The Twylight Tower (2 page)

THE QUEEN KNEW A STORM WAS COMING,
but it wasn’t going to halt her necessary duty.

“I cannot fathom this large a crowd could form so quickly with bad weather threatening,” Elizabeth observed as her chief adviser, Lord William Cecil, and her Horse Master, Robert Dudley, escorted her from the palace toward the public street. Other counselors and courtiers trailed after her as the crimson-clad yeoman guards used their halberds horizontally to hold back the press of people.

“It is hardly popular fervor to see Cecil off to Scotland to negotiate a dry, nitpicking treaty, Your Grace,” Robert put in before Cecil could say aught. “This public thoroughfare through the palace grounds is always this crowded on market day. Your subjects are heading
for Cheapside or the public barge landing—ah, but they are thrilled, of course, for the opportunity to see their queen,” he added, evidently realizing his banter could be construed to insult not only Cecil.

“Though they may also be here,” Cecil muttered, “to see you, Lord Robert. As usual, you are dressed as gaudily as—”

“You were not going to say as our queen, my lord?” Robert interrupted, his voice mockingly abashed.

“Hardly. As a peacock. Her Grace’s taste is matchless.”

The queen saw Cecil bite back the rest of his comment and merely roll his eyes. He had, no doubt, wanted to remark that her taste was matchless in all things except choosing intimate friends.

It was true that her dear Robert—she ever called him Robin—wore only the finest fig at court, as if he dared rival her royal selection of fabrics and styles, though the man had no fortune but that which she had bestowed. She had granted him the right to export wool without a license and awarded him twelve thousand pounds to cover his court costs, else he’d never have been so finely arrayed, not after the treasonous tumbles his family had taken more than once. But she did indeed—whatever Cecil and other courtiers thought of him—trust Robin.

Amidst the swelling crowd noise, the horses of Cecil’s waiting retinue stamped and snorted. Or mayhap the big beasts sensed the coming storm. At least, she noted, for she had a keen eye for horseflesh, the steeds and their trappings had been selected to match the
occasion. Her Robin might think Cecil a stern stick-in-the-mud, but he knew to prepare a fine show for a queen’s man heading out to do his duty.

On her accession, Elizabeth had made Robin her Master of the Horse, later a garter knight and Lieutenant of Windsor Castle. The position was no sinecure, for it made him one of her closest advisers. In addition, Robin oversaw the royal stables and the purchasing and training of the 275 household horses there. He rode directly behind her in all ceremonial occasions. She felt safe from everyone when she was with him, except sometimes from herself, since he held such manly appeal for her. Cecil feared that too, though he should know she was, above all, master of her own heart.

“I shall not have you two sniping at each other like schoolboys,” she scolded. “Worsening weather or not, I want a public departure, not only to assure my people all is well after our brief, victorious war with the French in Scotland, but”—she lowered her bell-clear voice so only the two of them could hear—“because I want the whoreson, poxy French and Spanish spies to tell their masters of my people’s affection for their queen.”

“Then my leave-taking is best done in the open air, even if ’tis chill and wet, Your Majesty,” Cecil agreed, hunching his narrow shoulders. “As you imply, your palaces are oft infested with self-serving ears and eyes that lurk above a smiling mouth.”

The queen saw him glare at Robert again, but other conversation was thwarted by huzzahs from the
crowd when they caught their first glimpse of their queen emerging from the shelter of rose-hued, brick Whitehall. She smiled and gave a stiff-armed wave, but was sore annoyed to see that the late-morning sky looked like twilight and already spit rain.

“Should we go back inside, Your Grace?” Robert asked, sweeping off his bronze-hued satin cloak and slanting it aloft to shield her.

“The queen of England had best not be shaken by a bit of rain,” she retorted as they hurried toward the protection of the triple-arched King’s Gate. Connected to the palace yet spanning the public street, it was three stories topped by twin turreted towers of gray stone with protruding cornices and busts of Roman rulers. Some courtiers not in her immediate retinue crowded its narrow second-floor mullioned windows. Trumpets blared, sounding as if they had something stuck in their brassy throats. No turning back now, though it rained harder and thunder rattled the cobbles underfoot as if cannonballs rolled along them.

About twenty feet away the lead horse Cecil would mount whinnied and shied. Though a groom seized the reins, Robin handed his cloak to her women Kat Ashley and his sister Mary. “By your leave, Your Grace,” he said before he darted over to comfort the big beast. Suddenly, for no reason, Elizabeth felt as skittish as that horse. She sensed something amiss, someone …

As Robin reached the horse, a full-fledged rose hit her hair from above, then skidded down her face to scratch her forehead and nose before plopping at her
feet. When she cursed and squinted skyward another sodden flower smacked her, its thorns snagging her hair before it fell off her shoulder. Through raindrops, she saw numerous heads and arms leaning out windows above her but no one heaving flowers.

“Hell’s teeth!” Cecil cried, seeing her plight. “Your Grace, your face is bleeding from a thin scratch.…”

“It’s nothing,” she insisted. “Some overzealous dolt is throwing Tudor roses instead of simply petals. Jenks,” she called to one of Lord Robert’s men who was also dear to her, “go up there and see the bouquets from heaven cease!”

Though slow to grasp what she meant until another rose pelted down between her and Cecil, Jenks ran back into the palace to access the upper tower.

After Kat Ashley dabbed at Elizabeth’s forehead with a damp handkerchief, Elizabeth nodded to the crowd but glanced again at Robin calming the horses with those big, steady hands. They were thicker than hers, but also long fingered, skilled at the pursuits of riding, hunting, and dancing that she excelled in. And he was doubly skilled in the art of making a woman feel tenderly touched, wanted, and beloved.

Sometimes Robin almost seemed her other self, though his hair was a more muted chestnut while hers gleamed red-gold. Neither had milky English complexions. Hers was olive-hued, a heritage from her mother, while Robin’s was more burnished. His nose was classically long like hers, and his eyes dark too. “The gypsy” some courtiers called him behind his back, and she almost believed he could put a spell on
her. Tall, perfectly proportioned, and poised with an athletic body both powerful and graceful, he was also the queen’s masculine ideal of wit and charm. They were of an age, and both had suffered much to survive in turbulent times, binding them even closer.

When Robin rejoined her, she stood on the square of carpet someone had originally put down for her but refused the canopy of his cloak. Nor did she move under the shelter of the tower, for then her courtiers above could not see or hear. She cleared her throat and nearly shouted her words.

“My Lord Cecil, your queen charges you with the honored task of riding to our northern neighbor Scotland and seeing that the French we have defeated are expelled forthwith by lawful treaty.”

As raindrops thudded harder, Elizabeth watched Robin’s finery go from speckled to blotched to sodden, and knew Cecil would not get far on muddy roads in this deluge. He would have to put everyone in his train up at his city house and set out on the morrow, but she wanted to maintain the illusion he could charge off at her bequest the moment she commanded.

Elizabeth admitted to herself she wanted him to go. He didn’t approve of the time she spent in Robin’s company, though it was none of his damned business. Under her full brocade gown, she stamped her foot.

“And so farewell and godspeed for the betterment of our righteous realm!” she shouted, and cut her carefully planned speech short as Cecil knelt before her.

“Rise, my lord,” she said, her voice softer. “I am certain,
despite this wretched beginning for your trip, the sun will smile upon you in this great endeavor.”

“I pray so—for the sake of queen and kingdom,” he said to her alone as he rose and replaced his cap on his slick head. “Your Grace, I also pray you’ll not heed seductive Siren voices while I am away—”

Thunder made him look like a mute mouthing words. No one waited until he and his men were mounted. When the queen made it back inside and wiped the rain from her face, her palm showed smeared crimson.

“Vile thorns. Jenks,” she called when she saw him at the fringe of the soaked crowd, “did you find who tossed those roses?”

“Probably,” Kat Ashley, her First Lady of the Bedchamber, put in, “the same person who sneaked in and hacked them from your privy garden during the night. Least that’s what your herb girl said.”

“These were up on the top windowsill,” Jenks said, and extended a handful of wilted roses. “Nearly up to the roof—see?”

“But who threw them so carelessly, or did the wind just sail them amiss?” Elizabeth demanded.

“Don’t know,” he said, frowning and shrugging. “No one was there.”

“It was, no doubt,” Robin said in the awkward silence, “some secret admirer so driven by passion he did not heed the proper way to give flowers to the queen of his heart.”

“Then I shall have music to soothe the savage
beast,” Elizabeth retorted despite her annoyance and unease. “Someone fetch my master lutenist for a song about a sunny day!” she ordered, and clapped her hands as everyone scattered to fall into line behind her again. Except, that is, for Robin, who walked backward up the broad staircase, holding her hand and leading the way.

WILLIAM CECIL STRODE RAPIDLY FROM HIS
hired barge through the edge of town to Richmond Palace. Though but forty years old, the pounding ride from Edinburgh had made mincemeat of his muscles, so he’d managed to come the last few miles on the Thames. Usually he was glad to see the tower-topped silhouette of Richmond, the queen’s favorite summer home, but today he wasn’t so sure.