Her Last Assassin (43 page)

A woman of my age?

Did he possess no sense of self-preservation? Elizabeth wondered, clasping a hand to her throbbing jaw. Or was Lopez genuinely unaware of the accusations Lord Essex had laid upon him in recent weeks?

Certainly Lopez would never get her tooth. Or not without the bitterest of struggles.

At that moment, the jolting agony of her tooth reasserted itself, radiating throughout her head and down her spine. It felt as though a pike had been thrust through her jaw. Her pity for the doctor evaporated in a painful rush. ‘God’s blood!’

Elizabeth glared round the bed hangings at young Sir Robert Cecil in a meaningful way.

Lopez shook the phial, then turned towards the bed, his smile almost sinister. ‘Three drops of this cordial in your wine, Your Majesty, and you will soon feel sleepy. Then the troublesome tooth can be extracted.’

‘Cecil?’ she demanded shrilly.

Her councillor took Lopez by the arm and led him away. ‘Sir, you had better come away with me. Her Majesty does not wish you to attend her any further today.’

‘But the tooth—’

‘I believe Lord Burghley and Lord Essex have some questions for you.’ Cecil summoned the guards from the door to the Privy Chamber. ‘One of you men, carry the doctor’s chest of medicaments. That will need to be examined too.’

Her other physicians gathered around the bed to probe and question her, some wearing self-righteous smiles at Lopez’s removal.

Too worn down by pain to resist, Elizabeth eventually allowed one of them to drug her, though she would not agree to a removal of the rotten tooth. She had few teeth left and needed them. Whenever she was persuaded to have one removed, she suffered for months after-wards, unable to chew properly and constantly in pain. At least while the bad tooth remained in place, the pain might be acute but it would come and go, allowing her whole weeks without discomfort.

Sleep would be a blessing, she considered, easing her body into it with reluctance. Their faces gradually dimmed, their voices draining away into the darkness.

Torchlight woke her in the late evening. Elizabeth stared blearily about the royal chamber, her view hampered by half-drawn green hangings fringed with gold.

What dreary bed curtains, she thought, studying them through half-closed eyes. I must get someone to replace them. But she knew at once that it would never happen. Or not in her lifetime.

Whitehall was an old palace, and this was an old bed, to suit its old occupant. Besides, the coffers would not take another palatial renovation. Not while this war with Spain dragged on and on. If only she had kept her cousin Mary alive. That bodged beheading was what had brought on this business. Mary’s head rolling.

She started. ‘Who’s there?’

A man stepped into view. Torchlight behind him. Handsome, his cloak furred, a jewelled sword by his side. Her heart sang with relief and pleasure.

‘Ah, Robin,’ she said in relief, and held out her hands to him. ‘Come to visit me at last? Those dogs wanted to butcher me, to tear out this rotten tooth. But I stood up to them. What do physicians know? Only what will pay their fee or keep them from the hangman.’

He came to the bedside and took her hands, looking down at her strangely.

‘What is it, my dearest Robert? You may speak your mind, we are alone here.’

‘Who am I?’ he whispered.

She smiled, playing along. ‘Leicester,’ she said confidently, then saw the frown in his eyes and reconsidered. Stammering, she managed, ‘My lord Essex. I thought …’

Not Robert Dudley. Robert Devereux, his stepson. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Her own darling Robin had been dead these past five years.

‘I have been asleep for hours,’ she said hurriedly. ‘They gave me a sleeping draught. For my toothache, you know. What … What news do you bring, my lord?’

She dropped his hands and sat up, tidying her own bedclothes like a servant. Where was Helena? Who was meant to be watching her this evening?

She babbled on, nodding, responding to his news, hoping to distract Essex from her error. She did not want him to think his queen in her dotage. A trick of the light, that was all it had been. The wall torch behind his head, throwing him into relief. Her sleepiness. A natural mistake, in fact.

‘Cecil had the doctor taken away,’ she commented, snatching at a true memory. ‘Has he been questioned again? I regret my temper now. If Master Lopez is innocent, and I do still believe him to be …’ Her voice died away at his expression. ‘What is it? You have spoken with Cecil? Discovered something?’

Essex shook his head, a sombre look in his face. ‘We have questioned your doctor at length. Lopez continues to deny his guilt.’

‘Then what troubles you?’

‘Senhor Tinoco was arrested yesterday evening, Your Majesty, on his arrival at Dover. He was questioned and his possessions searched. It is as we feared. In the false bottom of one of Tinoco’s travelling chests we found fifty thousand crowns, and a letter in Spanish code which we have not yet been able to decipher.’

Fifty thousand crowns. The bribe King Philip was supposed to be sending to Lopez in return for her death.

‘This proves nothing,’ she said uneasily. ‘Except Tinoco’s guilt. We have no evidence that Lopez would have taken the bribe.’

‘Your Majesty!’

‘Lopez has always been a good servant to me.’

‘And I have not?’

‘Your loyalty is not in question here, Robbie.’

‘Yet you doubt me. You toss aside my hard-won proof that Lopez wishes and intends your death, as though you have no faith in me. Or more in him, perhaps. A foreigner in the pay of our enemy, and you rate his word above mine. Would you have doubted Leicester’s word?’ His voice grew bitter. ‘Shall I go out of the room and come back in the guise of my stepfather, so I may be believed when I say Senhor Lopez means you great harm?’

She did not know where to look. ‘Robbie, that is hardly fair. I was drowsy, I was still half asleep.’

‘Lopez should be taken to the Tower and made to confess his guilt on the rack. Topcliffe will soon have the truth out of him. Will you ratify that decision or must we take it without you?’

Elizabeth stared up at him, shocked by such an outlandish suggestion. Was this a
coup d’état
?

‘Torture one of my servants without my permission? You forget yourself, my lord Essex.’

‘Better to forget myself than be forgotten by a woman twice my age, who sleeps the day away in a drugged state while those who plot her death wander the country freely.’

She considered whether to call her guards and have him thrown into the Tower.

But he had not finished.

‘Elizabeth,’ he continued, ignoring her anger at this familiar address, ‘I beg you to see sense. Lord Burghley told me of your conversation with him about Mistress Morgan. You continue to keep a faithful servant locked up in the Tower, a lady who is with child and in failing health, for no greater crime than that she was foolish enough to love without your permission. Yet you will not allow us to arrest your doctor, a traitor who is clearly in league with the Spanish and even now may be plotting your death.’

Her mouth thinned. Assault on every side. So be it. She knit her fingers tight together and glared at him.

‘Lucy Morgan has trespassed against our authority.’

‘The man who led us to Tinoco and the fifty thousand crowns is Master Goodluck, who will marry Lucy Morgan if he can obtain your permission.’

‘You ask too much!’

‘The Queen whom I revered as a youth, the beautiful Gloriana, she would not have needed this debate. She would have committed Lopez to the Tower in a heartbeat, and rewarded her spymaster and his men for saving her life from another Spanish plot.’

Whom I revered as a youth
. But now despised, it would seem.
The beautiful Gloriana.
That stung.

No, he was not Leicester. His stepfather would have come about this business an entirely different way. The other Robert would have flattered and cajoled her. He would have been courteous, then passionate, and left her smiling in the end, believing it was her own idea. He would not have bludgeoned her with insults, then made these paltry demands for recognition of his skill.

But Robert Dudley was long gone. He was a bag of bones and dust under a memorial. This handsome young cockerel, and his arrogant fellows, were all she had left to protect her throne.

Her head throbbed as she regarded him through narrowed eyes. She needed to give a little on this matter, to retain the young earl as an ally. Things were still too fragile for the English court to be split by an argument. And Essex would make a dangerous enemy.

Her knitted fingers flexed, then wound together again, ravelling up her emotions until they were a hard little ball pressed between her palms. This she clasped to her chest, hating herself for her weakness.

‘Do it then,’ Elizabeth conceded bitterly. ‘Throw Lopez to your interrogators, release Lucy Morgan from the Tower, even wed her to your lascivious spy if you must. I am prepared to grant permission for all this. But I am not convinced of the doctor’s guilt and shall never sign a death warrant for Master Lopez without proper evidence that he has conspired against me.
That
I can promise you.’

Five

W
ILL WOKE IN
a chilly room to the familiar sound of small clattering hooves accompanied by incessant, bell-tongued bleating.

For a moment he lay in a bemused stupor, wondering why on earth he could hear sheep below his window. Then his mind groped sleepily towards the explanation: he was back in Stratford, and what he could hear were the good farmers of Warwickshire driving their sheep to market along the street outside. Then the memories returned that he had been trying to suppress: arriving in Stratford with Anne late at night, his father throwing open the door to stare at his bruised and battered face. Then the faltering explanation Will had given his mother, that he had been ‘set upon by vagabonds’, and the look on their faces.

His parents had not believed him. They knew what he was and what he had done.

From Anne’s looks and sparing comments on the journey back from London, it was clear that rumours of his wild behaviour had reached even the little market town of Stratford-upon-Avon.

Nonetheless his parents had welcomed him back home and drawn him inside to the fire, black sheep that he was.

‘I did not wish Anne to visit you in London,’ his father had said quietly, taking him aside before bedtime. ‘But your wife would not be gainsaid, and your cousin Richard swore he would take good care of her on the journey. Besides, I was hopeful she would be able to persuade you to return with her. It has been too long since you last visited, Will, and the children have missed you. Particularly the boy.’ He hesitated a moment before adding, ‘Young Hamnet needs his father.’

Was John Shakespeare unsure of himself? It would be the first time. But it was a hard thing for a father to say to his son about his own offspring, Will supposed.

As the two men had stood silently beside the fire, the sound of women’s voices had come from above, one singing a lullaby, the other whispering reassurances as she tucked a child into bed. Feet had creaked across the floorboards by the light of a candle, its thin glow reaching down through gaps into the room below.

Now, beside him in bed, Anne stretched and yawned. Briefly he felt her stockinged foot touch his leg, then flinch away.

They were awkward together, like newly-weds who were still not sure what would please or offend. He thought of how she had edged backwards into their bed last night, her thick nightrail and stockings necessary against the bitter cold of an icy night in Warwickshire, then had blown out the candle without speaking or looking at him.

The message had been clear: don’t touch me.

He had lain next to her unmoving body the night before, and felt on the brink of something new in their marriage. Some astonishing revelation about Anne’s character. His brain had still been wearily untangling the problem when he fell asleep, leaving it unsolved. Perhaps it would never be solved. His wife had changed and matured over the years he had been away from Stratford, but he had only glimpsed that change in snatches, during those fleeting days and weeks when he had felt able to return home and be with her.

Now the changes were complete, it seemed. Anne was no longer the woman he had married. She was a stranger to him. And his position as her husband was somewhat tarnished by these whispers of orgies in London. Neither of them had come innocently to bed last night.

Something new could be forged between them though, if both wished for it hard enough. There was always a chance they could start afresh, strangers to the other, lying in the same bed and with nothing to lose now that the early love between them had gone.

‘Are you awake?’ Anne whispered, and he dismissed the temptation to lie.

‘Yes.’

Boldly, her hand found his hip. Then his groin. So she was not indifferent to him, then. Despite the pain of his bruising, he felt desire flicker and return.

‘Will …’

He turned at the sound of his name, and took his wife in his arms. He kissed her throat, her pale breasts, but never her mouth. The intimacy of her lips against his would have been too much. His heart could not love her again, even if his body could.