The Queen's Captive

The
Q
UEEN’S
C
APTIVE

Books by Barbara Kyle

The Queen’s Captive

The King’s Daughter

The Queen’s Lady

The
Q
UEEN’S
C
APTIVE

B
ARBARA
K
YLE

KENSINGTON BOOKS

www.kensingtonbooks.com

I dedicate this book to
Audrey LaFehr.
My heroes were in exile. She brought them home.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Authors often thank their life partner at the end of their acknowledgments. I will thank my husband, Stephen Best, at the beginning, because that’s how important he is to my writing. When I create a new novel I give him a draft of each chapter, and the comments and suggestions he offers are truly invaluable. For this, and for his steadfast support, I thank him with all my heart.

My literary agent, Al Zuckerman, is a near legend in the business, and I am fortunate to have him as a mentor and advocate. He is, in the words my late father used as his highest praise, “a scholar and a gentleman.”

I appreciate the creative energy of all the hardworking professionals at Kensington Publishing, New York. My thanks go to un-flappable editorial assistant Martin Biro, always helpful and efficient, and to Tory Groshong for her meticulous copyediting. I am especially grateful to John Rosenberg, whose tremendous book business savoir faire has brought my novels such success in Canada.

It gives me the greatest pleasure to dedicate this book to Audrey LaFehr, Editorial Director at Kensington. No author could ask for a more constant champion. Audrey was the first to see the potential of my “Thornleigh” novels—this is the third one—and she breathed new life into these books, shepherding them into the world with passionate commitment. I cannot thank her enough.

HISTORICAL PREFACE

When the corpulent and six-time-married King Henry VIII died in 1547, he left behind three offspring from three wives. Mary was thirty. Elizabeth was fourteen. Edward was nine. Henry could never have imagined the chaos he was bequeathing to England.

As the only son, Edward inherited the throne. He was managed by his powerful and ambitious councilor, the Duke of Northumberland, who took control and hardened the country into a severe Protestant regime. King Edward, always a sickly boy, died before he reached the age of sixteen. It was the summer of 1553.

Edward’s legal and declared heir was his half sister, Mary. But Northumberland struck quickly with a coup, proclaiming his daughter-in-law Jane, a great-niece of King Henry, as queen. She was seventeen years old. It was a dangerous time for anyone whom the brutal Northumberland considered a claimant to the throne, and the two princesses, Mary and Elizabeth, lived in fear for their lives. Queen Jane ruled for nine days with the sullen disapproval of the people of England, until Mary rallied dozens of powerful lords to her side, and a fighting force, and took the throne that was indisputably hers. Jane was imprisoned. Northumberland was beheaded. Mary was triumphant.

But not for long. Mary’s great cause was religion. She immediately declared her intention to revert the country to Catholicism, and to marry Philip of Spain, “the most Catholic prince in Christendom.” Much of England was Protestant by now, and many people, whatever their religion, mistrusted a foreigner becoming the lord and master of their queen. They feared that Mary, controlled by Philip, would turn their small country into a vassal state of the mighty empire of Spain. When Mary gave the church free reign to begin burning heretics, people started to look to her younger sister, Princess Elizabeth, as someone who might give England back to Englishmen.

The people’s discontent with their zealous queen festered, and in early 1554 it broke out into open rebellion. The leader was Sir Thomas Wyatt. With the backing of some influential lords he drew an army of several thousand common Englishmen to his base in Kent, where they proclaimed their intention to overthrow the queen. Many among them said they hoped to supplant her with Elizabeth. In February, they marched on London. Wyatt was an experienced soldier, and his men were loyal, but he had waited too long to act. Mary’s forces were waiting at London’s gates, battle-hardened troops with artillery. Wyatt and his men were cut down and captured. The rebellion was crushed. Once again, Mary was triumphant.

But she did not forgive, or forget. Especially the woman in whose name the rebels had risen against her: Elizabeth.

Contents

1. The Tower

2. The Bargain

3. The Gatehouse

4. Neighbors

5. The Captive Princess

6. The Rosary

7. In the Presence of the Queen

8. The Queen’s Summons

9. The Queen’s Child

10. News

11. The Princess’s Defender

12. Allies and Enemies

13. Smithfield

14. Commons and Lords

15. Discord

16. The Jaws of Victory

17. The Plot

18. Blood and Treasure

19. The Queen’s Net

20. The Tower

21. Lord and Master

22. Adam’s Bargain

23. Homecoming

24. Princess at the Threshold

25. The Royal Commoner

26. In the Presence of the King

27. Battle Lines

28. Midsummer Day

29. Midsummer Death

30. A Plea to the Princess

31. The Making of a Queen

32. From the Ashes

33. Colchester Jail

34. Two Ships

Author’s Notes

A Reading Group Guide

Discussion Questions

1

The Tower

March 1554

T
hey came for her at dawn.

Through the long, dark hours Elizabeth had stared from the window at the garden made darker by the rain, knowing that if they were coming they would march along the gravel path under the bare, forked fruit trees. For three weeks the Queen’s guards had kept her a prisoner in these remote corner rooms of Whitehall Palace. The patch of winter-dead garden had been all she had been able to see of the grounds. Music and laughter from distant banqueting rooms had reached her faintly, like echoes of the life she had lost.

Voices of the guardsmen at her door made her turn sharply from the window. Two lords of the Queen’s council marched in past the guards. She had been wrong, they had bypassed the garden. Henry Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex, shook rain off his cap with the air of a man irritated at being burdened with unpleasant business. William Paulet, the sixty-year-old Marquis of Winchester, seemed far more troubled by their mission. Stroking rain from his wiry gray beard, he looked at the floor, and Elizabeth knew the old gentleman well enough to realize he was avoiding her eyes. Both men, with their damp garments and grave faces, brought in a chill that reached her like a cold hand at her throat. She had to swallow hard before she found her voice.

“My sister’s reply?”

Sussex clapped his cap back on. Elizabeth felt a jolt of anger. He should be kneeling. They should both be kneeling.

“None, madam.”

“But, my letter—”

“Her Majesty did not read it.”

It knocked the breath from Elizabeth. One moment—that was all she had entreated of the Queen. One moment, face-to-face, to swear that she was innocent of any involvement in the rebellion.
I pray God that evil persuasions persuade not one sister against the other,
she had written.
I humbly crave only one word of answer from yourself.
But her begging had been for naught. Mary would show no mercy.

Elizabeth stood tall, rallying her courage. She was the daughter of a mighty father, great King Henry the Eighth. She would not let these lords see her terror.

They led her out into the cold March rain. She was twenty years old and on her way to die.

They took her down the Thames toward the Tower. She sat shivering in the barge under a dripping canopy, as pewter-cold waves heaved around her, and pewter-gray clouds poured down their frigid rain. Her fingers, gripping the seat edge, were purple with cold. The turbulent river, reeking now at low tide, churned up smells of dead fish and decaying sea matter, turning her stomach. Above the din of waves beating the hull and rain beating the canopy, church bells clanged throughout London. It was Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. Elizabeth’s pious sister had brought back all the old Catholic rites—there would be creeping to the cross on Good Friday—and she and her council had ordered all the people to go to church this morning. “Keep to the church, and carry your palms!” had been the criers’ calls through the muddy streets. An ideal diversion, Elizabeth thought bleakly, for the religious ceremonies would keep Londoners from seeing the barge carry her away. She gazed out at the seemingly deserted capital with its scattered steeples thrusting into the gray sky. All those people crammed into the churches. She thought,
Their palm fronds will have wilted in this downpour. Their stick crosses will be soggy relics for Mary’s priests to bless.
She imagined them hurrying to get in out of the rain in their wet clothes—rough, homespun wool on fishwives and apprentices, rich velvets and brocades on the great merchants and their wives, but all of them jostling together, sharing a sense of community that she was now cut off from.

She had been arrested at her country home at Ashridge, and when they had brought her into London she had seen the grisly evidence of her sister’s justice. Gallows heavy with decomposing rebel corpses stood at every one of the city’s gates and in all the market squares. Body parts of rebels who had been hanged, drawn, and quartered were strung up along the city walls, a nightmare vision of dismembered arms and legs, the stench making the street dogs howl.

London Bridge emerged ahead through the rain. Its three-and four-story houses and shops looked as deserted as the city streets. Its stone arches bristled with spikes stuck with the gaping heads of rebels. Elizabeth thought she could smell the decaying flesh, putrid on the waterlogged air.

The river, squeezed between the viaduct’s twenty huge arches, roiled in treacherous rapids, and the bargemen squared their feet wide, preparing to “shoot the bridge.” Elizabeth gripped the gunwale to steady herself. The barge rocked and pitched in the angry water as it tumbled through the cavern of the stone arch. The light darkened. The water beat a hollow roar that echoed off the stone. The barge shot out the other side, wallowing in the confused currents, jolting Elizabeth’s neck and knocking her knee against the hull.

Her heart thudded as she saw the Tower through the steely curtain of rain. It lay dead ahead on the northern shore. Ancient royal fortress, palace, and prison, its precincts were a labyrinth of stone walls and towers and turrets that rose, massive and forbidding, crushing Elizabeth’s nerve.

Again, she plumbed a wellspring of strength from somewhere deep inside her and summoned defiance. “Not in by Traitor’s Gate, my lords. I am Her Majesty’s true subject and no traitor.”

Winchester’s voice was sad and kind. “Take heart, madam, the tide is with you.” The low water made it impossible to enter by Traitor’s Gate, a water gate. Instead the bargemen were rowing for Tower Wharf. Small victory, Elizabeth thought.

Yet Winchester’s somber face, showing how little he relished his duty, suddenly gave her heart. She had friends. Many friends. Influential men. Lord Admiral Clinton. The Earl of Bedford. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton and Sir Peter Carew and Thomas Parry and John Harrington, and her favorite, the stolid Sir William Cecil. A mad hope swept her. They would rescue her! Yes, Sir William was hiding there in the windswept rain on the wharf, waiting with a troop of soldiers. They would attack her escort and spirit her away to safety!

But no friends came as the two lords marched her across the drawbridge and into the Tower’s western precincts. She splashed through puddles that left her feet and ankles icy. Her sodden cloak, heavy on her shoulders, chilled her to the bone. Loose strands of her red hair plastered her neck, dripping ice water on her skin. The lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Brydges, met them and led her across the narrow causeway. His soldiers lined the route hemmed in by the high stone walls. Rain drummed their steel helmets. Brydges led the party past the royal menagerie where Elizabeth could hear a lion roar. She did not flinch. She would not show the soldiers her fear.