The King's Daughter (49 page)

“Enter.”

“Pardon, Your Majesty,” Edward said, opening the Queen’s door, “but your councilors anxiously await your presence and …” His final words dwindled. He had expected to find the Queen bustling about, preparing to attendthe conference. Instead, she sat in her darkened chamber with a blanket on her lap and a prayer missal in her hands as if she had no intention of stirring. Frances, lighting the votive candles on the Queen’s
prie-dieu,
turned to Edward. He felt a ripple of revulsion as the two women looked at him from the gloom of their pious niche like two spiders spinning in a corner.

“It’s Candlemas, Edward,” Frances gently reminded him.

“But, Your Majesty, the rebels are—”

“We deal with the things most needful, sir,” the Queen said, a quiet reprimand. “Our souls’ salvation lies therein. Today we mark the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in reverence, before we turn to the vile misdeeds of men.”

About to protest, Edward caught himself and bowed his head contritely. “Of course.”

Frances beamed at him.

“However, Your Majesty,” Edward ventured, “matters of some urgency require your attention.”

“Which matters?”

He shrank from blurting out the worst, that Wyatt’s army was on its way to London’s gates and that the Queen’s defenses were in a shambles. He would let the lords break such unwelcome news. “Your councilors have thought fit to appoint Lord Pembroke to command Your Majesty’s forces,” he said. “Your consent is needed, Your Grace.”

The Queen’s face hardened. “Pembroke is a desperate choice.”

Because he’s a Protestant, Edward thought uncomfortably. But even the Queen must know that Pembroke was all the council had. Already, a quarter of the members of the greater council had slunk away to their country seats to await an outcome. They would emerge when it was all over, to support the victor, whether rebel or monarch. “He is an able soldier, Your Majesty,” Edward suggested. “With much experience.”

“Aye,” the Queen muttered bitterly, “but will he use it to oppose the traitors, or to join them?”

Edward said nothing. His suspicions were not far off the Queen’s.

In the silence, the arrogant eyes of Philip of Spain stared down on the three of them from the Titian portrait. The votive candle flames twitched. Rain dripped from the corner of the casement.

“My lady,” Frances said gently, “you asked me to remind you to thank Sir Edward.” Edward smiled. He had sent letters with the departing envoys, directed to his contacts in the banking house of Fugger and other powerful men in the money markets of Antwerp, completing his transactions over the Queen’s loan. His efforts would bring her the funds she desperately needed.

The Queen brightened. “So I did, Frances. My heartfelt thanks go to you, sir. The loan arrangement was well done. I shall not forget you.”

Edward felt emboldened. “Your Majesty, may I speak?”

The Queen nodded.

“It is too long since your London subjects were graced with your presence. And, sadly, many of them have been cowed by the traitors’ actions. They crave your guidance. Let the Londoners
see
you, Your Majesty. A few words from their sovereign would do more to inspirit them than all the gold of Antwerp.”

The Queen seemed intrigued by the suggestion. “Think you so?”

“I do. Your courage will give
them
courage.”

“Thank you, sir, for this kind advice. I shall consider it.” Her eyes drifted to the
prie-dieu’s
crucifix gleaming in the candlelight. She stood and moved toward the
prie-dieu
and seemed about to kneel before it, but stopped. “There is a task I would ask of you, good sir,” she said.

Edward bowed. “Anything, Your Majesty.”

“The Constable of the Tower tells me the prison there is crowded with traitors. I want them moved to my prison of the Marshalsea, to await their trials. I ask you to take chargeof this business and oversee its completion. Room must be made in the Tower.”

Edward could almost feel the warmth of Frances’s smile. He understood; the Queen’s request did him great honor. “Room, Your Majesty?” he asked. “For what?”

“Heretics, sir. They breed like vermin. My people apprehend them every hour. They have become bold, seeing Satan arm the traitors against me. But once God brings me my deliverance the heretics shall be exterminated.” She smiled at Edward as though struck by the aptness of her own pronouncement. “Did you know, my mother’s mother, Isabella, once performed a similar act of piety in Spain? As Queen, she expelled the Jews from her realm in gratitude to God for her victory over the Moorish infidel. I shall emulate her. I shall cleanse my realm of our particularly English vermin. The heretics shall all be burnt, as my thanks to God.”

Edward’s blood turned cold.

“And now,” the Queen concluded, kneeling, “excuse me, sir, for I must pray.”

Frances quietly guided Edward to the door. He walked out in a kind of stupor, imagining the terrifying crackle of flames licking up at him around the stake. He had seen his father burn, had been forced by his mother to watch the horror. “We must bear witness,” she had commanded, but Edward had only wanted to run. Now, he was barely aware of Frances’s quick kiss on his cheek, and of her smile following him from the doorway as he passed through the antechamber where some of the Queen’s ladies sat, hushed and fearful, at the fire. A hand touched Edward’s elbow to stop him. Startled, he whipped around. He blinked at the slim, jeweled fingers gripping his arm. They belonged to Amy Hawtry. Her face was pale.

“Oh, sir, is it true?” she asked in a strained whisper. She placed both her hands on his chest and leaned close as if for protection. Her lips came almost to his mouth. Edward was dimly aware of Frances’s frigid stare at Amy from the door-way. “They say Wyatt is coming!” Amy said to him. “They say we are all to be murdered in our beds! Oh, Sir Edward, tell me it isn’t true!”

“You’re late, Valverde.” Lord Abergavenny sounded angry, wounded, glancing up from breakfast in his tent as Carlos walked in. Abergavenny flinched as his teeth hit a hard knob of gristle. He tossed down his eating knife in disgust beside his breakfast trencher. Three young officers standing at the back of the tent looked around, trenchers in their hands. Rain drummed on the tent. Abergavenny glanced again at Carlos. “Well?” he mumbled sourly around his mouthful. “Our company not good enough for you?”

Carlos clenched his jaw in silence. Since the victory at Wrotham Hill the commander had been treating him like a favorite son, always wanting him near, throwing an arm around him to share a jest or to pour out his worries, irritated whenever Carlos went off by himself. Carlos had no taste for such a sycophantic relationship. But neither could he afford an argument with the commander. So he said nothing.

Abergavenny spat out the gristle. “Cavendish, you call this mutton? Tastes like dog’s tail.”

A lieutenant mumbled, “Best we can do, my lord.”

“Take it away. Body of God, I’d rather starve.”

The lieutenant cleared away the commander’s trencher.

Carlos filled a cup from the ale keg. Before coming to the commander’s tent he had wolfed down breakfast outside over the cook’s cauldron, watching the rain from under the cook’s tarpaulin stretched over poles. Now, although he’d thought his stomach was impervious to soldiers’ rations, the rancid mutton sat in his gut like a rock. Decent food was proving difficult to forage from the hostile country people. The company, marching from their victory at Wrotham Hill to join Norfolk in Gravesend, had been forced by the foul weather to camp here, a few miles south of the rendezvous. And then word had come that Norfolk had prematurely advanced alone on Rochester, to disastrous results: all but a handful of his men had rushed over to the enemy. Abergavenny’s company had shivered in this camp all yesterday as the commander awaited orders from Whitehall. Orders that still had not come. Meanwhile, their scout had reported that Wyatt was moving out of Rochester toward London. Carlos shook his head. He had fought in many confused campaigns, but none as badly led as this. He downed the ale. Flat, and cold as ice.

There was a squabble of voices beyond the tent. Abergavenny stood, rubbing his stiff back, and walked to the open tent flap. “A brawl,” he muttered. “Cavendish, go see to it.” He jerked his thumb at the other lieutenants. “You two go as well. It looks ugly.”

They shuffled out. Carlos was left with Abergavenny who continued to watch the fight, rubbing his tailbone. The morning camp smells drifted into the tent—woodsmoke and horse dung and burning fat. A boy in the corner polishing the commander’s breastplate yawned.

Looking out, Abergavenny asked wearily, “What do you suppose it’s about this time, Valverde?”

“It is always the same. Money or women.”

Abergavenny grunted. “No women following us in this bloody weather.” He shook his head. “Candlemas,” he muttered, “and still I cannot pay these troops.”

Candlemas. The fact struck Carlos hard. Tonight he was to have collected his fee at the Blue Boar Tavern for delivering Thornleigh’s finger. A hundred pounds. Enough to get him out of this fog-brained island and get him on his feet again somewhere. A week ago it had seemed so clear-cut a mission. Then, everything had become complicated.
She
had complicated it. He had failed.

And now? Now she despised him. And the lawyer, Sydenham, had her in his house. Carlos felt a cold flame of hate in his belly at the recollection of Sydenham in the inn courtyard, murmuring into Isabel’s ear. Involuntarily, his hand balled into a fist. He had earned his pardon, yet what did he have? Nothing. He felt as powerless as if he were still in jail, felt like some cringing courtier hanging around Abergavenny, awaiting favor. It rankled. Everything rankled.

If all of his failure was to mean anything, he must make a success now. What he needed was land. Land would make up for everything. But for him to be rewarded with land, the Queen’s forces had to win. And this lame army was doing precious little to ensure that.

He knocked back another cup of ale. He had to think of something that would help force a victory.

“Amy, are you afraid?” Frances asked. She spoke quietly, and the other ladies-in-waiting in the Queen’s antechamber continued with their halfhearted games of cat’s cradle around the hearth.

Amy turned from the window. She had been using its rain-darkened surface as a looking glass, nervously smoothing back a lock of her blond hair, and Frances’s question had startled her. She shivered and hugged herself. “And you are not?” she asked sullenly.

“I suppose we all are,” Frances admitted. She looked around at the other young women and sighed. “But it does seem useless to just sit here and quake. Let’s you and I go and cheer ourselves with a game of primero, shall we?”

Amy frowned, uncertain or unwilling. “The Queen may want us,” she said.

“The Queen will be deep in her Candlemas devotions for some time, and after that she must meet with the council.”

Amy fidgeted with her necklace.

Frances said, “I am sorry if I’ve been short-tempered with you in the past. But now … well, we are both rather in need of some diversion, and …” She stopped herself. “Oh, never mind,” she sighed. She turned to go.

“No, wait, Frances.”

Frances saw the fear in the girl’s eyes, the dread of being left prey to her own wild thoughts of the rebels’ barbarity. “Yes,” Amy said firmly. “Let’s play.”

“Damn you, Valverde, you nearly made me cut my own throat!” Abergavenny scowled over his shoulder as he stood shaving, his razor poised at his chin. The servant boy stood by him with a basin of water. “No,” Abergavenny insisted to Carlos, “absolutely not. It’s a foolhardy idea.”

“You need information about Wyatt,” Carlos said.

“I need a good cavalry captain more. No. I can’t risk you.”

“Can you risk letting the enemy pass?” Moments ago, just before noon, the scout had ridden in to report that Wyatt, marching to London, had stopped at Dartford, only seven miles away. Carlos had known at once that it was his chance, and had hurried into Abergavenny’s tent. He pushed on now: “Do nothing to discover his strength, his arms? Let him take London—while you shave?”

“All right!” the commander snapped. “I agree it would be good to infiltrate his camp. I’ll send someone. Not you.”

“Who else can you trust to come back?”

Abergavenny whipped around, furious at this reference to the mounting desertions. He jerked up the razor in front of Carlos’s nose. “Careful, Valverde,” he threatened quietly. “I could just leave you behind, you know, in the clutches of these country folk. They’re not at all fond of Spaniards.”

Carlos’s eyes locked with the commander’s. “Or you can send me into Wyatt’s camp. And if I get back out, you can reward me.”

Amy giggled, remembering. “… but my sister came upon us in the dovecote, and when my cousin Simon heard her shriek—his hands were up under my skirt, the randy cur—he bolted and I don’t think he stopped running until he crossed the bridge to the village. Lord, what a coward!” She giggled again.

Amy and Frances were sitting at the card table in Frances’s bedchamber while the rain dribbled down the window. As Amy reminisced, Frances watched her.

Amy bent her elbow on the table and languidly laid her cheek on her hand. Her fair hair tumbled over her shoulder. She felt her muscles slacken in the heat from the fire in the hearth, and from the wine warming her veins—a sweet respite from the worry about Wyatt’s army. “But the next night,” she went on, smiling, “we did it, Simon and me. My first time.” She winked at Frances. “Lord, what a summer that was, the summer I turned fourteen. And
he
was all of seventeen.” She heaved a sigh of regret. “My, but he was a handsome dog.”

“Goodness,” Frances said. “Such an energetic childhood. More wine?”

Amy pushed her goblet across the table for more. Frances poured. Misty-eyed, Amy watched the red liquid swirl into the cup. She drank several deep gulps. Her fingers felt pleasantly tingly.

“Ah, those sweet summer days on the home farm seem a long time ago,” she sighed. “Daisy-chain making, and paddling in the pond, and merry tumbles in the hay.” She looked across at Frances who sat ramrod straight in her hard-backed chair. Amy wondered if she
ever
relaxed. She sighed again and drank some more, then idly trailed her finger through a small puddle of spilled wine on the table, drawing wet patterns. “I thought it was going to be merry here at court with the Queen, but it’s all just ‘fetch my missal,’ and ‘read me that prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas,’ and ‘hurry along to Mass now.’ Lord, I’ll be glad when she finally weds Prince Philip.” She winked again at Frances. “If she gets down on her knees once the Spanish prince is before her, I warrant it won’t be to pray!” She giggled so hard her elbow slipped off the table, and she lost her balance and almost fell off her chair.