by Karen Harper
“A deal that is a duet, my lord?” she said, and her eyes lit. “You know,” she added, carrying her lute and walking with him toward the door that went down toward the river, “the fact I play left-handed makes it easier for me to teach others because—for example—when the queen looks at me to copy my fingering, it’s just like looking in a mirror, almost as if I were her. And then, she trusts me more.”
Before he could garner a reply, the girl began to strum and sing,
The night right long and heavy
The days of my torment
The sighs continually
That throughout my heart went
My color pale and wan
To her did plainly show
That I was her true man
And yet she thought not so.
The queen’s principal secretary almost stumbled. For once, William Cecil was at a loss for words.
“YOU WERE ROUGH ON ME AT THAT PLAY READING TODAY, my queen,” Robin complained almost peevishly as they strolled the fountain court in the shade while her retinue promenaded the intersecting paths.
“Robin, I merely want the masque as it should be. By the way, I’m planning to have your friend Dr. Dee fly my Diana out with his ingenious, invisible harness.”
He looked shocked but quickly recovered. “But if we’re holding it here in the courtyard, what if a big wind comes up?” he protested. “I’ll not have you hurt.”
“Do you not trust your friend you have oft recommended to me?” she countered, as if they were fencing. “With my approval of such a feat, that silly rumor he is some sort of sorcerer or wizard will be ended and he can be of more use to me. Besides, my lord, it is you who are the sorcerer or wizard.”
“You mean of your heart, I pray. My queen, may I not come to your rooms this night? Keep Mary and Kat about if you will, it is just that I long to have you alone … nearly alone … to show you how much I adore you.”
“That is one of the costs of being queen, Robin, not lack of privacy, for I manage that at times, but not being certain whether proclamations, however impassioned, of adoration are to be trusted. A little voice inside me asks if my subjects love me for myself or for the fact I hold might and riches in my hand. Chi ama crede is not such an easy thing.”
Looking furious that she had turned his own lure upon him, he stopped walking. “You don’t mean you question how I truly feel? You cannot mean that, and if so, it is because, as I just said, you will not let me show you fully.”
“Ah, well,” she said, and turned down a cross path to take him unaware and make him hurry to keep up.
“Elizabeth,” he said, when he almost never dared her Christian name, “do not doubt that I love you as a man does a woman. Why, if you were a country lass and I some rural swain, I would love you ‘til I died.”
“ ’Til you died …” she whispered, closing her eyes dreamily.
When she caught her toe on a brick, she stopped to kick at it as if it were that object’s fault for ruining her reverie. Pain shot through her toes. That reminded her she wanted to talk to Robin about Amy’s health, but she could not bring herself to so much as mention it now. If anyone found out she had asked, would it not give credence to rumors she awaited Amy’s demise? But if Robert Dudley were indeed free to wed, would it change anything? Worse, if Amy were to die, her enemies could say the queen caused it somehow, so she’d best pray for Amy’s health, more even than her own.
“About tonight,” she whispered, “I do not know.”
“We could talk naught but politics,” he said, his lips tilting in the hint of smile.
“Talk that now,” she commanded. “You have spoken with de Quadra about the Grey girl as my heir, I take it?”
“I did, and he wanted it so badly he trusted me and took the bait whole. He says I am his friend now.”
“I knew it, but never trust or believe him fully. Do you think he might already have hatched a plot to help her?”
“I—truly, Your Grace—I think he still has hopes you might consider a Catholic fiancé who could then wed and bed you and in one generation have a Papist back on your throne.”
“Then he has a lot to learn,” she said, hitting her fists one atop the other as they walked, though her toe still pained her.
“He does indeed, but then, like me, he is merely a man.”
She turned to study Robin’s expression. Hurt but hopeful too. She did love Robin and want him desperately. But that made her fear him too—or was it herself, her womanly weaknesses, she feared?
“Robin, some evening soon,” she whispered, pointing upward at the Round Tower that so dominated Windsor, “I will walk there on the battlements, around and around, and mayhap I will see you there at twilight—before darkness falls.”
She turned and swept back toward the royal apartments, while others hurried to keep up. The wind lifted the fountain spray to coat her salmon-hued bodice so it seemed to turn a shiny, bloody crimson.
MEG HAD BEEN RELIEVED TO HEAR THAT EVEN THOUGH Her Majesty’s new London barge and rowers had arrived today, she’d already sent them away to fetch Dr. Dee. Not that Meg liked doctors. Though she could recall little of her life before the queen’s aunt, Mary Boleyn, took her in and nursed her after a kick in the head by a horse, Meg sensed they had not trusted doctors at her family’s apothecary shop in her earlier life. When her mother was dying, the old woman had warned against trusting them too, and Meg had been forced to bar the old leech Her Grace had sent in good faith from hurting her mother more.
As Meg kept cutting more roses, she glanced through the leafy, leggy autumn bushes down the slant of lawn toward the landing. The barge that had been repaired bobbed at its moorings, guarded by two louts arguing about something. Their angry voices carried clear up here. Of course it was just her imagination, but one voice sounded familiar and filled her with foreboding. Mayhap he was the bargeman who had called out the rhythm for the oarsmen from time to time.
“Can’t believe the varlets couldn’t keep this barge off the rocks,” the man in question told the other. “Why, I been shooting the rapids under London Bridge at high tide and hardly e’er lost a one.”
The other lout hacked and spit into the river and said something back about the queen, but Meg heard no more. Ben Wilton was a bridge shooter. It—it could be him. But it had been over a year since she’d seen him, and then she’d been far off or had hidden her own face with hair.
She squatted down behind the rosebushes and carefully parted two stems, ignoring the prick and scratch of thorns on her hands.
“Mercy, oh Lord, have mercy,” she whispered.
It looked like Ben Wilton, sounded like him too. Somehow he’d been brought here, then left behind when the other new oarsmen went to fetch Dr. Dee. Meg grabbed her basket and, hunched, did a low duck waddle to get farther away from the barge landing. A few times the queen had ordered her to take to the royal bed while Her Grace went somewhere else garbed as an herb girl, but now Meg would have to take to her own bed. Anything to keep clear of running into that man or she was as good as dead with Her Grace and probably, literally, with Ben Wilton too.
But she backed right into a pair of sturdy legs, gasped, turned, and looked up. She was half expecting Ned had been spying on her, but it was Lord Hunsdon’s man, that Luke something-or-other. Like the queen had taught her, the best defense was an attack.
“Do you dare to spy on the queen’s strewing herb mistress?” she demanded, rising to her full height but keeping her back to the river.
“Looks to me like you’re spying on those two men talking down there, and the question is why?” he said with a smirk. “Do you fancy them, then? I don’t know their names but I could present you just like a fine lady. They say bargemen have strong arms to hold and please a lady and great thrusting thighs to—”
“Leave off!” she ordered, putting a bit of the metallic clang in her voice as the queen sometimes did. Ned hadn’t taught her to mimic Her Grace’s carriage and tone for nothing.
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br /> “Leave off?” Luke threw back at her, and hooted a laugh, hooking his thumbs in his belt as if he were lord of all he surveyed. “Now what red-blooded man—including those oarsmen, I warrant—would want to do that when he came upon a blushing wench hot and flushed out here amid these sweet flowers?”
Furious with this lout and with herself for getting caught where he might force her to face Ben Wilton— damn all men—Meg grabbed her rose basket and fled toward the palace. But he caught her easily and swung her around to face him.
“Don’t run off. Since you’re so close to the queen, you and I can strike a bit of a bargain, all right? I long to serve her closer too, to know what pleases her so—”
“What pleases her is her cousin Harry’s lackeys, kin or not, keeping their ham-hock hands off her servants!” Meg cried, and shook herself free to run again. This time he let her go, but she didn’t like that he’d seen her spying on the bargemen, especially since he had the habit of tat-telling to the queen.
“YOUR MAJESTY, I’VE JUST RECEIVED MISSIVES FROM AN informant in France about certain occurrences there,” Cecil told Elizabeth, stretching his strides to keep up with her as she led courtiers down to the barge landing to greet the eminent Dr. Dee.
“Has war been declared on us again, my lord?”
“No, Your Grace, but—”
“More of that she-wolf’s lies about my character?”
“There are subtle hints of religious unrest and cruelties against the Protestant Huguenots that—”
“Save it for later, mayhap for the Sabbath. Besides, Cecil, Dr. Dee might just be one to give us better intelligence about France someday than subtle hints and rumors. Hurry, everyone, as I want this to be a good welcome, and then we get to work on the masque again!” she called to her stampeding entourage behind her.
Cecil swore under his breath and stopped trying to keep up. He was done with this, and if Elizabeth of England wanted him out of her frivolous path to destruction, so be it—except for his card up his sleeve.
He waited to let everyone stream by toward the landing, as if he were a stone in a brook. But he snagged the lutenist’s sleeve as she passed.
“Behave yourself,” he muttered.
She nodded. He turned up toward the castle to pack his things so he could go to town to hire a barge of his own. But he heard Felicia sing the saucy lyrics to a catchy melody, and he wondered if it was meant for his untuned ears:
I shall do anything for you
To stand in your good graces.
Perhaps if you won’t favor this,
I’ll put on other faces.
“CECIL WHAT?” ELIZABETH DEMANDED AS MEG HANDED her the goddess Diana’s bows and arrows just before her final entrance. Her silk mask was bothering her too. It kept slipping, so she had trouble seeing straight ahead. And as if this bejeweled bodice wasn’t already tight enough, she wore Dr. Dee’s flying harness under it and had to keep a good watch not to tangle the ropes and wires over her head.
“They say my Lord Cecil packed and left posthaste yesterday, Your Grace,” Kat repeated, tying the strings of the queen’s mask tighter. “Mayhap his wife was of a sudden taken ill or some such thing—”
“You have the wrong wife for that,” Elizabeth interrupted. “Don’t you think I’ve been fearing Robin might be so called away? Besides, Mildred Cecil is as healthy as a horse, and I will settle with my lord secretary later. For now, tell Ned to have someone else of some gravity read the final moral I’ve newly written for our masque, then.” Kat hurried off, out of breath.
Indeed they were all rushed and breathless, Elizabeth thought, feeling a bit nervous herself. Plenty of things had gone wrong at the last moment and with the courtyard packed with courtiers and townsfolk for this masque, the first she’d been in for years. And, it seemed, everyone—except herself, of course—was just trying to get attention.
Meg had pleaded a sour stomach and tried to beg out of acting in this play, but agreed to keep her small part when she saw her costume included a wig and veil in addition to a mask, so Elizabeth could only surmise that the girl was trying to catch Ned’s eye again, and she simply would not have that going on. Stephen Jenks was still in a fine snit since Elizabeth had picked Luke Morgan to hoist Diana up to heaven with Dr. Dee’s wires. Robin had continued to sulk over Luke’s attendance on her too, as if the poor man were some sort of foreign suitor she could wed instead of just a handsome, smitten young man whose attentions pleased her.
Even Felicia was evidently out of sorts, probably because she played not for the queen’s entrances and exits but only for Robin’s. From time to time, no doubt in protest, Felicia had amazingly hit a sour note from where she sat just behind the painted canvas, far across the stage from where Luke was stationed.
The trumpet fanfare that marked the goddess’s final entrance blared. Elizabeth walked onto the alfresco stage as Robin joined her from the other side to Felicia’s strummed chords.
“O rare Diana, sister,” Robin said, projecting his lines out over the mesmerized crowd through his full-face mask, “never again will the pompous Niobe censure or disparage our dear mother, Leto, for we heavenly beings have taught her the lesson of her life.”
“And so must others learn,” Elizabeth’s voice rang out, “that we, the folk of fair England, cannot be separated nor conquered.”
“I go now on another charge to do my duty,” Apollo cried, and strode from the stage with his quiver of arrows raised high. Felicia struck more chords, one or two, the queen noted, most annoyed, misfingered again.
“And I must return to my heavenly realm from which I shall dispense justice forever,” Elizabeth concluded, and braced herself to be lifted off her feet.
As Ned himself stepped out onto the stage and began to read the closing moral, which she’d meant for Cecil to say, she waited for the tightening of the harness and the upward ride to the platform above. In their two rehearsals it had worked well, and she had soared above them all, keeping her balance until her feet touched down on high. Now the distinctive trumpets blared again to fill this void of action. At last, she felt the lift.
A set smile on her face under her half mask, she heard the winch Luke used to elevate her. She rose only about ten feet above the pavement of the courtyard and, strangely, hung there suspended. Why was she not swung over? The trumpets played, longer and louder, evidently holding their last note not to leave her dangling like a target on the archery range. When the trumpeters were out of breath, Felicia’s lute filled the void. At least, the queen thought in the back of her mind, the girl got to play for the royal exit.
“Curse Luke Morgan,” Elizabeth muttered, trying to keep control. The two main wires above her, cantilevered out from the corner tower above the scenery, did not seem snagged. Where those two joined behind the scenery, Luke held a master rope. He needed to counterbalance her weight by walking his scaffold plank to pull her over. Then he must put her down gently, and he knew that well enough. If this was his idea of a jest…
She saw Dr. Dee leap to his feet in the front row of the audience where she’d had him sit. He’d been watching with his observation cylinder to see close-up that his wires and ropes worked. But now he took the cylinder and his hands from his face. He looked so alarmed she panicked too, her eyes darting up, all around, though a scream snagged in her throat. Horrified, Ned ceased his speech and ran behind the scenery.
Everyone looked up, gaping at her. No music sounded, neither trumpets nor lute. Her heart began to thud against the constricting harness. Surely the ribs of it and of her body would break. Though the breeze was cool, she began to sweat. Her mask slipped from her forehead and nose so she could not see but she could not right it. No one could reach her from above or below. A trembling began deep inside her. She kicked her feet, trying to swing over. Was this all happening in a moment or eternity?
The wires jerked her hard once, twice to lower her a bit. Dr. Dee began to run toward the stage, while Harry, Jenks, and others gathered under he
r to break her fall. Another jolt shook her and then the lines went slack.
The men below her broke her fall; yet she went off balance to her hands and knees on the pavement. Her voluminous skirts both slowed her fall and cushioned her, but for a goddess and queen it was damned undignified. Disheveled and dismayed, she could have skewered Luke Morgan.
The final trumpet fanfare pierced her ears, the crowd’s shouts, a woman’s scream, then a man’s voice—Ned’s—shouting from behind the scaffolding.
“Luke Morgan tripped and fell, and he’s not moving!” Ned cried, bringing back her black memories of Geoffrey’s fatal fall. At least she was alive. Shakily, Elizabeth got to her feet, helped by those around her.
Chapter the Eighth
What should I say
Since Faith is dead,
And Truth away
From you is fled?
Should I be led
With doubleness?
Nay! Nay! mistress.
I promised you,
You promised me,
To be as true,
As I would be,
But since I see
Your double heart,
Farewell, my part …
— SIR THOMAS WYATT, the Elder
“HE FELL JUST LIKE GEOFFREY!” THE QUEEN heard Meg cry.
’S blood, Elizabeth thought, it was not just like Geoffrey, for Luke Morgan lay flat on his back. Wrapped yet around one hand, the rope that worked Dr. Dee’s flying wires had evidently snapped from the master rigging. But from ten feet away, the queen could see Ned had been correct that Luke was not moving. He looked dead.
As Elizabeth neared the fallen man, her snagged harness ropes pulled her back as if she were a child in leading strings. When Jenks saw her struggling, he rushed to take their weight upon himself. With one hand, he drew his stage sword to cut her free, but she stopped him.
