Lost Love Found (74 page)

“A moment, Lady Scrope,” Valentina interrupted.

“Yes, my dear?”

“I am no longer Lady Barrows. I am now Lady Burke, having married my cousin Padraic on the first day of this year. How shall I broach this with Her Majesty?” The queen could be very difficult about the marriages of her ladies.

“You have been gone from her service for a year now, my dear,” said Lady Scrope. “The news is more likely to please her than fret her. She loves you, and she wanted you to marry again. I think you may tell her without fearing her anger.”

“Tell her what?” demanded Lady Howard, the Countess of Nottingham. She was queen’s cousin and also her closest friend. Born Kate Carey, she possessed great loyalty and a kind heart.

“Lady Barrows is now Lady Burke, having married her cousin, my dear Catherine,” said Lady Scrope. “I think Her Majesty will take the news well.”

“Indeed, yes,” Lady Howard agreed. “When news of your return came, the queen said she hoped you had chosen to wed one of your two suitors. She wants you to give England strong sons and daughters.”

“We shall strive very hard to obey Her Majesty,” replied Lord Burke with a grin as his wife looked mortified.

The queen’s two ladies chuckled indulgently. Then Lady Howard espied the Earl of Lynmouth. “Robin? Robin Southwood? Is it indeed you?”

“Indeed, Lady Catherine, it is I. Will it cause her too much excitement that my wife and I have come to see her?”

“No, my lord, it will gladden her heart. Only yesterday she spoke about the fine Twelfth Night fêtes that first your father, and then later you, hosted. We all remember them fondly.”

The door to the queen’s privy chamber opened then and pretty Mistress Joanna Edwardes hurried toward them. “My lords and my ladies! The queen is anxiously awaiting you, and ’tis not right for you to keep the queen waiting!” Her young voice was tinged with disapproval.

“She sounds just like Willow,” Lord Southwood said under his breath.

“All of Willow’s daughters sound like their mother,” Padraic whispered. “She trains them.”

With the queen’s two ladies and the young maid of honor in attendance, the two couples entered the queen’s privy chamber.

“Oh, dear, Lady Scrope, she is dozing again. What shall I do?” fretted young Joanna.

“Wake her gently, child, as if you never suspected that she was asleep,” Lady Scrope instructed the girl in a quiet voice.

Valentina looked hard at the sleeping queen. She had grown old in a year, and she did not look well. Lady Burke’s heart went out to Elizabeth Tudor, and she determined that even if it displeased her new husband, she would remain with the queen through the winter months. Neither in the outer chamber nor in here did Valentina see any new faces excepting one, a young girl she assumed to be a new maid of honor. The queen did not, in her old age, like changes.

Joanna Edwardes succeeded in awakening the queen gently. As Elizabeth’s dark gray eyes began to focus on the people about her, Lady Scrope whispered to Valentina, “She has suffered dreadful insomnia these past weeks, so we let her sleep when she can.”

“Who is here?” demanded the queen, squinting at the group.

Lady Howard replied, “It is Valentina St. Michael, dear cousin, come home to England and returned to court to tell you of her adventures, just as she promised you she would.”

“Valentina! Come here, my child,” called Elizabeth Tudor. “The light is poor in this room, and my sight not what it once was.”

Valentina stepped forward and knelt gracefully before the queen, her scarlet velvet skirts belling out around her. She took the queen’s hands in hers and kissed them. “Dearest madam, I am so grateful to see you once again,” she said fervently.

The queen’s face softened, for she knew Valentina’s words came from the young woman’s heart and were not some artful flattery meant to influence her. “And have you made a choice between your two suitors, my child?” she asked.

“I arrived home on Christmas Day, dearest madam, and on the first day of January I wed my cousin, Lord Burke. He came to court with me to see Your Majesty. We left Pearroc Royal three days after our marriage, and arrived in London only yesterday. We hope you will give our marriage your blessing, dearest madam,” Valentina said.

“So,” the queen said, “you have married
that
woman’s son, have you? Good! If that is what your heart dictated, then that is what you should have done. I am old now, Valentina, and I know only too well what I have given up to be queen of this fair land. I have given up all the things
that
woman has had in abundance. Love. Marriage. Children and grandchildren.”

“But you would have had it no other way, madam,” said the Earl of Lynmouth, stepping from the shadows to kiss Elizabeth’s hand. “Confess it, madam, for ’tis so!”

“Robin Southwood! You have come to see me, too? What plot is this?” demanded the queen.

“No plot at all.” Valentina laughed, then rose to her feet. “Robin and Angel were at Queen’s Malvern with their children for Christmas. We decided to travel south together to London. It was a most enjoyable journey, dearest madam.”

“Humph!” snorted the queen.

The earl grew serious. “Madam, you do not look well,” he said bluntly. The others all held their breath at this dangerous honesty.

“I am
not
well, Robin,” the queen replied just as bluntly. “The doctors say I shall live another few years, but doctors say what they think you want to hear. In truth, they know little more than the rest of us mortals.” She eyed him critically as if seeking some flaw, then said, “You, my lord, have changed little that I can see.”

Robin Southwood smiled, answering, “I am in danger of a paunch, madam. My wife frets me for my love of good food and wine, but as for change, we all change. How kind that you remember the boy who once served you, when that boy faces a fortieth birthday this year. Why, madam, my two eldest daughters are married, and I shall, no doubt, be a grandfather before Christmas next.”

“
That
woman has more descendants than is decent,” the queen said. “Seven living children and how many grandchildren, Robin?”

“Forty-two at last count, madam, and seventeen great-grandchildren, although most of them are my elder brother’s, Ewan O’Flaherty’s, get. Ewan has eight children, and the eldest three are sons who are now married.”

“More Irish rebels to give England trouble! But I shall not be here to be bothered by them. Let the king handle it—if he can! Well,” she continued, her gaze turning to Lord Burke, “here’s one Irishman I’ve made into an Englishman.”

Padraic took the queen’s hand and kissed it. “Even had I been raised in Ireland, dear Majesty, I should have been your loyal liegeman,” he declared.

“Hah! You are like your mother,” the queen accused him. “
That
woman, like all the Irish, has a silver tongue and a love for her own independence. So do you, my lord! When I took the ancient Burke lands from you and gave you Clearfields Priory in exchange, I saved you from a traitor’s noose, Padraic Burke, even though you were an infant at the time. I remember telling your mother that I should make you a good Englishman, thereby assuring me of one less Irish rebel! Ha! Ha! Ha! I was right!”

“You did me a far greater kindness, madam,” Lord Burke said with deft charm. “Had I not been raised here in England, I should never have found the greatest love of my life.”

“You’re a romantic like your mother as well,” the queen remarked. “I never knew such a woman for love as Skye O’Malley!”

“Our mother,” said Lord Southwood, “has lived an extraordinary life, madam.”

“I remember when she was married to your father,” the queen reminisced. “What fêtes and parties they gave! There were few who could match them for style and elegance. You would not remember, of course, being just a baby, but bless me, if I am not rambling like some ancient crone! Sit down, my dears, all of you. You, my dear Valentina, must tell me of your adventures.”

As they seated themselves, Angel having greeted the queen and been received warmly, Valentina told Her Majesty, “My adventures, dearest madam, have consumed a full year of my life and cannot be told in a little space of time.”

“Then, dear child,” said the queen, “you must enter my service again, if only for the winter months. Then I may learn of all your wanderings. Your husband will not mind being at court, will you, my Lord Burke?”

“Madam, I am honored that you ask my wife and me to remain. It is many years since I was part of the court,” Padraic replied, heeding Valentina’s pleading look and being as gracious as he could. He wanted to go home to Clearfields, to have Val to himself this winter, but he understood her desire to remain and his heart went out to the sickly old queen. Yes, Elizabeth needed her friends.

“And with your kind permission, my wife and I shall stay the winter months with you also,” announced Lord Southwood, surprising them all. “It is many years since I was at court.”

Angel was stunned by her husband’s statement. The queen saw it and hid her smile.

“I will enjoy having gay young people about me again,” Elizabeth said brightly. “It is too much like a death watch at court now, and the strangers who come to court these days have neither manners nor elegance. You four will show them, my dears! Show them what my court should be like! Aye, you may stay, all of you, and welcome, say I!”

Elizabeth had appointed no new mistress of the maids since Valentina’s departure, so Lady Burke was welcomed again to that position. The maids of honor were now a group of charming, well-behaved girls. They were Honoria de Bohun, at nineteen, the eldest; pretty Beth Stanley, now sixteen, who, to her family’s annoyance, had insisted on remaining with the queen; Valentina’s three cousins, Gabrielle and Joanna Edwardes, seventeen and thirteen, and Anne Blakeley, fifteen, who was also Padraic’s niece. The one newcomer was Susanna Winters, thirteen, a distant cousin of both Sir Walter Ralegh and Kat Ashley. These girls, unlike many of their predecessors in the recent past, considered their chastity paramount.

January 21 dawned dark, a rainy and windy day that did not promise to improve. The queen wished to travel by the river and she would not change her mind. Her ladies all fussed at her about the filthy weather, for if she went by the river, then so must they. All envisioned catching colds, which, of course, would not excuse them from the queen’s service, and that would make their illness twice as hard to bear.

“You are not dressed warmly enough, cousin,” the Countess of Nottingham scolded Elizabeth. “You would do better to wear a gown with a high neckline rather than exposing your chest to the elements. You will catch your death!”

“I will have a fur-lined cape about me, Kate. God’s foot, you fret too much. What is worse, you sound like an old lady!”

“I
am
an old lady, and so are you,” the countess muttered under her breath, out of patience with the queen for the first time in her entire life.

Unfortunately, the maids of honor had overheard the Countess of Nottingham and they fell into a fit of the giggles.

“Maidens!” Valentina cautioned them sharply. “Have you finished your packing? Remember, there will be no returning until spring.”

The Countess of Nottingham appealed to her husband, who was also a blood relation of the queen. “Madam,” he told Elizabeth bluntly, “you are old and should have more care of yourself. If you would travel the river in this sharpest season, at least dress yourself warmly.”

“Charles,” the queen replied scathingly, “I may be an old woman, but you are an old fool, which I judge to be far worse! Leave me be. I shall dress as I please.”

The Earl of Nottingham told his wife privately, “There is no contentment to a young mind in an old body, Kate, and that, I regret, is Bess’s greatest problem.”

The queen was irritated by her relations, and except that the earl insisted, she would not have had him on her barge. Indeed, she banned Lady Howard, Lady Scrope, and Lady Dudley to the barge that would follow hers, instructing Lady Burke and the youngest maids, Joanna Edwardes and Susanna Winters, to accompany her in her vessel. “I would have merry company,” she said pointedly.

The weather was foul. Valentina was glad she had instructed her young charges to dress warmly. She herself wore several pairs of plain silk stockings topped by a pair of knitted ones and three flannel petticoats. Her silk chemise was lined in soft rabbit’s fur, but even those garments and her fur-lined velvet cloak and hood could not keep the damp chill from insinuating itself into her bones. The maids, too, shivered in their capes. But if the queen felt the bitter cold, she did not betray herself. She sat easily beneath the fur rugs in her barge and never complained.

Valentina had begun, during the few days they spent at Whitehall, to tell the tale of her adventures. As their barge made its way along the winter-roughened river, Lady Burke asked, “Shall I continue with my story, dearest madam?”

“Not now, dear child. Instead, tell me of your family. How is your cousin, the Countess of BrocCairn? It is several years since I saw Velvet. They used to come to court in the summertime, but no more.”

“I should think not, not with five little boys and Alex’s daughter to look after.” Valentina laughed. “Velvet adores her children. She is a wonderful mother. She leaves her brood only rarely. The boys are young yet, and her stepdaughter, Sybilla, will be thirteen on February first. Sibby is becoming quite a young lady, dearest madam, and is such a joy to Velvet, who has no other daughter.”

“They will come south one day soon,” the queen said quietly.

“Next summer for certain,” Valentina agreed.

“I do not mean then,” the queen replied. She turned to the earl. “I told you my seat has been the seat of kings and I will have no rascal to succeed me;
and
who should succeed me but a king?”

Valentina felt a prickle go down her spine. The queen had steadfastly refused to name her successor officially, though most assumed she would designate Scotland’s King James VI, son of her mortal enemy, the late Mary, Queen of Scots. Elizabeth Tudor’s aunt, Margaret Tudor, her father’s sister, had been married to James IV of Scotland, who was the current James’ great-grandfather. With both Tudor and Royal Stewart blood running in his veins he was the most logical choice to succeed Elizabeth, although there were several other claimants.