Latimer was a good speaker, Elizabeth admitted. Grudgingly, because the more fiery the rhetoric, the more she instinctively wanted to argue the opposite. Not that she didn’t agree that God had worked wonders in England, but so often his wonders were hard to distinguish from the more earthly ambitions and plots of men. Did Latimer believe that her mother had been set in her father’s path specifically to seduce him into splitting from Rome? That argued a God of sardonic intent and not always impeccable methods.
If William had ever entertained such doubts, she didn’t know it. Her brother tended to the practical wherever religion and politics collided, and kept his personal impressions close to his heart. She believed he had them, she just didn’t know if God’s words to William’s heart ever deviated from his personal wishes.
The final prayers were spoken and Elizabeth had just reached the chapel door when Lord Rochford was suddenly, silently, next to her. “May I walk with you, niece?” he asked pleasantly.
“Certainly.”
They kept a companionable silence with one another as they passed out of the tiled chapel floor and into the more crowded areas of the palace. Since her mother’s death last summer, these informal conversations had been carried out once or twice a week. At first Elizabeth had been surprised that her uncle would seek her out, but she had come to realize how deeply he missed his sister. They had always been exceptionally close and, with Anne gone, Rochford seemed to think Elizabeth the nearest thing to a substitute.
Not that he would ever say so.
When they reached the less public north galleries, frigid enough for breath to be seen if one walked slowly, Elizabeth asked, “What is on your mind, Uncle?”
“I have been brooding on the Penitent’s Confession and the aborted Catholic plot in November.”
She inclined her head in acknowledgment and waited. There would be more. There was always more than the obvious when George Boleyn spoke. He did not need to elaborate, for Elizabeth had been a full party to the search for the alleged Penitent’s Confession, a document the Catholics desperately wanted to lay hands on as evidence that William had not been Henry VIII’s son at all, but rather, born of incest between Anne and Rochford himself.
The search for the Penitent’s Confession had ended at the Duke of Norfolk’s home at Framlingham in November. Minuette had been sent by Rochford precisely because she could look for the document without raising suspicions. She had found it, all right—and promptly burnt it, for the forged confession had purportedly been signed by Minuette’s own mother, once a friend to Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth thought that Rochford had not been exactly displeased at that.
That forged document had led to Norfolk’s arrest and subsequent natural death in the Tower. The most pressing question left unresolved two months later was the extent of Mary Tudor’s knowledge and support of a plot against her brother’s throne. It was no secret that every Catholic in Europe—and England—thought Mary England’s only legitimate ruler. Rochford’s spies had even reported that Spanish ships were prepared to land on the east coast preparatory to either spiriting Mary away to raise an army or else to land troops in support of her royal claims.
Rochford sighed. “Not a single member of the Howard household has admitted to plotting either to help Mary escape or to help her fight against the Crown.”
“We know that Norfolk was searching for the Penitent’s Confession—his own brother told us so. And it was your intelligencers who said Spanish ships were sailing to England.”
“Anyone who provides information in exchange for money is unreliable. Who is to say my intelligencers were not offered more money to lie to me?”
“Are you saying that you do not trust your own intelligencers?” Elizabeth regarded her uncle, walking gravely beside her. He had her mother’s colouring—and William’s, for that matter—dark and sharp-featured and watchful. Though William’s bright blue eyes softened the resemblance.
“I am saying that anyone who trusts blindly is a fool and deserves to be lied to.”
Elizabeth had heard that from him before. She smiled briefly in acknowledgment. “Whom do you suspect of lying to you—and why, Uncle?”
“The Howard family is extremely unpopular amongst the more radical Protestant circles. I can think of any number of men who would not hesitate to work against them.”
“By planting lies about the Spanish navy and spreading the vilest rumours about my brother’s birth? Do you really think that Protestants would tell such falsehoods in the hopes of implicating Norfolk?” Elizabeth had never been able to erase from her memory the broadsheet Dominic had found at the beginning of all this—the drawing of her mother attempting to seduce Satan himself. Her voice hardened. “That is a perilous game to play, no matter how unpopular the Howards may be.”
“That is why I am troubled. If it was all a pretense, if Norfolk was perhaps innocent—”
“Norfolk most certainly wanted his hands on the Penitent’s Confession,” Elizabeth interrupted sharply. “He was actively looking for evidence of Mary’s legitimate claim to the throne, and he would not have hesitated to use it against William. That is not innocence.”
It was Rochford’s turn to agree. “No, it is not innocence. But if there was another hand at work, one that manipulated the situation to bring Norfolk down, it means there is still another traitor to be found.”
She paused, and searched her uncle’s face. “You are truly concerned about this.”
“I am truly concerned about any threat to William’s throne. My sister paid a heavy price for you and your brother to hold the positions you deserve. I will not see that price paid for nothing.”
“Why are you telling me this and not William?”
He shrugged and looked down the corridor, as though the bricks or window glass might provide an answer. “Because I cannot go to William with half-formed fears. He likes hard answers, not speculation. But you…it was Anne I always went to in order to work out my own mind. And you are remarkably like her. I find talking to you helps put my thoughts in order.”
“I have done precious little.”
“You have listened, niece, and that is enough.”
“Enough for a beginning. But what will you do next?”
“What I always do—hold multiple possibilities in my head at once and not neglect any of them for the simplest answer. Anne’s children need never fear for the throne while I am here. I was born to unearth secrets.”
