The Queen's Captive Read online

  She dismissed him. When his footsteps died on the stairs she went back to the window and looked out at the church steps. The beggar had stopped scratching. He was looking at Frances’s front door as it opened, flooding the patch of street with light.

  Sturridge walked out, swaggering now as he pocketed Frances’s purse. The door slammed shut, cutting off the light, leaving Sturridge alone in the moonlight. He smoothed back his hair with both hands and looked up and down the street with an expectant look, but unhurried, as though pondering which alehouse to visit.

  The beggar on the church steps threw back the side of his cloak, revealing a dagger in his hand. Another man stepped out of the dark alley, and another moved forward from behind Sturridge. The three came slowly toward him, stalking. He tensed, taking in the two brutish faces before him, and their knives. He twisted around, saw the one coming behind him with an even longer knife. He shot a look up at Frances’s window, horror leaping into his eyes.

  The beggar’s blade rammed into Sturridge’s back. He arched in agony. The others’ knives stabbed his neck, his chest. He dropped to his knees. The three men bent over him and hacked.

  When Sturridge lay still and bleeding, the beggar dug into his pocket and yanked out Frances’s purse. The other two carried the body to the church alley and heaved it, facedown, into the darkness. The three men dispersed into the night.

  Frances looked up for a moment at the moon. Was Adam looking up at it, too, and thinking of her? She pulled the curtain, blew out the candles, and went downstairs. He could sleep now, safe. She would always take care of him. No one could hurt him and live.

  The horses were saddled. Richard was booted and spurred. Honor had tipped the servants and said her thank-yous. Adam was bidding Elizabeth good-bye. They were leaving for London, Richard to take his seat in the upcoming Parliament in Westminster, Adam to launch his ship in Colchester, Honor to report on Elizabeth to the Queen.

  Another toothless report to lull Mary’s fears, Honor thought as she made her way down the stairs of Hatfield House to join the others outside. How much longer could she keep up this subterfuge with the Queen? The chilly autumn wind whipped her skirts as she crossed the gravel path to where Elizabeth stood talking with Richard and Adam beside the waiting horses and grooms, and she wondered if now was the time to warn the Princess. There was no crisis yet, and indeed Mary had grudgingly accepted her regular assessments that Elizabeth, well frightened by her imprisonment in the Tower and her year under house arrest, had been sobered by the reality of Mary’s reign and was now properly conforming in religion and eschewing any contact with a single soul who grumbled against the Queen. But almost weekly, festering rumors of rebellion burst like boils in Mary’s court, panicking her councilors and enraging Mary herself, and each rumor invariably peaked with the whisper that, naturally, any rebel leader’s aim would be to put Elizabeth on the throne. It maddened Mary. Which made Honor’s task of lulling her more difficult with every passing week.

  “Careful, careful,” Elizabeth said, sounding as anxious as a mother as Adam swung himself up into the saddle.

  He laughed. “I can sit a horse, my lady. The wound’s not in my backside.”

  The grooms chuckled, and so did Richard as he mounted his horse beside Adam. It was good to see the healthy color back in their son’s face, Honor thought. Good to see him on his feet at last. He was still a little weak, and she feared his chest still ached, but the moment word had come from his shipwright that the work was finished, Adam had started packing. Honor had urged him to stay another week to get all his strength back, but she knew it was pointless. Nothing short of multiple amputations would keep him from captaining his new ship.

  Elizabeth saw her coming and held out her hand, in both greeting and farewell. Honor clasped it, wondering how to begin. A groom stood holding Honor’s horse for her, but she wasn’t ready yet to mount.

  “I wish you and your good husband could stay,” Elizabeth said with feeling. “You return to the great world to do battle, while I can but watch and wait. You have my deep thanks, both of you.”

  “These gifts are thanks aplenty, my lady,” Richard said, patting the horse’s neck. Elizabeth had given them three of her finest mounts and a couple of her servants to ease their journey.

  “It is small recompense, sir, if you can forestall the Queen.”

  A sober look passed between them all. Last night over supper they had discussed the bills that Queen Mary was going to introduce in Parliament to seize the estate revenues of all English exiles abroad, denouncing them as heretics. The Thornleighs had scores of exiled friends in Antwerp alone, and there were hundreds more throughout the German lands and in France. Some of the most prominent were Elizabeth’s friends, too. Honor feared that this cash grab of the Queen’s would be just the beginning. Not content with burning every self-declared Protestant in England, her apparent aim now was to ruin the exiles. And then, how long would it be before she moved against Protestant sympathizers here at home, even those she merely suspected? If her bills passed, as royal bills almost invariably did, it would put the Thornleighs and all their friends in peril.

  “We’re not alone, and we’re ready,” Richard said. “The Queen will get a fight.”

  Elizabeth smiled her thanks, but Honor knew this girl so well now she could read the tension in the smile. Though showing a courageous face, the Princess was still afraid of her sister.

  Elizabeth took a deep breath as though to shake off the fear, then brightened her smile. “I have another gift, sir. For your son.” Adam looked at her, clearly surprised, but she continued to speak to Richard. “Words cannot express my gratitude for his brave act to save my life. But perhaps my purse can.” There was a twinkle in her eye as she turned to Adam. “Master Thornleigh, will you allow me to invest in your new ship? Say, three hundred pounds?”

  Honor and Richard exchanged a look of astonishment. A huge sum. It would almost completely discharge Adam’s debt.

  Adam grinned in delight. “It would be my great honor, my lady.”

  “Partners, then?”

  Honor caught the warm look that passed between them. How Elizabeth’s eyes held his. This, it was clear, was no everyday business transaction.

  “Give me a gold coin right now,” said Adam. “An angel.”

  Elizabeth looked shocked. “You doubt my word?”

  “Good God, no. It’s to set under the mainmast.”

  When she frowned in puzzlement, Richard explained, “It’s a custom with shipbuilders, Your Grace. For luck.”

  Elizabeth smiled her delight. “Really? How charming.” She dug into the velvet purse that hung at her waist and handed an angel coin up to Adam.

  “My lady,” Adam said, his voice low with feeling as their fingers touched, “the ship is yet unnamed. Will you allow me to call her the Elizabeth?”

  She practically glowed. “An excellent name. You have my consent. May she bring you joy, sir, and riches. As I do not doubt she will if you always abide by one rule.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you master the Elizabeth tenderly.”

  Honor’s eyes flicked to Richard and he cocked an eyebrow as if to tell her that even he could see the spark between these two. Well, Honor thought, it’s natural. A handsome young hero and a lovely, grateful princess. How could they not appreciate one another? But in her mind a warning fluttered its flag. Appreciate from afar, Adam. This is a princess of the blood.

  Elizabeth broke the spell. “Now, sir, what surety can you offer me for a return on my investment?”

  Adam looked crestfallen. “There’s the cargo, of course…and—”

  “I’ll have something for my angel right now, if you please. Your whistle.”

  He blinked in confusion. “Pardon?”

  “In your pocket. You’re always toying with it. I’ve never seen you without it.”

  He pulled it out. His captain’s whistle carved from stag horn. A gift from Richard several years ago. He handed it
to Elizabeth, and as she took it her expression became very sober. “I will treasure it always, to remember what you risked for my sake.”

  The sentiment was so genuine, so unadorned, it moved Honor. Both these young people were dear to her. And both had been in mortal danger at the assassin’s hand. It jolted her back. She had to speak up now. She took the reins from the groom holding her horse and waited until he ambled away. Then she said, “My family is proud to serve you, my lady, however we can. My husband in the House of Commons to protect your interests, our son whenever you may need him, and I at court to forestall the Queen, if I can. But you must acknowledge the danger you are in.” She glanced around to make sure the servants were out of hearing. “Someone sent that assassin. We agree that it was almost certainly the Queen. She will not hesitate to try again. I fear the time has passed when you can simply watch and wait. You may have to do more.”

  Elizabeth’s face went pale. “No one is more aware than I am of the threats I face. But I have taken every precaution, and so has Sir William St. Loe, increasing my guard. What more would you have me do?”

  Honor was about to speak, but Richard stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, gentle but firm. His look warned, This is not the time or place.

  But someone had to say it. With so many lives at stake, Elizabeth had to prepare to use her power. “It may come to a fight beyond words hurled in Parliament. Your many friends here and abroad would serve you faithfully to unseat this queen. But you alone can lead them.”

  Elizabeth looked aghast. Honor could almost see the teeth of terror bite in her mind: Wyatt fought Mary. She cut off his head. And cast me in the Tower. When she spoke her voice was harsh with anger. “I will not be her prisoner again. Unless you want to send me to the block, madam, forswear such talk. Forswear the very thought. I command you.”

  Frances was nearly nauseated by the smell. The priest’s house squatted in a lane around the corner from meat shops where carcasses hung in the windows, and the air held a putrid odor of decaying flesh. She almost wished she hadn’t come, but her steward, Dyer, had said it was important. Months before, she had charged him to investigate Honor Thornleigh’s claim of friendship, long ago, with Queen Catherine and what had subsequently taken her to the Low Countries, and Dyer’s search, following up on his German agent’s report, had led him back to London and this shabby house in the filth of Southwark across the river. “You’ll want to meet this priest and hear his tale, my lady. And soon, for he is dying.”

  Perhaps that accounted for the smell, Frances thought as Dyer ushered her into the cramped bedchamber. The priest lay in a narrow bed on sweat-stained sheets, his eyes closed. She felt a little ashamed at her uncharitable response, since he was a man of God, but she had always felt disgusted by the fetid odors of the sick and the old, and this priest was both. She was also a little unnerved by his deformity.

  Father Jerome Bastwick wasn’t ugly so much as startling. His hair, standing in dry white bristles, grew on just one side of his head. On the other side, perfectly bald, the ear was as shriveled as a bacon rind, and the skin was an angry red, and stretched so tightly over his skull it was shiny. Frances knew from Dyer’s report that Bastwick had once been a royal chaplain to King Henry VIII, personally raising the host to the old King’s lips, but the old King’s son and heir, the Protestant King Edward, had made life hard for the faithful, and it was clear how far the priest had sunk since those glory days. From the look of the place—the grimed wooden walls, his soiled clothing scattered on chairs, a bowl of congealed porridge abandoned on a stool—he had not even a housekeeper.

  Bastwick’s eyes sprang open. He fixed them on Frances with surprising clarity. “God sent you,” he said, his voice a rasp.

  She was taken aback at his fervor. “I hope I walk in God’s path always, Father,” she said. She glanced at the door for Dyer, but he had gone outside to wait. She wanted to leave. “I am very sorry to bother you when you are ill, Father, and perhaps I should come back another—”

  “I will be dead. Your man told me why you’ve come. I am glad you did. It was ordained.”

  “Do you, in fact, have information about Honor Thornleigh?”

  “What is she to you?”

  “My neighbor.”

  He looked appalled. “She has returned?”

  “She and her husband and their—” She stopped before mentioning Adam. She wanted to keep his name untainted. “Yes, she recently came home.”

  “Home, bah. Her home is hell.” He was groping with one hand under the bed. He dragged out a metal box the size of a large book and, with a grunt of effort to lift it, landed it beside him on the mattress. He lay back, exhausted from the exertion. “Open it.”

  Eager to conclude this bizarre interview, Frances raised the box lid. Mottled papers lay inside.

  “Take them.” When she hesitated, he commanded “Take them!” in a voice so urgent and so full of authority, she obeyed. She lifted out a sheaf of dog-eared papers.

  “She is a devil,” Bastwick said. “I knew her first as Honor Larke, and she did me a wrong once, long ago. But that is nothing compared to the foul deeds she committed while serving Her Majesty Queen Catherine. The Thornleigh woman is a viper in the breast of Christendom.” He held up a bony finger and shook it, pointing at the papers. “It’s all there. How she befriended heretics who plotted against the Church. How she carried these vermin to safety across the Narrow Seas to laugh at God’s priests. How she wrote filthy books to bewilder and inflame the gullible. And how, in the end, she came before my court, the bishop’s court, at St. Paul’s. We examined her and found her foul with heresy. She abjured, as so many of Satan’s minions do to save their skins. But I brought her back, and proved her rankness with her own writings. She was condemned to burn. We had her chained to the stake and the fire lit under her, and she was about to breathe the last of her contagion. Read, madam, read. It’s all there. The Church’s record, faithfully transcribed. I have kept it for a day of reckoning.”

  Frances was stunned. “She was…about to burn?”

  Bastwick was groping inside the box. He took out a key. Holding it up, he said, “Take this.” He pointed to a high wooden chest across the room. “Open it.”

  Afire with curiosity now, Frances took the key and slid it into the lock and opened the chest’s twin doors. Dozens of glass vials stood in tidy rows, the kind apothecaries used for herbs and ointments.

  “Imagine the execution ground of Smithfield,” Bastwick said, “and the crowd around the stake. Imagine St. Bartholomew’s church hard by. Imagine a devil, leaping on the church roof, howling its fiendish cries, setting the people to run in terror. Imagine the fiend hurling boiling pitch down on them.” He turned to her, a wild gleam in his eyes as though he was reliving the chaos and horror. “Flaming tar that struck some poor souls, who screamed in pain.” His hand groped at the bald side of his head with its red, shiny skin. Burned, Frances realized—burned beyond recovery. “Imagine vile wretches planted in that crowd who raced to the stake and freed her, Honor Thornleigh, Satan’s own.”

  He stretched out his thin arm to proudly indicate his collection of vials. Listening in awe to his story, Frances had not looked closely at what was in the vials. She looked now. Not herbs. Not medicines. Each vial held a small bone. Some as thin as pencils, some charred black, some white as chalk. She realized with a shock that they were finger bones. Human fingers.

  “Each one from a heretic burned in England since I took holy orders,” he said. “Gathered from the cinders, or bought, or bartered for. For twenty-one years I have been waiting to add Honor Thornleigh’s.”

  Frances could not get away fast enough. She rode onto London Bridge with Dyer riding behind her, and kicked her horse to move as quickly as possible through the traffic of wagons and riders and people on foot, all plodding their way in and out of the city. The truth about Honor Thornleigh appalled her. A heretic! Condemned! And another realization was creeping over her—that her father had known it a
ll. That had to be the reason why he went to Speedwell House that night, that terrible night over a year ago when he shot the woman, wounding her, and her husband killed Frances’s father.

  What was she to do with this dumbfounding news? Tell her brother? John would be maddened beyond imagining. Maddened enough to attack the Thornleighs. Attack Adam!

  No! John must never know. She must tell no one. She was shocked at her own decision. It was terribly wrong to withhold knowledge about a convicted heretic. But how could she not, when it would endanger Adam, so dear to her heart?

  In her saddlebag were Bastwick’s papers. They would stay in her possession. The old priest would soon die, and then she would be the only one who knew. Dyer had heard, of course, but Dyer she could trust. Honor Thornleigh’s secret would stay with her.

  13

  Smithfield

  November 1555

  “A silver rattle?” Honor suggested.

  “How about a silver cup?”

  “Richard, the child’s still suckling.”

  “Not for long.”

  “You’d send him a beer tankard if you could.”

  “Good idea. Why wait?”

  She laughed. “A silver rattle,” she said, ending the debate. She would order it this very morning and hope it would reach their baby grandson before Christmas. George Mitford would have just the thing.

  Stepping out of London’s Crane Inn they started to make their way along busy Thames Street, and as Honor hooked her arm in Richard’s she felt buoyed by life’s fullness. Nicholas was a thriving babe of six months. Adam would soon launch the Elizabeth on her maiden voyage to Antwerp with a cargo of finished wool cloth, the fruits of Richard’s hard work. And she and Richard were now on their way to deliver a gift for another of life’s passages, a wedding present for George Mitford’s son Roger, whose marriage would take place next week. Honor had enjoyed searching out the gift at Chastelain’s, one of the finest shops on Goldsmiths Row—a set of Venetian crystal goblets tinted blue like a spring sky at dusk, and etched with a delicate pattern of stars.