Haunt Me Still (15 page)

May 1, 1585
Dirleton Castle, Scotland

SHE STOOD ON
the battlements and watched them come. It had been a long time since Scotland had been ruled by a monarch of mettle. The young king, not quite nineteen, who rode toward her was a coward, and his mother, long imprisoned in a remote English castle, was a fool. If the countess had her way, however, that blight would soon come to an end.

Between them, she and her husband possessed all the right qualities to rule: ruthlessness, daring, intelligence, and, so far, the golden smile of the gods. Their blood claim—the blue blood of royal Stewarts—might not be the strongest, but it was undeniably present. In her case, it was written all over her face and the bright copper of her hair. In combination with their other qualities and the possession of the crown, it would be enough.

Long ago, dark powers had pronounced that one day she would be queen, and she meant to help them, if she could. After the death of her first husband, helped along by one of her cordials when she tired of waiting for him to take her to court, she had ridden south as a still-young and beautiful widow, shining with the red beauty of the royal Stewarts. Though nearly twenty years his senior, she’d intended to take the young king in hand, as Diane de Poitiers had once taken Henri II of France in hand, with almost exactly the same spread in age. She did not need the title of queen; she wanted the power.

She thought she had made her choice of second husband well: an elderly cousin of the king, old enough to leave her alone yet trusted enough to give her access to the boy. But the old man had not left her alone, lusting after her youth and beauty, and the young king, it soon became clear, though undeniably fascinated by her, reserved his deepest passions and trust for men. Deciding to cast off her second husband, she looked about for a third, a man who would rouse the king’s admiration but respond to her seductions. A man who had royal blood, yet would need her backing to gain access to the halls of the great. A man with enough sense and sophistication to put aside petty jealousy and welcome any attentions the king might be induced to pay her, as she would welcome any attentions paid to him.

She’d found just the person she needed in the gallant and adventurous captain, now earl, who’d become her third husband. Their rise had been swift and sure. The day he had been handed the keys to Edinburgh Castle, she had swept into the storerooms that housed the wardrobe of the king’s mother, Queen Mary, and shut the doors against everyone else save her old nurse. Breaking open the chests herself, she had riffled through the royal jewels and silks, furs and satins, alone.

Some of the jewels she had pawned the next day; others, along with the gowns that could be recut into current fashions, she had taken for her own use. That evening, she had appeared in royal splendor high on the battlements of Edinburgh, overlooking a crowd gathering in the open space below, aware of both their wonder and their fear, but ignoring them, looking out over the city and the country that she meant to rule.

To do it, she had to rule first and foremost over the king now riding toward her, a boy who might have the coloring of the Stewarts but not the heart. Bandy-legged and pasty-faced, he was a poor excuse for a man, never mind a king. Not that one could blame the boy, if you stopped to think about it. He’d known nothing but betrayals, assassination attempts, abductions, and rivers of blood since before he’d been born, all topped off with severe Calvinist schooling in cold castles in the years since, his boyhood alarmingly devoid of warmth in either the sense of human kindness or of weather. His mother’s private secretary and possible lover—some still whispered his real father—had been slaughtered in front of her eyes by her husband while she was seven months pregnant with the boy. When he was not quite eight months old, the killer, the prince’s publicly recognized father, had been strangled and his house blown up around him to disguise the murder. When James reached the grand old age of thirteen months, his mother was dethroned in favor of his own ascension, and he had never seen her again. A year later she was imprisoned by his “dear cousin,” the English queen Elizabeth, with whom he nonetheless had to curry favor, in hopes of one day inheriting her crown. Or, at the very least, of avoiding yet another full-scale English attempt to annex Scotland by force.

And those were just the memorable punctuation points before he’d reached the age of two. If anyone had earned the right to fear naked steel and hidden plots, it was James. All the same, it was disconcerting to watch him, a month shy of nineteen, flush like a girl at the jingle of armor or walk in tight circles like a wandering top as he fretted over a minor slight or a major dilemma.

At least he could sit a horse.

He was sitting a horse now, in the center of a mounted knot of his most trusted men, her husband at his right hand as she watched them approach. They looked for all the world like a cheerful party out hawking, perhaps, bells jingling, ribbons streaming from the horses’ manes, and shouts of laughter lacing the bright spring wind off the firth of forth as they rode. But if you knew what to look for, no doubt you could see hints of something darker. The tight hunch of the king’s shoulders and his tendency to use the crop with a hard hand, for instance. A certain shrillness in his voice, perhaps. But the clearest sign was their speed. They were traveling much too fast for a party of leisure.

To be fair, this time it would not be just the king who was afraid. Most men were afraid of the Black Death, and two days ago it had broken out with a vengeance in a village to the west of Edinburgh. By yesterday afternoon, it had scaled the cliffs and entered the castle that loomed over the queen of Scottish cities. That had proved enough for the king, who had no wish to wait for the infection to roll down the hill and knock at the door of his pleasure palace of Holyroodhouse, scattering dark, foul-smelling buboes hither and yon, without respect for rank or piety.

She might have been frightened herself, had she not known that it was not yet her time to face death, black and bubo-swollen or otherwise. As plague season had approached, she had plotted with her husband to offer their newly acquired home of Dirleton Castle, a safe twenty miles east of the pestiferous city, as a refuge, where the king could find safety and a certain sophisticated beauty that enchanted him. For it was important to keep the spell of attraction strong and bright.

So she’d called in servants and laid in cartloads of food for several weeks at the approach of plague season. Hearing words of a traveling troupe of English players, she’d diverted them from the road to Edinburgh, sweetening their palms with enough money to make sure that their alternate route took in Dirleton. After a dour childhood, the king was fascinated by music, dancing, and plays.

And then Lord Henry Howard had come with a different proposition, one that twisted all her deep-woven plans to another shape entirely. A smile of satisfaction on her face, she went down to welcome the king.

Unaccountably, her husband, who had thrilled to the idea of taking the crown in the cold morning light, balked at it amid the music and laughter of the night. With a suddenness that even the king noticed, he rose and left the great hall in the middle of the feast. She knew where to find him: on the battlements outside her aerie, looking out toward the sea.

He flinched at her touch. “We will proceed no further in this business,” he said. “He has honored me of late.”

“He’s a boy, and fickle. It will not last.”

“He’s a boy. As you say. And frightened. And he’s here in double trust, as kin and king.”

A spurt of anger and annoyance shot through her. “I love our boys as much as you do. And yet, if I had sworn it, as you have sworn yourself to this, I’d dash their brains against the wall behind you.”

He walloped her across the cheek at that. A stinging blow, not bruising. A warning. She let the mark of his hand redden her cheek, disdaining to hold it, and pulled herself under control. The point was to persuade him, not to win a petty row. Sidling close, she began once more to paint visions in the air for him, running light fingers down his arm, lifting it high. “He has brought the crown within our reach tonight. Put out your hand and pluck it down, before we are plucked ourselves.”

He jerked away from her.

“Another opportunity may not come.”

“
No more.
” Turning on his heel, he strode off.

She watched him go as she might watch a recalcitrant child. He’d grown to like the boy, or at least to pity him; well and fine. He would have to be schooled to see that the king, despite his liking, was still a pawn. She had worked too hard to let the chance of a crown slip away now.

A shadow detached itself from the opposite doorway and Lord Henry Howard materialized before her eyes, contempt curdling his face. “If you cannot handle a husband, my lady, how will you control a kingdom?”

She tossed her head with impatience and distaste. “Husbands, like horses, occasionally require to be given their heads.”

She was brushing past him when he caught her. “
Put out your hand and pluck it down, before we are plucked ourselves,
” he said in light mockery, and then his voice hardened. He pushed her backward, pinning her against the wall. “If I have come here on a fool’s errand, I will see that both of you are plucked directly. I swear it.” Around them, the tapestries rippled and moved, and in the gap where one ended and another began, they saw the eyes. Another watcher in the night.

In an instant, Lord Henry had drawn his sword and thrust it through the cloth, but it had rung impotently against the stone as the watcher slipped sideways. Ducking out from his hiding place, the other man skittered across the room, putting her heavy oaken table between himself and Lord Henry’s blade.

He was the player, she saw. The player with the half-moon brows. Come back for more of what he’d found last night, no doubt, artless, addled fool that he was. Though she felt a thrill, truth be told, at this proof of her power. For a moment, the countess remained leaning against the wall, exultation and dismay tangled in her throat. Who else had been watching in the shadows? Was the king himself lurking in a corner?

A blow thundered against the table and she pushed herself up. Unless she stopped him, Lord Henry would kill the boy, which was a waste. She’d seen him at his work earlier, prancing about in a robin Hood play as one of the merry men. She’d found herself laughing.

Nobody was laughing now. She caught at Lord Henry, but he flung her off. Tasting blood on her lip, she pulled down a tapestry and went at him again as she had learned to stop her father’s drunken men-at-arms from killing each other, whirling the heavy brocade like a net over his sword arm. The cloth wrapped around him, unbalancing him, bringing him crashing to the floor on one knee. “Let him go,” she commanded. “He is not your concern.”

The boy needed no further prompting. Flashing her a cheeky grin, he scampered out onto the battlements and down the stairs. No doubt he’d disappear into the hills before dawn.

Lord Henry disentangled himself from the tapestry and rose, ramming his sword back into its scabbard in disgust. She’d expected to see rage in his eyes, but there was only coldness. “Not my concern. Then I take it he is yours. Did you rut with him last night?”

“Did you?” she shot back, still looking after the boy, the memory of his heat playing at her breasts and groin.

Lord Henry’s eyes hooded. “I would kill a man who said that.”

“You will not kill me.”

He laughed aloud at that, but it was not a sound of merriment.

“He’s nothing but a poor player.”

She had expected derisive laughter. But the man went pale and deathly still, his olive skin blanching with cold anger and something she had not expected to see in his face: fear. He took a step toward her, his hands clutching like claws, and for a moment she thought he might attack her. “What have you done?” he cried. “
Nothing but—”
He began pacing, his hands running through his salt-and-pepper hair. “Was he here last night?”

“That is not your concern.”

He grabbed her, shaking her with a force she had not felt since her first husband had been on a tear. “
Was he here?
”

She laughed in his face. “He was. All night.” for a moment, she thought he might squeeze the life out of her, but he put his mouth close to her ear and spoke with a low, quick urgency.

“You do not know young robert Cecil, then. Lord Burghley’s son and Walsingham’s protégé.”

She went still. Burghley was Queen Elizabeth’s secretary of state and lord high treasurer. The quiet, conniving man who ran her kingdom. Walsingham was her master of spies. She did not know the son, but his connection to these two men made him someone worthy of caution.

“Misshapen as a changeling,” Lord Henry went on, his voice low and urgent with loathing, “with a mind as twisted as his body. But precocious. A few years back, at his recommendation, every troupe of players in England surrendered their best actors to the queen’s own company. The rest were redistributed, and many were recruited.” He ran a long, cool finger down the line of her jaw. “
Nothing but players.
They are Elizabeth’s eyes and ears at a distance.
They are spies.
”

He flung her off and backed away, and at last the scornful laughter ripped from him. “Within three days, Elizabeth will know everything that has passed within these walls. If she finds it to her advantage, she will pass your treason on to your king.” He brushed the sleeves of his doublet as if the very air of her room had soiled him. “I must ride for England and attempt to control the coming storm. As for you, madam, do what you will; I fear you will never be queen.” With that, he strode out the door.

“You are wrong,” she’d whispered defiantly to the empty room. “I have seen it.”