The Twylight Tower

by Karen Harper

  Pretending a stone was in her shoe, Meg waited outside the house on the palace-side edge of town. If only she could trust Ned to have come along. He could have played some part and asked questions for her. But she feared he’d tell the queen, just as she had feared Luke Morgan would if he guessed the truth, God rest his soul. Besides, Ned would never grow to care for her if he knew she was already wed, even though that hardly stopped some of her betters at court. Mercy, not even counting Lord Robin’s longing for Her Grace, Meg had overheard and seen a thing or two of cheating on one’s spouse in the hallowed halls of the queen’s palaces.

  Meg strained to shut out the normal street noises. Through the front door set ajar, the house sounded quiet but for a muted thumping. Hoping she didn’t puke, she edged to the doorway and peered in. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dim interior. A bent, white-haired woman in the common room was putting pewter plates onto a bare trestle table.

  “Excuse me, good woman,” Meg called out once, then louder until the old dame looked up.

  “Ey?” she said, making the web of lines around her eyes and mouth deepen even more.

  Meg pushed the door open a bit farther. “Is this the place where the queen’s bargemen live during the queen’s stay here?”

  “Ey. Looking for some’un special? Mostly, they’s out.”

  Mostly? Though Meg saw or heard no one but the woman, she almost turned and fled. Still she went into the little speech she’d rehearsed.

  “It’s just I lost my stepbrother years ago in the north of England, name of Benjamin Wilton, and someone told me there’s an oarsman here by that name, though of course it might not be him, seeing there’s probably lots of Ben Wiltons.”

  “Ey.”

  “Ey what?” “He’s here.”

  “Now?” Meg cried, jumping back.

  “For the queen’s visit. Out rowing her now for a funeral but don’t know whose.”

  Meg’s heart nearly thudded out of her chest, but she stood her ground. Ned had taught her never to make hasty exits, even if you’d made a mistake onstage.

  “A Ben Wilton, thin and blond—from the north?” Meg forced herself to go on with this charade, her voice a mere squeak.

  “Ben Wilton all right, but no barger’s ever thin. This ’un a brawler, not blond, and hails from London. Brags a being a bridge shooter, a lusty, loud ’un too, worse ’n most. Where you live in town? Thought I knew ’em all in town. Ey, where you going?”

  Meg turned back and, thinking of Ned’s admonition, said, “I told the man who mentioned it that our Ben Wilton would never have been an oarsman, not even for the queen, so pray don’t mention a thing to him. My Ben was a traveling player, and a fine, handsome one too. Good day to you.”

  When she turned the first corner, she picked up her skirts and hustled back to the palace.

  THE SUN WAS SETTING OVER THE TWISTING THAMES WHEN Elizabeth climbed the steps of the Round Tower alone, exhausted from facing down Felicia, and Luke’s funeral. She had asked Jenks to examine the tower, from foundation to lofty parapet, to be certain it was deserted and safe. Then she’d sent him to fetch his Lord Robert and keep a watch down below so they weren’t disturbed.

  Other than Jenks, who was loyal to both her and Robin, Elizabeth had told no one where she was. Ordinarily Kat or Mary Sidney would have known, but Kat was sleeping from the concoction Meg had given her under Mary’s supervision. Now though, the mere thought of Robin’s soon joining her poured strength into her walk and made her heart beat faster.

  The queen had circled the high walkway of the tall tower only twice when Robin appeared before her, gasping for breath from his quick climb. Twilight muted his robust complexion and his gold velvet and forest-green satin garb to make him seem all shimmery silver. She felt caught in a trembling trance between daylight and nightfall.

  “You see, my queen, you always leave me breathless.”

  “And you me,” she countered, laughing nervously, “but only for your clever quips and puns and wordplay.”

  “Alas,” he said, mock serious, with one hand on his chest as he bowed to her, “I had hoped for more than that backhanded compliment. I would die to hear you say you are left breathless by my love play.”

  She shook her head but put her arm through his and walked with him on a slow circuit of all they could survey. Yet they looked only at each other. “We must not speak of dying on this sad day,” she said. “But as for love play, I hear you have another song for me.”

  “Did Felicia say so?” he countered, squeezing her wrist firmly against his ribs. “And I hear you are keeping her close confined at Harry’s again.”

  “Does everyone know, then?”

  “Do you still believe that anything you do won’t be known, remarked on, and spread even abroad?”

  Elizabeth noted, as she had before, that whenever Robin did not want to answer a question directly, he simply made his own query. “You said once, my Robin, if we were but common folk, even a country swain and milkmaid, you would love me forever. But things shall never be so simple. Would that we could be fast friends as we are and not have others scandalized.”

  “ ’S blood, we can stand up to them! I wish you could trust me enough to take my advice. To let me become your next Cecil and your only love.”

  She tugged her arm free and leaned her elbows on a gap in the wall. Tears prickled behind her eyes but she blinked them back, thinking of poor Luke with his desperate blinking message, of how far he and Geoffrey Hammet fell. Thinking of the burden of being queen, loving and longing as a woman but caught in this dim realm between bright surrender and dark self-control. Her mother had held her power only as long as she held her father at bay, for when she gave in to him, her world collapsed like a—a tower of cards.

  “What is it, my beloved?” Robin whispered, leaning close but not touching her now.

  “I am thinking of my parents. Great Harry, wed to a wife he could not love when the alluring Anne Boleyn became his passion. To have her, he thrust the Catholic church aside, he executed friends who would not back him, and made this once Papist place into the Pope’s hell on earth. The king set aside his first wife, but when he wed Anne—and she bore me—things went so bad between them.”

  “Stop this melancholy train of thought, or you’ll make yourself ill,” he protested. “Our estate is naught like theirs, though I could set Amy aside, if you’d but give the word.”

  She pushed away from the wall and him, pacing faster around and around while he hurried to keep up. “That’s just it, Robin, I will not give the word and not only because she is ill.”

  He snagged her elbow to spin her around into his arms. “Let’s not talk of Amy then. Let’s just talk of us.”

  “You know, I actually told myself I agreed to meet you here just to find out if you’d seen aught amiss when Luke Morgan fell and to ask you to go to de Quadra again so we may keep an eye on Katherine Grey from that end too.”

  “Firstly, I did not see Luke fall, I swear it.”

  “Then I told myself I would be bold enough to demand if you had hired Felicia Dove to spy on me as well as sing your songs to me.”

  “I—spy on you? Elizabeth, my love, I watch you with my own hungry gaze and ever shall, but no, I have not asked her or anyone to spy on you,” he vowed, emphasizing each word and staring deep into her eyes while his hand on her chin made her look at him.

  “I believe that, truly. I’ve just become so obsessed with finding out who’s watching me and who is murdering my men and why.”

  “Murder? You believe so?”

  “More and more. I long to close my eyes and have it all go away, to have our happy, carefree summer back again, to have Cecil here, keeping his mouth shut about a foreign marriage, to have Kat recovered—Meg too—and to have …”

  Somewhere in her recital, she had closed her eyes. He crushed her in his arms and kissed her. His mouth moved against hers, opening her lips, tearing away her defenses. As always she felt his masterful kisse
s down deep in her belly. She sagged into his strength as he leaned against the outer wall.

  Her head spun so that the top of the tower seemed to tilt at them. She had to stop this madness before she begged for more. Somehow she managed to step away from him. “Whatever that changeling Felicia has done or not done,” she plunged on, clearing her throat and shaking out her skirts, “I want to hear the new song. Since she is not here, you must sing it for me.”

  He grinned rakishly, making her insides flip-flop again. How quickly he’d recovered from a kiss that had shattered her poise. Dusk embraced them, and she could barely see his face clearly when she stepped away. Mayhap they should have brought a lantern, but then all could look up and see the strange light on the tower. No, they were better in this dark that followed twilight.

  “Shall I order you to sing it for me, my lord?” she asked.

  “I am only thinking you will no doubt also imprison me for my shoddy lyrics and unworthy voice.”

  “If I ever imprison you, it shall be here in this tower, and I shall come to bring you bread and beer each day.”

  “You are already my gaoler, my queen. And anything that comes from your hand, my virgin goddess Diana, is pure ambrosia. But since you command this birthday gift early, I am thinking I must find you another for that grand occasion.”

  “If you can be so glib in mere conversation, I must hear this song and now.”

  “All right, though it shall suffer from lack of your Dove’s lute. Really, you must free her soon, but here it is then.

  At twilight time I climb the stairs.

  The sky is silvered everywhere.

  If my foot slips the fall is long,

  And yet it pulls me on, this song

  Of lovers’ tryst high in the tower,

  Of union in this glimmering hour.

  “You wrote it for this place and time,” she whispered, awed. “You knew I would agree to meet you here. You are a wizard or sorcerer like your friend Dr. Dee.”

  “I’d like to tell you your future,” he said, stepping forward again to press her hands in his. His breath, like sweet cloves, embraced her before the wind tugged the scent away.

  “But since you cannot,” she said, fighting again for reason over passion, “at least you must interpret that falling apples dream you told me. I thought it was strange that it came just before I fell during the masque, and I wish you had rescued me then.”

  “I would give my life to do so.…”

  She pulled away and began to walk again. “Stop saying these life or death things,” she insisted. “I know you were vexed that Luke Morgan put his hands on me, and then to have a fantasy of rescuing me when I fell …”

  He pulled her to him as he had before. He even backed her up against the curve of the outer tower wall. Elizabeth knew she should order him to unhand her, to step away, but she could not.

  “I told you, my love, the dream had naught to do with rescue—for it is you who have rescued me. But must you remain as forbidden to me as Eve’s apple? I yearn, I love and burn …”

  He took her lips again, and she was lost. But for a shred of strength she could well have begged him to press her to the floor stones and ravish her body as he had her heart. When at last he released her, her knees were so weak she pressed against his legs to stand. Pulling back, she leaned against a gap in the wall, staring out over her now black kingdom and the vast reaches of her own soul.

  “I shall write yet another verse of my song, which begs you to be brave in climbing the twilight tower,” he rasped, his mouth close to her ear. “I shall sing that to yield to passion is like flinging yourself from that tower, not to fall but to fly!”

  She felt her bones melt but managed to take another step away. “I will think on that, my dearest Robin. But you must recall, I have already tried to fly—and fell.”

  Elizabeth felt her way around the tower to the dark stairs. Suddenly she felt the fear of being up so high; a strange dizziness assailed her, like Felicia claimed on the walls of Richmond, like herself dangling on wires above the courtyard paving stones. But the queen must never fear the heights. She put her hand against the solid, steadying stone.

  “Robin, stay here for a bit before you follow. And, I swear to you, when I am ready to fly—as you want—you will be the first to know.”

  THE MOMENT ELIZABETH ARRIVED BACK IN HER PRIVY rooms through the tower door, Mary, Kat, and Meg began talking at once. The queen held up her hands to silence them.

  “I was simply out for a walk on the parapets with only Jenks along,” she said to fend them off. “What is all this jabbering about peering in windows? Or you mean you saw someone outside—on the roof?”

  “No,” Mary said primly. “Word has come that your clever lutenist has gone out hers.”

  Elizabeth cursed and sat down hard on the mounting stool for her bed, her head in her hands before she asked in a shaky voice, “Someone threw Felicia out a window at Lord Hunsdon’s? And so this dreadful pattern of murders continues, and I nearly blamed her.”

  “Oh, no, that’s not it,” Kat put in, her voice still sounding slow from her medicine. “Someone leaned a ladder up to her window despite your cousin downstairs and the guard you had posted on her door. She climbed out and disappeared, for good, I hope. I’m starting to think it must have been she, not Katherine, trying on your clothes at Richmond. Why, however brilliant at the lute, that girl is like a snake that keeps shedding its skin and emerging all new and slimy once again.”

  The queen clipped out one of her father’s favorite oaths. “Mary,” she said, “have a messenger send word to Lord Hunsdon that I will be there at first light, and he’s not to touch the girl’s room nor anything outside the window. I was just coming to fear Felicia was spying on me for someone—and I fear that someone has sprung her like a woodcock from a trap. And tell them to double the guard on the ground and on the roofs of the palace here, these back stairs too. I must find Felicia—or whatever her name truly is—before she finds me again.”

  “Oh, something else,” Mary said, and went to Elizabeth’s cosmetic table to fetch a torn piece of parchment. “I’m afraid Lord Hunsdon’s already touched something in Felicia’s room. He sent you this. Stuck through with the quill she wrote it with, stabbed right to the drapery at the open window she went through.”

  Elizabeth took the letter with two fingers as if it would burn her. And Felicia had told everyone she could not write. She obviously was not afraid of heights either. Lies upon lies, the queen thought as she read,

  The simple Dove in open sky

  Whom eager hawk with hasty flight

  Pursues to death is forced to fly.

  Nor sees she safety where to light

  But cuts the air to ’scape away

  From present peril as she may.

  “Pursues to death?” Elizabeth muttered.

  “Lord Hunsdon said it’s another song she wrote,” Kat explained.

  Elizabeth closed her eyes and sank back against the side of her bed. “She didn’t write it originally,” she whispered. “It was penned by my dear friend John Harington, whom I fear may be her father.”

  CLOAKED AND HOODED SO AS NOT TO DRAW A CROWD, WITH Ned, Jenks, Gil, and two guards in attendance, Elizabeth went by working barge to Eton just after dawn the next day. The moment Harry greeted her at the side garden gate, he began his recital of events, obviously guilt-ridden his prisoner had escaped.

  “It was yet light, Your Grace, so, of course, who would think such a thing could happen?” Harry rattled on. “I had no notion that, three stories up, she would get out that small window, not with your own guard on her door.”

  “I shall deal with him later. She must have made some noise.”

  “But how,” Harry went on, “did anyone know she was here to rescue her? I gathered only your inner circle knew, and they wouldn’t tell.”

  “Be that as it may, I just hope, cousin, my guard was not nodding off and you were not downstairs drinking overmuch, from your gr
ief about losing Luke, of course.”

  “Indeed I was not! So—do you have some idea who could have come for her?”

  “For all I know,” she said, stepping around to the side of the house to look at the deep prints the ladder had made amidst the white hollyhocks under the escape window, “she could have dropped coins to some knave in the street who fetched a ladder for her. But in truth I have no such hope. I fear she was hired by someone to ingratiate herself with me, for what purpose I am not certain—mayhap simple spying if she meant not to harm me when she could. Nor do I know her mentor’s identity, who either came or sent someone to filch her to freedom to do more mischief. But her rescuer appears to be a man. See the large, deep bootprints on each side of the ladder marks?” she added, pointing.

  “Indeed, a good-sized man in riding boots,” Harry observed, squatting down. “Besides, it would probably take a man to heft a tall ladder.”

  “A well-off or well-paid man, as his boots were not worn at the heels. Gil,” she called to her lithe little artist, “draw me those bootsole prints to size while Jenks and Ned go about in this area to see if anyone saw or heard something amiss or has a ladder that would fit these holes.”

  As Jenks and Ned hurried off, Gil made hand signals to her that said, “In London, leaving prints, she would be caught and put in prison as an angler, just like me and Bett. Do you think she took goods from that house to sell? If Lord Harry has rich things, there are men who’d pay a pretty penny …”

  “Never mind all that,” Elizabeth scolded. “You are no longer a thief, and I’ll not have you chattering about it. You just worry about the pretty penny I’ll give you for drawing those marks in the ground. And, Gil,” she added, her voice softer, “I sent your drawing of the lutenist to my friends at first light, and it was a fine one.”

  The boy smiled, nodded, and bent to his work. Elizabeth let Harry escort her into the house, forgoing the cakes and ale he had waiting for her. Leaving her guards downstairs, she climbed the two flights to the small upper-story room where Felicia had been kept last week and last night. She surveyed the small space under the eaves.