The Virgin Queen's Daughter - Ella March Chase (8 page)

“You will not hear a word of reproach from me if you return home,” Mother pressed me, so sincere I felt sorry for her pain. “I swear it on my own dear mother’s grave. Once you are inducted into the court, you will not be able to leave unless the queen gives you permission to. You will be under the queen’s control for as long as she wishes it. I will have no power to help you.”

“I will write to you,” I reassured her, regretting the lines in her face, her hair, once lustrous black and now graying. Somehow, in the war between us, my mother had grown old.

She reached for my right hand. Her fingers gently chafed the scar that arced from the knuckle of my smallest finger toward my wrist. For a long moment she stared at that ridge of flesh as if it held all the secrets in the world. “I love you, Nell. You must never doubt it.”

Chapter Six

Elizabeth

F
EBRUARY
1 5 4 8

D
AUGHTERS OF EVE ARE BORN TO SIN. LUST OF THE FLESH
waits to devour us . . .

Winter sunlight streaming through the solar windows

D of Chelsea Manor could not lighten Elizabeth’s displeasure at the religious tract Lady Calverley read aloud. But even Kat Ashley, Elizabeth’s beloved governess, who sat nearby trying to stitch, was oblivious to the dangerous course of Elizabeth’s thoughts of late. Kat did not know the secret her fourteen-year-old charge clung to, hiding its sinful sparkle. Thomas.

Elizabeth frowned at the prayer book cover she was working in silver thread. Her handsome stepfather teased her memory, slapping her buttocks, tickling her, his big hands brushing her breasts. He was her stepmother’s loving husband. Elizabeth knew the sensations he evoked showed
her
sinfulness, not his. Had sin been transferred to her while in her mother’s womb? She pictured Anne Boleyn’s exotic face from a portrait she had seen. The Boleyn Witch. The Great Whore. And what of her daughter? A child conceived in lust so strong it toppled a pope. Elizabeth jabbed her needle through the velvet and bit back a yelp as she punctured her finger beneath the embroidery hoop. A nudge from God, Lady Calverley would have claimed, had Thomasin de Lacey’s eyes been able to pierce Elizabeth’s innocent facade.

Elizabeth glanced at her stepmother, wondering if she felt that same burn inside when Thomas Seymour was near. The serene Katherine glowed in spite of Lady Calverley’s grim reading, blushed with a love that filled Elizabeth with confusion and envy, ugly resentment as well as affection. Four times that day the silk thread Katherine was using had slipped from her needle and she set ten stitches before she noticed anything was amiss. Yet instead of the embarrassment Elizabeth would have felt at being caught thus, Katherine’s smile only grew more mysterious.

“Lady Elizabeth,” Lady Calverley’s voice intruded. “Does today’s reading not please you?”

“I am not the one who keeps dropping my thread!” Elizabeth accused, then winced when she saw her stepmother flush.

“You need not scowl, Thomasin,” Katherine said. “It pleases me when Elizabeth speaks her mind. I remember when she was far too cautious for such a little poppet.”

“I am much grown since then. Forgive me, Your Grace,” Elizabeth said, and meant it. “I am restless today.”

“And eager for your run in the garden. You love a chase, just as your father did. You need not stay inside, just because I am not ambitious enough for our afternoon game.”

Elizabeth’s nape burned beneath the veil that hung from her green French hood. The dowager queen was right. Elizabeth loved the chase. And as if wicked thoughts could summon a devil, Lord Thomas entered the withdrawing chamber.

“Husband!” Katherine exclaimed in delight as he swept over to plant a hearty kiss on her upturned face. “What a surprise!”

“I am full of surprises, my sweet. One is being tucked up in the stables even as we speak. The most magnificent stud I have ever laid eyes on. Far finer than any in my brother’s stables. I would stake my neck on it.”

“Never risk that, love.” Worry marred Katherine’s brow and Elizabeth could not blame her. A parade of bold men much like Thomas Seymour had supplied gruesome spectacles for London’s mobs at the executioner’s block throughout her father’s reign.

“You and your brother wrestle like schoolboys to see who will be in first place,” Katherine said. “What does it matter?”

“It matters to
me,
” Seymour said. “Since brother Edward became Lord Protector he and his wife have slighted you too often for me to stomach.”

“I do not care about them,” Katherine said. “We have each other and now . . .” A look passed between husband and wife that irritated Elizabeth.

“Now
what
?” Elizabeth demanded.

Seymour chuckled. “
Now
I have bought my wife a magnificent stallion to sire meadows full of foals for her.” Seymour nuzzled Katherine’s neck. Elizabeth imagined how his mouth must feel, his prickly mustache and beard against that fragile skin.

“Thomas! You must not!” Katherine gasped, but she tipped her head to give him better access.

“I cannot help it. I am exceedingly interested in breeding at present.” He flashed a devilish grin. Katherine went red as Chelsea’s brick walls, and Kat Ashley tittered, while Lady Calverley scowled at the bawdy jest. Sometimes Elizabeth felt her stepfather enjoyed needling the disapproving lady-in-waiting almost as much as she did. Lord Thomas winked at Elizabeth. “I had best make certain the horse is not murdering my stable hands. The beautiful villain stove in a groom’s ribs down in Lincolnshire. Lady Calverley’s husband can tell her all about it when next she visits him.”

“The stallion is a wild one, then?” Elizabeth asked. God knew she had always loved spirited creatures. And when it came to horses, she knew no fear.

“The man who owned the brute meant to slice off vital bits that would make any man shudder in sympathy.”

“May I go to the stables to see him?” Elizabeth asked.

“I think you had better not if this animal is uncontrollable,” Katherine said.

“I will keep our princess safe. That hell-spawned beast cannot get loose.”

“Please, my lady!” Elizabeth bounced out of her seat. “I beg you!”

“Off with you then,” Katherine succumbed. “Shall I come, too?”

“Not today, on my life!” Seymour exclaimed. “It is slick outside. I would not have you fall. It is not worth—” He hesitated. “There will be time enough on a warmer day,” he amended. “You must have a care, Kate.”

Seymour’s tender words aggravated Elizabeth. The way he fussed over his wife’s fragility. Life had taught Elizabeth to stand strong.

“Your Grace,” Lady Calverley began. “Do you think it wise for the princess to—”

Elizabeth fled the room before Lady Caution could change the dowager queen’s mind. Seymour followed, his hearty laugh echoing behind her as he ordered servants to fetch her cloak.

Lord Thomas fastened the garment beneath her chin, his fingers lingering against the place where her pulse beat. “I do not envy Lady Calverley’s husband her bed. It is cold as a frozen well, I wager, and harsh as a joiner’s rasp.”

“She makes me feel wicked even when I am trying to be good.”

“So you want to be a dour saint like your sister Mary?” Lord Thomas’s impudence delighted Elizabeth. “I cannot wait to share this sight with you, my Tudor cub,” he said. The wind whipped Elizabeth’s hair as they walked toward the stable. “His name is Hades,” Thomas said. “The Lord of the Underworld who carried the woman he desired down to hell.”

“I know who Hades is,” Elizabeth said primly. “Persephone pleaded to be let go. But he ravished her and kept her for his bride.”

“That is what your tutors would have you believe. But what if the truth is far more dangerous? If the story took a direction no man would dare mention to a lady.”

“But you will dare. You would dare anything.”

He grinned in appreciation. “Only think, Elizabeth. What if the lady’s protests were for appearances’ sake? Because she was afraid others might think ill of her? Perhaps she was as full of passion as Hades was. What if she wanted to be dragged off to his bed?”

Elizabeth knew she should be offended. And yet there was something enticing about sharing things others were not worldly or freethinking enough to understand. “There is no scholarly evidence of any such thing.”

“Do not consider this through the eyes of a child, Elizabeth. Or the mind of a scholar. But as the woman you are. God’s blood, lady, you will drive men to madness in time.”

Elizabeth feared her heart would beat right out of her chest. She tried to picture her stepmother’s gentle features, hold tight to the kindnesses the lady had done her.
Do you wish to be a dour saint like your sister is?
Seymour’s question mocked her. Seymour ushered Elizabeth into the stable, and Elizabeth gasped as she caught sight of the stallion, his coat black as devil’s wings, his hooves slashing the air. She was glad there was solid wood between her and the beast.

Haunches bunched with muscle as Hades pulled back on the lead the grooms held. “He scents a mare in heat,” Thomas whispered, so close to Elizabeth’s ear she could feel his breath, hot on her skin. “It is a good thing I had these stable walls shored up, is it not? Or he would tear through any barrier to mount her.” As if the mare in the pasture beyond understood, she whinnied, a primal sound that made tiny hairs on Elizabeth’s body stand on end.

“He wants to claim her so badly,” Lord Thomas said to Elizabeth. “His seed must be planted. It is his whole reason for being. You understand, do you not?”

“Yes.” She shivered, watching the mare.

“Some males have seed more potent than other men’s. Mine is, princess.” Elizabeth gasped that he should say such a thing to her, but he continued. “I have filled the queen’s belly at last.”

“That is impossible!” Elizabeth felt ridiculous, betrayed. “She is barren.”

“I have quickened her womb where three others have failed, one of them a king.”

“But childbirth . . . it is dangerous! She is not young.”

“I will not let her die,” Seymour said, as if he could order God himself. “Of course, the Church commands that I not swive my wife again, until she is churched after the babe is born. That is hard on a man, to have his natural passions denied. I must deny that which I desire most fiercely.”

Seymour’s gaze swept the area, saw the stable hands busy with the stud. Seymour drew aside Elizabeth’s veil, leaned so close she could not breathe. With fierce tenderness, Thomas caught hold of her throat with his teeth for just a moment, touched her skin with the wet heat of his tongue.

Chapter Seven

May 1564

L
ONDON

I
HAD BEEN A MERE FIVE YEARS OLD WHEN LAST
I
HAD
seen the city. Now I was mistress of my own fate. The bounty of all Christendom lay at my fingertips, the finest booksellers, the most intriguing shops. Vendors hawking wares from rosy berries to horn spoons blended into the cacophony of sound. I could buy all the strawberries and cream I wished with the coins in my coffer. Make myself sick on the tart fruit if I wanted. But the one thing I wanted most of all I could never have again. Time with my father. Even London seemed different without his gentle voice recounting tales that made kings and queens from centuries past seem alive. In my mind I tried to imagine how he might describe the scenes we rode past.

Half-timbered buildings cupped the streets like giant’s hands, the upper stories jutting out over the road. Signs above every door named each house something witty or whimsical: The Primrose, The Filly Fair. I wondered how anyone ever found a particular shop in this sprawling city. Even the queen had numerous royal residences scattered within London’s town walls so the court could move between them when one place became too fouled for habitation. Considering the number of courtiers and the servants necessary to tend their every whim, the queen made frequent use of Hampton Court and Whitehall, Greenwich, and Windsor and others as well. With Elizabeth Tudor’s renowned horror of filth the court moved every few weeks. As for Elizabeth’s sensitivity to foul smells, I hoped the queen never happened along this street.

The glitter of wealth mingled with abject poverty. The stench of fish from the river and cabbage from the rubbish heaps mingled with the odor of waste from the puddles where chamber pots had been emptied from second-story windows onto the streets below. A gang of richly dressed youths in drunken high spirits jostled to enter an alehouse, pushing a plump older woman aside. But instead of bearing the indignity in silence, the woman thrust out one plump leg, tripping the most obnoxious of her tormentors, sending him plunging into a pile of horse dung.

A pang of loneliness struck me at the sight. The woman reminded me of Eppie. On my childhood trip to the city she had not bothered trying to distract me from the ugliness of beggars and gallows with the artfulness my father used. She had simply clapped her beefy hand over my eyes to blot out anything she did not wish me to see.

Despite my mother banishing Eppie from my life, I never believed she would disappear completely. I had hoped Eppie would smuggle me a reassurance of her love or at least tell me she was safe. But it was as if one of the sea serpents on my map of the New World had sucked Eppie down where I could never find her. If only she were traveling with me instead of Moll, the day would have been quite perfect, I thought, wistful. Yet, Eppie would have been warning me against Gypsies and vagrants. Almost as if my mind had conjured it, I glimpsed a wee flash of crimson and a tiny feathered cap, a monkey capering upon a Gypsy’s shoulder. From my vantage point atop Doucette, I saw the monkey sidle up to a rich merchant’s daughter and climb nimbly onto her shoulder to kiss her cheek. Moll clapped her hands, reins and all, in delight. “What a charming little rogue!” she cried, not noticing the monkey’s naked hand flash out, pluck a pearl from the woman’s hair. The cunning creature quickly tucked its purloined treasure into the front of its tiny doublet.

“Oh, Mistress Nell!” Moll enthused. “Is not London the most delicious place? I wish the monkey would dance over to me.”

Since Moll had the simple, well-scrubbed look of a country servant there was little chance of that. Yet I did not want to dampen her joy. “You approve of the city, then?”

“I had not known there were so many people in the world!”

“And not one of them acquainted with a basin of water to wash in,” I observed wryly as a litter carried by two gray horses nearly overturned a cartload of bricks. “It will take me hours to scrub this filth from my skin. After ten days of traveling on the road I will be fortunate to make myself presentable to a scullery maid at the palace, let alone a queen.”

“How soon after we arrive at the palace do you think the queen will summon you?” Moll asked, so twitchy with excitement, her poor horse should have gone mad hours ago. “What will you say to Her Majesty, Mistress Nell? I vow if I were ever presented to her I would be struck mute. Queen Elizabeth is said to be brilliant. A scholar. And sly. In fact, I have heard she is not a woman at all—but a man in disguise.”

I frowned like one of the gargoyles on the church carvings—a glare so sharp it could terrify even the most dedicated sinner to repent. “Quiet, for pity’s sake!” I warned.

Moll’s voice dropped lower. “My sister went to court with her mistress. She heard the queen spends much time alone with Lord Robert Dudley. There are even those who whisper the queen has borne him a child!”

“Which would entirely disprove the theory that Her Majesty is a man, unless there was some sort of miracle you have neglected to tell me about,” I observed.

“You are laughing at me, Mistress,” Moll said with wounded dignity. “Everyone cannot be as wise as you and the old master.”

She turned her attention to the city again. I was left to contemplate Robert Dudley. He had been prisoner in the Tower when we visited there, though I had never seen him. Robert had watched his father, the Duke of Northumberland, and his youngest brother, Guilford, Lady Jane Grey’s husband, make the terrible journey to Tower Hill. Some claimed he had found a way to pass secret notes to Elizabeth while they were imprisoned, that they had fallen in love within those dread walls. Even bribed guards to allow them a tryst. But then, people would latch on to the slightest whisper of scandal to share, even if they knew it was a delicious lie.

The thought of meeting Dudley filled me with excitement—Father had told me the queen’s favorite was a most exceptional man: canny enough to keep his head, brilliant enough to match wits with England’s finest, sensual enough to bewitch a queen, even though he once had a wife tucked away in the country.

Suddenly I noticed my maid’s expression, shadowed from our earlier exchange. Father had warned me often it was unfair to lash out with my wit against someone who had no hope to defend themselves. “Come, Moll,” I coaxed. “I did not mean to wound your feelings. Your mind is quick enough when you are not making calves’ eyes at Jem.”

“Quiet! Oh, I beg you, mistress!” Moll hushed me. “Look, he comes this way!”

Indeed, Jem did, weaving his roan gelding against the flow of traffic. He reined into step beside me. “My lady, Master Crane has just returned with news. The queen is lodged at Whitehall at the moment. That is where you must present yourself.”

Whitehall. I remembered seeing the queen’s chief residence as a child, and hearing my father’s tales of how the Archbishops of York had ruled there in the days before Henry’s war with the Pope. The structure stood opposite the burned-out ruin of Westminster Palace, symbols of power and destruction set in sharp relief. The buildings that made up Whitehall were crowded over twenty-three acres and had been a gift from Cardinal Wolsey to Henry VIII before Anne Boleyn had destroyed their friendship forever.

In the end, Anne Boleyn’s daughter ruled in the palace that had once been Wolsey’s own.

I shivered in delight, feeling the history of it all envelop me, enthrall me. Soon I would be safe inside the palace grounds, under royal protection, my hours beguiled by the most exceptional minds England had to offer. Moll’s eager questions from moments ago raised a host of my own. When
would
I meet the queen? What would I say to her? Not something that would make me seem a country-bred girl blundering into her first regal occasion.
But that is who you are,
I could almost hear mother say.
A girl from the country
.

We had turned the corner onto King Street when I saw Whitehall Palace rising out of the confusion. The Holbien Gate—with its turrets and chequerwork facade arched across the northern entry, the massive gatehouse wider than several rooms, its windows sparkling. Beyond those gleaming panes lay lodgings for guards, a store of weapons in case of rebellion, and the mechanism Father had once described to me, holding pulleys and ropes the guards could use to shut the gate if needed to keep an enemy out.

The guards themselves stood vigilant at their post, their red livery a perfect foil for handsome faces, shining halberds in their hands to hold the teeming city at bay.

I trembled, anticipation warring with nerves. That gate—built in all its glory to display the power, wealth, and decorum of the English throne—was the entryway to my dreams.

Crane rode up to a guardsman so tall that he seemed a giant. Calverley’s beloved Master of the Horse announced: “Mistress Elinor de Lacey, daughter of the Baron of Calverley, come to wait upon the queen.”

The guard’s massive hand all but swallowed up the summons that had shattered my mother’s peace. He noted the royal seal, then regarded me with frank appraisal, displaying the kindest eyes I had seen since I left home. “Welcome to Whitehall, Mistress,” he said with a surprisingly graceful bow for one of his size. “I am Sergeant Porter Thomas Keyes. You look wearied from your journey.”

“I am.”

“I doubt you will get much peace tonight. A new maid of honor is a most interesting curiosity until the court puzzles you out, so you had best brace yourself.”

“And exactly where am I to undergo this scrutiny?”

“You must present yourself to Lady Betty, the Mother of the Maids. It is hard to guess where that poor beleaguered lady is, but one of my men can escort you to the Maids’ Lodgings and you may begin your search for her there.”

“I thank you for your help, Sergeant Porter.”

“I will accept your thanks now, Mistress, because later, you may see me as villain. The women you will serve with may look sweet as cream, but they deal nasty scorch marks if left to their own devices. Keep your wits about you when you are in their company, Mistress de Lacey,” he said with sudden gentleness. “And give the maids of honor my warmest greetings and good wishes.”

I wondered which lady had scorched him, and to whom he sent greeting. Intrigue already and I had not even crossed the palace’s threshold. I gigged my horse forward, remembering my mother’s warnings. A shadow fell across me as we passed under the arch, then I gobbled up the palace grounds with my eyes. Beautiful gardens spilled before me, grander than any I had ever seen. Courtyards unfolded, one after another. I had entered a world as different from my own as that of the Minotaur that had once thrilled my child heart with delicious fear. But this was no story to escape into, then wake in my own cozy bed. This was real, I told myself. In these grand chambers my future might still be a riddle, yet one I would solve with my own hands.

This was to be my world.
Mine.

The world of the Elinor de Lacey I wanted to be.