My Lady Jane(39)

“Have a bite, Eddie,” she said. “For me.”

He met her eyes, hers glittering with some dark determination, his glossed by a sheen of tears. In that moment he understood the truth.

Mary was in on it.

“Be a good boy, Eddie.” She pushed the fork forward.

“Don’t call me Eddie,” he returned in a low voice. He gathered his strength and reached up to take the fork. He turned it around slowly, balancing the precarious morsel of pudding. His hand wavered, trembled, but he managed to hold the tines to her lips. “You first, sister.”

His heart ached with the betrayal of it. She was his sister. She was a terrible, humorless, traitorous, bloodthirsty, dowdy spinster of a woman, twenty years his elder, but she was still his sister. His own flesh and blood.

Silence.

Mary stared at him. Bess still was standing across the room like she’d been frozen in place, her expression unreadable.

Mary smiled quickly and took the fork back from Edward, set it on the plate. “I couldn’t possibly,” she said. “I’m watching my figure.”

“You’re watching your figure do what?” he asked.

Her eyes closed for a moment. Then she smiled again, tensely. “Oh, Edward, always joking, aren’t you?” She stood up and brushed imaginary crumbs from her skirt. “At least your illness hasn’t robbed you of your sense of humor.”

He wanted to tell her that he’d given the throne to Jane and see if she’d find that so funny. He couldn’t imagine that Mary would be in collusion with Lord Dudley if she knew that particular detail of the duke’s plan.

But telling Mary about the newly revised line of succession would only put Jane in danger. So instead he said, “The duke will turn on you, too, you know. Just as soon as he’s done with me.”

She stiffened. “You are confused, brother. You’re not thinking clearly. And I am sorry for you.” She touched his shoulder like maybe she even meant it. “I am sorry.”

He waited for her to leave before he turned his attention to Bess. He’d never seen his other sister’s face so pale and drawn. Her freckles stood out against her nose. He remembered a time when he was a child, when she’d let him count her freckles. Twenty-two of them, he thought.

“Do you think I’m confused, too, Bess?” he asked.

She shook her head almost imperceptibly. Her gray eyes were fierce and shining. They were her father’s eyes. His eyes.

She walked over to place her gift for him on the bedside table, then leaned down to kiss his cheek.

“I believe you,” she whispered against his ear. “I will help you. Trust me, Edward.”

“Rest, brother,” she said more loudly, as if there was someone else in the room.

After she’d gone, he opened her present. It was a smaller box than Mary’s, but inside he found a jar of honey-soaked apricots and a flask of cool water.

Trust me, she’d said.

The day his father died, he and Bess had been sitting together when they’d received the news. Edward was a boy of nine and Elizabeth thirteen, but both of them were keenly aware in that instant that everything had changed. “The king is dead. Long live the king,” his uncle Seymour had announced, which meant that Edward was king. He’d been overwhelmed by sorrow and terror, and started to cry.

“I don’t want it,” he’d said, trembling all over. “I don’t want to be king, Bess. I’m not like Father. Don’t make me be king.”

Elizabeth had turned to him and kissed his hand.

“It’s going to be all right,” she’d whispered. “Trust me.”

Trust me.

Edward ate the apricots and drank the water without a second thought. If Bess was also poisoning him, then he supposed he would happily die. When he was finished he felt more refreshed than he had in weeks, good enough to sit up and examine the rest of Bess’s box, where he found a small scrap of parchment with Bess’s flowery writing on it. You’re in danger. I’ll return tonight.

And in spite of all the trouble he was in, he felt better. Because there was still someone he could trust.

He woke in the middle of the night to Pet snarling. Before he was even fully awake, rough hands were upon him, forcing his arms up painfully. Hooded men loomed all around his bed. Someone lashed one of his wrists to the bedpost. He kicked and struggled, but to no avail—he had no force behind his blows, no strength.

He did, however, have Pet. She lunged over him with her teeth snapping. He heard a muffled curse, followed by a thump and a yelp as one of the men tossed the dog aside. Then came the noise of a sword leaving its sheath.

They were going to kill Pet.

Edward stopped struggling. “Wait!” he called out. “I relent.” He coughed for a minute. He couldn’t get air in his wretched lungs. “I relent,” he gasped again. “Don’t hurt my dog.”

Pet whined. One of the men grabbed Pet by the scruff and tied a rope around her neck. Suddenly she surged forward and buried her face in Edward’s shoulder.

He put his free arm about her and whispered against her long silky ear. “Don’t worry about me, Pet. Find Jane. Tell Jane what’s happened.”

She whined again, and the man yanked on the end of the rope, dragging her across the floor and then out of the room.

Edward’s heart thundered in his ears. He coughed again, into the air because his free hand was now being tied to the other bedpost. A man with a candle stepped toward the bed. Boubou. Edward glanced around at the other figures surrounding him.