The Queen's Gamble (39 page)

Her mother fell on her knees with a cry, “Stop! Isabel, stop this! Elizabeth—”

“Lady Thornleigh, collect yourself,” Elizabeth said, appalled. “Rise this instant.”

“Isabel, take back these lies!” she wailed. “Elizabeth, you cannot believe—”

“You, man,” Elizabeth ordered Carlos, “see to the lady. She is unwell.”

He stood like stone, agonized, his eyes locked on Isabel.

Elizabeth glared at him. “I said see to your mistress, oaf!”

St. Loe gave Carlos a shove. “Your mistress, man.”

Carlos turned on him in fury. St. Loe stiffened at such a defiant response from a footman. Carlos’s hand was a fist around his sheathed dagger hilt.

Carlos, don’t!
Isabel looked around wildly for someone to break the impasse. Courtiers stood watching, and actors had come forward on the stage, everyone transfixed by the drama around the Queen. Among the actors was a face that made Isabel gape. A long, white face, eyes like wet coals. Father York! How could he be
here?
He wore a black cloak like the actor who had played the lawyer. Between it and his leg he held something alongside his knee. A tube of metal that gleamed in the sunlight. A pistol. His eyes were locked on Elizabeth.

Isabel’s heart seemed to stop.
He has come to kill her.

She looked in amazement at St. Loe. The guards. The courtiers. None of them noticed York. Everyone was watching Carlos in his aberrant standoff with St. Loe. Her mother was still distraught on her knees before Elizabeth. Elizabeth was reaching to raise her to her feet. Her back was to York, an unobstructed target.

The words burst from Isabel before she could think. “The priest!” she cried, pointing. “Carlos, look! He has a pistol!”

York jerked the pistol into the folds of his cloak. The guards instinctively moved in on Isabel. The actors looked about in alarm.

“There!” she cried. “Stop him! He’ll shoot!”

Carlos bolted toward the stage, dodging the courtiers who were moving about in confusion, their voices rising in panic with cries of, “Pistol! . . . Assassin!”

York dashed along the stage behind the actors, raced down the steps, and disappeared into the throng of courtiers. St. Loe shouted orders and guards burst into action to surround Elizabeth. Isabel saw York pushing people aside, coming her way. Men shouted, and one grabbed for him, but York knocked him down. He was heading for the dais. In the melee it was the only vantage point for a clear shot.

“Carlos! The dais!” Isabel lurched forward, arms outstretched to shield the Queen. Guards seized her.

A woman screamed.

York was atop the dais. He raised the pistol. Aimed.

Carlos charged him, knocking him down. The priest tumbled off the dais. There were screams. People ran in panic. Carlos rolled across the dais to get to York. Guards rushed toward them.

The priest struggled to his feet. He raised the pistol, his arm jerking and bobbing in an attempt to get a clear shot at Elizabeth behind her screen of guards. The pistol pointed at Isabel. She saw the blackness down the barrel.

Carlos lunged for York. They fell to the ground, wrestling. The guards shielding Elizabeth were marching her away to safety. Other palace guards were rushing in. Two guards still gripped Isabel and she struggled to turn her head to see Carlos fighting the priest on the ground.

A gunshot.

People ran in panic, leaving space around the two men on the floor. York staggered to his feet. Carlos groped at the priest’s leg. Palace guards reached York and seized him. Isabel strained to see past them. “Carlos!”

Carlos let go of York’s leg and fell back. Blood soaked his side. He sprawled on the floor on his back. Isabel screamed, “No!” as his eyes closed.

32

Home

T
hree months had passed since the hangings. It felt to Frances like a year, so much had changed. The war in Scotland was over, and Adam was coming home.

She stood waiting on the landing at the Old Swan Stairs, looking out at the river traffic for his boat to appear. She was so eager, her skin felt flushed, an extra heat that she did not need on this sweltering June afternoon. She dabbed her moist upper lip with a handkerchief, thinking the last thing she wanted Adam to see was sweat dampening her face like a fishwife’s. In the heat, wherrymen lounged in their boats, some napping, as they waited for trade. One pulled a net out of the water and fished from it a leather bottle of ale. Frances envied him the cold drink he upended in his mouth. She had been waiting in the sun for over an hour. The two footmen she had brought to carry Adam’s luggage waited on a shady bench under the awning of a fishmonger’s stall, but from there the view of the river was blocked by people buying the catches of shad, salmon, and eels, and others coming and going in boats. Frances wanted to stay at the wharf edge to catch the very first glimpse of her husband.

The church bells of All-Hallows-by-the-Tower rang out in the still air. She glanced across the waterfront rooftops at the Tower. She felt no pity for the twelve traitors who had died that April morning, not even for Father York, a man of God sickeningly corrupted by his hatred of the Protestant Queen. She thought of her brother Christopher. If he had not died in the fire, he would have been hanged alongside his wretched fellow conspirators, and neither could she muster a shred of grief for him. She was only thankful, deeply thankful, that Isabel had been spared. Frances had been about to sail on the Dutch ship with Nicolas and Katherine when Lady Thornleigh’s messenger had come alongside in a boat with the extraordinary news. Isabel’s action and Carlos’s bravery in saving the Queen from Father York, followed by the arrival of Isabel’s Indian servant with her letter, had proved her innocence beyond all doubt. The Queen had pardoned Isabel while bestowing her flustered thanks. What a change was there! And how welcome was the news that had reached Frances the next day, that Carlos had survived his wound.

The changes had been no less extraordinary in Scotland, where just ten days ago the tide had turned for England with an unexpected and resounding victory. The feared Spanish ships bringing an army to help the French had never arrived. Philip of Spain, in his ferocious ongoing war with the Turks in the Mediterranean, had suffered a disastrous defeat there just as his troops in Antwerp’s port were about to embark for Scotland, and so, instead, he had sent them south to throw against the Turks. The French, bottled up in Leith, hungry and weakened by sickness after months under siege, and dispirited by Spain’s abandonment, had surrendered to the English commander, Lord Grey.

Adam! There he was! Standing in the bow of the boat, his men rowing. Frances waved. He did not wave back. He must not have seen her. Or had he? She had a chilling memory of his cold aloofness when she had said good-bye to him on this very wharf at Christmas. She had hoped for just one tender look before he’d sailed off into danger, but his mind had been on his mission, not her.

“Come,” she called to her footmen, beckoning them to follow. She pushed through the people hailing boats and reached the wharf edge as Adam’s boat nudged the water stairs. He hopped out. She kept back a few paces as he spoke with his men. Then he turned and saw her. “Frances,” he said with smile. He came to her. “How are you?”

“Very happy, now that you are here.” Her heart swelled, for he looked so hale, his face burnished by sun and wind from the months at sea off Edinburgh where he and his fellow captains had been blockading the entrance to Leith. “And you?” she asked as his men began unloading his luggage.

“Me? Could not be better.” He looked so pleased, she hoped it might be partly from seeing her, but she knew better. It was because of the victory. “The peace negotiations,” he said, slinging a satchel over his shoulder. “Have you heard?”

“About your father? Yes, it was quite an honor.” Lord Thornleigh was in Edinburgh as one of the delegation led by Sir William Cecil.

“It’s done. Astounding terms, and France has agreed to every one. No French troops to be left in Scotland, not one outpost, not a single soldier. The Leith garrison to be torn down, walls and all. Plus—and this is the crowning glory of Elizabeth’s victory—she has forced her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots to foreswear calling herself the rightful queen of England. It will be there in black and white, her renunciation forever of any such claim, signed by all parties. Ha! Elizabeth has not only ousted the French, she has put all of Europe in awe of her prowess.”

Frances managed a smile, though it hurt to see him so animated whenever he spoke of the Queen. Elizabeth, he always called her. How could Frances compete with that young and beautiful creature? Life at court, they said, was lively these days with her banquets of triumph amid music and dancing and entertainments. The Queen especially loved to dance. Frances supposed that Adam would be asked to attend.

“What a wonderful outcome,” she said. “You must tell me all about it.” She gave instructions to the footmen to go on ahead with the luggage, then asked Adam, “Are you free to come back to the house now? I have had everything newly cleaned and fresh floor rushes laid, the best quality, in just this morning from Kent. And I’ve had cook prepare partridge the way you like it, with wine and blackcurrants. And Katherine—just wait until you see how she crawls about!” She knew she was rattling on foolishly, but Adam was looking at her in a new way, a look both gentle and intense that made her babble. “She grins when I coo to her. And when I offer her the spoon she can—”

“Frances,” he said, stopping her. The tenderness in his voice sent a spark through her. “I want to thank you for all you did for Isabel. She wrote me, said she would be drowned at the bottom of Grenville’s millrace if you had not fetched Carlos. And then, when she was in the Tower, I know how you stood ready, despite all the dangers, to take their son to safety.” He lifted her chin, bringing her face closer to his. “What you did was not only good, it was brave.”

He kissed her. A kiss of warmth. The very first. She could not move a muscle.

“Buy some eels, sir?” a boy asked, coming to them with his basket.

Adam looked at the boy, but Frances did not take her eyes off Adam. She could scarcely breathe for joy.

“No,” he said, and then with a smile at Frances, “I have a better supper waiting.” He slung his satchel higher on his shoulder. “Come. Let’s go home.”

“Bel, watch what you’re doing. Oh, dear, you’ve nicked yourself.”

“It’s nothing,” Isabel said, sucking the bead of blood from her fingertip. She and her mother were on their knees training a thorny rosebush onto the garden trellis, but when she had let her concentration slip to look at the door to the house, a thorn had jabbed.

“You will not make him come home any faster by constantly checking the door.”

Isabel mustered a smile. “I suppose not.” She wiped perspiration off her brow with her sleeve. It was so hot, and now, in her seventh month of pregnancy, she keenly felt the heat. “I’m just on edge after all the waiting.” It had taken three months for the grinding wheels of Spanish bureaucracy to reach a decision about Carlos, and that morning he had been asked to the Spanish embassy to hear it. Our fate, she thought. If the King had forgiven Carlos his transgression with D’Oysel, they would be going back to Peru. A happy outcome, of course. Perhaps she would actually feel it once she knew for certain.

“Nicolas,” her mother called across the garden path. “Come and help me, darling. You too, Pedro, since your mistress is no use to me today.”

Isabel looked to the fountain where Nicolas and Pedro were playing. They had been sword-fighting with sticks, but now Pedro had found a pile of large, smooth stones that the gardener had left for starting a border and he was juggling three of them, to Nicolas’s delight. Dear Pedro, she thought in wonder. That he had searched for her letter and found it, that he had raced to London with it, that he had reached her mother at Whitehall in that chaos of terror over York, and by delivering the letter had saved her life—it still left her in awe. How grateful she was to him!

And how good he had become at juggling, she thought with a smile as she watched him now. Tom Yates’s legacy. Despite her deep well of sadness about Tom, it did her heart good to see how his skill at foolery had taken root in Pedro. It was branching out in all manner of little jests. Like yesterday morning. When Nicolas had come to breakfast, the servants had burst into laughter. While Nicolas had slept, Pedro had taken charcoal and drawn a mustache on him.

“They don’t hear me,” her mother said as Pedro kept juggling and Nicolas jumped to swipe a stone and missed. “Well,” she said, abandoning her roses and getting up off her knees, “this labor of love is lost. Come, up with you, Bel, and let us take some rest in the shade.”

She helped Isabel to her feet and they strolled arm in arm to a bench under an apple tree. “Don’t fret, darling. Elizabeth’s commendation of Carlos will have done a world of good, you’ll see.”

Isabel knew her mother meant to encourage her. In gratitude for Carlos stopping York, Elizabeth had written a note in her own hand to Philip of Spain, praising Carlos. As well she should, Isabel thought, shuddering at the memory of him being felled by York’s pistol shot. His recovery had been long and slow from the bullet’s ravages, including two broken ribs and a horrible loss of blood. For days they had not known if he would live or die. “I am sure you are right,” she said now. The Queen’s intervention on Carlos’s behalf had been extraordinary. “And if so, the path is clear for us to return to Peru.”

“From the Old World to the New,” her mother murmured. They sat down under the leafy apple boughs that arched over their heads. The shaded grass felt cool where it touched Isabel’s ankle. In bright sun at the garden wall, bees hummed among the tall irises and climbing columbine. The ginger cat prowled through a dense patch of lavender, releasing its perfume. Isabel felt her mother’s probing gaze on her. “And yet, that does not seem to cheer you.”

“It does . . . yes, of course it does. Trujillo is so beautiful. And I love our house. And it means so much to Carlos. But . . .”

“But it does not feel like home?”

How she sees through me,
Isabel thought, unnerved. And then,
If only I could untangle my feelings
. She watched a chaffinch peck at seeds on the grass, then flutter up into the apple tree to a forked branch where its nest was tucked, a tidy cup pressed from moss, grass, and feathers. She remembered a day in spring when she was five or six, and Adam had pulled a ladder to a beech tree and showed her a chaffinch nest. Perched on the ladder, she had been entranced at him explaining how the nest was bound with spiders’ webs and lined with feathers and wool, and decorated with lichen and flakes of bark.

Home, she thought. Peru. She said, “I didn’t come to stay.”

“No. You came for me.” Her mother took hold of her hand. “I am so glad you did.”

Isabel looked into her eyes. Whatever happened, she was part of this family forever. But something else was nagging at her. Something that her parents’ young porter, Henry, had told her. He had taken a gift of honey from her mother to Adam and Frances, and had heard the story from a groom who had recently left Yeavering Hall to join Frances’s household. At the time of the fire at the mill, the groom had been on an errand at the port of Bamburgh, and the day after the fire, he said, he’d seen a man boarding a ship bound for France, the man hunched over, looking furtive, as if to avoid being seen. The groom swore it was his master, Sir Christopher Grenville. “All burned his face was, red and raw, the hair half burned away.” That had chilled Isabel. But was it true? The groom had sworn it, Henry said, but then had added that the groom was infamous among the servants for his tall tales. Was it nothing more than a made-up tale for a dark night by the kitchen fire? She had not repeated the tale to anyone.

“Papa!” Nicolas sang out.

Isabel jumped up. Carlos was coming out of the house. Because of his wound, he still walked favoring one leg to take the pressure off his side. She held her breath. What was the verdict? It was impossible to read his face. Nicolas ran to him and Carlos picked him up with a slight wince at the residual pain in his side. “Are you helping your mother and grandmother?”

“No, they just play with flowers. I’m learning to juggle. See?” He pointed to Pedro, who was still at it.

“Go on, then.” He set him down, and Nicolas ran back to Pedro, calling, “Let
me
try!”

Isabel waited. Carlos looked at her. He shook his head. “Bad news.”

“How bad?”

“Could not be much worse. The King revoked our
encomienda
.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. This was a shock. The land grant with its Indian laborers was the basis of all wealth and status in Peru.

Her mother had stood as well, and she asked, “What does it mean, Carlos? For you?”

He let out a tight sigh. “Leaves us with nothing there but the house.”

“Oh, dear. I am so sorry.”

He managed a mirthless smile. “The price of bashing an ally commander’s head.”

“And freeing Adam,” she countered, “for which all of us can never thank you enough.” She squared her shoulders. “Well, this does change things.” She called to the house, “James!” then turned back to Isabel and gave her elbow a squeeze. “I am going to see Elizabeth. It’s time she did right by you.” The footman appeared at the door. “We’re going upriver,” she called to him, and went inside.

Isabel and Carlos looked at each other. She could see his deep disappointment.

“I’ll sell the house,” he said. “Sell my share in the mine, too. It will pay most of our debts. But after that . . .” He shrugged. “No point in going back. Without land, there’s nothing for us there.”

“My father will give us something.”