Blood Between Queens

Books by Barbara Kyle

B
ARBARA
K
YLE

KENSINGTON BOOKS

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Table of Contents

HISTORICAL PREFACE

In 1560 the young English queen, Elizabeth Tudor, in the second year of her reign, feared a French invasion through Scotland. To prevent it, she sent an army to back Scottish rebels who had risen up against their mighty overlords, the French. The nominal queen of Scotland was Mary Stuart, but she had gone to France as a child to marry the heir to the throne. He had become king and she, at seventeen, was queen of France. The leader of the Scottish rebels was Mary’s half brother, the Protestant Earl of Moray, and with Elizabeth’s help he and his fighters beat the French army, ending French domination in Scotland and putting a Protestant government in power. Elizabeth’s victory over the French in Scotland was a turning point in her fledgling reign. By gambling on intervention she had defied the great powers of France and Spain, elevating her status at home and in the eyes of all Europe, whose leaders had to acknowledge her as a formidable ruler. She did this at the age of twenty-six.

Elizabeth could not have realized that her problems with Scotland had just begun. Mary Stuart had a claim to Elizabeth’s throne. They were cousins: Henry VII was Elizabeth’s grandfather and Mary’s great-grandfather. The following year Mary’s husband, the French king, died, and she, a widow at eighteen, came back to Scotland to take up her birthright as its queen. She also publicly maintained her claim to the throne of England. But first she had her own people to contend with. Her return upset the balance of power among the Scottish nobility, setting off an incipient civil war between Mary’s supporters, who were mostly Catholic, and those of her Protestant half brother, Moray, the de facto head of the government. For six years this unrest smoldered. Mary infuriated Moray’s party when she married a young Englishman, Lord Darnley. She gave birth to a son, but the marriage quickly turned sour and Mary began to rely on the tough, soldierly Earl of Bothwell; many whispered that the relationship was adulterous. In the winter of 1567 the rivalry between the power-seeking factions came to a head when Lord Darnley was killed in an explosion: The house he was staying in was blown up with gunpowder. Three months later Mary wed Bothwell. Suspicion for Darnley’s death fell on them both. Moray acted quickly to take power. He indicted Mary for masterminding her husband’s murder, took charge of her baby son, and imprisoned her. Bothwell fled. Mary, Queen of Scots, at age twenty-four, had lost her kingdom.

Mary’s prison tower rose from an isolated fortress, a castle on an island in Loch Leven. She had been a captive for ten months when one of her young supporters helped her slip out of the castle dressed as a country woman. He rowed her the mile across the lake. Waiting on the other side were her loyal nobles.

All of Europe gasped at the news of Mary’s escape. She was notorious for the scandals that had swirled around her: Was she a murdering adulteress who had deserved to be deposed, or an innocent victim horribly wronged? Everyone had an opinion—and waited to see what would happen next. It held enormous significance for every leader. The kings of Spain and France, fiercely Catholic, were eager to see Moray’s Protestant government destroyed. If Mary ventured to reclaim her throne, it could start an international war. Elizabeth, once again, feared invasion.

Mary quickly gathered an army. So did Moray. They faced each other on the Glasgow moor near the village of Langside. As Mary looked on from a hilltop, her commander Lord Herries led a cavalry charge that forced Moray’s men to retreat. But when another of the Queen’s commanders led his infantry through the village’s narrow street, they met close fire from hackbutters that Moray had placed behind cottages and hedges. Hundreds of the Queen’s men fell under the gunfire. Moray’s main force, moments ago in retreat from Herries’s cavalry charge, turned and attacked. Mary’s demoralized men began to flee, deserting. Moray’s men chased them. The Battle of Langside was over in less than an hour. Mary had lost her kingdom for a second time.

She panicked. She galloped down the slope, terrified of being captured again. Lord Herries and a dozen others loyal to her rode after her. Herries begged her to take flight for France, but Mary galloped south. In her terror she wanted to put Scotland behind her as quickly as she could.

She rode for England.

T
he night of the fireworks changed the course of many lives in England, though no one suspected the dark future as hundreds of courtiers stared, faces upturned in delight, at the starbursts of crimson and gold that lit up the terraces and pleasure grounds of Rosethorn House, the country home of Richard, Baron Thornleigh. That night, no one was more proud to belong to the baron’s family than his eighteen-year-old ward, Justine Thornleigh; she had no idea that she would soon cause a deadly division in the family and ignite a struggle between two queens. Yet she was already, innocently, on a divergent path, for as Lord and Lady Thornleigh and their multitude of guests watched the dazzle of fireworks honoring the spring visit of Queen Elizabeth, Justine was hurrying away from the public gaiety. Someone had asked to meet her in private.

“Who is it, Timothy?” she had asked the footman when he reached her beside the goldfish pond. She was shepherding three of Lord Thornleigh’s grandchildren in a game of tag and had to raise her voice above their squeals. They were a rambunctious trio, excited at being allowed to stay up late for the revels.

“I know not, my lady. She would not say. Just asked for you.”

“Behave yourselves,” she told the little ones. “Katherine, watch them, will you?” The eight-year-old took an instant tyrannical pleasure in ordering her brother and cousin to sit.

Justine hurried along the path through the knot garden crowded with strolling courtiers. She was hurrying because she wanted to get the interview over with quickly, whoever it was. She had something more exciting on her mind. She’d been told that Lord Thornleigh’s nephew, Will Croft, was somewhere among the guests. An ambitious law student, Will was never far from his patron, Sir William Cecil, and Cecil, the Queen’s most trusted councilor, was never far from her court. Tonight, most of the court was here at Rosethorn. Justine was determined that as soon as she had fulfilled her promise to entertain the children, and their nursemaid had taken them off to bed, she would find Will in the throng. One word from him, one look even, would thrill her more than all the fireworks in the kingdom.

Nevertheless she slowed, a little in awe, as she passed the open-air banqueting pavilion where the Queen was making merry with her hosts and closest courtiers. Justine had never spoken to Queen Elizabeth face-to-face, an honor she hoped one day to be worthy of, and it was thrilling to see her bantering with Lord and Lady Thornleigh. The three were old friends. Naturally, Justine thought with a glow of pride, for no monarch could ask for a more loyal nobleman than Lord Thornleigh. So commanding a man, tall, erect, with his close cropped iron-gray hair and the leather patch over his lost eye while his good eye, a blazing blue, missed nothing around him. Lady Thornleigh, elegant and gracious as ever, would always have Justine’s affection and respect, but his lordship had Justine’s love.

And what magnificent entertainment he had laid on for the Queen! The pavilion, built for her visit, was on a raised platform to give her the best view. Its canopy of scarlet silk rippled faintly in the breeze, and torches flared around it. The vista she looked out on was a dazzle of fire and water. On the terraces, fountains shot up bursts of wine that sparkled in the torchlight as if mimicking the fireworks. The man-made lake reflected the torch flames that ringed its shores. Windows in the four-story house appeared ablaze as they, in turn, reflected the burnished lake. Even the crowd shimmered, Justine thought, all the lords and ladies in their satins and silks of every jewel hue. She hoped her own finery did justice to the family; she had carefully chosen a velvet gown of cornflower blue spangled with silver stars. Lady Thornleigh had approved it for the grand event and Justine knew the color set off her fair hair well. Yet she felt a pang of regret, as she often did, at looking so unlike a Thornleigh. Her ladyship and her daughter and stepson and all their children were dark-haired, and Justine often wished that her own hair was not so brightly blond nor her eyes so very blue. Still, she took a secret delight in sharing that blue trait with Lord Thornleigh. It made her feel as though she alone was his daughter.

Trumpeters blared a fanfare. Drummers rumbled a drum roll. A signal that the next fireworks fusillade would be the crowning event? Every guest looked to Queen Elizabeth, and so did Justine. Slender at thirty-four, dressed in lustrous black and white satin, her red hair studded with pearls, Elizabeth stepped closer to the pavilion’s rose-wrapped railing to watch, a wineglass in her hand. The barrage that followed was stunning: twelve cannon boomed from earthen ramparts, shooting balls of fire high into the blackness. Justine felt the ground tremble from the blasts. People cheered. She caught the expectant looks of Lord and Lady Thornleigh standing beside their royal guest. Had this magnificent display they had arranged been worth the enormous expense?

The Queen quaffed back the last of her wine. She rapped the goblet against the railing and the bowl of the glass shattered. She stuck the broken stem in her mouth, then grinned. Sugar glass. Courtiers around her followed suit, smashing their glasses in a shower of brittle sugar and munching the shards that their servants scrambled to retrieve. The Queen threw back her head and laughed. Lord and Lady Thornleigh beamed.

Definitely worth the expense, Justine thought with a smile.

Once past the Queen’s pavilion she hurried on up the crowded terrace steps, making for Lady Thornleigh’s rose garden, where the unnamed guest was waiting. The rose garden lay at the far side of the terrace, beyond the torches, and she could make out no figure yet in its shadows. Who could want to see her? She recalled that a place for a lady-in-waiting to the Queen had recently opened up. Could this visitor be the widowed Lady Denny come to solicit her to get Lady Thornleigh to put her daughter’s name before the Queen? Or could it be the scholar’s wife from Oxford who had grabbed her sleeve on the Whitehall Palace wharf at Lent, asking her to recommend her son as a tutor to Lord Thornleigh’s eldest grandson? Justine was determined to protect her guardians from excessive demands on their largesse. She would take Lady Thornleigh only the petitions of the deserving.

Another fusillade of fireworks burst behind her with such a mighty noise, a
whoosh
like a thousand arrows let fly, she stopped and looked up. Five enormous bursts of fire hung suspended for a moment, then rained down in a shower of gold. Justine had to admire the wild beauty of it. It was as if the stars were falling from the sky. It gave her goose bumps, for it seemed to herald success with her vow to speak to Will before the night was out. This time, she would let him know her heart. Unmaidenly behavior, no doubt, but she didn’t care.

She had loved Will Croft from the moment she first saw him. Eight years ago when Lord Thornleigh had brought her into his London home, she was a frightened ten-year-old whose world had been devastated. Bewildered and withdrawn, she had responded to Lord and Lady Thornleighs’ gentle questions with tight one-word answers, for although they were kindness itself, she had so much anxiety knotted up inside her, she was afraid to open her mouth lest her fears shoot out in words and turn these good people against her. They had taken her in, telling everyone she was the orphan of a distant Thornleigh relation. No one beyond the immediate family knew the truth: that she was the child of a traitor. One evening, creeping into the parlor as the family went into the great hall for supper, Justine had stood in lonely silence, trying to rouse courage to join them, to speak, to allow herself to hope that they really would accept her as one of them.

“I’m not too hungry myself,” a voice said, startling her. She turned. He was sitting on the window seat tucked into an alcove, reading a book. A lad a few years older than Justine, thirteen or fourteen she guessed, lanky, his long legs stretched out along the window seat, perfectly at home. He glanced up at her, pushing aside a lock of his thick dark hair that had tumbled over his eyebrow. “Ever read Leland’s histories?”

She shook her head. But said not a word. Who was he?

“He says there actually was a King Arthur of Camelot. Says there’s evidence to reconstruct Arthur’s lost tomb at Glastonbury Abbey. Ever been there?”

Another shake of her head.

“I haven’t either. I’d like to, though. What’s even more interesting, he identifies the hill fort of Cadbury Castle in Somerset as Camelot. Listen to this.” He read: “At the south end of the church of South Cadbury stands Camalat, once a famous castle town, upon a tor or hill, wonderfully strengthened by nature. The people there have heard say that Arthur much resorted to Camalat.”

Curiosity tingled her. “Isn’t King Arthur just a fairy tale?”

He looked up at her over the page. She realized she had spoken her first sentence in weeks. The smile in his gentle brown eyes told her that he knew it, too. He said, “I like to have all the facts before I make up my mind.”

Suddenly, so did she.

“Sit down,” he said, “and I’ll read you about Queen Guinevere. She was his love, you know. He would have laid down his life for her.”

Shyly, Justine perched on the edge of the window seat.

He smiled. “I’m Will. They won’t miss us in there.” He flipped a page. “Listen to this.”

And he read to her for maybe half an hour, maybe an hour, she was too enthralled to notice. By the time he closed the book Justine was curled up in the other corner of the window seat, dreaming of how, if Will ever should need it, she would lay down her life for him.

But the next day he was gone. To Oxford, she was told. Thirteen was when promising young gentlemen started their studies at the university, and Will Croft, Lord Thornleigh’s nephew—for that’s who they told her he was—was preparing for a life in the law. Justine thought about him often, and whenever she opened a book it was his voice she heard reading, but she did not see him again for eight years. Then, four months ago, at the Queen’s Twelfth Night revels at Hampton Court, there he was. Justine’s heart had leapt. He was a man now, twenty-one, almost as tall as Lord Thornleigh, but with the same boyish lanky limbs she remembered, the same gentle brown eyes, the same lock of thick dark hair tumbling over his eyebrow. He had looked at her in surprise, as though astonished to find her grown up, too.

“Did you get to Glastonbury and find King Arthur’s tomb?” she asked, unable to mask the glow that radiated from her heart.

He smiled. He remembered! “Not yet. It’s good to have a mystery or two waiting to be unlocked, don’t you think?”

She had danced with him, and wished the music would never end. Not that he was the best dancer. Rather gangly, really. No, it was the way he answered her questions about the Inns of Court in London where he was now studying law—answered as if he were struggling to keep his mind off her. And the way he pushed back the curling lock of hair that kept falling in his eyes—pushed it as if annoyed at it for breaking his concentration on her. By the time he had made of point of dancing with her three more times that night, Justine was sure he felt as she did. Every day since then she had relived the thrill of his hand on her hip in the dance. But, maddeningly, they had seen each other only twice more, both times at Whitehall Palace, surrounded by people, no chance to talk. There might as well have been a wall between them. Tonight she was bursting to open a door in that wall.

She reached the rose garden and passed under its brick entrance arch. Inside, the trellised walls reached as high as her shoulders. The blooms, dusky red in the darkness, perfumed the air. The light was dim, the torches now so far away, but moonlight silvered the foliage. The voices and laughter on the terrace sounded fainter, and Justine’s footsteps crunched softly on the gravel path. She stopped. Trellised alleys radiated out from the arch, but she saw no one. A bat flitted down the right-hand alley. In the distance behind her, musicians struck up a tune.
The Queen will be dancing,
she thought.

There was a rustling as from a satin gown. She looked down the left alley. At the far end a figure stood in shadow, her dark red satin cloak the color of claret, like the roses. Justine went to meet her, thinking how odd it was that the hood of the lady’s cloak was pulled up, putting her face in even darker shadow. The night was warm; no need for a hood.

“You came,” the lady whispered when Justine reached her. The two words carried surprise and relief. And a touch of fear, Justine thought.

“Madam? May I know your name?”

The lady threw back her hood and lifted her head so that the moonlight made her features clear. Justine gasped. Could it be? “Alice?”

A smile. “Justine.”

It had been eight years! Justine had been ten when they’d parted, Alice twelve. But she would know Alice Boyer anywhere, the dearest friend of her childhood. “Good heavens!” she cried.

“Shh!”

Justine grabbed Alice’s hands in delight, but was immediately shocked at the feel of her skin, as rough as a field worker’s. From the time Alice was seven she had been a seamstress in the household of Justine’s father. By twelve she was an expert needlewoman, the kind that ladies vied for. But recently, it seemed, her hands had been at work far harder than plying a needle.

Alice flinched at the reaction and pulled her hands free. Justine took in her friend’s whole appearance. Under the fine satin cloak she wore a dress as brown as a burr and of a wool almost as coarse. It was frayed at the neckline and smelled faintly of bacon fat. She wore no jewelry. Nor needed any, Justine thought. Though a servant, Alice had a beauty that would put any great lady to shame. Lustrous auburn hair, skin like cream, full lips, and a statuesque figure that gave her the bearing of a duchess.

“I lifted this from the Marchioness,” Alice said, fingering the fine cloak. “To get me in here.” A sly smile. “What odds she never noticed? She has five others.”