Blood Ties (21 page)

Philip!
She pictured him now, his slight stature, refined features, reddish beard. The vision made her smile. She knew she should not like him as she did. She knew her people hated the very idea of him and the Spanish match. She had tried to remain aloof, treating him with little more than a cool courtesy when he came to see her the day after her interview with Renard. Yet he was not the arrogant Castillian his unwilling subjects supposed him, but a cultured and sensitive man, full of charm and humour, and he showed her the first kindnesses in a long age. He promised to speak to the Queen on her behalf, he took her out of her cramped rooms and into the fresh air of spring, her England’s most glorious season. That first day, when he discovered she delighted in the chase, he lent her his favourite mare, took her into Bushey Park, demonstrated his skill in single-handedly killing a fiercesome stag they had chased down, displaying a courage of which even her father would have approved.

She found her thumb and forefinger resting on the white king and she quickly withdrew them, rubbing them on her skirt as if to remove some taint. The idea of Philip was different from his reality, for he was part of Renard’s scheme against her, indeed the ultimate goal of it. She had never mentioned it to the King or questioned him about it. It would have seemed a breach of etiquette somehow for all he would be able to do was deny. And Philip was always absolutely proper in his attentions to her, speaking of his admiration for the Queen his wife, his respect for her courage and her faith. Yet, despite all the correctness, when they were out on horseback, or walking beneath the avenue of elms that swept to the east of the palace, in the silence that followed laughter or the ending of some heated Classical debate – for he was as well-read in Latin or Greek as she – Elizabeth would sometimes catch him glancing at her and there was a passion in the look she had seen before when men looked at her, a passion that made her both excited and afraid.

Well, thoughts of Philip would not help her in the game, in either game! Renard would be expecting her next move by nightfall. She had not seen the Ambassador since that last disagreeable meeting, had received nothing more by way of contact than written responses to her moves. Concentrating now, breathing deeply, she sought a way to thwart him.

There was one move, almost her only option, which would protect her for a while. Dipping her quill in the inkwell, she was just bending over the table to scratch it down on some parchment, when she heard the key in the door behind her turn. It was about the time that Kat, her servant, should be returning with her noonday meal.

‘Set it down there, Kat, by the window. I can at least gaze out of my prison bars. And then you can take this to the poxy Fox, may God rot him further every day.’

‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t say, “Amen”.

She rose from her bent position, took time to blot the parchment, replace the quill in the inkwell. When she was ready, she turned to face him, smiling.

‘Ambassador. Are you yet living?’

‘No thanks to your good wishes, I am.’ Renard stooped in the low doorway. ‘May I enter?’

‘You don’t usually ask permission for anything, do you? Please.’

‘Ah well, you see, the King tells me that I must mend my ways.’ Renard entered, a smile on his thin lips. ‘After all, you may be his Queen one day.’

Elizabeth stiffened. ‘I may be … Queen, it is true, though God preserve my sister and her throne. I am grateful though to his Majesty for this lesson to you in etiquette. I expected no less from him. Would that he heard all my thoughts on you.’

Renard ignored the barb, moving past Elizabeth to study the chessboard. After a moment he said, ‘So you still threaten. That is good. No, I do not think I will let you have my knight.’ His long fingers closed over a rook, lifted it from the board, set it down in a new hole. ‘Checkmate in about seven or eight, I fear.’

‘Oh, was my move that good?’ said Elizabeth, moving up beside the Ambassador who glowered, then forced a smile.

‘Speaking of knights, I should introduce you to one of mine. Enter, sir!’ he called, turning. ‘Oh, you already have! So silent, these Jesuits.’

Elizabeth looked to the door where a man of some thirty years now stood, black-cloaked, the hood thrown back, dark hair streaked with grey, his pale face composed of features that showed some breeding. The man bowed.

‘Thomas Lawley, your Highness. Your servant.’

‘I am grateful you address me with that title, sir. Few around here do.’

‘My loyal servant has been away on an errand for me. No, errand is too small a word. A mission? Well, almost a crusade, wouldn’t you say, Thomas?’

The Jesuit glanced at Renard, returned his gaze to the Princess. Now he was before her, Thomas felt a pang again, similar to the one he’d felt in the chapel in the Tower, down in the grave of this woman’s mother. Yet he kept his face impassive.

‘I believe I have been about God’s work, yes. I could not have done what I have done otherwise.’

There was something in what he said, the tone in which he said it, that hinted of regret. Elizabeth saw the apology there, saw the troubled decency of the man, and her fear grew as she saw it.

Renard continued. ‘Oh yes, a crusade, I think. And with better results than some of our illustrious ancestors had on theirs. Tell her
Highness
what you found in France, Thomas?’

She knew before he spoke and the knowledge caused her legs to weaken. She felt she might have fallen so decided to step forward instead, toward the man who was regarding her with something close to sadness in his gaze.

‘Yes, tell me, Master Lawley. What evil thing have you found to help my enemies practise upon me?’ She was pleased how firm her voice sounded.

His reply came evenly, uninflected. ‘We found the skeleton of a hand, my lady. It was buried in a casket in the middle of a crossroads in the Loire, beneath a gibbet beam.’

‘And what has this to do with us?’

‘The hand had – has – six fingers.’

There it was, as clear on the man’s honest face as if it was laid before her, as if she felt again a strange touch she’d forgotten, except in a dream of happiness from a distant past. She did stumble now, toward the man and he caught her, supported her, and she hated the weakness in her that needed his arm to help her to a chair. Hated above all the triumph that her weakness provoked in the Ambassador. She sensed his smile, his fox eyes fixed upon his prey.

Still, she was Harry’s daughter, and if her legs betrayed her, her mind would not.

‘Well, Renard, what are you waiting for? Why do you not produce this … this blasphemy, and have done?’

‘My lady! Has our game taught you nothing? I do not run with all my forces at my enemy. I come to them in stealth, square by square, until success is certain. Unlike you, I do not bring my queen forward until I am sure of victory.’

She saw an opening. ‘You have not seen this … desecration, have you? You cannot know its effect.’

‘I have not seen it, no. But my trusted friend here has.’ He put his hand on Thomas’s shoulder. ‘It is now in the safest place in the kingdom – the Tower. And timing is everything. The Queen, poor lady, as you know, is not yet come to her crisis. Your mother’s hand will have its best – or worst – effect when she has just lost all hope. Nothing would save you then.’ He leaned in, his voice losing its venom, gaining a honeyed quality that Elizabeth found even more distasteful. ‘But why should we talk of such unpleasant outcomes? Perhaps I am deceived and the Queen will be delivered of a healthy child, a Catholic heir to a Catholic throne. And then your promise to marry Philip – such a noble, handsome Prince, is he not? – will not matter. It is so little a thing we ask of you, a signature no bigger than the scrawled chess moves we have been exchanging.’ He moved to the table, dipped the quill in ink, bent over a blank parchment. ‘Why not sign here, let us fill in the details later?’

Elizabeth rose, found her legs were steady again, walked across to the table where she took the quill and set it down again on its stand.

‘You know I put my signature to nothing that may be misconstrued. You could write treason here and have my name attached.’

Renard looked wounded. ‘My lady! Would I do such a thing?’

‘You would sell your mother to a whorehouse if the purse were heavy enough. And if you could discover her name.’

It was the noise like a suppressed sneeze that turned them both around. But Thomas Lawley’s face was as blank as ever, even if something twinkled in his eyes.

‘Well, lady.’ Renard’s tone had regained its former fury. ‘We shall see how this progresses. The Queen shall hear of your continual stubbornness, even if we will not yet reveal this part of it. She shall know how you still refuse to admit your treasonous plans and will not throw yourself on her mercy!’ He made for the door.

‘If I could but see my loving sister, she would quickly learn how innocent I am.’

Renard pivoted, snarling. ‘She will believe nothing good of you, daughter of the heretic-witch who ruined her life. The stars will fall before she will see you.’ He paused on a thought. ‘But you would see her, would you?’

‘It is my dearest wish!’

‘Then let us fulfil it. Come!’ He beckoned. ‘Come, do not fear! I shall take you to where you can observe your sister. But beware! She has forbidden you her society. Watch but do not try to force yourself into her presence or worse than further exile might await you!’

As the two antagonists swept from the room, each as determined as the other, Thomas sank gratefully onto the chair at the window. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept for more than an hour. The boat from Tuscany, probably. Since then it had been endless days on horses, his young companion setting a relentless pace, to the crossroads, beyond it. Sleep had become an impossible dream. They had arrived at the Tower near dawn and he had immediately to set out with the tide for Hampton, leaving Gianni to guard their prize. That was Renard’s order, to keep the relic safe in the strongest fortress in the land. At least he would not be able to return there until the evening tide, might have some chance of snatching a few hours of rest. He wouldn’t even need a bed. Just the back of this chair would do.

As his eyes closed, he smiled, thinking of the Princess’s rejoinder to Renard, her allusion to his bastardy. He felt sorry for her, so young, so beset with enemies. He himself was one, he supposed, and he was sorry for that in many ways. Yet she, as heir, represented a return to the land of the Protestant faith he abhorred, that his father had died trying to oppose. Renard’s ways might be devious but, like the Jesuits, he knew that the ends justified the means.

Such means, such ends. He shivered, tried to rise.
Just one more second of rest
, he thought as his head slipped onto the back of the chair. Just one mo…

The Ambassador knew passages around the palace that Elizabeth, in a hundred childhood explorations, had never discovered. His anger swept him forward at great pace and though she would have preferred a more dignified step, she was determined not to lose this chance. When he finally stopped before a painting of a lady, some unrecognizable ancestor in the Long Gallery, she was right behind him.

‘Wait here,’ he said curtly. ‘Listen and do not think to speak. This is not advice to serve my ends. You shall hear how the Queen thinks of you and discovering you spying here would not serve her temper, your purposes or mine.’

With that, he pressed a panel and a door swung open on a cramped chamber behind the painting. He gestured her inside and when she was reluctantly within, pressed the door upon her. At first, she thought he meant to suffocate her, for there was little air within her confines. But then she saw a chink of light and, moving a cloth aside, was able to place her eye against a hole the size of a farthing. She had a strange feeling that her own eye was within the eye of the painted lady. Shivering, she prayed she would not be kept waiting there long.

She was unused to prayers being answered at all, let alone with such rapidity. Voices carried from beyond the room, footsteps entered it, and to her eye, pressed to the hole, was revealed what looked like a procession. A series of servants were carrying what appeared, at first, to be large wooden boxes. When they set them down on the floor, however, Elizabeth saw that each rocked back and forth after the servant had moved away and she realized they were cradles, each beautifully carved in woods of varied hue. Then she heard a voice she recognized and had long yearned to hear again. The voice of a sister. The voice of a Queen.

‘My Lord, come, help me choose, for I fear choice will be too hard for me alone among these riches.’

Elizabeth tried to peer around to the source of the voice, but Mary was just out of her sight to the left. Someone came into her vision though, she saw the back of the head, an edge of beard.

‘They are each miraculous, each worthy of our saviour himself.’ Renard bent out of her sight, straightened into it again.

‘Do you truly think so? Let me look closer.’

It was nearly two years since she’d heard her sister’s voice, yet Elizabeth could hear the change in it. But it was not preparation enough for the sight of Mary as she appeared, a lady-in-waiting supporting her under each arm. She gasped, saw Renard’s head flick toward her in irritation.

Mary had never been pretty, but her features had been small and delicate, her hair thick, her skin rosy. Now her pale cheeks were puffed, her face blotchy and bloated, her hair thin and unkempt. Her eyes, her best feature, were glazed, a darkness under each matching a greater one within. Though she seemed to be trying to put some light and life into them, to lighten them with a smile, the effect merely served to highlight the strain as she bent, with help, to rock one of the cradles back and forth.

If she is with child, all this could be explained. If Renard is right in his assumption … oh, how horrible
! Elizabeth barely managed to restrain another sigh. She watched as Renard leaned in and whispered something into the Queen’s ear.

Mary said, ‘Affairs of State, Ambassador?’