Blood Between Queens (20 page)

Frances was staring at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. He remembered how his son had looked at him like a stranger. Neither of them saw
him
. “You heard me,” he said. “Send these people home. Today.” He turned to go.

She caught his arm. Her voice was a tight whisper. “You cannot. Your reputation will be ruined.”

“I’m already ruined. Frances,
there is no money
.” A plasterer’s apprentice glanced up from stirring paste. Adam looked away, irritation biting him. And something sharper—a gnawing sense of failure. He said to Frances, forcing himself to speak more gently, “I told you, it all went down with the
Jesus
. I’m sorry.” He noticed two more workmen looking at him. It was humiliating. “No more of this in public,” he said to his wife, and headed for the stairs. He felt he couldn’t get out fast enough.

Frances caught up with him as he walked away from the wing. “But . . . there’s the income from your lands. The rents. The revenues.”

He kept walking. “And most of it will go to cover what I owe Porteous.”

“Well then, there’s your father. He has—”

“No.” He would not ask his father to pay for his wife’s folly. Hot bitterness surged through him. He’d
had
all the money they needed and more! He had sailed off on a great venture and made a great profit, but the Spaniards had sent it to the bottom of the sea.

“Adam, stop. Please!”

He halted, hearing her distress. She was out of breath. They were in her topiary row, and the foliage shadows cast an unforgiving mottle over her distraught face. Adam heaved a tight sigh. He wanted no more wrangling. “I’m sorry. I know you want this grand place. But it’s impossible.”

“Me?” She looked hurt. Redness sprang to her eyes. “I haven’t built this for me. It’s for
you
. A haven from the dangers of the sea. A shelter. A sanctuary.”

A mausoleum,
he thought. He couldn’t stifle a shudder.
Dear God, give me an ocean.

She saw it, and stiffened. “For you, yes. And for the children. Even if all my efforts mean nothing to you, think of your children. They must have a legacy.”

“A legacy of debt?” He looked at her, baffled. Was she
willfully
blind to the facts? It irked him, too, the way she wielded the mention of the children like a weapon. He remembered his son’s probing look of suspicion. “The boy called me a thief. How did he get that notion?”

“Robert? I don’t know. I had to tell him why you didn’t come home, since he knew you’d landed. I told him of the Spanish count insulting you and how, to clear it up, they kept you at the palace.”

“That’s how you put it to him? That I was kept there?”

“Isn’t that what Her Majesty did?
Keep
you?”

The double meaning was too clear. Adam’s anger boiled, but he held his tongue. He would not take her taunt. “That’s no way to talk to the boy. You should have explained I was reporting to the Queen about my trading mission. A mission to enhance the power of England and the glory of Her Majesty.”

“Not to provide for your family?”

“My family prospers only when Her Majesty’s interests prosper. Why can you not see that they are one and the same?”

“Yet you do not. You esteem her
above
us.”

“Good God, she is our queen.”

“And nothing more? To you? Can you swear that?”

He was fed up. “You talk rot.” He turned and strode on.

She shouted after him, “I say no more than what half of London is saying. How she entertained you alone on her barge. How she took your part after you attacked the count. How even when the man died and the Spaniards called for justice, she gave you her protection.”

He turned, appalled at the loudness of her voice. No one was near, but anyone could be beyond the yew trees. He went back to her. “Frances, whose side are you on? I roughed up a Spaniard and I regret his death. But he is just one man. We English lost over three hundred!”

“She kept you in her private rooms! Like some male whore!”

He raised his hand in fury. Then froze, rocked by how near he had come to striking her.

She was trembling. “It’s revolting,” she croaked. “The show between the two of you. You love her! Do not deny it.”

“You are mad.”

“Swear it, then. Swear that she is no more to you than your queen. Swear it on the souls of your children.”

He seethed in silence.

“You see?” she cried. Red anger splotched her face. Tears brimmed in her reddened eyes. “You make our marriage a mockery!”

His anger suddenly drained. He could not even muster that much passion. All he felt was dull, cold revulsion. This moment had been long coming. “Our marriage was a mockery from the moment we said our vows. No, before. From the moment you threatened my father’s wife.”

“Lady Thornleigh has done very well for herself, so do not blame—”

“You would have informed on her. Marry me, you said, or see her burned at the stake. That was your ultimatum. Till death do us part. Well, I’ve kept my end of the God-cursed bargain. So keep yours, madam, and spare me your prattle about love.”

She was weeping now. Uncontrolled, racking sobs. Adam turned and walked away.

“Where are you going?” she shouted.

“The
Elizabeth,
” he shouted back, no longer caring who heard.

Her voice was a wail behind him. “She robbed me of my husband!”

I was never yours to lose
.

 

Portsmouth harbor lay rosy under a blood-red sunset. The water, calm as dimpled glass, radiated pink tints back to the sky. The tightness in Adam’s chest eased as he walked up the gangplank, taking in the familiar shipboard smells and sounds: the air’s salty tang, the haylike smell of the canvas, the water lapping gently at the hull, the rhythmic creak of rope against wood. His anxiety drifted away. A ship beneath him soothed him the way a tankard of ale before a hearth soothed other men. He was home.

Some work had been done to clean up the
Elizabeth
when she’d been brought here to Portsmouth, but there was still much to do. He felt bad about how he had galloped off to London and left his ship with her topsides filthy, mainmast a giant jagged stub, spars splintered, canvas in tatters, lower decks reeking of sickness. He had ordered a cleanup and basic repairs, and these had been done, and now the ship dozed at rest like the patched-up veteran she was, wounds bandaged, body bathed, but still a long way from fighting form. Ah, but what a campaigner she had proved, baring her teeth against the Spaniards in the skirmish! And how faithfully she had brought them home, the handful who’d survived, though she had been limping from her own injuries. She had slogged on as a veteran carries a wounded comrade off the battlefield. Adam crossed her bare, beaten deck and went down the worn companionway stairs. He felt he owed his ship more.

How much would it cost to refit her? he wondered as he opened the door of the stern cabin. He unbuckled his sword and hung it on the bulkhead hook, then flopped down on his berth on his back with a weary, grateful thud. Rose-tinted light from the stern window warmed the dark wood paneling that cocooned him. With the slow gentle rocking of the hull, the ropes that were the sinews of the vessel carried on their whispering creaks. His compass on the table clinked softly against a pewter plate. His eyes drifted closed. Refit her? As impossible as Frances’s foolish palace. Bitterness was a worm in his heart. He didn’t have enough money even to replace the bowsprit.

“Had enough of home life?”

Adam’s eyes sprang open. Anthony Porteous sat on the edge of the table. With arms folded over his broad chest, his bald head agleam in the rosy light, and a satisfied aura of omnipotence, he put Adam in mind of a genie from a fable. But a genie, he suspected, who wanted to be paid.

“Couldn’t stay home,” he replied. “There’s work to be done.” He sat up and threw his legs over the side of the berth to show he meant business.

“Tonight?” Porteous smiled like a man at cards calling a bluff.

“A candle will do.”

“For what task?”

“My log, for one. Accounts, for another.”

“Accounts? What, will your pen conjure profit from disaster?”

Adam slumped. “No.” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Look, if you’re here about what I owe you—”

“I am.”

“Porteous, you know I have nothing. Once I get the ship refitted I’ll do whatever it takes to pay you back. I’ll slog to Flanders with tin and hides and slog back with pots and boots. It will take a few years, but I swear you’ll get your money back.”

“Years? No, no, my friend, that will not do.” He toyed with the compass. “I want it all repaid by Michaelmas.”

Adam stared at him. Next month? The demand was insane. Unnerved, he tried to make a jest of it. “Then tell me where I can conjure a chest full of gold.”

“I shall. It’s scheduled to leave Seville, bound for Flanders. I’ll give you a ship to intercept it.”

A shiver scurried up Adam’s back. Piracy? He remembered his son’s words,
“Did you steal it?”
The thought revolted him. He glared at Porteous. “I’m no thief.”

“You haven’t heard whose gold it is.”

“A rich Castilian merchant’s? A fat Dutch burgher’s? I’m not interested, I tell you. I am no pirate.”

“No, you are a man who’s been wronged. By Spain. A man who wants revenge. On Spain.” He set down the compass and spoke in earnest. “The ship I speak of sails for Philip of Spain.”

Adam’s breath caught. “What?”

“That’s right, the king himself. Next week that ship will be bound for the Spanish-occupied Netherlands. It will carry a hoard of gold destined to hire more troops in Philip’s murderous oppression of the Dutch. This is your chance, Thornleigh. The King’s gold will not bring back your men, but it will give us back what the Spaniards stole from us in the Indies.” Porteous crossed his arms with a satisfied smile. “Interested now?”

Adam made no effort to hide it. Excitement coursed through him as sharp as hunger. He wanted this! It was a huge risk. He would be going alone against Spanish guns. And there was Elizabeth. Would she stand by him again or have him arrested? This raid, he saw, would either make him very rich or get him hanged. He stood up with fresh vigor. Either way, he was going send a pack of Spaniards to the bottom of the Channel.

E
arly to work as always, Will strode down a crowded corridor of the Council of the North in York on his way to the chamber where the inquiry about Mary, Queen of Scots, in its third day, was about to resume. He had been here from the start acting as Sir William Cecil’s representative, a position that put him in daily company with Elizabeth’s three commissioners hearing the arguments, and he didn’t intend to miss a word.

“Master Croft, beg your pardon, sir,” a young page said as he caught up to him. “You asked me to tell you when Lord Thornleigh arrived.”

“He’s here?”

“Yes, sir.” The boy pointed past the milling crowd. “North entrance, sir.”

Will turned on his heel and set out in the direction he’d just come from. This day had already begun well with a letter from Sir William praising his diligence and entrusting him with more responsibility in liaising with the commissioners. Now Uncle Richard’s arrival made it even better. He had come as Elizabeth’s personal envoy to the proceedings, a hugely prestigious position, and Will was not above basking in his uncle’s glory.

And he in mine just a little,
he thought with a tickle of pride. After all, the inquiry had been Will’s idea. Now in full swing, it was making history and Will was making a name for himself. That promised quicker advancement through Sir William at court, and
that
meant he would soon be in a position to marry Justine. He had got her note that she had been sent to attend Mary and he’d decided that as soon as they were both back in London they would wed. He was grinning as he reached his uncle.

His lordship was shrugging off his cape to a footman, and Will greeted him with a respectful but cheerful bow. “My lord, welcome. Will you take some refreshment after your journey? I’ll alert the commissioners that you’re here.”

His uncle’s look was almost a scowl. “I’m fine. Let’s get to work.”

Will took no offense. The journey from London was wearying, and his uncle was not a young man. In the saddle for weeks, no wonder he was testy.

They moved through the crowd of men who parted, murmuring and watching Lord Thornleigh as he passed. There were clusters of the Scottish delegation, huddles of English lawyers, knots of York aldermen, and Will knew they were all hungry for clues from his uncle about Elizabeth’s position in the matter of Mary.

“How they study you, sir,” he said quietly as they walked. “I warrant they’ll be noting every twitch of your eyebrow, every frown, every sigh.” It made him smile. “Puts one in mind of Romans reading entrails.”

A cool glance from his uncle, and a gruff grunt.

He’s in no mood for jests,
Will thought. It sobered him.
Down to business, then.
“You know Sir Ralph Sadler, of course,” he said, indicating one of the commissioners they were passing who stood conferring with his clerks. Sadler, sixty-one, was an old hand at Scottish politics. Lord Thornleigh nodded to him and Sadler gave a courtly bow of his head in return. Farther down the corridor a swarm of underlings buzzed like bees following another commissioner as he strolled into the inquiry chamber, the mustachioed Earl of Sussex, a highly influential man as Lord President of the North.

Will quietly told his uncle, pleased to be in the know, “His Grace the Duke usually arrives late.” The Duke of Norfolk, thirty-two and immensely wealthy, was the highest-ranking nobleman in England and presided over the inquiry as the foremost of Elizabeth’s three commissioners. Will could not suppress a chuckle, “Perhaps thanks to the night’s libations. He brought half his wine cellar with him.”

His uncle rounded on him with a scowl and halted. “This is no good. Where can we talk alone?”

Will was taken aback. Had some problem arisen at court? He indicated a spot under a staircase out of the flow of men. The moment they were alone his uncle said with severe, clipped anger, “Betrothed. In
secret!
What in God’s name were you thinking?”

The bubble of good cheer in Will burst. He saw in an instant how he had misjudged his uncle’s mood. “Sir, let me explain—”

“Oh, Justine explained.
Love,
” he said in a withering tone. “Damn it, is this your character? I expected better from you. A betrothal should be public, a family ceremony. You did wrong, Will.”

He smarted at the rebuke. “I believe it was right, sir.”

“It was plain skulduggery. And there was no
need
. I told Justine you had my blessing. Nothing was blocking your way.”

“With respect, sir, there was a need. I had told my mother my intention to marry Justine, and her reaction was . . . well, a violent hostility. It was unnerving, as though she’d gone slightly mad. She has taken a notion to hate Justine. I have no idea why.”

His uncle looked away with a groan. “This is what comes of secrecy.”

“Sir, she threatened to ask you to forbid our marriage. I wanted to assure Justine that nothing my mother might say or do would change anything, so I asked her to become betrothed. I take full responsibility, I persuaded her.” Wounded through he was at his uncle’s anger, he could not pretend to be contrite. “I did force the issue, but I’m not sorry that she and I exchanged vows. We love—”

“You love each other, I know. But that’s not enough. You’ve cast a blot on our whole family. Her majesty takes a personal interest in approving marriages within great houses, and she would heartily disapprove of what you’ve done. As do I. A mother’s bitter words are not reason enough for a man to act so dishonorably.”

It cut Will so deeply he stood mute.

His uncle let out a breath of angry impatience. “I gather you haven’t told Joan that you two are betrothed?”

“No. Given her hostility, I was afraid it might make her ill. And I thought if she had some time to—”

“Time. Bah, this is ill done. Ill done.” He glared at Will. “I can still forbid the marriage.”

It was a blow Will had not seen coming. A future without Justine was a future he did not want to imagine. “Don’t, sir. Please. Give me a chance to make good this blunder. To prove myself to you.”

“Oh, you shall. Believe me, you shall.” He shook his head, heaving a sigh, as though attempting to get past their wrangling. “The fact is, I have a job for you.”

Will grabbed the opportunity. “Gladly, sir. What is it?”

“Later. This is not the time or place to talk.” He looked out at the crowd. “We have business here. Come, let’s go in. I want you to tell me what’s happened so far. Everything.”

“Of course.” Will pulled himself together. This was a chance to make a good impression. He meant to use it.

They made their way into the inquiry chamber packed with men, the session not yet under way. The leaders of the various parties stood in animated talk with their respective supporters and clerks: the three English commissioners, the Scottish delegation of the confederate lords who had usurped Mary, and the commissioners she had sent. Will was aware of all eyes on his uncle as they headed toward the English commissioners’ table.

“So,” his uncle asked quietly, “is this exercise giving us any joy?”

“If the purpose is to find a
modus vivendi
between Her Majesty and the confederate lords, and between the Scottish queen and them—”

“And it is.”

“Then I’d say we have not found it yet.” He knew by now the many strands of religious factions, family betrayals, and vendettas that were the tangled web of Scottish political life. It made the central issue of the inquiry—Mary’s alleged complicity in her husband’s murder—far from clear.

His uncle nodded. “I’m not surprised. Bring me up to date.”

“Yes, sir. On the first day Mary’s commissioners were called, she having refused to attend in person. Lord Herries presented her case.”

“Point him out.”

“There, by the window.” He nodded toward the Scottish noble, a gray-haired soldierly man, one of the dwindling cadre of Scottish peers who had remained loyal to Mary. “He laid out what he called the crimes of the confederate lords. That they took up arms against their lawful sovereign and deposed her. That they incarcerated her at Loch Leven. That they violently forced her abdication—meaningless in law, of course, since it was coerced—and usurped her throne. That they took control of her infant son, James, and crowned him king to give their offenses a sheen of legitimacy while the Earl of Moray took de facto power as regent. That they besmirched her reputation with slanders. These crimes, Herries concluded, had compelled Mary to seek justice from her royal cousin, Elizabeth.”

“And Moray? Has he spoken?”

“Yes, yesterday he presented the confederate lords’ case. And a compelling one it was.” They both glanced across the room at the Earl of Moray, Mary’s half brother, who stood talking with his colleagues amid a cluster of lawyers. Moray was thirty-seven, tall, fit, and fair-haired as they said his father, King James, had been. He had a reputation as a fierce fighter in battle eight years ago against the French and, last year, against Mary. As leader of the lords who had usurped her, Moray now ruled Scotland, and he moved among his delegation with the aura of a sovereign, one with an iron resolve. Will had never seen a man so single-minded in his purpose, so bent on winning.

“His claim is that Mary, as queen, planned the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley, in collusion with the Earl of Bothwell, her lover, so that she would be free to marry Bothwell. Moray presented depositions from Bothwell’s servant William Powrie confessing that he laid gunpowder in the cellar of the provost’s lodging at Kirk o’ Field where Mary had brought Darnley for the purpose of having him killed. After the explosion, which threw Darnley clear into the garden, Mary did nothing to investigate the murder, and it was left to the lords to indict Bothwell. Moray says that Mary then colluded with Bothwell to stage her own abduction by him, a ruse which allowed her to be with him while avoiding the lords’ opprobrium of her. But when the lords threatened to take up arms against Bothwell for wresting control of their queen, she abandoned the charade of being Bothwell’s unwilling captive, and married him.”

“What’s your opinion on all this?”

The question caught Will off guard. “Opinion, sir?” He was trained to examine only facts.

“Is she guilty?”

“That has yet to be determined. And this is not a trial.”

“Don’t talk like a lawyer. Come, come, let’s hear your thoughts. It will help my report to Her Majesty.”

Given this license to speak, Will took it. “I’d say she has proved herself an inept ruler, one with catastrophically poor political judgment. I’ve talked to a lot of people here and everyone agrees that from the beginning of her reign she showed little interest in governing. She attended few meetings of her council, and when she did she spent the time sewing. She married Lord Darnley, her personal choice, in haste and against the advice of her council.” He felt a nervous stab, realizing how this mirrored his own hasty betrothal. His uncle, thankfully, did not seem to make the same connection, his eye on Moray across the room, so Will carried on steadily, “Once married, however, she and her husband fell into violent arguments and eventually were estranged. When crises befell her, she seemed prone to weeping and fainting, leaving control to some strong man. She enraged the lords by making Bothwell her chief adviser, cutting them out of all decision making—”

“But the murder, Will, the murder. Do you think she was behind it? Elizabeth will not let this case turn on the justification of rebellion against a sovereign. It has to be about Mary’s innocence or guilt. What have you learned?”

“No facts, sir, I’m sorry.” He saw his uncle’s disappointment, and knew that did his own cause no good. It made him bold to delve further into speculation. “But her actions do invite deep suspicion. Though estranged from Darnley, she suddenly told him she wanted a reconciliation and invited him to join her in traveling to Edinburgh. They stopped outside the city at the Old Provost’s house, at Kirk o’ Field, and around midnight she slipped out to visit friends. While she was gone the house exploded. She displayed shock, but the very next day, when she should have been in the seclusion of mourning, she put aside her mourning clothes to go and make merry at a retainer’s wedding. She gave Darnley a mere private burial, not the state ceremony his rank deserved, which fueled people’s suspicions. Despite widespread belief that the Earl of Bothwell was the chief murderer, she stood by him, defying public opinion. She seems to have submitted herself totally to him, and he, seizing the opportunity, gathered a great force around him. When the lords finally indicted him for the murder, Mary allowed him to bring four thousand armed men to Edinburgh to harass the witnesses and jurors, and after a trial that lasted just a few hours he was let go, a free man. She says he then abducted her, yet when she was at his castle of Dunbar, not one of her supporters made a move to rescue her, an indication of how generally it was felt that she had connived at her own abduction. Finally, she committed political suicide by marrying him. In allowing Bothwell to rule her, and therefore the country, the lords declared she was not fit to reign, and deposed her. By her own conduct, she lost her realm.”

Lord Thornleigh’s expression was grave. “Yet Moray does not look happy.” Will followed his uncle’s gaze. Moray was haranguing one of the lawyers clustered around him, poking the man’s chest with his finger to make a point. “Certainly, he has cause to be nervous,” Lord Thornleigh went on. “If Mary returns home in triumph, Moray will lose everything in Scotland. Even, perhaps, his head.”

Will conceded that Mary’s restoration to her throne seemed a possible outcome.

His uncle turned to him, keenly interested. “Think you so?”

“I do. Because of my lord of Norfolk.” They both looked at the duke, pale-eyed, slim, unsmiling, who was settling himself at the head of the table, arranging his gold velvet robes, preparing to open the session. Norfolk had not impressed Will. Though born into a family of great power, the Howards, he seemed vacillating and vain, an unstable combination. “He has a personal interest, sir, in not antagonizing Mary.”