Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters by Ella March Chase Page A

deliver Cousin Mary a letter in gold, but no angel would ever appear to the likes of me. Even if I was able to smuggle a note out of Syon House, it was a long way to Hunsdon. Not even the most trusted messenger could deliver this news. Even if they wanted to be loyal to Cousin Mary, would they not carry the letter to the devil duke out of fear? If Northumberland did not mind giving a king arsenic or killing a princess who should be queen, he would not hesitate to poison me.
    I bit my fingernail until it bled. Maybe I was not brave enough to send a warning someone might read, but there was another way. I gathered the small jewels I had hoarded: a bent gold ring I’d found in Bradgate’s garden, a silver chain, and three pearls I had secretly snipped off Bess of Hardwick’s gown. Pressing the iridescent feather to my breast, I ran to find Owen in the stables below.
    As I returned to the house, I passed one of King Edward’s secretaries, a man named William Cecil. I had noticed him before. He had three large warts on his nose and a face that looked quiet, but I could sense thoughts were racing through him like the water in the brook at Bradgate when it flooded during spring.
    Now he looked as if those thoughts were going to burst out of their banks. Was he one of the men Northumberland had spoken of? The ones who knew the king was dead? Or was Cecil just suspicious like me, trying to find out what was afoot?
    His face was shadowed beneath his black coif, his forked gray beard looking as if he had rumpled it with nervous hands. What was he doing, staring at me like that? Had he guessed what I had done? I tried not to tremble as I passed him, the one person at Syon House with eyes that saw as much as mine.

Chapter Seven

J ANE D UDLEY
C HELSEA P ALACE , L ONDON
J ULY 9, 1553

    nly six more steps to eternal damnation, I thought as I moved toward the coiling serpent of the Thames. It would be so easy to succumb to temptation. Just wade into the river. I could picture my skirts floating like the petals of a velvet lily, the water soaking into them, weighing them down as I walked deeper into the channel. I would not fight the river’s pull. I would lie back and watch the sun dissolve from watery ripples into darkness.
    “Lady Jane!” Mrs. Ellen’s worried voice pulled me back from the bank as she had so many times during our stay in the old palace at Chelsea. I watched her hasten down the path to catch up with me. She had scarcely left my side in the two weeks since we had arrived here at what had once been Catherine Parr’s widow’s portion.
    See, lamb , my nurse had said as our coach rumbled up to the red brick manor with its fairy-tale turrets and gardens of roses. Remember how happy we were here five years ago? The air at the abbey did not agree with you. I feared if we stayed at Sheen any longer, you might never recover. Is that not what I wrote your lady mother? But you will get well walking in the dowager queen’s gardens. Forget your troubles .
    Kind, simple Mrs. Ellen. My marriage to a Dudley would follow me wherever I went.
    I shivered as Mrs. Ellen closed the gap between us. If I had possessed the will to feel anything beyond my own pain, I would have suffered guilt. Keeping vigil over me had carved deep lines into my nurse’s face, kept her red-rimmed eyes busy with worry and helplessness. If I died, at least Mrs. Ellen might get some sleep.
    “My lady,” she said, breathless, “you were so lost in thought, I feared you would stumble into the water! Look at you out here without your shawl. I know it is July, but the air is chill near the river. Come away from here before you catch your death.” She looped one arm around me as if she feared I might resist, then guided me back toward the gardens.
    “I would not really do it, you know,” I whispered.
    “Do what, you silly child?”
    I raised my eyes to hers. “It would be a mortal sin.”
    She misunderstood me on purpose. “You wish to look up some