The Greatest Lover in All England (27 page)

Mute beneath his outburst, the queen shook her head, and behind her, his sisters and Lady Honora did likewise.

“Like Odysseus, I have wandered the world, from Scotland to Cornwall, from the barren Continent to the teeming London streets. I've fought monsters of jealousy, prejudice, and envy, as well as real men who would have killed me for the pleasure of it, or the challenge of it, or simply because I was an enemy.” He thumped his chest with his fist. “That manor, that estate, is the pinnacle of my personal odyssey. My reward for serving my queen and country well, for defeating all the monsters, is that estate. It is the end of my odyssey, the pinnacle of every cliff I've climbed. There'll never be another Odyssey Manor for me, and I pray you, madam, do not break my heart by depriving me of my home.”

The small group seemed frozen in the sunlight, like Italian statues carved for the garden. Then Queen Elizabeth stirred and sighed. “You present your case eloquently. I will consider.”

Tony became aware of the ache in his knees, but he didn't dare move. “I beg you, madam.”

“I said I would consider.” A smile quirked the queen's lips. “After all, Lady Rosalyn—or should I call her Rosie?—hasn't presented her petition to me yet.” Standing, she arranged her cloak. “Perhaps you should send for this fair and accomplished maiden so I may speak to her. You
do
know where she is, don't you?” But she didn't wait for an answer. She made her stately way toward Whitehall Palace. After one horrified mo
ment, Jean, Ann, and Lady Honora scurried to catch up.

Tony rose, pleased the queen had forgotten Essex, for Tony didn't wish to report Essex's defiance.

“Sir Anthony.”

Queen Elizabeth returned and interrupted his self-congratulations, and he could have groaned. “Aye, madam?”

She stood with her profile to him, not looking him in the eye, denying him the sight of her still-lively optimism. “When does my lord Essex present himself before the Privy Council?”

So blessed forgetfulness had eluded her, and Tony had to say, “He is not coming, Your Majesty. He claims illness.”

“Did he send me a message?”

His heart ached for her, but he allowed no pity to color his tone. “Nay, madam.”

“Then I will have to deal with him. Did you know the Chamberlain's Men performed
Richard II
today on Essex's command?”

“I did
not
know that, madam.”

“On the morrow, send my Privy Council to wait upon him at ten o' the clock to demand an explanation for this offense.”

Torn between his desire to search for Rosie and his need to do his duty, he asked, “Shall I go with them, madam?”

“I think not, Sir Anthony.” She turned her full gaze on him, and it seared him with its intensity. “I suspect you are a bad influence on my lord Essex and his compliance to my orders.”

He acknowledged that with a small bow. “I suspect you are right, madam.”

“Escort the gentlemen there, but remain without for their security.”

“Aye, madam.” Later, he would free Sir Danny from prison, convince Rosie they must wed, and convince the queen of the fitness of his suit. A lesser man might cringe, but while he'd overcome greater obstacles, he'd never overcome more important obstacles.

“When Essex comes out, escort him back.” Elizabeth turned away, then turned back. “And Sir Anthony?”

“Madam?”

“Swear you will not harm him.”

“
Essex imprisoned
the Privy Council?” Tony stared at Wart-Nose in amazement and dismay. As instructed by the queen, Tony had escorted the delegation of her foremost and trusted advisers to Essex House, but stopped short of the front gate. This was Essex's final chance to redeem himself, and he had failed. Tony cursed him soundly. “And I swore to the queen I would not harm him! Damn! Send a man to Sir Robert Cecil and tell him these developments. Perhaps he will send someone who has not so sworn.”

As he spoke, the front doors of Essex House swung wide. The great gates opened, and like water overflowing a kettle, two hundred men boiled out onto the Strand. In the lead was the earl of Essex, his gaze
fevered, his gestures extravagant. His dark hat with its white plume bobbed above the heads of the rebels.

“To the court!” the rebels roared, rattling their bare swords. The majority of Tony's men remained on guard in Whitehall Palace, but Tony thought of Queen Elizabeth's age and dignity, and, with a flourish, he planted himself before Essex.

Essex stopped. Tossing the tails of his crimson silk cloak over his shoulders, he said, “Stand aside, varlet! You can no more stop this holy delegation than you may stop the tides of the ocean.”

“I have no wish to stop you.” Tony kept his gaze steady on Essex and ignored the angry calls of the rebels. “I offer a challenge. Let us join in battle, for in battle, the bastard and the lord will be equal. There we will truly see who is the greater warrior.”

Essex was tempted, licking his thin, painted lips like a cat presented with a plump mouse.

Tony raised his voice so all could hear. “Or are you a coward, who fears my weight on your chest and my knife at your throat?”

With a roar, Essex pulled his sword and his dagger. Tony pulled his blades and met Essex's first sword lunge. Essex tried to bury his glittering knife in Tony's chest. Tony slipped under the sword and knocked Essex's dagger hand with his arm.

A mistake, for pain shot through his elbow where the fleshy stitches tore. Essex laughed at Tony's exclamation of agony and swung his sword. It caught in the folds of his own billowing cloak.

Tony laughed back and cut the strings of the offending cape with a quick slice of his knife. “My lord, I dressed for fighting. You dressed for conquest. See now how I help your cause.” He leaped back as the crimson silk fluttered to the ground like a flamboyant symbol of defeat.

Essex's face contorted with rage. “Bastard boy, I'll teach you respect at last.” In a fury of slashing, he drove Tony back toward the wall surrounding Essex House.

Cotzooks, Essex was good! And he was willing—nay, eager—to kill Tony, while Queen Elizabeth's promise limited Tony to a single blooding.

Tony had no chance, he feared, unless he could move in close enough to use his street skills. One good blow to the groin, and Essex would topple like a tree.

A damned long-armed tree.

Tony ducked a dagger thrust.

Essex was smirking, his white-plumed hat still firm on his head. His hat…

Tony flicked the tip of his sword up. Essex flinched back, tossing his head. The hat tumbled, then sailed on the breeze, and Tony whirled past Essex's lowered guard. He gained the open street, then leaped high, exulting in his own prowess. His foot caught his opponent's sword hand. The sword went flying. His dagger flicked Essex's dagger hand, cutting the skin. Essex jerked back, and smacked his arm into the wall. Knocked loose of his grip, the dagger skidded across the street. Tony jumped into him, using his good elbow to knock the queen's pet off his feet.

Essex landed in the soft dirt unharmed, but before Tony could put his blade to Essex's throat, another body catapulted out of the air and knocked him sideways.

Tony rolled and came up, knife seeking the varlet who'd ruined his fun, but Wart-Nose was already racing away. “Run,” he called over his shoulder. “Run!”

One look around him sufficed. The rebels had taken the defeat of their leader with no humor and less grace, and the array of steel coming toward Tony convinced him.

He ran.

He ran to Fleet Street, then turned west toward Whitehall Palace. He ran until he heard no more footsteps behind him, then he turned.

Essex's disciples had returned to their master, and Tony, too, crept back toward the Strand, staying against the buildings, hearing the babble of belligerent voices.

Then Essex strode onto Fleet Street. Filth streaked his crimson cloak. A strip of linen, dotted with red, wrapped his hand. The white plume of his hat was bent, and he limped just a little.

His rebels were yelling, “To the court!” with almost as much gusto as before.

But without a glance toward Whitehall Palace, Essex turned east and marched through Ludgate, going right to the heart of the City, crying, “For the queen! For the queen! A plot is laid against my life! Good people of London, follow me to save the queen!”

 

“You're going to have his child?” Uncle Will kept his voice down, so none of the other actors heard, but his vehement tone made his opinion clear. “You're going to have Sir Anthony's child and you ran off before you married him?”

“Sh.” Rosie glanced around at the other actors who milled about in the large room in Whitehall Palace. They were preparing for the performance before the queen: helping each other into costumes, putting on their paint before tiny mirrors, practicing their lines in the quiet desperation born before every royal presentation. But Rosie suspected none had been more desperate than this one, and she was the cause. Every actor, regardless of his feelings for her, kept well away as if she might contaminate him with her treason.
If any one of them heard Uncle Will exclaiming about her pregnancy, she'd not perform this day, or ever again.

“I won't be silent,” Uncle Will raged as he wiped white powder across her face. “I want to know why you lied to me.”

“I didn't lie.” She adjusted the stomacher and wondered if breathlessness plagued all women when they were with child. And wished she could ask someone. “I just didn't tell you everything.”

Dotting color along her cheekbones, he said, “I shudder to think what might have happened if you hadn't had Ludovic protecting you.”

She said nothing, and he smoothed the colors together and stepped back to look at her. Something about her expression must have alerted him, for he asked, “Are you not telling me everything again?”

“Ludovic has disappeared.”

Uncle Will groaned. “When?”

“The night Tony found us. I don't know whether it was Tony, or the child, or”—she shook her head, honestly bewildered—“something I said. I don't know, but I haven't seen him or heard from him since.”

“You're unprotected.” It sounded like an accusation.

She patted the unwieldy purse hanging from her belt. The purse Tony had given her. The purse she went nowhere without. “I wouldn't say that.”

“You're alone in London.”

Placing the brown wig on her coiled hair, she said, “Only until I'm done with the play.”

“And then what?”

Then what? Would God she knew the answer to that. Would God she could see Tony once more. Sometimes she thought she could feel him, feel his gaze searching for her. Sometimes she thought all she needed to do was
jump up and yell, “Here I am!” and he would be with her, picking her up and carrying her to safety.

But then who would redeem the soul of her father? The father who now spoke to her every night in her dreams. “When I'm done with the play, I'll be with Sir Danny.”

“Rosie.” Uncle Will caught her arm. “You're putting too much reliance in this one performance. You cannot truly believe—”

She placed her hand over his mouth. “I'll make Her Majesty laugh at Ophelia's silly belief in true love, and cry at Hamlet's betrayal. I'll win a boon and free my dada—and free Sir Danny.”

Her resolution had become a living thing, the most important thing in her life. Touching the ring which hung on its chain around her neck, she whispered, “'Tis the only way I'll ever be free of my ghosts.”

 

Hamlet. Act one, Scene three
.

“Your first scene, Rosie.” In a quiet tone, Uncle Will gave Rosie direction, and she listened in a state of fatalistic terror. “Remember, you're not Rosie. You're Ophelia. You're a lovely, star-crossed woman who loves a prince and who believes her prince loves her.”

The other actors rushed off the stage, flowing around them in frantic haste. Rigged like a ship in full sail, Alleyn Brewer sparkled with lush sensuality as Gertrude, Hamlet's mother. With convincing corruption, Dickie Justin McBride played the part of Claudius. Richard Burbage, the star of the Chamberlain's Men, performed the role of Hamlet as if he'd been born to it. A few actors, like Cedric, played multiple minor parts and shed clothes, then redressed to fit the new scene.

“John Barnstaple will be out there with you, so
you'll not be alone, and I'll be on soon.” With gray powder on his face and hair, Uncle Will gave Rosie a numbing slap on the shoulder. “Now go out there and rend every heart.”

Would to God that I could, she wanted to say, but he put the flat of his hand in her back and shoved her through the curtains onto the stage, and she couldn't say anything at all.

But she had to. She had a line. Oh, God, what was her line? John Barnstaple—no, wait, he was her brother Laertes—spoke first, four lines.

She had four words. “'Do you doubt that?'”

Not difficult. She'd delivered it well.

But John Barnstaple—no, Laertes—spoke, and she had another line coming up.

Four words. “‘No more but so?'”

The temporary boards creaked when she stepped on them. Massive candles stood in stands around the stage, lighting the players, but leaving most of the cavernous room in darkness. And the utter silence sucked the air from the room. Sweat trickled down her back, causing such a chill she shuddered. The stage sickness had come again.

But it couldn't come to her this time. This time was special. This time she needed to be perfect. She needed to be, had to be Ophelia.

Instead, she was only Rosie, and she was afraid.

In a rush she spoke the seven lines reproving her brother for his worry; then Uncle Will himself stumped onto the stage. It seemed right he should play Polonius, Ophelia's father, for after Sir Danny he was the man who had treasured her childhood affection and encouraged her growth. Her eyes misted over, and she frantically blinked to clear them.

Uncle Will—nay, Polonius—lectured her about accept
ing Prince Hamlet's tenders of affection, and he sounded so much like Sir Danny lecturing her for her own good that her protestations of Hamlet's fidelity came out with the proper indignation. Uncle Will smiled, and as they finished the scene and exited, a few of the actors clasped her hands and pressed them with approval.

 

The gates of Essex House hung open, the chimneys puffed with smoke, but the manor had an air of abandonment. The mighty company which had before occupied the grounds had dispersed, blown away by the winds of adversity. It seemed not even a servant remained.

Cautiously, Tony entered the gates and picked his way through the litter left by two hundred men.

“Sir!”

A woman's voice hailed him, and he glanced around.

“Sir, we've heard only rumors here. Can you tell us what has transpired with my lord Essex?”

Tony looked up through the gathering dusk, and out of a second story window hung Lady Rich, Essex's sister. For her he had no sympathy; she had ever encouraged her brother in his vanity and ambition. But for Lady Essex, who peeked over her shoulder, unwilling compassion tugged at his heart. She was the wife of a man whose career had begun so brightly and which now lay ruined by his own hand, the wife of the foremost traitor in the land.

The wife of a dead man, if Tony had anything to say about it.

He bowed. “I hadn't realized ladies remained within the house.”

Lady Rich leaned out farther, and even from here he could see her sum him up. “You're Sir Anthony Rycliffe,
the master of the Queen's Guard. You should know very well the events of the day.”

Her callous inquiry and the shrill voice with which she issued it strengthened him. “So I do, my lady, but first I would know if the men of the Privy Council are still imprisoned.”

Lady Rich understood the necessity of bartering information for information. “They were released hours ago in perfect health.”

Tony could scarcely refrain from wiping his brow. “For you the news is not good. All is lost. London rejected Lord Essex. His troops flee the city. The Archbishop of London has fired on him, and Essex even now flees.”

With a wail, Lady Essex turned away from the window, but Lady Rich demanded, “To where, Sir Anthony?”

“To here, I hope, my lady.”

She whipped her head inside and slammed the window, and without seeing, he knew she flew to pack her bags and abandon her brother to his fate. It was fitting that all should abandon Essex.

All except his captors. Essex wanted to escape, but Tony wanted him for the queen. Skirting the main house and the stables, Tony strode through the garden to the water gate and looked up the darkening Thames. The usually busy river rippled along, its traffic beached by the rebellion. One boat struggled against the current; one boatman put his back to the oars while his passenger huddled in the stern. A tall, red-bearded passenger feeling a warrior's satisfaction, Tony concealed himself in the bushes and waited.

Soon he heard the slap of the oars on the water, then the thump of wet wood as the boat struck the dock. Essex spoke to the boatman, coins clinked as they changed from one hand to another, and his boots dragged as he started up the path.

His bright head passed the place where Tony hid, and Tony followed as Essex trod slowly toward the house.