Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (25 page)

reckless enough to say it, and impertinence, flippancy, were the very last

things to display before Mary Tudor.

“Madam, are you mad? You of all people must guard your tongue in

your sister’s presence.”

“Oh yes, I know she’s never liked me.”

“Then you must admit the need to stay in bed and play out your farce

to the end.”

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Elizabeth pouted. “But I’m so bored.”

“Better bored than dead,” snapped Kat, sharp-tongued with nerves.

“For the love of God, madam, get back between the sheets before

someone sees you prancing at the window.”

Elizabeth turned and regarded the curtained cave with repugnance.

“I hate beds,” she said slowly. “They stand there night after night

waiting for you to die in them. It’s like lying in a tomb.”

She shivered in the hot sunlight and Kat, watching her bleakly, recog-

nised the signs that heralded a new cycle of nightmares and migraines.

For all her hard self-sufficiency that childhood legacy could still reduce

her to suffocating panic each time she woke in mindless terror, screaming

for lights. Kat knew she would be needed tonight, when the brittle air of

nonchalance had run its course. But for the moment, high as a kite and

careless of the risk, Elizabeth sat in full view in the window-seat and her

eyes, scanning the parched gardens below, sparkled with taut anticipation.

Kat had once heard it said that people who lived overlong with danger

were sometimes unable to live without it; increasingly, she was beginning

to fear that Elizabeth was one of them. That look on her face was a

euphoria more properly appertaining to the steady consumption of wine.

Certainly, she was still in peril. Everyone knew the new Queen instinc-

tively disliked her sister and had more reason than most to consider her a

bastard. She was now in a position to secure her own legitimacy by Act of

Parliament and to bar Elizabeth from the line of succession. A treacherous

quagmire of ugly emotions surrounded Elizabeth and one false step while

crossing it was likely to prove her last. Already, by sitting quietly on the

sidelines during Northumberland’s coup, she had let the first round with

her sister go by default. She had measured the situation with the yardstick

of expediency and Mary, who so despised compromise, would distrust

her for it. But that could not be helped and however quickly the Hatfield

entourage was assembled now to join the new Queen, it would still be

too late to allay Mary’s suspicions.

So why hurry? It would only look ignoble, place her on the same level

as those rats of the Council who had already scuttled towards the rising

sun. She might as well take her time and go in style. What could not be

done with any hope of success could at least be done with panache. And

the people dearly loved a good show—

Kat, waiting with scant patience for her mistress to return to bed,

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Susan Kay

tapped her foot ominously, but Elizabeth uncurled her legs in a leisurely

fashion and began to study the curls which tossed loosely round her

shoulders in an auburn cascade.

“I think I’ll wash my hair,” she announced thoughtfully. “It ought to

dry well in this heat.”

Kat was speechless. An hour later she exploded into the antechamber

to inform Blanche Parry that certain people had no sense of priority.

“…and they say Nero fiddled while Rome burned—doubtless the

Lady Elizabeth would have taken a
bath
!”

t t t

Elizabeth met Mary on the road to Wanstead, with an escort of a thou-

sand strong sprawling behind her spirited gelding. The Queen beckoned

her forward and she dismounted, kneeling on the roadside to kiss the

shrivelled little hand so formally presented.

“Madam, permit your humble servant to lay her loyalty at your feet.”

A trifle too glib, it irked the new Queen, rubbing an old sore. With veiled

insolence such as this had Ann Boleyn curtsied to Mary’s mother in the days

when Henry had first begun to show his preference. The gesture, the voice,

even the arrogant set of her head—oh, the likeness was unnerving!

Dear God, is it really only I that see it?

But Mary could not complain of any genuine lack of respect on her

sister’s part, and she had already sworn, in gratitude for her wonderful

delivery from Dudley, to allow no past bitterness to mar the future. So

when the two retinues halted at White Chapel, she dismissed her ladies,

detained her sister, and made a deliberate effort to be pleasant.

“How well you look, my dear.”

Even as she spoke, Mary was aware of saying the wrong thing with

that old lack of tact for which she was renowned. Elizabeth’s pale cheeks

instantly suffused with hot colour.

“The news of Your Majesty’s victory did much to restore me, madam.”

“I’ll warrant it did.” Mary’s smile was not pleasant. “I imagine you

were warned of Northumberland’s intent?”

“No, madam.” Cecil had publicly made his peace with the Queen

and been duly acclaimed as “a very honest man”: she owed him silence.

Sensing the lie, Mary frowned and began to finger her crucifix. In

spite of good intentions, the old, unreasoning hostility was clamouring

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suddenly for expression. Everything about her sister irritated and alarmed

her, even to her choice of dress. Virgin white—after all that scandal!

Mary’s shortsighted eyes narrowed on the girl’s face.

“You swore to serve me,” she began slowly. “Your mother served

mine—in what manner the whole world knows.”

Elizabeth fell to her knees in the dusty straw, frightened by that far-off

look in Mary’s eyes.

“Madam, I beg you, let the dead past go, and remember the loyalty

of blood ties.”

“As you remembered it, sister, when you chose to sit safe at Hatfield

rather than ride with me against the traitor’s forces?”

Mary’s hand beneath her chin tilted her face sharply upwards, and

Elizabeth was silent, trapped for once by her own instinctive need for

subterfuge. Safer by far to have confessed to her sham, admitting deceit and

making fear her excuse. But lying to Mary had always come naturally to

her. She did it on almost every occasion they met, because the temptation

to do it, as a sort of mark of her own mental superiority, was irresistible.

But now, it was no longer safe to play games with Mary—

She was not even aware that she had begun to bite nervously at her

fingernail, until the moment the Queen reached out and tapped the

offending digit away.

“I thought Ashley would have cured you of that silly habit by now,”

Mary sighed, and her voice was suddenly quite sane and kind. Her mood

had shifted in the manner which made her so unpredictable. She was the

officious elder sister now, reaching for the pair of scissors which hung at

her waist, a relic of those years of cloistered domesticity.

“Such dreadful nails,” she grumbled, snipping with quick efficiency,

“like an eagle’s talons! No wonder they irritate you. There now—doesn’t

that feel better?”

Elizabeth looked at the Queen’s handiwork. Nails grew again; heads

were not quite so obliging. She agreed it felt much better, and for a

while their conversation was devoid of rancour and suspicion. At length,

aware of time pressing, the Queen laid both hands upon her shoulders

and kissed her cheek lightly.

“It gives me real pleasure to have you at my side again, Elizabeth. You

and I have known so little family life these past troubled years. But now,

once we are safe in London, the two of us shall hear Mass together once

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more as we used to do when you were a small child. Remember how

you would say a Paternoster for me before you went to bed? Barely two

and every word in perfect Latin. You were such a forward little girl—”

“Yes, madam—I remember.” Elizabeth had stiffened and the faint

note of hesitancy was unmistakable.

Mary removed her hands from the girl’s shoulders and the light of

indulgence went out of her eyes like a snuffed candle.

“You do of course intend to support the restoration of the Roman

Church by attending Mass with me? There can surely be no question of

you continuing in your heret—” she broke off and continued hastily, “in

your misguided practices.”

Elizabeth looked away uncomfortably.

“Madam, did you not yourself demand freedom of conscience in our

late brother’s reign?”

“Naturally,” Mary rejoined frigidly. “Mine was the true faith, for

which I would gladly have died. Would you die willingly, sister, for the

beliefs you now profess to hold?”

Talking to the Queen, thought Elizabeth suddenly, was like walking

a tightrope over a yawning chasm. The prospect of weeks, even months,

of these swift veering confrontations set all the nerves in her stomach

jumping. She was suddenly very glad to see Susan Clarencieux appear in

the doorway looking flustered.

“By Your Majesty’s leave, the night is drawing on. If we are to enter

London while it’s still light—”

“Yes—yes, of course. Tell them I am coming.” Mary turned to look

at her sister steadily. “Elizabeth, you had better go down. We will speak

further on this issue when I have more time. But think on what I have

said—think very carefully.”

Suspicion, like bread, rises rapidly in a warm environment. Though

London was red-hot in its welcome for Mary, there was no mistaking the

tremendous ovation which greeted Elizabeth’s entry to the capital, and the

Queen, with the cheers for her sister ringing hollowly in her ears, struggled

with a serpentine quiver of jealousy. It was no use, even in this sweet

moment of victory, pretending that the years between them did not show.

The girl was nineteen and the people worshipped her glowing youth.

Mary rode on stiffly and bit her lip until she tasted blood.

Oh, God, teach me how to trust her…

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Chapter 10

T
he new reign began briskly with the trial and execution of its

principal opponent. Most unsuccessful traitors displayed a certain

degree of dignified restraint, even cheerful resignation, to this inevitable

act. Northumberland took the opposite course. All that could be done

by recanting his Protestant faith, grovelling, and begging shamelessly for

mercy he did and more.

“Oh that it would please her good Grace to give me life, yea the life

of a dog, that I might but live and kiss her feet…”

People said it was a disgraceful exhibition and only went to show what

Dudleys were, a low lot that wanted breeding as badly as they would

shortly want heads. But Northumberland cared nothing for the ridicule.

Even at the last moment, when he stood on Tower Hill, he was still

gazing steadily down at the city, scanning the narrow streets desperately

for a royal messenger bearing his written reprieve.

But that message never came. The Tower guns boomed and Robin

Dudley, alone in his damp cell at the bottom of the Beauchamp Tower,

awaiting his own imminent trial and execution, sat on his flea-bitten

mattress and wept harsh, difficult tears for the fallen idol of his childhood.

Further along the river, Elizabeth, sitting with the Queen a little

apart from their attendant women, heard that same dismal booming and

thought of Robin. Her throat closed and her fingers trembled as she drew

a thread of gold silk through her tapestry frame.

Mary leaned forward a little in her chair and frowned.

“Unpick that rose, Elizabeth, it’s wildly uneven.”

Susan Kay

Elizabeth looked up, carefully expressionless.

“Madam—do you not hear it?”

“Of course I hear it, do you imagine I’m deaf ?”

“Then—the Duke is dead.”

“I think we may safely assume that,” said the Queen drily. “Never sit

there and tell me that his death disturbs you.”

“Not
his
, of course,” retorted Elizabeth hastily, “but some of his sons

are very—young.”

“The youngest will naturally be pardoned,” said Mary primly. “Henry

is barely fifteen, I understand.”

Elizabeth took a tremulous breath.

“Only Henry, madam?”

Mary dug her needle deep into the tapestry and pushed the frame aside

with a pettish gesture of irritation.

“Guildford, as Jane’s husband, I cannot possibly pardon. Both

Ambrose and Jack are of an age to answer for their crime. And as for that

impertinent young man who set out with armed men to capture me,”

she snapped her fingers impatiently, “the wretch’s name escapes me—”

“Robert.” It came on a whisper.

“Oh yes, Robert! I can well imagine what my fate would have been

had he succeeded. There can of course be no question of clemency

for
him
.”

The needle slipped through Elizabeth’s nerveless fingers and was lost

in the dusty straw at their feet.

“But, madam, he was only obeying his father’s instructions. Surely, in