The Queen's Captive (6 page)

Turning, Honor dropped the paper on Elizabeth’s lap. But Elizabeth did not notice it. Her eyes were still closed.

The sallow lady loaded Honor with the bundle of dirty laundry, then told her to be on her way. She had no choice but to go.

She walked through the council chamber and out the door, her heart thudding. What a botch she’d made of it! Hurrying down the stairs, she expected to hear one of the ladies come after her and shout to a guard to stop her. They would surely see the paper before Elizabeth did and read it.
Call on the laundress to mend your skirt and mend your hope. Written by my hand this 19th day of December. Your servant, William Cecil.
Her mission would be strangled at birth. She could face arrest. Sir William, too. Stupid, stupid move, ill thoughtout, she told herself as she hastened through the courtyard toward the closed gate. She should not have been so rash. Should have waited, found a better time—

“Stop!”

She glanced back. The sallow lady was hurrying after her.

“Stop her!” the lady cried.

A guard lowered his pike, barring Honor’s way. Her heart banged in her chest.

The lady caught up to her. She was hugging herself against the cold, her face screwed up in irritation. “Her Grace wants you. Can you patch a petticoat?”

They had to wait for the Queen’s women to leave. The two were busily airing the Princess’s bed, flapping sheets and nattering court gossip, while Honor knelt on the floor, sitting back on her heels, diligently sewing the torn hem of one of the Princess’s petticoats. Elizabeth sat in her chair across the room, motionless as a cat waiting to pounce. Her restless eyes were the only clue that betrayed how excruciating the wait was for her. Honor was impressed. This girl could control herself when she wanted.

Glancing up from her sewing, she studied the Princess. She was tall, slim, and upright, with a graceful long neck and long legs like a high-spirited filly. Her most striking feature was her hair, bright as copper, smooth as satin, hanging loose, tamed only by a black velvet headband. Its brightness was made brighter by the whiteness of her skin, which was, in turn, made whiter by the darkness of her eyes. No soft blue or gentle green, the black sparkle of these eyes was the legacy of her dark-haired mother, Anne Boleyn.

Honor felt a chill, recalling Anne’s reckless, fiery pride that had fuelled the chaos of those stormy days when Honor had served Queen Catherine. How cruel Anne had been to King Henry’s wife of eighteen years, desolate in her failure to give him a son. Anne had demanded the Queen’s jewels from her royal lover, and got them. Demanded a noble title, and got it. Demanded marriage, and got it, triumphant in all her pregnant glory as Henry’s new queen. She had been crueler still to Catherine’s daughter, the sixteen-year-old Mary. She had dismissed all Mary’s friendly household, denying Mary her status as a princess in favor of her own daughter, the baby Elizabeth, even forcing Mary, in processions, to carry the baby’s train. Anne had installed her own aunt as Mary’s governess, giving her complete authority to browbeat Mary, telling her to slap and beat the girl whenever she claimed to be the true princess and to swear at her as a “cursed bastard.”

Honor wondered, was Anne’s daughter, now a willful twenty-one, driven by the same merciless resolve? Those flashing black eyes spoke of pride, and the spite she had shown to the hapless serving man she’d hurled the book at did not bode well. But bad temper was not brutality. The cruelty now was all on Mary’s side. Necessary, Mary would say, to safeguard her kingdom against a likely traitor. But Honor thought the motive was more deeply personal: to punish the daughter of Anne Boleyn.

The sallow lady finished tucking in the last corner of the last blanket and straightened up. “And now, with your leave, my lady, we’ll see to your dinner.”

“Tell them to warm some cider, too. I have a sore throat. The good cider, from old Bedingfield’s stash, not the swill.”

“That’s in Sir Henry’s storeroom,” the other lady said in protest. “I’ll have to get the chamberlain to unlock it.”

“Take your time,” Elizabeth said sweetly, then added with a bitter smile, “I’m not going anywhere today.”

The moment they were alone Elizabeth dashed to the door and shut it, then whirled around to Honor, who was still on her knees. “Have you a message from Sir William Cecil?”

“No message, my lady. Only myself.”

Elizabeth looked startled at the sudden change in Honor’s manner and tone, all her subservience gone, authority in its place.

“Stand up. Who are you?” Her questions came fast, tripping over each other. “Why have you come? How did you get in? How do you know Sir William? Who
are
you?”

Honor rose, holding up her hands at the torrent of queries. “Your first and last are easy—my name is Honor Thornleigh. Sir William sent me to you. As for why, he believes you could use some friendly council.”

“Council?” Elizabeth said with a skeptical frown, taking in Honor’s coarse homespun clothes.

“Philosophum non facit barba,”
Honor said. The beard does not define the philosopher.

Elizabeth laughed in delight at the Latin. “You quote Plutarch! Ha! Truly,
fallaces sunt rerum species.
” Appearances are deceptive.

Honor glanced at the door. “We may not have much time, my lady. Though I will endeavor to come to you again as soon as I can. First, is there anything I can do for you? Anything you need?”

“Books! Bring me books! That toad Bedingfield allows me nothing but religion. The Queen is bent on making me more Catholic than the pope. I’m choking on those dusty tomes. Bring me books, I beg you. Else I shall die of boredom before my sister gets around to killing me.”

Honor was taken aback at the defeatist tone of her last words. “Are you so sure she means to?”

“What else? She hates me. Body and soul.”

“Yet keeps you alive.”

“Because she has no evidence! She can find no guilt!”

She said it so triumphantly that Honor immediately doubted the girl’s former, fatalistic tone. It seemed this Princess enjoyed dramatics. Honor itched to ask her outright if she had indeed conspired with Wyatt in the failed rebellion, but it was not her place to push so hard. Not yet.

“I will try to bring you a book or two on my next visit, my lady. What would interest you most?”

She said eagerly, “Philosophy. Science. Poetry. Ask Sir William. Or have him send you to some learned person—they’ll show you what to bring.”

“Sonnets by William Dunbar, perhaps? On science, Linacre’s
De naturalibus facultatibus,
translating Galen? For philosophy, perhaps
Oration on the Dignity of Man
by Pico della Mirandola. And Thomas Elyot’s
Defense of Good Women.
”

Elizabeth looked dumbfounded at the litany. “Elyot…one of my favorites.”

Of course, Honor thought. Elyot had championed the education of women. “I knew him quite well,” she said. “He was a friend of my guardian, Sir Thomas More, and visited us often.”

Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. “You grew up in Thomas More’s house?”

“I did.” She knew this was a double-edged sword. It would cement her credibility for learning, but her guardian had famously gone to his death on the scaffold rather than accept King Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn.

“You are well read, Mistress Thornleigh,” was Elizabeth’s cautious reply.

“And you are perhaps the best educated princess in Europe. I heard so from my friend and your tutor, Master Roger Ascham, when he was in Germany.”

Elizabeth’s cool reserve melted into sudden warmth. “Dear Master Ascham. His name is passport enough. You are very welcome, mistress. Now, these books, will you really bring them? When can you come again?”

“As often as your underclothes need washing. In your daily walk can you manage, perhaps, to fall into a mud puddle?”

Elizabeth laughed. A lovely sound that touched Honor’s heart, for it reminded her of her own daughter’s laugh.

“The laundress comes every other day, I think,” Elizabeth said. “Can you do the same?”

“With pleasure. If the guards remain as compliant as today.”

“Aspirat primo fortuna labori.”
Fortune smiles upon our first effort.

Honor matched Virgil with Virgil.
“Audaces fortuna iuvat.”
Fortune favors the bold.

They smiled together.

They heard voices, the ladies returning. Honor grabbed the bundle of dirty laundry, ready to leave. “One more book,” she said. “May I recommend
Il Principe
by Niccolò Machiavelli?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Never heard of him.”

“A Florentine. Brilliant. Not a favorite of the pope.”

“Bring it.”

“I shall,” Honor said.
And with it,
she thought,
I’ll teach you how to rule.

It was two days before she could get back in to see Elizabeth. When she arrived, still pretending to be the laundress, the ladies were not present but Bedingfield was. A weary-looking, jowled man dressed in heavy brown velvet robes, he was on his knees before an angry Elizabeth. Honor hung back, unwilling to have him notice her, but she observed him carefully. The skin below his eyes looked bruised, shadowed with sleeplessness from the stress of dealing with his imperious prisoner, and his chin, though shaven, was shadowed with a black bristle of whiskers.

“I tell you, I must present a petition to the royal council,” Elizabeth snapped. “They will not countenance the abuse I endure here, suffering in this miserable, stinking wet and cold. I will ask them to move me to a house nearer London.”

“But, my lady, you have been forbidden any pen or paper.”

“Good God, man, how you dwell on details.”

“No detail, madam. The Queen’s order.”

Elizabeth almost exploded. “Even a common felon in Newgate jail is allowed to sue for his rights! Am I to be denied even this?”

“I can but follow orders, my lady.” He started, laboriously, to get up.

“Kneel, sir, before your betters!”

He sank back down on his knees with a grimace of displeasure. Honor could see how deeply he resented this treatment.

Elizabeth’s tight expression showed that she, too, could barely contain her disgust with him. “Since I am not allowed to write,” she explained slowly, as if to a dull-witted child, “you must write
for
me. A summary of my petition. You will come here tomorrow and I will dictate. You must bring pen and paper and ink. Can you manage
that?
”

He managed to say that he could, though he looked like he felt it the worst kind of imposition, fraught with danger for himself.

“Gratia
,” she said with chilly hauteur,
“causarum justia et misericordia.”
Thank you, for the cause of justice and mercy.

When Bedingfield looked perplexed at the Latin, Elizabeth shot a wry glance at Honor, and said,
“Margaritas ante porcos.”
Pearls before swine.

He looked around to see who she was talking to. Honor ducked her head. Bedingfield, she hoped, saw only a laundress.

When he was gone it was Honor’s turn to let loose her anger. “You are too familiar with me, my lady. You risk us both.”

“What, with that toad? He’s as oblivious as a baby. Have you brought books?”

Honor unpacked them, two small volumes, including the Cicero that Elizabeth had requested. “As your keeper he holds the keys to your comfort or pain. And mine. You would do well to show him respect.”

“I will not kowtow to an idiot. I am the daughter of a king.”

“And as such you have some power. But you use it like a child.”

Elizabeth looked shocked. Had no one ever spoken to her like this?

“It is you who are too familiar,” Elizabeth said coldly. “Leave the books. Then go. I need no washerwoman’s advice.”

Honor spent an uncomfortable night at the Bull Inn, unable to sleep, unsure how to proceed. It was going to take time to teach this willful young woman the dangers of the game she was playing.

4

Neighbors

December 1554

“R
ichard Thornleigh? Here?”

It was so shocking, Frances Grenville thought she must have misheard her brother. He had reached her in the outdoor barnyard court where she was overseeing the slaughter of a dozen Christmas geese, and the squawking was hectic as servants restrained the frantic birds and old Mossop’s knife hissed at the whetstone.

“Not yet,” John said as bitterly as though he’d tasted wormwood. The expression on his bony face was one of grim hostility. It made the scar above his upper lip—a hard, diagonal ridge from the nostril to the lip’s edge—go whiter than usual. “Fanshaw galloped across the pasture to say he saw him riding the road toward us.”

Frances felt a shudder of terror. The murderer, on his way!

“I want you to stay here,” John said. “I’ve sent Arabella upstairs with the children. God knows what’s going to happen.” He strode away.

She hurried after him across the court, disobeying his instruction. “Is he coming alone?”

He gave her an irritated glance but walked on. “No, six men ride with him.”