The Twylight Tower (12 page)

“Is there some uprising or rebellion that you demand to see your queen the moment you arrive and without summons?” Elizabeth began as soon as he bowed and stood facing her again.

“Indeed, Your Gracious Majesty, a rebellion of sorts. Mine. I cannot serve you in such fashion where I must stand in line with the kingdom’s essential business in hand to await the whims of dancing, boating, or gambling at cards, while all the time you gamble with your own future. I honor and admire you far too much to see that happen.”

She probably, he noted, would have cut him off, but she looked so shocked, she gasped for words. Good, he thought. He had her full attention at last.

“You—you are resigning?” she choked out. “I’ll not allow it! You are but vexed I have for once taken some time to enjoy myself before my return to London.”

“London, Your Grace, where people are muttering that you will wed Robert Dudley.”

“I cannot wed Robert Dudley!” she shouted, and jumped up to come at him, then swerved to pace before the throne. “The man is married, for heaven’s sake, Cecil.”

“Your father’s being married never stopped him when he desired to wed, that’s what your subjects are remembering. And rumors say Amy Dudley is ailing and—”

“Rumors?” she cried, flinging out both arms. “I am indeed doomed if my chief adviser is making his decisions on rumors. Are you demented, my lord?”

He nearly dared to ask her the same. “Your Grace,” he said, choosing each word carefully, though he couldn’t recall one of his well-rehearsed pleas, “you have said you wish to rule by the goodwill of your people. I am only asking that you hold personal affairs more at arm’s length and return to state affairs in London to assure the country and the watching world that you are the ruling queen of England, not only the reigning one.”

“I could put you in the Tower for such insolence.” She leveled a stiff arm and trembling index finger at him. “You are speaking sedition, if not treason, and I
can hardly allow a man who knows so much of the state’s business to go about scot-free.”

He thrust his wrists forward as if they were in shackles already. “I will gladly go to the Tower to rot there rather than see all my dreams rot here, Your Grace. I told Mildred I had almost feared you might have me cast off one of the towers here, but I just might do it myself.”

“Do not jest with that,” she said, her voice quiet for the first time. “But no, you may not resign. I will return to London, my lord, but later, after a little while at Windsor. Yes, have you not heard? I’ve ordered the court to progress to Windsor on the morrow as this place does not please me now.”

He saw her eyes dart around the room. He felt instantly protective of her, just as he had for years. “Because of the death of your musician?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper.

She shrugged. “I know not. Something—I feel someone is watching me, wanting to harm me. It’s a foolish fancy.”

“Or a guilty conscience,” he dared.

She stared straight at him, nostrils flared and fists clenched. He was certain she would strike or banish or even order him imprisoned.

“Be on my barge tomorrow and bring your—my—most important papers,”she said, and swept from the room.

When he was alone, he realized his legs were shaking so hard he had to lean against the wall behind the throne until he felt steady enough to leave.

BUT ON THE BARGE, DESPITE CECIL’S HIGH HOPES, THINGS
weren’t much better. The queen signed papers without reading, half listening to Dudley’s chatter and her lutenist’s eternal repetition of some song entitled “Chi Ama Crede.” She kept up a running patter with her cousin, Lord Hunsdon, who—God bless him—understood Cecil’s dilemma and tried to steer Her Grace back to business. And besides seeming to hearken to everyone and everything but state papers, she kept squinting at the passing shoreline as if some enemy was hidden there. She had Gil Sharpe, her mute little lad of an artist, sketching faces and bringing them to her to comment on. More than once she sent Lord Hunsdon’s new young protégé—some handsome family cousin named Luke Morgan—on errands to order the bargemen to row faster or put in for a few moments. Cecil ground his teeth.

“Everyone had best hold on,” Luke announced to the entire barge when he returned to sit at the queen’s feet for the fortieth time. “The barge master says the rain in this area’s been bad and the rapids below are up a bit.”

Several ladies giggled in anticipation, though Cecil could see no white water ahead. Perhaps it was rocks newly hidden in the swirls that made the danger, for the bottom of the barge bumped and scraped. Cecil saw Dudley immediately seize the queen’s arm to steady her. At least, Cecil thought, the blackguard
wouldn’t let her perish in the water, even if he was willy-nilly drowning her reputation.

A woman screamed. Everyone looked up; some bent over the side.

“It’s Dove, your lutenist, Your Grace,” Dudley’s sister Mary cried. “Perched on the side, he’s fallen in!”

“Fetch him out!” Her Majesty shouted, rising to her feet despite the barge tilting on the rock. She shoved several, including Robert, aside to clamber to the back of the barge near where the lad had popped up in the rush of water, still holding his lute. Shivers shook Cecil. Whatever her flaws, the courage of Elizabeth Tudor was magnificent.

Before her oarsmen or guards could reach an oar to help, Luke jumped off and fought his way through coursing currents to the lad. At first they were swept too far to reach the oars, but Luke half dragged, half swam them toward the barge. Oarsmen towed them in, both sputtering and hacking river water.

Men cheered, ladies applauded, and Elizabeth leaned over the side to take the lute from Franklin and clap the sopping Luke on the back. She refused to step back even when the two men were hauled over the side and drenched her skirts.

“I believe, Franklin,” Her Majesty said, “I must indeed let you use Geoffrey’s lute now, as this one will warp.” Mary Sidney threw a swag of satin bunting over the boy and sat him down in the back of the barge. Cecil saw the queen speak to Luke and shuffled closer to hear.

“You are a good man, Luke Morgan,” Her Majesty said.

“But Your Grace,” Cecil heard him say, out of breath, “I led you wrong about the lad’s being a eunuch.”

“What?” she asked as the others made their way back to their places to hold on while the oarsmen got the barge off the rocks. “You could tell when your hands were on him? You could feel he’s not been gelded?”

“I could feel,” he gasped out, “full breasts that were bandaged tight and popped free under that sopping shirt. Majesty, your he—your eunuch—is a she.”

AFTER THE ROYAL BARGE SWEPT PAST THE
palaces of Hampton Court and Oatlands, Meg saw the gray stone mass of Windsor Castle hove into sight with the little town sprawled around its stony skirts. Though the queen liked her other palaces well enough, the lofty view and fresh air of Windsor always brought her back in late summer. Sometimes Her Grace complained the place itself was like to tumble down about her ears, but she had plans to rebuild it when she got the money.

Peering over the walls sat ornate St. George’s Chapel, where the queen had made Lord Robin a Knight of the Garter in a fancy ceremony Meg had only heard about. Rising above the chapel, the hulk of the old Norman Round Tower frowned down on them all, but right now its heavy brooding could not outdo the queen’s.

Meg could tell Elizabeth was seething, but she
wasn’t sure why. Even when Franklin fell in the river, Her Majesty had been in a soaring mood, glad to see him plucked out. It was only his old lute he’d ruined, but now the queen kept glaring daggers at the bedraggled lad. No, more like it was that the barge had sprung a leak. Most of the men were bailing with hats or even boots, and the queen, like the rest of her ladies, had sopped her skirts and shoes.

“Franklin,” Meg heard the queen say in a sharp voice, “or what must I call you now?”

Meg edged closer as Franklin shuffled through the four inches of water to the queen and bowed very low. “In truth, Felicia Dove, Your Gracious Majesty, but I thought if you knew I was really a—”

“Indeed,” the queen cut him off. “Evidently you deem yourself worthy to do my thinking for me and to dupe me. When we dock, you are to go with Lord Hunsdon and Luke Morgan to Eton and return to court only when I send for you—accompanied by one or the other of those men.”

“If you please, I can explain, Your Maj—”

“I do not please. Go write songs about deceivers for that wet, warped lute, if you can!”

Baron Hunsdon’s man Luke, as if he knew what the queen was ranting about, stepped forward and seemed to take the poor lutenist prisoner.
Felicia
Dove? Meg thought. And then, when Franklin had to unwrap himself from the satin swag he’d clung to like a shawl, Meg saw that the lad was indeed a maid. Despite the barrier of the lute, the sodden shirt clung to a feminine form.

Meg gasped at the wench’s trick, crafty as Ned’s turning lads to ladies for the stage with wigs, face paint, and padded breasts. Mercy, thought Meg, the queen had gone about as a lad a time or two herself, so why hadn’t she discovered that ruse? Though, of course, Meg and Ned hadn’t either. Still, she was certain more was expected of queens, and that must be why Her Grace was out of sorts.

Set between town and castle, the royal barge landing was a bit past the bustling public one. Under a grassy bank where Meg tended the queen’s rose and herb gardens, the palace’s wooden dock soon swarmed with townsfolk who saw the queen’s barge. After her betters had disembarked, Meg clambered out. The queen’s castle steward, a portly man whose name Meg could not recall, greeted Her Majesty with a low bow. The royal litter with carriers awaited her short ride up to the castle. Though it wasn’t far, someone produced horses for Lord Robin and other men to make an escort.

“A difficult journey, I take it, Your Grace,” the steward intoned, “but we can no doubt repair the barge.”

“Do so, but also send for another back in London,” the queen clipped out, settling herself in her litter with Lord Robin’s helping hand. “And,” she said, speaking loudly enough for everyone on the landing to hear, including the barge crew, “order new oarsmen sent with it who know how to keep me off the rocks, hidden or not.”

Meg’s insides cartwheeled. Not only were the poor
oarsmen shamed and dismayed, but Felicia Dove was also downcast. Her Grace’s command could hurt Meg too. Meg’s estranged husband was an oarsman in London, and she’d told the queen not one thing about him—not even that she’d been wed before she lost her memory.

Meg had learned of him in London and seen him too, close-up, the ruffian. So every time new rowers were hired for the royal barges, Meg shuddered to think one might be Ben Wilton, come to work for Her Majesty. He would see Meg, whose name had once been Sarah Scutea, and claim his wayward wife. And what if, like Felicia Dove, Meg thought as she hurried to keep up on foot with the queen’s entourage, the queen cast her off for lying? If she ever had to stop being Meg Milligrew and leave Elizabeth Tudor, she’d just as soon throw herself off a tower, maybe like poor Geoffrey’d done.

As Meg hurried through the King Henry VIII gateway of the palace, she glanced up to see fierce gargoyles glaring down at her.

ELIZABETH ORDERED A CANDLELIGHT SERVICE THAT EVE
ning in St. George’s Chapel in gratitude for her safe deliverance on the river. She sat in the first row between Robin and her cousin Harry, staring at the altar, hardly hearing what the minister said. However much she loved this ornate, gilded, and carved place, which lifted hearts to heaven with its soaring arches and spires, she could not help but stare at the high altar.
The black-and-white tiled floor before it seemed to shift and shudder in flickering light as a thunderstorm rumbled into the valley outside.