The Queen's Captive (20 page)

She felt Richard’s hand grope hers. She turned to him, and the anguish on his face buried her in a panic so crushing that she had to look away, toward the altar. The crucifix gleamed, the man impaled there twisting in agony. Hot bile rose in her throat. She felt she would be sick.

Voices hummed like hungry insects buzzing the news across the congregation. More people turned, and the voices grew to a drone of horrified excitement that rushed all the way up to the pulpit. The priest stopped his sermon. He looked in consternation across the backs of heads.

Honor and Richard shared a glance of agonized agreement.
We must go to him.
Still clutching each other’s hands they started to push through the bodies. They had almost reached the door when they heard a woman shriek, “No!”

Honor staggered on the spot and glanced back. Frances Grenville was running toward them.

“Stop!” she screamed.

They shared another look—what did the woman mean by this affront?—and then again, in tortured agreement, they turned and made for the door.

Frances caught Honor by the arm and jerked her to a halt. “Tell me it’s not true!”

Honor stared at her in shock, the woman’s hand painfully squeezing her arm. Richard said, his voice hoarse, “Madam, our son is…please, let my wife go.” He pried Frances’s hand off Honor and again they turned to leave.

But she lurched around them and cut them off, a wild look in her eyes as she spread her arms wide to corral them. “Let me come with you! I must see him…alive or dead…I must—”

“Take pity, madam,” Honor said, her mind thrashing in confusion at the woman’s behavior, her heart bleeding. “Leave us be to—”

“I beg you!” Frances cried. She fell to her knees. Honor and Richard stepped back, recoiling. Frances clutched Honor’s skirt and cried, “Take me with you! We’ll use our horses, they are fresh. I
must
be with him!”

They stared, dumbfounded. The woman was mad.

“Frances!” John Grenville pushed through to his sister. “What are you doing? Get up. Let these people go.” He looked at Richard. “They are grieving.”

Honor saw the gleam in Grenville’s eyes, a sadistic glint of satisfaction at Richard’s suffering and hers. “My condolences, sir. My sister and I know what it is to grieve for a loved one.” He was enjoying their pain.

Richard groped for Honor’s hand and pulled her away from the Grenvilles. As they stumbled out the door she could hear Frances wailing.

Soldiers in half-armor were posted in the torch-lit darkness around Hatfield House. Sir William St. Loe, captain of the Princess’s guard, waited on horseback to meet Honor and Richard as their horses plodded through the gate at three in the morning. St. Loe was a hardened soldier who had done distinguished service in Ireland under young King Edward, but as he escorted them in silence to the house he looked grim-faced with shame at the tragedy that had occurred on his watch. Honor looked up at the red brick walls that loomed dark in the moonless night, the windows black voids except for a few where candles flickered. Something dying screamed from the forest. Then a howl from the victor. A wolf?

“My deepest sympathy, sir, madam,” St. Loe said, his ramrod posture at odds with the quiver of emotion in his voice. “I honor Master Adam Thornleigh.”

Neither of them could muster the voice to thank him for this touch of kindness.

A soldier with a torch lighted their way up the stone steps. Had the forbidding stone portico always been at this entrance? Honor could not recall. The exhausting, bone-jarring ride had left her mind too numb to think clearly. But the merciless memories were all too clear. Adam at nine, sailing his first little boat, a skiff he had slapped together from leftover lumber at Richard’s fulling ponds, the sail a linen sheet he’d cajoled from the housekeeper. Adam at thirteen, buying a gingerbread doll for baby Isabel at the fair-ground in Brussels. Adam, just last year, striding into their Antwerp house with a grin, thinner and with a new beard, back from his voyage to Russia.

They reached the top step. She hesitated. She was not sure she could find the strength to go in and see his body. She glanced at Richard. His face, gaunt in the torchlight, broke her heart.

Preparing to face the ordeal, they again clasped hands. His hand was so cold!

The soldier knocked. The door opened and candlelight flooded them. Two guards inside stepped back to make way as Elizabeth hurried to greet Honor. “Mistress Thornleigh,” she said, her voice low with feeling.

Honor felt dread cram up in her throat. She could not swallow. “My lady—” She licked her dry lips. “This is my husband, Richard.”

He bowed, stiff with his own dread. “Your Grace.”

Elizabeth reached out both hands, offering one to each of them, a gesture of such sweet sympathy that Honor had to fight not to weep. She and Richard stood rock still, too numb to respond.

“I am so, so sorry,” Elizabeth murmured. “How the villain got past my guards, I know not. He climbed to the dovecote roof. Your son was the only one who saw him.”

They listened, eager for scraps about Adam even as the details savaged them.

“He saved my life, of that I have no doubt,” Elizabeth said. “I am in your debt, and ever will be.”

Richard managed to ask, “May we see him?”

Elizabeth frowned. “Are you sure? Now?”

Oh God,
Honor thought,
is he so mutilated?

“Now,” Richard said, a croak. “Please.”

“Yes, of course. Come. I’ll take you myself.”

She led them. A staircase. A long gallery gloomy with flickering rushlights in wall sconces. A harsh smell of lye soap. At the end of the gallery, a closed door. Elizabeth opened it and stepped inside. The room was stuffy, and dark but for a candle on the windowsill, its lonely flame standing as still as death. Richard stopped in the doorway. Honor saw a bed. On the bed, a body. She heard a breath dragged from Richard, a sound shuddering with pain. His face was white. She slid her arm around his waist for support. “My love,” she whispered.

They shuffled forward in the unwilling steps of a funeral march. They reached the bed. Adam lay stretched out, eyes closed, lips blanched. A blanket covered him from his toes to his neck.

Richard shocked Honor—he reached for the cover and flung it off his son. She understood, though. He needed to see. Adam lay shirtless in his breeches, a linen bandage wound around his chest. A massive bruise spread out from under the bandage. A small, bright spot of blood had wept through the cloth. Honor stared at the blood. It looked still wet. Fresh. How…?

Richard suddenly turned to her as though unable to bear the sight. “Honor,” he whispered, “I think I’m going mad. I can see him…breathe.”

Elizabeth said, apologizing, “I assure you, this dressing will be changed. I allowed the doctor to go and get some sleep, but he’ll be back at dawn.”

They both stared at her.
Doctor?

“He’s alive!” Richard blurted.

Honor gasped so hard it pinched her throat.

Elizabeth said, perplexed, “You didn’t know?”

“We were told—” Honor felt Richard grab her hand with such fierceness it was pain. They looked at each other, and her tears broke forth, a dam bursting. She leaned against him and wept in sheer joy. He threw his arm around her shoulders and squeezed so tightly she knew it was to keep himself from weeping, too.

Elizabeth regarded them with a sad smile. She said gently, as though to prepare them, “Yes, good people, he is alive. But for how long, we know not.”

Honor’s wild joy died. But cautious hope took its place. Richard was already studying Adam’s face for hopeful signs. Honor sat on the bed’s edge and touched the back of her hand to Adam’s forehead. He was burning up.

Elizabeth, looking on, said, “The doctors fear his fever has lasted too long.”

“He’s young. He’s strong,” said Richard.

“I’ve had three doctors examine him, sir. They all agree. They also warn of the danger of infection.”

They spoke in hushed tones, as though to keep Adam from hearing. If only he could, Honor thought.
Don’t leave us, Adam. Please.
“We are so grateful, my lady,” she said, “for the care you have given him, calling in your doctors.”

She reached for the basin of water on the nightstand, dipped a fresh linen cloth into the water and squeezed it, then gently set the cool cloth on Adam’s brow. Richard took a stopper the doctor had left beside a pitcher of water and filled it, then came to the other side of the bed, sat on the edge and dripped water drops onto Adam’s parched lips.

Elizabeth said, her voice tinged with wondering admiration, “I doubt not that kind parents will do him more good than ever doctors could.”

Honor glanced up at her. Elizabeth’s remarkable parents had stamped her life, but she had never really known them. Her mother had been executed when Elizabeth was three. She had rarely seen her father, the King.

“Doctor Rufus comes back at dawn. Until then I will leave your son in your care,” Elizabeth said. “I have had the room beside him prepared for you.” It showed a subtlety of understanding that Honor blessed her for. “Do not hesitate to call on the servants for anything you need.” She looked down at Adam and her voice, still low, rang with feeling. “God keep Master Adam with us.”

They sat up all that night. Adam never moved.

The next day the doctors came, one after another, shook their heads, then left. Elizabeth looked in every hour. Honor and Richard did not leave the room all day. They stoked the fire in the grate, opened the window a crack, closed the window, called for fresh water, fresh linen cloths, fresh pillows. The maids brought them meals. They took a few bites, then sat again at the bedside, dabbing Adam’s brow, coaxing him in low tones, holding his hand, reading to him from Elizabeth’s books. Aesop’s fables. Marcus Aurelius.

All day, he never moved.

When dusk came they took turns at naps in the chair by the fire, the chair turned to face the bed so they could see Adam.

All evening, he never moved.

A hand jostled Honor. She jerked awake. Bleary, blinking at the cold light of dawn, she saw Richard standing over her. His face was haggard. Tears glinted in his eye.

She dragged her voice from the pit of her despair. “He’s gone.”

He shook his head. And smiled. “No, my love. He’s awake.”

12

Allies and Enemies

October 1555

H
atfield, the house in which Elizabeth had grown up and which she now, once again, called home, was not just a fine country estate, it was also a working farm. Cattle and sheep grazed its pastures, yielding beef and mutton for the communal tables of Hatfield’s great hall and also for market. The life of the manor house and its scores of workers moved in rhythm with the seasons. Spring was for plowing, seeding, shearing, and felling timber. Summer, for cutting hay, harvesting the gardens and orchards, collecting honey. Autumn, which had settled on the woods around Hatfield like a tapestry of gold and orange and red, was the busiest season. In preparation for winter, the yeomen chopped logs for firewood and the kitchen staff laid up victuals, while the gardeners covered the strawberry beds and the sweeps scoured the chimneys.

Despite their dawn-to-dusk tasks, the servants had been instructed to move quietly and keep their voices low as they cleaned the bedchambers, for the Princess wanted no one disturbing the man lying in the chamber next to hers, the hero who had saved her life. During the first days, when everyone was sure he would die, the maids had whispered in tones of grief as they worked. Then, when his fever broke, the chamberlain announced it to the household at dinner in the great hall and the news brought a cheer. After more days of rest, with the chambermaids cosseting him and the doctors bleeding him daily, he was proclaimed out of danger.

Adam could have done without the bleeding. But he was very glad to be alive.

“Sit, do sit, sir,” Doctor Rufus said, indicating a stool before the fire. “That’s enough exertion for this morning. You’re still weak as a newborn pup.” A portly, balding man, he was laying out his wares on a table beside the stool—scissors, a basin of warm water, a sponge, a jar of herbal ointment, fresh linen bandage strips.

Adam eased himself down on the seat. “Feels good to be up, though,” he said. Awaiting the doctor’s ministrations, he looked across the room at the window. Though he sat bare-chested, the fire was warm, but outside cold-looking drizzle slid down the leaded windowpanes, and the sky was the color of a bruise.

He had gotten quite familiar with his own huge bruise that spread out from under the bandage binding his chest. He looked down at it, a nasty greenish black with striations of angry red. The one on his back was even worse, the doctor had told him. He’d also gotten used to the dull pain that constantly grumbled in his chest, but it was definitely lessening with each passing day. He counted himself very lucky.

He heard footsteps in the hallway, and women’s voices. Elizabeth? She was early. Usually she came after the household’s noonday dinner, and again last thing before she went to bed, but at this hour the hall could barely have finished breakfast. Then he realized: no hunting or hawking in this wet weather. He blessed the rain gods.

The door opened and in she came, followed by two maids. Adam quickly got to his feet to grab his shirt and greet her properly, but Elizabeth, her eyes darting over his bare chest, flicked her hand, a command to sit. He did, for the doctor was right, he was still weak. Jumping up like that left him a little light-headed. The maids bustled around them, collecting his empty breakfast dishes.