The Virgin Queen's Daughter - Ella March Chase (4 page)

“The man wears royal livery,” Father told me as we approached the man and his sweaty roan horse.

“What is your business with Calverley,” Father demanded.

The messenger smiled. “I bear a message I am to deliver into the hand of Mistress Elinor de Lacey.”

“I am she,” I said. The messenger placed a rolled piece of vellum into my hand.

Father ordered Jem to see to the messenger’s comfort, then we went back up to the library to read the letter. Father took the missive, broke the seal, an official-looking blot of red wax deliciously bumpy where a ring had pressed into it. I opened the page, but the writing was full of curls and elegant swirls.

“Father, it is the first letter I have ever gotten,” I enthused. “Who is it from?”

“The Lady Elizabeth. It seems your princess has left London with her head still attached to her shoulders.”

“But how, Father?”

“Her enemies could find no proof she was in league with Wyatt’s rebels, so Queen Mary had to release her from the Tower. Who knows what may happen now. Queen Mary’s mother had difficulty bearing one living child when she was young. Mary is old. Elizabeth might one day be queen if she is wise and patient.” Father considered for a moment. “She would make a fine one, from what my friend Roger Ascham says. Twice she braved great peril, refusing to desert her servants to save herself. She shows great love to those who are loyal to her. People like you.”

“Like me?”

“That is what this letter is about, sweetheart. She is grateful for your attempt to free her from the Tower. Someday, when you have a daughter of your own, you can show this missive to her, and tell her of the day brave Nell de Lacey tried to rescue a captive princess. Perhaps it is time I show you a secret place I found when I was a boy. A nook where my father and his father before him hid precious things.”

Father carried me to my nursery and showed me how to wriggle a brick near the hearth until it came loose. Behind it lay a piece of blue glass, a lark’s nest, and an iridescent peacock feather. I placed my letter in the space beside them.

“Mother would not like this secret place or what I have put in it,” I said solemnly.

Father smiled. “Then we must be quite sure she never knows.”

Chapter Three

May 1561

C
ALVERLEY
M
ANOR

I
T WAS NOT UNTIL SEVEN YEARS LATER THAT I LEARNED
the bitter lesson my princess mastered the moment her mother became a Tower ghost. That life is like the Thames in winter: At any instant the ice beneath your feet can shatter, plunge you into a torrent that sucks you under. Once you realize that hard truth you can never return to blissful ignorance. You spend the rest of your life waiting for the ice to give way.

As the weeklong celebration of my twelfth birthday approached, my father kept the estate buzzing with his promise of a diversion more spectacular than any Calverley had seen. I chafed with curiosity, attempting to spy upon him, uncover the surprise, but he was far too wise for my trickery. He gave me a book sent by his friend Roger Ascham, my own princess Elizabeth’s tutor, knowing I would not be able to resist it.

Curiosity pricked me, sharp as the needles Mother used as she and Eppie tormented me with the fitting of new gowns. “Put the book down, Elinor, or we will never get the length of these skirts right,” Mother grumbled, taking pins from between her lips. “Do you wish to appear before the Barton children with your hem halfway to your knees?”

“I do not wish to appear before the Bartons at all! They talk of nothing save jewels and gowns and who they will marry one day.”

“It is important to consider who you will marry. The future course of a woman’s life will depend upon the choice her parents make.”

“Your parents did not choose for you. Father told me.”

Mother’s brow rose in mild displeasure. “My parents were surprised, true. But your father was a suitable choice in every way. He was Baron of Calverley, had wealth enough and ancestors stretching back to Agincourt. He was already known as one of the foremost scholars in Lincolnshire.”

“I doubt Clarissa Barton has ever opened a book! Last time she was here, she frightened Moll so with tales of witches that Moll bought a charm from some Gypsy woman and smelled of spoilt fish for days!” Eppie had brought Moll from one of Calverley’s outlying farms after seeing the girl’s skill with a needle. From the moment of her arrival at the manor, Moll had been so gullible; few of the other servants could resist toying with her. Mother frowned. “Is what Nell says true, Moll?”

Moll ducked her head. Though she was a few years older than I, she was not yet used to the force of Mother’s disapproving glance. “It was tales of that witch Nan Bullen Mistress Clarissa was tellin’, an’ then Jem chimed in, an’ all I could see was the witch queen’s corpse wanderin’ about with her head tucked under her arm.”

“You can be sure I will scold Jem over scaring you thus.” Suddenly Mother stiffened, remembering some task. “I will return in a minute. Moll, mind that hem you’re stitching,” she called as she hastened out of the room. “If you aren’t careful the edging will end up wriggly as a snake.”

“Maybe the witch queen will turn it into a snake!” I snickered. “Surely any self-respecting witch could do such magic. If Anne Boleyn was
really
a witch, why didn’t she fly away? Or do a spell to grow another head, just like she grew a sixth finger on her hand? By the devil’s magic?”

I could see Moll shiver. “Nay, Mistress Nell! Do not make fun on it. Old Lucifer will snatch you up.”

“If he did I would ask him to make a brain sprout in your head! I vow, you believe the stupidest things!”

“Nell, what is this about?” I heard Father’s voice from the doorway. He strode into the chamber, a smudge of black powder on his cheek.

Glad to have an ally in logic, I appealed to him. “Moll is claiming Anne Boleyn was a witch. But near as I can tell, Queen Anne got her head cut off for no reason at all.”

“She was condemned of witchcraft!” Moll insisted. “ ’Twas all written down, was it not, Lord John? The charges, I mean.”

“Anne Boleyn got condemned for adultery, too, did she not, Moll?” I goaded.

Moll nodded so hard that her chestnut curls bobbed. “With her brother an’ lots of other men. The wife o’ the king cannot be—be . . .” Moll glanced nervously at my father, then let her voice fall to an embarrassed whisper. “She can’t be layin’ with other men.”

“But King Henry got the marriage annulled before they executed her, didn’t he?”

“Aye, and Elizabeth named a bastard.”

“So how is it justice to chop off her head for committing adultery against a husband she never had?”

“But he never . . . well, I . . . she was a witch! She cast spells on the king! Made his manhood shrivel up and—”

“Father, do you believe Anne Boleyn was a witch?” I looked to Father, sure he would be proud of my arguments. Instead, he looked a trifle sad.

“I do not know if she was a witch or not. But I do know much evil befell England when she had the king’s ear. The king was cruel to his good wife, Queen Katherine of Aragon, and his daughter Mary. Henry would not even let Mary see her mother when the old queen lay dying. People feared Anne Boleyn would see them poisoned. The king had many good men executed for not recognizing Boleyn as his wife.”

“Like the man who wrote the book you gave me.
Utopia
.”

“Yes. Sir Thomas More. He was not a saint, Nell. Every man has parts that are goodness and parts that are wickedness. But many men who disagreed with the king died so Henry could wed Anne Boleyn and sire princes. In the end, there was only Elizabeth, another daughter, of little use to England’s throne.”

“Aye,” Moll put in, “and she a bastard, an’ maybe a witch like her mother.”

I stung under the insult to my princess. “At least she has a mind and uses it! She would never run about with a fish head hanging around her neck!”

“Nell.” Father’s voice was full of disappointment. He looked at the other seamstresses and gestured to the door. “Take a few moments to refresh yourself. As I passed the bake house I smelled fresh bread being taken from the oven.”

The ladies scattered, stretching stiff backs, rubbing at their tired eyes as they rushed from the room, fearful my mother would return and order them back to their needles and stools. Moll cast a hurt glance over her shoulder at me. I frowned.

“I was only telling the truth,” I asserted.

“Ah, but you did so harshly and wounded little Moll in the process. It was not a fair contest. Your wits are a weapon, Nell. You must not use them against those weaker than you.”

“But she smelled of fish heads, and she was saying the most preposterous things!”

“Do you believe in goodness, Nell? Like the kind in Father Richard?”

“Yes. He is the best man in the whole world besides you, Father.”

“Father Richard is far better than I will ever be. But just as there is darkness and light in the sky each day, there can be darkness or light in men’s souls. In women’s souls, too.”

“Then you
do
believe in witches?”

“I do believe in evil. One cannot live very long in the wide world without doing so.”

“How can we make it go away?”

“We cannot make evil vanish altogether, I fear. But we can try our very best not to be part of it. You can choose not to hurt people if you can help it. Like Moll, for instance. You must be gentle with her. She has come here to Calverley to live far from her family. And she will never get the chance to learn the things you know, you and the Lady Elizabeth.”

“Lady Elizabeth is not a witch like her mother. Is she?”

“I cannot say. What I can tell you is that she is one of the finest intellects Roger Ascham has ever taught.”

“I wish I could be in the schoolroom with her. You say I must not use my wits to hurt Moll’s feelings. I fear I will never get to use my wits at all. Mother says I should think of marrying and such. But wives do not have time to read Aristotle and debate Cicero. Mother never reads anything but her Bible. I wish to be like my princess and study the most difficult subjects in the world.”

“Your mother has a fine intellect, Nell. When she was lady-in-waiting to Katherine Parr she studied often, learned much. But someone must tend to things like shoring up the walls of the old castle section of Calverley. Someone must order the joiners to fix the library roof lest the rain come in and ruin all our books.”

“I wager Princess Elizabeth is not worried about salting fish and shoring up roofs. I wish I had a mother who—”

“Hush!” Father laid his finger on my lips, stopping my words. “God gave you the mother you have. Surely He knows best. A great girl of almost twelve years old must know that.”

“Father, sometimes I am not sure God knows what he is doing at all. When He lets people burn other people up for reading the Bible, and then lets the very same people burn Catholics. Sir Thomas More was a good man about
Utopia,
but a bad man who liked burning people he did not agree with. But then he got his head cut off for disagreeing with the king. It is all very confusing.”

“What would Father Richard say?”

“He would say our task on earth is to love God and love one another and try not to squabble over details. God will sort things out in heaven. Perhaps I should begin by sorting things out with Moll.”

“That would be a fine start.”

I found I liked Moll better once I came to know her. She thought I was the smartest girl she had ever known and promised to ask me before she ever believed in fish-head charms or the like again.

And when Clarissa Barton and her red-faced father arrived for my birthday celebration I told Clarissa that if she frightened Moll I would stick her with a pin.

Clarissa must have believed me, for she ran off to play with the other children arriving from the neighboring estates and left me to talk with father’s Cambridge friends.

In the days that followed we hunted Calverley’s deer park, ate feasts, and performed a masque where I played the role of Spring with roses in my hair and danced with my dancing master, a tiny, spritely man with a voice that squeaked.

When time came for skittles and hoodman-blind, Mother tried to chase me out to join the other young people, but I hid from her, then slipped into Father’s library to listen to the learned men speak.

On the final night of the celebration I sat with my parents upon the velvet draped dais at the head of the Great Hall as servants paraded in with my birthday feast. A trumpet announced the finest dish—a peacock displayed on a silver platter, the bird perfectly roasted, then dressed once again in its feathers so that it looked alive.

I had barely touched the tender meat when the subtleties of spun sugar were brought in, Saint George mounted upon his fine horse, wound away from a marchpane castle on his quest.

I nearly shamed myself by straining up in my seat. “But where is the dragon?” I asked, pulling upon Father’s sleeve.

“Dragons are not easily found, you know,” Father said with a secret smile. “Perhaps he will appear during the dancing.”

But the dragon did not show himself while I impatiently went through the steps of a pavane with dull Sir Charles, Clarissa’s father. Nor when there were games set up near the hearth. I would not be drawn into them, searching instead for Father. But he had disappeared and I could not find him.

Suddenly, another trumpet blared, a herald announcing we were all to gather on the field beyond the gatehouse. Father had a special entertainment planned in honor of my birthday.

I ran out into the darkness, far ahead of the other guests. I hastened to where I could see the hillside, where Father was hard at work. Excitement sizzled through the guests like the thin trail of gunpowder Father used to set his fireworks alight. I glimpsed the red smear of Father’s torch as he moved to light the fuse. Black powder flared. The sky came alive. Dragon wings spanned the heavens. Fiery squibs and great, golden apples shot from the beast’s mouth, setting the sky ablaze. A flaming apple plunged earthward. Then a deafening blast split the night. Flames shot across the hilltop where men were lighting the fireworks’ fuses. Our tenants clapped their hands, thinking it part of the display.

I knew better. Even before I heard Father scream.

F
OR WEEKS WE
feared he would die. Between the pain and his blindness he might have been grateful for that final peace. But Eppie nursed him with potions. My mother bullied him mercilessly, demanding that he fight.

As for the daughter the dragon had been conjured for—I hid in Father’s study while horror carved up my courage. I might have remained there forever, but Mother hunted me down. “Do you think you do your father any good, starving yourself to a shade?” Mother placed my favorite dishes on the chest at the end of my bed. Just the sight of gingerbread and partridge stew made my stomach hurt anew.

“But what happened to Father is my fault.”

“I did not take you for such a fool, Nell!” I could hear her quell the fear in her voice. “Your father is mending now. His sight is gone but his mind is hungry as ever. Feed it, Elinor, the way your father has fed yours for so long!”