The Twylight Tower (13 page)

For beneath the tile and stone, interred in lead caskets, lay her father and his third queen, Jane Seymour. Somehow, whatever sermonizing tone the current cleric took, in her ears it always turned to her father’s outrage at something she had done amiss.

You shall not speak of your mother in my presence!
he had thundered once and stomped toward Elizabeth, favoring his sore tree trunk of a leg.
Be grateful, girl, you are not declared bastard again! You and your sister had best learn to hold your tongues and tend to your brother’s wants, as he shall rule here after me, not a weakling in petticoats. No woman shall sit on this throne without a man to guide her, is that not right, my darling Tudor rose?

He’d softened then as he turned to beam at his young fifth wife, Catherine Howard. He’d not gone closer to Elizabeth but chucked his Catherine under the chin while she giggled and preened. And then the silly chit had trusted him and, worse, trusted a young, dashing paramour and got her head cut off for following her heart.

Elizabeth jolted back to reality as Robin shifted in his seat beside her, bumping her skirts. She forced her brain back to the sermon from the Old Testament about King David.

“And David saw and coveted a married woman, wife of his trusted soldier Uriah. ‘And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed
and walked upon the roof of the king’s house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.’ And the monarch sent Uriah,” the elderly minister went on, “to be killed in battle so that he might possess another man’s wife.”

Again Robin shifted sharply beside her. Elizabeth heard whispers, mayhap even titters farther back in the congregation of courtiers. Her quick mind closed on the sermon like a trap: Did this man dare to imply she, as monarch, was acting in like manner? Did her own people believe she would dare to possess Robin and rid herself of his spouse?

The queen stood. “Leave off, man!” she shouted at the cleric, who jumped back so far he almost tumbled off his lofty lectern. “You have preached too long and too far.”

She turned to walk out. Her father had done such when the Papists preached against his will. She needed not some pious insult about her and Robin. This preacher would find himself lecturing the northern sheep of her realm next week, indeed he would!

The queen did not glance behind her until she left the long aisle of the chapel. Her ladies followed her out in disarray and Robin, bless him, sat still and rose slowly, as if the message had naught to do with him at all.

THE NEXT MORNING ELIZABETH WALKED OUTSIDE ON THE
north terrace with her ladies to survey her favorite
lofty view of parks and woodland below. She’d rather be hunting, but she had promised Cecil an hour for business and had also sent for that two-faced liar, Franklin, alias Felicia Dove. First he—she—had claimed to be a lad, then admitted to being a eunuch, but had turned out to be a woman.

“ ’S blood!” Elizabeth muttered, and did not deign to explain herself when several of her ladies asked if she were in pain. It vexed her too that Robin was packing to go to London to try to cozen the Spanish ambassador on her behalf—and she was the one who would miss him. And if it weren’t for her sister Queen Mary being besotted by her husband, King Philip of Spain, the money to repair this terrace would not have been squandered on a damned Spanish war. Planks and rails, some decaying, covered the earth and stones at the top of the escarpment and made footing a bit slippery, however lovely the blue-green vista below.

“Your Grace,” her cousin Harry called to her. Both he and Luke Morgan joined her, with the lutenist between them as if she were some vile state prisoner. “You wished to see Mistress Dove.”

Despite the muddy wooden walk and the fact she was finally garbed as a girl, Felicia went down on both knees and stayed there. She was quite a fetching female, slender as was the style.

“Rise and walk with me,” the queen ordered, treading the very edge of the terrace, turning away to overlook the stretch of vibrant scene again. “Well,” she said when Felicia stood at her side, shaking soil from her gray skirts, “is there some excuse, some explanation?”

“Aye, Your Gracious Majesty. I feared you’d never take a mere lass in, not on a lute. ’Tisn’t done, no more than wenches on the stage, and I so longed—”

“Women play the lute and sing in their own homes,” Elizabeth interrupted. “I play passably well, but not in public.”

“You play
very
well, Your Majesty, and I was thrilled you asked me for a bit of further instruction. You see, I knew the music was God’s gift to me and I yearned to play for you, to know you, to just be near you, a woman who is queen in her own right, and that is not done either, as e’en your royal sister was wed.”

Elizabeth’s temper flared again, but this was not Cecil in some you-must-wed harangue. “Well said, Felicia,” she admitted. “It
is
Felicia, with no more surprises, is it not?”

“Oh, yes, Your Grace. If I can no longer play in your gallery with the men, can I not be your privy player and—”

“I have not decided,” Elizabeth interrupted, turning to study the girl’s eager face. “I will not—cannot—abide those who deal treacherously with me, not a lutenist, not the highest peer in the realm, not the dearest friend. I had friends who lied to me the very month I was crowned, the Haringtons, and they are yet cooling their heels in the country out of my sight.”

She saw that revelation startled Felicia. Elizabeth bit her lower lip and glanced away again, remembering how she had sent her dear friend Bella and her Lord John into rural exile. She longed to summon
them back. Yes, perhaps it was time. With these unfair rumors about her and Robert flying hither and yon, she needed all the friends she could grapple to her.

“Your Majesty?” Felicia broke into her thoughts, sounding even more shaken now. “I admire you greatly. I am so honored to be at your court, so please do not send me back to oblivion.”

“Not to oblivion, girl, but you cannot get off scot-free for such deceptions, and you will remain in Lord Hunsdon’s household until I send for you again. He has a soft spot for brilliant talent and, no doubt, a lute or two for you to practice on there. Practice hard— lute playing and truth telling—and mayhap I shall decide to trust you again.”

Tears puddled in the girl’s eyes, and her face flushed. She gripped her hands together so hard in supplication that those skilled fingers turned white as sausages.

“Will you argue more?” Elizabeth challenged, sensing anger battled with the girl’s shame. “N-no, Your Majesty.”

“What has saved you, Felicia, is your clever point that you dared only to do what I have done in my own realm. We’ll show them, won’t we, those men who say a woman cannot play in public, cannot rule?”

“I MUST REPORT,” CECIL INTONED AS THEY SAT AT A TABLE
in the withdrawing room where he’d finally gotten the queen off alone to attend to business, “an affair of state
that I believe will not please you.” When she looked up from the pile of papers, frowning, he added hastily, “Bishop de Quadra has followed us to Windsor.”

“He has?” Elizabeth cried, breaking into a smile and clapping her hands, astounding Cecil. “He’s here? Then I must stop Robert’s plans to go to London.”

She jumped up from the table with the top document only half-signed. She threw her quill down, spattering ink.

“Lord Robert was going to London to see de Quadra?” Cecil asked. “On what business? I thought the bishop annoyed you, and why send Dudley?”

As she ran from the room, he cursed and hit his fist on the pile of papers. He gathered his work, refusing to sit here waiting while the queen of England bounded after a married man like some tavern doxy. On his way out, he ran nearly headlong into de Quadra on his way in.

“She’s not here,” Cecil muttered as de Quadra wheeled about and fell into step beside him down the long gallery.

“In other words, you told her I was coming,” the man said with a hint of a grim grin.

Cecil almost chuckled despite his frustration with the queen.

“I hear she’s been in a mercurial mood for days,” de Quadra continued, as careful as Cecil not to talk when they passed clusters of courtiers in the hall.

“To put it mildly.”

“Even banished that brilliant new lutenist she was so enamored of,” he said matter-of-factly.

Cecil tried not to act surprised at the depth and breadth of the Spaniard’s knowledge of the queen. “Your eyes and ears here keep you apprised of the most minute details, bishop. Or should I ask instead if you have some other, special interest in the lutenist?”

“Now that he has been found a she, you mean?” he parried. “Why, my Lord Cecil, do you suggest I covet the girl? I tell you, I do not take my vow of chastity that lightly.”

“I meant, bishop, that my eyes and ears tell me that your eyes and ears are someone close to the queen, so why not a lutenist?”

“But a woman? Like Eve in the garden, as I hear Lord Robert called the queen, women are too fickle and untrustworthy. Best guess again.”

They exchanged wary yet bemused looks of admiration. But Cecil’s observations of the so-called Dove of the lute had convinced him, at least, that the lass was a survivor and a clever one at that. Chameleons who could change their skin and story and had fire in their fingertips and in their belly always were. After all, that was how Elizabeth had survived to claim her crown.

FELICIA DOVE, USING A BORROWED LUTE SHE’D NEVER SO
much as seen before, played for Lord Hunsdon while he ate a little venison stew and drank a great deal of Burgundy wine that evening at his small leased house at Eton. The tiny college town was just upriver from Windsor, where Felicia longed to be.

She felt as caged as she had at home. You might know Lord Hunsdon thought Windsor Palace so drafty and rickety he leased a place. Compared to Richmond Palace, these rooms were small and dark. And that poxy lackey, Luke Morgan, hovered about as if he were her father. He appeared now from some brief errand and sat at table with his lord, glaring at her from time to time over the rim of his flagon. Hoping Lord Hunsdon didn’t notice, Felicia glared back.

True, Luke had saved her from drowning—she couldn’t swim worth a fig—but she’d paid the price. This was the second time he’d tat-taled to the queen about her for his own advantage. It was bad enough she’d had to agree that her carefully crafted persona, Franklin Dove, was a eunuch. Oh, how she’d like to cut Luke Morgan down to size and condemn him to that very estate right now, the lickspittle.

And worst of all, how was she to keep herself flush with coin if she couldn’t send court information to her secret sponsor? Cooped up here, she’d never get her daily written missive to the courier who got them to her employer, whether nearby or elsewhere.

“Play ‘Greensleeves’ again, Frank—Felicia,” Lord Hunsdon put in, his voice slightly slurred. “You play it the mos’ melancholy of an’one I’ve e’er known.”

“No wonder, seeing all my dreams are dashed,” she dared, and modulated into the minor tones of that sad ballad again.

“But Her Grace sent for you righ’ away,” he said, stopping for another swig. Luke was savoring his wine
and had hardly eaten much for such a big man, she thought. Instead, the blackguard had been watching her, as if he’d devour her for dinner. “And,” his lordship went on, “if she forgives tha’ fas’, she’ll have you back in her service in a trice.”

“May I ask a question then, my lord?” Felicia said, not stopping her fingers through the tune’s sonorous swells.

“Indeed,” Lord Hunsdon said with a hiccup and a grandiose gesture.

“Her Grace mentioned having banished someone called the Haringtons, someone who must have been dear to her. I just wondered, in light of my own chastisement, what is their plight and status now?”

“Suffice to say, she trusted ’em, and they misled her,” his lordship said, his sibilant words coming out in a strange hiss. “Can’t tell you details, sworn to secrecy. But don’t fret. She did not imprison ’em, as I believed she would, as I would’ve if I were the queen—er, king.”

“So she didn’t ‘cast them off discourteously’?” she sang her next question to the tune.

“As a matter a fac’,” his lordship said as Luke poured him more wine, “she helped ’em search for their wayward daughter, who’s Her Grace’s half niece—ill-illegitimate, a course.”

“Through which of King Henry’s lovers, my lord?” Luke put in, pricking up his too-sharp ears again.

“Mm, a certain Jane Dyngley in the parade of them, ’S I recall,” his lordship explained, frowning as if trying
to remember. “Any rate, their child—Audrey, I think’s her name—was fostered out. Great Harry kept the court clean of bastards that way.…”

His voice trailed off, and he frowned into his goblet. Felicia knew servants’ gossip said Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, could be one of the lusty king’s bastards, though his mother, Mary Boleyn, had denied it.

“So,” his lordship went on as if speaking to his drink now, “this Audrey was Harington’s firs’ wife, and their daughter, Hester, ran away coupla years ago—no doubt a wench after your own heart, eh, my little revolting lutenist? Well, meaning you revolted to run away from parents too, not that you were revolting, righ’, Luke? But Her Grace’ll have you back and if she won’t, I’ll be your patron … pay you better than Her Grace, the penny-pincher, ’spite a what you see.”

His lordship rose and fumbled to unbutton his breeches, leaning an arm on the mantel over the hearth as if to use it for a chamberpot. She’d seen the practice even at court, when they all thought she was a lad and the ladies weren’t around because the queen didn’t allow it. But he evidently remembered his lutenist was female and strode hurriedly from the room, listing a bit like Her Grace’s barge on boulders in the Thames.

“However much Lord Hunsdon would pay and coddle you,” Luke said, reaching out to spear a hunk of bread with his dagger, “I believe you’d choose to serve the queen, even if
you
had to pay
her.”

“You should understand that, as you scramble hard
enough to please her at cost to anyone,” she countered, stopping her playing with a dissonant chord.