His Dark Lady (42 page)

But much to her shame her knees began to weaken and buckle after only a few steps. The ulcer on her leg throbbed viciously. One or two of the younger women in her entourage looked away, no doubt smiling behind their fans. Staggering on, Elizabeth felt her cheeks flush with rage at their mockery. Harlots! Vipers! She looked about for assistance, but Helena had walked ahead to prepare for her return to the palace, and even Lord Burghley was talking to one of his gentlemen attendants and had not noticed. Was this the English court now? Young men and women with no respect for their queen, and men too old to draw a sword in her service?

Someone pushed through to her side from the back of the staring courtiers. ‘Lean on me, Your Majesty,’ a male voice murmured in her ear. Good man, she thought. Excellent man. Her saviour slipped his arm impertinently about her waist and for once she did not protest. ‘I have you safe.’

‘Rather too safe, I fear,’ she retorted, then recognized the soft burr of the man’s Devon accent and looked at the courtier properly. ‘Ah, Sir Walter Raleigh. So you have come back to court from your adventuring!’

‘Did you miss me, Your Majesty?’

‘I hardly noticed you were gone,’ she told him cruelly, enjoying the hurt flash in his eyes. ‘Now let me go. I can walk well enough with my hand on your shoulder.’

‘You think me too forward?’

‘I think you squeeze too hard, Sir Walter. I am not the rail of one of your ships.’

Many condemned Sir Walter Raleigh’s intimate manner with her, and claimed he overstepped his authority both at court and in the parliamentary seat she had granted him. But the arrogant tilt of his head, the adventurer’s smile as he admired her figure, and his short dark hair …

Walter reminded her of Robert as a young man, that was the truth of it. Handsome. Charming. Willing to dare things other men feared to do in order to win his prize. And bold, yes. But it was an honest man’s boldness.

‘Did you see the young man who came to kill me?’ she asked as they approached the palace.

‘I saw a fool blinded by the radiance of your presence, Your Majesty. You were never in any danger.’

Elizabeth smiled, though with scant humour. ‘Indeed? That is not how it felt at the time. It is my opinion that I was lucky to escape with my life.’

One of the guards came running back from the woods, his chain-mail armour jangling heavily. He dropped to both knees on the grass before Elizabeth.

‘Your Majesty,’ he gasped, removing his helmet and wiping his wet brow, ‘we have searched the woods and found a dagger among the trees, but there is no sign of the man himself. Shall we fetch the dogs?’

‘The river!’ Elizabeth exclaimed impatiently, waving him away. ‘He will have come by the river and returned that way, too. Out of my sight! Fetch the dogs by all means, but by the time they have been brought from their kennels, Robert Barnwell will be a mile downriver and laughing at us all for fools.’

Fifteen

‘HUSH’, LUCY SAID
. She dipped the cloth back into the basin. Goodluck’s blood reddened the water, its tiny spider’s web spreading on the surface. She wrung out the cloth and reapplied it to his swollen lip. ‘Don’t try to speak.’

Goodluck grimaced, but obeyed. She finished with his face, which almost looked worse now the dried blood had been removed, revealing the extent of his injuries. Gently, she shifted on the edge of the bed, beginning to dab at the lesions on his chest with pig’s grease, on the advice of her neighbours. The grease was slimy and it stank most vilely, but it did seem to lessen the livid look of his burns. Downstairs, someone knocked at the door, but she took no notice.

Goodluck lay a while in silence, flinching occasionally as she cleansed his hurts. Then he caught her wrist.

‘I’m sorry,’ Goodluck managed in a hoarse voice. ‘I let you think … I was dead.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she lied.

‘You took no harm by it?’ He frowned, either knowing Lucy too well to think her so heartless, or sensing something more sinister beneath her silence. ‘Lucy, what is it?’

Her heart stuttered a little. ‘Master Twist …’ she began in a whisper, then could not finish.

He lay still, watching her averted face.

‘That bastard. He hurt you?’

She did not want to speak of that day. But it was important that
Goodluck
should know of their friend’s treachery. So briefly, she told him the bare facts of her encounter with Twist, leaving out the more unpleasant details.

‘I managed to escape before he had his way,’ she finished, and continued greasing Goodluck’s wounds with a steady hand.

‘I’ll kill him,’ he said thickly.

‘Not in this state you won’t.’

‘Even if it takes me a year to get out of this bed, John Twist will die at my hands,’ was all Goodluck’s reply, but his eyes had closed again, perhaps tired by even this small effort at revenge. She worked on him in silence. Then, the wounds on his chest and belly cleansed and greased to her satisfaction, Lucy prepared to pull down his stained hose.

Stirring, he groaned and shook his head. ‘No,’ Goodluck said, struggling to sit up. ‘Not there.’

‘It must be done,’ she told him firmly. ‘And there is no one else to do it. Now lie still and stop hindering me.’

Once she had finished tending to his needs, she left Goodluck uneasily dozing.

Exhausted beyond even sleep, Lucy carried the basin downstairs. She threw the soiled water out into the street, then poured fresh into the basin from the covered pail she had left behind the door. After wearily casting off her filthy apron, she washed the blood off her hands, taking care to bathe her wrists too and check under her nails.

She knelt there a while on the hearth after finishing, her hands in the cool shallow basin, her gaze on the smouldering logs.

She did not want to think about John Twist, though she knew there was a chance he might come back and try his luck with her again. Unless, of course, he had already heard that Goodluck had escaped the Tower alive and was back in his house.

Upstairs, Goodluck moaned in his sleep.

She listened, in case he needed the chamber pot again, but he fell silent after a moment. Perhaps she had done the wrong thing, telling him of Master Twist’s attack. But it was better he should know the truth than still believe John to be his friend.

Just a bad dream, she thought wearily, listening to another muffled cry from upstairs.

There would be more nightmares to follow. She never wished to
see
him again as he had been on first recovering consciousness, crouched in the corner and weeping uncontrollably, pushing her away when she tried to comfort him. Later, Lucy had persuaded him to crawl upstairs on his hands and knees, for the cart-man had not offered to help him to the bedchamber, and she knew what he desperately needed was to sleep somewhere comfortable and familiar.

‘Lucy?’

She straightened and stared about herself in a daze. The house was darker than before. She had fallen asleep on the hearth.

The whisper came again. It was not Goodluck.

‘Lucy?’

Her dagger was still in the basket she had taken with her to the Tower. She fetched it and stood by the door a moment, considering. If it was Twist come back to keep his promise …

But she knew it was not Twist either.

When she jerked open the door, Will Shakespeare stared first at the dagger and then at her. ‘Lucy, I’m so sorry about the way I behaved last night. I was mad for you. I couldn’t think.’

You were drunk, she thought drily, but said nothing.

‘Can you forgive me?’ he continued, trying to reach for her hand. ‘I know I’m a fool, but at least I’m love’s fool. Please don’t pull away. Were you asleep? I knocked earlier.’

‘I know,’ she said calmly, not letting him inside. ‘I was too busy to answer. My guardian has come home and needs me to look after him.’

Will’s eyes narrowed on her face. ‘Goodluck? You said he was dead.’

‘I was mistaken.’

He was watching her oddly, a flush in his face. ‘So he’s back here? Is he upstairs?’ he asked, then pushed past her without waiting for an answer and took the stairs two at a time.

She put down the dagger and followed him upstairs more slowly, her body aching with tiredness.

The sun had not yet gone down and the room was bathed in a warm yellowish light. Goodluck was heavily asleep, snoring and naked on top of the bed linen, bruises and burns visible all over his body.

Will stood over the bed and stared down at Goodluck. His face was grim. ‘What happened?’

‘He was in the Tower,’ she whispered, not bothering to lie. ‘They tortured him. But he’s home now, and I intend to look after him until his hurts have healed.’

Will went back down the stairs without another word, and she followed him. He stood by the fire, staring into the dying flames, then turned to look at her, an unexpected accusation in his eyes.

‘You love him,’ he said flatly.

Lucy did not know how to answer him. ‘Of course I love him,’ she said, confused. ‘Goodluck is like my father.’

‘No,’ he insisted. ‘You love him. As you love me, too.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Will. Nobody can love two people at once. And who says I love you?’

‘You think love is only for one woman, one man, at a time?’ he demanded. ‘It is not so. The world is crueller than you think.’

Lucy laughed. ‘You do not need to tell me of the world’s cruelty.’ She opened the door, determined to resist him. ‘You’d better go. I need to sleep.’

‘With him?’ he asked roughly.

Horrified, she slapped his face. The blow was harder than she intended. Her palm stung and tingled afterwards. He stared back at her, his cheek beginning to redden.

‘Go,’ she repeated, on the verge of tears.

‘Forgive me. I’ve barely slept for days. I can’t write, Lucy. Not a bloody word. All I can think about is you. Your face, your body … your kiss. Sweet Christ, I don’t even know what I’m saying.’

His words made her dizzy with longing, but she said in a firm voice, ‘Then go home to bed,’ and shoved him through the door.

Will turned as she closed it, but Lucy was too fast, forcing it shut behind him and drawing the bolts across at the top and bottom. He slammed his hand against the frame, speaking through the crack in the wood just as John Twist had done in the night.

‘Lucy, I love you.’

She laughed silently and mirthlessly. Loved her but would not marry her? Loved her but would give no explanation for his absences?

‘I’m tired, Will. Please go away.’

‘You don’t believe me, I know. And who can blame you? I can’t seem to speak my mind to you. Just one look leaves me tongue-tied, green as a schoolboy with his first love. But inside I’m still a man, and I’m burning for you. I thought I knew love before I met you. But I knew nothing. All I ever felt before was a boy’s lust, a shadow of love that lasted only while the sun shone.’ Will groaned, his voice catching at her heart. ‘For pity’s sake, Lucy, I shall die at your door of this longing. Let me sleep with you tonight.’

Lucy could not stand on her feet any longer. She sank down by the fire like a hound that has run itself almost to death on the hunt, a twitch jerking at one eyelid, her heart worn out by conflict and yearning, her limbs trembling with exhaustion.

Although Will stayed long after the sun had set, speaking urgently to her through the crack in the door, Lucy let the dark tides of his voice wash over her while she slept. In her dreams, she lay curled up in the bottom of a small rudderless craft, adrift on a wide ocean, listening for the slightest creak or stirring from the stars above her head.

Sixteen

‘WILL, ARE YOU
drunk?’

Will lifted his gaze to Kit Marlowe, sitting across from him in the noisy snug of the Three Tuns. ‘What makes you ask that?’

Kit looked pointedly at the scrap of parchment in front of Will. ‘Well, I may be drunk myself,’ he conceded, ‘but reading that upside down, your sonnet would appear to be dedicated to a “Lucy Shakespeare”. Have you forgotten your own wife’s name? Or perhaps you have changed wives since yesterday, when you called her sweet Anne, as I recall, and praised both her breasts in turn for having nurtured your three children? Though you were certainly drunk then, for shortly afterwards you vomited into young Dick Burbage’s best cap. But not before calling him a pintpot knave for having the audacity to wear velvet in defiance of his rank as an upstart whoreson. To which his father James promptly took offence, claiming his wife was no whore, unlike your own.’