The Virgin Queen's Daughter - Ella March Chase (31 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

April 1565

M
ARCH SWEPT PAST WITH SHEETS OF RAIN AND
promises of lambs scattered on distant meadows. One dark night in late April as the rest of the court gambled at cards, Gabriel came to seek me. “The chapel,” he whispered. “Meet me.”

I knew from his face the news he carried must be bleak indeed.

I waited a bit after he disappeared, then slipped from the chamber and dashed toward the chapel. Before I could reach it, a voice hissed my name. I looked around, but the corridor seemed empty. Then Gabriel beckoned me from the partially open door of one of the many rooms kept for nobles’ use while at court. I hastened in and he bolted the door behind him. I could tell the chamber had not been occupied for some time. Holland cloths draped furniture, filling the room with ghostly shapes in the flickering light of the taper Gabriel held. “Did anyone follow you? See you passing this way?”

“No. What is it?”

“I needed to get you alone, but I dared not take you to my chambers or your own. We should be safe for the time being. No one would think to look for you here. These are Lord Ashwall’s rooms, and that bastard hasn’t been to court since I lopped off his ear.”

“Please, Gabriel,” I begged. “Just tell me what is wrong.”

“Mistress Jones is dead.”

“No!” I jerked away from him, shook my head in denial. “That is impossible.”

“I wish to God it was. Oxenham claims the Tower guards speak of little else.”

“Eppie dead?” I choked out. “Why did you not tell me she was ill? I could have brewed a posset. Sent her an apothecary.”

He gripped my arms as if to keep me on my feet. “No medicine on earth could have helped her. She was not sick.”

“Not sick? Then why . . . ?” Dread wrenched tight at the hell in Gabriel’s eyes.

“Do not make me tell you, Grace,” he pleaded, soft.

“Tell me!” My voice rose on a note of hysteria. “Tell me, Gabriel, now!”

He clapped his palm over my mouth, glanced at the door in alarm. “Quiet! Christ, Nell! Do you want to bring Walsingham’s spies down on us?” Ever so slowly he withdrew his hand from my mouth, but he did not release his hold on my arm.

I was shaking as if I had been cased in ice. “Tell me,” I rasped.

“They put her on the rack. Tried to break her there.”

“God, no!” I pressed my hand to my mouth. Gabriel maneuvered me to a bench before my knees buckled. “Did she . . . She must have told them everything. Who could suffer torture and not do anything to end the pain?”

“We do not know that for certain.” Gabriel sat down beside me and clasped my hands in his. “No one but Walsingham and the torture master know what she revealed. We must be vigilant. Brave. We may survive this yet.”

“At what price?” A sob rose in my throat. “Eppie died for loving me.”

Gabriel chafed my fingers as if trying to press life back into them. “You did not put Eppie on the rack, Nell. Walsingham did.”

“Because I was too headstrong to stay at Calverley. If I had never come to court, I would never have mentioned Eppie to the queen. Gabriel . . . if Walsingham resorted to torture, then do you think what Eppie said about my birth is true?”

“Perhaps. But perhaps not.”

“Why else would the queen’s spymaster hunt a simple midwife?”

“I wonder that myself. But we do not know all the circumstances, Nell. Perhaps Eppie told someone else of her encounter with the “very fair lady” and that person carried the tale back to the queen. Mere rumor can pose enough of a threat to bring a ruler down. The queen knows the danger of well-placed rumors in unscrupulous hands. Her mother lost her head because a musician broken by torture swore he had bedded her.”

“Eppie must have fought so hard to keep the truth from Walsingham. If she had revealed all, they would never have tortured her. She died trying to protect me.”

Gabriel kissed my brow. “She loved you very much.”

“I called her mad . . . I called her a liar.”

“It is little wonder. The information she gave you still sounds fantastical.”

“If it was fantastical then why arrest her?”

“For all her temper the queen is cautious to a fault. She drives her councilors mad with her indecision when it comes to matters like this. I know Her Majesty has been cool to you of late. But I have seen Her Majesty look warmly upon you as well. She respects you, a woman whose intellect can match her own. She admires your honesty. You told her from the first your mother did not approve of you coming to court. While other women play games to win her favor, you do not.”

“I am too busy trying to stay alive! As for honesty, I shed that long ago. I badgered my father to secretly write the queen on my behalf. I deceived my mother. Dear God, I wish I had never come to court! I am sick of the intrigue, the lies. Acting as if all is well, trying not to flinch whenever I hear the guard drawing nigh me, even though they might be coming to take me to the Tower. Behaving as if all is goodness and light when I know the queen is plotting against me. Looking at her and wondering if she carried me inside her womb, if she felt me move, felt the life in me, and then ordered some servant to smother me. Maybe even Kat Ashley—Kat Ashley who is so kind to me . . .”

“I know how you must feel, Nell.”

“No, you do not! I have to brush the queen’s hair and fetch her books and smile even while she talks of you and your women!”

“Nell—”

“I do not feel like a wife! I feel alone and scared and helpless, knowing I might die tomorrow. And it might be better for you if I did.”

“Nell, for God’s sake.”

“It is true! Anyone who is linked to me is in danger. Who might be next on Walsingham’s list to torture? My mother? You?”

“He will not torture a peer of the realm.”

“He could kill you, Gabriel. What if your life is the forfeit?”

“Then you would be a merry widow,” he tried to tease.

I knotted my fist, pounded it upon his chest. “Do not mock me! I have already lost one person I—”

My voice broke. I could not finish.

Gabriel caught my wrist. I could feel his heart racing. His lashes dipped down, as if to shield feelings so raw he dared not let me see. “My death would grieve you?”

I wanted to rage at him. I wanted to pull away from emotions inside me, be safe. But who knew what time we had left? Even now Walsingham’s men might be coming to lock us up in Eppie’s place.
“My death would grieve you?”
His question reverberated through me. What could I say but the truth? “Yes.”

Gabriel kissed my temple, nudged my face upward until he could reach my cheek. His lips were warm with life, a gift I knew was far too fragile, fleeting. I wrapped my arms around him, held tight as if the two of us were caught in a gale. My lips sought his, and I wept as I dragged him down to the floor, then onto my body.

The skill he’d brought to our first bedding was gone, his body urgent as we both attempted to drive back horror with one life-affirming act. This time when he drove inside me there was no time for caution, no sheepskin barrier between us. He could not keep me safe.

I cannot say how much time we lay together. But when we heard footsteps beyond the door Gabriel went rigid. I held my breath. The instant it was quiet again he scrambled to get me back into my clothes, his face hard with self-disgust. “We should not have stayed away from the queen so long. Someone will be looking for you.”

God help me, how I wished that were true the way it had been when I was a child, when arms eager to gather me close waited behind every doorway and I had no doubt that love was there for the asking.

I fought for composure as I entered the queen’s chamber a quarter hour later. “Mistress Nell,” the queen said. “Where have you been off to?”

“I fear that there was a private matter, a woman’s matter to attend to.”

“Ah,” the queen nodded. I felt her eyes follow me the rest of that endless night.

T
HE DAYS THAT
followed were a blur of grief and deception. I stumbled through my duties, trying to hide what I knew: That Walsingham had Eppie’s blood on his hands and that Elizabeth Tudor, the queen I had so admired, the woman who might be my real mother, had given permission for the torture that had ended my nurse’s life.

I hated the queen, hated her spymaster, hated myself. Could barely drag myself through the day, until everyone from Lady Betty to Kat Ashley to even Lettice Knollys wondered at my sudden decline in health. It poisoned me inside, thinking the queen must know the reason why, be watching, waiting. At night, I tried to stem my weeping until all were asleep, but there were not enough tears in the world to wash away the guilt I felt, or the terror.

Uncertainty tore at me like the beak of the giant bird who was Prometheus’s tormenter, ripping me open night after night, making me doubt my own courage. If I could not even bear imagining the horrors Eppie had faced, how would I endure my own trial by fire if should it come? And the odds of that trial coming grew more ominous by the day. Why hadn’t Walsingham pounced already? I wondered, listening at every moment for the sound of guards marching to escort me away. More to the point, how would I outwit Walsingham when I could not even fool Mary Grey into thinking nothing was amiss? My failure to deceive her was evident in the soft store of cloths I found one night when I slipped my hand beneath the pillow.

Even Gabriel wrenched at my tenuous hold on sanity. I could not reach him. He had closed a gate heavy as the Tower’s own between us. To protect me, I reasoned, while a cold voice whispered within me
: to protect himself.

Night after night I huddled in the bed I shared with Mary Grey, in the chamber full of maids of honor and snuffling small spaniels.

I had never felt more alone.

Chapter Twenty-Five

May 1565

I
RONIC THAT ANOTHER WOMAN’S SUFFERING SHOULD
grant Gabriel and me a brief respite, delay the hounds we feared were closing in upon our heels. On the fifth of May, Isabella Markham hastened into the Maids’ Lodgings, exhausted and discouraged.

“You look a fright,” Lettice observed, her nose wrinkling in disapproval.

Isabella groaned. “It is my lady Ashley. She was stricken last night and can scarce sit up in bed. The queen is heartsick and even Her Majesty’s own Dr. Lopez does not know what may be done to put Lady Ashley at ease. I have tried every trick I know, but I only make her more restless. The queen actually hurled a book at me. Someone must go to the sickroom and attempt to soothe both of them, but I cannot think who to send.”

After what the queen had done to Eppie, part of me was glad to know Elizabeth Tudor felt pain. Then I remembered Kat Ashley’s kindness to me. “I could distract Lady Ashley,” I volunteered. “I read to my father for hours at a time after he went blind.”

Isabella Markham sighed. “I wish you luck with it.”

I selected one of Father’s volumes, then went to where the sick woman lay. The queen had ordered servants to move Kat Ashley to a chamber near to her own, fitted out with a tester bed spread with the finest linens. There, with every comfort love and wealth could provide, lay Elizabeth Tudor’s childhood nurse, lines of suffering etching her face. I pictured Eppie’s final days, imagining horror, filth, knowing I had abandoned her to her fate. It took all my will to keep my outrage from showing on my face.

“I hear you had a storm-tossed night, my lady,” I said as I approached the sickbed.

Lady Ashley’s hand fluttered. “I have been a great deal of trouble to everyone I fear. I feel as if someone placed an anvil on my chest and my limbs ache.”

At least no one has ripped them out of their sockets,
a grim voice whispered within me, as I shifted the heavy embroidered bed curtains out of the way. They were decorated with exotic animals like those I saw in the menagerie so long ago. Vines and trees and lushly stitched flowers created a jungle where the colorful creatures dwelled. With deftness cultivated while caring for my father, I slid a bolster beneath her knees, fluffed a pillow behind her shoulders and drew a snug shawl under her chin.

“I am here to amuse you,” I said, tucking the blanket around her feet. As Kat settled back into the nest I had made she sighed.

She gave a wan smile. “You are a good child to do so. I fear Her Majesty has frightened everyone else away. She is most worried, bless her.”

I did not trust myself to answer. “I have brought the tales of King Arthur. Perhaps hearing of his quests will while away the hours.” I opened the first page.

In time the tight-drawn skin on her face softened, her eyes closed. She did not sleep, but she was lulled by the tale, and when a gentleman usher opened the chamber door for the queen hours later, Kat Ashley looked the better for my being there.

I saw the queen start at the sight of me. Felt her unease. Perhaps she was wondering if I knew of Eppie’s fate. If I might take some sort of revenge.

“Mistress Nell has made Camelot come quite alive,” Lady Ashley said. “I vow I am tempted to walk to the window, peer out to see if Sir Gawain is riding up to the gate.”

“That is a fine idea,” I said. “Movement will keep your muscles from growing stiff, and sunshine can revive you as it does the flowers.”

Elizabeth regarded me warily as I helped Lady Ashley to a chair near the window, where a block of spring landscape could cheer her.

“I wish I might keep Nell with me whenever I cannot sleep,” Lady Ashley said. “She does not knock about disturbing things and making me fretful.”

I saw conflicting emotions cross the queen’s face, could imagine how torn she must be. Kat must have recognized her reluctance as well.

“I beg you, Your Majesty, indulge me in this,” Kat pleaded. “Something in the child delights me. Reminds me of the old days when you were young.”

My red hair felt like a banner of guilt, and I wondered if the queen was considering the likeness between us.

“As I recall, they were dangerous days, and comforts were sparse,” the queen said.

“There were happy days even amid the troubles. You loved me well then, best in all the world.”

“I still do.” Elizabeth turned her eyes to me. There was grief in them, helplessness, rage, and a warning that chilled me.

Let her suffer as I have suffered, as Eppie suffered, I thought. Yet there was one fatal flaw in that plan: Kat Ashley would have to suffer as well.

As the summer slid past I could not bear the kind woman’s pain, or ignore the queen’s tender care of the only mother she had ever known.

Once again the strands of Elizabeth Tudor’s life twined with my own. She stood by as helplessly as I had while her beloved nurse grew ever more ill, just as I had when my father was dying. Even a queen cannot command death to retreat. As spring greened into summer and the whole countryside thrived with life, Lady Katherine Ashley withered away, and all the physicians in the queen’s household could not force her to get well.

I could have succumbed to bitterness since the queen was able to sit by her nurse’s bed and spoon broth into Kat’s mouth, while away her dying hours by sharing memories to make Kat smile. Elizabeth had the chance to tell her nurse how much she loved her, say goodbye. Comforts the queen’s watchdog, Walsingham, had denied me. Even so, I felt no joy in kind Kat Ashley’s pain. Nor could I help but pity Elizabeth.

I still had my mother. The queen had never really had her mother at all.

No matter what estate we visited on progress or what palace the court lodged at, Elizabeth’s pattern remained the same. Every night after the business of state was concluded, Her Majesty would enter Kat’s chamber, hold Kat’s hand, speak to her of the day’s events. We discussed the movements of the stars, the wellspring of art blossoming in Italy, men like Michelangelo and the great inventor da Vinci.

Early one July morn while I sat building a cathedral out of playing cards, the queen came in, fragile somehow in her embroidered night robe, shadows beneath her eyes.

I rose, balancing the last stiff rectangle against one of the spires. “Your Majesty. I did not expect you until tomorrow night.”

“I could not rest. I heard something that reminded me of a tale the Spanish ambassador once told me. It regarded a miracle cure worked on King Philip’s only son two years past. The prince had taken a blow to the head. The finest physicians in Spain tried everything they could think of. Applied holy relics and charms to the wound. The pious throughout Spain flogged themselves as a plea for God to spare him. A man named Vesalius wished from the beginning to trepan the boy.”

“Drill a hole in his head to let out the poison?”

“Exactly.” Elizabeth looked surprised at my knowledge, but I had heard Mother and Eppie discuss such a procedure, yet both felt the risk of infection too great. “At last in desperation the king ordered Vesalius to perform the procedure. He drained a good deal of pus from the wound. The prince lived. Do you think there might be some cure that the physicians are missing? Something that would help Kat?”

“My mother often lances wounds that are swollen and angry. But you cannot trepan a wound you cannot see.”

The queen hugged her arms about a waist still slim as a girl’s. “Do you think she is in pain?”

“The doctors are dosing her with soothing teas, and she complains little. You are doing all you can to help her.”

“Would I could do more. There are those who loathe the anatomist’s work, dissecting human beings, even criminals who earned their execution. I have heard many churchmen claim it is an abomination and I understand the horror of it. Yet, what if such grim searches could reveal the secrets that would save one like Kat?”

“The more scientists learn about the body the more likely they’ll be to heal it.”

“Spoken like John de Lacey’s daughter. I am certain Thomasin does not share your view.”

“In science Father always said there must be mistakes before there can be great discoveries. He believed God gave us the ability to reason and expects us to use that reason to solve life’s mysteries. Else why would we be so curious?”

Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed, and I felt the force of her will upon me. Felt angry with myself for bringing up such a subject. Was not my curiosity what she must fear most of all?

“Such hungers of the mind can be fatal, Nell,” Elizabeth said. She touched the card cathedral I had been building. I watched it teeter, the whole structure threatening to fall. “Curiosity can bring any world you build tumbling down.”

I
THINK ELIZABETH
surrendered to the inevitability of Kat Ashley’s death thereafter, and turned her thoughts to whiling away the patient’s weary hours instead. The queen had servants bring whatever novelties she had to hand that might distract Kat during the weeks in bed. Exquisite instruments came to rest on shelves so I could play for Kat and sing at her whim. Seven ivory and gold flutes that made the sounds of different animals distracted her during one sleepless night, the two of us attempting to identify which beast the cry came from. The queen’s own ivory chessboard was brought for Kat to play upon and we cast the silver dice upon the backgammon board late into the night. But in time the games became too tedious. Even Kat’s needle grew too heavy, and she fastened it into the tapestry piece she was working on and laid it aside.

One night the queen entered, her face icy pale, tense with waiting. Death was coming. We all knew it would not be long. “Kat, is there aught I can get for you?” Elizabeth asked, and I marked how strange it seemed—the queen asking such a question.

“There is something. My coffer. Nell, bring it. Most precious gift the queen ever gave me . . . tucked in very bottom.”

Elizabeth nodded to me and I went to the far side of the chamber, scooped up a pearl-crusted box. I set it on the bed between them and opened the coffer’s lid, wondering what kind of treasure it might hold.

The queen rummaged through it, drew out a pair of velvet slippers no longer than her palm. A tiny rose was stitched in gold upon the worn blue cloth.

“My first dancing slippers,” Elizabeth whispered. “I remember you snipped off the pearls.”

“Had to return them to the Royal Wardrobe. But slippers were beyond repair and too small to be of any use. You said I must keep them, lest I forget you. It was as if you knew somehow how many of those you loved you had yet to lose.”

“Not you. Even when they tried to take you away.”

“Will you tuck them in my shroud when this is over? I cannot be without them.”

Feeling their grief too private for me to intrude, I withdrew to the far side of the chamber where my writing box and books lay, close at hand for those weary hours when Kat was sleeping. But the pain reached out to me across that divide. I know the queen wept. I was weeping, too.

I stood at a table, tried to write to a letter. At length, the queen crossed to stand beside me.

“Kat is asleep. You write to your mother?”

“Yes.”

“Have you told her of Kat’s illness?”

She already knew the answer, I was certain. Walsingham had read every missive I wrote. I laid my pen aside and turned to look at the queen. “My mother cares much for Lady Ashley. I know she prays for her to find peace.”

“Peace,” Elizabeth echoed, running her thumb over the tiny slipper cupped in her hand. “These might have fit you had you tried them on that day you tried to rescue me from the Tower.”

“I frustrated my poor dancing master. He did his best, but my parents did not push me overmuch. I was to stay in the country, as you said the day Sir Gabriel wished to partner me.”

The queen fell quiet. I expected her to leave. Instead she whispered. “I have never known a world without Kat.”

I cannot say what drove me to risk it, but I dared to squeeze Elizabeth’s hand. No words would come. The queen’s thumb swept the ridge of my scar. I could feel the truth she must know, an insurmountable barrier between us. I released her, looked away.

Next morn, Katherine Ashley was gone.