Watch the Lady (56 page)

“You will not find any letters. All the earl's papers were burned.”

“What, everything?” She is smiling. Why is she still smiling?

“Every last scrap?”

Cecil is thinking of that letter to the Spanish ambassador which he feared had found its way to Essex House—the greatest error in his game—going up in flames. A wash of relief breaks over him. He hadn't realized the extent to which that letter was still oozing poison at the back of his mind. It may well come up at Essex's trial—the earl is sure to fling some mud about—but without hard evidence it will be difficult to make it stick.

“It wouldn't need written proof to convict you, my lady. You were armed when you were arrested. There are plenty who will bear witness to that.”

“That! Sidney's dress sword? You are being ridiculous.”

“A dress sword is as sharp as a battle sword,” he replies, interlacing his fingers, grasping that it must have been that very same sword her brother almost drew on the Queen. “You know as well as I do that if Her Majesty wants rid of you, then it will be done.”

“Of course,” she says. “I understand how these things are.” He is impressed at her mettle; her composure remains entirely intact. “Are you afraid to die, Cecil?”

He does not know how to respond and drops his guard a little. “Well . . . well . . . That has nothing to do with this.”

“I think everyone is afraid to die, even those few who are truly pious and without sin. And as for the rest of us . . .” She lets her voice fade.

Fear flaps in his gut. Her ruse has worked, for he is rattled by this talk of death.

“I have a proposition,” she says, regarding him with those inky eyes.

“A proposition? Do you truly feel your situation offers opportunities for bargaining?” It is taking all the composure he can gather to keep himself together. He imagines her pulling a letter written in his hand from beneath her gown. It is addressed to the Spanish ambassador. He tries to reassure himself: if what she said is true, then his letter may well be nothing but ashes.

She doesn't answer, just continues to hold him with her eyes, and slowly understanding alights—a proposition. He cannot forget that this is a woman who defies all the laws of decency with her lover, and seems not to care for her reputation. He reaches out, a fingertip grazing the soft flesh of her throat.

She flinches as if he has burnt her, moving back abruptly out of his reach, the legs of her chair screeching against the floor.

A servant interrupts, entering with an array of dishes, followed by his boy carrying a gilded jug.

“I see they have brought out the plate in your honor.” She sniffs at the jug. “Good red wine—I have been drinking watered ale from a leather cup since my arrival.” She makes an exaggerated scowl and picks up a small pie from a platter, sinking her teeth into it without ceremony. A flake of pastry clings to her lip. He imagines removing it with his tongue.

The server hovers. “Do you require—”

“Leave us be,” he says, indicating for his boy also to wait outside.

When the latch has fallen with a click, he stands, taking a step towards her. His mouth is arid, making words impossible. Snatching up a trailing corner of her shawl in his fist, he whips it away from her body. She pulls it back smartly.

“Not that! Did you think
that
was my proposition?”

He is rigid with shame, horrified by the way his desires had taken hold, confused him, disrupted his composure.

She is laughing at him. “I have something better by far for you than my body.” She is still laughing. Cecil's face is pulsating with heat.

“So what, then?” he says when he eventually finds his tongue, his mind returning to that blasted letter. “Do you have it?”

“It?” She is half turned away from him, seeming distracted by something beyond the window.

“The letter.”

She spins towards him, her eyes grabbing him sharply, like the claws of a cat. “A letter? No. I'm talking of . . .” She stops. “Sit down, for God's sake.” He does as he is told, like an obedient dog. “I believe there are always opportunities to strike agreements if both parties find it to their advantage.”

He collects himself, understanding only now that this is not about anything he might have written, his emotions adjusting like a compass to the north. “You have my ear.”

“I want to talk about the succession,” she says. “You must be aware that the Scottish King is the only truly suitable candidate.”

A shiver runs up his spine, for he suspects he is about to hear the resurrection of something he'd thought lost with the demise of her brother. She might be on the brink of making the very proposition to him that he might have made to her, had it occurred to him first.

“Perhaps,” is all he says.

“There is no perhaps about it. The Infanta was a pipe dream all along. Not a soul within these shores would accept a Spaniard, and a woman to boot. We all know that. And that Stuart girl, the Scottish King's cousin who has been groomed for the throne—she's half mad from what I hear; and the Beauchamp claim—well, that's run dry. James of Scotland is as near in blood as it is possible to be, he has a son and a fertile wife. Do you think England would turn away from a chance like that?”

“And your point is?” He keeps his voice steady, not wanting his eagerness to show. She is right, of course, but he will not give her the satisfaction of agreement.

“Mark my words: James of Scotland will be named successor, I have no doubt about it.”

“I still don't see why this is relevant.”

“James of Scotland is a dear friend to the Devereuxs, to me in particular and to Lord Mountjoy.” She pauses, for effect he presumes. “But I know he is not enamored of you. Indeed, he believes you to be—what was the word he used when he last wrote to me?” She stops again, and licks her lips, scooping the fragment of pastry up with her own tongue. “Ah yes,
devious,
that's what he said of you. ‘I would not want
devious
men like Cecil advising me. He would be the first I'd be rid of.' ”

She plants her eyes on his once more, seeming to challenge him, and must be aware that she is admitting, here and now, to having discussed the succession with the Scottish King. That alone is enough to send her to the block. But she has the confidence of knowing that Cecil wants to feather his own nest for the future—he feels as if she has peeled back his soul and taken a good look inside.

“King James will know you are the instigator of my brother's downfall. He will want revenge once he is in power.” She pauses as her point strikes home. Cecil feels himself shrink. “But I could tell him he has misunderstood you, Cecil. And your mercy with regard to me shall be proof of that. Deliver me from the block and I shall deliver you James of Scotland. I will convince him he needs a man like you at his side. I fancy you could see yourself as Chief Minister in the new regime.”

His mind is stirring. If he agrees to this, it means he is tied to Lady Rich by their shared treachery. But he can see his future, an infinite vista of glory, of riches, something his father would have been proud of, a legacy to pass to his son. It is that, or his destruction.

He is trying to calculate the best way to package this to the Queen, when like a mind reader she says, “Tell the Queen you are convinced of my innocence, or if that's not enough then remind her that Lord Mountjoy has an army thirteen thousand strong who will do his bidding, and it is not worth the risk of raising his ire by doing away with his wife.” She says the word
wife
with defiance, as if challenging him to contradict it. “Besides, in Ireland Lord Mountjoy has achieved in months what a string of others did not manage in three decades. The Queen needs him, and if a hair on my head were harmed I am sure Lord Mountjoy would . . .” She doesn't finish, just leans back in her chair and stretches her arms up above her head with a little moan of satisfaction. “You will think of something, Cecil, a man of your ingenuity.”

“You will be brought before the Privy Council for your part in your brother's folly.”

“The Privy Council—I think I am quite able to deal with them. I have done it before.” She tilts her head to one side and lifts her tone to a high-pitched simper. “I was enslaved by my blind love for my brother.” She flicks her head back to upright and holds out her hand. “Do we have a deal?”

He looks at her hand and then back at her face; she reveals nothing in her expression that tells him if this is a bluff of the highest order. Perhaps the Scottish King said nothing of the sort . . .
Devious
—pah! Perhaps this great friendship between him and the Devereuxs is a fabrication.

That marble hand is still held out.

•  •  •

Cecil peeps through a crack in the hangings. From up in the gallery he has a view across Westminster Hall. Below sit Essex and Southampton. He cannot see their faces, only the tops of their heads. They sit before the men of law: the Lord Chief Justice in his scarlet robes with his eight judges and Lord Buckhurst presiding. On either side Cecil counts out the nine earls and sixteen barons—the peers who will pronounce the verdict; one of them is Lord Rich. Opposite the judges sit the Queen's Counsel, with Francis Bacon amongst them. It must curdle the earl's insides to see a man who has been privy to so many of his secrets seated there with his prosecutors.

Cecil is reminded of Doctor Lopez all those years ago—that poor man hounded to the scaffold; in his mind he has erased his own part in the doctor's downfall, attributed it entirely to Essex. Bacon was one of the prosecutors then, at Essex's behest, if Cecil's memory serves him well, which it does. Cecil pushes Lopez from his thoughts before he has another crisis of conscience. He has not been able to shake away Lady Rich's question:
Are you afraid to die, Cecil?
He is afraid of the day of reckoning. But sometimes he receives signs of God's mercy, indications that perhaps God understands a ruthless man if his actions are for the higher good, and what has Cecil done but serve his Queen and country?

He had one such sign only this morning, a happy discovery that laid a foreboding of two years' duration to rest. As a result he sits behind his arras light as a cloud. He had need to refer to an old ledger on a point of governance and, flicking through its pages, came upon a folded leaf of paper, recognizing instantly his own tidy hand on its surface, a particular line popping out at him:
I feel sure some kind of accommodation can be arrived at in respect of the Infanta
 . . . A wave of euphoria caused him to exclaim, “Thanks be to God!” so loudly, his scribe had come in to ask if all was as it should be. “Oh, yes, indeed,” he replied, tearing the letter into several pieces and scrunching them in his fist. How memory can play tricks on the mind; he'd felt so sure the offending item had been sealed and sent, it never occurred to him to look for it in his own study. “The entire universe is correctly aligned.” His scribe had looked his way askance, making a last perturbed glance back towards him as he left the chamber. Cecil skipped across the room and dropped the torn fragments into the fire, watching the flames devour his words for good. He has a fancy that God was teaching him a lesson with that letter.

Bacon is speaking now, tearing strips out of the earl with his rapier intellect. Cecil likes his vantage point and the fact that no one is aware of his presence. He is neither a peer of the realm nor a man of law, so he is not required to attend the proceedings, and nothing would have made him sit with the rabble. If he cranes his neck, he can see the public gallery. He supposes Lady Rich would be there were she not still incarcerated in that grim chamber at Henry Sackford's house.

He can still feel the marble-cold clasp of her handshake and the arousing sense of trepidation that came with it. He is working on the Queen with respect to that business—that handshake, that deal struck—she is coming round; he has seen the glimmer of forgiveness in her eye when Lady Rich is mentioned. The same look he used to see so often in respect of the earl. Not this time, though. The earl is as good as done for, but Lady Rich's slender neck will remain intact. And he, Cecil, has begun to sow seeds for James of Scotland's succession. Subtlety is what's required, and that he has in abundance. He has wondered, though, in the black of night, if he hasn't made a pact with some dark force; after all, he has betrayed his Queen. He stops his thoughts before they fall to wondering if that means he has also betrayed God.

For the first time today Essex is becoming riled under the questioning of his one-time ally Bacon. He has sat through testimonies from Popham, Ralegh, and a squirming Ferdinando Gorges. Not once did the earl lose his composure. But now he is twitching visibly as he listens. Bacon is armed with a depth of knowledge; he and Cecil had questioned all the main players in the affair. In the most part they had confessed like papists. Only the stepfather, Sir Christopher, half dead from a pike wound to the face, had refused to speak. He had spat onto the filthy floor of Newgate Prison, saying, “You will get nothing from me.” He was hanged the next day with Meyrick and Cuffe. The Devereux women were really most unfortunate in their choice of husbands.

Bacon continues his prodding, describing each point with a wave of one of his graceful hands like a choirmaster.

Essex gets to his feet, shouting now. “You want to hear about rebellious intent and treason? Well I have a story about how the crown of England was nearly sold to the Spaniard. It was told to me by a loyal source, that one of my fellow councillors heard with his own ears.
His own ears
,” he repeats loudly, his voice ringing round the rapt hall. “Robert Cecil, the Lord Privy Seal, was heard to say that the Infanta's claim was as valid in the succession as any other.”