Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (29 page)

Against her shoulder, Elizabeth laughed weakly.

“Yes,” she said slowly, “that’s it. Put me to bed, Kat, and say I am too

ill to travel.” Lifting her head she looked at the shifting shadows on the

stone wall and shivered convulsively. “It will gain me a little time—and

time is all I have left to hope for.”

They went out of the room together and slowly up the stairs with the

three dogs tumbling gaily around their heels.

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t t t

“Too ill to travel!” Renard tossed Elizabeth’s letter aside with a gesture of

contempt. “Madam, this is a card she has played too often!”

“This time it would appear she plays it with some justification,”

muttered the Queen, refusing to meet his gaze. “They are saying here in

London that she has been poisoned, that she is so sick and swollen that

her life is despaired of.”

The corners of Renard’s mouth began to curl up in a rather cruel

little smile.

“Sick and swol en, heh?” he echoed softly. “Then depend upon it,

madam, Wyatt’s contact with her has gone considerably further than a letter.”

Mary stiffened and a slow purplish flush mounted in her cheeks.

“I know you to be my friend,” she said uncomfortably, “but was that

really necessary?”

“Very necessary.” Renard twisted the end of his moustache with quiet

enjoyment. “I would ask Your Majesty to remember that Wyatt’s father

was the Concubine’s lover.”

“That was never proved.” The memory twisted deep in Mary like a

sword thrust in an old wound. “Wyatt was a gentleman and my father

was satisfied with his personal integrity.”

“
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind
,” quoted Renard slyly in

his impeccable English and was rewarded by seeing the Queen flinch as

though from a physical blow. “Are you satisfied now with the integrity

of Wyatt’s son and Boleyn’s daughter?”

“You know I am not.”

“Then I humbly and most desperately beg Your Majesty to act. Bring

the Lady Elizabeth to London by force and commit her to the Tower

for examination.” He waved the letter in his hand, in what was almost

a threatening gesture betokening his angry despair. “You have every

justification. A copy of this letter of hers was found in de Noailles’ mail

to the French King. I tell you plainly, madam, as I have told you before,

she is working with France.”

“That might be difficult to prove. And of her involvement with Wyatt

we still have no evidence that will stand up in court.”

“Under your brother’s laws we would have circumstantial evidence

sufficient to hang the lady three times over.”

Mary turned away.

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“But as you are so fond of saying, my friend—these are not my brother’s

days. And I have never regretted the repealing of those tyrannical acts.”

I have!
thought Renard bitterly. Aloud he said smoothly, “May you

never have cause to regret it, madam!” and tried a new line. “She has set

an armed guard around Ashridge—do the implications of that act not

strike you as sinister?”

The Queen shrugged thin shoulders. “With Suffolk encamped so

near, it is quite conceivable that Elizabeth fears attack.”

Renard choked back a curse and took the Queen’s hands in his

urgent grasp.

“The only thing Madam Elizabeth fears,” he said evenly, “is the failure

of this attack on you. For the love of God and His mother, bring her to

London now, before it is too late!”

t t t

At the first breath of danger, Courtenay bleated all he knew to the Queen’s

chief minister, Bishop Gardiner, who had been both friend and father-figure

to him during the long years of their mutual imprisonment. The news

of his betrayal reached Kent four days later, forcing Wyatt to act alone,

seven weeks before their original schedule. The church bells rang the alarm,

rousing all who feared the heel of Spain and the wrath of the Inquisition.

Wyatt raised his standard in Rochester, seizing vital arms and ammunition

from the Queen’s own ships, and began the march to Greenwich.

In London, those who had dismissed the Queen scornfully as a tear-

sodden old maid, Renard included, watched the metamorphosis with

amazement as once again the natural warrior kicked aside the vacillating

middle-aged woman and Mary Tudor rose in defence of her crown. She

ignored the pleas of her councillors to take refuge in the Tower or better

still flee to Windsor Castle, ordered the arming of her capital city, and

rode out to the Guildhall to appeal to the goodwill of the people, to

assure them of her love and devotion and to ask theirs in return.

They listened, and they gave it. At the end of the most stirring speech

she would ever make, the loyalty of London spoke back in a sudden

deafening roar.

“God save Queen Mary! God save the Queen!” And suddenly, inex-

plicably, unbelievably, the cry of support for he who was now her dearest

hope, “God save the Prince of Spain!”

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Susan Kay

She rode through the cheering, waving crowds to take her barge

to Westminster, and then, in the sudden flush of triumph, ordered her

oarsmen to row her as near as possible to London Bridge.

Across the Thames, an army of two thousand rebels sprawled along the

Southwark banks, their banners fluttering defiantly in the wind.

Mary stood beneath the canopy and smiled the challenge of a

Tudor prince.

t t t

Silence hung over the Thames, silence deep and penetrating, and Wyatt

stood in his camp, scorning the £100 price on his head by wearing a

velvet cap boldly stamped in large letters with his name. Having sworn

he came “only to resist the coming in of the Spanish King” he was proud

of the orderliness of his men who had obeyed his stern commands. There

would be no rape and pillage on this campaign! But for three days now

he had puzzled over the silence of that barricaded city which he had been

led to believe would welcome him with open arms. Five hundred of the

Queen’s guard had deserted to him at Strood, but since then, nothing.

Not a single shot had yet been fired as each side waited for the other to

make the first move.

Integrity, which had once saved the father, now betrayed the son.

By the time Wyatt accepted the need for an assault upon the city, the

fatal delay had already lost him the offensive. His nightmare march led

him through rain and ice and confusion to a muddled furore at Charing

Cross. And there, as his followers were mown down by cannon fire, he

came face to face with the traitor, Edward Courtenay, fighting now on

the Queen’s side. Courtenay panicked at the sight of him and fled to

the Queen at Whitehall crying that all was lost. And for a moment his

panic threatened to sweep the whole palace. Men and women ran like

frightened rabbits until Mary’s voice rang out above the pandemonium

like the lash of a whip; she swore to take up arms herself before she would

“yield one iota to such a traitor as Wyatt…God will not deceive me.”

The panic died; the palace held firm; God had not deceived her—not yet!

Wyatt struggled to Ludgate only to find the city gates locked against

him, and it was there in the rain, staring at the impenetrable thickness

of wood, that he suddenly realised he was beaten. He sat on a bench

at the Belle Sauvage inn and watched his men slip away down the

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side streets. The day had gone against him and further resistance would

be a senseless bloodbath. He surrendered his bedraggled person to Sir

Maurice Berkley and rode through a bristling, insulting mob to the

Tower, where the Lord Lieutenant greeted him contemptuously.

“If it were not for the law which will pass just sentence on you, I

would dagger you myself, sir.”

Wyatt drew his hand across his face, wiping away blood, mud, and

tears. “It is no matter now,” he said sadly, and stepped inside.

t t t

Renard said grimly, “Madam, the time has come for you to cut out the

cankers of this realm. They must all die—all of them.”

Mary hunched a little further down in her chair; her face in the

candlelight was an old woman’s.

“Not Jane,” she muttered dimly, “not Jane.”

“Show mercy again and the heretics will call it weakness. Madam—do

you want bloodshed for the rest of your reign? What are three lives when

the safety of your realm and the preservation of your faith are at stake?”

Three lives. Jane, Guildford—and Elizabeth. She had heard the same

argument from countless sources:
What were three lives…?

The candles burnt low and had to be renewed; she agreed at last to

sign the warrants for Jane and Guildford.

“And Elizabeth?” Renard prompted coldly.

She shielded her face with her hands.

“I will leave my husband to deal with her.”

“
Husband
?” he echoed blankly.

She looked up at him wildly and felt suddenly cold with apprehension.

Renard spread his beautiful hands in a helpless gesture of frustration.

“Madam, is it possible that the precious person of Prince Philip could

set foot on English soil while Elizabeth still lives?”

“But he would have every conceivable protection!”

Renard shrugged and made a slight bow.

“No protection would be adequate in the Emperor’s eyes, madam. I

fear our business is concluded and by your leave I shall retire.”

He was not more than halfway across the room when she called him

back and promised to despatch doctors, her personal litter, and an armed

guard to Ashridge.

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Susan Kay

He came back, concealing a wry smile, and reflected with unkind

amusement that Philip was in for a most unpleasant surprise.

t t t

The state bedroom at Ashridge was dominated by an enormous carved

bed, and Elizabeth lay in its cavernous depths, playing chess in the yellow

candlelight. She made two shrewd moves in succession, then lunged

suddenly across the mattress and was violently sick into the big silver

bowl at her side.

“Play on,” she commanded cheerfully in the panting pause before the

retching convulsed her again, but Isabella Markham had risen in alarm.

“For God’s sake, madam, let me fetch Mrs. Ashley.”

“Don’t be silly, Markham, there’s nothing she can do for me.”

Elizabeth leaned back on her pillows, white with exhaustion, and pressed

a handkerchief to her lips. “There are some sweets in that cabinet over

there—fetch me one of those instead.”

“You’ll be sick again.”

“So?” Elizabeth shrugged carelessly. “We’re not short of bowls, are we?”

Markham sighed and went across the room to pull out a box of sugared

violets and marchpane. Over her shoulder she said severely, “All your

teeth will go black one day.”

“Only if I live to be old,” remarked the invalid smugly, “and under the

present circumstances, that prospect hardly seems likely to concern me.”

Isabella bit her lip and was aware of a sudden tightness in her throat. It

was a moment before she had schooled her face sufficiently to return to

the bed in a brisk and uncompromising manner.

“Medicine first,” she said and put a tiny goblet firmly into

Elizabeth’s hand.

“Be kind to me, Belle,” wheedled the younger girl. “You know how

I hate physic. I’ll take it later before I go to sleep.”

“No, you won’t,” said Isabella bluntly, “you’ll throw it in the chamber

pot—the doctor warned me not to trust you.”

“Oh, did he?—the impertinent old fool! You could balance the sum

total of his medical knowledge on the head of a pin.”

“He may not know much about medicine, madam, but he certainly

knows a good deal about
you
!”

Elizabeth shrugged her thin shoulders against the pillows.

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“Well, what if I am a poor patient? My father was too. It’s part of my

royal inheritance.”

“Madam, your
royal
brother bore all manner of unpleasant treatments

in his last illness with saintly patience.”

“Much good it did him!” muttered Elizabeth, pushing the goblet to

the back of the bedside table. “And for your information, Markham,

when that little painted saint was four years old he once kicked old

Doctor Butts and yelled: ‘Go away, fool!’”

Markham looked up in astonishment, with a knight suspended in

her hand.

“Why, madam, the late King never put a foot amiss in all his life!

You’re making it up.”

“I’m not! And I’ll tell you something more—Butts fell on his knees

with joy and swore that if he tarried till the child called him knave he

would say
Nunc Dimittis.
It’s the first rule they teach at the College of

Physicians—as long as the patient can still kick you there’s every chance

you’ll be paid for your services.”

“You’re a dreadful cynic, madam.”

“So I am and so was Butts in the end. So would you be if someone