The Twylight Tower

by Karen Harper

  “Isn’t it just a splendid day, Your Grace?” Mary’s sweet voice repeated as if Elizabeth had not heard her the first time. Her hand on the pommel, the queen shifted slightly in her sidesaddle to see her friend better.

  “The weather, my dear Mary, might as well have storm clouds after the learned doctors delayed this meeting twice,” Elizabeth groused. “Delayed meeting with me.”

  “I understand, Your Majesty,” Robin put in, looking up at her, “that they had an official convocation in Cambridge, then must needs go on to Oxford. And the second time they petitioned for a stay, their messenger said it was to be certain their premises were pristine for your perusal.”

  “As if they had something to tidy up or hide,” she added ominously.

  He flashed a smile as he took her reins from a groom, patted her white stallion’s flank, and tried another tack. “It is true that they overvalue their power and always have, Your Grace.”

  “Indeed,” she replied crisply, tugging the reins from his big, brown hands, “for I have known others to do such and pay the price.” With a narrow look at him, she spurred her horse before he could mount his.

  Others fell quickly into their appointed places in the royal retinue. Usually the queen traveled by river barge but she was a splendid horsewoman. She always felt more in control when mounted than encased in a coach. Yet armed guards with swords circumspectly sheathed rode ahead of and behind her.

  Only two ladies-in-waiting accompanied her today, Mary Sidney and Anne Carey, the latter wed to her dear cousin Harry Carey, Baron Hunsdon. Two men rode her flanks, Robin, her Master of the Horse, who scrambled to catch up and, because she always felt safer when he was at her side, a man of no rank but in her lofty regard, her longtime protector, Stephen Jenks. If any of the horses balked, a mere look or touch from Jenks would calm them. With the carriage rattling over cobbles behind their mounts, they clattered out of the King Street Gate into the busy flow of London foot, cart, and horse traffic.

  The queen gave but a quick glance back at the white towers and glittering, bannered pinnacles of the palace that symbolized the Tudor monarchy. Kat still stood on the parapet of sprawling, rose-bricked Whitehall, the queen’s official London seat. Its twenty-four acres stretched between two main east-west thoroughfares of her capital, the broad River Thames and this passageway cutting through Whitehall’s grounds. The latter was called King’s Street, or more simply “the street.” Though the city was awash with people, it was good to be away from the overly ambitious, watchful two-thousand hopefuls who always jostled each other for place and position around her. In bright sun and crisp breeze, she waved to the common folk.

  “Give way! Uncap there, knaves! Give access to the queen’s majesty!” her first two guards began to shout in repetition. When her people heard the cry or glimpsed the queen herself, they parted like the sea. Men hoisted boys on their shoulders to see better; maids waved scarves or hats; old women peered from second- or third-story windows. The faces of her people turned and tilted toward their queen like flowers to the sun. It was always that way, and her love flowed back to them.

  “God save Yer Grace! Long live our good queen, Bess Tudor!” and a hundred other jumbled cries assailed her ears. Ordinarily, that was enough to buoy her up; today it only slightly sweetened her sour humor.

  But the shops and taverns did have their doors ajar. She caught glimpses of the wares within. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to stroll the streets and peek in with no one noticing, to be simply English and not the English queen. Once, when she had Meg Milligrew in her household, she had planned to do just that, for the girl resembled her and, on a whim, she had thought to change places with her for a brief hour. But that was tomfoolery and best put away like so much else. Nothing mattered but being a good queen and a strong one. And commoner to courtier, ignorant carter to learned physician, the folk of her realm had best realize she meant to rule and not just reign.

  As the queen’s party turned into the long, broad street called the Strand, Elizabeth averted her eyes from the apothecary shop that Sarah Wilton, alias Meg Milligrew, her former Strewing Herb Mistress of the Privy Chamber, managed. She worked it with her husband, Ben Wilton, once a bargeman who now lorded it over the shop, the lazy lout. Through Ned Topside, the queen’s fool and principal player, and two other sources of town gossip, Bett and Gil Sharpe, Elizabeth knew Meg’s fate. But Meg had misled her queen about being wed. Worse, she had dared to pass herself off as the queen without permission and had even forged her royal signature.

  Her Majesty always looked straight ahead as she passed, even when she knew Meg stood in her door, because she could not bear to look into her eyes or admit she had sent the girl away too hastily. God forgive her, she’d far rather trust Meg then her own treason-tainted cousins, Katherine Grey and Margaret Douglas, who coveted her throne.

  Katherine was currently confined to the Tower on the other side of town that also housed Margaret’s dangerous Scottish husband, Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox. Margaret, who favored Mary, Queen of Scots for the English throne, was herself under house arrest with her son Lord Darnley at Sir Richard Sackville’s home at Sheen. Her Royal Majesty was not backing down from dealing with anyone who challenged or defied her.

  “Don’t see Meg—I mean Sarah—today, Your Majesty,” Jenks called to her. “She’s always hanging out the door or window when you go by. Seen her on boats in the Thames when the royal barge passes too. But look, there’s Bett waving!”

  “Leave off,” Elizabeth said without letting her gaze waver. “I don’t give a fig if you and Ned visit the shop, but do not try to cozen me into taking her back.”

  “But I din’t mean—”

  “Ride ahead and tell the eminent doctors that their queen is on her way and she has much to say.”

  HER STOMACH KNOTTED WITH CHURNING EMOTIONS, SARAH Wilton watched and waited. Cocking her head, she listened too. Ah, there was the distant clatter of a goodly number of horses’ hooves. Huzzahs came closer, echoing in the narrow, crooked streets of the City, the heart of London within the old walls and gates. She tugged her hood closer about her face, then gripped her hands tightly under her russet cloak. The queen was coming.

  As the entourage and its crowd slipped into the end of Knightrider Street, Sarah stepped back into the narrow mouth of an alley so she would not be seen by the palace folk or the robed and flat-capped physicians who were slowly filing outside their ornately facaded guildhall. Their large, four-storied, black-and-white framed building was a place the barber-surgeons and apothecaries of London knew all too well, but she wondered exactly why the queen was visiting today.

  Sarah, who still always thought of herself as Meg Milligrew no matter what her husband or the others called her, reckoned she knew most things about the queen, even those that had happened the last two years since she’d been sent away in disgrace from royal service. And one thing Meg Milligrew knew was that Elizabeth of England seldom made purely social visits, not that clever queen.

  Pressing herself against the plaster wall, Meg peeked around the corner as the noisy rabble filled the street. She picked out the queen’s one-time favorite, Lord Robin Dudley, and skimmed the queen’s retainers for Her Grace’s Secretary of State, the wily William Cecil. Fortunately, he wasn’t here, because not much escaped his eyes. Then Meg saw, in the center of it all, Elizabeth.

  Meg’s skin prickled, and her mouth went dry. Her Grace looked fine as ever—maybe a bit thinner, if that were possible—but Meg could read vexation in the clenched set of the high, pale brow and purse of the narrow lips. Aye, Bess Tudor was here apurpose for more than reveling in public adoration or a pleasant chat with the chief doctors of her realm. Meg could see her dark eyes assessing the small cluster of cloaked and befurred master physicians before she intentionally turned away from their set smiles to wave again with a slender, gloved hand to the crowd. The people responded as if she’d caressed them, the dolts, for Meg, like Lord Robin, knew well that royal affecti
on lavished one day could languish the next.

  Under her dark blue riding cloak, the queen wore another new gown Meg hadn’t seen, a dark green brocade edged with sable that set off the gleam of her red-gold hair peeking out from her feathered hat. Her Grace’s detested summer freckles still looked faded. Mayhap she was yet using the tansy and buttermilk face wash Meg had suggested when Elizabeth was but a princess and lived in exile.

  “But four short years ago,” Meg whispered as a shiver raced up her spine. She clasped her hands and glared as those blackguards who were Fellows of the Royal College bowed to the queen and gestured for her to come inside. They were always trying to rule Meg’s—and all apothecaries’ lives—with their dictums and pronouncements. An apothecary could even go to prison for hinting a particular medicinal cure would work, for they wanted every farthing for their own purses for giving prescriptions.

  Physcian’s cooks, the carping, complaining jackanapes were fond of calling those of her profession, and they treated women the worst of all. And neither the Company of Barber-Surgeons nor the guild of Grocers, Apothecaries, and Spicers were getting visits from the queen!

  “But then, I’ll never get to visit with her again,” Meg spit out the words, suddenly more angry than sorry for herself as the queen dismounted and went inside. “Tender and terrible, the worst, cold, cruel and unforgiving …”

  “Eh, you talking ’bout our queen?” a blue-coated apprentice behind her demanded so loud she jumped. He had come down the alley but now rounded on her. “Who you be, darin’ talk ’bout our queen?”

  Lest the lout make a scene and wishing that she had the brilliant thespian Ned Topside here to bail her out with some fantastical tale, she lied. “I’m talking about my husband, and if I have to call him over here, you’ll be sorry. He’s one of the queen’s guards.”

  “Go on then!” the simpleton said, gaping. “God’s truth? Eh, you,” he went on, leaning closer to peer into her hood, “you know you look a wee bit like the queen, I mean coloring and all?”

  Without answering, Meg ducked away into the press of people. Standing on her tiptoes to catch another glimpse of the woman she once would have died for—and now could kill for—Meg scurried between two other tight buildings, cross-cutting into the same alley where she’d hidden her goods. She had a lot to do before Her Majesty came back out.

  “ALL OF YOU HAVE A LOFTY HERITAGE TO LIVE UP TO IN this fine edifice and historic site,” the queen remarked as she completed her escorted tour and was led into the large front chamber of the College. As the twenty Fellows filed to their seats at the long, dark oak table, she surmised this served as their council room. She decided to forgo the plates of suckets, comfits, and an elaborate marchpane castle—bribes, all of it, she thought—they had laid out for her. But she took the proffered goblet of wine because she expected this to be thirsty work.

  Before anyone could answer her subtle challenge about their guildhall, a fuss fomented outside. People on the street peeked in the front windows set ajar and began to cheer again; the royal guards evidently shoved them away. During the moment’s respite, Elizabeth surreptitiously studied the assembled physicians, especially Pascal and Caius on either side of her at the head of the table. The two men were physical opposites, she noted, however much they had seemed to covertly conspire with silent, unreadable glances during her tour of their sprawling building and gardens.

  The forty-eight-year-old Peter Pascal was as severely dressed as if he were a cleric. Or as if he were still in mourning for, no doubt, his illustrious mentor, whom he managed to mention incessantly. Pascal was plump, to put it nicely, as rosy-cheeked as a milkmaid, and quite effeminate-looking depsite his total baldness. The man obviously shaved what hair he had for its outline was a faint shadow above his ears and on the nape of his neck. Beards and mustaches, trimmed or long, were the fashion of the day, which he seemed to be directly flaunting in favor of older, clean-cut styles. His blue eyes bulged slightly the way her father’s had, and that made her even more edgy around him.

  Unlike his black-garbed friend, John Caius, aged fifty-two, was ornately attired to show his status with a scarlet and gray taffeta cassock buttoned to his chin and his wide sleeves trimmed with fur. The current president of the College was, in contrast to Pascal, rake-thin with sallow skin and a long, gaunt face, accented by a salt-and-pepper beard and long mustache. Wisps of gray hair peeked from beneath his traditional physician’s circular cap. He moved deliberately and spoke portentously. His dark eyes darted, even when he addressed her, as if his mind were flitting elsewhere or he was afraid to look her in the eye.

  “Indeed, your observations about our hall are precisely correct, Your Most Gracious Majesty, Maxima Regina,” John Caius said, grandly addressing the entire assembly. “This building was donated to the College in perpetuity by the brilliant Medieval physician Thomas Linacre after his death. I sometimes feel his spirit still lurks inter nos within these walls.

  “Erecting edifices and libraries is a worthy goal,” the queen agreed. “But above all, we must work together to find new cures and elevate English medicinal practices to rival those on the continent. My people stagger under the burden of too dear a price for some of the new remedies to which they should have access.”

  “Bread and circuses, panem et circenses ad infinitum, that’s what they’d like, Your Majesty,” Caius muttered with a shake of his head. “Give them one step and they will want a mile, to wit that raucous crowd out there.”

  “I do not fear my people, but say on,” Elizabeth commanded.

  “Life is naturally unhealthsome,” Pascal put in with a sharp sniff. “No utopias exist, as Sir Thomas More’s great book made eminently clear. Besides, it is not just the fees for our learned services that cause the prices to rise but the outrageous reckonings of the apothecaries.”

  “Who,” Caius said, rolling his eyes in feigned disbelief, “are ever clamoring for more freedom, when what they need is a firmer hand.”

  “But you already hold the power to place apothecaries who sell faulty stuffs in any prison but the Tower,” she protested. “And you can legally enter their shops and search for defective and corrupted wares, which you can then destroy. I should think that would not only be enough to keep the herbalists in line but, sadly, to keep you from doing your duty to spend time learning and perfecting cures. I will not have my Royal College of Physicians waste their days being constables or bailiffs and not healers!”

  “But, Gracious Majesty,” Caius argued with a nervous, ever-shifting smile, “we must keep control of not only the barber-surgeons and apothecaries but other quacksalvers, mountebanks, and runnagates which—”

  “Do you mean to say,” the queen cut in, “that the shops in town which import and supply your cures are in the same category as quacks?”

  “Indeed not,” Pascal took up the discussion, steepling his fingers before his broad face as if to hide his expression. “But, just as in the days of your father, Your Grace, each area of mankind’s expertise must be left to the experts and not encroached on by those who know not whereof they speak.”

  She stared him down, unsure if he dared such a direct affront at her, to the apothecaries, or if he was throwing Thomas More’s so-called martyrdom in her face again. As the other fellows up and down the long table gaped and leaned out to listen raptly, Caius jumped into the moment’s silence.

  “Id est, there are certain apothecaries who are hardly trained as we by years of study and time abroad, et cetera. Why, madam, some who cannot even read or speak Latin and Greek but only cling to simple herbs dare to question the medical truths of humors within the body.”

  “Truths, you say, and not theories?” she challenged. “Of a certain we all rely on the wisdom of great men of past ages, but did they not make errors too? We have learned the world is hardly flat.”

  “Ah, but we do continually re-examine the old ways, though one out-of-town doctor, we’ve heard,” Pascal said, shaking his head, “has been spreading the here
tical belief that disease is caused not by warring humors, governed by the planets, nor by bad air. He—and he is not alone,” his voice rang out and he pressed fingers fat as sausages on the tabletop as if to prop himself up, “claims that the airborne seeds of disease fall upon open pores of the skin and infect the person. Such a one claims that a man must be most careful shaving or his open pores will allow in certain harmful vapors! So much for new-fledged ideas!”

  There was general nodding, head-shaking, or smothered sniggering down the length of the table. Elizabeth’s ire rose, and she did too, partly to make everyone stand. Men scrambled to their feet, and she heard her two ladies’ skirts rustle as they stood behind her.

  “But like all my people,” Elizabeth said, “I am plagued by worry that I or those I love, God forbid, may be one of the persons who needs your expertise and wisdom someday, gentlemen. Ergo,” she added, staring now directly at the Latin-spewing John Caius, “the next time I send for help, I would expect some of you to be in London healing and not wandering hither and yon to attend meetings or chasing down apothecaries like a wayward constable-of-the-watch or harassing someone who has a new theory which you choose to mock without testing its good first. Never say something cannot be done without trying it, learned and yet-learning doctors. I am a new theory, a queen ruling alone, and it can be done, indeed!”

  “But, Majesty,” Peter Pascal dared to rattle on, after that speech with which she had hoped to make her exit, “about your Lady Katherine Ashley’s recent illness. We all know disease is a gift from God to gild a martyr’s crown, so each must suffer some in his or her turn in this life.”

  “And I say”—here she switched to speaking Latin with an occasional phrase in Greek—”that I hate to be ill, and I think illness is a personal affront which a kingdom’s doctors must and will spend their precious time to battle. We have yet the small pox and the great pox and the Black Death and numerous other maladies, and there must be something, some way we can discover what the Lord God has given us to fight such. The status quo is not acceptable, and I expect occasional and detailed explanations of how you will strive to improve upon your past performance. Good day to you, Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians.”