Blood Between Queens (7 page)

She moved to a sideboard near her ladies’ alcove where a decanter and goblets stood ready. The two ladies instantly left their tasks and went to serve her. Will watched his uncle and his patron exchange a tense look. His uncle rubbed the back of his neck, deep in thought. Sir William clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace.

Excitement coursed through Will.
Do it now.

“Sir William,” he said quietly, moving to him. “May I have a word?”

He looked annoyed at having his thoughts interrupted. “What is it?”

Will kept his voice low. “Her Majesty needs more time.”

“Obviously.”

“No, I mean she is under too much pressure. All attention is concentrated on her, on what action she will take. That’s what we should look to change.”

“Change? The privy council expects to be told her policy today. So do the ambassadors.”

“And so they shall. But what if the policy we announce is one that shifts people’s focus away from Her Majesty and onto Mary.”

“I don’t see it. How?”

“By feeding their curiosity. Mary is notorious throughout Europe. Everyone wants to know, did she collude in her husband’s murder or not? Did she have him killed so she could marry her lover? Bring
that
to light and we make this case turn not on Her Majesty but on Mary. On her innocence or guilt.”

“A trial?” Sir William looked interested, but skeptical. “English courts have no jurisdiction over foreign monarchs.”

“I would call it an examination into the facts, sir, born of Her Majesty’s desire to restore stability in Scotland. It would give her more time. Perhaps more important, at its conclusion it would yield straightforward grounds for her to act, because whatever decision she takes then could not be seen as arbitrary.”

Sir William seemed tempted. “I doubt she would agree to it. She is much troubled by any appearance of dishonoring her fellow queen.”

“But, sir, by launching such an inquiry she would display her heartfelt
support
for her fellow monarch. She could officially declare that she intends to help restore Mary to her throne just as soon as it is established that Mary is innocent. How could Mary or her supporters gainsay that?”

Sir William was now paying keen attention. “Nor could they hold the high ground if she were found guilty.”

Will nodded. “Her Majesty, of course, is correct that by law Mary is not bound to answer to her subjects, but that argument serves us ill, for it casts Mary as the party with rights superior to those of the Earl of Moray. Not so if the case turns on murder. After all, sir, there is a higher law—Thou shalt not kill. From it even crowned heads are not exempt.”

 

Dusk was gathering when Will hopped out of the wherry onto London’s Queenhithe wharf where fishing smacks, tilt boats, and wherries crowded the water stairs. He tossed the wherryman an extra tip for bringing him down the Thames from Whitehall Palace and made his way past fishwives’ stalls and city men beckoning the wherries with calls of “Oars!” Will felt so buoyed up he began whistling. Hard to maintain the tune, though, because a smile kept twitching his mouth. Not only had Sir William taken his idea to Elizabeth in his presence and given him full credit for it, the Queen herself had considered the proposal then and there. Never one to be rash, she had mulled it, sipping her wine and strolling to the window as her two advisers waited and Will tried to keep his racing heartbeat under control. Then she had turned, flicked a glance at Will, and told Sir William, “I like it. It gives me breathing room, and with no loss of honor.”

Striding across Thames Street, Will abandoned the tune he was whistling—the grin had won.

In the fading daylight food vendors were packing into baskets their unsold eel pies and rabbit pastries, muskmelons and fragrant strawberries. Apprentices trudged home, weary from their day’s labor. Will’s own afternoon had been a marathon of work with Sir William, who had immediately begun to formulate the parameters of the official inquiry about Mary, but Will didn’t feel tired, just invigorated. A cart clattered by with hogsheads of ale and he gave a thought to how satisfying it would be to relax in a tavern with a foaming tankard, but he strode on, for he was on his way to visit his mother. He hadn’t seen her for several weeks. In term he lodged at Gray’s Inn, and lately Sir William had given him a room at Whitehall to have him close at hand. Will was looking forward to giving his mother the happy news. Today, he had made his mark.

The thought of what that promised expanded the very breath inside him. A secure income. Justine! His every sense felt sharpened to the city’s sights and sounds and smells. The church bell clanging near the Glaziers Hall. The bawling of sheep, faint at this distance, as they were herded across London Bridge where the first lanterns would soon be lit in the houses that crammed both sides. Across the river, flags snapped in the evening breeze atop the bear gardens of Southwark. Dart-shaped swallows swooped overhead for insects. In the air there was a scent of fresh sawdust and the river’s ever-present seaweedy tang. And what was that other smell? Gingerbread?

“Wait,” he called to a little girl wrapping the last of her gingerbread babies into burlap. He bought two of the treats and gave the girl an extra penny. His mother liked gingerbread.

Crossing the busy thoroughfare of Cheapside, Will zigzagged through the traffic. Gentlemen on horseback trotted by. Ladies’ maids ambled home with baskets of produce. Merchants and traders, clerks and lawyers marched to and from the imposing edifice of the Mercers’ Hall. He sidestepped a couple of grimy boys scurrying to snatch some cabbages that had tumbled off the back of a wagon. Voices rose from St. Paul’s Cathedral to the west. Its yard was always bustling with booksellers’ stalls—one of Will’s favorite haunts. St. Paul’s interior was the city’s busiest meeting place, where people came to transact business, exchange news and gossip, or hire a serving man or a scrivener. The cathedral’s roof looked naked to Will since its steeple, once the tallest in Europe, had been lost seven years ago in a fire from a lightning strike. Would it ever be rebuilt? he wondered. The city aldermen kept haggling about the expense, and everyone knew that competing guildsmen had come to blows over it more than once. What an exasperating, brawling, magnificent city, Will thought. He loved London.

He looked east along Cheapside. That’s where Justine was, across the city at Uncle Richard’s fine house on Bishopsgate Street. He wished he’d been able to speak to his uncle in private at the palace to ask whether Justine had told him about their decision to marry, but as soon as the Queen authorized the inquiry his uncle had left. Not before voicing his agreement with the plan, though. “Cautiously pleased with the idea,” he had told Elizabeth. As he took his leave from her and Sir William he had murmured, in passing Will at his desk, “Well done, lad.”

From Cheapside, the V made by Milk Street and Wood Street ran north. Will took Wood Street, its traffic and commerce thinner, its noise more subdued. The light, too, was dimming, and birds were settling in to roost for the night in the eaves of the Bowyers’ Hall and the Brewers’ Hall. He was approaching the compact graveyard of St. Olave’s, where ancient yew trees stood sentinel. Their shaggy branches drooped over his father’s grave. Will never passed the spot without feeling a needle of the terror ten years ago when he had seen his father stagger and fall, bristling with Grenville arrows.

“Buy a posy, sir?”

“What?” He turned away from the tombstones. A scrawny woman was offering him a clutch of violets.

“For the grave, sir. Your loved one?”

“Ah. No, thank you.”

He strode on, glad to be near his destination. This neck of Wood Street was his mother’s neighborhood, Cripplegate Ward. He passed the Castle Inn where the smell of manure wafted from the expansive innyard. The inn offered bed and board and stabling for travelers, and its yard was a hub for porters riding with deliveries to and from the city. Among the people passing by outside it were a couple of faces Will knew. He nodded a greeting to Henry Pierson, his mother’s neighbor, a goldsmith and moneylender, who absently nodded back, in conversation with a fancifully dressed fellow, a tout that Pierson employed to wind in young gents in need of cash.
Money,
Will thought.
Who
isn’t
in need of it?
Two blocks ahead lay Cripplegate which led through the city wall out into Moorfields with its market gardens, public archery butts, hedgerows where laundresses spread out sheets, and tenting yards where apprentices stretched wool cloth on tenterhooks, while beyond them creaked the windmills of Finsbury Fields. All those folk would be heading for home now, Will reckoned. His own path did not lead through Cripplegate. Dusk was deepening as he turned west onto his mother’s street.

Silver Street was a quiet byway one block long. It lay in a pocket of houses tucked into the northwest angle of the city’s wall. In former times it had been home to silversmiths, but now its denizens included a catchpenny printer, a needlemaker, a pewterer, a jeweler, a scrivener, a porter, a clothworker, and a saddler, as well as the goldsmith Will had passed. Their shops took up the street level of their houses, the families living on the second floor, and servants and apprentices in the small rooms of the attics. The upper stories jutted out into the narrow street, cutting out what little twilight was left. Will passed a link boy with a glowing lantern heading for Wood Street to make a penny or two by lighting the way of gentlemen going out to sup. Otherwise, the street was deserted.

His mother’s house stood at the crooked intersection with Monkwell Street. Bits of chaff, disturbed by the faint breeze, scurried past the doorstep of the printer’s shop next door. Three hens pecked at spilled grain. Behind a shuttered window, a baby cried. In the lane between the houses, the Parkers’ cow in their back garden stood scratching its shoulder against a post.

Will found his mother in the parlor sitting in darkness before the cold hearth. She looked like a ghost, a shadowy silhouette in the twilight. Eyes closed, head up, her back as straight as an arrow, she wore a cloak over her gray dress. Was she preparing to go out?

“It’s dark as a tunnel in here, Mother,” he said pleasantly. “Light the candles, why don’t you?”

Startled, she twisted to look at him, peering through the gloom as though she didn’t recognize him. Then, in a heartbeat, a look of bittersweet surprise washed over her face. “Will! You remembered.”

“Remembered?” he asked, coming to her. It saddened him how the ghostly light deepened the lines around her sunken eyes and hollowed out her cheeks. She was much younger than her brother, Uncle Richard, but had none of his vigor.

“Ten years, Will. Ten years to the day.”

It shook him as he realized.
Father
. June. The thunder of horses’ hooves that day. The swords, the arrows. The blood.

“I’ve just come from his resting place.” She sprang to her feet, agile in her fervor. “Would you like to go and talk to him? Come, we’ll go together.”

“You’ve just got back.”

“I don’t mind. It’s where I feel closest to him.”

“No. Let’s stay. It’s almost dark.” He hated reliving the horror. Unlike his mother. She visited the grave every day. She had made it her mission to never forget. “Come, take off your cloak and let’s have some light,” he said. “Where’s Susan?” He’d seen no sign of the maid.

She shrugged. “Getting supper.”

Will was eager to dispel her melancholy. “Here,” he said, presenting the burlap square. “For a sweet.”

She mustered a smile. “I can smell it. Gingerbread.” She kissed his cheek, her touch as dry as a winter leaf. “Such a good boy,” she murmured.

They looked at each other for a quiet moment, she gazing at him with that sad smile he knew so well. She would try to be merry for his sake. He was grateful. He felt too happy today to pretend otherwise.

“Off with this,” he said, whirling off her cloak. He took it to the passage and hung it up. The house smelled faintly of apples. A single stubby candle of tallow guttered on the table by the door to the kitchen. He carried it back to the parlor. “Let there be light,” he said, heading to the cold hearth. With the flame he lit the tall wax candles on either end of the mantel, then went about the room lighting every other candle, one on the desk, one on the windowsill, one on the small table with its scatter of books.

“Can you stay?” she asked.

“With pleasure. I could eat an ox.” He was lighting the lantern that hung over the desk. “What’s the fare?”

“Leg of mutton. Richard sent it.”

Will was glad, and not surprised. Uncle Richard was generous to his sister in actions large and small. He had offered to buy her a grander house across town, but she would not leave Will’s father, buried in St. Olave’s down the street.

“There, that’s better,” he said, his task of lighting the room done. He rubbed his hands together briskly. “Now, have you a bottle of claret? We’ll drink to the health of Sir William.”

“Oh, dear, I hope he is not ill.”

“Far from it. He is prodigiously delighted with the prodigious talents of your prodigious son.”

“As well he should be,” she said with a smile of pride in her voice. It did Will’s heart good to hear the smile.

“And he has made it known to same prodigious son that a sinecure will soon be his. Mine, that is. Indeed, the gentleman is so pleased with me, I daresay he would have given me the post of principal secretary to the Queen if he did not already fill it himself.”

She was astonished. “What?”

“Ah yes, vast riches await us, Mother.” He chuckled at his own nonsense. “Well, riches enough to buy your own leg of mutton and a bottle of claret whenever you fancy. Sir William has promised me a reward at court. I shall be the Royal Holder of the Royal Mop and gather in the gold that every man must pay me for a license to sell mop heads.” He saw her bewilderment and reined in his high spirits. “Jesting aside, Mother, he has given me a secretarial post that brings a modest income, and for his faith in me I am heartily grateful.”