The Queen's Gamble (38 page)

They neared London Bridge, the incoming tide frothing the water around its twenty stone arches. Isabel looked up at the tall houses and shops that crammed the bridge. She could hear the traffic on it—the tramping people, riders, oxcarts, the bleating of a flock of sheep being driven across. They passed under the bridge, and she turned her face to the warm southerly breeze that had sailed across distant fields with spring scents of wet earth and grass. She felt a faint flutter in her belly. Her baby, stirring! It brought a jolt of happiness so strong she ached to turn and look at Carlos.
Not yet . . . not yet
. But oh, to think that in high summer, late August, this child would come into the world!

She looked ahead. Soon they would be past the city. Around the bend in the river lay Whitehall Palace. She could not see it yet. The wait felt hard, so hard. She bent her thoughts to her audience with the Queen. She would defend herself resolutely, but she expected nothing—the tyrant had granted the meeting only out of affection for her mother; there would be no pardon. She worked her thoughts on playing her role well in what would follow. The guards would take her back to the barge to return her to the Tower. That’s when Carlos and Adam and their band of fighters would attack. She would be prepared to run with them.

The sun slipped behind a cloud. The water darkened. Isabel felt a shadow creep into her. Something was not right. Something about the stark joy she had felt since leaving the Tower. It had enveloped her like a bright light that she could not see beyond. Now, in shadow, she sensed that something was not right.

The sun flashed out, leaving the cloud behind, and her hope shot up again, riding high with the warm breeze.
Don’t think. Let Carlos’s plan unfold. Live!

The turrets of Whitehall gleamed. Atop them the Queen’s flags rippled, signaling she was in residence. The palace wharf was as crowded as ever with throngs of men come to do business at court, but as the Tower barge came alongside the landing and the guards got out, people moved away, eyeing Isabel, a prisoner about to come among them.

She stepped out onto the landing. Her guard formed around her. St. Loe led the party toward the stairway that led up to the palace, with Isabel’s mother and Carlos at the rear. People eddied to let them pass. Isabel noticed soldiers of the Palace Guard on regular duty, perhaps a dozen, posted at the foot of the staircase and along the landing. Another half dozen soldiers idly watched from the top of the stairs. She looked across at the sheds and taverns that barnacled the wharf, where servingmen lounged in the sun with their ale. Adam was in one of those taverns with his hired fighters. How many had her mother said? Seven?

Her footstep faltered. Seven—with Carlos and Adam that made nine. Against the eight guards of St. Loe plus all these palace soldiers? Terrible odds. Carlos and Adam would try, but could they . . . She suddenly stopped walking. Her mother’s words from the Tower echoed.
“Trying is everything.”

“Move on,” a guard said, nudging her. Isabel walked on, but her blood had gone cold. She suddenly knew what was not right. Her mother was wrong. Trying is
not
everything. Trying can fail.

Up the staircase she went with the guards, her every footstep as stiff as her fear. Soldiers were posted everywhere. At doorways, under arches, on terraces.
Carlos and Adam cannot possibly prevail. The plan is impossible. To attempt it is suicide.
She imagined them attacking her guards, wounding many, killing some, and the palace soldiers rushing in to fight them. In the skirmish Carlos and Adam would be cut down. If still alive, they would be tried for murdering the Queen’s men, interfering with the Queen’s justice. Her father, too, and her mother. They would all be condemned. They would hang. And she would hang.

It was so clear.
If they attack, they will die.
The next thought was even more starkly clear.
If they don’t attack, I alone will die.

A voice inside her wailed,
Just try! It might work! Try!

She stifled the voice. Killed it. To go on hoping for rescue was to condemn her family to death. She could not
let
them try.

It was agony. To not turn to Carlos, not reach out for him. To force herself to keep walking in the sunshine when she knew she was already dead.

“Where’d you spring from, goblin?”

Pedro did not understand the question. He was so tired from seven days of riding almost nonstop he could barely stay upright in the saddle, but he had made it to the walls of London. And now, to be held up at this roadblock outside Bishopsgate made him angry. Five armed men in breastplates manned it. Why were they stopping everyone from going into the city? “Goblin?” he asked. “What is that?”

The men laughed and one said, “You are, you runty little red-skin.”

“Get a move on!” a woman on a donkey called out from the cluster of people waiting to get through.

The man in the breastplate ignored her. He asked Pedro, “What’s your business in the city?”

“Business? No business. Letter to give.”

“Hand it over.”

Pedro would not. He shivered when he remembered the beating the last time men had demanded this letter, but he was sworn to deliver it to the señora’s mother and this time he would do it even if they beat him black and blue. Instead of taking the letter from his pocket, he countered with a question. “Why stop people?”

“Looking for papist troublemakers. Sheriff don’t want nothing to mar the hangings tomorrow morn.” He eyed Pedro’s dust-white breeches and jerkin and his lathered horse. “You a papist looking for trouble?”

“Papist?” He had heard that word before and knew it could lead to fighting. “No, just servant.”

“Aw, let him through,” an old man groused from the throng. “At this rate none of us will get to see the hangings.” He added cheerfully to the young farmer beside him, “They say there’s a woman among ’em. I never did see a woman swing. That’ll be something.”

The man in the breastplate glared at Pedro. “The letter. Give it over.”

“Sergeant, forget it,” a breastplated man on horseback said, trotting up to him. “The runt would quake at his own shadow. Let’s move this lot through.”

“Aye, sir.”

Pedro rode in, glad to be past such men. He was tired and hungry and sore, but so happy to be near the Thornleighs’ house he kicked his horse for one final sprint down Bishopsgate Street.

But at the house his hope was dashed. Lady Thornleigh was not at home, the steward said. She had gone to Whitehall Palace. Pedro sat down on a bench in the courtyard, every muscle aching, and puzzled over what to do next. Take the letter to Lady Thornleigh? Or wait for her to come home? The smell of onions cooking in the kitchen made him want to stay and wait. Get some food. Some ale. Rest. Besides, if he went, how was he to find the lady at the great queen’s court?

He pushed himself to his feet. He had to try.

Following St. Loe, the eight Tower guards marched along the corridor of Whitehall Palace, forcing Isabel, boxed in at the center, to keep up, though she felt her legs might buckle. Her mother was at the rear with Carlos, but Isabel did not dare glance back at them. They reached a double door with palace guards posted on either side. St. Loe gave an order and the guards opened the doors. The Tower party marched through.

They entered a long gallery, bright with tall windows. The guards tramped to a halt, and Isabel almost staggered at the sudden stop. There was a wave of laughter from the far end where a few dozen men and women sat with their backs to her and the guards. She looked past the people to a stage. A play was in progress. Actors dashing about. A beet-nosed buffoon, tumbling. At the center of the audience, on a hip-high dais garlanded with roses, in a gilt chair, sat Queen Elizabeth. St. Loe beckoned his men to stand at ease, and Isabel, struggling with her fears, tried to make sense of what was happening. St. Loe would not interrupt the performance that the Queen and her courtiers were enjoying. He was waiting for it to end.

The wait was torture. She felt disoriented by the merriment . . . the perfume in the air . . . the ladies’ rustling silks . . . antic actors banging drums and tweedling pipes. Some of the actors looked familiar. A barrel-chested, strutting man in a lawyer’s black cloak with cape. Another one, lean, with a crafty face. The players from Yeavering Hall, she realized. On the night of the fire they had been about to start south. There was a drumroll, and an actor’s mock scream, and more laughter rocked the gallery. The Queen’s shoulders, however, were still. She was not laughing. Elizabeth the tyrant, Isabel thought. How she hated the woman.

She was aware of Carlos and her mother moving slowly along the window wall, coming alongside her guards, getting closer to her. She fought to order her fractured thoughts. Carlos and Adam planned to attack when the guards took her back to the wharf. She had to tell Carlos to call it off. A shudder went through her bowels at the thought of going to her death tomorrow . . . the hangman’s rope . . . snapping her neck. But unless she stopped Carlos and Adam, she would be sending them to
their
deaths, and likely her parents, too. She could not let everyone she loved die for her. She had to make them abandon the rescue attempt.
Dear God,
she thought in a daze of misery,
give me the strength to hold fast
. But how was she to tell Carlos? Eight guards surrounded her, and he was so far away.

The players cavorted to more laughter. Isabel stole a look at Carlos. He kept his eyes lowered, playing his servile role—or maybe because he did not trust himself to look at her. The people’s laughter burst out in a crescendo. Then a rush of applause. The players lined up at the front of the stage and bowed, sweating and smiling. The courtiers and ladies clapped and chattered. Then all heads turned to the Queen. There was silence.

“ ’Twill serve,” Elizabeth said, no smile in her voice. “Master of the Revels,” she said to a nearby official, “next time, no drums.” The players, chagrined, bowed deeply to her. She rose from her chair. All the courtiers and ladies rose, too. St. Loe went forward to the Queen’s dais and bowed and said something to her. She turned to look at the Tower party. Her eyes met Isabel’s. Her face hardened.

St. Loe motioned to his two men at the vanguard and they stepped to the side, leaving the way clear between Isabel and the Queen. Elizabeth came down the dais steps, ignoring the arm that St. Loe offered. She said something to another official. He hastened to pass the word along to the crowd, and the courtiers and ladies began quietly chattering, preparing to leave.

Isabel stiffened as the Queen approached her. Dark circles under Elizabeth’s eyes made her look both fragile and pitiless.

“Your Majesty,” her mother said, coming to them. “I thank you most humbly for granting my daughter this audience. It shows you as the merciful monarch you are.”

Elizabeth barely nodded in acknowledgment. She regarded Isabel coldly. “Well?” she demanded. “Speak.”

Words jammed in Isabel’s throat. The chattering courtiers . . . Carlos moving nearer . . . an image of him dead on a gallows. Dazed, she could only mumble, “I am not . . . please, Your Majesty . . . I am loyal. I am innocent.”

Elizabeth was unmoved. “So you claimed at your trial, I am told. Claimed it
ad nauseam
. No one believed you then. Why should I now?” Her dark eyes flashed with contempt. “Traitors, spawning pernicious discontent to eat at the good people of my realm and rob them of their native pride. And how vile of you to come at us now, like jackals, when we are so low, weakened by war. I will not suffer traitors.”

It lit a fuse of anger in Isabel. To think that she had tried to
save
this woman from the traitors. Save a tyrant! Near the stage all the courtiers and their ladies remained standing, watching her and the Queen in fascination. The actors, too. No one was leaving.

Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed on Isabel in suspicion. “You took on much in Northumberland, emboldening your fellow traitors to come at me. Did you devise that stratagem alone? I think not. Who put you to it? Answer me. Was it your husband? Your Spanish husband in the pocket of Spain? Where is he now, eh? Has he deserted you to stand alone?”

The accusation stunned Isabel. She did not dare let her gaze flick to Carlos, but he had moved so near she saw him from the corner of her eye, his hand on his dagger hilt, his knuckles white. Panic leapt in her. Elizabeth’s suspicion, unchecked, could taint him, taint her whole family. She saw terrible danger for them all. She had to speak up, and now.

“Alone,” she blurted. “Yes. I acted all alone.”

Elizabeth frowned in surprise. “What?”

“I confess. All of it. Plotting. Sedition. Treason. I am a traitor to Your Majesty. I, alone of all my family.”

Her mother gasped. “Isabel! What are you doing?”

“Quiet, Mother. I am guilty as charged.”

Carlos had frozen. Courtiers had turned to look. Isabel forced herself to breathe.

“No!” her mother cried. “Your Majesty, I beg you . . . my daughter is not well. Her wits, in the Tower . . . do not listen—”

“I am listening only
because
of you,” Elizabeth snapped. “Now, at last, we are getting the truth.” Her eyes flashed at Isabel. “Out with it.”

“The truth . . . yes. I confess to it all. I conspired with Sir Christopher Grenville to murder Your Majesty. No member of my family knew it, I swear it. They are all Your Majesty’s loyal subjects.”

She heard a tortured groan dragged from Carlos. She plowed on, “My poor mother—she loves me, that is her only sin. Loves me so much she begged for Your Majesty’s clemency. So much, she will plead with you now beyond all reason. So much, she may even dream of rescuing me from Your Majesty’s justice. Of course, that cannot be.” She looked straight at Carlos. “I would not
allow
it. If it were attempted, I would refuse to flee.” She tore her eyes from his ashen face and looked back at the tyrant. Her banging heart made it hard to breathe. “I accept Your Majesty’s justice. And the sentence. The treason is on my head alone. Let your wrath fall on me, and be there confined.”