by Susan Kay
The Duke coughed uncomfortably. He had his reasons for overruling Elizabeth but this was hardly the time or the place to reveal them.
“The Lady Elizabeth might be persuaded to marry a Catholic, in which case her accession would be equally hazardous to the future of the Protestant faith in England.”
Doubt crossed Edward’s white face.
“She would never willingly marry a Catholic,” he protested.
“Her hold on the throne would be tenuous, sire, she might have no alternative means of securing her position.” Northumberland rose and bent ominously over the wasted figure against the pillows. “Let me remind Your Majesty that when the good of the country and the glory of God are at stake, it is the bounden duty of a prince to set aside all considerations of blood. Neglect of that duty will procure you everlasting damnation at the hands of God’s dreadful tribunal.”
The boy in the bed was bald, shrivelled and nail-less. Gangrene had already claimed several of his toes and he was close enough to death to be swayed by fear of what he would find waiting on the other side of that threshold.
By the end of June, Northumberland’s new Device for the Succession was signed, sealed, and witnessed by the Privy Council, waiting in a locked drawer to be used.
* * *
On the sixth day of July, the air was hot and heavy all over England. At Hatfield, where park, gardens, and orchard shimmered beneath a stifling heat haze, the dove-house had emptied and in he solar he bees droned lazily.
Dusk came in a violent thunderstorm. Streaks of blue lightning split the sky and giant hailstones pummelled the manor house. Shortly after midnight a deluge of rain lashed against the windows of Elizabeth’s room, and she got up from her desk to close the casements. Tendrils of hair had crept from beneath her cap and coiled damply about her forehead, for the heat was still oppressive. She was tired and tense and a sudden unexpected tap at the door made her start round violently.
“Come,” she said sharply and the door opened to reveal a nervous maid, clutching a candle. A howling wind was springing up beyond the ill-fitting casement, causing the flame to waver drunkenly in a strong draught.
“What is it, Meg? I thought the whole household was in bed by now.”
The girl made a flustered curtsey and hesitated in the doorway, reluctant to intrude into the room without direct invitation.
“Begging Your Grace’s pardon, but there’s a man in the Great Hall asking to see you urgently. Soaked to the skin he is, and his horse spent from hard riding. Well, I told him of course Your Grace could receive no one at such an hour, what with Mrs. Ashley retired—and Mr. Parry too—and really, madam, he was downright rude—”
“My business is not with underlings, Your Grace.”
A tall man with urgent, hunted eyes stepped into the room unannounced and stood with his heavy cloak dripping steadily on the bare floor.
“Business?” echoed Elizabeth warily.
“A private message, madam—from one who wishes you well.”
She weighed him for a moment in silence and then waved away the curious-eyed girl. His voice was well modulated and his cloak of good cut; he was obviously no ordinary messenger.
“You come from court?” she demanded.
He ignored the question and took a step towards her, extending a small slip of folded paper.
“Read it, madam. It may save your life.”
She took the paper unwillingly, concealing it in the palm of her hand.
“Who sent you?” she repeated.
“Please, madam,” he said uncomfortably.
“Don’t you trust me?”
She let both her hands rest a moment on his wet sleeve and he was dizzily aware of her oval face, those extraordinary eyes which seemed to see inside his head. He had heard it said that she was beautiful and at first glance had been vaguely disappointed. But now—
“Madam,” he whispered, “I gave my word. My master’s life may depend upon my silence.”
Her slow smile sank into his memory like a caress, as she stepped back from him. She had tested his spirit and not found it wanting; she was not displeased.
“You are a loyal servant, sir—I wish you were mine.”
He flushed and opened his mouth to babble inarticulately of his sudden irrational desire to throw himself and his life at her feet, but she took pity on him and held up her hand. Immediately he was silent. She picked up the little handbell on her desk and its imperious tinkle was shrill in the silent house.
“Tell your master of my gratitude,” she said gently. Again he would have spoken, but the return of the serving girl forestalled him. The fleeting moment of intimacy was gone and might never be recalled. He felt curiously depressed as she addressed the girl in a clipped businesslike manner, kind enough, but distant, as though she were discussing the stabling of a horse.
“Take this gentleman to the kitchens. See he is warmed and well fed before he leaves.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” The girl withdrew, waiting for him, and miserably aware of his wet clothes, his dishevelled appearance, and inferior status he bowed low and would have backed out of the room. Then he saw that she was holding out her hand to him. He was a messenger, in this instance no more than a lackey and no lady of the manor would waste such a gesture on a man of his standing—
He went down on one knee and pressed her fingers to his lips.
“Remember me,” she said quietly. “My time will come.”
The door closed behind him; and he went down the stairs with the curious girl at his side like a man in a trance.
When the soft sound of footsteps had died away in the corridor, Elizabeth returned to her desk and opened the paper in the tremulous candlelight.
Seven words in a hand she did not recognise: Avoid the court. The King is dead. She sat down suddenly, staring at the paper and a kaleidoscope of memories whirled in her mind. Edward at two, wearing the cambric shirt she had painstakingly made for him; Edward at nine, King of England, a frightened little boy cowering in her arms; and Edward at eleven, with the Lord Admiral’s death warrant in his steady hand—
Mentally she shook herself. The King had been dead for perhaps a few hours; the boy she had loved as her brother had been dead to her for almost four years. No time to waste in tears when her own life hung in the balance. She bit her lip savagely and lit more candles with a trembling hand.
Ever since news had come of Jane’s marriage to Guildford, Elizabeth had known which way Northumberland would leap when Edward died. She herself had left him with no other choice. It was several months now since she had received the neat outline of his outrageous proposal to divorce his wife and marry her; “together we will take the throne.” She had laughed and turned away, without even troubling to reply, but not before she had seen his features harden into an expression of fear and dislike. Several times since then she had wondered whether the pleasure of snubbing him had been worth the price he could make her pay if his new scheme succeeded. He would eliminate Mary with passionless efficient speed—but for her, he would surely reserve some special suffering, a lingering end that could be savoured. For once, she had allowed anger to override her common sense; she ought to have kept him dangling. Even now an armed force might be marching on Hatfield—
She stared into the flickering candles, while her mind galloped forward into the blind night, seeking desperately for intuition to guide her through the pitfalls now gaping at her feet.
Everything depended on Mary, and Mary was a dark, untried horse. Would she give up at the first sign of danger in meek surrender; would she flee to the armed support of her uncle the Emperor Charles V, the mightiest power in the Christian world; or would she stand and fight doggedly to the death?
Elizabeth privately suspected the last course. Mary didn’t lack for courage, and when she believed she was in the right she could be as stubborn and mulish as ev
er her father had been. So—unquestionably Mary would fight. But would she win? Who in this largely Protestant land would now support a Catholic claimant? Northumberland controlled the Council, the soldiers and the ports; and on any purely logical assessment of the facts he must win with ease. Mary had no hope at all, save for the goodwill of the English people. Fickle as the toss of a coin, whose side would they come down upon now?
Elizabeth moved to open the casement and looked out at the raging storm. It was a night fit for treason. It seemed as though the heavens themselves had cracked open in fury, as though her dread sire hurled mighty thunderbolts against those who dared to tamper with his will and take the Crown from the Tudor line. She shivered with a delicious thrill of terror. Here she stood between Mary and Northumberland, utterly alone save for the anonymous goodwill shown by the author of that curt little note.
She looked again at the slip of paper in her hand, the words illegible in the gloom at the window. Who had risked his life to warn her of Northumberland’s trap? Was it Robin, acting behind his father’s back, or Sir William Cecil, about to desert yet another master? She would have liked to believe it was Robin, but the brief line bore the stamp of Cecil’s personality—cautious, calculating, saying just enough and no more, trusting her intuition to reward him when she came into her own. Robin would have signed it, in terror that she might prove obtuse.
No, it was Cecil. She knew it as surely as if she had seen him write it. She also knew that if she failed to use this warning to advantage she would hear no more from him. If the Duke won, Cecil would be at his side to serve him. She attached no censure to the knowledge, for he had a family; and a man had to live—
Avoid the court! That suggested she would shortly be summoned to her brother’s deathbed. But when the Duke’s messenger arrived he would find her in bed, too ill to move from the house, certainly too ill to declare her partisanship for either side. Do nothing, say nothing, for as long as possible, and pray that Northumberland would be unable to spare sufficient men from his desperate venture to take her by force of arms.
A sudden flash of lightning threw the shadowy furniture into sharp relief against the dark walls. She held the slip of paper to a candle, let it shrivel to her fingers, and then dropped the smouldering remnant into the empty hearth. Across the empty miles of rain-lashed countryside her gratitude stretched out towards a silent, clerkly man whose true stature was a closed book waiting for her opening hand.
“My Spirit,” she said softly to the wild night beyond her window.
And on the streaming latticed pane she traced an inverted cross.
* * *
In the dark hollow of the courtyard an armed body of men mounted on restless horses waited the appearance of the young man who was to lead them on their mission. They knew precisely why they were gathered here and one or two muttered among themselves that it began to look as though the great Duke of Northumberland might have bitten off more than he could chew this time.
“Bit of a bad job when it’s left to a young fellow-me-lad to salvage the game,” someone muttered, and a little furtive, nervous laughter travelled along the ranks.
In the torchlit corridor beyond the courtyard, Robin Dudley paused with his feathered hat in his hand and glanced uneasily at his father. All the Duke’s composure did not disguise the anxiety at the back of his dark eyes, for by now they were certain there was a traitor in their camp and that their intended coup had been betrayed to their two enemies. The Princess Mary and the Princess Elizabeth had both received urgent messages summoning them to their brother’s deathbed. Mary had set out for London immediately, having apparently swallowed the bait as everyone had anticipated. They had traced her progress as far as Hoddesdon, but there all information of her activity abruptly ceased. And while Mary had failed to arrive, the Lady Elizabeth, conveniently struck with another of her mortal illnesses, had not even set out.
Evidently someone had talked and Robin strongly suspected that ingratiating lawyer, William Cecil. But there was no time to waste now in idle accusations. The entire design depended on Robin’s ability to ride out and capture the Princess Mary before she got the chance to do any serious harm to their cause. And when he returned her to London, he knew, without a shadow of doubt, that he would be returning her to her death. That much did not trouble him. It was inevitable and he had neither attachment nor loyalty to that dull old maid. But something else had been weighing heavily on his mind in the tense atmosphere for the past week or more. He had not dared to mention it to his father, whose brooding temper had become increasingly uncertain these last few days; but now he knew he could remain silent no longer. He had to know.
Twisting his hat in his hand, he averted his eyes from his father’s fine-drawn face and stared out into the noisy courtyard.
“Father—” He hesitated a moment and took a quick breath. “What will become of the Lady Elizabeth?”
Northumberland’s restless eyes narrowed on the younger man’s with an inscrutable lack of expression; knowing his son as he did, he was not unprepared for this awkward question. He was also acutely aware that he could not afford any more wavering loyalties at this critical stage in their venture. It was largely for that very reason that he was packing the young man off on this desperate gamble when he would have much preferred to send one of his older and more experienced sons. It would be a great deal safer to get Robin actively involved as far away from Hatfield as possible; by the time he returned, Elizabeth would no longer be complicating the issue.
He said in his calm, precise courtier’s voice, “I will settle with the Lady Elizabeth.”
“But you wouldn’t—” Robin’s voice faded out and the Duke shook his head quickly.
“Oh, I don’t think it will come to that. I have a certain proposition to make which I’m quite sure the young lady will accept. But let’s not take chivalry too far, Robin. I want the other one and I want her damned quick—you understand that, don’t you?”
“You’ll have her, sir. I swear it.”
Robin saluted his father, marched down the steps two at a time, vaulted effortlessly into the saddle of his favourite mare and galloped out of the courtyard at the head of the troop.
The Duke watched him go with a frown. The moment he had Jane safe on the throne, he would invite the Lady Elizabeth to attend the Coronation festivities, where, at some convenient point in the entertainment, she would be taken violently ill. A fatal recurrence of that earlier malady, which only a few weeks earlier had prevented her travelling to her brother’s deathbed. Very sad, but hardly surprising with such precarious health!
As for Robin—well—he was young and he had a wife; he would get over it eventually.
But in the meantime, as a representative of the family’s grief, he would make an extraordinarily convincing chief mourner at the funeral.
* * *
Mrs. Ashley stirred three heaped tablespoons of salt into a small goblet of water, hid the container beneath the curtained bed, and looked at her mistress doubtfully.
“Is it really necessary to go this far, madam?”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth curtly. She took the goblet and frowned.
“Are the Duke’s emissaries in the anteroom?”
Ashley nodded.
“Give me time to stuff this goblet under my pillow and show them in immediately.”
The salt water was spectacularly effective. The Duke’s messengers, openly suspicious in the anteroom, hovered in the doorway, horrified, embarrassed and suddenly uncertain, bumping into each other in their haste to back themselves out again.
They were readmitted a few minutes later and Elizabeth watched them arrange themselves around her bed like a flock of nervous vultures. She coughed and was amused to see two of them start and step back warily. How oddly squeamish in men who would cheerfully stand around a scaffold to see her head fall.
“Your business, gentlemen,
” she said at last in an extinct whisper and lay back on her pillows.
Their business, suitably bolstered by a welter of legal jargon, was to inform her that on the tenth day of July, in accordance with the will and testament of the late, lamented King Edward, the Lady Jane Grey had been proclaimed Queen of England.
They waited for her to speak. And waited. The moment lengthened intolerably, forcing their spokesman to abandon ceremony and explain the Duke’s proposition in blunt layman’s terms.
“…and that, madam, is the proposition as it stands. The Duke—” He amended himself hastily, “The Privy Council, is prepared to be magnanimous to the—the natural daughter of the great King Henry. Withdraw all claim to the throne, madam, acknowledge the lawful succession of Queen Jane, and you will be handsomely provided for.”
With a coffin, thought Elizabeth and closed her eyes against their steely gaze. So that was the bait! Make it easy for us, you will not find us ungrateful.
Dudley was sharp, she gave him that. To buy her acquiescence, keep her at court just long enough to parade her approval of his coup, and then quietly remove her from the scene—it was a master stroke; one could only admire the man’s nerve! And he had placed her on a razor’s edge of insecurity. One wrong word now to his minions and she would be arrested and hauled off to the Tower anyway. But cornered like this by the Duke’s henchmen, how could she neither accept nor reject this offer?
She opened her eyes; she said coolly, “My sister is the only one concerned with the Duke’s proposal. As long as she lives I have no claim whatsoever to assign.”
They stared at her amazed. The quick, clever twist of logic had thrown them momentarily off guard and she gave them no chance to recover their wits.
“Ashley, show the gentlemen out.”
Swept out of the room by the belligerent governess, they rode back to the Duke, who swore. Damn the bitch, damn her to the deepest pit in hell, and damn these spineless fools who had allowed her to slip out of his net. Must he see to everything in person, was there no one on the Council with an ounce of courage or common sense? But rage was useless, self-defeating; he had no more time to waste on her at present, more urgent matters pressed. No news of Robin for days, and Mary still at large, safely installed at Framlingham Castle, rallying large numbers to her cause. Of course he should have sent Jack, older, more experienced; and had it not been for Elizabeth he would have done so. Elizabeth, Elizabeth—that crooked little white-faced whore had put a spoke in all his wheels; nothing for it now but to take the field against Mary Tudor himself.
