The Virgin Queen's Daughter - Ella March Chase (13 page)

“Drink this.” Sir Gabriel brooked no argument. “Do it, Nell. It will rinse the foul taste from your mouth.”

I choked, but whiskey burned away the terrible taste, leaving a mellow heat of its own. My stomach did one last flip, then settled back to its natural place.

“There.” Gabriel stroked my hair gently. “Good lass.”

I swiped my mouth with my hand. “I fear breakfast did not agree with me.”

“For God’s sake, woman, you have barely caught your breath. Do not waste it lying.” He corked the flask, tucked it away. “There is no one here but me, Nell.”

“I am better now.” I started to climb to my feet.

“You are gray as ash. Sit down before you fall down.” He pressed me back to the ground. “You may have hair near the queen’s own shade, mistress, but you lack her stomach for the kill. You were wise to hide that from the others. Blood scent is dangerous whether hounds catch it or humans.” Wyatt’s stallion whickered to my mare. “Easy, Archimedes,” Sir Gabriel soothed him. “Steady, lad.”

“Archimedes is your horse’s name?” I could not hide my surprise.

“This clever lad had an inventive gift for befuddling even the finest masters in my stables, so I named him after the Greek inventor who built war machines to terrorize the invading Romans. He held the invaders at bay for—”

“I know who Archimedes is.”

“I would wager anyone who knew of astrolabes should.” His stallion nudged him with a velvety nose, demanding to be stroked, as hungry for affection as my Doucette. I remembered the Gypsies at Lincolnshire fair who bewitched my childhood pony. Later I would wonder if the Gypsy’s Angel had somehow enchanted me. What other reason could I have had for speaking so honestly?

“I was once able to hunt without a second thought,” I confessed, climbing to my feet. Sir Gabriel cupped a hand beneath my elbow to steady me.

“What changed?” he asked.

“The year I turned eleven years old a savage dog got loose near my father’s manor house. Our Master of the Horse, Crane, tracked it down. I followed him, though I was not supposed to. When Crane caught up to the dog, it had a fawn by the leg. Crane killed the dog and was knocking up an arrow to do away with the injured deer when I rushed out of the woods and flung my arms around the fawn. It is a marvel she did not kick my brains in.”

“It is a wonder your father did not turn this Crane fellow out on the streets for putting you in such danger. I would have.”

“I was horrified and Crane loved me. He slung the fawn over his shoulders and the two of us carried her back to the stable and washed the bites with wine. She should have died, and yet, somehow she managed to live. I named her Grace.”

“Grace,” Sir Gabriel echoed.

“She drove my mother to madness, following me about inside the manor house, stealing pippins from the cook, getting into the garden, tearing the wash off the bushes so she could eat the leaves. When Grace destroyed the herbs used for physicking, mother could bear it no more. She made the gamekeeper take her far out into the woods where Grace would not find her way back. A month later she was dumped on the doorstep of the larder. A ‘gift’ for my father.”

“Perhaps it was some other deer.”

“There was no mistaking Grace. Her hind leg was scarred where the dog attacked her. I have never been able to forget the moment I saw her, her throat dark with dried blood. Since Grace . . .”

Wyatt squeezed my shoulder. “Grace. It is a good name for you, as well.”

“You surprise me yet again, Sir Gabriel. I never expected you to be kind.” He cupped my cheek in one broad palm, and kissed me. Warm, coaxing, then he pulled away. “I am not kind,” he said gravely. “I am every bad thing people claim I am. Never forget that, Grace.”

His kiss haunted me that night, and every night after, from that moment on. I could not drive the sensation away—feeling stripped bare by the confession I had made to Sir Gabriel. Why in God’s name had I done such a thing? Since the day Crane helped me bury my beloved deer beneath Grace’s favorite apple tree I had spoken to no one about my pet.

T
HE NEXT DAY
, when the queen was sequestered with the French diplomats and I was relieved of duty, I attempted to distract myself from disturbing thoughts of the scene beside the stream. I wrangled entry to the tower where the Kratzer clock traced the hours, marveled at the intricate machinery as it whirred, set in motion by the heavy weights that dangled on thick chains.

I returned to the Maids’ Lodgings and concealed Dr. Dee’s mystical mirror in the folds of my kirtle, then summoned Moll from the servants’ quarters.

“Mistress Nell, I dare not be gone long,” Moll said as I led her through the palace. “Isabella Markham’s maid says there is a most important lady coming to teach us how to prepare ruffs as they do in the Low Countries. There is something called starch which will make the folds stiffen out most elegant.”

“Starch?” I scoffed. “Where is your sense of adventure, Moll? Surely you would not rather fuss about how stiff my ruff is than see Anne Boleyn’s ghost?”

“If I am to be your maid I would as soon your ruffs be a credit to me,” Moll insisted. “Besides, I cannot think it wise to go seeking ghosts. Jem says they can stick to you so you will never be free of them.”

“Bah! Jem also claimed the reason Widow Gummidge raised more cream from her cows was that she dipped a hanged man’s hand in the milk bucket. Now hasten along and stay quiet. The gallery should be deserted and we’d not wish to startle any spirits that happen to be lurking about.”

With a visible shudder Moll moved closer to me, the tread of her slippers softer on the rush-strewn floor. I glimpsed the entry to the gallery ahead and my grip on the mirror tightened.

“They say that there was a great ugly lump upon Queen Anne’s neck,” Moll whispered. “A devil’s mark.”

“If she was so monstrous why would the king have desired her so desperately?” I asked.

“A charm, maybe. A love philter? Some dark witchery. Some say a black owl flew into her chamber and dropped a strangled cat upon her bed the day they chopped off Sir Thomas More’s head.”

We stepped into the gallery, the long room deserted, hushed, somehow, expectant. I drew the mirror from its hiding place, unnerved by shapes from the trompe l’oiel murals that decorated the walls. Painted tables that thrust into the room with angles that were not there. Cherubs whose wings appeared to unfurl. Sly-faced gods whose hands seemed to blur before my eyes, fingers reaching as if to catch at my skirts. It was a fine place for a ghost if I could just figure out how to make the magic work, I thought, angling the mirror and turning my attention to its surface.

Scarlet flashed against hammered silver. A sudden ripple of what might be black tresses. I glimpsed movement, heard a faint echo. One of King Henry’s dead queens?

“Moll, did you hear that?” I asked.

Moll stood, ashen. “Saw it more like. A lady, all white and glowing.”

“Was her hair black or brown or fair? It could have been any one of three queens. If only Father had shown me how to use this properly before he lost his sight!”

“Maybe the lady wasn’t a queen at all!” Moll cried. “And maybe the old master never meant you to use the mirror!”

“Don’t be a goose, Moll! Why would such a mirror exist unless we were supposed to use it?”

“Maybe Lord Calverley was wise enough to use it, and maybe Dr. Dee. But you don’t know what you are doing any more than I do!You could make terrible mischief if you do something wrong!”

“What kind of mischief?” I asked, scornful.

“I don’t know, but you ought not to be playing at magic you don’t understand. It’s like flinging sparks into that barrel of fireworks that burned the old master’s eyes.”

That analogy gave me pause; the mirror’s fascination dulled. I thrust the mirror into a pouch at my waist.

Moll touched my arm. “I’m sorry to upset you, Mistress. But all the master’s knowledge didn’t save him from the fire. This magic—stirring up ghosts and such—it might burn you, too.”

I did not answer her, merely started to walk away.

Moll called after me. “It is wicked to dredge up the past. Let it stay buried.”

Wise words. I wish I had listened.

B
Y THE TIME
I returned to the Maids’ Lodgings an hour later the chamber was abuzz, the ladies chattering about the special entertainment the Master of the Revels had concocted to celebrate the queen’s return to Hampton Court: a masque to take place that very night, a kind of play with elaborate scenery where a select group of costumed courtiers would bring a legendary world to life. I was enlisted to be part of a group of sea nymphs dancing to distract the audience from some shift in scene or character—I could not say which because the Master of Revels did not trust the wagging tongues of maids of honor and made certain we had no notion of any part of the performance save our own.

My costume for the evening’s masque—a nymph’s fluttering ribbons of gossamer blue and green—did little to drive back the chill of Hampton Court’s Great Hall with its great hammered beam ceiling. When we had entered it, no fire blazed in the vast hearths. Only a small wreath of candles in the farthest depths of the room nudged back the darkness, the tiny flames reflected in the hammered silver crags of a make-believe Mount Olympus.

As the hours passed, the Master of Revels drew back one black velvet drapery after another, revealing his creation. The chamber transformed into a wonder of Grecian pillars and splashing fountains amid blue satin seas. Minstrels played celestial tunes from the musicians’ gallery overhead, the smell of frankincense burning increasing the atmosphere of magic. Courtiers disguised as gods and goddesses floated through the company like ghosts from ages gone by, while the servants wore wreaths of Bacchus’s grapes or Demeter’s golden wheat in their hair.

Grateful when my part was over, I tucked up on a pile of cushions between Isabella Markham and Mary Shelton to watch the performance reach its height. The other ladies giggled, ogling the men whose togas revealed hair-sprinkled legs and the occasional flash of bare buttocks. Robert Dudley brought Plato to life, teaching a page boy portraying young Aristotle. Each philosopher set a cresset alight, brightening the world—and the Great Hall—with their knowledge.

Only Elizabeth was awash in the golden glow, the flower-decked throne she sat upon crowning the summit of Olympus. Her role—the goddess Diana, a sliver of jeweled moon sparkling against the sunset of her hair. It fit her—the huntress, eternally virgin, though every man longed to claim her. When each hero approached to worship at her feet, she drove him away with a sweep of Diana’s gilt bow, commanding the man choose a lady from the audience to be his consort, the mate who would join him in the annals of history.

Dudley gifted Lettice Knollys with Plato’s scroll, mourning that if he were denied the glow of Elizabeth’s moon, he would be forced to settle for its pale reflection. Sir William Pickering, Dudley’s most pressing rival for the queen’s affections, cast Robin a self-satisfied sneer, then sprang from Homer’s stylus and stormed across the stage as Hercules. Pickering waged mock battle against his mythical foe: a giant whose face was concealed beneath a mask sporting the Cyclops’s eye. Yet as Hercules drove the snarling beast to its doom from a trestle table cliff, I was puzzled to note not only heroes were claiming their mates this night, but the monster claimed a lady as well.

While everyone cheered in delight at Pickering’s choice of the respectable matron Kat Ashley instead of one of the court’s young beauties, the Cyclops lumbered across to Mary Grey. Her eyes went wide as the monster snatched her up, flinging her over one broad shoulder to carry her to his lair. “That is a perfect match if ever I saw one,” I heard someone jeer. “The Devil’s child and her demon lover.”

“At least the Cyclops has but one eye to look at her.” Even in the midst of the masque Lettice could not resist flinging barbs. I tried to blunt my outrage. After all, why should I resent the cruel joke? Mary had been bitter as cheap wine since I had pricked Lettice’s mount with my brooch.

The audience shouted encouragement to Pickering, urging him to steal a kiss from the queen’s former governess, then Markham, Elizabeth’s companion in the Tower long ago, elbowed me in the ribs.