The Queen's Gamble (25 page)

“Carlos,” she whispered when the soldier was out of hearing, “come with me?”

“Don’t you understand anything? This is my post. I have given my word.”

Don’t do this,
she wanted to cry. She longed to reach out, touch his face, his arm—just a touch to tell him they were still connected, still man and wife, still
one
. But his face was a closed door. “Then,” she said, a sharp pain at her heart, “we have no more to say. Go to your muster.” She could not move him. And she could not tarry any longer. Tears scalded her eyes.
“Vaya con Dios,”
she whispered. She turned to go.

She gasped as he snatched a fistful of her dress at the back. He yanked her to him. “Going to report to the rebels?” His voice was a growl, kept low so the waiting soldier would not hear, but still tight with fury.

Humiliation at his manhandling brought her anger surging back. “You
told
me to go,” she snapped. “Back to London.”

“But that’s not where you’re going, is it?”

“I’ll go where I want!”

His hand flew up so fast she could not have avoided the slap. He clenched his hand into a fist that hovered at her cheek. Her breath had stopped in shock. Carlos swallowed hard, then lowered his arm. Isabel sucked in air. They stared at each other, both knowing how near he had come to striking her.
Dear God,
she thought,
what’s happened to us?

Tears glinted in his eyes. It sent a sorrowful wave of love coursing through her.
His heart is breaking, just like mine.

“Soldier, come here,” he said, his voice raw. The man was back in a moment. “Escort this lady to Monsieur de la Salle’s chamber, up there. Make sure she doesn’t leave the room.”

Isabel froze. “Carlos, no—”

“Quiet.”

The young soldier looked puzzled. “You mean, keep her under guard, sir?”

“Are you deaf? Yes!”

“Your
wife?
”

Carlos slapped him. The soldier gasped, but said not a word. Isabel felt shaky, knowing that Carlos’s rage was meant for her. He looked pale himself. Never before, she was sure, had he struck an inferior.

“Take her upstairs, I tell you, and hold her there. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir.” The soldier grabbed Isabel’s arm. “Come, madam.”

“No! Wait—” He was pulling her up the stairs. She struggled to resist, but he was strong and dragged her up two steps.

“They’ll know about me!” she cried in desperation to Carlos. “If you hold me here, they’ll know! That will hurt
you
.”

“A marriage spat, I’ll say.” He turned to go.

This could not be happening! She was fighting the soldier, and Carlos was walking away!

“Carlos, wait! You
must
let me go! For Nicolas!”

He kept going, and said over his shoulder, his voice flat, “He’s safe with your mother.”

“He’s not with her!”

He stopped. Then turned, frowning. “What?”

“He’s not with my mother. And if I don’t get back to London, I don’t know what will happen to him.”

He stared at her. “What are you talking about? If this is some new lie—”

“It’s the truth.” The soldier tugged her, and she dug her heels against the bottom of the next step. “Tell this man to let me go! I must talk to you. Alone.”

“Let her go.” Carlos was coming up the steps, taking them two at a time. When he reached Isabel he yanked her by the arm, taking her up to the room where they had spent the night. Over his shoulder he said to the soldier, “Go. Tell the commander I’m coming.”

He shoved her into the room and slammed the door behind them. “Where is he? Where’s Nicolas?”

She rubbed her arm, sore from his fingers. “At Whitehall Palace. With the Queen’s ladies. Don’t worry, they’re talking good care of him. For now.”

He gave a bitter bark of a laugh in sheer disbelief. “What fantasy is this? He’s playing in a royal palace?”

“It’s no fantasy. I brought him along when my mother took me to see the Queen.” She remembered how Nico had seen horsemen of the royal guard riding into the courtyard and called out,
Papa!
She had to close her eyes for a moment. This was so hard.

“Why in God’s name is he still there?”

“I offered to take the Queen’s gold to the rebels, and—”

“You told me that. What’s it got to do with Nicolas?”

“The Queen wasn’t sure she could . . . trust me. Because of
you
. I’m the wife of a Spaniard, a Catholic. So, to be sure I would carry out the mission, she . . .” Suddenly, all the shame she had kept dammed up swept through her like a poison. She turned away, feeling faint. She could not look at Carlos.

“
Madre de Dios
. She kept him.” He gripped Isabel’s chin and wrenched her face back to him. “Look at me! She kept him, didn’t she? He’s a hostage.”

She nodded.

He let go of her. “
You
did this. You’ve risked his life to—” He took a step back, as though from something vile. Never, ever had he looked at her that way.
Man and wife? Still one?
No, he had severed that bond.
Or did I?
a voice inside her wailed. They were as separate as strangers on a midnight street. She could not bear it. “Carlos, please—”

He grabbed her satchel from the floor. Threw it on the bed and wrenched it open. “Pack. You leave today. Now. You’ll take Pedro. You will ride to London and get my son from the palace. You will take—”

A knock on the door. Carlos barked, “What!”

The young soldier poked his head in. “Excuse me, sir. The Queen Regent’s chamberlain is below and asks—”

A portly man pushed the door open and stepped past the soldier. “I am Her Grace’s chamberlain, Señor Valverde. Her Grace requests the pleasure of Señora Valverde’s company.”

Dread flooded Isabel.
They know! They all know! They’re going to arrest me!
She looked at Carlos, and his clenched jaw told her he was horrified by the same thought.

The chamberlain added with grave dignity, “Would you kindly escort your wife, señor?”

Dear God, would they arrest Carlos too? Make him suffer for her sins? They shared a look, he tight-lipped with alarm, she feeling trapped. It was impossible to ignore the Queen Regent’s summons. They followed the chamberlain down the stairs. Two soldiers waited to accompany them. Isabel almost recoiled. Guards to deliver her to prison? Carlos, too? Side by side she walked with him across the courtyard, the chamberlain leading the way, the guards behind them, the din of the mustering soldiers all around them. She wanted so much to feel Carlos take her hand to give her strength, but he marched on, eyes forward, his face as still and taut as if he were riding into battle. They reached the house appropriated for the Queen Regent and her entourage, and guards stood aside to let them enter. As she climbed the staircase to the Queen Regent’s suite, fear so blanked Isabel’s mind she saw nothing but the few feet ahead of her.

“Kindly wait here, Señor Valverde,” the chamberlain said when they reached the antechamber to the Queen Regent’s private rooms. “Señora, will you follow me?”

He opened the door. She followed, her legs feeling as spongy as if she were walking to her execution. The Queen Regent sat at a dressing table, flanked by two of her ladies who fussed at dressing her hair. She flicked her hand to dismiss them. Isabel dared to glance at the door. The chamberlain stood there, the door still open. Beyond it, Carlos stood rock still, his eyes on her. His struggle to appear calm was clear to her alone. He was too far away to hear. Or to help.

The Queen Regent turned to her. Her face had the pallid cast of chronic ill health, her eyes rheumy. “Thank you for this visit, señora.”

Isabel curtsied, her legs as weak as willow saplings.

“Though I am sorry that it must be a short one,” the Queen Regent went on. “I return to the castle today. I am not well, you see, and they can care for me better at the castle. So, sadly, I will not see you again—that is, assuming you intend your stay here to be brief. Or do you expect to remain long?”

She was almost too confused to speak. “Not long, Your Grace,” she managed.

“Oh? When do you plan to depart?”

“In fact—” Her mouth was so dry she had to swallow to go on. “Today.”

“Today! Gracious.” She smiled. “Well, in that case I was wise to see you now. Tell me, will you journey to London?”

“To London . . . yes.”

“And do you intend to break your journey with your relations near Berwick, as before? With Sir Christopher Grenville?”

Isabel’s mind was spinning. They were not going to arrest her? It made her almost light-headed with relief. She glanced at Carlos. He had moved, but only to pace, for servants had come into the antechamber. He did not know that she was, apparently, out of danger.

“Señora?” the Queen Regent coaxed.

“Yes, pardon me, Your Grace. I will stop there, yes. At Yeavering.” Her thoughts could not be further from this chitchat about her journey.

“In that case, might I ask a favor?”

She did not follow. “Your Grace?”

The Queen Regent nodded to her chamberlain. He went to a cupboard and returned with a package, a box-shaped object wrapped in silver satin and tied with a pretty bow of red lace.

“A christening gift. For the baby daughter of my friend, Anne, Lady Percy, the Countess of Northumberland. I am told that your relation, Sir Christopher, lives not far from their estate, and I hope you will entreat him to do me the honor of delivering my gift.”

Isabel hesitated. It seemed an odd request. The woman had scores of servants to ride south with messages, so why not this gift? It took only a heartbeat to realize this request was about more than a baby’s gift. What, exactly, she had no idea. But she was sure that friends of Marie de Guise—English friends in high places—could not be friends of England.

Again the Queen Regent prompted, “Señora? Can you do this favor?”

Isabel found her tongue. “Of course, Your Grace. You honor me with your trust.”

The Queen Regent’s smile had a touch of iron in it as she glanced at Carlos beyond the open door. “Ah well, you see, we so appreciate the company of your husband.”

Her eyes locked on Isabel’s, and Isabel felt a shudder to her very core. Elizabeth had Nicolas. Marie de Guise had Carlos. And both expected her loyalty to their cause.

She was with him again, going down the stairs of the Queen Regent’s suite. She hardly knew how her legs were holding her up.

“That’s all?” Carlos whispered tightly. “Just a gift?”

She was carrying it. It wasn’t heavy, whatever it was. “Yes. Just this.”

He shook his head as if to shake off his bewilderment, and with it all matters that were not essential. They left the building and walked in tense silence until Carlos was sure they were out of hearing of the Queen Regent’s guards. He turned to Isabel. “Then do it. But don’t stay long in Yeavering.”

She hoped he would offer some word of kindness. Not forgiveness—she didn’t expect that—but just a word to let her know that the rift between them might one day be bridged.

He didn’t. “When you reach London, you will get my son from the palace. You will take him to your father’s house and stay there, and when I come back I will take him home with me to Peru.” He glanced at the soldiers across the courtyard lined up in their ranks. That was where he had to be. He gave Isabel a last, hard look. “And then, as you said, madam, you can go where you want.”

PART THREE

Yeavering Hall

20

Out of the Storm

I
n the north of England people cherished the old ways. The hushed hills and dales of Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland, and York were remote from the clash and clamor of London, where volatile new ideas from the Continent, especially the German cities afire with Protestant zeal, arrived with every trading ship, heating a ferment of reform. That ferment did not reach the North, where the age-old rites and customs of the Roman Catholic religion were engrained in the country people’s dawn-to-dusk working lives. Their local lords, too—the powerful families of Percy and Neville, whose ancestors had come from France five centuries ago with William the Conqueror—shared this bond with the old Church. Henry VIII’s shocking break with Rome to create a new national church so he could wangle a divorce had wreaked a devastating change throughout the realm, and nowhere more than in the North, where his decree to break up the monasteries had thrown hundreds of thousands of acres of church-held lands onto the open market to be grabbed by the jumped-up new gentry.

Now, the young Queen Elizabeth’s reformed Protestant religion had become the law of the land, and her Visitors, the authorized committee, had visited every nook of England to purge all churches of so-called idolatry. The people of Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland, and York had grudgingly obeyed, watching in mute shock as the Visitors’ workmen had ransacked magnificent Durham Cathedral of its gorgeous rood screens and stained glass, its sacred paintings and alabaster saints, its engraved brasses and the bright, embroidered raiment of their priests. They obeyed, but felt bereft at losing these beauties and customs that had brought comfort to their days of grunting toil and brought meaning to their lives: the Jesus Masses that had been sung every Friday throughout the year, the great silver basins and crucifixes that had gleamed before the high altar, the candles that had burned continuously day and night, the tinkle of the sacring bell at all rites, from christenings to funerals. In every parish they remembered creeping to the cross on Good Friday, remembered the joys of saints’ days and feast days, the quiet mysteries of holy wells and relics, and the robust pealing of the monasteries’ bells ringing out across the dales to touch people’s hearts in the upland hills and let them know that the monks, who were their sons and brothers, were praying for their souls. Northerners missed these things, and longed for their return.

Frances Thornleigh, coming north at Christmas, had seen inside the stripped shell of Durham Cathedral and felt revulsion at its desecration. She would never get used to heresy being the law of the land. Her strongest reason for coming to Northumberland to stay with her brother, Sir Christopher Grenville, had been to ensure that her baby, Katherine, would be properly baptized by a priest, for if the child should die without that sacrament her little soul would be condemned to drift for eternity in Limbo and never see the face of God. Catholic priests, however, had been made outlaws by the new regime. Most had capitulated to the new rules; many had gone into exile. But Frances knew that Christopher had given a few priests secret sanctuary on his manor estates. He had arranged the baptism soon after Frances arrived, a quick ceremony held privately in his library away from the eyes of the servants. Baby Katherine’s soul was safe.

Afterward, Christopher told Frances that he had been displeased by her marriage and asked her not to mention her husband’s name in his company. The war between the families—how she hated it! But he had made his request with urbane restraint, so she told herself to be grateful to him, and she was, for the baptism and for much more. It was her first visit to Yeavering Hall, his home, and she had found the place truly grand. Christopher had married well. The house was immense: three stone stories rising into the cold, blue Northumberland sky, with acres of pleasure grounds and gardens—though they huddled now under crusted snow—and views that swept up to the twin-peaked hill of Yeavering Bell and down to the frigid River Glen. Despite the home’s magnificence, its chambers, tastefully decorated by Christopher’s late wife—he was a widower—felt cozy and intimate. Especially the solar. This bright family room on the third floor where Frances sat now with Katherine was her favorite place, for she liked to know what was going on in the household, and while the solar’s north windows overlooked the snow-swept Cheviot Hills, its south windows kept tabs on the domestic activities in the courtyard.

Still, she did not know
all
that was going on—that was her thought as she tugged her needle and thread through a silk cap she was sewing for Katherine and rocked the cradle with her foot. Lately she had begun to wonder how far her brother’s passion to preserve the old religious ways had taken him. She had heard murmurings about secret musters among his scores of men-at-arms, and had seen neighboring gentlemen arrive for meetings with him behind closed doors. When she had asked him about it, Christopher said the musters were in preparation for a strike against a Scottish clan of cattle-thieving border raiders, while the meetings were gatherings for Christian fellowship. Frances believed none of that. The raiders did not merit such force, and the grim faces of the gentlemen traipsing in and out of Christopher’s library were not suffused with Christian contentment. And then there was the surprise visit last week from the Earl of Northumberland, Thomas Percy. Christopher was well respected in the shire, so dealings with the earl were nothing extraordinary, but for his lordship to arrive practically alone, with no retinue and only five men-at-arms, and not even stay to the supper that Frances had ordered in a flurry of instructions to the kitchen, was odd, to say the least. It made her quite anxious. In spirit she was with her brother in his deep love of the old Church, but the laws of Queen Elizabeth demanded a compliance that Frances knew was wise to obey.

Katherine sneezed. Then sneezed again, so violently it stopped her breath. Frances dropped her sewing in alarm and scooped the baby out of the cradle. Katherine sucked in a breath, and Frances hugged the little body in relief. “There, there, sweet pea,” she cooed.

A kitten, one of five newborns barely a week old, mewed from their basket beside the hearth. Frances looked at the gray balls of downy fur nuzzling their mother’s side for milk, and she felt a tug of indecision. She had promised Christopher that she would dispose of the kittens, for his nose got stuffy and his throat scratchy whenever a cat was nearby. But the kittens fascinated baby Katherine, so Frances had kept the basket with the mother cat and her brood in a nook beside the hearth. She would have to find a home for them soon, though. Perhaps the wife of the household marshal would take them. In her sizable house she would need mousers.

Sleet lashed the north windows. Frances looked out at the barren hills. A storm had raged down from Scotland for three days, and wind moaned in the casements as though making an anguished escape from the border’s bleak wastes. It was five in the afternoon, the winter daylight beginning to fade toward frigid night, and Frances felt grateful for the warmth and comfort of Christopher’s home. The glow from the hearth’s blazing oak logs rippled over her baby’s face, the tiny eyelids trembling on the brink of slumber, and in her daughter’s features Frances, as always, saw Adam. How she missed him. This unholy war in Scotland still kept him away, doing she knew not what. That barbarous country was so near, a curlew on the wing could cross the border by nightfall, yet her husband seemed a world away. And in worsening danger, too, she feared, for the war had intensified. News had come that Queen Elizabeth had made an open pact with the Scottish rebels and mustered an army ten thousand strong to join them in fighting the French. They were marching north at that moment under the command of Lord Grey. They would soon tramp through this very shire.

It made Frances shudder. Which side was she on? The rebels were heretics. In their brutal sweep through Scotland they had desecrated churches from Perth to St. Andrews to Glasgow, killing priests and looting monasteries. The French had beaten them back to Stirling, but now that an English army was on its way to join them the rebels might take the country, force out the French, and press every Scot into heresy. That would be grotesque—an entire country, right on England’s border, spitting at God.

But beyond the hills outside her window lay the North Sea, and on it Adam aboard his ship. She
had
to hope for an English victory, for his sake. A victory for the heretic Queen—that thought turned her stomach, but she knew she must swallow her aversion to Elizabeth. Men’s fortunes were made by the Queen’s friendship. Or rather, her lust for handsome young adventurers. Men like Adam. Frances knew all about the shameless interest Elizabeth had shown in Adam, and she despised the woman for it. But that was in the past, behind them now. He was married, and a father, and Frances was not such a fool as to risk his chance of advancement by visibly holding a grudge.

There was no choice, really. She knew in her heart that she had made her choice the day she first saw Adam and fell desperately in love. She would be loyal to him, even if it took her to the gates of hell. Her life was one with his, so his cause was hers. And his cause was the Queen’s.

She hugged her baby closer and told herself not to pine. She would write to him, and she wanted no melancholy to creep into the letter. She settled Katherine in the cradle and sat down at the desk and arranged paper and pen and ink. She began,

My Dear Husband,

Then hesitated. What to say? God only knew when, or even if, the letter would reach him. She could only send it to the Admiralty in London and hope. What if—God forbid—he had been killed? No, she would not allow that demon thought to terrify her. He will survive, she told herself, and he will come back. For Katherine, if not for me.
And when he does, I will somehow make him love me.
She dipped her quill in the ink and began again on a fresh sheet.

Dearest Adam,

She told him how comfortable she was at Yeavering, and how busy, for her brother had encouraged her to oversee the household almost as though she were mistress of the manor. Christopher had been without a wife for over a year and Frances was proud to call herself a very capable manager. She told Adam what a joy Katherine was, and how she was thriving and growing. Told him that she prayed daily that God would keep him unhurt and send him home soon. Told him how dear he was to her, blushing as she wrote it, adding that he must allow her to say such things because today was Saint Valentine’s Day, when the church, in its infinite wisdom, encouraged the sending of affectionate letters to a beloved.

She heard a shout outside. She moved to the south windows and peered down. The film of sleet on the glass made the shapes in the courtyard look wavy and indistinct. Four or five servants surrounded two figures, a young man and a woman, who stood bundled in cloaks beside a horse. The couple had apparently just come in, for the gates were still wide open, causing sleet-stiff wind to gust across the courtyard and the servants to hunch their shoulders against it. Despite the distorted glass, Frances could see the lowered heads of the couple and their shaggy horse, too, as though all three were bowed with fatigue, as well they must be, she thought, traveling in this foul weather. Were they tramps? Parkins, the master butler, was waving an arm toward the outside world as if interrogating them on where they had sprung from. But why was no one moving? The servants seemed dumbstruck.

She would have to deal with this herself. The tramps must be given shelter for the night, at least, in the stables or one of the outbuildings. The bakehouse would be warm. She was about to go down and give these orders when she saw the woman beside the horse look up at the windows. Frances gasped. Though the face was a blur, she knew so well that tilt of the head.

She ran down the stairs, not even stopping to grab a cloak as she hurried past two chambermaids on their knees scrubbing the foyer floor. She dashed out the front door, calling, “Isabel!”

Her words were lost in the wind, a frigid blast that stung her face. The young man beside the horse, hugging himself against the cold, saw her coming and said something to Isabel and she turned.

Frances was shocked by the look of her. White-faced with cold, her lips almost blue, she was shivering horribly. Her cloak was plastered to her body, and ice was clumped on strands of hair that had escaped her sodden hood. She blinked at Frances as though trying to focus, and when she tried to speak her words were slurred. “Fra—? Is it—you?”

“Oh, Isabel, my dear! Where have you—? Come inside, out of this wind!”

“I—we—”

“Don’t talk, dear. Come inside this moment.”

Isabel slumped against the horse’s side, looking too weak to take another step.

“Señora,”
the young man pleaded,
“debemos parar aquí. Está enferma.”

Foreign words. Frances didn’t understand any of it. “Isabel, we must get you inside.” She turned to the butler’s fellows. “You men, take her arm. Help her in!”

But Isabel did not budge. “Give . . .” Her teeth chattered, slurring her words more. “Give . . . Pedro . . . drink, and . . .” Her lips kept moving, but making no sound, like she was a lost soul in Bedlam. Her eyelids trembled. Her eyes rolled up in their sockets. She collapsed.

“Isabel!” Frances cried.

Two serving men caught her. “Carry her inside!” Frances ordered them. One lifted Isabel in his arms. “Gently!” She grabbed the foreign young man’s arm. “Dear God, what has happened to bring her through this storm?”

He gaped at her, shivering. Did he not understand English?

“Parkins,” she said, “fetch Signor Carelli.” The Italian had been there for days, visiting Christopher on business, and must know some Spanish. “And send someone for Doctor Harcourt.” She hurried after the servant who was carrying Isabel, and called over her shoulder to Parkins, “And get word to my brother at the Palmers’!”

Frances and Christopher stood on either side of the bed, silently looking down at Isabel’s still form. Frances felt shaken by Isabel’s condition, especially after hearing that the doctor was not available, had gone to Bamburgh. She was relieved to have her brother near. He had been at the neighbor’s two miles away, discussing with Henry Palmer their defenses against the Scottish border raiders, when the footman had brought the news about Isabel. He had left immediately, but the treacherously slick roads in the dusk had slowed him, and he’d got home just fifteen minutes ago. His fair hair was still damp with melted ice.