His Dark Lady (56 page)

With memories of the Tower looming darkly in her mind, Lucy sank to both knees before the Queen and bowed her head. ‘Your Majesty.’

‘I hear you were married without permission while away from my court,’ the Queen remarked coldly, ‘and are now a widow. That you should be known from now on as Mistress Parker.’

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

There was a long silence. The fire crackled at Lucy’s back, and a log popped loudly in the flames. Finally, the Queen clicked her fingers, signalling her to rise.

‘I do not like this name, Parker. It is a common one.’ There was a petulant note to the Queen’s voice. ‘And I do not like it that a woman must take her husband’s name in this slavish fashion. Lucy Morgan suited you well enough. Since your husband is dead and cannot call us to account for it, I shall know you still as Mistress Morgan. How others address you at court is your own affair.’

Lucy said nothing, but waited. She knew there must be more, or the Queen would not have summoned her.

‘I am curious about you, Mistress Morgan. You owe your return to court to Lord Leicester,’ Queen Elizabeth continued, her thin lips pursed as she examined Lucy’s gown with apparent disapproval. ‘His lordship argued most passionately on your behalf. Though I am told Sir Francis also took you under his wing on your departure from court. Is that true?’

Lucy hesitated, her gaze carefully lowered to the floor. Sir Francis had not instructed her to keep his arrangements for her marriage secret, so it seemed safe enough to comment. Besides, if she was to keep this new place at court, she must be prepared to abase herself before the Queen and tell the truth. It galled her, yet she must do it. The Queen would accept nothing less than her complete obedience. And she had no pride left to chafe her conscience, surely? Not after everything that had happened to her.

‘Yes, Your Majesty. I am most grateful to Sir Francis for his kind help, which I did not deserve.’

‘Indeed,’ the Queen replied drily. She tapped her fingers on the arm of her high-backed seat. ‘Well, it seems you have friends at court, and so may stay while your favour lasts. Only remember to keep yourself chaste this time, Mistress Morgan, and obedient to your betters. You may be a widow now and not to be watched as closely as a virgin, but I will have no light women in my service. Is that clear?’

Lucy curtsied. ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

‘Now go and seek some better gowns for yourself from the keeper of the royal wardrobe. You cannot come to court like that. And since I will need you for state occasions, a bedchamber and a servant have also been arranged for you.’ As Lucy bowed out of the Privy Chamber in a display of humility, the Queen called sharply after her. ‘You have been granted bouge of court again, Mistress Morgan. Do not be a fool this time and lose it through neglecting your honour.’

The next morning, having been woken by the now unfamiliar sounds of a great palace stirring in the dawn light, Lucy took herself to the chambers of the royal wardrobe to be measured for a gown. She was standing in her undershift, being presented with an array of court gowns discarded by Queen Elizabeth as worn too often or not flattering enough to her hair or figure, when there was a loud knock at the door and it began to open.

‘Go away!’ one of the women called, looking shocked at the intrusion.

A very young, curly-haired pageboy grinned round the door frame, ignoring cries of outrage from the other ladies present.

‘Is Mistress Morgan here?’ he asked in a high voice.

‘Yes.’ Lucy frowned, holding up a gown to conceal her semi-clad body. ‘What is it?”

Then the door opened fully to reveal Cathy standing there, flushed and smiling, still in her travelling gown and cap, her hem dirty from the road.

Lucy shrieked with joy and ran forward, forgetting to cover herself in front of the pageboy. ‘Cathy!’

They embraced fiercely, while the ladies pushed the page from the room and closed the heavy door against other passers-by.

Lucy was astonished but delighted to see her old friend. ‘I was so sorry to hear about your husband. You must miss him terribly. But how are you here? I thought you were nursing your mother?’

‘She passed away ten days ago,’ Cathy told her, and her smile was sad. ‘Just after I wrote to you last. I was so distressed after we buried her, I did not know what to do with myself. Then I received a letter and a purse of coins, bidding me to court as your maid, by order of Sir Francis Walsingham himself.’

Drawing back in shock, Lucy held her at arm’s length. She felt unsteady. ‘My
maid
?’ she repeated. ‘But no, Sir Francis must have made a mistake. You … you are an entertainer, not a servant.’

Cathy shook her head. ‘I was never a gifted singer, Lucy. Not like you. And now I cannot even dance any more. See?’ She lifted her skirt to reveal that one of her shoes was built higher than the other. ‘I broke my ankle falling from a roof in the autumn. My own silly fault, thinking I could mend the thatch as well as a man. But it healed poorly, for I was busy about the house and not able to let it rest. Now I walk with a limp, and they say I shall never dance again.’

‘Oh, my dearest.’ Lucy held her close. Her heart hurt at the thought of her lively, fair-haired Cathy unable to dance, she who had loved so much to shine at court. ‘But for you to be my servant! It does not seem right.’

‘I am a widow now, remember? Just as you are. You will not deny me a chance to earn my keep, surely?’ Cathy’s face was suddenly pale. ‘If you refuse my service, I will be forced to return to Norfolk and beg a crust at my father-in-law’s farm, where my son is being brought up.’

Lucy stared. ‘You left him behind?’

‘I could not bring a young child to court. Not as a servant,’ Cathy explained quietly. ‘He will be well fed and cared for on the farm, and whatever I earn will be kept safe to pay for his education.’

‘I’m not sure—’ Lucy began, but Cathy interrupted her, her voice catching on a sob.

‘Do not turn me away, Lucy, for the sake of our old friendship. I have no money left and no place else to go.’

‘Mistress Morgan, please,’ one of the tiring women said impatiently at their backs, holding up a dark velvet gown with a lacy bodice for Lucy to try. ‘We must hurry. There are other women to be measured this morning, and we have not yet come to an agreement on which gowns you are to be allowed from the royal wardrobe.’

‘Of course,’ Lucy told the woman swiftly. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’

She turned to Cathy and squeezed her hands. ‘Since you are so very determined to stay, then I cannot tell you no. We shall make it work, the two of us together. Now will you not take off your cloak and help me into this gown? I fear I may be too broad in the hips for it, but the velvet is so fine, I would dearly love to wear it about the court. What do you think?’

Cathy managed a smile, beginning to unfasten her cloak. ‘I think Sir Francis Walsingham is a very wise man.’

Nine

Fotheringay Castle, Northamptonshire, 8 February 1587

IT WAS ALMOST
dawn when Goodluck showed his papers at the castle lodge and was escorted with another group of waiting gentlemen through the castle to a chamber with no chairs but a good fire and some cups of spiced wine set out, to warm them in the bitter February weather.

Goodluck took a cup of wine and sipped at it, glancing covertly about the room.

One of the other men looked at him, frowning. ‘I do not think I know you, sir.’

Goodluck inclined his head politely, but did not give his name. ‘I am here on state business, sir. You must forgive me,’ he said, and moved to stand apart.

Nobody else spoke much after that. More gentlemen arrived under escort and soon the room was crowded, but awkwardly silent. Then an usher appeared at the door in livery and, after a brief announcement about the proceedings to come, led them in an orderly fashion to the Great Hall. There, wooden chairs had been set out in rows; these had been alloted to most of the gentlemen and nobles present. Those without a seat allocation were told to stand about the room wherever they felt most comfortable, but not to crowd too close either to the raised platform at the centre, or to the far door, which stood closed and was guarded by stout-faced yeomen.

Goodluck took up a position near the fire, and was glad of its heat at his back. The weather was damp that morning, and the wind had cut him to the quick as he had walked in the darkness before dawn from last night’s lodging-place to Fotheringay Castle.

He recognized a few faces among those seated nearest the dais. One or two seemed to glance at Goodluck with more than passing interest. He was disguised as a local gentleman that day, wearing a country suit and hat, and carrying a stout cane instead of his sword. But there had not been much he could do about his beard, presently regrown in its grey and sable splendour, and quite distinctive to friends and enemies alike.

Now that they were in the execution room itself, with its generous crackling fire and tapestry-hung walls, the assembled gentry seemed more cheerful. Men talked among themselves about the weather, or stared with frank curiosity at the raised platform that dominated the Great Hall. Some five feet high, it had been railed off on three sides from the spectators, for all the world as though for a wrestling match – except for the yards of black crêpe with which it had been hung. At one end stood a high-backed seat, presumably intended for the exiled queen, and several other seats for witnesses, set about the dais. In grim opposition to these more comfortable objects stood the block, rough and stained, where her head would soon be laid.

Standing to one side on the dais were the executioner and his assistant, both large men, their arms folded over the black gowns and white aprons of their trade. Today at least, Goodluck thought darkly, there would be no dragging out the traitor’s innards while she was still alive and begging for mercy. For royalty, the penalty was beheading; an easy death by comparison with that suffered by less exalted conspirators.

The guards on the door into the antechamber drew themselves up as it opened. Several sombre-looking men entered, accompanied by a small party of soldiers, and a priest holding a Bible, from which he was reading as he walked.

Behind them came Mary Stuart herself, holding herself with dignity in a black gown with a red velvet bodice, a white veil trailing down her back from her cap. Her face was ashen pale, and her eyes red from recent weeping, yet she seemed composed.

A muttering filled the room as Mary hesitated at the foot of the
platform
, her eyes on the block that awaited her. Then a soldier came forward, taking each arm, and firmly escorted the Queen up the steps to the dais.

Passing the low wooden block, Mary seemed to stumble but recovered herself, and was even smiling as she settled herself into the high-backed chair.

The death warrant was then read aloud to the Queen and the crowd, in case any believed the proceedings not to be legally conducted. Goodluck barely heard a word, his attention on the faces of the rapt assembly instead. If any rebel traitor was in the room that morning, he felt sure some flicker of despair would betray him now, at the death of his best hope for a Catholic England.

But although he saw pity and discomposure on many faces there, he found no outward signs of anger.

The Dean of Peterborough stood to address the Queen, asking her to accept ‘the comfortable promises of Almighty God to all penitent believing Christians’, but was rudely interrupted by Mary herself, who insisted in a strong French accent that she was a true Catholic and had no need of his English comforts. She had been raised at the French court, Goodluck recalled, and was still by all accounts a popular figure there – though none of her followers in Paris had ever stirred themselves to obtain her release.

‘Mr Dean!’ she exclaimed, when the priest ignored this shrill outburst and attempted to continue with his address. ‘I beg you not to trouble yourself with the salvation of my soul. You should know that I am settled in the ancient Catholic and Roman faith, and I mean to spend my blood today in its defence.’

Rising from her seat, her face flushed with sudden indignation, Mary dropped to her knees in the centre of the platform and began to pray loudly in Latin. Her servants at once joined in, kneeling around her as though to protect their mistress from interference. One of her women handed her a white crucifix which the Queen raised first to heaven and then kissed, praying ever more passionately in Latin, and weeping as she did so.

The Dean of Peterborough stared at Mary with undisguised loathing, then stalked to the far end of the platform. There, the block waited starkly for her neck.

The dean spoke briefly with the executioner, his back turned, but
the
Scots Queen’s gaze had followed him – and lighted on the block.

More unnecessary cruelty, Goodluck noted. His bile rose. Did the officious bastard have to wave his triumph in her face? The dean had wished to remind Mary that she might have won that particular battle, but the end of the war was in sight.

Finishing her prayers, Mary spoke with each of her weeping servants in turn, then allowed the executioners to approach and kneel before her.