The Queen's Captive (55 page)

Honor and Richard turned. The Spanish galleon was sliding out of the fog. Honor strained to make it out. It looked like there were people on the decks, but the ragged shreds of fog blurred everything.

“Is that Isabel?” Richard said, excited. “There, to port of the mainmast. Look.”

Honor’s heart leapt. A young woman, waving, with a little boy at her side. But, no, it was not Isabel.

“That’s not her. Maybe they’re below deck?”

“Longboats towing them,” Richard said. “No wind.”

“How long till they reach us?”

“Half an hour at least. Hours more if the customs officials decide to meddle.”

Honor’s spirits plunged. “And we must go. You to Sir William, I to the Queen.”

They shared a look of frustration. The summons to Whitehall must immediately be obeyed.

“I’ll stay,” Frances said. “I’ll greet them. And take them back to the house.”

They turned to her. She looked so anxious, so eager to please. Pregnancy had softened her features somewhat, even her temperament. Honor was moved. “Thank you, Frances. That is kind. Get them settled, if you would. Tell them we’ll be back for the feast.”

“I will.” Frances laid her hand on her stomach and said with a hesitant smile, “It will be lovely to have a child in the house.”

Richard offered her a stiff bow of the head. But a little less stiff than usual, it seemed to Honor. “Madam,” he said to Frances. It was his thanks.

Honor took a last loving, aching look at the ship that held Isabel and little Nicolas and Carlos. Then Richard took her elbow and they turned and made their way through the crowd and left the quay.

The wind was fair on the
Elizabeth
’s quarter and the sea shimmered with blue and white and gold as Adam took over from the weary helmsman at the wheel.

“Get some rest, Griffiths.” The gale off Dover had kept them all on their toes. Now, they could relax.

“Aye, sir.” Griffiths tugged his cap and lumbered off, glad to be relieved.

Adam watched an osprey wheeling above the sails, her head gleaming white in contrast to her rich brown body. Her heading was the same as his. He didn’t know about the bird’s planned landfall, but the
Elizabeth
would fetch Portsmouth tomorrow morning. He was eager to begin his mission. Meet with Sir Benjamin Gonson, treasurer of the Admiralty, and William Winter, master of naval ordnance. Elizabeth was rebuilding her navy.

“I don’t know those men,” she had told him when she had given him her orders. “I do know you.”

What a day that had been. Her great hall at Hatfield crowded with lords and ambassadors and courtiers, and she, queen for just three days, looking radiant and confident and eager. She had knighted Thomas Parry. Then knighted him.

“Rise, Sir Adam.” Her dark eyes had sparkled as she said it, and Adam knew he was not imagining that a tear intensified the sparkle even as she smiled. She handed him a captain’s whistle made of gold, and under the watch of all those people she said quietly, “The original shall stay with me, for safekeeping.”

His heart was so full he’d been glad that protocol required his silence, for he would not have been able to form a single, rational sentence. It was the second best day of his life.

Now, his mission was to assist Gonson in evaluating the Queen’s naval assets and liabilities. Inventory each ship’s tonnage, number of men, state of readiness, condition of repair, type and quality of artillery and other munitions in the Queen’s storehouses, and then calculate what would be required, at what cost, to make Her Majesty’s navy into a vigorous fighting force. Adam was under no illusions. England at sea was weak. The fleet was just thirty-four ships. Of those, only eleven of the largest ships, all upward of two hundred tons, plus ten barks and pinnaces and one brigantine, were in satisfactory condition. The other twelve, including two galleys, were not worth repair. Or so he’d been told. He would see for himself. He had told Elizabeth that she could rely on private ships, too, if necessary. He estimated that forty-five merchant ships, including the
Elizabeth,
could be refitted and fashioned for war.

Because Elizabeth was vulnerable. Adam looked southeastward across his port gunwhale. There lay Spain. With its mighty forces on land and sea, its endless wealth from the New World, and a grip on the hearts of Catholic Englishmen, Spain could so easily invade England. At his stern, to the north, lay Scotland, a virtual province of France, whose troops were stationed on England’s border, just waiting to march south and claim England as well.

England. When he’d left Antwerp five years ago, he had thought he was coming home. Home was where family was. He would soon have a child, and that filled him with a calm kind of joy. But Frances was not his home. And never would be.

He took a deep breath of the salt-tanged air. The
Elizabeth
felt like home. He looked ahead. Far across the ocean lay the New World. Something in him longed to see it. The
Elizabeth
could take him there, take him anywhere. But not now. Now, he had a child to raise, a country to defend, and a queen to protect and strengthen.

He steered a few degrees to starboard to keep the wind full on his quarter and fly the sea miles to Portsmouth. The osprey kept him company for another few minutes, then bore off on her own charted course.

AUTHOR’S NOTES

Readers of historical novels are often curious, when they reach the end of a book, to know how much was fact and how much was fiction. So let me fill you in.

The tense relationship between the two daughters of Henry VIII is famously true, confirmed in the writings of many contemporaries at court, including several foreign ambassadors. Mary, the child of pious Queen Catherine of Aragon, considered Elizabeth, the child of Anne Boleyn, a bastard and a heretic, and abhorred the thought of her ever ruling England. Even when the childless Mary knew she was dying, she refused to acknowledge Elizabeth as her rightful heir. Begged by her councilors to do so to prevent massive unrest over the succession, Mary added a terse codicil to her will in which she finally made provision for the passing of the throne to the sister she hated. This happened three weeks before her death—not four months before it, as my story depicts. There is no historical record of a final meeting between the two sisters during these last months of Mary’s life, but for dramatic purposes I have portrayed a confrontation between them in which Elizabeth out-maneuvers Mary, leaving her little choice but to acknowledge Elizabeth as her heir.

It is part of the historical record that Mary’s husband saved Elizabeth more than once from her sister’s wrath. Some modern novelists have fancied a romantic interest on Philip’s part for his comely sister-in-law, but this seems to me unlikely given the man’s dour character. Instead, I have attributed his actions to political forward thinking, of which he was a master. His intervention was ironic, because for the next thirty years he and Elizabeth were hostile political adversaries, waging a bitter cold war that culminated in the legendary confrontation in 1588 between her navy and the “invincible” Spanish Armada, and Elizabeth’s celebrated victory.

Religious zeal ruled Mary. She oversaw the burning of more than three hundred English men and women, earning the name her subjects gave her in her lifetime: “Bloody Mary.” Yet it is hard not to pity the woman when we consider what she suffered. The phantom pregnancy I depicted in the novel actually occurred—it was the talk of the court, and foreign ambassadors wrote home about it with increasing astonishment as Mary willed herself to believe she really was pregnant, right into the tenth month. Some modern scholars have attributed her malady to uterine cancer. Her trials were many: her barren state; the horrible humiliation of two phantom pregnancies; the desertion of her husband, whom she adored; the bankruptcy in which she plunged England for the sake of his wars; the resulting loss of Calais, so disastrous for English trade; and the complete overthrow of her resurrected church—the supreme mission of her life—which she could see coming with the ascension of Elizabeth. The weight of these miseries broke her in body and spirit. She died knowing that she had been an abject failure as a wife and as queen. Mary’s life was tragic.

Elizabeth’s life as queen was a triumph by any standard—a forty-four-year reign that saw the flowering of an unmatched age of artistry, exploration, and enterprise, an age whose glories we still refer to as “Elizabethan.” Yet before her ascension this young woman spent twenty years in almost constant insecurity, in and out of her royal father’s good graces depending on which wife he had at the time, endangered when rebels acted in her name, fearful of her sister. The book’s opening event, in which Mary imprisoned Elizabeth in the Tower of London, is true, as is Elizabeth’s purgatory afterward under house arrest for more than a year at Woodstock. She was never sure if the sister who hated her would kill her by outright execution or by other means. The assassination attempt depicted in the novel is invented, but there is historical evidence that the imperial ambassador actively considered ridding Queen Mary of her troublesome sibling. Later, during Elizabeth’s long reign, there were dozens of known attempts on her life.

I have depicted Elizabeth as reluctant to support the Dudley conspiracy. She was known to have had a cautious nature. During her forty-four years as England’s monarch she often frustrated her advisers with what they saw as her indecisiveness, especially during crises when the country’s security was threatened. Sir William Cecil wrote that she was always loath “to have her people adventured in fights.” Modern scholars, however, tend to attribute Elizabeth’s caution more to cleverness and a deft management of foreign affairs. Given the astounding peacefulness of her long reign, the latter interpretation seems justified.

The following are some notes on the fate of other real personages in my book.

In the history of England, Sir William Cecil stands as a mighty oak. Elizabeth was at Hatfield House the day Parliament proclaimed her queen, and on that very day she made Cecil her principal secretary, a position we would equate to prime minister. It was the official beginning of an extraordinary professional relationship, arguably the most successful partnership in English history, and it lasted forty years, until Cecil’s death, in 1598. He worked tirelessly and brilliantly in Elizabeth’s interests, and she, in turn, elevated him to the peerage as Baron Burghley and enriched him with her largesse. She visited his bedside often during his final illness, even feeding him medicinal cordials with a spoon. It was said that the day he died was the only time Elizabeth was seen publicly to weep.

Elizabeth was loyal all her life to people who were loyal to her. She stood by them and rewarded them, none more so than the men who had risked so much for her sake during the failed Dudley rebellion. Upon taking the throne she made Sir William St. Loe captain of the Tower guard, made Sir Nicholas Throckmorton her ambassador to France, and knighted Thomas Parry, her wily administrator during the insecure years when she was a princess. She had been queen for just a year when Parry died. A drawing of him by Holbein survives.

The revolt in Parliament and the subsequent Dudley conspiracy, both depicted in the novel, are true, though I have invented the ways in which they happened. And I bent three facts for the dramatic purposes of my story. First, the House of Commons debated and defeated the Exiles Bill three days after passage of the ecclesiastical revenues bill; I have made it the following day. Second, the revolt in the House of Commons was led by Sir Anthony Kingston; I demoted him to a lesser position and gave this catalyst role to Richard Thornleigh. Third, upon hearing of the planned rebellion, Mary did send her agents to post a guard around Elizabeth’s house, but this happened at Hatfield House; I have changed the locale to Somerset House, Elizabeth’s London home.

Regarding the robbery of the Queen’s treasury—astonishingly, such a robbery did happen, and the master teller was complicit in the scheme. But my research did not uncover the mastermind. I gave that role to Adam Thornleigh.

Fictional characters in the book include the Thornleigh family—Honor, Richard, Adam, and Isabel—as well as John Grenville and his sister, Frances. The Thornleighs all appeared in my previous novels,
The Queen’s Lady
and
The King’s Daughter.
Honor’s story as a young lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon forms the heart of
The Queen’s Lady.
It features Honor’s conflicted relationship with her guardian, Sir Thomas More; the missions she ran to rescue the men he persecuted; and her tumultuous love affair with Richard.
The King’s Daughter
features Isabel’s adventures with mercenary soldier Carlos Valverde during the Wyatt Rebellion early in the reign of Queen Mary.

I have been gratified and moved by all the mail I’ve received from readers who’ve enjoyed the books. A question sent to me leads to the following note on Honor’s name. Why, this reader asked, did I choose for a Tudor-era character a name that seems to come from a later century when girls were often given such names as Hope, Charity, Patience? Another reader asked why I had used the American spelling for an English character. The answer to both questions is quite simple: Honor’s name comes straight out of the 1530s, and the spelling is Latin. I chose it after researching
The Lisle Letters,
compiled by Muriel St. Clare Byrne. This is a collection of correspondence from 1533 to 1540, written to and from the family of Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle, who was appointed by Henry VIII as governor of Calais, England’s possession in France at the time. His wife’s first name was Honor.