The Twylight Tower

by Karen Harper

  “Oh, my lovey, remember how your own mother’s enemies pulled her down to destruction along with married men accused of adultery with her so—”

  “Stop it!” she screeched. “This is nothing like that. I rule here, not de Quadra, not Mary Stuart, not Cecil, not gossipmongers, and not you! But I tell you now, if I had the will—or found pleasure in such a dishonorable life as you imply, from which God preserve me—I do not know of anyone on earth who could forbid me, including you!”

  Elizabeth turned and banged out of the room, striding through her presence chambers where her ladies and Franklin Dove—their new pet in place of lapdogs and parrots—scrambled to fall in behind her. She did not slow until she reached the gardens overlooking the river. Under a bower of white roses, she sat on a turf bench and summoned Franklin with a flick of her wrist.

  “Play something that suits,” she commanded. “Something about fickle friends will do.”

  Elizabeth ignored the fact that Katherine Grey snickered and Mary Sidney shook her head. The queen closed her eyes and felt the river breeze cool her flushed cheeks and neck as Franklin began,

  Right true it is, and said full years ago:

  Take heed of him, that by the back thee claweth.

  For none is worse, than is a friendly foe.

  Though he seem good,

  All things that thee delighteth,

  Yet know it well, that in thy bosom creepeth.…

  Chapter the Fourth

  Prince Robert wedded a gay lady,

  He wedded her with a ring;

  Prince Robert wedded a gay lady,

  But he dare not bring her home.…

  Oh where is now my wedded lord,

  And where now can he be?

  Oh where is now my wedded lord?

  For him I cannot see.

  — ANONYMOUS

  AMY DUDLEY WAS OUT OF BREATH FROM HER climb up the steps of the monastery’s skeletal bell tower. Even the double flight of stairs in the manor house hadn’t prepared her for this. But now she could see down the road Robert must ride to Cumnor. He’d sent one of his men ahead to tell of his coming. Without even asking, Amy knew his visit would be short. She propped her elbows on the remnant of the windowsill to watch, then put them down at her sides when the lump in her breast hurt again.

  Petite but buxom and childless after ten years of marriage, Amy Robsart Dudley couldn’t abide living with her brother’s or half-brother’s families. She used to visit, but they were always fussing at her, always saying she should go to court, as if Robert wanted her there, as if some wives were even allowed there if they didn’t directly serve the queen. Right now her sisters-in-law would be fretting over her ailment and accusing her of moping. It was better to be here.

  Robert had housed her on old monastery lands King Henry VIII had given to his physician Dr. Owen, whose son now owned it and whose widow still lived in part of the manor house. Anthony Forster, Robert’s steward, and his family also leased here to oversee the farm and Robert’s interests in the nearby fields he owned. Amy and her waiting woman, Mrs. Pirto, had some rooms of their own on the second floor and ate noonday dinner with the others, but it wasn’t like really living in a family.

  Amy wondered what people thought about the twenty-eight-year-old country wife of the queen’s Lord Robert, if they thought of her at all. Did they know he had a house at Kew and fine apartments within beck and call of their queen, while Amy was still a paying guest in other people’s houses?

  Yet Cumnor was a pretty place. It had a park, terraced walks shaded by elms and oaks, and a pond with flashing fish. Fine farmlands stretched to the wild downs. If one wanted shops, it was six miles to the market village of Abingdon and four to the university town of Oxford.

  Still, she always thought about the abbots who used to hold this country seat and were buried beside this tower. Sometimes she fancied she heard their mournful voices, singing, praying. She often walked among their graves, and if she was alone, laid flat on the ground and stared up at the sky. Then she heard them chanting right through the turf. After all, Cumnor had been ripped from the abbots when Queen Elizabeth’s father ruined the holy church. If he could do that, what couldn’t his royal daughter take from anyone she pleased?

  Amy sucked in a breath when she saw three riders on the road. Her heart beat fast, and she began to perspire. She shouldn’t have worn her best gown. Picking her way down the stairs, she waited in the garden amid tall hollyhocks and bright roses. Years ago she and Robert had coupled on the grass in a bower of roses. Robert had watched her face and said she blushed so prettily. She pinched her cheeks to make some roses now.

  Her belly fluttered as she watched her husband ride closer. How fine and proud he looked, even dust- and mud-spattered. She always forgot how tall and robust he was when they were apart. But now he rode next to his thin-as-a-rake favorite groom, Fletcher, so maybe that made him look ever bigger.

  “Amy, love,” he said, all smiles, dismounting and unstrapping a saddlepack. “I’m heartened to see you outside instead of keeping to the house.”

  Fletcher was the only one of his companions she recognized. The other was a burly queen’s man, she supposed. While they went to stable the horses, Robert pecked a kiss on her mouth, then hugged her hard. That hurt her breast, and she flinched, but he didn’t seem to notice. He threw an arm around her shoulders and walked her toward the house, the pack in his other hand. Anthony Forster, who would do anything to please Robert, came out to greet him. They started talking rents and crop yield, but not for long.

  “I’ll speak with you later,” Robert told Anthony as he took her hand. “See to my companions, will you? I’ve brought gifts for my lady, and she’ll make mincemeat of me if she doesn’t have them forthwith.”

  “As if I’d ever gainsay or order you about,” she protested gently as they climbed the stairs to her suite of four rooms. Mrs. Pirto bobbed him a curtsy at the door and went out, God bless her.

  “Amy,” he said, and sat in her favorite chair by the empty hearth and pulled her onto his lap, “I am sorry to see you paler and thinner. You must eat better, my pet, keep up your strength.”

  Amy had gone over many things she’d say to him. She wanted to scold him and insist he had no right to court the queen, that’s what all the rumors were saying. Rumors he might ask for a divorce to wed the beautiful, young Elizabeth. He deserved his wife’s scorn and spite, but Amy loved him yet.

  If these gifts in his saddlepack were bribes, she told herself, she didn’t want them. Still, she watched as his sun-browned hands drew them out: an alabaster jar with sweet-smelling something in it, a new ruff, an embroidered sky-blue silk scarf with bouncing fringe, a porcelain pomander for herbs and perfumed petals, and so much more.

  “I can’t bear it,” she blurted, and burst into tears.

  “Are you in pain?” he asked, seizing her shoulders and trying to study her face while she sobbed. “You miss me, don’t you? Are you well treated here? Do you need another physician?”

  Sniffling, she nodded at his first three questions and shook her head at the last. He offered her his fine handkerchief, and she snatched it to hide her face.

  “Amy, Amy,” he said, sounding like her father, “we have already discussed that this is my—our—great moment in time, our moment of destiny. To have the goodwill of the monarch after the two great falls the Dudleys have taken, after my own father and brother were executed for the rebellion, is a blessing to us all.”

  Amy tried to listen, but his words blurred. Sometimes Robert’s reasonings came out all twisted together. She blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes.

  “But now, my pet,” he went on, “we have the opportunity to regain some of our lost lands and ruined wealth from those disasters.…”

  Disasters, she understood that, all right. She squirmed off his lap, though she would have loved to cling to him, more fool she.

  “Monarch, you called her,” Amy said, blowing her nose again. “As if she is not a flesh-a
nd-blood woman to you, as if she could be a man just as well.”

  “She intends to rule like a man, mayhap without a man, so she needs advisers who—”

  “You think she needs you as a man, as her man!” she exploded. She wanted to break the porcelain pomander over his head, to gag or strangle him with that new scarf.

  “Amy, don’t you turn on me too,” he said, rising and coming to pull her gently to him. His voice was silky smooth. She tried not to cling, but she turned her head and rested her wet cheek on his leather doublet. Through its thickness, she fancied she could hear his heart beating right over the sound of the abbots’ songs.

  “Who else dares to bear you ill will if she is your friend?” Amy choked out.

  “Ah, to know so little of how the world works. Many resent that I fly high and fast and they yet hate my father for taking the badge of the earls of Warwick. Some cannot abide he named himself Duke of Northumberland, the first subject unconnected with royal blood to hold the ducal rank.”

  Amy lifted her head as his voice rose. She saw his neck veins throb. “They are all hellfire, raving jealous, and I must show them they need me,” he went on, glaring into space. “Sometimes, I almost think, all but her—and you—hate me. My beloved, I can still count on you?” he asked, and held her at arm’s length and bent down to look straight into her eyes.

  Amy sighed, and nodded. What little strength she’d summoned flowed from her, and she sagged against him. He lifted and carried her to the bed and sat perched on it, holding her hand as daylight fled the room. Soon she fell asleep and when she woke, Mrs. Pirto was sitting by the hearth in lamplight, and Amy could hear Robert’s voice somewhere below … entwined with his steward’s … if the voices weren’t the monks’ singing their sad chants from their graves out back again.

  “DEAR HARRY, I AM GLAD TO SEE YOU!” ELIZABETH TOLD her Boleyn cousin Henry Carey, now Baron Hunsdon, as he bowed before her in her withdrawing room. Harry had been gone just over a week and, in truth, she’d hardly noticed, even if he was the captain of her personal guards, the Gentlemen Pensioners. Robert had been away only one day and night, and she missed him like the very devil.

  “How did you find your lady wife and the children, my lord?”

  “Good news, Your Grace, as Anne is with child so soon again.”

  He looked as proud as he did pleasant, the queen thought. The thirty-four-year-old son of her mother’s sister was a bluff, forthright man, but one who also appreciated fine things in life. Harry was russet haired, but with that and his prominent nose, the family resemblance stopped. He was stocky, broad faced with wide-set eyes, blunt fingers, and a deliberate, stiff walk. But he was stalwart in tournaments and would serve well in war, God forbid, she thought.

  “Harry, I share your joy and will be honored to stand godmother to the babe. And how did you find your lands at Hunsdon?” She rose, indicating they should stroll toward the gallery. It was then she noted another man, a stranger to her, in the shadows across the room, mayhap waiting for Harry. She shivered as if someone were spying on her again, or as superstitious folk used to say, someone had walked on her grave.

  “And who have you brought to court this time, my lord?” she inquired, for Harry was always mentoring young men of talent. This one would have done for one of her guards or porters with his height and clean, good looks were he not already attired in the new buff-and-brown Hunsdon colors.

  “Your Grace,” Harry said, “may I present my new man, Anne’s second cousin, Luke Morgan.”

  She offered her beringed hand for the young man to kiss, which he did quite smoothly for one new-come to court. “He is more than a body servant and less than a bodyguard, I take it, Harry? Come along then, Luke,” she added, savoring the familiar blush she could bring to a man’s cheek with sudden attention or displeasure—except for Robin, who thought he ruled her, the wretch.

  Her ladies quickly fell in behind them. Elizabeth had been trying to give her courtiers more of her time since Robert was away. At least Harry’s arrival cheered her. They shared a love of music and drama, and bestowing lands and titles on him was her way of elevating her once-slandered mother’s family in everyone’s eyes and diverting attention from the gifts and preferments she showered on Robert. Because she’d named Robin Master of the Queen’s Horse, she’d named Harry Master of the Queen’s Hawks.

  “Oh, I nearly forgot, I have a surprise for you,” she said, turning to her entourage. “Mary,” she said to Robin’s sister, “will you fetch Franklin Dove? Baron Hunsdon will like to hear him.”

  “And who, pray tell, is Franklin Dove?” Harry asked as they descended the steps to walk outside in the shade of the covered passages.

  “Geoffrey Hammet fell to his death last week,” she explained, her voice catching. “I recall he was another young man you had taken under your wing once. Someone surprising came along to replace him, and I had to carpe diem. And don’t you be trying to lure this one away with promises of patronage or more than I pay him, my lord.”

  “Then, Your Grace, you in turn will not try to filch Luke from under my aegis. Besides, no one could lure anyone from you, nor can a mere youth tempt me to try to displeasure Your Gracious Majesty. But—Geoffrey fell to his death, you say?”

  As she explained the details of Geoffrey’s demise, she noted Harry’s deepening frown. Unlike many at court, her cousin’s emotions were writ plain on his countenance. She was expecting him to question her or ask what he could do to help probe the death, for he had served her twice thusly before. But as they sat in the shaded courtyard by the fountain and Franklin perched on its stone lip, playing, and Luke stood in the shadows as if he were guarding them all, Elizabeth would have wagered Harry forgot all about Geoffrey Hammet.

  “Remarkable!” he said, looking astounded and awestruck at Franklin’s performance. “Exquisite! Such alacrity and delicacy of fingering, but such robustness in interpretation too. The seething passion held within, I cannot fathom. Your Majesty, as tragic as is Geoffrey’s loss, this lad stands far above him. But fifteen years of age, you say?” he asked, squinting at the boy.

  “And I also said you’ll not pirate him.”

  “Ah, no, but I shall sue for just one favor.”

  “Which is, my lord?”

  He lowered his voice and leaned closer. “I can tell you are determined to put Geoffrey’s loss behind you, Your Grace, so will you not allow me to go up on the parapet where he played for you and portray what could have happened? You could meanwhile sit in your window and watch for what we both might discern. You have done such before in like matters.”

  “I fear, cousin,” she whispered, “you have been talking to the others of my Privy Plot Council, Kat perhaps, Meg or Ned.”

  “No, but will this not set all minds at rest if they are uneasy? And you, no doubt, are far too busy with the kingdom’s business to pursue such investigations anymore. Just allow me to borrow Franklin to play the part of Geoffrey, though I swear to you on my life, I’ll not let him fall.”

  “Aha,” she said, rising, “my Master of the Queen’s Hawks wants to seize my Dove after all. But, yes, Harry, I think that is a worthy idea. We’ll do that tonight to put all suspicions of suicide or murder to rest once and for all. For,” she added, staring at him pointedly, “I believe Geoffrey’s demise was naught but sad mischance.”

  “SHOULD THE LAD SING AS WELL AS PLAY, YOUR GRACE?” Harry’s voice boomed across to her that evening.

  Sitting in her darkened bedchamber window, Elizabeth shook her head and rolled her eyes. She had sent everyone but Kat from the room to keep this secret, and Harry was shouting from the tower. Did he not know other windows opened onto this courtyard?

  “ ’S blood,” she hissed across the short distance to him, “melody, my lord, just melody. Something sweet and soothing merging to a tune more dissonant, I cannot recall exactly what.”

  Franklin’s lute knew what she wanted, even if Harry did not. But Elizabeth could tell that Harry had Franklin sitt
ing too far over, no doubt not even above the fatal spot in the courtyard. The wind was picking up again, playing its haunting music, blending with the night. Then, devil take him too, her lute lad began to play that tune about fickle friends again.

  “I’m going out there myself,” the queen told Kat.

  “But your ladies and guards will all know if you go out—”

  “Out the back stairs. Come if you will,” she added, snatching and lighting a fat beeswax candle before Kat could lay her cloak about her.

  Going out the small back door and down a short hallway, Elizabeth climbed the curving stairs inside the tower’s thick stone skin. At least Harry had left torches at regular intervals, for, as on the night of Geoffrey’s death, no lights lit the parapet. Not waiting for Kat, whom she could hear laboring on the stairs behind her, Elizabeth banged the wooden door open against the wall as she joined the others. Her candle sputtered out, but she could see better here.

  “Ah,” she said, looking up into the vast heavens, “the stars are out.”

  Luke Morgan, standing closest, swept her a bow. “It takes the dark to make some things clear,” he said, like some sage philosopher. She thrust her candle at him and pushed past on the narrow walkway toward Harry and Franklin.

  “Sit at least two more niches that way,” she ordered her lutenist, pointing. “Harry, where you stand was, so I hear, the place the lute was leaned on this low wall.”

  “These natural seats are so deep here,” Franklin put in, doing as she bid, “and have such a solid backrest, I cannot fathom anyone just toppling over from lost balance.”