The Queen's Captive

by Barbara Kyle

  “Master Barnes,” she managed.

  He walked in looking very grave. He held a rolled paper scroll. Honor could see that its red wax seal was broken. An official confirmation of the execution? From the mayor?

  “I’ve come to tell you—” Barnes stopped and shook his head. “God’s blood, I can’t hardly hear myself with those bells going at it.”

  It unnerved Honor despite her effort to be brave. Were they ringing bells to announce the execution? Was that common?

  “They’ve already set bonfires in the market square,” the jailer went on. “And what with all the dancing in the streets and feasting and drinking and such, I’ll be lucky to keep even one of my turnkeys on the job today.”

  Honor could not fathom what he meant. She was trying with all her might to stay strong, to hear the time decreed for her execution and acknowledge it with some dignity.

  “Bonfires? Feasting?” Richard asked, his voice raw. He glanced at Adam, who seemed just as lost.

  Barnes looked at the three of them, his eyes going wide. “You didn’t hear the news? God’s blood, the old queen’s dead. Aye, Queen Mary died in her bed just past midnight. And this morning in London the lords and gentlemen of Parliament proclaimed the new, young queen. Queen Elizabeth. Folks have gone stark mad, rejoicing. Listen to them bells!”

  “Good Lord,” Adam said in awe.

  Honor felt a moment of deep satisfaction. The burning of heretics would stop. The country would suffer no civil war. The young woman she had counselled and cajoled had survived her sister’s hate. “Queen Elizabeth,” she said almost to herself, liking the sound of it. “I am right glad of it.”

  “Aye,” Richard murmured hollowly. She looked at him, knowing his mind was still fixed on her imminent execution. This joyful news did nothing to cheer him.

  “Aye,” Barnes echoed. “The new, young queen is mistress of the lot of us now, and I must do her bidding. And she wastes no time in making us jump.” He raised the scroll. “This here is my order, delivered straight from her hand.” He put on a sober face and puffed out his chest to make a declaration. “Mistress Honor Thornleigh, in the name of Queen Elizabeth, the first of that name, I release you from my custody.”

  She blinked at him, not understanding.

  Richard asked warily, confused, “Is my wife to be taken to another jail?”

  “God’s blood, man, no. No jail at all. She’s to have her freedom. Her life. Your good wife is pardoned.”

  34

  Two Ships

  December 1559

  Fog—a cold, wet, winter fog—lay heavy on the River Thames, making some in the small crowd on the London wharf shiver as they waited. But the gathering, the usual mix of merchants’ agents, customs officials, ale sellers, chandlers, lightermen, scavenging boys, pickpockets, and whores accepted the discomfort. Every arriving ship was a floating opportunity to make money.

  Honor felt the cold not at all. She was too eager to catch the first glimpse of the Spanish galleon through the river fog; her first sight of Isabel and Carlos and their little boy. Storms had delayed their landfall for weeks. Now, they were coming home. Not to Speedwell House—the rebuilding was still going on. In the meantime, Honor and Richard, befitting their rise in the world—thanks to Elizabeth, and the astonishing new wealth that came with it—had bought a London house on fashionable Bishopsgate Street. Joan, part of their household now, was there, getting everything in order for the feast to welcome Isabel and Carlos back to England. Honor and Joan had had a spirited difference of opinion this morning about whether to have the cook serve goose with preserved cherries as the first course, or pheasant. They had resolved it by ordering both.

  How quickly we get used to a life of luxury, she thought now with some amusement. And yet, every day she gave silent thanks for her great good fortune. And her gratitude would be boundless at the sight of her daughter after five long years. A friend of Richard’s at the customs house had alerted him about the ship en route from Seville. The ship’s boat had come ahead with the passenger list, and Richard’s friend confirmed that Isabel and Carlos were on board.

  No sign of them yet, though. Just screehing seagulls and a few wherries either appearing out of the dirty-looking fog or disappearing into it. Beside Honor, Richard had struck up a conversation with the agent of a colleague of the Mercers’ Guild. She glanced back at Frances, waiting quietly a few paces behind them, hugging herself. She already missed Adam, Honor knew. She was with child.

  “Cold?” Honor asked her.

  Frances shook her head with a quick, reassuring smile. Honor had come to pity her, and also, strange to say, almost to admire her. At her brother’s death Frances had surprised everyone by taking Honor’s part, saying she would never forgive her brother for using her to enable his attack on Richard and Speedwell House. She had made a complete break with the house of Grenville, and was trying hard to fit into the Thornleigh family, although Richard still did not trust her, and spoke to her with strained civility. But Honor could see how much Frances loved Adam. It was pitiful, really. Adam was reconciled to the fact of their marriage and treated his wife with courtesy, and even a modicum of intimacy, but it was very clear that Frances would never have his heart. Yet she made no complaint. Honor found that touching.

  A manservant Honor didn’t know approached their little group and bowed. “Your lordship.”

  Richard took no notice and kept on talking to the agent, listening with interest to the man’s replies.

  The servant tried again. “Pardon, your lordship.”

  Oblivious, Richard talked on. Honor watched with amusement. He still wasn’t used to being addressed as a peer of the realm.

  The servant coughed to catch his attention.

  Honor laughed. “Lord Thornleigh,” she said pointedly.

  Richard blinked at her, then at the servant, then remembered—he was Baron Thornleigh now. Elizabeth had ennobled him in the flurry of her first acts as queen, and gifted him with rich lands in Kent and Wiltshire as well as another large manor neighboring their Essex home. Richard, grinning, had told Honor it was Elizabeth’s way of thanking her. “Sorry,” he said now to the servant. “What is it?”

  “Sir William Cecil bids you come to Whitehall for a meeting, and to kindly come posthaste.” Elizabeth’s very first act had been to name Cecil her principal secretary, the most influential man on her newly formed royal council. “He sends you this, my lord.” The servant handed over a folded paper.

  Richard scanned the note. “More talks with Gresham,” he said to Honor. “The Antwerp strategy.”

  “Then you must go right away.” Sir Thomas Gresham was Elizabeth’s expert financial agent in Antwerp. Honor knew that England’s financial crisis was dire. Queen Mary had left a bankrupt treasury, which dangerously weakened the country’s security. Elizabeth was facing the first international crisis of her reign. French troops, brought over by the Scottish queen regent, had been threateningly posted along England’s border. But Elizabeth had no standing army, a fleet that was in urgent need of repair, little cash, and a debased coinage. She needed to borrow immediately from the powerful London merchants’ companies in Antwerp to consolidate her debts, buy arms, refit her ships, and rebuild confidence in the pound sterling by removing base coins from circulation. She needed all the help she could get. Richard knew Antwerp, knew the major traders there, and knew Elizabeth, who trusted him. “The lord treasurer, too, will want to see you,” Honor said to him.

  The servant bowed to Honor. “Your ladyship’s presence is also requested.”

  Richard smiled wryly. “And the Queen will want to see you.”

  Honor was glad to help in whatever way she could. Elizabeth had called her in for several private discussions to help formulate the act that had begun her reign, an act to establish a truce in religion, a proclamation of tolerance. That had made Honor very proud. She had stood beside her as Elizabeth had prepared to make her entrance into Parliament for the proclamation, while her ladies-
in-waiting fussed with last minute touches of her jewels and her robes. Honor’s heart had swelled with admiration for the new queen.

  Elizabeth had turned to her with a nervous look, and reached out her hand for reassurance. Honor clasped her hand and gave it a squeeze and said, “Aspirat primo fortuna labori.” Fortune smiles upon our first effort. An echo of their very first meeting when Elizabeth had been a frightened prisoner at Woodstock.

  Elizabeth had smiled, relaxing. She stood tall and said, matching Virgil with Virgil, “Audaces fortuna iuvat.” Fortune favors the bold.

  “There it is,” Frances said. “The ship.”

  Honor and Richard turned. The Spanish galleon was sliding out of the fog. Honor strained to make it out. It looked like there were people on the decks, but the ragged shreds of fog blurred everything.

  “Is that Isabel?” Richard said, excited. “There, to port of the mainmast. Look.”

  Honor’s heart leapt. A young woman, waving, with a little boy at her side. But, no, it was not Isabel.

  “That’s not her. Maybe they’re below deck?”

  “Longboats towing them,” Richard said. “No wind.”

  “How long till they reach us?”

  “Half an hour at least. Hours more if the customs officials decide to meddle.”

  Honor’s spirits plunged. “And we must go. You to Sir William, I to the Queen.”

  They shared a look of frustration. The summons to Whitehall must immediately be obeyed.

  “I’ll stay,” Frances said. “I’ll greet them. And take them back to the house.”

  They turned to her. She looked so anxious, so eager to please. Pregnancy had softened her features somewhat, even her temperament. Honor was moved. “Thank you, Frances. That is kind. Get them settled, if you would. Tell them we’ll be back for the feast.”

  “I will.” Frances laid her hand on her stomach and said with a hesitant smile, “It will be lovely to have a child in the house.”

  Richard offered her a stiff bow of the head. But a little less stiff than usual, it seemed to Honor. “Madam,” he said to Frances. It was his thanks.

  Honor took a last loving, aching look at the ship that held Isabel and little Nicolas and Carlos. Then Richard took her elbow and they turned and made their way through the crowd and left the quay.

  The wind was fair on the Elizabeth’s quarter and the sea shimmered with blue and white and gold as Adam took over from the weary helmsman at the wheel.

  “Get some rest, Griffiths.” The gale off Dover had kept them all on their toes. Now, they could relax.

  “Aye, sir.” Griffiths tugged his cap and lumbered off, glad to be relieved.

  Adam watched an osprey wheeling above the sails, her head gleaming white in contrast to her rich brown body. Her heading was the same as his. He didn’t know about the bird’s planned landfall, but the Elizabeth would fetch Portsmouth tomorrow morning. He was eager to begin his mission. Meet with Sir Benjamin Gonson, treasurer of the Admiralty, and William Winter, master of naval ordnance. Elizabeth was rebuilding her navy.

  “I don’t know those men,” she had told him when she had given him her orders. “I do know you.”

  What a day that had been. Her great hall at Hatfield crowded with lords and ambassadors and courtiers, and she, queen for just three days, looking radiant and confident and eager. She had knighted Thomas Parry. Then knighted him.

  “Rise, Sir Adam.” Her dark eyes had sparkled as she said it, and Adam knew he was not imagining that a tear intensified the sparkle even as she smiled. She handed him a captain’s whistle made of gold, and under the watch of all those people she said quietly, “The original shall stay with me, for safekeeping.”

  His heart was so full he’d been glad that protocol required his silence, for he would not have been able to form a single, rational sentence. It was the second best day of his life.

  Now, his mission was to assist Gonson in evaluating the Queen’s naval assets and liabilities. Inventory each ship’s tonnage, number of men, state of readiness, condition of repair, type and quality of artillery and other munitions in the Queen’s storehouses, and then calculate what would be required, at what cost, to make Her Majesty’s navy into a vigorous fighting force. Adam was under no illusions. England at sea was weak. The fleet was just thirty-four ships. Of those, only eleven of the largest ships, all upward of two hundred tons, plus ten barks and pinnaces and one brigantine, were in satisfactory condition. The other twelve, including two galleys, were not worth repair. Or so he’d been told. He would see for himself. He had told Elizabeth that she could rely on private ships, too, if necessary. He estimated that forty-five merchant ships, including the Elizabeth, could be refitted and fashioned for war.

  Because Elizabeth was vulnerable. Adam looked southeastward across his port gunwhale. There lay Spain. With its mighty forces on land and sea, its endless wealth from the New World, and a grip on the hearts of Catholic Englishmen, Spain could so easily invade England. At his stern, to the north, lay Scotland, a virtual province of France, whose troops were stationed on England’s border, just waiting to march south and claim England as well.

  England. When he’d left Antwerp five years ago, he had thought he was coming home. Home was where family was. He would soon have a child, and that filled him with a calm kind of joy. But Frances was not his home. And never would be.

  He took a deep breath of the salt-tanged air. The Elizabeth felt like home. He looked ahead. Far across the ocean lay the New World. Something in him longed to see it. The Elizabeth could take him there, take him anywhere. But not now. Now, he had a child to raise, a country to defend, and a queen to protect and strengthen.

  He steered a few degrees to starboard to keep the wind full on his quarter and fly the sea miles to Portsmouth. The osprey kept him company for another few minutes, then bore off on her own charted course.

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  Readers of historical novels are often curious, when they reach the end of a book, to know how much was fact and how much was fiction. So let me fill you in.

  The tense relationship between the two daughters of Henry VIII is famously true, confirmed in the writings of many contemporaries at court, including several foreign ambassadors. Mary, the child of pious Queen Catherine of Aragon, considered Elizabeth, the child of Anne Boleyn, a bastard and a heretic, and abhorred the thought of her ever ruling England. Even when the childless Mary knew she was dying, she refused to acknowledge Elizabeth as her rightful heir. Begged by her councilors to do so to prevent massive unrest over the succession, Mary added a terse codicil to her will in which she finally made provision for the passing of the throne to the sister she hated. This happened three weeks before her death—not four months before it, as my story depicts. There is no historical record of a final meeting between the two sisters during these last months of Mary’s life, but for dramatic purposes I have portrayed a confrontation between them in which Elizabeth out-maneuvers Mary, leaving her little choice but to acknowledge Elizabeth as her heir.

  It is part of the historical record that Mary’s husband saved Elizabeth more than once from her sister’s wrath. Some modern novelists have fancied a romantic interest on Philip’s part for his comely sister-in-law, but this seems to me unlikely given the man’s dour character. Instead, I have attributed his actions to political forward thinking, of which he was a master. His intervention was ironic, because for the next thirty years he and Elizabeth were hostile political adversaries, waging a bitter cold war that culminated in the legendary confrontation in 1588 between her navy and the “invincible” Spanish Armada, and Elizabeth’s celebrated victory.

  Religious zeal ruled Mary. She oversaw the burning of more than three hundred English men and women, earning the name her subjects gave her in her lifetime: “Bloody Mary.” Yet it is hard not to pity the woman when we consider what she suffered. The phantom pregnancy I depicted in the novel actually occurred—it was the talk of the court, and foreign ambassadors wrote home about it
with increasing astonishment as Mary willed herself to believe she really was pregnant, right into the tenth month. Some modern scholars have attributed her malady to uterine cancer. Her trials were many: her barren state; the horrible humiliation of two phantom pregnancies; the desertion of her husband, whom she adored; the bankruptcy in which she plunged England for the sake of his wars; the resulting loss of Calais, so disastrous for English trade; and the complete overthrow of her resurrected church—the supreme mission of her life—which she could see coming with the ascension of Elizabeth. The weight of these miseries broke her in body and spirit. She died knowing that she had been an abject failure as a wife and as queen. Mary’s life was tragic.

  Elizabeth’s life as queen was a triumph by any standard—a forty-four-year reign that saw the flowering of an unmatched age of artistry, exploration, and enterprise, an age whose glories we still refer to as “Elizabethan.” Yet before her ascension this young woman spent twenty years in almost constant insecurity, in and out of her royal father’s good graces depending on which wife he had at the time, endangered when rebels acted in her name, fearful of her sister. The book’s opening event, in which Mary imprisoned Elizabeth in the Tower of London, is true, as is Elizabeth’s purgatory afterward under house arrest for more than a year at Woodstock. She was never sure if the sister who hated her would kill her by outright execution or by other means. The assassination attempt depicted in the novel is invented, but there is historical evidence that the imperial ambassador actively considered ridding Queen Mary of her troublesome sibling. Later, during Elizabeth’s long reign, there were dozens of known attempts on her life.

  I have depicted Elizabeth as reluctant to support the Dudley conspiracy. She was known to have had a cautious nature. During her forty-four years as England’s monarch she often frustrated her advisers with what they saw as her indecisiveness, especially during crises when the country’s security was threatened. Sir William Cecil wrote that she was always loath “to have her people adventured in fights.” Modern scholars, however, tend to attribute Elizabeth’s caution more to cleverness and a deft management of foreign affairs. Given the astounding peacefulness of her long reign, the latter interpretation seems justified.