The Queen's Captive (17 page)

The captain opened the door. He nodded to Elizabeth, telling her to enter. Trembling, she walked in. Honor started to follow. The captain’s arm shot out to stop her.

“Let her lady pass,” the Queen’s voice ordered.

They came into her presence. She sat in a chair, her back straight, her eyes clear, her hair neatly coiffed, though her face was still pale. Honor was astonished at her recovery. Her gown, roomy enough to allow for a baby—and roomy enough to hide the truth—was a sumptuous gold and black brocade. The bedchamber was pleasantly alight with candles, and smelled fragrant with herbs strewn among the fresh rushes that covered the floor. Honor could hardly believe the total transformation from this morning.

Elizabeth moved forward and sank to her knees before her sister. Honor stayed by the door and kneeled, too. The Queen stared at Elizabeth with eyes narrowed in anger, as though trying to decide which accusation to begin with. Honor saw that she held the turquoise and pearl rosary, the one she believed had been her mother’s, and there was a restlessness about the way she fingered the beads tightly, jerkily, as though to hold herself back from lashing out. There was a sharp light in her eyes, an impulse to cruelty, restrained.

“What will you say in your defense?” she asked, her tone a cold, quiet dare. “That you have been wrongfully punished?”

Honor saw Elizabeth’s shudder.
Defense?
Was there going to be a trial?

Elizabeth’s voice quavered as she answered, “I must not say so, if it please Your Majesty, to you.”

“Oh yes, so clever. All your answers are so very clever. But what will you say to the world?”

On the scaffold?
Elizabeth’s terror forced its way out in tears, despite her will to dam them. Honor heard the tears in her voice. “That I am Your Majesty’s faithful and loyal servant, and ever will be.”

“I would you could swear the same to God. But I will not commit the sacrilege of asking you to, knowing you would to lie to Him as you have done to me.”

She sprang up from her chair, eyes ablaze, and hurled the rosary at Elizabeth. It struck her cheek. She gasped. Honor jumped to her feet.

“You plotted with Wyatt!” Mary shouted. “You plotted my death!”

Elizabeth rubbed her cheek, crying quietly, her struggle intensely private, a struggle to stay strong. It tore at Honor’s heart to see the girl fighting for her life. “I never did, Your Majesty…I swear that I—”

“Enough!” Mary sank back onto her chair as though the explosion of rage had exhausted her. “I will not listen. I care not. I am
done
with you.”

Honor felt frozen. Was the Queen sending her sister to her death? Yet that queer gleam in her eye made Honor wonder if she had misjudged what was happening here. Was there something else going on? Something beyond Mary’s control?

A scrape sounded across the room. Honor looked past the bed. The sound had come from behind tapestry curtains that divided the room. From inside, a hand pulled the curtain aside. A man stepped out, gorgeously dressed in jeweled black velvet and silver satin.

It was the portrait come to life. The Queen’s fair-haired young husband. Philip. Honor dropped to her knees again. The Queen, however, was not surprised by his entrance. She had known all along that he was there.

He sauntered toward his wife, confident, calm.
“Permettez-moi d’accueillir votre soeur, madame.”
Allow me to welcome your sister, madam. Honor remembered that he spoke no English, that the Queen had to converse with him in French. He looked down at Elizabeth on her knees.
“Notre soeur,”
he said, as though correcting himself.
Our
sister.

Elizabeth stared up at him in wonder. In fear.

He smiled.
“Très jolie.”
Very pretty.

He stepped closer to her and bent and picked up the rosary that Mary had thrown at her. He handed it back to his wife with a look of mild reproach.
“Non plus de cela,”
he told her. No more of that.

Honor’s eyes flicked in amazement from him to the Queen. Mary’s fury had shriveled, and she herself seemed to have shrunk. She gazed at her husband with spaniel eyes and said,
“Mon seigneur, comme vous voulez.”
My lord, as you wish.

Honor could hardly believe it. In one moment this man’s presence had transformed the Queen from imperious sovereign into slave.

“
My
wish?” he said, still speaking in French. “Why, madam, you know it. A son.”

Mary’s chin trembled as she endured her private humiliation and pain. She raised her hand to grasp his for comfort. He took it and held it. “I pray that God will smile on us with an heir,” he said kindly. “If not this time, next time.”

He knows,
Honor thought in amazement. Knows there is no child. Or at least he suspects it and is going along with the Queen’s charade. Does she know that he knows?

“Now,” he said, dropping his wife’s hand like a pair of gloves, “let us have no more shrill voices. Let our beloved sister henceforth feel your kindness.” It was an order, though gently made, and Mary bowed her head, accepting it.

Philip stepped up to Elizabeth and offered her his hand. Mouth agape, she slipped her hand into his. He raised her to her feet. He kissed her softly on one cheek, then on the other. Mary closed her eyes tightly, as though hardly able to bear this further injury.

“The hour is late,” Philip said to Elizabeth. “My wife is tired. We will talk another day.”

And in that moment Honor knew that the Queen’s husband had saved Elizabeth’s life.

They sat on the edge of Elizabeth’s bed, face-to-face, lost in the wonder of it. The room was still dark but for a single candle. They had no time for candles, or for any other thought beyond the extraordinary thing that had just happened.

“Why would he do it?” Elizabeth was whispering, as though speaking out loud might tempt the gods to snatch away this lifeline.

“I think…” Honor said, then stopped, still piecing it together. She was whispering, too, but only in case someone might be listening. Noailles had spies, so the imperial ambassador, Renard, almost certainly did as well. “I think he needs you.”

Elizabeth frowned, incredulous. “What?”

“Politics. With no baby—”

“A phantom baby,” Elizabeth murmured, clearly still overwhelmed by what Honor had explained to her on their hurried way back to her rooms.

“Exactly. With no heir of the Queen’s body, you are once again the heir apparent, and he—”

“But I always was. And Philip knew that. So why—”

“Because he’s thinking two steps ahead, like the wily Hapsburg prince that he is. He’s thinking of his situation if the Queen dies, if not from this malady then perhaps from a childbirth to come. If the Queen kills you and then dies childless, who is next in line for the throne?” She asked it like a good lawyer, knowing the answer.

Elizabeth didn’t hesitate. “My cousin, Mary. Queen of the Scots.”

“Only it isn’t the Scots who worry Philip. Where has your cousin lived since she was a child?”

“In France.”

“Betrothed to the French king’s son. She has grown up as a beloved part of King Henri’s family—”

“Pampered by them like a little pet, I always heard—”

“And soon she’ll be his daughter-in-law. No doubt it’s the very reason he wanted her for his son, hoping for the day he might see her take the throne of England. With England a vassal state of France, he could control trade. Use England to fight his wars. And confound his enemy, Emperor Charles.”

“Philip’s father,” Elizabeth said, instantly understanding. “So, I’m alive. And, if Philip gets to decide this—”

“Which he obviously does, as we just saw—”

“Then I’ll
stay
alive.”

For the first time Elizabeth allowed herself to smile. Brave girl, Honor thought. She could have hugged her.

“The question is…” Elizabeth paused, thinking, biting at a ragged fingernail.

Honor could practically hear that clever brain at work, weighing, sorting, planning. “The questions is…?”

Elizabeth looked at her, deadly serious. “Am I
free?
”

10

News

September–October 1555

H
onor was laughing so hard at the actors she couldn’t catch her breath. Beside her Adam, too, roared with laughter. They stood in the empty musicians’ gallery above the great hall of Hatfield House, looking down at the whole household of Elizabeth’s officials and administrators and servants and friends, all of them doubled over, their laughter ringing up to the roof’s timbers. Elizabeth sat in the front row, laughing hardest of all.

The trestle tables where everyone ate dinner had been pushed back, and from benches ranged in a semicircle they were watching the foolery on the makeshift stage, where the actors were running around in a fine madness. A buffoon surgeon had tried to pull a patient’s tooth with a pair of monstrous tongs while a sly servant tried to rob the suffering patient, and now the surgeon chased the patient and the patient chased the servant and the servant chased a pretty boy-actor playing a maid, and the hall rocked with laughter at their antics.

“Look out!” Elizabeth shrieked as the servant’s partner in crime tossed an orange peel underfoot in the path of the patient. The patient slipped on it and tumbled, the tooth popped out, the surgeon dove and caught it, the maid whirled around, the lusting servant plowed into her, knocking her down on her back, and fell on top of her.

The audience howled. Adam threw back his head and laughed. Honor laughed so hard she had to pull out her handkerchief to wipe her eyes. After the months of shared captivity with Elizabeth it felt so good to laugh. The Princess was free. She was back at her beloved Hatfield House where she had spent most of her childhood, and all of her loyal staff were with her.

Another five minutes and the play was over. Elizabeth, clapping, jumped up and skipped to the edge of the stage to talk to the actors, who grinned and wiped sweat from their brows. Several of Elizabeth’s household people followed her, handing goblets of wine up to the actors.

Honor sighed, dabbing at the last of her mirthful tears. Adam continued to gaze down at Elizabeth as she chatted with people left and right, making them smile.

“They love her,” he said.

Honor heard the warmth in his voice. Amazing, she thought, the effect Elizabeth had on people. The more lowly their station, the more passionate their admiration, from fishwife to butcher to carpenter’s apprentice. Honor believed it was because they sensed her genuine interest in them. “Ah, you should have seen it when we left London,” she told Adam. “The people went mad for her. Cheering, and rushing to give her cakes and flowers. She would stop and banter with them, which just brought more people running. It happened at every village. Took us days to get here.”

Honor was quite sure no European monarch or prince showed such affection for their common people. In fact, they would be shocked by Elizabeth’s easy familiarity. A fine quality in her, in Honor’s estimation, and one Elizabeth had earned the hard way—the terrors she had endured had given her an understanding of the insecurities most people lived with. Though a princess, she knew what it was to be friendless, fearful of the future, and at the mercy of rulers. People saw that in her, and it touched their hearts. Just as she has touched mine, Honor thought. The girl now felt as dear to her as her own daughter.

Well, almost. What joy she had felt when she’d read Isabel’s letter back in July, with the news that she had been delivered of a fine, healthy son. Nicolas, they had named him, in honor of Richard’s late father, Nicholas, but with the Spanish spelling. He would be four months old now. It had taken Isabel’s letter over two months to reach England from Peru. Nicolas had been born on May Day.

“Who’s that?” Adam asked.

“Who?”

“That oaf with his hand on her shoulder.”

Honor followed his gaze down to Elizabeth. “Oh, that’s Doctor Dee. Mathematician and philosopher. Her friend.”

“And that fellow? The one speaking in her ear?”

“Roger Ascham. Her former tutor. Another good friend.”

“What about the one at her back? Black beard.”

“A new friend, Senor Castiglione. He’s teaching her Italian.”

“An awful lot of them.”

“What?”

“Friends.”

“Well, naturally.” Honor was settling herself down on the bench, tucking her handkerchief back in her sleeve. “She’s been alone for so long.”

He looked over his shoulder at her. “She’s had you.”

“Hardly the same. It’s young people she needs.” She patted the spot beside her on the bench. “Come, Adam, I want all the news.” He had arrived just as the play was starting and she had whisked him up to the empty gallery to watch, but also to get him alone for a few minutes. She was hungry for news of home. “How is your father? How is everyone? Tell me all.”

“I can do better than that.” He was pulling letters out of his pocket. “One from Isabel. One from Father.” He handed them to her.

She tore open Isabel’s and read it quickly, gobbling the words. Carlos had been promoted in the viceroy’s horse guard. Baby Nicolas could now hold a rattle. Isabel had made friends with a captain’s wife and had become so fluent in Spanish she was writing poetry in it. Honor sat back, sated by wolfing down what she needed to know—that they were alive and thriving. She would read the letter again later, slowly and indulgently, to savor all its tastes.