Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (30 page)

took the most spectacular achievement of your career and threw it on the

dung heap.”

Isabella looked at her curiously.

“What was that? Oh come, madam—you have to tell me now!”

Elizabeth was silent for a moment, staring at the tester of the bed, as

though she half regretted embarking on this tale. Her eyes were pits of

ebony and Isabella for no accountable reason felt suddenly chilled and

uneasy. The door was shut, they two were unquestionably alone in the

room, and yet…and yet…

Markham’s trembling fingers crept up to her throat.

“Why,” said Elizabeth at last, in a voice which seemed to come from

a distance, “did you never hear how Butts was sent to cure my mother

of the sweating sickness—and how my father wrote to her: ‘I would

willingly bear half of what you suffer to cure you?’” Elizabeth laughed,

and the dreadful splintered sound made Isabella shiver. “People openly

prayed that she would die—but she didn’t die, not then. Butts had rather

more skill than most doctors—too much perhaps. God knows, half the

world called it the worst day’s work he ever did.”

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She smacked her greyhound playfully on the rump to make him jump

down off the bed and lay back with candlelight making an amber glory of

her eyes. Isabella released her breath in a slow sigh of relief, freed from the

crazy, fleeting sensation of something lurking in her mistress’s steady gaze.

“Checkmate,” announced Elizabeth calmly and began to collect her

winnings from Isabella’s hanging pocket. “Three games in a row, that’s

fifteen crowns. You play a miserable game of chess, Markham, do you

know that?”

“I was the victim of devastating strategy, madam.”

“Quite so,” agreed her mistress drily. “I seem to recall that every time

I threw up it was your move. Pure coincidence, of course.”

Markham smiled and said, “Shall I set the pieces out again, madam?”

“No, put them away. You’re too tired to play again.”

The girl’s head jerked up indignantly.

“I’m not tired, madam, far from it.”

“Look in your mirror, Markham,” said Elizabeth gently and saw the

tears seep suddenly into her friend’s eyes. “Don’t cry for me, Belle,” she

continued uncomfortably, “I’m not dead yet.”

“No, of course you’re not.” Markham pulled herself up sharply.

“Forgive me. It’s just that all this waiting and uncertainty are driving me

out of my mind. None of us can bear not knowing from one day to the

next if the Queen’s men will come. Oh, madam, we do nothing in the

Great Hall now but listen for hoof beats in the snow.”

For the last two weeks Elizabeth had been aware of the increasing

tension that was slowly crippling the household. With nerves reduced

to flapping strings, her close attendants snapped and quarrelled with each

other when they believed themselves to be out of her hearing; even

Kat, who seldom had a cross word for anyone, scolded the kitchenmaids

without mercy.

Why do they care so much what becomes of me, wondered Elizabeth

idly, it’s not as though I were an easy mistress…

Aloud she said kindly, “Everything seems worse at night, Belle. Put

out the lights now and go to bed.”

She lay in the increasing gloom as her friend moved quietly around

the room, dousing the candles with a brass-capped pole. The familiar little

ritual was strangely comforting with its unspoken promise of continuity

and one by one the candles were snuffed out until at last the room was lit

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only by the red glow of the fire. Outside snow was falling softly, swirling

against the uncovered windows which seemed to be made of black glass.

She burrowed under the sheets, glad of their warmth and security against

the cold hostility of the outer world, ready to fall asleep like a tired child.

Markham turned to the bed and swept a deep curtsey.

“Goodnight, Your Grace.”

The outer door to the ante-room was abruptly flung open and the

sudden tramp of boots, the jostling of spurs that announced the arrival

of armed men, froze Markham to the floor in her graceful gesture of

obeisance. Elizabeth sat up with a jerk and stared into the rosy half-light

as Mrs. Ashley’s voice soared into an indignant wail of protest in the

next room.

“My lords! Her Grace is far too ill to be disturbed at this hour of

the night.”

“Madam,” said a gruff voice in reply, “the Queen’s business will not

wait. Her Grace is to be examined immediately by Her Majesty’s own

physicians—and I’m sure you will agree she cannot possibly be too ill to

see a doctor.”

Markham found her feet and fled to her mistress’s side.

“Oh God, madam—they’ve come to take you! What shall I do?”

“Be calm—you must be, Belle, for my sake. Any panic among my

servants will be taken as a sign of my guilt. Be surprised, be indignant,

but don’t be afraid.” She squeezed the older girl’s hand. “There—that’s

better! Now you can go and let them in.”

Markham turned away mutely, not trusting herself to speak again and

went to light a taper. Elizabeth lay imperiously against the high pillows,

ready to show affronted regality, but her heart was hammering beneath

her ribs, making her breath come in painful jerks, threatening to spoil all

her practised poise. Light-headed with fever and lack of food, she had

a curious sensation of falling slowly into some nameless void—a little

white pawn, with no hope left of being queened, tumbling quietly off

the chessboard of life.

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Chapter 12

T
he snow-bound countryside was filled with a white brooding

silence as Elizabeth’s great-uncle, Lord William Howard, lifted the

Queen’s prisoner into the waiting litter. They had been told to bring

her back “either quick or dead” and everyone knew the examination

by the Queen’s physicians which had pronounced her fit to travel had

been a mere formality. Just as they were about to leave, there was a

sudden anxious skirmishing of servants between the house and the litter;

when Howard returned to poke his great head between the curtains, he

discovered that she had been sick all over the velvet cushions.

“The Queen’s personal litter,” he muttered, with a horror that quite

robbed him of formality. “Oh,
Elizabeth
!”

She looked up at him with a white-lipped smile of urchin innocence.

“Yes,” she agreed quietly, “such a shame, isn’t it?—and velvet never

washes. I expect she’ll have to have the whole thing refurbished.”

He suddenly saw there was absolutely no point in inquiring why she

had not managed to lean over the side in time.

“Get her a bowl,” he said curtly, and turned away before anyone

could surprise a rather disloyal smile on his heavy face.

They set out along the frozen lanes at a snail’s pace, with Howard

stubbornly insisting they could travel no more than seven miles a day. It

was an unheard-of pace, even in this weather, but he was more fond of

his great-niece than he dared to admit, and was deaf to all protest from

the Queen’s officers of deliberate delay.

The news of Lady Jane’s execution eventually reached them at

Legacy

Redburn, and Elizabeth was crushed into silence when she heard it.

Behind the swaying curtains, her mind flew back to Chelsea, to those

jealous days when Jane had first intruded on her gay life with Queen

Katherine and the Admiral.

“
If it please Your Grace, the Lord Admiral says you are to play with me
.”

“
Tell the Lord Admiral I don’t play with little girls.
”

She wept for the cousin to whom she could have shown more kind-

ness, and now, for the first time, she began to weep a little for herself.

Of what use to struggle for delay and plan the best line of defence to the

Council? If Mary could kill Jane, then there was nothing left to hope for.

An icy gale sprang up, swirling snow and sleet under the curtains of

the swaying litter, and she huddled beneath her furs, her long fingers blue

with cold. By the time they reached Highgate, the storm had become a

blizzard and Elizabeth was too ill to care any more what waited at her

journey’s end. She was only dimly aware of Howard carrying her upstairs

to her bed and standing over her while Kat forced aqua vitae between

her rigid lips.

“It’s barbarous,” Kat was sobbing wildly, “truly barbarous, my lord.

She’s the King’s daughter and she’ll be dead before we reach the palace—

is that what they want?”

Howard chafed Elizabeth’s cold hands and swore softly, for he too

had begun to think it more than likely. Cardinal Wolsey had died on his

way to the Tower and therefore spared Henry the unpleasant necessity of

disposing of him. But Howard was damned if he’d hand his great-niece

over to the Queen in her coffin, however convenient it might prove to

the government. He stormed out of the room without a word and five

minutes later the Queen’s doctors scuttled in, took one look at their

patient, and hastily advised complete rest.

And so there was a whole week’s respite at Highgate while Renard

spread the rumour across London that the swelling in her body had an

excellent and obvious cause since she was no doubt with child again—

whose child he neglected to say. Most assumed it was Courtenay’s; one

or two pockets of opinion inclined towards Wyatt.

Elizabeth seethed with rage when she heard the rumours and on

the morning of her departure insisted that her corset should be laced so

tightly she could scarcely breathe. She dressed in white to proclaim her

innocence, flung off the fur covers, and insisted the curtains of the litter

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should be drawn back so that the people who pressed to see the truth of

that rumour would know it for the lie it was.

The London crowds who lined her way were silent and frightened

and the gibbets which swung on every street corner were explanation

enough for the mute eyes which followed her. The whole city was like

a charnel-house.

“The most beautiful sights that can be seen in this town and indeed

all over the country,” de Noailles had written home triumphantly, “are

the gibbets on which hang some of the bravest and most gallant men

that she had in her Kingdom. The prisons are full of the nobility and

some of the most prominent people…” He was confident that prison

would shortly contain the most prominent person of all—but not for

long, not for long, eh? De Noailles was like a dog with two tails on the

day Elizabeth was carried through the city gates, all displaying their fine

array of heads and dismembered bodies like so much bunting. London

stank with decaying flesh and Elizabeth stared ahead with unblinking

eyes, swallowing hard, grimly determined not to disgrace herself before

the watching crowds.

At Whitehall, the Lord Chamberlain hurried her to an obscure suite

of rooms and separated her from most of her household, who were told

to find lodgings in the city. She demanded to see the Queen and was told

that was impossible; she would be denied all visitors and an armed guard

would stand outside her chambers day and night. The rooms, which were

cold and damp, had clearly not been in use for a long time and her few

remaining servants fell to unpacking her belongings and lighting a fire.

They put her to bed and she fell immediately into sleep, to be woken a

little over an hour later by a resounding crash overhead. The noise was

repeated at roughly ten-second intervals and sounded for all the world

like heavy metal pots being flung around in the room above.

“God’s soul, Kat, what the hell is that?”

Kat went to inquire from the guards and came back looking grim.

“Apparently Your Grace is lodged beneath the Countess of Lennox’s

apartments. The room above is a kitchen.”

Elizabeth stared at her, seemed about to flare up into one of her

sudden rages, then suddenly sighed with tired resignation, and lay back

on her pillows.

“Oh well,” she muttered, “I don’t suppose it can go on for long.”

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But it did. Lady Lennox’s household were evidently insatiable eaters

and her servants appeared to work in shifts. In desperation, Elizabeth

sent a request that the activity should cease, and the racket was promptly

doubled. By midnight she lay rigid with tension, bracing herself against

the next crash, and her eyes were misty with unshed tears. She wanted to

scream, but knew that once she had begun she would not be able to stop;

and she would not give her tormentor that much satisfaction.

“How can she be so cruel?” whispered Markham dully from the side

of the bed.

Elizabeth laughed shortly. “You don’t know the Countess of Lennox

if you can ask that.”

“But she’s your
cousin
!”

“Just so.” Elizabeth’s voice was grim. “And if the Council should