The King's Daughter (25 page)

“That’s the one,” Amy said, blithely waving Frances on. “Go on. Take it on down to her.”

Frances’s eyes darted between Edward and Amy, and she gave the young woman a frosty look before she started for the door. Edward rushed to her side, stopping her.

“Frances, you know that I yearn as much as you to see justice done for your family,” he said. “But, really, it hardly seems right to trouble Her Majesty with our sorrows when she has so many of her own. You won’t mention it, will you? About Thornleigh?”

Frances tenderly touched his arm. “Oh, Edward, you are good to consider Her Majesty’s feelings. But think how relieved she will be at this news. To know that one of the traitors who has brought on this calamity is already under lock and key here in her capital. And,” she added with a proud smile, “I’ll be sure to tell her that the one who can testify to Thornleigh’s crimes of treason is you. She’ll be so grateful.” Her eyes misted with emotion as she added, “And so am I. Now, let me take this balm in to her meeting, and I’ll whisper to her that you are waiting to see her.” She went out.

Edward wiped sweat from his upper lip. The room seemed unbearably hot. Amy was speaking to him, but Edward was trying to think. He had to stay to see the Queen and report his success with the loan. But immediately after, he could rush home and instruct his steward. He
must
reach Thornleigh before the Queen’s officers did.

He hurried out after Frances, leaving Amy blinking after him.

Frances Grenville stood behind Queen Mary, ready to offer the vial of balm, but the Queen, speaking to four of her councilors, was too distraught to notice.

“Do you mean, my lords,” the Queen asked incredulously, “that I have no more personal protection than the two hundred men of my Palace Guard?”

“That is why you must flee to Windsor!” Bishop Gardiner cried.

“Naturally, we shall keep trying to raise troops,” Lord Paulet said quietly, looking at the floor. “But …” He shrugged. Frances noted dark skin like bruises below his eyes, testimony to four sleepless nights since Wyatt had proclaimed rebellion. “Even in Kent can count on less than one thousand men.”

“And the cowards desert an hour after they’re mustered,” the Earl of Pembroke broke in.

“However,” Paulet went on, ignoring the gruff soldier’s remark, “my entreaty to the corporation of London for men-at-arms has brought some success.” He lifted a parchment scroll and extended it to the Queen. Bishop Gardiner intercepted it, unfurled it and scanned the writing.

Paulet said to the Queen, “The order requires your signature, Your Majesty.”

“Oh, curse this paperwork,” the Duke of Norfolk protested. He was pacing. “Let’s go round up these London soldiers. My own lieutenants stand ready to march ‘em. Let’s throw ‘em at Wyatt. Now!”

Paulet explained with a tactful, if strained, precision aimed not only at the old Duke but also, obliquely, at the Queen. “A royal order is necessary, Your Grace. Since the Freemen of London are exempt from impressment in the armed forces of the Crown, the city can refuse us these troops. The only exception is if London itself lies in immediate danger of attack. Clearly, that is the case. The difficulty …” Paulet hesitated like a messenger with bad news, then steeled himself. “We fear the city may not be firmly loyal to the Crown.”

There was an anxious hush. “Your Majesty,” Paulet concluded quietly, “you must sign the order.”

Gardiner grunted over the scroll. “Why, this muster is no more than the guilds’ quotas.” He read out with derision, “The Merchant Tailors, thirty. The Mercers, twenty-five. The Drapers, twenty-one. The Bakers, eight.” He snorted. “The Poulterers, three.”

Frances hoped the bishop saw the contempt on her face for his belittling of Lord Paulet’s efforts. She knew—everyone knew—that in his Southwark palace Bishop Gardiner went to sleep only after posting his own personal guard of a hundred men, and none of these had he offered to the Queen.

“With sixty guilds in all,” Paulet replied with some heat, “the total equals approximately six hundred men, well trained and well equipped. Can you do better, my lord Bishop?”

“None of us can!” Gardiner exploded. “That’s the point, it’s hopeless! Good God, six hundred against Wyatt’s thousands? Plus the French on their way to him with a hundred ships and God knows how many troops, if the rumors are true. None of us can match that. Your Majesty, you
must
retreat to Windsor!”

“The Emperor can match it.”

Frances turned to the man who had said this, the Imperial Ambassador, Simon Renard. Until he spoke, she had not noticed him in the room. Renard stood by the window, apart from the Queen’s councilors. A handsome young man with watchful eyes, he wore a trim, spade-shaped beard and was richly dressed in black. He stepped forward, moving between the Queen and her councilors, and turned his back on them. “Madame,” he said, “you know that the Emperor is your steadfast kinsman and friend. Only say the word and his ships and armies will be sailing here to defend you.”

“The Emperor’s armies?” Bishop Gardiner gasped. “On English soil? Your Majesty, you would make an enemy of every Englishman!”

“And have you joined them already, my lord Bishop?” Renard flared. “Madame,” he urged the Queen, “allow the Emperor’s might to crush your foes. They are the foes of God.”

“Do not, Your Majesty,” Gardiner said, composed for the first time, grimly calm now with certainty. “To enforce the marriage in that way would be nothing less than Imperial rape.”

Every other man in the room winced at the crudeness of this image used before the maiden Queen.

Mary herself blushed, but the stain on her cheeks spoke more of indignation than of tender sensibility. Her eyes darted between the men. Finally, she moved to Gardiner and snatched the parchment scroll. She went to the desk and sat. Frances hurried over and readied the ink and quill. Mary dipped the quill and moved her hand to the bottom where her list of official titles led to the place where she would sign, but her hand hovered over the spot. “Supreme Head of the Church in England,” she said with disgust, reading aloud the final title.

Frances understood the Queen’s revulsion. This was the title that King Henry had wrenched to himself from the Pope in order to divorce his Spanish-born queen, Mary’s mother. It had made Henry an excommunicate, and severed England from the Church of Rome. Mary loathed the title as the root of all apostasy. But it was attached to the sovereign, and only Parliament could expunge it. Parliament, hedging its bets, had not yet done so.

Queen Mary looked up at Renard as though to her only friend. “You see, my lord Ambassador, how every paper I sign in the governance of my own realm fouls me with this abhorred heresy. A queen’s titles should wreathe her like garlands, but ‘Supreme Head of the Church’ hangs on me like a bloodied butcher’s apron. I pray for the day that I may call His Holiness the Pope once again the spiritual head of this realm, and sign such trash no more.” She glared down at the writing. Her councilors waited. Frances felt their silent antagonism strain toward the Queen like a pack of chained dogs.

“However,” Mary said with great bitterness, “it appears I have no choice but to wait. I will not break barbarous civil war upon my subjects.” Renard looked away to hide his frustration.

Still, Mary hesitated, as if unable to move. Then she said with sudden, high-voiced anger, “But neither will I abide this traitor longer!” She scribbled her signature. Paulet sighed his relief. Mary tossed down the quill. “My Lord Duke,” Mary said, addressing Norfolk and picking up the scroll, “deliver this order to Guildhall.”

The old Duke stepped forward and took the scroll.

“I command you to lead the trained London bands to Kent immediately,” the Queen said to him, “and to join with the troops there under my lord Abergavenny. I command you to advance on Rochester with your combined forces and smash this villain Wyatt once and for all.”

The Duke bowed deeply and left.

The Queen sat back. She rubbed her temples with her fingertips. Frances proffered the purple vial. Mary took it with a wan, distracted smile of thanks. “My lords,” she said, standing. “I am going to Mass, and from thence to confession.”

“But, your Majesty,” Gardiner broke in desperately, “will you go then to Windsor?”

“And after confession,” the Queen went on as if her Chancellor had not spoken, “I shall spend the day in solitary prayer. I do not wish to be disturbed. I shall entreat God’s guidance. I suggest you all do the same.” She walked outthrough a door to her private chapel. For a moment the councilors were too stunned to speak.

“Why in God’s name would she send Norfolk?” Pembroke finally sputtered. “The old goat’s in his dotage. He hasn’t commanded men in over forty years!”

“But, sir,” Paulet reminded Pembroke, who was an ally of the previous Protestant regime, “the Queen considers his loyalty unimpeachable. And his religion.”

“And my loyalty isn’t?” Pembroke shouted, red-faced.

“I only meant—”

“Your damned meddling will cost us dear,” Gardiner snapped at Ambassador Renard. “It may sink this island!”

“This island is well on the way to sinking itself,” the ambassador replied.

The bickering went on, long and loud.

And Frances Grenville had found no moment to speak to the Queen.

On Farringdon Street, a hand touched Isabel’s ankle. She gasped and backed into the mercenary, away from the stone wall of the Fleet prison. The hand was reaching out through a prisoner’s grill level with the street. “Alms,” a weak voice begged.

Isabel stepped away stiffly from the mercenary. Since leaving the Anchor on foot after a silent breakfast a half hour ago they had barely exchanged five words. And on the way neither had looked at the other.

She bent and placed a penny on the prisoner’s dirty palm. Behind the grill was a shadowy face. “God bless you, lady,” the voice said, and the hand was pulled in.

Isabel and Carlos entered the long, four-storied prison building after being checked through the gates by turnkeys. As they made their way into the porter’s lodge, passing visitors coming and going, Isabel sensed that some sort of celebration was in progress. The sounds of festivity beyond the porter’s lodge, though muffled, were plain. She paid the porter and asked if her father was being held within. The porter got up from his stool and offered to take her to the jailer’s chamber across the inner yard. “There’s a wedding,” he said as he opened the door for her with a nod toward the crowd ahead.

The small yard was thronged with reveling men and women, but it was unlike any wedding party Isabel had ever seen—a dirty, tattered affair, for the guests were mostly prisoners, and the yard’s snow was a soup of slushy mud under the strengthening sun. But the merrymakers, along with several turnkeys, stood laughing and eating at tables laden with roasted meats, bread, and ale. They danced, solo and in couples, to the lively jig of an intent musician sawing on his rebeck. And more than one ale-besotted fellow was lurching through the melee with a glazed grin.

One of them bumped flat into Carlos. In an effort to keep from falling, the drunkard grappled at the mercenary’s sheepskin, wrenching it askew. In the tug of war between them, something fell out of the mercenary’s jerkin. Isabel saw it drop into the mud—a coil of thin, tightly braided leather. The mercenary flung the drunkard aside and quickly stooped to retrieve the coil. Isabel suddenly realized what it was—a garrote. She felt a pang of uncertainty. What brutality was he planning in order to accomplish her father’s escape? Could she really rely on his savage ways to be successful? “You know,” she said to him in a tense whisper, “it may not be necessary to strangle
every
person who crosses your path.”

He shot her a dark look, and stuffed the garrote back inside his jerkin.

“Come, my lady,” the porter called to Isabel. He was standing at the door of the jailer’s chamber across the yard. Isabel hurried over. There, she was met by a sight more surprising even than that of the dancing prisoners. The jailer who crossed the room to greet her was her own height, her own shape—in short, her own sex.

“Dorothy Leveland, at your service,” the woman said as her porter shuffled back outside. “Will you rest yourself, mistress?” The jailer—trim, tidy, and taut with the authority of middle age—gestured to a chair. “Tipton has my order to bring me any lady or gentleman asking assistance,” she said. “And if you don’t mind my saying so, mistress, you do look rather fagged.”

Isabel thanked her and sat. Carlos remained standing close to the door.

Mistress Leveland nodded toward the merrymaking. “Quite a day, isn’t it?” she asked Isabel. “Did Tipton tell you about it?”

Isabel shook her head.

“The groom was a prisoner here as a lad. Locked up for debt, he was.” Mistress Leveland took the seat behind her orderly desk. “The lad was begging at the grate on Farringdon street one day when a wealthy draper’s widow was walking past. I suppose he caught her fancy. She inquired about him and I explained to her that ten pounds would pay his debt. Well, the widow not only paid, she took the lad into her service as an apprentice. That was seven years ago. And today,” she said, smiling like a satisfied matchmaker, “they’ve come back to celebrate their marriage in my yard where they met. God bless them both, I say.” She lifted a goblet from her desk to toast the couple and swallowed a sip. “Will you take some refreshment, mistress? The widow—or, I should say, the bride—has been generous with the feast.”

Isabel declined. She explained her visit. Mistress Leveland shook her head.

“You mean, you’re sure he’s not here?” Isabel asked.

“I am sure of no such thing, mistress.” The jailer angrily thumped her palm down on a large open book. “There’s no way to decipher who’s come or who’s gone, thanks to my idiot clerk’s scrawl here. Drunk again. I’ve just sacked him.” She rose and said with a worldly sigh, “But these are my worries, mistress, not yours. Come. I’ll help you in your search myself.”

This did not at all fit Isabel’s plans. She wanted no one of authority about when she found her father. “Oh no,” she said, “there’s no need for you to trouble.”