The Queen's Captive (14 page)

Mary seemed hardly able to hold back. “How long did you attend her? Did she get my letters? What did she say of me?”

“She cherished your letters,” Honor said. “She would read them once, twice, three times, then have me read them to her again, often late in the evenings before she retired. Read them in order, over again each night, like a beloved bedtime story.”

Mary smiled at that, and nodded for Honor to go on, eager for more.

“She particularly loved your letter about the new pony you had taken hawking, and how it cantered down a slope so fast your gentlemen came galloping after, and Sir Matthew Ponsonby lost his hat and tumbled into the briars.”

Mary laughed. “Starlight!” she said, sharing a happy look with Frances. “That little pony was quick as a comet. Remember?”

Frances grinned back at her. “I do, Your Grace.”

“My goodness, I was…what? Twelve?”

“Thirteen, I believe, Your Grace,” Honor said, “for in that very letter you thanked your lady mother for the musical clock she had sent you as a birthday gift.”

Mary nodded in delight, but then her smile grew thin. “Not sent by her hand, though. She had to sneak it through a network—from her priest to the Duchess of Norfolk to me. King Henry had eyes throughout my household.” The way she said her father’s name gave Honor a shudder. So barren of intimacy. So tight with loathing.

Mary and Frances murmured reminiscences together, names and places that meant nothing to Honor. They had been friends since childhood, Frances living in Mary’s household as her playmate. As they chattered, Honor looked through the open doors to the adjoining bedchamber and noticed a larger than life-sized portrait on the wall. A blond young man dressed in splendid finery, with an arrogant gaze as flat as a steel blade. Prince Philip, of course. She looked back at Mary with a pinch of wonder at how history had repeated itself. Mary was eleven years older than Philip, just as her mother had been older than her father, by six years. Both women had married younger men they adored. But Catherine had eventually lost her husband’s love so completely he had called her “the barren old crone” in public. As for Philip, Honor had heard from Sir William Cecil that the Spaniard was, by all accounts, a courteous husband, but he could speak only a few words of English and made no attempt to learn more—he communicated with his wife in French—and it was common knowledge that he kept a mistress in Spain. According to Cecil, some had heard him refer to Mary in private as his aunt, which was almost the case. They were cousins, Philip a generation younger than Mary.

The Queen noticed Elizabeth’s letter still on the floor. She groaned. “That trash should have gone out with Winchester. Frances, would you mind? He can’t have gone far.”

Frances got to her feet. “Of course, Your Grace.” She picked up the letter and left the room.

Mary sighed, shaking her head in sorrowful anger as she fingered the rosary’s beads. She said to Honor, “You, brought up in piety by the godly Sir Thomas More—you would be sick to know of the evil I must combat. A constant fight for the souls of my kingdom. How the heretics breed. Priests, even, who desecrate their vows by taking wives—harlots, more like. And now, my sinful sister. Oh, yes, the heretics would love to see her take my place. How can I do God’s work with such vipers as
her
at my breast?”

Listening, Honor felt an idea, just hatched, scratch at her mind. “It is truly a mighty battle, Your Grace,” she said.

“I have been lenient. I have allowed her to live when other monarchs would have had her head. But she defies me at every turn. Defies me and defiles my trust.” She rubbed her forehead as if overcome with weary disgust. “Well, what else can one expect from a bastard, the whelp of a heretic whore?”

Honor flinched at the gross language. Luckily, Mary did not notice, her eyes closed as she kneaded her forehead. Suddenly, she thumped her fist down on the arm of her chair in a flash of anger. “And this viper hopes to inherit my crown. I know she does! It makes me sick. It must sicken God Himself.”

Honor took a deep breath. She could not allow the Queen to follow this train of thought. Mary had already shown her brutally vindictive nature when, a year ago, she had beheaded her seventeen-year-old cousin, Lady Jane Grey. She said, “Your Grace, you have good reason to despise the Lady Elizabeth.” She added steadily, taking her life in her hands, “So do I.”

Mary frowned at her and Honor knew how close to the edge she, a commoner, teetered. In speaking evil of royalty she was virtually speaking treason.

But she also saw that the Queen was interested. “How so?” she asked.

Frances, returning, came through the door, but Mary impatiently gestured to her with an abrupt wave of dismissal. “Not now, my dear. Leave us.”

Frances looked surprised. She shot Honor a sharp glance that glittered with jealousy. Then lifted her head high, turned on her heel, and walked out.

Mary pressed Honor again, “You say you hate my sister? Why?”

“Her father crushed the people I loved. I revered my noble guardian as a father, and King Henry executed him because he would not call the King’s mistress queen. Why do I hate Elizabeth? Because she is the King’s bastard.”

Mary looked astonished. And thrilled. “You say true.”

Honor went on, “I loved your lady mother, too, the most generous and righteous Queen, and King Henry cast her out and drove her to her death. The King crushed them both in his lust for Anne Boleyn. Why do I hate Elizabeth? Because she is the daughter of that goggle-eyed whore.”

Mary was nodding, her eyes glowing with bitter passion. “True. So true!”

“Your Grace, for Sir Thomas More’s sake, and for your dear mother’s sake, let me serve Elizabeth.”

Mary gaped at her. “What? Serve her?”

“Let me serve
you,
by serving her. I will watch her doings, her private words, and make reports to you. And, if I can find a way”—she lowered her voice to convey her dark meaning—“I will serve her in the fashion she deserves.”

The light flickered in Mary’s eyes, a vicious flame fueled by all the misery of her girlhood, all her youthful love for her mother that her father had despoiled, and it told Honor that the Queen had understood her meaning. Serve. Dispatch. Kill.

Honor pressed the point. “I have good cause, as you can see, and if you will give me—”

“The means?”

“Yes. I promise Your Majesty, I will serve her well.”

Mary smiled, as though content for the first time in a long day. “My sister’s present ladies have spent long enough in her wearying service. Can you begin at once?”

Frances summoned her steward to her small, private chamber near the Queen’s suite.

“I want you to find a discreet man,” she told him, “and send the fellow to find out whatever he can about Honor Thornleigh. Especially her life in Antwerp.”

“Send him there?”

“Yes. He shall have whatever funds are necessary.”

There was something about the Thornleigh woman’s claims that Frances found odd. Why would a ward of Sir Thomas More, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine, have spent years living in the Protestant German lands? Her husband’s business kept her there, no doubt. Yet something nagged. Something about Honor Thornleigh’s sudden and so earnest wish to become a friend of Queen Mary. That was Frances’s place. She would not be supplanted by an upstart…or worse.

“When did you want this information, my lady? Such an investigation could take some time.”

“Then take it. Be thorough. I want to know everything.”

8

The Queen’s Summons

April 1555

R
iding homeward to Colchester, munching an apple from the inn’s breakfast table, Adam was thinking about ships. A leaner, faster galleon—a new design—that’s what he would build and test if he had the means. Say, two hundred tons, with a length-to-beam ratio of three to one. That would create a hull form below the waterline more like the old, small galleasses, but with a deeper draft. He would keep the superstructure low, sweeping upward from waist to stern, and make a more rakish stem to improve handling in rough seas. He’d place the mainmast a little farther forward, too, and rake it forward slightly—that also would make for easier handling. Imagine the efficiency of such a lean, swift ship. Imagine a small fleet of them.

Reality blasted his fantasy. Imagine the cost to build them.

Ships and money. The first was impossible without the second. He had already spent more than he’d planned of the loan he had squeezed from the Antwerp money market thanks to his father’s good reputation, all just to maintain top quality on the one hull now taking shape in Colchester’s shipyard. He needed investment cash to finish this ship, and soon. Frances Grenville would prove her worth there, he hoped. She had promised to introduce him to some wealthy men at court. He glanced down at his brown breeches and sand-colored doublet of serviceable wool, six or seven years old at least. Christ, he’d have to get some clothes. Couldn’t go looking like a bumpkin among the courtiers in their velvets and satins and starched ruffs. A London tailor—that would be more precious cash out the window.

Strange to think of his stepmother moving in that courtier crowd. For two months she had traveled this road back and forth between the royal court and Woodstock, ostensibly as Queen Mary’s eyes spying on Princess Elizabeth, though her face-to-face reports to the Queen, she said, were invented, toothless nothings. Adam had escorted her on her return to Woodstock this time, then stayed overnight at the Bull Inn and was on his way home now. He had never seen the Princess and didn’t know quite what to make of his stepmother’s new position with her. All very clever, of course, but to what end? What did she hope to accomplish? Her double-dealing with the Queen seemed awfully risky. On the road from London yesterday, he had seen how her old wound troubled her, jostling on horseback, so he had kept their pace slow, but it reminded him of the dangers she was facing and prompted him to ask, “How long can you go on like this? I fear the Queen will see through your ruse.”

She had shifted in the saddle to ease her discomfort. “You’re the one who said we should befriend those who wield power.”

“And you said we don’t befriend tyranny.”

They exchanged wry smiles, acknowledging the odd switch in their positions.

“Trust me, Adam,” she had said, and would speak of it no further.

It wasn’t a matter of trust. He had been her enthusiastic admirer from the day she had married his father. Adam had been nine, and she had accepted his wedding gift of a model sailboat he had carved for her, thanking him with all the seriousness of a queen accepting a naval commander’s tribute. In the years since then, he had watched her resourcefully weather trials that would have left other women weeping on their knees. Now, though, it seemed to him that she had sailed into treacherous waters. But he knew little about royal courts and princesses and politics. She did. He must accept that she knew what she was doing.

Traveling home alone now, he could ride faster and that felt good. He meant to make it back to Colchester in two days, by Thursday. He had arranged to meet Frances on Friday, some saint’s day that she felt was auspicious, to discuss her silly priory. Saint Anselm? Whatever, he hoped that at their meeting he could set a date with her for a few important introductions at court. Get some investment cash flowing to his team of carpenters. If it didn’t flow soon, he wouldn’t be able to launch the ship this summer as he hoped.

He had left Woodstock when the sky had first blushed with dawn, and now, five miles out, the sun was beaming and the morning was warm with a soft breeze as he trotted his horse down the sloping road toward a hamlet of six or seven poor houses. Robins and warblers choired from the hedgerows. Tree buds were unfurling into leaves of a green so fresh you could almost taste it. Spring had burst in all its full-throated glory. Munching his apple, he watched a hawk spiral on a current of warm wind. A kestrel? It banked and dipped as though in jubilation at its freedom, almost as if it were dancing in the air.

He craned his neck, enjoying the hawk’s flight, thinking how its soaring had a lot in common with a ship making good way with wind and waves. He longed to launch by August, with luck by July.
Kestrel
—that might be a good name for her. She’d have to swiftly fly the Narrow Seas to the Antwerp cloth markets to start repaying his debts.

The road sloped down to a narrow wooden bridge across a stream that bubbled past banks frilled with watercress. As he neared it Adam took the last bite of apple, thinking he’d toss the core mid-bridge and hear a satisfying splash, when horsemen, at least a dozen, came galloping straight through the hamlet, hell-bent to cross the bridge before him. He felt a tweak of annoyance since he’d reached it first, but he hauled back on the reins to edge his horse to one side and let them have the bridge. There were a lot more of them.

He counted fourteen as they thundered past him. Soldiers of the Queen, one gripping an upright staff with the Queen’s banner fluttering from it. They were led by a brawny, blond-bearded captain. Adam turned in the saddle to watch them gallop off. They were heading for Woodstock. A shiver touched his scalp. Did their mission have something to do with his stepmother? Had her double-dealing caught up with her?

He tossed the apple core. It tumbled down the riverbank and was snared by weeds as he kicked his horse’s flanks and galloped back the way he’d come.