by Karen Harper
“But,” Harry was saying now, nearly on her heels in the slant-ceilinged chamber until she motioned for him to stand back in the doorway, “who would fathom she was so devious? You are thinking, are you not, Your Grace, that she might have had something to do with your lutenist Geoffrey’s demise to get in your good graces in the first place?”
“And mayhap with poor Luke’s death—not his final death, per se, but with the apparent accident that led to it. Is this where she stuck the note in the drape?” she asked, fingering the slit there. “It was a lyric by John Harington, you see, and I believe the girl was mocking or defying me with it—for all I know, giving me a clue to her real identity. I had earlier accused her of being John’s daughter and Isabella’s step-daughter, Hester, who ran away from their country home over a year ago.”
Harry gasped. Elizabeth looked back at him. “Oh, yes,” she said. “And that would mean she has Tudor blood in her veins from her real mother, John’s first wife, one of—of my father’s bastards. That would make Hester, mayhap alias Felicia, my niece, kin as close as my cousins Katherine Grey, Margaret Douglas, or Mary Stuart. If her mother had not been illegitimate, her claims could be stronger than theirs, for Hester is directly descended from my father, whereas the other claimants are heirs of his sisters.”
“But …” Harry stammered, “you can’t imply that someone like Felicia—Hester—actually believes you should elevate her somehow or name her as your heir.”
“I told you I don’t have all the answers yet. But I believe it could have been Felicia as easily as Katherine Grey who had access to my rooms. One of them washed in my bathwater, almost as if baptizing or consecrating herself before she went wild and defaced things. The same person had earlier sneaked in, I believe, and worn my clothes, mayhap laid in my bed. I know not which woman, what else, or exactly why. But I will find out. I swear I will!”
With a vengeance, Elizabeth rummaged in the single, small chest in the room, one carved from a tree trunk. The green gown Felicia had worn but yesterday, a smock, grass-stained slippers, and another gown of brown linsey-woolsey were folded inside. The girl had worn more dresses than these, but she must have left in some haste. The queen yanked them out, shook them to see if anything was secreted here, and threw them on the floor.
“Did you ever take the male garb from her, Harry?” she asked.
“Why, no. I simply told her not to wear it again.”
“Then we may be looking for a lad and not a lass, damn her. Ha, another paper,” she exulted when she saw a single sheet of parchment on the rough bottom of the chest. She picked it up and turned it over. The paper bore a crude drawing of a pointy-chinned, long-nosed woman in a crown with writhing snakes in place of curls and a dreadful frown. Her neck was long and scrawny and looked either crooked—or broken. Perhaps this was a perverted counterpart to Gil’s drawing of Felicia, though it was obvious enough who the subject was here. The words under it were from a song Elizabeth had never heard, but obviously meant to be those of an angry, spurned lover. Did Felicia actually love her or hate her? Her skin crawled as she read,
Where are your pleasant words, alas?
Where is your faith, your steadfastness?
There is no more but all doth pass,
And I am left all comfortless.
But since so much it doth you grieve
And also me my wretched life.
Having heard my truth shall not relieve
But death alone my very strife.
Elizabeth jumped and gasped when a shadow fell between her and the window. Gil’s head popped up outside as if he had flown from the ground. The queen ran to the sill and peered over. The boy was standing on the next-to-top rung of a ladder while, below, Jenks held it.
“It fits the marks and has soil in it too!” her man called up, grinning triumphantly.
“Seize the one who owns it,” she cried, leaning around Gil to see Jenks better.
“A poor old dame, a thatcher’s widow down and across the lane,” he called up as Ned joined him. “The ladder was hired last night by a small man with a strange way of talking and a flat cap—she doesn’t see well. He seemed to be alone and gave her a whole crown for its brief use.”
“A strange way of talking?” she called down, still looking with difficulty around Gil, who was holding out his sketch to her. She took it and hauled him toward the window where he scrambled lithely past. “A lisp, Spanish, French, what?” the queen demanded. “Ned, do some voices for her until she can pinpoint something.”
They were drawing a crowd from the street and other windows, so Elizabeth pulled back in. “Not good drawing of you,” Gil signed to her with flying hands when he glimpsed Felicia’s farewell message. Elizabeth was so frustrated she almost cuffed him. But she heard someone coming fast upstairs. Ned appeared in the doorway, shoving past Harry, who kept wringing his hands.
“I already did voices for her,” Ned reported as if their conversation had not been momentarily disrupted. “It’s my guess the man was just disguising his voice at first so she couldn’t identify it later. She thought she heard him talking different—regular, she put it—to a lad he had with him when he brought the ladder back. She can keep the coin, can’t she, Your Grace?”
“What? Yes, all right. Did she see them ride off?”
“Like I said, bad eyes, but she thinks it sounded like just one horse.”
The girl dare not run home to the Haringtons, Elizabeth reasoned. Besides, she had sent for them forthwith, so they’d soon be on the road to Windsor. Again she glanced at the mocking, mayhap threatening, drawing and the accusatory verse. The other song that had been stuck to the drapery also mentioned escape and death. Did that imply Felicia meant to commit suicide or—if she had been the cause of Geoffrey’s death—meant to make it look as if someone else had killed himself? Or did it mean Felicia would kill someone else and escape again?
Chapte the Twelth
Of my desires I weep and sing,
In joy and woe, as in a doubtful ease.
For my sweet thoughts
Sometimes do pleasure bring,
But by and by the cause of my disease
Gives me a pang that inwardly doth sting,
When that I think what grief it is again
To live and lack the thing should rid my pain.
— HENRY HOWARD, Earl of Surrey
SHE HAD BEEN TEMPTED TO WATCH FROM the old, ruined tower because she loved heights. They made her feel that she could soar, and she often dreamed of flying. She loved looking down on everyone else, the way she would when she was queen.
Hidden in the copse of chestnut trees beyond the old, ruined tower at Cumnor House, Felicia Dove also wished she had filched that observation glass from Dr. Dee. She had to keep her distance to avoid being seen by the wrong people. Her back and thighs ached from the ride here and from keeping watch, hunched over, yesterday. This second day her eyes burned from squinting through the sun, waiting for Amy Dudley to appear.
Without even glancing at her fingering, she’d been playing song after song she intended for Lord Robert’s wife. The ones by Surrey and Wyatt were especially depressing and distressing, Felicia thought with a tight grin. And every so often, to remind herself how serious this was, Felicia would hum or strum the melody that she’d meant to present at the queen’s birthday celebration on this very day.
“This is my offering to you, Your Most Gracious Majesty, Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland,” Felicia declaimed as if she were at court instead of stuck here. “On this special, blessed event of the commencement of your twenty-seventh year, this momentous seventh of September in the year of our Lord, 1560, I offer this song in the first year of a new decade during which will blossom forth your brilliance and your might.”
Felicia spit against a tree, wishing it were the queen. That drivel was almost too much to get out. Yet it was the way her sponsor had wanted it. He was powerful and clever and—but for the queen—the best sponsor she could have right n
ow. Last week Lord Robert had told her he had a sumptuous pearl necklace to give the queen at her birthday gathering, for which he’d nearly beggared himself. This song would have been her royal gift, before everything at court fell apart.
“So now,” Felicia gritted out through clenched teeth, “curse you on this day of your birth, Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland. For I will curse you indeed with my deeds and soon celebrate your death day too!”
Felicia startled as she saw the woman emerge from distant Cumnor House who must be, by the description given to her, Amy Dudley. Soberly clad, she had been out once earlier but with a maid, and that would never do. This time, heading around the back of the house toward the tower, she was blessedly alone.
Gripping the fine, new lute her sponsor had bought her, Felicia emerged from the trees, keeping her prey in sight. For a moment she thought she’d somehow lost her behind a low wall. Had she fallen? Everyone knew that Amy was sore ill with a breast tumor, but Felicia had the strictest orders not to be inquiring of her condition from local folk. Besides, her companion on the fast, furtive ride from Windsor and their endless watch yesterday had told her all that she must know.
As Felicia came closer to the low stone fence, she saw for the first time it set off a graveyard. Amy sat on the turf in the midst of small, sunken headstones, her arms wrapped around her knees, humming in a minor key.
That was a good sign, the lutenist thought as she crept closer. If Amy liked music, it would be all the easier to befriend her and convince her to cooperate.
Forcing a smile to her lips, Felicia leaned on the stone wall, the lute cradled in her arms like a babe, and called out, “Pardon, milady. I’m a strolling player—of the lute, not comedy or tragedy, and would play for you.”
Like a doe scenting a hunter, Amy looked up and froze. Her dark eyes were smudges in a pinched, chalk-white face. The lady was ill indeed. Then, as her sponsor had said, in the long run, she would really be helping, not harming, Amy.
“I—I brought no coin out with me,” Amy said, getting slowly to her feet. “But I would favor a tune and can get you food from the kitchen for it. If you play something, pray make it lively and loud. I keep hearing old Latin church songs in my head.”
Though she had escaped Eton in boy’s garb, remembering she was a lass again in the plain gown her rescuer had brought with him, Felicia walked around to the gate and went into the cemetery. She kept her distance from the woman, hoping she would not bolt.
This, Felicia marveled, was the lusty, suave Robert Dudley’s wife? She looked as if a breath could blow her away, so mayhap all of this would be easier than Felicia feared. Anything to bring the queen down, no matter why her sponsor was paying for this masque without a mask. She began to pluck and sing a bouncy, brazen little tune she hoped would work subtly on Amy’s heart.
No more shall virgins sigh
And say, “We dare not,”
For men are false
And what they do
They care not.
Amy’s thin face broke into a tight smile.
“Do you like it then, milady?” Felicia asked. “ ’Tis all the fashion at court, I hear, both song and sentiment.”
“At court? My husband lives at court and promises he shall send me the finest gift from there, fit for a queen. Have you seen the queen?”
Felicia played on to give herself time to digest all that. She should have realized that Lord Robert would send gifts to his wife since he often gave them to the queen. Either men were skilled at keeping women on a leash with courtesies, gifts, and sentiments, or they weren’t, and that man was.
“A gift fit for a queen?” Felicia repeated, fitting those words into her new song. “Then I must tell you, I have played at court and have seen your handsome husband there—”
“Oh,” Amy said as her face lit. “Then do you know the lutenist Franklin Dove?” While Felicia gaped at her, the woman picked her way closer through the long grass around the turfy mounds. “My lord hired him once to sing a song for the queen, and I wished—prayed—he would do the same for me and come here to sing it himself. He used to sing to me—we’d sing together.” Her voice trailed off and she looked away, frowning and tilting her head as if listening to something.
Felicia fought to keep from cheering at the perfect opening she’d been given. “Yes, I’m Franklin Dove’s sister Felicia, whom he himself taught to play the lute,” she said, throwing all caution to the winds. She had been told to use an alias and a far different tale, but this was too good to be true. Young Moneybags, whom her sponsor had sent to guide her here, would have to admit it when she joined him at their forest encampment again this evening.
“Indeed I am,” she said, beginning to play again, “not only Felicia Dove but the gift fit for a queen Lord Robert had promised you. I’ve defied Her Majesty by playing in disguise with my brother at court, and so I beg you not to tell the others in the manor house that I’m here. I will come each day to meet you privily but will not go into the house.”
Amy grasped her hands together. Her eyes, once flat and dull as gray stones, now shone. “It’s the best gift he could have given me and just like him to have the lutenist be a woman and not a man, so I would know to trust you. And if you’re out of favor with the queen, you are especially in favor with Lady Dudley of Cumnor. You know, Robert used to be so jealous of me at first. But I thought I’d truly lost him to the queen.”
Felicia kept playing. She didn’t want to press her fine fortune, but she needed to get Amy off by herself, as soon as possible, down by the stream perhaps or for a walk along that ravine with all the protruding tree roots. Still, it would be so much better if this could happen in a common place and not in one Amy seldom went.
“Play that first song again, Felicia Dove,” Amy commanded quietly with a sweep of her hand, but the lutenist saw her flinch at some inward pain. She hardened her heart for what she must do.
“Sing with me then, but let’s stroll a ways farther from the house. I believe your beloved Robert would be in trouble with the queen if she knew he sent me, and someone in your household might tell.”
“I’ll keep your secret, but all right then,” Amy said, stretching her strides as she led Felicia out through the cemetery gate. “Let’s both sing as loud as we can to drown out other voices.”
ELIZABETH COULD HAVE CRIED AS SHE WELCOMED HER OLD friends John and Isabella Harington back to court from twenty months in exile. Their eyes, too, glittered with unshed tears, and it wasn’t until Bella rose from her deep curtsy that the queen saw their enforced time in the countryside had given them a great gift, even if they had perchance lost Hester now.
“Bella, dearest,” Elizabeth cried. “You are … finally, a baby?”
“Is it so obvious already, then?” Bella asked as John beamed. “You know, Your Grace, how desperately I—we—have longed for our own child. But what is the word on my lord’s Hester? We don’t believe we passed her on the road, not that she’d come home to Kelston, especially after all your messenger told us. We nearly feared you would banish us again for rearing such a child.”
“No, no, I would never punish parents for a wayward child,” the queen protested as she hugged Bella and John kissed her on each cheek. “Especially those who served me so well before I was queen, even in the bad times.”
“We are grateful to be back for this special day of your birth celebration,” Bella added.
“Bless you both for not forgetting,” Elizabeth told them, pressing their hands between hers. “Twenty-seven, a lofty age for an unwed queen, some say, but we shall see. You both, of course, will attend the banquet and dancing tonight, though you must see Bella takes to her bed early, my lord.”
“Anything you say, Your Grace.”
“John, you have always been loyal to those you served, and I have missed you both,” the queen declared. “Especially now, I have need of loyal friends.”
The Haringtons exchanged unspoken looks that somehow said so
much. Elizabeth felt that strange yearning for her own love again. Well, she’d see Robin tonight and pray God he never failed her as these usually loyal people had. Yet the Haringtons had gone to the Tower with Elizabeth when her sister imprisoned her there, and if John had not defied her and lied to her the month she was crowned, they would never have been apart in the first place, sent to their rural home at Kelston near Bath. But all that was over now.
“I deeply regret,” Elizabeth told them as they walked together into the royal withdrawing room, “that I had to bring you back to such unsettling news. Once I saw the lutenist was a lass, I should have known she was Hester, but she kept changing her name, her appearance, her sex.…” She smacked her hands on her huge skirts. “You did tell her who she is?” she asked them both. “Her heritage—descended from the king, my father, I mean.”
“Her mother told her early and often,” John admitted. “Knowing Audrey, she probably embellished each detail about the court and her Tudor ties.”
“Ties,” the queen whispered. “Yes, ties, all right.”
“Hester is a brilliant girl,” Bella put in, “like her father, skilled in the arts. But even when she was young, she seemed to tread the edge of reality at times.”
“Made up fantastical plays and stories, all with music, and wrote them down,” John explained, gesturing broadly. “In most of her elaborate musical dramas,” he went on, “she became noble or royal—harmless head-in-the-clouds sort of things.”
Elizabeth nearly stumbled. Not harmless, perhaps, if one felt thwarted and had that treacherous trace of Tudor blood rampaging through one’s veins. Elizabeth herself had chafed for years in exile, but she’d had hope for her future; Felicia—Hester—mayhap raged from adoration of and abhorrence for the Tudor queen. The seething passion held within, I cannot fathom, Harry had said of Felicia when he first heard her play. The depths of both love and hate she must feel for her aunt, Elizabeth of England, could be staggering.
