The Queen's Captive (16 page)

She was about to go and ask Frances where the Queen was, when she caught the unmistakable smell of an unwashed body. Sweat.

She heard a groan. She looked past the candles’ glare, and her breath snagged in her throat. Queen Mary sat on the floor in a linen shift, barefoot, her hair loose and tangled, her face as white and damp as raw pastry. She looked up at Honor, pain thrashing in her eyes.
She’s in labor,
Honor thought.

“Your Grace, is the baby coming? I’ll call for your doctor. Try to—”

Mary heaved another groan and her head dropped to her knees. Honor felt a stab of shock—her
knees?
The Queen had pulled her knees up tightly against her chest and wrapped her arms tightly around them. No woman nine months pregnant could possibly sit in such a posture. “Your Majesty…” She stopped, not knowing what to say, what to ask.

A horrifying thought struck. The baby had been born, just now. Only…where was it? There was no crying. No blood. Had the infant died? Was the Queen in shock?

“Mistress Grenville,” she called, hurrying back to her. “What has happened?”

Frances looked up from her sewing, her face as hard as a closed door. “Happened?”

“The baby…haven’t you seen?” She stopped. Frances seemed to have no inkling of how impossible the Queen’s posture was. Or was she, too, in shock?

“I’ll fetch the doctor,” Honor said, starting for the door.

“Don’t. He was just here, not fifteen minutes ago.”

“What? What did he say?”

“That we must be patient. Babies take their time.”

Honor could only gape at her.
There is no baby!

“Her Majesty gets these spells,” Frances said, a smug look on her face. “They always pass. God works in wondrous ways.” Her tone hardened. “Now, go back to your mistress.”

This was madness. Honor pulled open the door and the daylight hit her, making her squint. Some of the ladies looked at her, but most kept on playing cards, strolling, gossiping. She opened her mouth to speak but could find no words. What was she to say? Who would believe her? She scarcely believed what she had witnessed with her own eyes and ears.

She hurried from the Queen’s apartments.
No baby
—that was the only clear fact. Should she tell Elizabeth? Honor had left her studying Cicero. But the girl, high-strung at the best of times, had been through so much with her recent feverish hopes of freedom dashed, the last thing she needed was more alarm and uncertainty. And this could not be more bizarre. The Queen, the doctor, the whole palace seemed to be in the throes of a delusion. First, Honor had to sort out what it portended for Elizabeth. She needed to talk to someone with a calm and rational head. Someone in the real world.

Sir William Cecil lived in Wimbledon, a few miles southwest of London. Honor rode, and with the clear, warm weather and dry roads she was there by six, the supper hour. Cecil’s house, the Old Rectory, stood on the northern slope of a hill, the view dominated by the spire of mighty St. Paul’s across the Thames on the northeast horizon. The house was not luxurious, but Cecil’s family lived comfortably: he and his wife and son, along with his sister, his wife’s sister, and his ward, plus the two dozen or so servants who saw to the bake house, brew house, kitchen, and stable.

Sir William’s wife, the able administrator of this lively household, welcomed Honor and led her to the parlor. “Do stay to supper, Honor,” she said. “It’s been ages since we’ve seen you, and Thomas Randall has just come back from Antwerp. He’s got plenty of news of our mutual friends there. Do stay.”

“I wish I could, Mildred, but it’s impossible today.”

Sir William rose from a chair beside his desk. “Honor,” he said, “what news?”

She took a breath. “I hardly know where to begin.”

He looked mildly startled. He glanced at his wife, and she, taking the cue, said, “Yes, yes, I’m going. Honor, do take some of our honey back with you when you leave.”

“Thank you, Mildred, I shall.”

She left them, closing the door. Honor now saw another man in the room. He was far more elegantly dressed than Sir William, with much jewelry—rings and a chain of gold—and a look of sharp intelligence.

Cecil gestured to him. “May I introduce—”

“Monsieur de Noailles,” she said.
“Je vous ai vu au palais.”
I have seen you at court.

The French ambassador bowed, and when Sir William told him Honor’s name his face lit up. “The mother of
Isabel
Thornleigh?”

“The same, sir,” she said with a swell of pride. Isabel, the rebel. Honor knew that Noailles had been complicit in the Wyatt uprising.

He made another bow, this time as deep and respectful as if she were a duchess. “A young woman of courage. How I relied on her.”

“Come, Honor, what’s happened?” Sir William said. “Something. I can see it in your face.”

She was wondering if she could speak freely in front of Noailles. But Sir William clearly considered him a friend, and Noailles already knew how deeply her family had been involved in Wyatt’s failed rebellion. As he had been himself, secretly. His employer, the king of France, was a notorious enemy of Prince Philip’s father, Emperor Charles. The two countries had been warring for decades over pieces of the Italian peninsula. The emperor was lord of half of Europe, and France was his only real adversary, so each was always angling for England’s allegiance. Queen Mary’s marriage to Philip had incensed the French. Noailles would naturally be a supporter of Elizabeth.

“What would happen to Princess Elizabeth if the Queen delivered no child at all?” she began.

“Pardon?” Sir William asked with a bewildered frown.

She told them the condition in which she had found the Queen. And how no one at the palace seemed to notice. Or at least pretended not to.

“
Mon dieu,
then it’s true,” Noailles said, his eyes wide. “I didn’t believe it when she told me.”

“Told you?” Honor asked. “Who?”

“I have a spy among the Queen’s women, clever at worming out information. The midwife secretly admitted this very truth to my informant—that there is no baby.”

Sir William let out a puff of astonishment. “But what about…” He smoothed his hands over his belly as if it were swollen with child.

“Imagined, all imagined,” Noailles said. “A fantasy.”

“Perhaps a malady,” Honor said. She had heard of women suffering bloated lumps in the womb. Sometimes they were fatal. “Poor lady. Not life growing in her, but disease.”

“But what about the doctors?” Sir William said with obvious skepticism. “How could they possibly get this wrong?”

Noailles shrugged. “Too ignorant to know the difference.”

Honor said, “More likely too afraid to tell the Queen. The same with her women.”

Sir William shook his head, unable to accept it. “But, the Queen herself. How can
she
not know?”

Noailles answered with some relish, the satisfaction of an insider. “First, I understand there are more symptoms than just her swollen abdomen. The state of the breasts, for example, tender and somewhat enlarged. And her appetite, diminished and queasy. Second, I am told that she has suffered for years, since her adolescence, with only intermittent monthly bleeding. Still,
this
—I did not actually believe it until now.” He summed up with some amazement, “The Queen is either an outright liar or a pathetic fool.”

“Or,” Honor said with a twinge of pity, “so hopelessly obsessed with proving herself a good wife and queen, she has truly deluded herself.” She remembered Mary’s mother, Queen Catherine, and her desperate twenty-year quest for a son. The tearful miscarriages, the tragic death of an infant boy, the dismaying approach of menopause. And, through it all, her agonizing sense of failure to her husband. A husband lusting after nubile Anne Boleyn.

“So, no baby,” Cecil said, finally accepting it, the bureaucrat getting down to business. “What does that mean for us? For the Princess?”

Noailles threw up his hands. “Back to where we were. Heir apparent, despised by the Queen. I lie awake thinking
how
despised. Ever since Wyatt’s uprising, Renard has been urging the Queen to execute the Princess, and it is clear how much she wants to. And then, well, the Queen herself…” He seemed now to be thinking aloud, mulling the situation. “If this is a disease, as you suggest, Mistress Thornleigh, perhaps the Queen will die of it.”

Honor guessed that his thoughts were bending to the political landscape if both Mary and Elizabeth were dead. Next in line for the throne was Mary Stuart, the late King Henry’s thirteen-year-old grandniece. Born in Scotland, and called queen there since her infancy, she had been betrothed to the king of France’s son when she was a child of six, and had lived in the splendor of the French court ever since.

“The present Queen is our concern, sir,” Honor said firmly. “Though ill, she is very much alive. Frances Grenville told me she gets spells of pain but they always pass. And she has much to live for. A kingdom. And future pregnancies.”

“But, good Lord, how will she manage things when the truth is known?” Sir William said. “She cannot keep up this deception for much longer. And when the truth becomes public, just imagine. She’ll be an object of ridicule. To her people—to all of Europe.”

“Exactly,” Honor said. “Monsieur de Noailles thinks things will go back to where they were, but I cannot agree. Nothing will be the same. No woman can go through what the Queen is enduring—and
will
endure, publicly—and remain unchanged. It will devastate her. And a woman in despair, a humiliated and cornered queen—”

“Could be a dangerous creature,” said Sir William.

“This queen is already unstable,” she added. “Besotted with her husband and fanatical about her mission for God.” As these tumultuous thoughts distilled into one, she felt a thump of fear. “It could drive her mad.”

Sir William looked as though he was thinking precisely what she was, and dreading it. Who would Mary lash out at in the full fury of her despair? Elizabeth.

She rode as hard as she could, but her mare was old and her gunshot wound plagued her and she did not reach the palace until long after dark. When she hurried into the Princess’s bedchamber, panting, Elizabeth was gone. A young maid, no more than fourteen, was weeping in the gloom. Candlelight shadows writhed over her face. Just minutes ago, she said, the soldiers had come for her mistress.

It’s happened.
“Where are they taking her?”

The girl sobbed. Honor shook her by the shoulders.
“Where?”

“I know not!” she wailed. “They just…barged in and…the last thing she said was, ‘Pray for me, Margery.’”

Honor dashed to the window. The room overlooked the rear garden and in the moonlight she could see the troop of the Queen’s guards, eight of them, marching down the cinder path that bisected the garden, two holding torches to light their way. Elizabeth walked in the middle unsteadily, like someone condemned.

Honor left the sobbing maid and ran out.

She caught up with the troop as they marched, their boots crunching the gravel, their torch flames twisting in the wind. “Wait!” she cried. “I beg you, wait!”

Elizabeth turned, her face as white as the moonlight.

Honor caught up with the captain. “I must attend Her Grace,” she said, breathless from running, her wound afire. She showed him her badge. “It is her right!”

The captain stopped the troop. Conceding, though reluctantly, he jerked his head, motioning her to join Elizabeth. Honor flung out her arms to embrace Elizabeth, but the captain thrust his sword between them. “You will not touch her.”

They started to march again, the two women side by side. Honor would stay with her as long as she could—all the way to the end. But where were they taking her? Past the end of the garden lay the river, the wharf, boats. Downstream, past the night-dark fields and villages, lay London. In London, the Tower.

“I should have listened to you…my letter,” Elizabeth whispered, her voice as hollow as Honor’s hope. She looked like a terrified child bewildered by an inexplicable punishment. “Will she kill me…for a letter?”

They reached the end of the garden and the guards turned. Not to the river then, Honor realized. To a lockup somewhere on the grounds? Or—a far worse horror—a secret palace scaffold?
Summary execution.

Elizabeth seemed to guess at that horror, too, and gasped. Her footsteps became erratic, her breaths shallow. Her eyelids fluttered as though she might faint. Honor’s arm circled her waist to steady her, defying the captain. “Have pity, sir, and stop,” she said. “My lady is ill!”

He glared over his shoulder at her and did not stop. But neither did he force her to let go of Elizabeth. They were turning again, taking a path that led back to the palace, to the east wing. Straight ahead lay a flight of stairs. Honor and Elizabeth exchanged a wondering glance. These were the private outer stairs to the royal apartments. The forward guards started up the steps. Honor and Elizabeth followed, the rear guard at their heels.

The antechamber was deserted and lay in gloom, a few low candles guttering. No duchesses now, no ladies-in-waiting, not even a maid to refresh the candles. The room’s shadows seemed to shrink in fear as the guards stomped through. They halted before the Queen’s bedchamber door. The captain knocked.

“Come.” The Queen’s voice. Strong and low, in command.