The Lost Duchess (8 page)

‘Sweet Majesty, difficulties may have arisen here at Roanoke.’ He stabbed a finger on an island between the mainland of America and a long ribbon of land around what looked to Emme like a vast estuarine lake. ‘But we can learn from that and make a fresh start.’ He raised his finger before the Queen could object. ‘Thirty leagues to the north in the land of the Chesapeake,’ he said as he swept his hand over a large bay unmarked by any name, ‘the people are as friendly
as children and the region is like a garden.’ He gave a nod to Harriot and White. ‘As these intrepid men will testify – fruit, animals and fish abound. Our colonists could thrive there. I would like to see English farmers till the soil in this place, and English artisans build houses for English wives and children. I envisage a city founded in godliness, following the best principles of good governance, a city of peace and prosperity in which toil is rewarded and all are treated fairly.’

The Queen smiled and gave a small shake of her head. ‘You speak of Utopia; it cannot exist on this Earth.’

‘It can,’ Sir Walter countered. ‘We
can
build such a city with enough ships and provisions and good Englishfolk who share this vision. It might be costly but …’

‘The cost would be enormous, and have you not already invested a fortune?’

He looked pained for an instant as if checked by a blow. ‘I have,’ he said quietly with his head bowed and his fingers resting on the map below the English coat of arms, ‘for the honour of England and my sovereign.’

The Queen touched his hand gently and looked upon him with such tenderness that Emme felt a pang in the pit of her stomach.

‘We will always reward loyalty,’ the Queen said softly. ‘What traitors lose, faithful champions will gain. So let us suppose you have estates and revenues enough to ease the burden of embarking on this new enterprise, where will you find the colonists of the kind you have described: adventurers ready to farm and lay bricks? Women prepared to risk their lives to make homes in the wild? I doubt that many of General Lane’s veterans will be prepared to go back to Virginia again. I hear they have been spreading tales of woe about their experiences.’

‘Soldiers make poor settlers, and those who complain about hardship are not the kind we want as citizens. These are the gentlemen upon whom our Virginia will be founded.’ He indicated the men around the table with a sweep of his hand. ‘I would lead the expedition myself if …’

‘No! I forbid it.’ The Queen clutched at his shoulder, and Emme could see the force with which her fingers dug into his flesh through his thin muslin shirt. ‘Sit,’ she commanded.

He did, and turned his head to her hand still gripping his shoulder, then he raised his eyes to her face.

‘You will stay,’ she said softly. ‘If Spain declares war I shall need you here to protect us.’

He laid his hand over hers.

‘I will stay, just as the Earth always stays with the Moon. I will never be far from you and I will never fail you.’

She sighed, squeezed his shoulder, closed her eyes for a moment and let go.

‘Then who will lead this bold venture.’

‘Master White, here, has put forward his name as Governor.’ Sir Walter motioned to the limner who inclined his shaggy head. ‘He is well acquainted with the region having surveyed it for this chart.’ He gestured to the map. ‘Master Simon Ferdinando will act as pilot for the next expedition just as he did for the last.’ Sir Walter turned to the Indian, Manteo. ‘Our good ally, Manteo, will assist us from his island of Croatoan.’ He pointed to another island, near Roanoke, along the thin line between the huge lake and the sea. ‘Others at this table have already volunteered.’ He looked round as Kit stood.

‘I offer my skills as a Boatswain who has circumnavigated the
globe with Sir Francis Drake.’ Kit bowed to the Queen. ‘It will be a privilege to serve.’

‘And I will join as a settler,’ another man said as he rose.

‘Aye,’ said another, ‘I also.’

Emme watched Kit standing there and bit back the urge to shout that she would go too. She yearned to tell them all she was prepared to leave everything and risk her life for the chance to start afresh in the land of promise; she could be as brave as any of them for that. But she did not need to make an idiot of herself to know that the reaction would be derision. She would never be taken seriously if she spoke up like a man, so she held her tongue as the Queen spread her arms.

‘I applaud you,’ she said, clapping lightly before turning to Sir Walter. ‘You may have the rootstock, but you will need more than this to plant a whole colony.’

Emme looked from the half-dozen men standing to those still sitting down, Master Harriot amongst them. Perhaps his skills were too great to risk on another voyage. Who else would go? Where would the families come from that Sir Walter had spoken of? In the silence that followed within the hall, the sound of cheering outside seemed to grow louder.

Sir Walter got to his feet, walked over to one of the windows, opened it and leaned out.

A great roar swelled up from the street. He waved and beckoned for the Queen to stand by him and as she moved closer the noise became a crescendo.

‘There,’ he said to her. ‘There are the people we need: the salt of the earth.’

A lump rose in Emme’s throat. The venture was so courageous
it made her want to weep, but there was no place in it for her. She stepped back feeling excluded, wanting the shadows to swallow her. Then she flinched from the touch of something against her hand.

She looked round to see Master Kit by her side. His hand enveloped hers, and as he turned to her he smiled.

Without thinking, she pulled away.

At the first opportunity before leaving Durham Place, Emme visited the garderobe and washed her hands. She locked the door, used the close stool of necessity, then poured water into a bowl from the silver ewer provided, worked a block of fine white Castile soap around her hands, and used a bristle brush to scrub at her fingers. She wept as she rubbed without knowing why, perhaps because she’d reacted absurdly to Kit’s gentle touch, recoiling from the very man for whom she had some real regard. What would Kit think of her now? He must have felt she wanted nothing to do with him, probably that she was aloof and conceited and considered herself superior without any cause. Then what was she doing? She should have been treasuring the affection implicit in his gesture, not trying to wash it away as hard as she could. But she felt unclean. Kit’s contact with her had been a shock; she had not anticipated it at all. He had touched her unexpectedly and she’d connected it with Lord Hertford driving his fingers into her.

O me, not that. She hung her head in mortification and rubbed with the brush until her fingers were raw. She felt as if she would never be clean again. In the bowl was her world: the light from a tiny window in a high stone wall and the shadow of her reflection in a greasy film of dirty suds. Her tears plopped onto the surface
one by one. She plunged in her hands and inadvertently splashed her skirts. She felt dizzy, not helped by the heady smell of violets in the confined space together with a lingering odour from the privy drain. She longed to escape. She did not know what to do. She no longer understood her own mind. What did she hope to achieve by scouring her hands?

A sharp rapping on the door made her look up.

‘Emme?’ Bess called softly. ‘Are you in there?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, more brightly than she felt. ‘I’ll be out in a moment.’

She wiped her eyes and her hands on a napkin, looked out of the little window and saw the river far below. Then she picked up the bowl and threw the water outside.

‘Knowledge is never too dear.’

—Favourite maxim of Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State and chief intelligencer to Queen Elizabeth I

‘I did not order that Babington was to be tortured in execution.’ The Queen’s voice rose to a shout. ‘Defiled and butchered!’

‘You told my Lord Burghley that hanging was not terrible enough,’ Sir Francis Walsingham remarked quietly.

‘I said that the populace should see and learn from the just punishment of traitors, not that they should be left fainting and retching. This report says that the man’s privities were sliced off before his eyes and his innards were drawn out while he was still alive.’

Bess gasped and put her hand over her mouth. Emme stopped sewing in the act of pulling a stitch tight, conscious that her needle was trembling in her hand. They both leant closer together on their
cushions in the corner of the Presence Room. Through the damask of her friend’s sleeve, Emme could feel Bess shivering.

The Queen tossed a sheet of paper on the table before Secretary Walsingham and slammed her palm down on top. ‘This sickens me.’

‘It is done,’ he said, clasping his hands within his sleeves. ‘The quarters of the first seven traitors are displayed at St Giles and their heads are on London Bridge as an example to all.’

‘Make sure the next seven are dead before they are cut open.’ The Queen picked up a late September plum from a silver plate and turned to face the magnificent view from Greenwich Palace over the Thames. ‘What does my cousin Mary say now?’

Walsingham stood behind her. ‘She feigns unconcern and says she will answer to no one but God.’

‘Pah!’ The Queen brought the plum to her mouth, held it close to her lips, then took it slowly away and proffered it to Walsingham.

He held his palm open. ‘She must stand trial,’ he said gently. ‘The evidence is overwhelming.’

To Emme, watching from the corner, Walsingham looked ink black against the light while the Queen shimmered like a fiery ember capable at any moment of bursting into flame.

‘Yours,’ said the Queen, letting the plum drop into his hand. She folded his fingers around the fruit and pressed them into the flesh until a glistening drop of juice dripped from his fist to the floor.

When she turned to leave, her mouth was closed tight as a sprung trap.

Emme remained motionless for a moment until she shook herself into action. Then she took Bess by the hand and they left, Walsingham louring like a dark cloud at their backs.

Emme looked round and saw him walking slowly behind, head bowed. She knew he would want to speak with her and inwardly sighed.

‘You go on,’ she murmured to Bess. ‘I shall not be long.’

She drifted casually back and offered the Secretary of State a small curtsey, making as if to pass him.

He nodded and turned to walk with her. They proceeded as far as the library where he ordered the yeoman guard to stand outside, beckoned her in and shut the door.

The room smelt of paper and leather, refreshingly pleasant after the stink of the jakes at Richmond which had become so foul, after weeks of use by the hundreds in the royal household, that a change of palace had been deemed necessary. She was still adjusting to the new surroundings, taking delight in the long halls and galleries overlooking the river, her spirits uplifted by a private fantasy, one that had grown and strengthened in the six days since her visit to Durham Place. But Secretary Walsingham’s manifest gloom was a warning to her to hide the new-born eagerness she felt inside. She watched him prop his elbow on a high sideboard, rub his brow and close his eyes. Was he ill? Emme guessed he was suffering from one of the migraines that frequently pained him, especially when there was any tension in his relations with the Queen. She almost felt sorry for him, though wariness curbed her sympathy.

Walsingham winced. ‘I was expecting to hear from you weeks ago.’

‘I have only recently found out the details of Sir Walter Raleigh’s plans for Virginia.’

She moved nearer and looked down at a clock on a table. It bore a single hand like an arrow on a flat horizontal face supported by a
dome of gilded brass patterned in strands like fine waves. The arrow seemed frozen, pointing to the space between two Roman numerals, to the moment she had to fill. Beside the clock was a large, open book. It showed a heart-shaped map of the globe in which the New World lay stretched out and curved round near the circumference to the west. She brought her fingertip close to the word ‘
AMERIC
’ then ran it up through the southern continent to ‘
CANIBALES
’ near the top. Were there cannibals in Virginia? Master Harriot had led her to believe that the people there were naturally peaceable, but on the map all she could see were the spikes of mountains and the gaping jaws of river mouths where she supposed Virginia might lie. The place seemed a complete wilderness. She could not even make out any names. The clock ticked loudly as she considered what to say.

Her thoughts went back to Durham Place and everything she had heard there concerning the planned expedition to found a new colony, and she tried to separate that out from the tangle in her thoughts about Mariner Kit, the way he had taken her hand and her reaction. Not that her awkwardness with him mattered now. He had probably forgotten all about her; she had not seen him since. Walsingham would want to know about what the Queen and Sir Walter had said. She drew breath and began.

‘Sir Walter is prepared to back another expedition led by Master John White as Governor with the help of assistants who will be charged to found a new city in Sir Walter’s name. They mean to establish a permanent settlement of around two hundred men, women and children in a bay north of Roanoke which is known as the Chesapeake. Sir Walter is prepared to offer every settler five hundred acres of farmland in Virginia, and Master White is already
enlisting volunteers from the streets of London. They mean to sail in the spring with the Queen’s approval.’

She glanced up at Walsingham and saw his eyes flicker towards the clock; then he glanced at a note that he pulled from inside his sleeve. He knows already, she thought. She had not surprised him, and he was impatient to be dealing with something else.

‘I would like to go too,’ she added, stating the fantasy she had nurtured as if it might actually become real.

His brows shot up and he put the note aside. ‘Has Her Majesty encouraged you in this?’