought it a sort of gift to his beloved to lock away his former mistress. Dominic did not expect Eleanor to be locked away for long. She was a woman, and the mother of William’s child, and had proved herself skilled at pleasing the king. No doubt the king’s memories of pleasure would, in time, lead to her release.
When the service was ended, everyone rose for William and waited while he swept out. Dominic was kept from following by Robert Dudley, who left the side of a smiling Elizabeth to speak to him.
“What is it?” Dominic asked roughly. He had a hard time taking Robert’s measure, and that made him uneasy. Add in the fact that Robert had been at Framlingham on that last, disastrous night when Norfolk had been arrested and his youngest son killed…
Robert did not take offense, though he always seemed to give the impression of understanding and somehow pitying Dominic’s unease. “I merely wondered what news from the council this morning.”
“Ask your father.”
“I’m asking you. Is it true that William means to return Surrey to court?”
