The Queen's Captive (51 page)

“Not at all, Sir Harry, I love a play,” she assured her host. “But weightier matters require my attention.”

Sir Harry Whitcombe eyed the group, including Honor and her dishevelled state. She knew him only by reputation, but knew where his sympathies lay. The other two men stood in edgy silence. None could mask their tension.

Elizabeth’s eyes flicked between the three men. “All friends, good sirs?”

Parry and St. Loe looked grim. Honor entreated Whitcombe with her eyes. He must have caught something he needed from that, for he looked back at Elizabeth and said quietly, “All friends in a righteous cause, my lady. These gentlemen are loath to name me, but I am proud to name myself.” He bowed again. “Your champion.”

Elizabeth’s smile showed her excitement. But a careful smile. A controlled excitement.

Suddenly, everyone was talking. Not with anxiety anymore, but with determined calmness, keeping their voices low, though not a soul was near. Elizabeth led the exchange, asking about the plans, the extent of the preparations, the leading organizers. The three men answered succinctly and confidently, and with their own careful excitement now that she was one of them.

Honor waited, ignored by the others as they discussed the details of treason. She waited, feeling jumpy for action. Action, not more words! She thought of Adam charging, felled by a sword to his throat. Thought of Richard. His tongue cut out. His skin peeled off in strips.

“It’s
time,
my lady!” she blurted. “The country wants you. They are only waiting. Give the signal and lead your people.” She gripped Elizabeth’s arm. “Be queen, Elizabeth! Stop Grenville. Save Adam. Save Richard!”

The men stared at her, startled by her outburst. Elizabeth told them, “Please excuse Mistress Thornleigh. Her family has suffered a tragedy. Sir Harry, will you escort her inside and see that she is looked after?”

“No,” Honor protested, “I’m fine.”

“Take the lady in, sir,” Elizabeth insisted with a compassionate, sad glance at her, “and treat her as gently as you would treat me. She is my well-beloved friend.”

Whitcombe’s servants settled Honor in an elegant bedchamber. They brought her a silver basin of warm water, and perfumed soap and embroidered towels. They brought clean clothes, a gown of dove gray satin frothed with white lace. They brought roasted quail and wine and candied fruits. Honor carelessly splashed water on her dirty face, and crammed some food in her mouth, too keyed up to taste it, hungry only for Elizabeth to give the order to march.

She lay down on the cool, clean sheets, her muscles trembling with fatigue but bowstring tight with hope and anticipation. Everything she had done to keep Elizabeth alive and unharmed by Queen Mary, everything she had endured for Elizabeth’s sake would be worth it the moment the Princess wrested power from her sister. The new queen would send her army to thunder down on Grenville Hall and release Richard before Grenville knew what had happened. Queen Elizabeth! Honor lay on her back, eyes wide, longing for morning, and action.

Darkness crept over the house, but sleep was impossible. She got up from the bed, drawn to the moonlit window. Forests surrounded Bramley Hall, and she cast her eyes to the dark, green-black horizon, looking for traces of smoke rising from her burning home, praying she would see none.

Someone was moving on the terrace below. It was Elizabeth. Pacing. All alone. Arms folded, head lowered in thought, she went slowly back and forth between huge urns that spilled over with blood red gillyflowers. The moonlight, stark and cold, made her features indistinct and her slim body look ghostly as the night breeze tugged at her long, loose sleeves. In the distance beyond her the boat on the crescent lake was tethered to the jetty. Unmanned, its single sail furled, it tugged at its rope in the breeze as though eager, like Honor, for morning.

She felt a pain at her heart. It would take time to march soldiers to London, more than a day. Two, at the least. Three, perhaps. Could Richard hold out until then? Would Adam hold off from attacking?

She climbed back into bed, too tired to stand or even to think. It was out of her hands now—and in Elizabeth’s. She closed her eyes, still stinging from the fire, the ride, the fear. Her last thought before sleep dragged her under was,
It all begins with morning.

31

The Making of a Queen

June 1558

T
he Queen was retching. A black-robed doctor held the porcelain pot while two other doctors hovered, anxiously inspecting the color and consistency of the vomit.

Mary spat out the last of it, exhausted from days of illness, and then pushed the doctor’s hand away with surprising strength. “She is
here?
” she demanded of her lady, Jane Dormer.

“Here, Your Majesty,” Jane said, still curtsying from delivering her message. “In the antechamber. The lord chamberlain thought you must have summoned her.”

“Never!” Mary fell back upon her pillow, her haggard eyes wide with disbelief. “How does she dare?”

“Shall I return the message that Your Majesty is unwell?”

“No! I would not give her the satisfaction. Come, help me dress,” she said, thrashing at the sheet to throw it off. Her skin was clammy and her emptied stomach ached, but she was on her feet within moments.

“Your Majesty,” Jane ventured nervously, “she has come with many friends.”

Honor had ridden into London in a state of almost dizzy anticipation. She rode near the middle of Elizabeth’s retinue of forty retainers, grateful for the company’s quick pace. Their departure had been so sudden and swift she’d had only a moment with Elizabeth, who had come to her room at dawn to say, “Mistress Thornleigh, I want you with us. It is important that you witness this.” They had left Sir Harry Whitcombe’s house as the sun’s first rays were pinking the sky. Elizabeth rode out at the head of the company, flanked by Whitcombe and Parry, with St. Loe and his lieutenant as their vanguard.

Honor could hardly believe Elizabeth’s audacious gambit. Straight to London! It was brilliant. After all, why had Wyatt’s rebellion failed soon after Queen Mary took the throne? Because he and his small army had marched from Kent, and by the time they reached London the Queen had rallied her forces and the city gates were closed and Wyatt’s men were slaughtered. Why had Dudley’s rebels, likewise, never had a chance, even before they were betrayed from within? Because they had planned to march from the Welsh borders and join Dudley’s French troops arriving in the south—all too far from London, the center of royal power. The capital was the prize, the linchpin, the key to success. Start in London, take the city, and remove the Queen before she had a chance to call out her troops. Brilliant.

But Honor’s exhilaration at the strategy did not last long. As the company rode past Charing Cross outside London’s wall, she realized they were not going into the city, and though the people in the street cheered the Princess as she passed, it was clear that Elizabeth was not going to join up with the organizing leaders Richard had told Honor about. No one joined them. As the entourage turned into the sprawling precincts of Whitehall Palace, Honor realized in dismay that Elizabeth had not come to London to raise a rebellion. She had come to see the Queen.

Queen Mary swept into the antechamber attended by five ladies and as many gentlemen ushers, plus several lords of her council, hastily convened. Honor dropped to her knees. Lowly in rank, she was far behind the Princess, and she watched, still stunned, afraid that Elizabeth had lost her mind. Ahead of her St. Loe, Whitcombe, and Parry were making their bows, their sheathed swords glinting. Ahead of them, Elizabeth.

The Queen stood stone-faced as Elizabeth rose from her curtsy. Someone inside the royal bedchamber quickly closed the door, but not before Honor glimpsed the rumpled bed and the three doctors in tense discussion, and caught the smell of vomit. She looked back at the Queen, at her face as white as raw pastry, at the ruff slightly askew at the throat of her orange taffeta gown as though she had dressed too quickly.
She was in bed, ill,
Honor thought. Even in her consternation at being here, she noted with surprise how gaunt and aged the Queen looked.
She’s deathly sick.

Despite the large number of people, there was utter silence. Protocol forbade even a princess speaking until addressed by the Queen, and the rustle of Elizabeth’s silk skirt as she smoothed it from her curtsy was the only sound. Honor could sense her fear. Elizabeth had always been in terror of her sister’s power to have her executed, and whatever bizarre gamble had given her the courage to come here today, the fear lingered. But this was a new Elizabeth Honor was seeing. Serious. Carefully confident. Her nerves controlled. Honor felt on tenterhooks, waiting to see where it would lead.

“Well?” Mary demanded.

“I thank Your Majesty for granting me an audience at such short notice,” Elizabeth said, “and I beg your forbearance for so crudely disturbing your peace. Believe me, nothing less than a matter of grave urgency would make me do so.”

“And what is this grave matter?” Mary asked with cool derision. “Have you lost a dancing master?” She glanced at her councilors to catch their amused response. None smiled.

“I am come to alert Your Majesty of a great danger. Forgive my blunt telling, but there is no other way. The country, Your Majesty, is about to rise up against you.”

There were gasps from Mary’s people. Honor saw the backs of Parry and Whitcombe stiffen. St. Loe’s fighting hand at his side balled into a fist.

Mary fixed her small eyes on her sister and said quietly, “Have a care, madam. You speak of treason.”

“I speak of what I see and hear, Your Majesty. And it is dire. The people live in fearful unrest. They fear that with our soldiers off in faraway wars, our country is left open to any brute invader. They fear the roaring rumors that Your Majesty’s treasury is bankrupt and that this will drag down their careful businesses to ruin. They fear the burnings in every market town, which every day snuff out in dreadful agony another of their neighbors, their cousins, their kin. Most of all they fear a leaderless future, since you have no heir of your body.”

Shocked courtiers stared back at Elizabeth. No one ever dared to mention the Queen’s barren state in her presence. Mary herself went rigid, and livid color splotched her chalk white cheeks.

“And since you have named no one to be your heir,” Elizabeth went on pointedly, “the people fear that a malicious claimant to your throne could sweep in from foreign shores and bring a ravenous army to lay waste to this peaceful realm.”

The lords of the royal council exchanged bleak looks. This was their own fear.

A sheen of sweat glistened on Mary’s forehead. It sprang from both fury and fever. She said with barely suppressed rage, “There is no such threat to the realm.”

“But it is what the people fear. With no proclaimed heir—”

“My heir. That is the prize
you
covet. You want my crown.”

“I have no such ungodly wish, Your Majesty. I am unworthy—even though it is true that you and I share the same royal blood. I love my country, and I love the people, and they know it, but I am well aware that I am not worthy to wear the crown. I am only anxious to preserve Your Majesty and the country from a bloody uprising.”

“I know you, what you are. You
foment
this unrest. You lust for my crown. You lust to rule. You, who know nothing of the cares and burdens of a monarch. You, who spend your days in dancing and playacting. Spend your nights, as your strumpet mother did, in who knows what godforsaken pleasures.”

The insult besmirching the Princess brought murmurs of discomfort from the courtiers. Sir William St. Loe took an indignant, protective step closer to Elizabeth.

“I am not here to speak about myself, Your Majesty,” Elizabeth said calmly, “but to warn you as your loyal servant. With this instability about the succession, the country is floundering in such alarm and foreboding it could bring you to ruin.”

“Who dares to plot this? Who would rise against God’s anointed? I want names!”

The three men with Elizabeth did not move a muscle. Their heads could roll, but they had cast their lot with the Princess, come what may. All the courtiers and councilors knew it, and Honor read respect on the faces of several—admiration, even, for the valiant loyalty of Elizabeth’s supporters. The Queen seemed anxiously aware of it. She wiped beads of sweat from her upper lip. “Names, madam,” she demanded again. “Who are these traitors?”

Elizabeth bowed her head. “I cannot say.”

“You
will
not say!”

“I cannot, Your Majesty, because there are too many.”

There were gasps. Sir William Paulet, the lord treasurer, whispered something to Lord North, who nodded in dour agreement.

“Silence!” the Queen cried, turning on them. One of the ladies nearest her took an instinctive step away from her, as from an aggressive dog.

“I cannot,” Elizabeth went on steadily, “because they throng me to tell me their fears, and how can anyone know the names of so many? If it were just one or two men driven to take action, or even ten or twenty, you might snuff them out as you would snuff out an errant spark from your grate. But there are
legions
of our fearful countrymen. The realm is a tinderbox, and one spark will ignite the whole country. Your Majesty cannot suppress an entire kingdom. To attempt it would be to kindle a blazing civil war. And that would be tragic for so wise a ruler as yourself, a ruler so careful of her people’s welfare. Their memory of you would be tainted for all time. A legacy of carnage. All because Your Majesty has not proclaimed your heir.”