His Dark Lady (35 page)

Burbage came to Will’s elbow, muttering in his ear. ‘Let it drop, Will,’ he told him urgently. ‘I have seen this fellow Carter in a fight before, and he knows his business. The quarrel is not worth your death.’

Will ignored him, pushing Lucy behind him as though to protect her. ‘The lady is here with me,’ he said stubbornly. His jaw clenched as he raised the point of his dagger towards Carter’s face. ‘And I will defend her honour to the death.’

Burbage swore softly under his breath. But he drew the sword at his side with a bow and a mocking flourish as though still on stage. ‘And I, too. Come, shall we make a fight of it?’

‘Defend her honour?’ Carter repeated, in apparent disbelief, and his friends roared with laughter. But he looked assessingly at Will’s stern face, then at the sword in Burbage’s hand, and shrugged. ‘Well, well! Such stout protectors. The great Master Burbage himself taking up steel in her defence … But then, you theatre folk love to share your goods in common, do you not?’ He smiled unpleasantly. ‘Perhaps I was mistaken in calling her a whore. You must forgive my error. It grows dark, after all, and the wench is the same colour as the sky.’

Will started forward with a growl, and Burbage caught him hard by the arm. Parker was at his other arm in an instant, both men holding Will back with an effort as he strained to be free.

‘I’ll rip your throat out, you bastard!’ Will choked.

But the man called Carter had already turned away, sheathing his dagger and pushing through his watching friends into the tavern. Slowly, these men followed Carter inside, muttering and shaking their heads as though frustrated that the quarrel had not developed, the youngest even making a brief, obscene gesture in Lucy’s direction before hurrying after them.

‘Leave it, Will,’ his friend Parker muttered. ‘He is a fool, and not worth spitting on your dagger. Listen to Master Burbage. Take Mistress Morgan home and enjoy the rest of your evening.’ With Will still staring fixedly after the men into the crowded tavern, Parker raised his voice. ‘Look to your lady, Will.’

At that, Will turned to look at Lucy. She lowered her head, not wishing him to see the fear in her face.

Will slipped his arm back around her waist. ‘Come, Lucy,’ he said doggedly, ‘let me escort you safely back to your home. The streets of this city are overrun with vermin.’

They walked in silence through the dark streets, Will’s arm tightly round her, her head on his shoulder. No longer tired but with all her nerves on edge, Lucy turned the quarrel over in her mind. Even with Will by her side, ready to protect her, Lucy thought she had never felt so alone. Nor so vulnerable.

They came to the door of the house that had belonged to
Goodluck
. She could see the low flicker of the fire through a crack in the door, and knew that Cathy had been waiting up for her. They had no spills left for light, so the fire had to be kept lit after dark. Lucy felt a stab of guilt, and pulled away from Will’s tight hold. She had been gone for hours, leaving her poor friend alone in the house with only her baby son for company. But the delicious lure of time spent with Will and his friends had been too much for her.

‘Will,’ she asked suddenly, ‘why do you not marry me? Is it because of the colour of my skin?’

‘What?’ Will seemed amazed. He stared back at Lucy for a moment, then demanded, ‘How can you ask such a question when I have just risked my life and the life of my friends to defend your honour?’

‘A black whore is a fine catch for your bachelor days,’ she continued steadily, ‘but not good enough for your marriage bed, is that it?’

‘You are no whore, Lucy.’

‘That is no answer.’

‘It is all the answer you will receive from me on this matter,’ Will said flatly, then pulled her close and kissed her.

They stood in the doorway a few moments, locked together in silence. His hands caressed her spine through the thin fabric of her gown, his lips warm and persuasive.

‘Let me in, Lucy,’ he whispered against her throat. ‘That braggart frightened you, that is the only reason you are upset. But you do not have to sleep alone tonight.’

Yes, she wanted him in her bed again tonight. Her body craved his. But the nights stretched out, and still no promise of a wedding. If they continued like this, lying together like man and wife night after night, taking no care to avoid a child, he would soon ruin her and she knew it. Lucy turned to unlatch the door. She shook her head when he would have followed her inside.

‘You may come to my bed again when I have had a proper answer, Will Shakespeare, and not before.’ He might be a player, but she would not be played for a fool. ‘No, you cannot come in tonight. My mind is made up. If you can say nothing, then you shall have nothing.’

Nine

ELIZABETH RETRIEVED ROBERT’S
letter from the table and read through it for a fifth time. It was brutally short, not written in his more habitual flowery or persuasive style. Was he unwell? Angry with her? She looked at his signature and traced it slowly with one finger. Why should Robert be angry with her? There was no more money for Robert beyond that which she had already ordered to be sent to the captains, or not until the armies’ musterbooks were seen to be in order, at least. And if his anger had a more personal spur, she was the Queen and had every right to demand that his wife should remain in England and not join him at his dubious English ‘court’ abroad.

Elizabeth threw his letter aside again and limped to the window of the Royal Bedchamber. The ulcer on her leg was a nuisance. Yet she would not sit still. That way lay death. Or decrepitude, which was as good as death. The common people must see her up and about. They were at war. They must believe their queen whole and hale. She leaned her arms on the wooden sill and stared out. Richmond was a fine palace, and she loved to visit it in the summer months when she was not away on progress, but this year it felt more like a prison. The satisfying warmth of an English summer streaming through the glass, reflected sunlight dazzling on the ornamental lake below, and yet she hardly dared venture outside for fear of assassins hidden behind every tree or concealed among the flattering smiles of her courtiers.

Meanwhile, Robert remained abroad, and even Walter Raleigh, whose saucy looks and country accent amused her, had upped and gone home against her command. Another one who would not bow to her authority but must wend his own way. Now there were only old men and boys at court to play chess or dance the volta with her.

The war must be won. They had poured too much of England into it. The royal coffers had been depleted to pay the soldiers the hugely inflated salaries Robert had insisted upon. And still the English and their allies lost battles they should have won, and made little headway. Yet to call Robert home would be to admit defeat. She must be brave and hold her nerve, however bad the news.

One of her ladies sighed, sitting on a cushion on the sunlit floor, and she glanced back at her. Under her own instruction, Robert’s niece, Lady Mary Herbert, was copying out a sonnet of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s on the back of an old sheet of parchment. She was an intelligent young woman, Elizabeth thought, watching her with interest. Indeed, now that her relentless child-bearing of the past few years seemed to be at an end, Lady Mary’s own poetry had begun to find some admirers at court. Elizabeth had thought to enclose the sonnet with her next letter to Robert, as a reminder of happier times when they had read Wyatt’s poetry together as youths. Now she thought such an act would only encourage him to write more abrupt, discourteous letters, considering her entirely in his thrall.

Helena sat at the tapestry stand, embroidering a new scene for Elizabeth’s bedchamber that depicted the young lovers Cupid and Psyche at play. A less fitting image to hang above her bed she could not imagine. Yet it seemed to amuse Helena, whose spirits had been low in recent months.

Elizabeth knew what ailed Lady Helena these days. The Swedish-born noblewoman had been so beautiful in her youth, a star of the English court. But now Helena’s skin was almost as wrinkled as Elizabeth’s own, and she no longer turned the courtiers’ heads as she walked in the Queen’s wake. And with so many of the noblemen in their prime still away at the war, the court had become a lonely place for a woman in her middle years.

There was a knock at the door and Sir Francis Walsingham entered with no formal announcement, leaning on a stick. She wondered if he was ill again. Best not to comment, though. Her own
legs
were too often in need of the physician’s attention these days. It was never wise to draw attention to another’s ailments.

Walsingham bowed gravely to the ladies, then approached her, a letter in his hand.

‘Not more bad news?’ she demanded. That grim look again. She dreaded it, but knew it must be faced. ‘When I heard you had returned to court, I thought it was to entertain me with news of London. But I see from your face it is to frighten me with more tales of dark deeds and treachery.’

‘Forgive me, Your Majesty.’ He gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Would you rather walk in darkness or light?’

She sighed and settled herself at the table. ‘Very well. Tell me the worst, old friend.’

‘You remember young Gifford?’

Elizabeth shuddered, recalling her night-time visit to the Tower and its vile dungeons. ‘Only too well. The poor boy is not back in Master Topcliffe’s clutches, I trust?’

‘Indeed not, Your Majesty.’ Walsingham handed across the letter. ‘He has played his part with great cunning and ingenuity, intercepting letters for us almost every week between your cousin Mary and the conspirators. That information has allowed me to plant a select few of my own men among them, and so to watch these plotters more closely. But it has not been easy to infiltrate their ranks. They are clever and know their business. Some would appear to have taken training from Thomas Morgan in Paris, and to have studied with other such traitors here in England, all men skilled in the art of political intrigue. Their letters are written in a new code, which took us some time to break. But as you can see, they have now been decoded into plain English.’

‘So you believe this is another letter from my cousin to these men you have been watching, these Catholic plotters?’

The letter was several sheets thick. Elizabeth frowned, unrolling them and holding the parchment a little away from her so the crabbed letters did not dance in front of her eyes. Her eyesight was no longer good for close reading, but she would not have everything read out to her as though she were blind.

‘Beyond any doubt, Your Majesty. The original is here, if you wish to verify your cousin’s signature.’

Slowly, she read over the decoded letter with growing unease, then took up the original and studied the signature. It was indeed Mary’s hand. There was a short postscript with, inserted above it, this damning command: ‘Fail not to burn this privately and quickly.’

‘Who is this Anthony Babington to whom she writes so intimately? Apart from a traitor to my throne, that is.’ Elizabeth scanned her cousin’s incriminating postscript, then threw the sheets down with a sudden vehemence. ‘Is Babington her lover, that Mary addresses him at such length and with such disregard for her own discovery?’

‘I do not believe so, Your Majesty. I suspect merely that your cousin grows weary of captivity, and weariness makes her reckless. In her earlier responses to Catholic conspirators, she was cautious, almost diffident. Yet now she makes no effort to hide her interest in this plot, and all but condones your assassination at the end.’ He picked up the letters and showed her the last sheet of the decoded one himself, lowering his voice so her ladies-in-waiting should not overhear. ‘Did you note her postscript, Your Majesty, in which Mary asks for details of how these men intend to do away with you?’

‘I did note it, yes,’ she said curtly. ‘And felt sick.’

‘Is this letter not enough to condemn her—’

Elizabeth stood up, knocking her chair backwards with a clatter. Her ladies looked up in wonder, but at one freezing look from Elizabeth they bowed their heads again to their work.

‘No, a thousand times no!’ she exclaimed, then had to snatch a breath, leaning over the table as pain shot through her stomach. ‘I have told you before, Walsingham, I will not have the sacred blood of a queen on my hands. You may bring me a dozen such letters every year, and still I shall not order my cousin’s death.’

Walsingham stood silent while she recovered, watching her. ‘Should I send for your physicians, Your Majesty?’

‘No, I shall be better in a moment.’ She stood waiting for the fit to pass, her jaw clenched. She would not show further weakness by sitting down or allowing him to summon help. Her leg ulcer throbbed but she ignored it. ‘Besides, my physicians would only bleed me, and then I would be in no fit state to govern. It is bad bile, nothing more. An imbalance of the humours. A momentary spasm. Call it what you will, it soon passes.’

‘Brought on by too many unnecessary worries,’ Walsingham said, and there was genuine concern in his voice. ‘Allow me to remove this source of worry for you, Your Majesty, and launch an inquiry into the contents of this treasonous letter. We can draw our own conclusions here in this room, but to act upon those conclusions will involve more sturdy measures. Your cousin Mary will need to be properly questioned over her dealings with these plotters, and the various letters we have intercepted should be examined by a jury of trusted gentlemen. Only then can we be sure of the truth.’