The Queen's Captive Read online

  “I care not what he thinks,” said Frances, which was true, though not for any reason John would assume. Adam’s good opinion she craved. Adam’s father could go hang.

  “Don’t misunderstand. I approve what you’ve done,” John murmured, absently tugging at the scar above his lip. Frances remembered hearing about how he’d got that scar. He had been fifteen when, late one night, in the kitchen, a pretty scullery maid had rebuffed his advances. He had forced her to the floor, and the girl, struggling to repel him, had groped for a knife and flailed, cutting him. To punish her he had convinced their father to turn her out as a thief. He had told Frances the facts with no more remorse than if he’d ordered a hunting dog put down for biting him. Nine months later the girl gave birth in the woods beside the churchyard, then strangled the baby and hanged herself. “I very much approve,” he repeated now.

  “I knew you’d like it. I got the idea from your own actions the other day, treating Thornleigh as though you’ve forgiven him.”

  “More important, letting him believe so.”

  “Exactly. And now, through his son, I can keep watch on them. See what they’re up to.”

  “Bide our time.”

  “Yes.”

  He fingered the scar, musing.

  5

  The Captive Princess

  February 1555

  The floor rushes reeked like a London alley. That was Honor’s first thought as she carried in Princess Elizabeth’s laundry through the gatehouse rooms on a drizzly February morning. The rain that had been pummeling Woodstock for three days had let up only hours ago, reduced to a fainthearted spitting as though weary of the fight. It had come after the freezing cold of January, when the inmates had shivered day and night as wind whistled through the decayed roofs and broken windowpanes. Elizabeth had told Honor on her last visit that her fingers were so cold she could barely turn the pages of her Cicero. Now, her rooms, shuttered tight against the wet, smelled so stale that Honor judged they had not been aired, nor the floor rushes changed, in a week. It was a week that she had used to full advantage, however. She was tingling with the news she had brought the Princess.

  But the days of rain seemed to have beaten the fight out of Elizabeth. Honor opened the door to find her slumped in her chair, gazing out the cracked window at the wet, gray courtyard, her legs stretched out, her arms folded, as though she expected nothing to ever happen, nothing to ever change. A black-and-white cat lay in her lap, stretched out as still as death.

  Watching her from the doorway, Honor felt a tug of pity. For all of her young life this fastidious princess had been accustomed to moving with her whole household every few weeks from one of her homes to another, so that the rooms could be cleaned and a new carpeting of rushes with sweet-smelling herbs strewn down. She was used to being active, too. A skilled horsewoman, she had delighted in riding her estates, in hunting and hawking. She loved dancing and music and merry company. The squalor and idleness of these eleven months of captivity had been hard on her indeed, Honor thought. How much more would she have to endure? Or—terrifying thought—was captivity just the first stage in her march to the scaffold?

  Honor glanced around the room. No ladies. She set down her load of laundry, making the cat on Elizabeth’s lap jerk up its head. It jumped to the floor and streaked past Honor and out through the open door.

  Elizabeth said, without even making the effort to turn her head away from the window, “You watch the clock well, Mistress Thornleigh. I sent them out, just as you asked.”

  “How long do we have?”

  “Not long. They’ll be back soon with wine.” Her voice was raspy, a just-out-of-bed voice, as though she could not find the interest to wake it up. “I hope they bring enough wine to fog my head. I long to forget where I am.”

  The tone of self-pity doused Honor’s sympathy. Rouse yourself, she wanted to say, or how can you expect others to rouse themselves for you? She had thought the girl’s former, brazen defiance of Bedingfield a dangerous indulgence, but this sluggishness was worse. She pulled a book the size of her hand out of her bulky shawl. “The della Mirandola volume you wanted,” she said, displaying it.

  Elizabeth barely glanced at it. “Oration on the Dignity of Man.” She shrugged and puffed out her cheeks in a weary sigh. “To what end? All my fine learning for naught.”

  Honor noticed some odd scratches on the windowpane. Three ragged lines etched into the bottom corner. Words, she realized. She bent closer to read them:

  Much suspected by me,

  Nothing proved can be.

  Quoth Elizabeth, prisoner

  She looked at the Princess, startled. How had she etched this on the glass?

  Elizabeth’s smile was sly as she held up her right hand and waggled her index finger to display a diamond ring.

  Honor had to admire the girl—she had some fighting spirit. She glanced at the words again—Nothing proved—and could not resist asking, “Is there guilt to prove?”

  Elizabeth looked her in the eye. “None. I received a letter from Wyatt a few days before he raised his rebellion. He told me I should get as far away from London as I could. In answer I sent word by way of Sir William St. Loe, saying I thanked him but would do as I saw fit. That is all.”

  “And the French ambassador? They say a letter of yours to the Queen was found in his diplomatic pouch.”

  “A copy only. As I’ve told the Queen’s councilors a hundred times. And not a word in it about rebellion.”

  “Yet how could it have got there without your cooperation?”

  “Who knows? Some worm of a spy in my household.”

  “More serious, why would the ambassador have had it unless the French were expecting you to take an active part in Wyatt’s revolt?”

  Elizabeth sprang to her feet, fury on her face. “Do you worm your way in to spy on me, too?”

  It was Honor’s turn to be angry. “To strengthen your courage to survive the Queen’s questioning. As you well know.”

  They were standing face-to-face, and Honor saw a change sweep over Elizabeth’s. From defiance to fear. “What good is courage?” she cried. “What good is my innocence if my sister means to kill me at all costs?”

  “Not at all costs. Which is why we must make the cost too high.”

  “There is no such thing for a queen!” She flopped down in the chair and buried her face in her hands. Honor could not help thinking of Isabel ten years ago, disconsolate over some slight that could wound only a twelve-year-old girl. It reminded her how young this Princess still was. How untried. How unused to the uses of power.

  Elizabeth shook her head as though suddenly too weary of it all. She looked out the window to the courtyard, disconsolate. “I like to let Fool out. Like to see him go about his cat business, whenever and wherever he wants. How I envy him.”

  Honor followed her gaze. The black-and-white cat was prowling along the top of a high stack of firewood beside the farrier’s forge. Through the kitchen’s open doors she saw scullery maids scrubbing pots, steam billowing out into the chilly air. One of them stepped outside and hurled a pan of water onto the cobbles, and the cat bolted away.

  “Those maids are more free than I am,” Elizabeth mused. This time there was no self-pity in her voice. This was a tone Honor had not heard before, though she couldn’t have said exactly what the difference was. Longing, perhaps, but honest and direct. “I watch them,” Elizabeth went on. “I sit here and I watch. One got her ears boxed last week by the cook. One sneaks out to see her lover, a guard. They have their trysts over there in the farrier’s shed. Another one shoves bread crusts into her apron pocket. At first I thought she was hoarding for herself, but then I saw her one evening scattering the crusts for the pigeons. I watch the guards, too. Their quarreling over dice games, and their petty feuds, and then a half hour later their easy camaraderie, everything forgiven. I watch them all, and envy them.”

  Honor listened, fascinated. And understood something at that moment. The yearning h
eart in this princess that drew people to her. A phrase of Niccolò Machiavelli came to her mind. To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.

  Elizabeth lifted her eyes to the far wall of the courtyard, as though envisioning the garden that lay beyond it. “You know the legend of Fair Rosamund who lived here? Mistress of King Henry II? He kept her, they say, in an elegant bower inside the garden maze. He hid here there to keep her safe from his jealous wife, Queen Eleanor. He would find his way through the maze to Rosamund by following a silken thread. But the Queen came by one day and outside the maze she spotted the thread. It had caught on the spur of the knight who guarded Rosamund. Eleanor followed it, and it took her to the center of the maze, where she found her rival and forced her to take poison. The bower had hidden Fair Rosamund, but it was a prison that fatally entrapped her.”

  Honor felt a rush of sympathy for Elizabeth. Felt as protective as a mother for her child. She came close to her and said, “We will not allow this queen to kill you. I promise.”

  Elizabeth looked up at her, blinking. “How can you be so sure?”

  Honor was not sure. But she would do her all to make good on this pledge. “I believe there is one cost too high for her to do so.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “The anger of the people. If they know you bear your hardships with dignity, they will love you for it—and resent the Queen. She has no standing army. She cannot risk another uprising in your name, because next time she might lose.”

  Elizabeth looked skeptical. “All the more reason to kill me.”

  “Only if she becomes maddened enough, unbalanced enough, to take that risk. That is why we must be cautious and vigilant.” Honor looked at the clock on the mantle. It was time. “Listen to me, my lady. The Queen’s other gambit is to snare you in her religious trap. I urge you to show more willingness to conform.”

  “Good God, not you, too! Religion, always religion. I have done nothing to go against her in this. I do not prate like these wild Protestants. But how can she expect me to know each tricky step of the Catholic ways when I never even heard her religion until now.”

  Honor knew this applied to most young people across the country. Attending mass every Sunday was the law, and almost everyone obeyed, but the Queen had forced this change only a year ago, at her coronation. Until then no mass had been celebrated in England for two decades, not since King Henry had wrenched the realm away from Rome to make himself head of the English church. And, after him, his teenage son, Edward, had ruled for six years as a devout Protestant. Queen Mary had now reinstated the old orthodoxy, but Honor believed there was no English subject under thirty who was a true Catholic.

  “Bedingfield watches you at mass,” she said, nodding toward the chapel that adjoined Elizabeth’s outer chamber. “If he sees your reluctance to participate, you can be sure he is reporting it to the Queen.”

  “And how am I supposed to convince the toad of my devotion?”

  “By show. Ask him for more religious books. Invite him to attend mass with you. Seclude yourself in the chapel every day for private prayer.”

  Elizabeth looked at her as if Honor had lost her mind. “I’ll do no such thing. I have no stomach for groveling and hypocrisy.”

  “I tell you, you must, for if—”

  Laughter interrupted them from the other room. The ladies, returning.

  Honor snatched up the bundle of laundry. “Go to the chapel,” she whispered. “Now.”

  Elizabeth smirked. “Or else?”

  “Or you’ll have no more books, for I shall never visit you again.”

  Elizabeth’s frown showed she was considering the threat. Honor could only hope that the books meant more to the girl than her pride. “Now, tell your ladies you will spend an hour in private prayer. Go.”

  The ladies came in. Honor kneeled as Elizabeth flounced past her. “I am going to chapel,” Elizabeth announced to the room with gloomy theatricality, like a child being punished. “I feel a need to pray.” Honor watched her go into the chapel with all the eagerness of a patient going to have a tooth pulled.

  It took a few minutes for the ladies to sort the laundry and load Honor with the bundle of dirty underclothes. They were settling down with a deck of cards to play primero as she left them and headed through the outer room. But instead of going out she ducked into the chapel.

  Elizabeth sat pouting in a pew. Honor slipped in beside her. Elizabeth looked surprised. “What—?”

  “Just wait,” Honor whispered. “And it wouldn’t hurt you to kneel and say a prayer.” In case anyone looked in.

  Defiant, Elizabeth sat back, arms folded, to endure the wait.

  Not five minutes later they heard a rustling behind the curtain of the confessional. Its rear door adjoined the former priest’s room. The curtain opened and out stepped Thomas Parry. Elizabeth’s mouth fell open at the sight of her steward dressed in the homespun smock and leggings of a servant.

  He made a low bow to her. “Your Grace.”

  She jumped up. “Thomas!”

  “Shhh!” Honor said.

  Elizabeth shot Honor a look of wonder. “How…?”

  Honor was pleased with herself despite the dangers that still lurked. “I discovered some interesting byways in this ancient heap.” She had found that dressed in her laundress’s garb, with lowered head and a plodding gait, she was as good as invisible to Bedingfield’s household staff and his guardsmen, both within and without the decrepit palace grounds. On one reconnoiter through the kitchen and down its dank back stairs she had discovered a musty, cobwebbed room, a former root cellar, it seemed. The hinges on its creaking door to the outside were so rusty they half seized as she pushed it open. And it took several hard shoves against the tangle of thorny shrubs outside, grown wild, before she could open it enough to crawl through. She had been astonished to find herself at the base of the courtyard’s outside wall. A track led through trees toward the river. An old delivery path, she guessed. The root cellar, so long unused—for generations, perhaps—appeared to have been forgotten. The door was definitely unguarded.

  “Master Parry cannot stay long,” she told Elizabeth, “but long enough to give you news of your estates and your friends. Even a little news of the world.”

  Elizabeth laughed and grabbed Parry’s hand. “Thomas, you are the answer to a maiden’s prayer.”

  For half an hour the Princess and her steward talked like old friends long apart, eager to catch up. Honor followed as best she could as they discussed Elizabeth’s staff and servants at her various homes: her houses at Hatfield and Ashridge, her castle at Donnington, and her other estates. Many of these people had been dismissed by the Queen, and Elizabeth was concerned about them. After hearing all the gossip about an old governess’s pregnant granddaughter and a chamberlain’s gout, Honor was impatient for substantial news. She wanted reports of Elizabeth’s friends in high places, people the Queen could not slight without paying a price. She was glad when Elizabeth asked Parry about Sir William Cecil.

  “Have he and Mildred settled into their house at Wimbledon? How do they find it?”

  “Drafty.”

  They both laughed.

  Honor stifled a groan at this chitchat. She asked Parry, “Will Sir William stand again for Parliament?”

  “Yes, his seat for Lincolnshire is all but certain.”

  Honor’s mind ran ahead. Parliament could wield some power if it wanted to, because of its grip on the country’s purse strings, and Elizabeth could hope for support among its many members discontented with Queen Mary. She said to the Princess, “Parliament sits in several months, my lady, and if we—”

  “Oh Lord, what good can those bumpkins do us?” She turned to Parry. “What news of the Countess of Sussex, Thomas?” Honor itched to press her point, but held her tongue. The countess was Elizabeth’s close friend.

  “She has fled her husband, my lady,�
� Parry answered. “Been abroad for months.”

  “That’s the last straw for Radcliffe, I warrant.”

  “It was. He has washed his hands of her.”

  “Ah, my dear, good Anne. She suffered enough from that brute.” She added with a shiver, “He positively gloated when he brought me to the Tower, he and Winchester.”

  Honor wanted news that mattered. She put it firmly to Parry. “Sir, what doings at court should we know about?”

  He thought for a moment, scratching his head. “The brawls get worse.”

  “Of course,” Elizabeth said with a scoff, “since the Spaniards rule the roost.”

  “Aye, my lady. But more of them get their heads knocked every week they remain.”

  Honor knew of the enmity between the English courtiers and the haughty Spaniards of Prince Philip’s entourage. When Philip had arrived to marry the Queen last summer, he had brought with him over a dozen of the greatest nobles in Spain, all strutting their magnificence in everything from their wardrobes to their horses, and all bringing their own enormous retinues. Philip himself was the most magnificent. When his treasure was transported for storage at the Tower, Londoners had watched in resentful awe as twenty carts rumbled through the streets carrying his ninety-seven treasure chests full of gold. Since then, the resentment had erupted in fistfights throughout London between the Spaniards and the English, and there was fighting in the halls of the palace almost every day. Courtiers drew swords at every slight, real or imagined. Three Englishmen and a Spaniard had been hanged after a recent murderous brawl.

  Parry said helpfully, “I know of news outside the court. Master Gresham has his old place back.”

  “Oh?” Elizabeth said. “I thought he was not Catholic enough for my sister.”