The Queen's Lady
Authors: Eve Edwards
EVE EDWARDS
has a doctorate from Oxford University and thinks researching is a large part of the fun in writing historical fiction. She has visited Tudor houses, attended jousts and eaten Elizabethan banquets to get the sights, sounds and tastes right for this book. And, yes, she can testify that it is possible to eat neatly Tudor-style without a fork. She lives in Oxford and is married with three children.
Books by Eve Edwards
The Other Countess
The Queen’s Lady
RAZORBILL
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published 2011
Copyright © Eve Edwards, 2011
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN:
978-0-14-132734-1
For Lucy Drake
Contents
Prologue
1583
Rievaulx House, Yorkshire
It was a sad fate to have only three people in the world that really cared about her. Resting a palm against the cold pane, Jane gazed out at the red brick gatehouse and the rutted road leading on to the moor as she counted them off in her mind. Worse was the fact that one was denied her by marriage to a man Jane had abruptly jilted; the second was far away, finishing her a suit of mourning clothes; and the third lay dying in the chamber next door.
‘Jane?’ Jonas’s voice had grown weaker this past hour.
Gripping the stone windowsill, Jane struggled for the composure she sorely needed. She couldn’t bear it if he left her, but they both recognized he now had no choice.
‘I’m here, Jonas.’ Jane turned from the view of barren hills to hurry into his chamber, her heavy pink-satin petticoats rustling in the hush of the sickroom. Drapes were drawn across the windows, leaving the bedroom in perpetual twilight. The feeling of gloom was deepened by the sombre arras covering the walls and deep red bed hangings embroidered with gold thread – so old fashioned but she had not had time to change them for something more cheerful. The air, sweetened with lavender and dried rose-petals, still bore the unmistakable undertone of sour sweat.
Jonas reached out a frail hand, the back a knot of blue veins, knuckles prominent like limpet shells sticking to a sea-washed rock. ‘You’ve been a good girl, Jane.’
That was not how she saw herself, but then he had always believed the best of her ever since he had come to her rescue six months ago. Jane blinked away tears, determined not to burden him with her sorrow.
‘Jonas, try not to speak – don’t waste your breath on me.’
Grey hair curling from under his nightcap, face frozen on one side, Jonas Paton, Marquess of Rievaulx, had been felled by a stroke two weeks before. Already in frail health, his slide towards the grave was now inevitable. At seventy, the marquess was content, believing he had had more than his fair share of life. Only one thing he regretted and that was the plight in which he would leave his young bride.
‘My sons – they gather below – crows coming to feast on my corpse.’ Jonas fretted at the velvet counterpane. His words came out thick as his mouth refused to cooperate with his quick brain.
‘Hush now.’ Jane knelt by his side, stroking the back of his hand.
‘ ’Tis true, and you know it, Jane. They showed little love to me while I lived; they’ll show you no mercy once I’m gone.’
Jane shook her head denying this, but she knew he only spoke the truth. Her stepsons hated the seventeen-year-old girl their father had wed in what they considered an outbreak of senility. They did not understand that the marquess had wed Lady Jane Perceval not for a wife but as a rescue. Punished harshly for breaking a match with an earl, Jane had been sent in disgrace to the family seat at Stafford Grange, North Yorkshire, and left there ‘to rot on the moors’, as her father, the Earl of Wetherby, had so bluntly put it. He had imposed a regime of prayer and fasting, combined with corporal punishment to bend her rebellious flesh to his will, treating her as if she were a child. Jane’s confidence, once so high as she charmed lords at Elizabeth’s court, had been destroyed; her belief in her own worth undermined. Written off by her father as an expensive failure, she had truly begun to think herself one. While her brother, Henry, flourished at court, and her one-time lover, Walter Ralegh, reigned as the Queen’s favourite, she languished in her rustic prison.
That was until Jonas Paton came to visit Stafford Grange for the hunting. Expecting to kill a few deer, he came away with quite another quarry. A clever man of quiet Catholic persuasions, the marquess recognized Jane’s persecution for what it was – a sentence without fair trial or hope of paternal forgiveness. He took pity on the girl and saved her by offering marriage, the only key that would open her prison door. The arrangement had proved a happy one for both parties: he got a youthful friend to brighten his final days and she a wise companion. In the last six months, Jonas had been more of a father to her than her own had ever been. There had been no question of him taking her to his bed – he had no desire for more children with a clutch of legitimate sons to inherit – but he had certainly made her feel cherished with his tender consideration.
‘Ah, Jane, there’ll be little money in the settlement – my sons will fight even your dower rights as they know our union was not consummated,’ Jonas said softly. ‘But I’ve made sure you keep your dowry – you’ll need it again.’
‘I don’t want money.’ Jane curled her lip as she remembered with disgust her own selfish thoughts of but a year ago when she had considered marriage to an ailing nobleman, who would leave her a rich widow, the summit of her desires. Now she had got her wish, she cursed herself for ever tempting fate to punish her by giving her what she had wanted.
‘But you will need it, little bird. And this time it will be under your control, not your father’s. I got that promise on our wedding day. There’s a trust – my lawyers, Baines and Rochester, are your official guardians until you are twenty-five, but they understand you are competent to manage your affairs yourself.’
‘Jonas –’
‘No, Jane, we have to talk of these matters. When I die, you must get away from here. You won’t be safe from my sons. Richard will be after your money to sustain the Rievaulx estate, and Otho and Lucres have always followed his lead, more’s the pity. But with my title and your beauty, you are sure of a welcome at court. I’ve asked an old friend – Blanche Parry – remember me mentioning her? She’ll see you to a good position in the Queen’s household after your mourning is over.’
Jane bent forward and rested her forehead on his hand, trying to smother her sobs.
‘There now, we got you free, did we not?’ Jonas fingered a lock of her heavy honey-blonde hair as it escaped from her headdress, twining it round his thumb, then letting it go. ‘Time for you to soar. It pleases me to think of you like that – happy.’
She kissed his fingers. ‘Jonas, you are the best man I’ve ever known.’
‘I think, my dear,’ he whispered, voice sinking a notch lower, ‘you should send for the priest … and my sons. I wish to bid them farewell while I still can. I’ll make them promise to look after you … but I have little hope they will hold to their word.’
She sat up, recalling the many duties that fell to her as mistress of a marquess’s household. ‘I’ll fetch them. And … and if they vex you, I’ll box their ears, see if I don’t!’
Her defence of his peace made Jonas smile, as she had hoped. ‘Don’t mourn me long, Jane. I’m not worth so many tears. Had to do things in my life I regret – so many terrible choices … to survive. Pray for my soul. Fetch Father Newton now.’
‘Yes, at once.’ Jane brushed a final kiss on his brow and went to summon the family.
The Spanish Low Countries, near Dunkirk
A bitter wind blew off the Channel, wiping away the smoke still rising from the burnt-out village like a damp cloth over a schoolboy’s slate. The black silhouettes of inn, houses and barns stood out starkly in the gloom against the frost-hardened lake where once the children would have skated in winter sports. James Lacey knelt by the body of one of them, covering the girl’s face with her little apron. His hands shook as he saw the message embroidered on the pocket – a mother’s blessing on her child. A lot of good that had done her. Philip of Spain’s troops under the Duke of Palma had carelessly destroyed this nameless village in some senseless reprisal for an attack by the Duke of Anjou’s Dutch fighters. Spanish Fury, the locals called it. James called it a massacre of the innocent.
It wasn’t the first outrage he had witnessed, nor would it be the last in this ugly war, but this particular one had finally killed something inside him – the last glimmer of faith that a military campaign could be honourable.
‘My lord?’ His blackamoor manservant approached, leading two horses. They were hard to make out in the darkness as the metalwork on the harness had been dulled, hooves muffled by sackcloth. ‘We must go, sir – they may come back at any moment.’
‘God’s mercy, Diego, can’t we even bury the children?’ James’s question was not one he expected his servant to answer; they both knew they had little time to complete this surveillance mission behind enemy lines. He was carrying information that had to reach Anjou and his English military advisers.
Diego bowed his head.
‘Aye, I know it. But why?’ James addressed the last to the blank skies. The only answer he received was a flake of snow catching on his eyelashes like a frozen tear. God had hardened his heart against his people, leaving them to suffer the two plagues of rampaging troops and cruel Inquisition from their merciless overlord, King Philip of Spain. With the Protestant Dutch hard pressed in the Low Countries, the Spanish in possession of Dunkirk and Nieupoort, a bridgehead to England should they wish to invade, it seemed to James that God had turned Catholic and was intent on bringing Elizabeth’s nation to its knees.
‘Come, my lord.’ Diego held out a hand.
James took the blackamoor’s strong palm in his and got to his feet. Diego was only a year younger than he but appeared to be coping with the traumatic sights far better than his master. James swayed, the corpse dragging on his spirits like a sea anchor.
He took a deep breath, swallowing against a surge of nausea. ‘You have the reports?’
Diego tapped the leather pouch slung across his chest. ‘Secure, my lord.’
‘Then we ride on.’ James mounted his black gelding and urged the horse off the exposed road. Taking to the countryside to avoid Spanish patrols, Her Majesty’s spies disappeared into the woods.