The Queen's Captive Page 19

  The guard plunged the torch into the piled faggots and straw. There was a whomp of the straw bursting into flame. Voices in the crowd sighed a loud “Ah!” of approval. Hearing it, Honor could not breathe. In sympathy, Richard’s hand almost crushed hers.

  Flames leapt from the straw and licked George’s feet. His body stiffened. His red-rimmed eyes bulged white with terror. Smoke boiled up around him in the windless air. Honor’s parched lungs forced her to suck a breath, and the smell of the smoke sent an acid shock to her stomach that brought sickness boiling up her throat. She forced down the bile. Please, let the gunpowder catch.

  The flames died a little, the straw consumed. But the fire took hold in the faggots piled around the stake, and these flames, more determined, leapt up, making George’s breeches smoke. He kicked in an involuntary spasm, but he was above the fuel and there was nothing to kick but the scorched air. Honor saw the sole of his foot charred black like meat on a spit, and she gagged. His abdomen pumped under the searing hot chain. His head rolled against the stake, his eyes wild with pain. At his agonized moans Honor thought she would go mad. In the crowd, a few men and women were openly weeping.

  Soon George’s breeches were smoking black shreds. Flames ate at his charred legs. His eyeballs bulged as he writhed against the chain. His shirt hem curled and smoked, then caught fire in an orange burst of flame. Sparks jumped to his hair, setting it smoking. He screamed. Someone in the crowd laughed. The flames leapt higher.

  A slosh of liquid from the crowd hit one of the canvas gunpowder sacks, and then the other, wetting them. It was the apprentices flinging beer from their tankards, wanting to prolong the show. The sacks hissed steam, an almost comical sound that brought more laughter. The watching guards did not budge.

  “No!” a man in the crowd shouted, hoarse with grief.

  His cry unstopped the anguished fury of others like him. Two young men charged the pit, one banging Honor’s shoulder as he barreled past her. He jumped the rope. The next man trampled it. That set loose a half dozen others who stampeded after them.

  Guards sprang into action, chasing them. The dignitaries on the platform jumped up, shouting, pointing.

  But the enraged sympathizers, nine of them now, were racing toward George. A woman cried out to him, “Hold on, friend!” One of the on-rushers, a man huge like a wrestler, with long, fast strides reached the stake and pulled off his heavy gray cloak and hurled it at the burning faggots to smother the fire.

  Hope flashed through Honor. Without thinking she bolted forward, driven by a pure, primal need, mad to join the rescuers. She was over the trampled rope and at the heels of the young man running ahead. George, writhing in his agony, loomed so near! She heard Richard shouting her name behind her. Then his voice was smothered in the shouting all around.

  She was almost at the stake. Flames had quickly eaten through the man’s flung cloak and now raged up around George. Guards reached the sympathizers who had run forward first, and they set on them with fists and clubs. A man toppled at Honor’s side, blood gushing from his nose. A youth stumbled and fell, then instantly jumped to his feet and swung his fist at a guard. Another young man broke free from a guard and lunged at the bishop’s chancellor. His knuckles smashed the priest’s face. The priest collapsed and fell facedown in the muck.

  As Honor reached George, the heat of the flames hit her like a fist. She smelled his charred skin. He looked down at her from the ledge, his dried eyes stuck open, and recognition leapt there—a spark of joy at her presence—even as he continued to writhe. Wildness overtook her. She could not stop herself. She dropped to her knees and pawed at the burning faggots. She batted away scorching chunks of straw, scattering blazing sticks, feeling nothing but a surging desperation to kill the fire.

  “Here!” a man yelled at her. Liquid splashed over her hands. She gasped at the cold relief, suddenly aware of the stabbing pain, and looked up. The wrestler had grabbed the hogshead of beer from the apprentices and was sloshing it all over the straw and burning sticks. The flames died. The faggots hissed steam and billowed smoked. Honor looked up at George in a daze of elation. The fire was out!

  A cheer went up.

  Then, a scream. Honor staggered to her feet. The apprentices were leading a vicious counterattack on the sympathizers. Men and women were fighting all around her. Punching, kicking, gouging. With hands throbbing, she looked around for Richard. Through the mass of bodies she spotted his face, smeared with blood. He was fighting two guards. For every blow he landed they returned doubly brutal punches. His ear was ripped, streaming blood. A fist to his stomach made him double over. One of his attackers pulled a dagger.

  Something ferocious shot through Honor. She grabbed the closest stick, as thick as her arm and sharp at the tip, still smoking from the fire, and pushed through the flailing bodies, frantic to get to Richard. He chopped at the dagger hand of his attacker, knocking the man’s blade to the ground, but the other guard landed a punch to his jaw that sent him reeling. A third guard had fallen to his knees behind Richard, and he snatched the dropped dagger. Gripping it with savage determination, he aimed the tip upward for an underhand thrust at Richard’s back.

  Honor reached the man and stabbed with the stick, its tip spearing his throat. Flashing her a look of shock, he gasped and dropped the dagger. Blood spurted from his throat. He groped at his neck, smeared black from the charred wood and red with blood. He gasped for air with a gurgling sound, and fell. Richard punched one of his two other attackers, who staggered in place, and before the second one could swing, Richard grabbed Honor’s hand and pulled her away. Hacking with his free arm, he cut a path through the crowd.

  They reached the edge of the melee and she realized he meant to pull her all the way clear of Smithfield. She dug in her heels. “No! We can’t go! We can save him!”

  “We can’t. Look.” He jerked her around by the shoulders to show her.

  A troop of the Queen’s guard was galloping up from Pie Corner. At least thirty soldiers in half-armor. With swords held high, they thundered toward the rioting crowd with all the terrifying power of cavalry. Some in the crowd saw them coming and started to run. The soldiers expertly broke into a three-pronged formation and galloped after the escapees. Women screamed. Swords slashed. Blood gushed. Men toppled. Some soldiers swung down off their mounts and joined the guards in beating the troublemakers to their knees. Victims curled up beneath the merciless blows. Within minutes the Queen’s soldiers were dragging their quarry away, bloodied and broken.

  Honor felt Richard snatch her hand and yank her, like the sharp tug of a rope. They ran.

  They were almost at the Elms when a woman shrieked. Honor looked back at the pit. Fresh flames had burst around George, leaping as high as his waist.

  When they reached Newgate they melded into the oblivious, plodding crowd of farmers, maids, draymen atop wagons, lords on horseback—all passing in and out through the great arch. Panting, dazed, Honor and Richard leaned against the stone arch wall, out of the stream of traffic, hiding in its shadows. Standing behind her, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her backward to him. Her head thumped back against his chest, her burned hands pulsing pain, her spirit beaten. She felt his chest heave in a torment all his own. She slumped in his arms, her throat scalded by sobs she could not control.

  In the busy city, the bells of St. Paul’s clanged.

  14

  Commons and Lords

  December 1555

  The River Thames was sluggish under thickly falling snow as the wherry’s bow nudged the Whitehall Palace wharf. Honor ducked her head as she moved out from under the boat’s canopy, and found the wharf as busy as ever with people who had come to do business at court, though they bustled with cheerless determination in the damp December chill. Cheerless, indeed, was her own state of mind. There were just three weeks until Christmas, but she felt no connection to the lighthearted joys of the season. Stepping onto the water stairs, she tugged her fur-lined cloak tighter using ju
st her fingertips, but even that motion made her blistered palms sting under the linen dressings. Yet how paltry her pain was, she thought, compared to what George had suffered.

  Her heart was so heavy she could not have said which weight was the more punishing—her grief at George’s death, or her revulsion at the woman whose policy had condemned him. The same woman, she was sure, who had sent an assassin last month to kill Elizabeth—or at least connived the attack with the imperial ambassador—and almost killed Adam instead. The very woman she was on her way to see. Queen Mary. Honor wondered if she could bear to make yet another empty report to her about Elizabeth. How could she manage to hold back her fury? Yet she had to, for Elizabeth’s sake. Had to find out from the Queen herself the truth behind whispers of a new dark design she had against her sister. Honor had been warned of it by a trusted source, the French ambassador. Parliament was to be the Queen’s instrument.

  “I have heard,” Noailles said as they had dined alone at his house in the city, “that she has asked the Duke of Norfolk to draw up a bill in the Lords to declare Princess Elizabeth illegitimate. That would instantly bar her from the succession.”

  Honor had been appalled. “And leave open the door for the Queen’s husband to seize the crown.”

  Noailles nodded in grim agreement. “Philip of Spain on the throne of England.” It was the French king’s nightmare.

  An English nightmare was what it portended to Honor—for Elizabeth and the whole country. Philip taking power would so enrage Englishmen it could unleash civil war. But that did not seem to concern this criminally irresponsible queen. Far more important was saving her subjects’ immortal souls from the pollution of the sister she considered a bastard and a heretic. But, though the House of Lords might ram through such a bill, would the House of Commons agree to pass it? Honor fervently hoped not. But hope was no defense. It was up to Richard and their friends in the House to actually fight the Queen. He was in Westminster at this very moment, fighting her other bills.

  She made her way through the courtyard where courtiers and servants trod gingerly over cobbles slick with ice. A troop of the Palace Guard marched past, the battle-axes atop their halberds glinting through the falling snow, and Honor’s mind flashed back to the guard she had stabbed in the throat at Smithfield. That charred stick. His shock and horror. His spurting blood. Had he survived, or had she committed murder? The possibility sent a shiver through her. But she realized, with a calmness that shocked her even more, that the guilt she felt was a mere surface discomfort. The man would have killed Richard. The Queen’s tyrannical rule, she thought, has made savages of us all.

  She continued past the clock tower and around to the rear of the palace and through the snow-deadened gardens, then climbed the private outdoor stairway to the royal apartments. She entered the warmth of the antechamber and was still batting snow off the hem of her skirt with the back of her swollen hand when a young lady-in-waiting came and told her that Her Majesty was ready to see her. Honor took a deep breath to stifle her revulsion. Play the part. Be her friend. Get the information.

  The moment she was ushered into the Queen’s private chamber she felt a flutter of alarm. Queen Mary sat at dinner before a blazing fire, but not alone. To her right sat Frances Grenville. To her left, John Grenville. When had he become so close to the Queen?

  “Mistress Thornleigh,” the Queen said in that mannish voice that always unnerved Honor. She thumped her goblet down as though declaring a challenge. “You and yours have been mightily busy since we saw you last.”

  Honor made her curtsy, her skin prickling. “It has been some time, indeed, since I have had the pleasure of seeing Your Majesty.” The Queen looked ten years older, she thought. Pining for her husband? Philip, it was said, had been living with his mistress in Brussels these last four months. Honor nodded civilly to Frances Grenville and the baron. “And it is always a pleasure to see my neighbors.”

  “Do not be so sure. Lord Grenville has brought me very grave news. I will have the truth from you.”

  News? Truth? Honor had the queasy sense that she had fallen into a trap. The scene before her—the ladies-in-waiting quietly bustling with dishes of food at the sideboard, the musician across the room plucking a sweet tune on his lute, the cheery fire—it was all at odds with the dread creeping into her breast. The three of them at the table sat watching her like judges. Why?

  “But first I want to speak of your son. Of his action that saved my sister from an assassin’s attack. I am informed that he intentionally risked his life to save hers. How can you account for his behavior? Does your son not share your view of this pernicious woman?”

  It was hard for Honor to find her voice, choked by her certainty that the Queen had ordered the attack herself, and horrified that Adam was under suspicion. “I can vouchsafe for him, Your Majesty. He is a young man trained in dealing with danger on the seas. His action was a kind of reflex, an unthinking response.”

  “You can vouchsafe? And why should I believe a word you say? I trusted you, madam, gave you my friendship, and look how you repay me.” She pushed away from the table so abruptly it made the chair legs shriek. Both the Grenvilles immediately rose, too. John watched the Queen with a barely concealed excitement that made Honor feel suddenly cold.

  The Queen stumped to the sideboard, to a silver basin of water, and thrust her hands in to cleanse them, splashing them about like panicked birds. A lady-in-waiting bowed as she handed her an embroidered hand towel. Mary wiped her hands roughly, glaring at Honor the whole time. “What happened to your hands?” she demanded.

  “A foolish accident, Your Majesty. A brazier of hot coals came loose from its bracket. Unthinking, I reached out to steady it.”

  “Unthinking? Like your son?” Mary’s eyes narrowed on her. “You were indeed unwise. Burned flesh is a serious business.”

  Honor thought of George writhing in the flames, and had to bite her tongue.

  Mary flung the towel onto the sideboard. “Enemies on all sides,” she said darkly. “My bastard sister. This wretched Parliament. Your family.”

  All Honor could think of was saving Adam from the Queen’s wrath. “We are no enemies, Your Majesty. My son has proven his good heart in his devotion to your pious concerns. He is helping Mistress Grenville reestablish the priory in Colchester.” She looked to Frances, desperately hoping for support.

  A strange light shone in Frances’s eyes, as though she relished Honor’s fall. But Honor believed that the woman’s keen interest was also fed by her infatuation with Adam. Her hysterical behavior in church was hard to forget. Disturbing as that was, Honor now needed Frances on her side. Looking right at her, she said, “He takes such delight in doing this work with Mistress Grenville.”

  Frances blurted eagerly, “He has told you so?”

  “Often.”

  The Queen bellowed, “We speak not of monks but of treason!”

  The lute tune died. The ladies-in-waiting ducked their heads. Honor felt frozen with dread.

  John Grenville cleared his throat, trying to hide his pleasure at the Queen’s outburst but not succeeding. “Your Majesty, if I may question her?”

  “Do. I have no patience with the woman.”

  He turned to Honor with the coiled aggression of a prosecutor. “Misguided your son may have been, madam. We shall see. At the moment, though, another member of your family more nearly endangers Her Majesty’s peace. In Westminster, in Parliament, an unruly faction at this very moment is stirring up unrest in the Commons to thwart her Majesty’s bills, and among the rabble-rousers is your husband. How do you account for his behavior?”

  Honor had barely recovered from the attack on Adam. This was worse. The vicious gleam in Grenville’s eyes spoke of his hatred for Richard, a hate that had festered since his father’s death at Richard’s hand. “My lord, my husband’s actions—”

  “His duplicity!” the Queen burst in. “And this is not the first time. I have just been told that he joined the heinous
uprising against us led by the traitor Wyatt. My councilors advised me at the time that many men were duped by that villain’s lies and deceits, men who otherwise were loyal subjects, and on that advice I pardoned many in an act of mercy, including, apparently, your miserable husband. But now he rails against me in Parliament. Is this how you and yours value my benevolence? My friendship?”

  Honor swallowed. “My husband is green in the ways of Parliament, Your Majesty. I trust that a sovereign as wise as you can forgive a novice’s mere bluster.”

  Mary’s lip curled. “When I pardoned him I, too, was green—new to my calling as God’s chosen servant. I know better now. I rule for His glory.”

  She came forward until they stood just inches apart, her eyes boring into Honor’s with all the hurt pride of a woman abandoned by her own husband. Mary was shorter, and Honor, sensing that her taller stature was a further indignity to the Queen, dropped to her knees and bowed her head.

  The Queen gave a snort, then turned and walked back toward the table. “My lord, I am done. Have the sergeant of the guard take her elsewhere.”

  Honor could hardly breathe as she raised her head to John Grenville. He looked as if he could not believe his good fortune. “And what is your will, Your Majesty?” he asked. “Further interrogation?”

  She fluttered her hand impatiently over her shoulder. “Do with her what you will.”

  Frances’s eyes flicked between the three of them—her brother, Honor, and the Queen—as though a battle of indecision was raging inside her. Suddenly, she moved toward the Queen. “Your Majesty, may I have a word?”

  They met at Arundel’s Tavern that evening to strategize. It was well away from Westminster, deep in the old city, a few hundred yards west of London Bridge on Poultney Lane. Richard poured ale from a pitcher for the nine of them around the table. They were all tired, hungry, and thirsty after the intense Commons debate over the Queen’s ecclesiastical revenues bill. It had started at eight in the morning and gone on all day, and when the vote was called they had lost. Richard had been shocked—he’d thought they had the support they needed. But he was quickly learning about Parliament. He wouldn’t again underestimate the Queen’s allies in the House.