His Dark Lady

by Victoria Lamb

  They walked in silence through the dark streets, Will’s arm tightly round her, her head on his shoulder. No longer tired but with all her nerves on edge, Lucy turned the quarrel over in her mind. Even with Will by her side, ready to protect her, Lucy thought she had never felt so alone. Nor so vulnerable.

  They came to the door of the house that had belonged to Goodluck. She could see the low flicker of the fire through a crack in the door, and knew that Cathy had been waiting up for her. They had no spills left for light, so the fire had to be kept lit after dark. Lucy felt a stab of guilt, and pulled away from Will’s tight hold. She had been gone for hours, leaving her poor friend alone in the house with only her baby son for company. But the delicious lure of time spent with Will and his friends had been too much for her.

  ‘Will,’ she asked suddenly, ‘why do you not marry me? Is it because of the colour of my skin?’

  ‘What?’ Will seemed amazed. He stared back at Lucy for a moment, then demanded, ‘How can you ask such a question when I have just risked my life and the life of my friends to defend your honour?’

  ‘A black whore is a fine catch for your bachelor days,’ she continued steadily, ‘but not good enough for your marriage bed, is that it?’

  ‘You are no whore, Lucy.’

  ‘That is no answer.’

  ‘It is all the answer you will receive from me on this matter,’ Will said flatly, then pulled her close and kissed her.

  They stood in the doorway a few moments, locked together in silence. His hands caressed her spine through the thin fabric of her gown, his lips warm and persuasive.

  ‘Let me in, Lucy,’ he whispered against her throat. ‘That braggart frightened you, that is the only reason you are upset. But you do not have to sleep alone tonight.’

  Yes, she wanted him in her bed again tonight. Her body craved his. But the nights stretched out, and still no promise of a wedding. If they continued like this, lying together like man and wife night after night, taking no care to avoid a child, he would soon ruin her and she knew it. Lucy turned to unlatch the door. She shook her head when he would have followed her inside.

  ‘You may come to my bed again when I have had a proper answer, Will Shakespeare, and not before.’ He might be a player, but she would not be played for a fool. ‘No, you cannot come in tonight. My mind is made up. If you can say nothing, then you shall have nothing.’

  Nine

  ELIZABETH RETRIEVED ROBERT’S letter from the table and read through it for a fifth time. It was brutally short, not written in his more habitual flowery or persuasive style. Was he unwell? Angry with her? She looked at his signature and traced it slowly with one finger. Why should Robert be angry with her? There was no more money for Robert beyond that which she had already ordered to be sent to the captains, or not until the armies’ musterbooks were seen to be in order, at least. And if his anger had a more personal spur, she was the Queen and had every right to demand that his wife should remain in England and not join him at his dubious English ‘court’ abroad.

  Elizabeth threw his letter aside again and limped to the window of the Royal Bedchamber. The ulcer on her leg was a nuisance. Yet she would not sit still. That way lay death. Or decrepitude, which was as good as death. The common people must see her up and about. They were at war. They must believe their queen whole and hale. She leaned her arms on the wooden sill and stared out. Richmond was a fine palace, and she loved to visit it in the summer months when she was not away on progress, but this year it felt more like a prison. The satisfying warmth of an English summer streaming through the glass, reflected sunlight dazzling on the ornamental lake below, and yet she hardly dared venture outside for fear of assassins hidden behind every tree or concealed among the flattering smiles of her courtiers.

  Meanwhile, Robert remained abroad, and even Walter Raleigh, whose saucy looks and country accent amused her, had upped and gone home against her command. Another one who would not bow to her authority but must wend his own way. Now there were only old men and boys at court to play chess or dance the volta with her.

  The war must be won. They had poured too much of England into it. The royal coffers had been depleted to pay the soldiers the hugely inflated salaries Robert had insisted upon. And still the English and their allies lost battles they should have won, and made little headway. Yet to call Robert home would be to admit defeat. She must be brave and hold her nerve, however bad the news.

  One of her ladies sighed, sitting on a cushion on the sunlit floor, and she glanced back at her. Under her own instruction, Robert’s niece, Lady Mary Herbert, was copying out a sonnet of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s on the back of an old sheet of parchment. She was an intelligent young woman, Elizabeth thought, watching her with interest. Indeed, now that her relentless child-bearing of the past few years seemed to be at an end, Lady Mary’s own poetry had begun to find some admirers at court. Elizabeth had thought to enclose the sonnet with her next letter to Robert, as a reminder of happier times when they had read Wyatt’s poetry together as youths. Now she thought such an act would only encourage him to write more abrupt, discourteous letters, considering her entirely in his thrall.

  Helena sat at the tapestry stand, embroidering a new scene for Elizabeth’s bedchamber that depicted the young lovers Cupid and Psyche at play. A less fitting image to hang above her bed she could not imagine. Yet it seemed to amuse Helena, whose spirits had been low in recent months.

  Elizabeth knew what ailed Lady Helena these days. The Swedish-born noblewoman had been so beautiful in her youth, a star of the English court. But now Helena’s skin was almost as wrinkled as Elizabeth’s own, and she no longer turned the courtiers’ heads as she walked in the Queen’s wake. And with so many of the noblemen in their prime still away at the war, the court had become a lonely place for a woman in her middle years.

  There was a knock at the door and Sir Francis Walsingham entered with no formal announcement, leaning on a stick. She wondered if he was ill again. Best not to comment, though. Her own legs were too often in need of the physician’s attention these days. It was never wise to draw attention to another’s ailments.

  Walsingham bowed gravely to the ladies, then approached her, a letter in his hand.

  ‘Not more bad news?’ she demanded. That grim look again. She dreaded it, but knew it must be faced. ‘When I heard you had returned to court, I thought it was to entertain me with news of London. But I see from your face it is to frighten me with more tales of dark deeds and treachery.’

  ‘Forgive me, Your Majesty.’ He gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Would you rather walk in darkness or light?’

  She sighed and settled herself at the table. ‘Very well. Tell me the worst, old friend.’

  ‘You remember young Gifford?’

  Elizabeth shuddered, recalling her night-time visit to the Tower and its vile dungeons. ‘Only too well. The poor boy is not back in Master Topcliffe’s clutches, I trust?’

  ‘Indeed not, Your Majesty.’ Walsingham handed across the letter. ‘He has played his part with great cunning and ingenuity, intercepting letters for us almost every week between your cousin Mary and the conspirators. That information has allowed me to plant a select few of my own men among them, and so to watch these plotters more closely. But it has not been easy to infiltrate their ranks. They are clever and know their business. Some would appear to have taken training from Thomas Morgan in Paris, and to have studied with other such traitors here in England, all men skilled in the art of political intrigue. Their letters are written in a new code, which took us some time to break. But as you can see, they have now been decoded into plain English.’

  ‘So you believe this is another letter from my cousin to these men you have been watching, these Catholic plotters?’

  The letter was several sheets thick. Elizabeth frowned, unrolling them and holding the parchment a little away from her so the crabbed letters did not dance in front of her eyes. Her eyesight was no longer good for close reading, but she would
not have everything read out to her as though she were blind.

  ‘Beyond any doubt, Your Majesty. The original is here, if you wish to verify your cousin’s signature.’

  Slowly, she read over the decoded letter with growing unease, then took up the original and studied the signature. It was indeed Mary’s hand. There was a short postscript with, inserted above it, this damning command: ‘Fail not to burn this privately and quickly.’

  ‘Who is this Anthony Babington to whom she writes so intimately? Apart from a traitor to my throne, that is.’ Elizabeth scanned her cousin’s incriminating postscript, then threw the sheets down with a sudden vehemence. ‘Is Babington her lover, that Mary addresses him at such length and with such disregard for her own discovery?’

  ‘I do not believe so, Your Majesty. I suspect merely that your cousin grows weary of captivity, and weariness makes her reckless. In her earlier responses to Catholic conspirators, she was cautious, almost diffident. Yet now she makes no effort to hide her interest in this plot, and all but condones your assassination at the end.’ He picked up the letters and showed her the last sheet of the decoded one himself, lowering his voice so her ladies-in-waiting should not overhear. ‘Did you note her postscript, Your Majesty, in which Mary asks for details of how these men intend to do away with you?’

  ‘I did note it, yes,’ she said curtly. ‘And felt sick.’

  ‘Is this letter not enough to condemn her—’

  Elizabeth stood up, knocking her chair backwards with a clatter. Her ladies looked up in wonder, but at one freezing look from Elizabeth they bowed their heads again to their work.

  ‘No, a thousand times no!’ she exclaimed, then had to snatch a breath, leaning over the table as pain shot through her stomach. ‘I have told you before, Walsingham, I will not have the sacred blood of a queen on my hands. You may bring me a dozen such letters every year, and still I shall not order my cousin’s death.’

  Walsingham stood silent while she recovered, watching her. ‘Should I send for your physicians, Your Majesty?’

  ‘No, I shall be better in a moment.’ She stood waiting for the fit to pass, her jaw clenched. She would not show further weakness by sitting down or allowing him to summon help. Her leg ulcer throbbed but she ignored it. ‘Besides, my physicians would only bleed me, and then I would be in no fit state to govern. It is bad bile, nothing more. An imbalance of the humours. A momentary spasm. Call it what you will, it soon passes.’

  ‘Brought on by too many unnecessary worries,’ Walsingham said, and there was genuine concern in his voice. ‘Allow me to remove this source of worry for you, Your Majesty, and launch an inquiry into the contents of this treasonous letter. We can draw our own conclusions here in this room, but to act upon those conclusions will involve more sturdy measures. Your cousin Mary will need to be properly questioned over her dealings with these plotters, and the various letters we have intercepted should be examined by a jury of trusted gentlemen. Only then can we be sure of the truth.’

  Elizabeth closed her eyes. The pain in her stomach had begun to abate. She thought fleetingly of her mother’s trial and execution at the hands of her father, and shook her head.

  ‘Put a queen on trial, you mean?’

  ‘An exiled queen without a throne,’ he pointed out mildly. ‘Nor should you allow such considerations to sway your judgement. Once your cousin’s perfidy is made public, no one in Europe will blame you for ordering her execution.’

  ‘King Philip will blame me,’ Elizabeth said bitterly, looking up at him. ‘As he blamed me when my sister died, and then when I would not marry him myself. Why, even the Pope will no doubt let it be known that whomsoever brings him my severed head on a platter, a golden seat will be reserved for that murderer in heaven.’

  Walsingham’s smile was grim. ‘I believe His Holiness has already issued just such a bloody invitation to English Catholics, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Damn him,’ she muttered. But again she shook her head. ‘I shall not order Mary’s execution. That is my final word on the matter, Walsingham, so do not test my patience with it again. However, it is clear that this conspiracy has gone on undisturbed long enough. It cannot be allowed to continue to its natural end, which would be my death. Arrest the men involved and rack them to see what names they spill. No man has ever worked against my throne alone; there has always been a greater name behind.’

  Tired, she gestured him to leave. ‘Go now, I am far from well and must rest.’

  Still her spymaster hovered on the other side of the table, frowning.

  ‘Well, what is it now?’ she demanded impatiently.

  ‘Was your food properly tasted today, Your Majesty?’

  Elizabeth stared, suddenly cold. ‘The same as every day since this latest business began. You fear poison?’

  ‘While your cousin lives, I fear every shadow.’

  ‘You feared poison before Mary even came to England,’ she reminded him in a testy voice, though she knew it would not be beyond the conspirators to have poison slipped into her food or drink. ‘But it is true I feel unwell. I dislike being so close to London during the summer months. Why will you not allow me to remove to the country?’

  ‘If it will comfort you, Your Majesty, I will tell Lord Burghley that he may accommodate you in Kent. His house is not too far from London and is well enough defended. His lordship would be honoured by a royal visit, I am sure, and with his daughter expecting a child it will be a comfort for him to return home.’

  ‘Yes,’ Elizabeth managed, struggling against the cramps in her belly. ‘I shall travel into Kent with the court, and return to London once the worst of the summer heat has passed. I always enjoy my visits to Lord Burghley’s exquisite gardens at Theobalds.’

  Her ladies had come to her side unbidden. Now they picked up her toppled chair and eased her back into it. Helena poured fresh wine into her glass and placed a tempting dish of sweetmeats in front of her. Elizabeth closed her eyes and allowed the women to tend to her, rather than upsetting herself further by dwelling on her many disappointments. She sighed as they cooled her flushed cheeks with lace-trimmed fans and wafted scented pomanders under her nose. But her calm did not last long.

  ‘Enough, enough. This is a bellyache, that is all. I did not sleep well last night, and now I must suffer for my hours of wakefulness.’ A sudden rage seized hold of Elizabeth as she considered how often she was ill these days, and why. She raised a ring-swollen finger and pointed at her secretary in open accusation. ‘And is it any surprise I cannot sleep when you have made me so afraid for my life, trapped in this palace with all my protectors gone off to the war? Where is Robert when I need him? Where is Sir Philip Sidney? My court holds nothing but boys and old men leaning on sticks. If the Spanish were to send a party of invaders up the Thames tomorrow, who would beat them off from the doors of Richmond Palace? You, Sir Francis? My women? Or must I take up a sword and protect this country myself?’

  Walsingham bowed and rolled the letters up again. ‘Forgive me, Your Majesty, I must send out arrest warrants to my agents in London,’ he murmured, discreetly ignoring her outburst. ‘They will supervise the apprehension of Anthony Babington and his fellow conspirators in my absence. Though we must tread carefully and be sure we can bring each man safely to trial on the evidence thus far. If we move too quickly, some may yet escape justice and attempt to carry out their plans.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘I shall give orders for the court to remove to Kent as soon as Lord Burghley can ride ahead to prepare for your visit. Meanwhile, will you undertake not to wander about the estate unguarded, Your Majesty?’

  ‘Yes, very well.’

  Her temples throbbing with a headache, Elizabeth watched him leave the chamber. Why must she always do as others bid her rather than her own will? Was she not Queen?

  She sucked gloomily on a sweetmeat, then called for a quill, ink and new parchment.

  Drawing the sheet towards her, she wrote the date with a bold flourish.

  Rober
t, I am afraid you will suppose by my wandering writings that a midsummer moon has taken possession of my brains this month, but you must take things as they come into my head.

  Elizabeth smiled, dipping her quill in the ink and continuing to write. Already the cramping pain in her belly had eased and she felt able to sip her wine without sickness. She would not reply to her dearest Robert in the same cross, abrupt vein in which he had written to her from abroad, demanding yet more money from the royal coffers and all but accusing her of withholding her support. Instead, she would soothe him with soft and flattering words.

  It was the first time in many years that the two of them had been apart for so long and under such trying circumstances.

  She wrote Robert an intimate letter over several pages, reassuring him of the full support of the English court and of her own affection for him. Yes, he had hurt her feelings. But poor Rob was a long way from home, she reminded herself compassionately, and had more reason to be afraid in the filth and screaming frenzy of a battlefield than she could ever have in England.

  I pray God keep you from all harm and save you from all foes, with my million and legion of thanks, for all your pains and cares. As you know, ever the same, Elizabeth R.

  Ten

  ‘CORPUS CHRISTI,’ THE priest announced solemnly, turning from his makeshift altar with the Blessed Host still held aloft on its silver platter.

  Goodluck raised his head as the priest approached. ‘Amen,’ he murmured, opening his mouth for the Host. A year ago, he had undertaken this part of the Mass with the greatest reluctance, fearing for his immortal soul. But he had spoken and acted and worshipped as a Catholic for so long now, it felt almost natural to close his mouth on the blessed body of Christ, bowing his head again in a muttered Latin prayer.

  The priest moved along the row to the new man, Robert Pooley, whose London house they were visiting, and then on to Babington and Ballard. A row of traitors, lined up together as though for the gallows. Goodluck hid his expression of grim satisfaction. It had taken many months of hard work to bring them together like this. Now at last the end was in sight. And not too soon, for every day brought him closer to danger and discovery as a spy in their midst.