The Queen's Captive (26 page)

“Leaving.” She abandoned the broken casket and began scooping up coins in handfuls despite her cumbersome bandages, and dumping the money straight into the trunk. “We have to leave.”

“Leave? What’s wrong? Has something happened at home?”

“Can’t go home, either. They’ll come for us.” Coins had rolled under the bed and she crouched lower, reaching out blindly to grope for them. She and Richard would need every ounce of gold now.

She heard his boots come closer, heard the worry in his voice as he asked, “Honor, what’s happened?”

“You cannot go back to Parliament.”

“What? Of course I’m going back. The Exiles Bill comes up for debate first thing in the morning.” She was still grubbing under the bed, desperate to reach the coins. “Forget those and look at me, would you?” he said. “You know what’s at stake. If we don’t defeat this bill we could lose everything we own.”

She turned on him. “If we stay we’ll lose our lives!”

She struggled to her feet and started toward the other trunk, but he grabbed her arm to stop her. “What in God’s name has happened?”

She looked up at his face and felt a shot of strength from his firm grip. Enough strength to pull herself together and tell him everything. How the Queen had turned against her in a rage, had cast doubt on Adam’s loyalty for saving Elizabeth, had questioned Richard’s loyalty for inciting the Commons, livid that she had ever pardoned him. She told him how John Grenville had been about to march her away with the palace guard. “And if she had agreed, I would not be here to tell you.”

“Good God.” He took her in his arms and held her close. “What hell for you.”

She closed her eyes, her cheek against his chest, and took comfort in the smell of him, that familiar mix of laundered linen, sweat, and horse.

“How did you stop her?” he asked.

“I didn’t. Frances Grenville did.”

He said baffled, “What?”

She pulled away to look at him, still not quite believing it herself. One moment Grenville had been about to march her off to some cell for questioning, and the next moment Frances was whispering to the Queen, and then the Queen told Grenville to let her go. “I think, maybe, it’s because of Adam.”

That seemed to stun him even more. “Is she so besotted with him?”

“Enough to want to save his good name, I think. And the Queen has such affection for her she relented.” It was the only explanation that made sense. There was a bang out on the street and she flinched. Just a wagon, she told herself, but it shook her back to the crisis. “Richard, the Queen’s last words were ‘Rein in your husband.’ She means it. You cannot go back to the Commons.”

He was looking across the room, his mind moving on. He said grimly, “This changes the battlefield.”

“Exactly. We have to get away as soon as possible. Back to Antwerp. For good. Come, help me pack.”

She started to turn, but again he took her arm to stop her. He looked at her for a long moment.

“Let me go. There’s so much to arrange before—”

“Honor, stop. We’re not going back. Now that we’re under suspicion, there’s no way to go but forward. We have to stay and fight.”

“Stay and…?” She did not want to say
fight.
The word felt sharp in her mouth, like a nettle. From the corner of her eye she saw snow fall past the window, jerking in the gusts as though in pain. Downstairs, someone was laughing. “Don’t you understand? We have to save ourselves.”

“I’ve given my word. There are good men counting on me. We need every single vote to defeat this bill, you know we do, because—”

“Damn the bill. Let
them
defeat it. It’s
you
the Queen is watching.”

“Because if we don’t,” he said pointedly, “if we let her have her way, we’ll be handing her a weapon to ruin us. I won’t let her steal everything we’ve built. We have to take a stand.”

She didn’t want to hear this. She turned to the bed and snatched things—a linen shirt of his, a silk shift of hers—and balled them up and threw them in the trunk.

“You know it’s true,” he said. “You knew it when you warned the Princess back at Hatfield. You told her she may have to fight.”

“I was wrong!” She grabbed an armful of clothes and dumped the things into the trunk. “I was wrong about everything. I told Adam to stay with Elizabeth and it almost got him killed. I told you to take the seat in Parliament and it could get
you
killed.”

“What’s happened is not your fault.”

She slammed down the trunk lid. “No, the fault is all the Queen’s. And the
power
is all hers, too.” She went to the trunk across the room and picked up books stacked on the floor and threw them in.

He came to her. “People are counting on me, Honor. I have a job to do here.” He added gently, “And so do you. The Princess needs you. Cecil knew that when he asked you to advise her. Elizabeth is in as much danger as we are. More. You cannot desert her now.”

She looked at him, trying not to tremble, not show how deeply his words cut her. She shook her head, hardly able to find words. “I’ve had enough of danger, Richard. Enough of terror. George was…” She fought the quaver in her voice. “I cannot fight them anymore. I cannot bear another day of this.”

He seemed to take her weak tone as a surrender, and started to pull her into his arms. “I’ll do the fighting.”

“I don’t need pity!” she cried, pushing him away. “I need you to see sense and come away with me!”

He said very soberly, “I can’t do that. I will not slink back to Antwerp and forfeit everything we own. Honor, we have a good chance of winning this fight in Parliament if we—”

“
That’s
what you want. The thrill of Parliament. And for that you would bring down the Queen’s wrath on us.”

“Thrill? I’m scared to death.”

“Then come away!”

“No. I will not let her run us off again. We ran last year, left everything behind and ran like dogs. And it was the worst year of my life. Looking bankruptcy in the face. Watching Adam work as a common seaman because I couldn’t employ him. Watching Isabel sail off to God knows what hardship in the New World because I had nothing to give her and Carlos. Watching you sell your jewels—”

“I don’t need jewels. And we have
some
money. We have the house in Antwerp, too.”

“And how long before we’d have to sell it to feed ourselves? I am not a young man. I don’t have the luxury of time to start earning a living from scratch.”

“Richard, I would take in washing before I’ll stay another day here.”

“You’re talking nonsense. And you’re not listening to me. Nothing will make me run away again.”

“Nothing can make me stay. I’m going to get away from this madhouse country, and on the very next ship that sails. I hope that ship will be the
Elizabeth
with Adam captaining her, because I need to get him to safety, too. And if you have any sense you’ll come with us.”

His face darkened. “Don’t rope Adam into running. Don’t force him to take you there.”

“Once he hears what’s happened he’ll
want
to go. He has more sense than you.”

“Don’t do that to him. He needs to build a life here.”

“You can’t stop him.”

“I think I can.”

“You would order him?”

“If you make him choose, yes. Don’t, Honor.”

They stared at each other, she breathing hard, he rock still. Suddenly, he turned and strode to the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To work.
Someone’s
got to keep their word.”

“If you go out that door, consider it locked.”

He walked out, slamming it behind him.

16

The Jaws of Victory

December 1555

T
he temperature had plunged overnight. As the House of Commons convened to debate the Exiles Bill, wind blew in icy gusts that blasted the precincts of Westminster along its water-front expanse. Going up the steps into Westminster Hall, Richard rubbed his hands to warm them after the frigid boat trip from the city.

He had spent a sleepless night at the house of his London agent. The awful quarrel with Honor had unnerved him. It wasn’t like her to buckle under pressure. He understood her fears, of course. Watching George’s terrible death. Facing down the Queen’s wrath. And she must be in pain with those burned hands. But she knew that she had bound herself to Princess Elizabeth’s cause. And the damned thing was, she was right about that cause. As long as Queen Mary ruled, they would be forever hiding, dissembling, forever fearful of her power to ruin them, to even take their lives. And John Grenville, now so close to the Queen—he would do his all to hasten that destruction, Richard was sure. Now, as never before, they had to take a stand. Honor had to see that, he felt. Now that she had slept on it, she would see it.

In any case, he couldn’t stew about it now. He had to stay focused on today’s fight. So as he walked into Westminster Hall he welcomed the din of legal business that engulfed him. The sheer size of the place always awed him. It was one of the largest medieval halls in Europe, and from the honeycomb of shop stalls that lined its length, hundreds of haggling voices echoed up to its massive hammer-beam roof. The place teemed with members of Parliament, lawyers and their clients, judges, priests, clerks, scriveners, pages, footmen, food vendors, ale sellers, and soldier-guards of the sergeant-at-arms. Richard made his way past stalls that spiced the air with the smell of their wares, the tang of meat pies and saffron buns alongside the mustiness of books, paper, and parchments. Outside, faint cries of “Oars! Eastward ho!” came from the busy wharf where gentlemen, lords, and servants shouted for wherries to take them back to the city.

Richard bought the paper and ink he needed, jammed them in his satchel, and left the Hall to make his way toward the House of Commons, squeezing past a rookery of black-robed lawyers bickering outside the Court of King’s Bench, while inside a lawyer thundered his case in Latin. To the east and south of the Hall lay a warren of offices, library, chapel, kitchens. These had once been the domestic apartments of the monarch’s household, for the centuries-old Palace of Westminster had been a royal residence for generations of kings until Henry VIII moved his main residence to Whitehall Palace, leaving Westminster solely as the hub of government. All this Richard had learned from his mentor here, Sir William Cecil. The place now housed the Court of King’s Bench and the Court of Common Pleas, the Treasury, and the Chancery, the administrative branch of the Crown, as well as Parliament when in session, both the House of Lords and House of Commons. Westminster was such a crowded place that for over two centuries the Commons had met in whatever room was available. But five years before Queen Mary took the throne, they had been granted a home in the chapel originally used by the monarch’s family. St. Stephen’s Chapel became the permanent House of Commons.

Richard pushed through the throng of hangers-on outside the House, showed his badge to the guards at the door, and walked in. St. Stephen’s Chapel was not large—Adam’s new ship was bigger—but it was magnificent. Its slender stone piers and vaulted ceiling seemed to float above the splendid stained glass windows. But Richard imagined that the ghosts of past kings would be shocked by what the place had become. Built as a spiritual oasis of peace, it was now as packed as a bawling market square and as raucous as a boys’ dormitory. Three hundred and nineteen MPs milled among the sloping choir stalls on either side, and on the stone floor between them. The word Parliament came from the French word
parler,
to talk, but right now there was a great deal of shouting. Everyone was on edge after the seemingly endless days of debate.

Richard especially. He felt on tenterhooks as he strode across the chapel floor. So much depended on this vote. He spotted Cecil and climbed the steps to the choir benches, elbowing past MPs standing in ragged groups. Cecil, who stood listening to the member from Buxton rant at him, had cocked his head in irritation, his customary calm civility obviously pushed to the brink. He saw Richard coming and made his way toward him. They met in the aisle.

“I count it at a hundred and forty-three for us,” Richard said, raising his voice above the ruckus. “We’re so close.”

Cecil nodded, cautious hope apparent on his weary face. “They’ll have to call the vote today.”

Richard looked around. “Or face a mutiny.”

Cecil jutted his chin toward the elderly MP from Coventry, shuffling to his seat in the lower choir stalls. “Did you talk to old Perkins? How did that go?”

“Sweet-talked him for an hour last night,” Richard said. “Even promised him ten ells of Florentine silk for his daughter’s wedding. No good. He won’t budge.”

“Old fool.”

“But a dozen others are leaning our way.” Richard and Cecil and their seven friends from the tavern had been at it all night—and the three days and nights before that—visiting undecided colleagues at their homes, stopping them on the street, in shops, in taverns, laying out the horrors that awaited their mutual friends among the exiles if the bill passed, and outlining the potential dangers to them personally, namely the confiscation of their estates and impoverishment of their families. Richard had been heartened by the response—the bill incensed most of them—and he felt that a small majority were ready to kill it. But he was nervous after losing the ecclesiastical bill. These fair-weather friends could waver if they had much time to think about the Queen’s persuasions. Hard for principles to compete with a post that brought bags of money. What was essential now was the timing.