The Spymaster's Daughter

by Jeane Westin

  “Dearest Jenney, what have they done to you? Are you hurt? Tortured?”

  Holding to the bars with grimy hands and broken nails, Jennet pulled herself erect. “Starved and questioned,” she said, stopping to wipe a trickle of blood from her dry, cracked lips, “but not put to the hot irons yet, although they have been shown to me…and more….” She bent her forehead to rest it near Frances. “I cannot use my poison. My life is God’s to take.” She looked up at her niece. “Mayhap I will die first.” Her voice carried a hopeful note that broke Frances’s heart.

  “No, Jennet, you will not die. We have come to take you from this place. Robert has arranged all.” Frances pulled her cloak aside and, from the pocket tied about her waist, drew a cloth-wrapped piece of cheese and a small bread loaf. She pushed them through the bars.

  For a moment, Aunt Jennet seemed as if she did not recognize what she held. “Food,” she croaked, and fell on it, forgetting all the fine manners she had taught her young charge, and breaking anew her niece’s heart.

  “Robert,” Frances whispered, aware the yeoman guard had moved too close for normal speech.

  “Yes,” he said. “It is time for us to leave.”

  Frances’s voice shook. “Not without Jennet.”

  “No, not without her.” He walked toward the guard and spoke quietly.

  The man took out a ring of large keys and with one opened Jennet’s cell door, motioning her forward. “Come out, woman. Mr. Secretary has decided to show you mercy.”

  For what seemed like hours to Frances, but could have been minutes, her aunt stared, unmoving, crumbs of bread and cheese scattered about her mouth. “Your father will take me back? I am leaving this hellish place?”

  Frances looked to Robert, her joy mixed with a question. “Why didn’t you tell me my father intended Jennet’s release before we left Greenwich?”

  “We had to look like a man and woman out for a lark. How could I trust that you would not—”

  “You thought me so weak and silly that…”

  “No, Frances.” He took hard hold of her arm. “I thought you so loving that you would not be able to still your weeping. Leave off now. You may chastise me later if you still wish it.”

  “But my father…?”

  “Your father has come to realize that this is a stain on his family honor that it is better he remove in a happier way.”

  “Did you help him to realize the stain?”

  “We both did. Now, enough talk. We must get to the boat before the cost drains my purse. The waterman will not expect another passenger and will see it as an opportunity.”

  Frances said no more, but took Jennet’s bone-thin arm and helped her stumble through the corridors and down well-worn steps to the water gate and out to Galley Key. The boat waited there, swinging on its mooring rope.

  As Robert had foretold, the waterman eyed the new passenger and held out his hand, which Robert filled with the last shilling in his possession and added sixpence to hasten the trip.

  “Waterman, take us to the south side of the river below London Bridge to a ship, the Rendsborg, flying the Danish flag.” He shook his head at Frances as soon as her mouth opened to question him.

  He wrapped his own cloak about Jennet as she sat shivering, trying to tame her wild hair.

  The sun was rising downriver, and the tide was running hard toward the channel. The waterman was skilled and steered confidently as they shot between the pillars of London Bridge.

  They reached the ship as the anchor was being winched snug to the windward side, a lug sail unfurling to gain steerage, a loud voice shouting orders.

  “Ho, the captain!” Robert shouted.

  A bearded man leaned over the aft castle. “Aye!”

  “Passenger for Calais.”

  “Who be ye?”

  “The man and passenger you are expecting.”

  “Ye almost missed the tide.”

  “But I didn’t. Toss a ladder over the side.”

  As the heavy rope ladder fell down amidships, Robert grasped it and held it steady. “Say your good-byes quickly.”

  Frances kissed Jennet, who seemed not to know as yet what was happening to her. “I will miss you, Aunt. Someday, perhaps…”

  “Not in my life, niece, but I will pray for you each day I live.”

  “And I for you, to the same God.”

  Jennet looked hard at Robert, the blowing river mist already cleansing her face and bringing some color back to her cheeks. “Take my thanks, too, Robert Pauley,” she said, relinquishing his cloak. “You are a better man than I knew.”

  “That is my lot, madam.” Robert smiled slightly and handed her a sealed letter. “Money and the name and address of a recusant English family in Calais who have need of a governess.” He hoisted her up to meet the hands of two seamen hanging easily over the side. Jennet was soon over the polished wood railing and standing on the deck of the already moving ship.

  Frances waved while her aunt stared back at her, still unbelieving, until the lug sail filled and the ship moved down toward the channel.

  Jennet, standing amidst the spars and rigging, her hair unpinned and whipping about her face, was no longer the prim lady she had been and insisted Frances should be. Aunt Jennet lifted her hand once and then was quickly gone, around a bend, out of sight.

  “Back to Greenwich quickly now,” Robert ordered the waterman.

  They moved along in silence for a time, except for the splash of oars to keep them centered in the river’s tidal flow. He could no longer see the topsail of the Rendsborg, though he could see Frances straining for a last sight of the ship.

  They faced the morning sun now slanting over the horizon.

  “I regret the loss you suffer,” he told Frances, hoping she would believe him.

  “If not for you, I would have much more to regret.” He heard the words, though her face was muffled in his cloak. Later, he hoped, he could find the exact place her lips had touched, and at the same time he damned himself for a brainless fool.

  Although he said nothing, she spoke again. “You are the kindest, most valiant man I know, and I have not been so myself. I did not always appreciate Jennet, or know her worth. She was loyal to her faith and to me. I shall miss her always.” The last words quavered on her tongue.

  He smiled at her, hoping she would not cry. He did not trust himself not to embrace her if she did. “My lady, if you find need for guidance or lessons in behavior, you may seek me out….”

  She laughed, the tears disappearing in the river breeze. “You look like no nurse I ever saw, Master Pauley.”

  “Frances, intelligencers come in all disguises.”

  They sat in silence, cloaked in their own thoughts, until they bumped into the Greenwich water stairs.

  They continued without speech, retracing their steps past curious guards, through kitchens, upstairs, until they reached her apartment. She took hold of his arm, not knowing how to thank him, or how to say good-bye. There would now be few opportunities to see him.

  “Remember, if you ever need a friend, I—” Robert breathed in as if he were almost out of air. “Fare you well, my lady,” he said, making a quick, respectful bow and walking away, at first slowly, then faster.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “O unjust Fortune’s sway,

  Which can make me thus to leave you,

  And from louts to run away!”

  —Astrophel and Stella, Sir Philip Sidney

  May Day, May 1

  HAMPTON COURT

  Mr. Secretary Walsingham kept Robert busy and generally far away from court, and from Frances, and had for months. She heard of him only through her father’s chance remarks, or saw Robert for no more than fleeting moments in her father’s bedchamber or crowded palace corridors, when amidst a throng. She could in no way speak to him as she desired. He did not appear to look her way. It was as well. What could he possibly say? In truth, how would she answer?

  In private, she railed against what she
tried not to acknowledge in public. She could not accept the reality of her feelings for her father’s man, yet she could not deny them without becoming the most dreadful liar to herself.

  She wanted him in her sight. At least she wanted to know where he was and when he’d return.

  Countess Warwick, the queen’s first lady of the bedchamber, had remarked how loose Frances’s gown had become, though Frances had attempted to conceal it with a lacy shawl. She had no appetite for food, often drinking a simple of thistle in some wine for melancholia.

  Frances, a married woman bound by the Church and all decent and polite custom, had to be faithful and true in thought and deed to a husband who did not love her. And worse, she was forced to turn her back on Robert Pauley, who did love her. Or did he? Though she could not forget his arms about her, the comfort of them, the thrill, no words of love had passed between them. Could she be merely a silly woman, no better than the kitchen maids yearning after stable boys?

  And yet there had been more in those embraces, she was certain…most of the time.

  She would never know Robert’s thoughts now, and that was the heart’s ache of it. They could be extreme sympathy, which she mistook for more out of some battered womanish hope for affection not yet quite dead under her breast. She tried to stanch her rampant wishes, but they flowed through her like the Thames at high tide, unstoppable by her will alone. She must find strength to thrust her own emotions deep down lest they show on her face, and the very observant Countess Warwick next to her in the presence chamber be made too aware of them.

  She sighed. She had long practice in pushing feelings away, no matter how often they slipped back into her head. Perhaps every woman did, since a woman’s emotions must first conform to her father’s or husband’s, or even her brother’s. She had no right to own them for herself.

  This day Frances had made her way through tapestry-hung halls to join Her Majesty’s entourage to the presence chamber. She held herself upright, having little choice, encased as she was in a farthingale and many shifts.

  Bright morning sun cast diamond outlines on the shining marble floor of Cardinal Wolsey’s old palace. She liked her new place, away from Lady Stanley, closer to the queen’s throne and next to the kind Countess of Warwick.

  Fortunately, Her Majesty had nevermore mentioned Frances wearing a sword. Today, she had adorned herself with the string of matched pearls that Philip had sent for the third anniversary of their nuptials. At the last moment this morn, she had removed a small bunch of dried flowers from under her bolster. Like a young girl she had rescued them from the bower Robert had made of her receiving chamber that last day of his service, and had tucked them into her kirtle. She realized with a slight smile that her ornaments were as conflicted as her heart.

  Leave off! she commanded, silently stopping her rambling thoughts. She must take care not to become a self-pitying creature, a pain to live with and a bore to befriend.

  Anne Warwick put her hand on Frances’s arm. Did her distress show so plainly?

  Always the lady closest to the queen wherever she was, Anne was also the wife of the Earl of Leicester’s brother, thus doubly tied to Elizabeth. The queen had been without Leicester’s close comfort while he was in Holland these last many months. She would have him there as general of her army, but she would have him also by her side. Thus, Elizabeth was ever unhappy, often angered by what she herself had commanded.

  Even a queen could not always have the man she wanted.

  Elizabeth had not married the earl when young, but had never been quite able to let him go, despite the ugly suspicion by many that he had murdered his wife, Amy Robsart, or hired a stealthy murderer to break her neck. The scandal had ruined any hopes Leicester or the queen might have had of a closer union. Even after his later marriage to Lettice Knollys, Her Majesty’s beautiful but detested cousin, Elizabeth would never allow the wife to come to court. Essex was Lettice’s son by her first husband, Walter Devereux, although it was said in close whispers that he looked the image of Leicester as a youth.

  The old scandal made Frances look upon the queen as a woman with a history that was easily understood. The court was full of such intrigues and tangled possibilities for endless tittle-tattle. Frances would not be made such a target.

  Determined to bring her thoughts under control so as not to be a subject for such gossip, which would probably have her mourning Essex, Frances paid close attention while Chateauneuf, the French ambassador, droned on about imagined and real insults to his person and embassy in London’s Salisbury Square. Londoners hated the French and Spanish, and unruly apprentices often threw street offal at their carriages.

  After what the queen considered enough time spent listening to a recitation of wrongs, though the ambassador obviously had not concluded, Elizabeth grew impatient with Chateauneuf. This was made plain by the tapping of her long white fingers on the arm of her gilded throne chair. If she found a petitioner too rambling, she would lose her tolerance and dismiss him until he was better organized, or brought her a more pleasing proposition in the form of a gift.

  Today, Her Majesty seemed distracted, as was almost every lady in the chamber. Frances knew the cause. Walter Raleigh, recently knighted by the queen, who had first sought to groom him for higher position, stood near the dais. His striking good looks made all the ladies present forget the Earl of Essex’s absence. The two jealous courtiers had almost fought a duel, for which the stated punishment, never practiced, was the loss of a hand. With a giggle, muffled by a cough, Frances imagined that Her Majesty would never tolerate a court half-full of one-handed handsome men.

  Raleigh was almost too well favored, his dark brown, curling beard snipped close to his jaw, his perfect features lit by bright blue eyes. A large white lace-trimmed and pointed ruff, just an inch smaller than Elizabeth’s own, sat on his neck, surely held there by wire, since no Dutch starch could keep such rigidity. Raleigh’s magnificence was crowned by a velvet cap the color of his eyes and adorned with large jewels.

  Every gaze, including the queen’s, lingered long on him, though he had his eye on one of her ladies.

  Anne leaned in to whisper, “Mistress Throckmorton has caught Sir Walter’s attention. He needs be careful. The queen does not share her favorites…or her ladies.”

  Frances smiled. These were well-known truths. Raleigh knew them, but he was an adventurer and naturally reckless. He was also after a position on the Privy Council. Perhaps he would trade love for a seat at that table? Or perhaps he thought to have both.

  Though the queen toyed with the idea of elevating Raleigh, Frances doubted he would ever move up to the first rank of advisors. He was too uncontrolled and Elizabeth too good a judge of a man’s worth to her and her kingdom. She would keep him dangling, with just enough favor, to decorate her court and write poetry for her—what woman did not want to be a Stella?—but she would never trust his self-serving advice.

  “Sir Walter!” the queen said, talking over the French ambassador, who flushed pink from the slight.

  “Majesty,” Raleigh said, sweeping his cap from his head, his curls falling in a most becoming fashion about his head.

  “You have recently had your portrait painted by Nicholas Hilliard. When will you present it to your queen and the court?” Her tone was droll, leading Raleigh willingly into one of his rhyming jests.

  “Your grace,” Raleigh said, advancing to kneel on the dais.

  The Artist uses honest paint

  To represent things as they ain’t,

  He then asks money for the time

  It took to perpetrate the crime.

  Laughter rippled through the courtiers.

  Elizabeth covered her smile with her feather fan, since her teeth increasingly suffered from her love of sweets. Raleigh was well pleased with himself, and he bowed first to the queen and then to the court.

  The Danish ambassador now stepped forward, but the queen rose, signaling an end to her patience and the morning audience. Frances g
athered her skirts to join the entourage to the royal apartments, where Elizabeth would take a lone meal. She disliked dining with others unless it was with her ladies or a state affair.

  Frances did not blame the queen. Whenever she sat down, someone approached to whisper a request for her favor.

  Lady Stanley, her face carrying an unusual high color, her lips in a slack sneer, stumbled into Frances as both stepped from the dais.

  Frances’s patience quickly went the way of the queen’s. “Have a care! My lady, if that was deliberate and Her Majesty saw your behavior, you could be sent from court.” Lady Stanley’s face was twisted in pain at the rebuke. Frances knew she should hold her tongue, but she could not. “Your suitors would grieve the loss of your fortune, if not your person.” The words were hurtful, and for the moment she meant them to be. She was tired of the woman’s childish tricks.

  Frances began to regret her harsh words as she marched away, and she determined to beg the lady’s pardon before the day was done. She heard a commotion behind her, but the queen’s entourage was formed, and she fell into place behind the Countess of Warwick and the leading trumpeters, drummers, and halberdiers.

  Later, she passed into the corridor, making a swift way toward her chambers. For the past several months, she had always looked to the shadowy place Robert had stood when he waited for her as her servant. Today, to her surprise, he was there. He bowed. She hoped he had not seen her display of temper toward Lady Stanley. Should she stop and speak to him of the lovely weather or the excellent hunting in the deer park, or continue with a nod of recognition? Her cautious heart forced her to the latter, giving her another action to regret. She was no more than ten paces on when she turned swiftly back to ease her mind of the last fault.

  Robert watched as she passed. She was angry. He could not blame her. She could count on no one. Her father would care for her as he saw fit, but he would never give her the recognition that she wanted and needed. Frances required accomplishments and friends who recognized her need. She was richly adorned in her person by God and had no requirement for what most women of the court sought: clothing and jewels, a higher position and title. She needed the love he could give her, though such love could never be. Even as he thought it, his body warmed to her.