The Queen's Captive (38 page)

Then he saw pinpricks of light. He followed the trail, the pinpricks strengthening into a brassy shimmer that brought him at last to the center. Frances stood under a yew tree where a lantern hung from a branch. A black-robed priest stood murmuring with her. The lantern light glinted off the jewels she had carefully arranged in her hair. Adam had a fleeting thought of Elizabeth. Sunlight on her hair.

Frances smiled when she saw him.

“Ah,” the priest said. “Shall we begin?”

Adam stood at Frances’s side and the ceremony began. Betrothal. A solemn pledge to marry. Both church and state considered it a formal contract. People considered it almost as binding as marriage itself. Country folk often took it to
be
marriage, sanctioning sexual relations.

“It will have to be our secret for now,” she had said in the stable. “I’ll need some time to bring John around.” At Adam’s silence—his grappling with this desperate bargain—she had pressed the point. “A secret, Adam, you understand? As will be my urgent request to Her Majesty.”

“I understand,” he had said. One word from the Queen and his father would live. It was a lifeline. He told himself that a drowning man does not quibble about the kind of rope he’s thrown.

The priest concluded the ceremony, intoning, “For the servant of God, Adam, and the servant of God, Frances, who are now betrothed to one another, and for their salvation, let us pray to the Lord.” They bowed their heads. Adam’s eyes stayed wide open. “And may an Angel of the Lord go before them all the days of their lives. For you are the One who blesses and sanctifies all things, and to you we give glory, to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever.”

When it was over she kissed him lightly on the mouth. “I’ll leave first. Go home, Adam. And take heart. Things will change, in time. Even John. Then we can marry. I will make you a good wife. I promise.”

He watched her go, leading the priest out. The lantern light died.

23

Homecoming

July 1556

A
hook ripped flesh from her shoulder…razors sawed her ankle…

She awoke with a spasm of terror. “Stop!”

“Honor, my dear! What is it?” A soft voice.

Not his.
She looked around for him, fear clogging her throat. “Where is he?”

“Who?”

Grenville.
Wind whipped something against her cheek.
Where am I?
She tried to swipe at it but could not move her arm. Panic flooded her. “Richard! Where’s Richard?”

“He’s…it’s all right, dear.” A woman’s face, a soothing voice. “He’s fine.”

But where?
“Where’s Adam?”

“He sailed to Amsterdam last week, remember? He’s fine. Don’t worry. You’re home. You’re safe. Everyone’s fine.”

The nightmare splintered. Her sister-in-law was leaning over her, gently squeezing her shoulder. Honor slumped in relief, her mouth too dry to speak. She went to touch Joan’s hand in thanks, but could not lift her right arm. She’d forgotten.

“You fell asleep, dear. It’s the sun.”

Honor swallowed the last bitter trace of fear. They were sitting in the garden in the bright July sunshine, she in an armchair soft with cushions brought from the house, Joan on a bench beside her. “Sleep,” she said, rubbing her forehead. The headache never quite went away. “That’s all I do.” Three weeks at home, and she had spent it almost entirely in bed.

“Just what you need,” Joan said. “Sleep, and plenty of it.” She settled down on the bench, taking up her embroidery hoop again with its needle and yellow thread. “You’re still as weak as a kitten.”

“But it puts so much on you. You’re overseeing everything. Kitchen, bake house, dairy house. Everything.”

“I quite like it. Your cook has quicker wits than mine, and your dairymaids are less prone to romancing the grooms. I might just stay.”

Honor managed a faint smile. She couldn’t begin to express her gratitude for her sister-in-law’s tender nursing since Geoffrey had brought her home from the Tower. Still, she felt sure that Joan, the capable governor of her own large household at Blackheath, must be eager to get back to Geoffrey, who had already returned to their family.

Home. Joan’s words echoed:
You’re safe.
Yet Honor felt a twist of worry as she noticed three men walking back and forth outside the garden gate, each armed with a sword and dagger. Patrolling, obviously. Who had set them to this task? Watching the youngest one, who seemed almost too young to
have
a sword, she realized he was the gardener’s apprentice. Jeremy something. And wasn’t one of the others Peter, a new footman? It made her uneasy. This did not
feel
like home; more like being a prisoner inside her own grounds. She already felt like a prisoner inside her body—every muscle still felt frayed, stripped of strength. The wind, too, made her jumpy, a turbulent wind despite the heat. It tossed the boughs of the pear trees by the garden wall, setting the leaves to rustling as though whispering an urgent message. The wind was heavy with the scent of roses. It was a rose petal that had blown across Honor’s cheek as she had lurched out of the nightmare. It had fallen to her lap, and with her good arm she picked it up. A petal red as blood. She looked across the sand path at the mass of red roses climbing the trellis against the far wall. Nodding near them in the wind were tall yellow lilies and crimson poppies. Grenville’s face suddenly reared up, that hard white rib of the scar above his lip. She winced, closing her eyes.

“Pain?” Joan asked.

She quickly shook her head. “No, I’m fine.” It was true, the worst of the pain was behind her. But there was desolation in her heart, like ice at her core, as she gazed at her garden. In the Tower, stretched on the rack, she had tried to bear the agony by imagining her beloved flowers, but Grenville had almost broken her. Would she ever see roses and irises and lilies again without seeing that face, that bony white scar? Would she ever smell the scent of flowers without reliving the terror and the pain? She hated him for befouling a love.

But that was just a surface hate. Far deeper, colder, flintier, was the hate she bore him for what he had done to Richard, chained for months in that coffin-sized cell. He had been so weak when Adam had brought him home, with gray skin and a wild, tangled beard. And so thin that his clothes hung from his shoulders as though from sticks. He had insisted on riding, refusing the humiliation of being brought in a wagon, but from her bedroom window where she’d had the bed moved, waiting for him to come home, she had seen, when the two of them rode through the gates, that he was barely able to hold himself upright in the saddle.

Again, that twist of worry in her stomach. “Where’s Richard?”

Joan plied her needle, studying her expert stitches. “Oh, you know—at work.”

“But where, exactly?” Since his return she had been haunted by a need to know his whereabouts at all times, to satisfy herself that he was alive, and nearby. That John Grenville had not snatched him again. She was profoundly grateful for whatever had moved the Queen to let him go. The best explanation she and Richard could gather was that their lawyer’s petitions had finally convinced the Queen of the illegality of keeping him a prisoner. But she still imagined Grenville, like a wolf deprived of a kill, lying in wait for his next chance.

“Well, there’s the new housing for the Flemish weavers,” Joan said. “Two of those roofs are still unfinished and the carpenters are at odds with the joiners, so he may be there, sorting things out. Or he may be down at the mill with the master fuller. I hear there’s a broken paddle wheel.”

Honor felt sure Joan was hiding something from her. Absently, she shredded the rose petal, wondering, as always in these past weeks, where Richard went every day. And how did he find the strength? He had been sleeping in another room to let her recover, but he was barely recovered himself, his once sturdy body still weak, moving with a slight stoop, yet while she had kept to her bed all day he had pushed himself to go out, seeing to his workers, leaving early every morning, coming back late. Every day began the same. He came in to see her, bearing a single rose and a look of tense wonder, as though relieved to find her still alive. He would bend to kiss her, then tuck the rose into the already full vase by her bedside, then sit on the edge of the bed and take her good hand in his and ask how she felt, how she had slept, whether there was anything he could do for her, or have the servants fetch for her.

“A new body would be nice,” she had said the other day. “Preferably one twenty years younger. And with fair hair this time.”

“This one has served you well. And me,” he’d said, the glint of a smile in his eye.

Gently, she ran her fingertips over the welts on his wrist gouged by the iron manacle, scabs that stretched in a band as wide as her hand. He was clean shaven, exposing how winter-pale his lower face still was from his prison beard. He wore a black doublet of thick, winter wool, needing its warmth even in the July sunshine. Tears pricked her eyes as she imagined what he had suffered, but she forced them back. She would not let him see how it wrenched her heart. He spoke to her of domestic things, and she was glad to go along—a servant’s wedding, a lame horse, Joan’s menu for dinner. Neither could bear to go deeper.

Every morning ended the same. He would give her a long look in silence, turning very sober, as though a cloud had passed over his face, then push himself to his feet like a veteran soldier hearing the trumpet call to horse. “Must go.” If she asked where, he always muttered, “Business.” He would kiss her again. And then he was gone. Each day she worried that Grenville would be watching and waiting. That Richard would not come back.

“I never see him from one morning to the next,” she said now to Joan, not a complaint so much as a plea.
Tell me he’s safe.

“Well, you know how it is with Richard. Always one task after another.”

Honor knew the truth of this. He had always hated being idle. But in his weakened state, how could his body take the way he was pushing himself? And why would Joan not look her in the eye?

“Why don’t you try it again, dear?” Joan said, changing the subject. She gave a nod to the writing materials on the bench—a quill pen, and paper tucked under an inkpot to keep it from blowing away.

Better than tormenting myself with worry, Honor thought. She positioned the paper, then picked up the pen. She had been practicing writing with her left hand, a frustrating effort. Her right hand worked as well as ever, though stiffly, but her right shoulder was so damaged she could not move the arm, could only lift it with her other hand, as though it belonged to someone else, and awkwardly place the right hand where she wanted it. The doctor’s opinion was that shoulder ligaments were ripped, the damage permanent. She dipped the pen in the inkpot and tried writing a few more words of the letter she had begun to her wine purveyor—
The shipment of burgundy arrived.
She stopped and looked at it. Awful. A scrawl worse than a child’s.

“Keep at it,” Joan coaxed. “It will come, in time.”

Honor continued writing—
and my clerk’s accounts show
—but her clumsy left hand refused to do what she wanted. Disgusted, she tossed the pen on the bench.

Joan had the wisdom to accept temporary defeat. “Oh,” she said, suddenly remembering, “Ned came while you were napping. This was delivered for you.” From the grass at her feet she picked up a burlap bag the size of a mop head and set it on the bench.

“Delivered from whom?”

“Ned didn’t know. And he said the gentleman who delivered it didn’t know either. But he arrived with an escort of three armed men. Must be worth something.”

Honor opened the bag. Inside, a rope of pearls was coiled on top of a purse of crimson leather. She loosened the purse strings, revealing a mass of gold coins.

“Good heavens,” said Joan, “the pearls alone are worth a small fortune! Who can it be from?”

A paper was tucked beside the purse. Honor unfolded it and silently read the short note.

Madam,
For your loyalty, a hundred pearls. For your pain, five hundred crowns of gold. For the love I bear you, a thousand years will not suffice to honor you.
It was unsigned, but she knew that confident handwriting so well. “Princess Elizabeth,” she told Joan. It moved her. A gesture full of meaning, those crowns—one gold coin for every pound that Elizabeth had given her to take to Noailles for Dudley’s venture. A tragic, failed venture. She had been heartbroken to learn that Sir Henry Peckham and several others had been executed. Sir William Courtenay and Lord John Bray had been arrested, but with friends in high places they had been released after paying heavy fines. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton had escaped to France. Honor would be forever grateful that none of them, apparently, had implicated either her or Adam. She gazed at the crowns, thinking of Elizabeth’s gold confiscated by John Grenville, and again the image of him forced itself upon her, twisting the knot in her stomach.

“You did such a brave thing, protecting the Princess,” Joan said warmly. “I’m sure she knows the true cost to you. This reward is a mere token.”

Honor found that she could smile, knowing Elizabeth’s tightness with money. “Oh, no. For her, this is most generous.”

“All I can say is, thank heaven the Queen saw fit to order your release.”