Her Last Assassin (22 page)

Lucy did not know the answer to that, so said nothing. But she could see that Will did not believe her. Perhaps he feared she was lying to him, blaming her long absence on his patron in order to ruin his chances of advancement. That her lover could be angry with her for telling the truth was hard enough to bear, but that he no longer trusted her, nor believed her story about the young earl, was like a knife thrust deep into her heart, killing her where she stood.

‘All I can think is that you must be jealous,’ he muttered, staring at her now as though he did not recognize her. ‘When I was a humble player and you were a great court lady, our secret love amused you. You could come to my rough bed for the kind of love you would not find at court. But now I am grown to be a man of some consequence, and Queen Elizabeth herself singles me out for praise, you are envious and wish to see me cast down again.’

‘No!’ she cried, and reached out to him, laying a hand on his chest. ‘I love you, Will. Nothing has changed in that respect. How can you think such a terrible thing of me?’

‘What else am I to think, Lucy?’ Will demanded, and she saw too late that he had grown suddenly furious, his temper whipped up like a summer’s storm. ‘You tell me what I cannot believe possible, that my lord and patron supports my endeavours with one hand and slaps my courtly mistress with the other. You must be lying, your tale makes little sense otherwise.’

He finished in a rush, ‘If you no longer want me, say so and have done with it.’

If only it were that simple, Lucy thought wearily. She longed to have her clever William back, the lover who wooed her with such charm and wit. But there was no talking to him in this mood.

She tried to turn away but he seized her. There was pain in his voice as well as contempt. ‘What, sweet Luce, are you afraid to end our love cleanly? I am no villain. I shall not strike you for honesty, only for lies.’

Lucy dragged herself free of his grasp, breathing hard. ‘Then you are a great fool, William Shakespeare, if you cannot tell truth from lies when it is your own heart that is involved.’

She let her own temper rise to match his, and did nothing to contain it. Why should she hold back? Shakespeare was more of a deceiver and dissembler than she had ever been, and she would not stand to hear him slight her character so unjustly.

‘You want honesty?’ she demanded. ‘I am glad Lord Southampton has forbidden us to meet, for it saves me from making such a decision myself. Yes, it is over between us. Now go, and do not write to me again, for I shall merely burn your letters unopened. I cannot wish you ill, Master Shakespeare, for that would be to work against my own heart. But I trust that God will go with you, and watch over you, and perhaps one day bring you back to your good senses.’

She stood in silence as Will bowed and left her alone in the small privy garden, his face averted, no doubt still believing her fickle and cruel. When he had gone, she sank down on to the icy grass, not caring that her black velvet gown would be ruined, and covered her face with her hands. But her eyes were dry and her hands did not tremble.

I will not weep
, she told herself fiercely.
I will not!

No, not for a man who could court her for years and still think her capable of such evil. William Shakespeare was not worthy of her tears. Nor should she weep when the fault was not hers, but his alone. And yet her heart was broken and might never be mended again.

‘Lucy?’

She looked up, hurriedly rising as she saw the dark shape of a man blocking the arched gateway to the privy garden. Who was it? Shakespeare back again? No, the man was too large and broad. Had one of his patron’s men secretly followed her from the hall, perhaps, and seen her speaking to Will? Had she been discovered in her disobedience to the Earl of Southampton?

‘Who is there?’ she whispered, suddenly afraid.

The man came slowly forward across the frosty grass, wearing the livery of the Queen’s household. Was she to be summoned to the Queen’s presence, perhaps? Then the faint moonshine fell on his face, illuminating a pair of familiar dark eyes and a beard, and her heart jerked in shocked amazement.

It was Master Goodluck.

Eight

‘Y
OU WISH MY
ladies to be dismissed?’

‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ young Cecil agreed, waiting for her permission to rise, where Essex would not even have knelt in the first place.

‘Oh, very well,’ Elizabeth said wearily, and gestured her ladies to withdraw.

Sleepily the women curtseyed and departed the Privy Chamber, closing the door behind them. Elizabeth drew her furred mantle about herself, for the month was December and the vast log fire in the hearth could never quite shake off the cold at Nonsuch, for all that her father’s grand palace was impressive to look upon.

For a moment she gazed upon Sir Robert Cecil, youngest son of Lord Burghley and his successor in terms of political ability. She felt no inclination to speak to the young man, who looked shorter and more deformed than ever on his knees. However distressing his looks though, there was no doubting either his loyalty or his wits. She did not know how the Privy Council would have managed if he had not tacitly taken on most of his elderly father’s duties as secretary of state.

‘Very well, you may get up now,’ she told Cecil impatiently. ‘How is your father?’

The young man rose to his feet with apparent difficulty. His face was sombre. ‘Still in much pain, Your Majesty, and likely to be confined to his bed until the end of the month at least. My father sends his deepest apologies and begs to be excused a short while longer from his duties at court.’

‘I suppose we can make do without Lord Burghley this Christmastide,’ she agreed reluctantly, then caught a flash of something in Cecil’s face. Irritation? Disapproval?

Her temper flared, and her voice rose. ‘No doubt you think me cruel, sir, to keep your father in service when he has reached his allotted three score years and ten. But these are difficult times, and there is no man yet to replace him. Except you, perhaps. Though you will need to stop butting heads with my other courtiers if you wish to succeed.’

So Lord Burghley was suffering with gout again. While Elizabeth felt every sympathy over his unpleasant ailment, she cursed her old councillor for being absent from her side when everything was still topsy-turvy in the world. The Earl of Essex had been at loggerheads with Sir Robert Cecil ever since his ignominious failure and return from France, and now she had heard that Bess Throckmorton, who had begged leave to return to her home at Yuletide, had done so in order to be delivered of a son, having been secretly married to Sir Walter Raleigh for some time.

Cecil said nothing in return to this pointed remark, but merely waited with his gaze lowered diplomatically to the floor, his figure small and hunched over, oddly reminiscent of a bat in his long-sleeved black coat.

She did not sit for this interview, preferring to stand, for she was beginning to find it hard to get up again after sitting for too lengthy a time. But she did signal her newest privy councillor to pour her a glass of wine, the heat of the fire having made her head hurt. She took a few sips, wetting her dry mouth, then nodded him to speak.

‘Well, what have you discovered?’

Robert Cecil drew a paper from his pouch and unfolded it. Quietly, he read aloud, ‘His lordship the Earl of Essex has been in secret meetings with Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, also the Bacon brothers, Francis and Anthony, and sundry other noblemen and gentry of your court. There has been some talk of rebellion against Your Majesty, but no plans made as yet.’

Her lip curled. ‘This is the same report you gave last time. Have you picked up the wrong paper, sir?’

Robert Cecil hesitated. His dark eyes flashed to hers, disturbingly like his father’s steady gaze, then back to the paper in his hand. ‘Southampton is to supply his lordship with followers, and of the Bacons, Anthony is to steer the earl in matters of intelligence.’

‘Intelligence?’

‘Now that the Earl of Essex has taken over Walsingham’s work, he is in need of someone more …’ Robert Cecil paused, and she read contempt in his suave expression. ‘More gifted in the ways of codes and ciphers, shall we say? Bacon provides that expertise, in exchange, one must assume, for a promise of power to come.’

Elizabeth’s eyes widened on his face. ‘In the event of my death, you mean?’

‘No, no.’ The young Cecil looked shocked. ‘I am sure his lordship does not plan so boldly, Your Majesty. I would suggest the earl merely hopes to share power with you in the years to come, presumably by making himself so useful to Your Majesty that you bring him closer to the ways of governance.’

‘You mean, appoint Essex to the Privy Council?’

The young man’s expression was grave. ‘I do indeed. Your Majesty is most percipient.’

‘I see.’ She ignored his flattery. ‘Well, I have not yet admitted him to the council, but that day may come. You may not have noticed this, Sir Robert, but I have few men of merit about me and must govern England with whatever tools I have to hand, however rusty or unfit for purpose. Now what other accusations do you have in that document? Anything to give me genuine cause for fear? To have the earl arrested for treason, perhaps?’

Robert Cecil looked almost disappointed as he shook his head. ‘No, Your Majesty. That is all the information I have been able to gather.’

‘Then why come to me in this dramatic way? I thought at least you had uncovered some plot against my throne, begging an audience so late at night.’

‘With any other courtier, Your Majesty, such secret dealings and assemblies would be considered treasonous, and their perpetrators committed to the Tower.’ He frowned, putting away the letter. ‘Forgive my impertinence, Your Majesty, but after the Earl of Essex returned from Rouen, he argued violently with you in front of the court when reprimanded on his failure there. I even thought at one point that he would draw steel against you. Yet you took no action against him that day, and the matter was never mentioned again. Nor is that the only time Essex has abused you in public. Indeed, I find his many discourtesies towards Your Majesty vile and dishonourable.’ He hesitated, seeming to catch her irritation, and bowed his head. ‘But of course you must act as you see fit.’

‘Thank you, Cecil,’ she commented drily.

She did not dismiss him immediately, but thought for a moment. While the rest was known to her already, it was true that this news about Anthony Bacon was interesting. Anthony was a clever young man of dubious nature, or so rumour had it, as was his brother Francis. Wild tales had been told of orgies and indiscretions beyond those ordinarily committed by young men of high birth. She had never pried too closely into such rumours, for they filled her with distaste, but if the Bacons and their circle managed to draw her handsome young Essex into such iniquities …

Elizabeth shuddered. ‘Anything more?’

Robert Cecil hesitated. Seeing her gaze on his face, he looked down at his papers again and seemed to squirm, as though confronted with a difficult duty. Then he murmured, ‘I have been asked to enquire again about the … erm … the question of your succession, Your Majesty.’

She stiffened. The impertinence of these young men. They couldn’t wait for her to be carried out of the door and a new prince installed in her place. Power-mongering dogs.

‘Asked by whom?’

‘The …’ Cecil did not like his duty. He cleared his throat. Shuffled his papers needlessly. Glanced sombrely at the small portrait of his father, Lord Burghley, which hung by the door. ‘The other members of the Privy Council, Your Majesty.’

‘Drew the short straw, did you?’

He waited. A small dog, a hunchbacked terrier, but a tenacious one. ‘Have you had an opportunity to consider the question yet, Your Majesty?’

‘I have considered it, yes. And I think it a great impertinence on the part of my own privy councillors to be asking me to decide who should warm my throne once I am dead.’

‘If you had married, Your Majesty, and brought forth issue …’ He took a precarious step forward into the most dangerous territory of all. Then saw her face and hastily retreated. ‘But in the absence of an heir, the stability of the country is at risk. With no heir named, if by some terrible mischance or illness Your Majesty should suddenly …’

‘Die?’

Robert Cecil cleared his throat again. Studiously avoided her eyes. ‘England would be left in turmoil. The obvious choice must be King James of Scotland, with whom you share a common blood at least. But he must be
named
, and by you, the reigning monarch, while you still live. It is the protocol.’

‘Better a Scot than a Catholic prince, is that the enlightened thinking of the Privy Council?’

He bowed, a slight flush in his cheeks. ‘Forgive me, Your Majesty. To put these questions to you is not a duty I relish.’

‘Enough! I am not dead yet, nor have I any idea to be in the next few years.’

She clapped her hands loudly, exercising her anger, and the sound echoed about the Privy Chamber, startling the young man so that he dropped some of his papers and had to bend to retrieve them.