The Spymaster's Daughter (44 page)

“I must. They would cancel everything, and Ballard would be afoot in London to preach and plot treason again. One of them now has the courage to try to murder Elizabeth to bring on an uprising. The queen must be guarded. She is too brave and takes chances.” He smiled slightly, as a son for a mother who had grown cranky in her dotage. “You know her. She would want to take that rusty old sword of her father's and fight them herself.”

Frances laughed. “You have the right of it, and I would save the queen, but—”

“No more, Frances. If you know the right, then you must follow it.”

She clung to him. “Yet I need you. There is so little time before Philip—”

Robert held her close, and despite his own warnings, the possibility of a passing guard or early stable boy, he crushed her to him.

Frances gulped tears and the choking fear welling inside her. “I feel you slipping away from me already. Love me, before we are parted, before others have your love.”

He took her chin and tipped her head back, reading as much as he could in the dim light. “Remember only this, dearest. It will be the memory of you in them that I love.”

Her face burning with desire, her body trembling, Frances backed to the stone wall behind her and held out her arms for him to step into. “Dearest Robert, love me now, while we can, before I am sent away. I burn for you…burn…”

For the next few minutes, dawn crept slowly into the courtyard, as if the dark curtain of the sky had been lifted. She clung to him as he lifted her, held her closer than ever before, her legs wrapped about his hips, his lips bruising hers. She had never felt such need for a man's love, nor felt any man so reach to her deepest place, finding a new raging fire that he fully quenched again as he had in the inn.

Frances pressed back her head, her maid's mobcap dropping unnoticed to the ground, and then screamed without sound into his mouth.

“My love, my love.” He choked out the words. “No matter how many leagues we are parted, this moment will stay forever in my heart…and memory…as the happiest of my life.”

He cradled her next to his chest, and though her hair brushed his face and wound, he could not push her away.

Clinging to him fiercely enough to last all her life, Frances knew she had broken her marriage vows again, and yet being with
Robert did not feel false, but like new virtue, the greatest truth she had ever known. And to think she could have never felt such womanly pleasure in her life without Robert. She had more than one reason to bless him.

Before she could speak of it, he set her upon the first step. “I must haste back to Seething Lane with wine.” He was out the door, but turned back once. “Remember always, dearest: Love cannot be conquered.”

Frances scrambled up the steps, a few times using her hands to hoist herself upward. She was tired to the depths of her soul, though her heart sang its song:
Robert loves me, only
me.

At the top of the stairs she realized that the spymaster's office was around the next corner. Panic rose along with her gorge, and she thought for an instant that she would not take the assassins' plans to her father.

What if he sent her this day to Barn Elms? What if she never saw Robert again? Was she choosing her queen over her love? Could she?

Taking a deep breath, she knew that if she did not go at once to her father, she could nevermore call herself an intelligencer, or even a true Englishwoman. Robert would despise her. And she could not even take the time to change from Meg's third-best gown!

She begged silently for God's help and announced herself to the astonished guards, who allowed her into her father's office, by this time well aware that she was more than Walsingham's daughter. Frances walked directly past the secretaries, who stood hesitantly at sight of her face and gown, their mouths slack with shock.

Sir Francis Walsingham sat at his writing table at the end of the long room, watching her approach, his face growing darker with each step she took toward him.

His voice was almost choked. “Daughter, what is the meaning of this…these clothes…your hair…and you here at dawn?”

“Father,” she said, bowing her head, “give me your blessing, for I am in need of it.”

When no blessing was forthcoming, Frances looked up at her father's candlelit face, his beard twitching as his mouth worked to form angry words. She did not wait.

“I have been with Robert Pauley at Seething Lane. He is much hurt from the Tower, but he has gained the trust of Babington, his men, and John Ballard, the murdering priest who is disguising himself as the soldier Captain Fortescue….” She breathed deeply before more truth could be spoken. “And I helped Robert as a maid of the house.” She hurried on while her father worked to form outrage into words, a problem he rarely had.

“Robert heard Ballard and Babington's men plot to murder the queen in her garden this very morn.”

“Tell me all of what you know.”

“They did not trust Robert completely with plans already made, but he heard that when the queen walks in her garden this morning—”

“How many men will come against her?”

“One. The priest Ballard claims the pope gave him the right to kill Her Majesty. Robert will hold the rest at Seething Lane until you send men to take them.” Without taking breath, she dropped to her knees. “Do not send me back to Barn Elms, Father. You see an intelligencer before you. Though you may not want it, this is what I am become.” She lifted her head with pride and was astonished to see a hint of admiration in her father's face, the first she remembered since her wedding night to a noted poet of great family.

He lifted her up, his hands light on her arms, and searched her face. “Indeed, for now I must think you have the right of it, daughter.”

Though the words were sincere, Frances knew they were grudging and could easily be reclaimed.

Walsingham coughed. “But we will talk more of this later. At this time, I must call out the guard.”

“Then the priest Ballard will be warned and escape to try again, or another assassin will come.”

Walsingham closed his eyes and nodded without acknowledging the rightness of her advice. “My men will be hidden, lest they warn this Ballard by their presence.” He tapped his quill on the letter he was writing. “My lord Essex is the man who would save Her Majesty and secure himself in her favor….” He smiled slightly, pleased. “And perhaps earn your esteem at last.”

“Aye,” Frances agreed, “he delights in playing the hero.”

Her father frowned. “Why have you so taken against this lord? He is your husband's friend, close to the queen…and speaks often of your beauty.”

She could not help but think her father saw only Essex's youth, daring, and easy manner, not the man who had once sought to conquer his friend's wife.

Walsingham paused, his eyes sweeping her costume, his mouth pursed. “Though Essex has not seen you arrayed thus.”

Her father stepped behind his writing table and bent to his papers. “Go, daughter, and prepare yourself to accompany the queen on her morning walk in her gardens. I will go to Essex myself before Raleigh gets news of this, as he always seems to, and rushes to throw his cloak at the murderer.” Her father laughed…actually laughed.

“Haste, daughter.” He fastened his starched neck ruff, which had been loosened for comfort.

“Will we talk again later?” she asked, knowing the answer.

“You may be assured of it. Now off with you.”

Frances made her way to her apartment from shadow to shadow, as she seemed to do more frequently lately.

“Meg,” she called as she latched the door and turned the lock.

A sleepy Meg came into Frances's bedchamber from her pallet in her small sleeping closet. Will followed closely.

So that was the way of it. It had not taken the minx long. “Dress yourself in livery, Will. I will have need of you soon.”

He nodded and disappeared toward the closet.

“Watch that your belly doesn't betray you,” Frances warned Meg, who yet rubbed sleep from her eyes, her lips still swollen from Will's kisses.

Meg hung her head for a moment, then lifted it and looked into her mistress's face.

“We wish to marry, my lady.”

“I know you are of age, but does he have the lawful fourteen years?”

“Just, my lady, no more than three years my younger. I can teach him much.”

“I have no doubt you have already played the teacher. We will talk more of it later. Now I must haste to wash myself and dress for the presence chamber.”

Soon Frances was swathed in her usual kirtle, partlet, shifts, embroidered oversleeves, and a gown of shimmering white sarcenet that set her face and dark, sleepless eyes aglow.

Meg stood back from the polished-steel mirror. “Her Majesty will be jealous.”

“Aye,” Frances said, “and I would not have it. Bring my slippers without wooden heels so that I am not taller, and I will wear no pearls, and thus to the queen's eye be not too richly dressed.”

Meg ducked her head, but not before Frances caught her knowing smile. The maid was too impudent for her station. She would either be damned for it or raised to a better one. Frances thought the latter more likely. She called toward the closet chamber, “Will, attend me!” and headed for the door, expecting him to reach it before her, and so he did. Perhaps he had already been well tutored in more than bed sport.

Joining the queen's procession into the presence chamber, Frances nodded to Essex, who tried to communicate with his darting eyes, but she, smiling with a somewhat forced friendliness, moved on toward the dais.

The dreary business of ruling took less time this day, Elizabeth being eager to reach her garden's fresh air, scented with spicy roses and small Spanish espaliered oranges to pick from her enclosed sun-warmed garden wall.

Frances congratulated herself for not wearing her pearls. Elizabeth appeared to wear every jewel in the royal jewel closet: triple strands of pearls swagged across her chest, table diamonds as large as thumbs lining her oversleeves, emeralds without number, and a large teardrop ruby pendant on her forehead.

When the procession to the royal apartments began, Frances moved to the queen. “Majesty, an urgent word for your ear alone.”

“Well…what is it this time, Lady Frances?”

“Your grace, there is a plot to kill you—”

“There is always a plot—”

Frances interrupted. “…in the garden as you walk this morn.”

“Traitors! They dare think to come against me in my own court! I do not fear them. I am King Henry's spawn and have his valor.” She stomped to her hearth chair. Grabbing up her father's sword with both hands, she slashed at an imaginary foe. Looking satisfied, she held the weapon up in front of her. “This sword my father carried in France on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, with my mother at his side. Let them try to threaten me and they will rue it for the rest of their short lives.”

Elizabeth straightened her back and drew herself to her full height. “Let us walk, Lady Frances. I have a desire for the fresh air of my garden. No traitor can keep the queen of this realm hiding in her bed!”

It was a sparkling morning, though the summer would soon come to an end, the rain of last night hanging like bright tears on
the roses. It was not a morning for murder, and Frances vowed there would be none. She moved closer down the circling gravel path toward the queen, who was trailed by all her ladies. Her Majesty was on Essex's arm, of course. He was cloaked and wearing silk hosen, a russet shirt open at the throat to show his broad chest, and a silver embroidered doublet as befitted his rank, but with no sign of a sword or any weapon.

“Come, Lady Sidney,” the queen said, “walk with your queen and my lord Essex the while.”

“Gladly, Majesty.” Frances moved up swiftly, her slippers not protecting her feet from the gravel.

Essex bowed. “Majesty, if it please you, let us stop here to admire your roses. I know you love the ones with the spicy scent.”

“I do, my lord. Do you not like them as well, Lady Sidney?” Though she spoke normally, the queen's eyes darted everywhere.

Frances was looking about her and forward to the fountain at the end of the walled garden and back to where the garden opened into a long yew-covered walk, darker than it should be. She knew her father would have guards well hidden, dressed in forest green up in the trees and within the maze. Then she saw their shadows as two guards stepped out onto the top of the wall holding crossbows cocked, quarrels in place, while still hidden under overhanging branches. The queen saw them, too.

“My lady,” the queen said in a voice that could reach to multitudes when she so desired, “you are not attentive!”

“Yes, Majesty,” Frances said, curtsying quickly. “I, too, love the spice-scented roses, and have some in our garden at Barn Elms.”

“Indeed,” the queen said, her gaze darting everywhere.

Frances was more admiring of her than ever. Elizabeth had the instincts of her father, the great Harry. This was a joust to her, and she expected to win the prize.

“Yes, your grace,” Frances said, “my father planted them for your enjoyment when you came upriver to honor us.”

“Mmm,” the queen said, a smile playing upon her mouth. “Let us move on to my oranges. I would break my fast with one while it is yet warm and juicy.”

They moved toward the sun-soaked brick wall at the rear of the garden.

A small, seldom-used gardener's door was suddenly thrust open, and John Ballard stepped through, his face dark with purpose, a pistola in his hand swinging toward the queen.

Elizabeth halted to pull her sword from the scabbard hidden behind her gown. Without sound or thought, Frances stepped in front of the queen, only to be pushed away by Essex.

“Ballard,” Frances said, “stop or you will get no more ale from me!”