The Virgin Queen's Daughter - Ella March Chase (10 page)

At that instant, there was a voice outside the door, the usher booming out my name. “Mistress de Lacey, you are summoned to the Presence Chamber, there to take your oath to the queen.”

“Are you ready to reacquaint yourself with Her Majesty?” Kat Ashley asked.

“That is what I have come here for.” My heart flipped with anticipation, excitement. I tipped my chin up, proud in the gown my mother had made for me, despite Lettice Knollys’s scornful gaze.

Lady Ashley laughed, tucking a tendril of flyaway red beneath my French hood. “It is a good thing for a woman to know what she wants, Nell de Lacey.”

“The danger comes when she takes it,” someone murmured. Lettice Knollys? Mary Grey? One of the other women who eyed me with curiosity or disdain? I would never know.

Chapter Nine

That Evening

T
HE RICH LABYRINTH OF CHAMBERS WE WOUND
through pressed hot and close with people. Faces blurred. Colors clashed. Rich raiment battled for notice as the nobles and gentlemen and ladies tried to outdo each other in grandness, thus capturing the queen’s attention. Yet I did not have to jostle for precedence that day, not even with the finest specimens England had to offer. They split before me, as if an enchanted sword had cleaved the path, and I glided down the Presence Chamber’s length. Every eye locked upon me, courtiers taking my measure the same way the queen’s ladies had.

What kind of cat is this one?
I now know they were thinking.
Is she a nobody like Crouchback Mary, to be ignored? Or is she someone who might displace me in the queen’s favor? Let her be a pawn I might be able to use in my own selfish quest.

My heart lodged in my throat as I made my way toward the cloth of estate, its canopy bright in torchlight. Yet more daunting still was the remarkable woman who sat in a throne beneath it. I thought of Father and the night he had carried me up onto the Tower wall. Never had Copernicus’s theory about the sun being the center of universe seemed more absurd. How could anyone believe that we spun around the sun? It was not the center of the universe. She was.

Her whole person blazed with jewels. Her glorious hair shimmered beneath her crown. And her face . . . I hardly dared to look at it, fearing it would blind me the way Father warned me might happen if I stared straight into the sun. Yet I could not resist the pull of that face, layered with strength from the trials she had endured. Elizabeth, cloaked in majesty so overwhelming it was as if God had fashioned her to show his angels, saying “This woman is everything a mortal queen should be.” Nowhere in this majestic figure was there any hint of the frightened girl Elizabeth Tudor had been. Before me in royal splendor was a stranger who both fascinated and unnerved me. I curtseyed deep and the queen inspected me. Deliberately, she took my measure. I nearly jumped out of my skin when she spoke.

“And so, you have come to my court at last, Mistress Elinor de Lacey.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” I met her gaze.

She gave a small nod, as if passing judgment on a test. “I confess I was surprised to receive your father’s request that you come to serve me, Mistress. Lord Calverley attended court only when dragged by his shirt points, as I recall. He preferred libraries and the colleges at Cambridge, as my tutor Roger Ascham did.”

“My mother spent much time in the royal household before I was born,” I said.

“I remember it well. In the reign of my beloved stepmother, Queen Katherine Parr. Are you ready to serve me as loyally as Lady Calverley did my stepmother, Mistress Elinor? She was with the dowager queen until that lady died.”

“It is my deepest wish to serve you with the loyalty my mother showed the dowager queen. My lady mother loved Her Grace very much.”

“Yes. Lady Calverley was capable of great loyalty. And stubbornness against those she chose not to like.” Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. “She was never good at hiding her displeasure. Neither was I. That is why I was astonished to learn it was your mother’s wish to place you in my household.”

I swallowed hard, feeling the sensation I would revisit so often at court. That sense of dangling from London Bridge, my fingers starting to slip. “My lady mother was excited that . . .” The lie began to slip out, but I could see the queen’s intelligence ready to cleave the truth from me. “My mother was not pleased with my coming here. It was my father’s wish. And my own.”

“Honesty is a rare quality at court,” the queen said. “I had heard there was no small unpleasantness before you left Calverley Manor.”

I chose my words with care. “You will not regret bringing me here, Your Majesty.”

The queen’s nostrils pinched. “Who are you to tell me what I will or will not regret? I will decide the worthiness of those who serve me.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. I did not seek to offend you.”

“And yet you have. Perhaps I shall see what my trusted advisers have to say about you. Lord Robert?” A man stepped from the crowd. Tall, with a chestnut beard and a horseman’s well-honed frame. Lord Robert Dudley, the childhood friend and rumored lover of the queen. I recalled Moll’s prattle about the babe the two made together, foolish gossip I was sure, and yet my gaze dropped to the floor, fearing they might be able to read Moll’s folly in my eyes.

“What do you think of my newest maid of honor, my lord?” The queen asked Dudley. “As Master of the Horse you have an eye for a likely filly. Is she beautiful?”

Dudley shrugged, barely glancing my way. “How will we ever know? Your Majesty shines so bright, no man will ever notice the poor child.”

Elizabeth smiled and in that moment I saw the truth pass hot between them.

“Then I shall bind the girl to me, Robin. And you shall keep your pack of dogs at bay.” The queen gestured to the cluster of men Dudley had just left. Handsome, arrogant in their wealth, yet my father had told me the queen gathered only the finest minds around her. I relished the thought of jousting wits with them as others might tilt with lances.

One man stood out even among so fine a display. Black hair gleamed beneath his green cap, white plumes fastening up one side with a pearl brooch. His eyes fixed on me; from his left ear dangled a single earring, a misshapen pearl pale against his skin.

“Mistress Elinor.” The queen’s voice. Sharp. I jumped, unable to hide the fact that she startled me. “Do you think you can stop gaping at Sir Gabriel long enough to take the maid’s oath?” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him smile, so smug my cheeks burned. “I hope this inattention to duty when faced with a handsome man is not a clue to your future behavior.”

“He is not at all handsome, Your Majesty.” It was true. Everything about Sir Gabriel was a trifle roughened—his jaw shadowed with a hint of beard, his teeth just the slightest bit uneven. “She does not think you handsome, Gypsy’s Angel,” the Queen observed. “What say you to that, sir?”

“Perhaps Dr. Lopez could fit her with spectacles,” Sir Gabriel replied.

The queen guffawed, setting the rest of the room laughing. “You have wounded one of court’s leading gallants, and you not in my presence yet an hour, Mistress Elinor. You are most amusing. A trait your mother never shared.”

“I am . . .”
An idiot.
“Your Majesty, I am very nervous.”

“If you have managed this much mischief in so short a time, I will be eager to see what you might accomplish in a week. Yet, be wary. You have insulted my gallant Angel. He will demand satisfaction. Sir Gabriel is recently returned to court. I banished him for nearly murdering one of my other courtiers. Tell us, Sir Angel. Will you be challenging my newest maid to a duel since she has wounded your pride?”

“Never! Your Majesty did forbid me after the last one. I am, as ever, your obedient servant.”

“Pah!” the queen said, but her mouth curved with sensual invitation. “You are a bad dog, Sir Gabriel, and you always will be. But you wear my collar.”

“Until I die.” The knight swept her a bow.

“Let it not be a traitor’s death as your father’s before you. I remember that your head was to be the next to fall were it not for a royal pardon.”

“That narrow escape taught me
some
caution, Your Majesty. You know how fastidious I am about keeping my collars white. Bloodstains can be beastly to get out.”

“As Ashwall discovered during the duel when he lost his left ear.” “I hope that in the future he will use his remaining one to listen, Your Majesty.”

“You would do well to heed your own advice!” the queen snapped.

Sir Gabriel swept his cap from his head. “I seek to please you in all things. As I hope your new maid of honor will do.”

“She does not think you handsome. That pleases me at present. Handsome heads are often the first to roll. Mistress Elinor,” the queen commanded, “you will kneel before me.”

I did as she bade me, took my oath then kissed the ring of state upon her finger. I pledged myself to Elizabeth Regina. Queen of England, Ireland, Scotland, and France. I was far too innocent to guess what the cost of that day would be.

A
FTER THE COURT
had supped, and the palace was washed red with torchlight, Lady Ashley signaled the Mother of the Maids that she wished to be left alone with me. Lady Betty gave a brisk nod, then shooed my fellow maids of honor off to their lodgings for the night. “My dear, that was a most unfortunate encounter you had today,” Lady Ashley said, her kind face lined with worry.

“I am sorry. The last thing I wanted to do was step wrong-footed where Her Majesty is concerned.”

“Your first meeting with the queen went well enough. It was the slap you dealt Sir Gabriel Wyatt’s vanity that makes me fear for you.”

I remembered how his gaze had followed me the rest of the night. “He treated my blunder as a jest, did he not?” I asked, hoping it was so.

“Mark me well, Elinor. You do not want to draw this man’s attention. And claiming a man who has seduced half the women at court holds no allure for you—you might as well have thrown down a gauntlet. He will set out to seduce you, or discredit you, or unearth some secret he can use against you. Sir Gabriel demands satisfaction in blood for slights done to him, because his father was a traitor and his mother a whore. He is not to be trifled with.”

“And yet, the queen called him Gypsy’s Angel?”

“Gypsy is Her Majesty’s name for Lord Robert because he is so swarthy of face. Sir Gabriel is Dudley’s man, blood and bone.”

“That does not explain the ‘Angel.’ ”

“It is a fine irony. Sir Gabriel will never wear a halo, but he possesses the ability to charm people into confessing things no sane person would reveal anyplace but heaven’s gates.”

I was unnerved, thinking of the forbidden books tucked in a hidden compartment in my writing desk. “It is a good thing I have no secrets for him to expose,” I lied.

“You will have.” Wisdom filled Kat Ashley’s eyes. “Court breeds intrigue.”

“Perhaps if I begged pardon . . .”

“Sir Gabriel would never consider the debt paid unless you announced it to every man or woman who was in the Presence Chamber tonight. And that kind of display the queen would find unseemly.”

“My lady mother warned me to curb my tongue once I arrived at the palace or I would find myself in trouble.” I remembered the dread in my mother’s eyes when she watched me ride away. I had not expected Lady Ashley’s expression to mirror hers on my very first day!

“I will never forget the weeks after Lady Elizabeth and I joined the dowager queen at Chelsea.” Lady Ashley fingered the gold cross at her throat. “Your mother was there, caring for Katherine Parr after the horrors of her marriage. The queen was thin from strain, pale as the ghosts of the wives Henry killed before her.”

My eyes widened at Kat Ashley’s boldness. The woman shrugged. “I am speaking the truth. The axe hovered over Katherine Parr’s neck from the moment Henry Tudor put his nuptial ring upon her finger.When the queen did not get with child we all knew the king’s eye would wander. Once it did, she would go the way of the others. Truth is she would have died, if it had not been for your mother.”

“My lady mother?” I echoed, astonished. “What had she to do with it?”

“Lady Calverley saw the queen’s great enemy drop a bundle of missives in the garden. Lord Chancellor Wriothesley was looking so fiendishly pleased with himself that your mother—” Lady Ashley made a wry face. “Forgive an old woman’s prattle. Your mother must have told you this tale a score of times.”

“My lady mother never speaks of her years at court.”

Lady Ashley glanced away. “Little wonder.” She plucked a loose thread from her sleeve. “There was much to grieve over then.”

“Please tell me what happened.”

“Your mother brought Wriothesley’s papers to Queen Katherine. The bundle contained a warrant for the queen’s arrest, signed by King Henry himself.”

I pictured mother stumbling across such terrifying documents. I imagined her indecision. She was far too practical not to guess what would happen to her and to my father if Katherine Parr’s powerful enemies discovered who had thwarted their plans.

If the queen was sent to the Tower, what trouble would it be to imprison the ladies who loved her? It would not be the first time Henry Tudor condemned one of his queen’s loyal servants to the axe. And yet, mother had not done the sensible, practical thing. She had not dropped the documents as if they were afire, left them for someone else to stumble upon. Why had she never told me of her courage?

“The queen went mad with terror when she read the warrant,” Lady Ashley said. “I was told her weeping could be heard throughout the halls. But her ladies called good Doctor Wendy to tend her in her distress. He and your mother and Lady Herbert, the queen’s own sister, bade Katherine gather her courage. If she could mend things with the king she might yet live.”

I tried to imagine going to such a man, pleading for your life. He was her husband. He had taken holy vows to bind himself to her.He had shared her bed. Professed to love her. Promised to protect her. What would I feel if I had been in my mother’s place? If the life of someone I loved hung in the balance, in the power of a capricious king who had already sent two wives to the block?