The Virgin Queen's Daughter - Ella March Chase (36 page)

Joy surged in me. A moment later I bit my lip, grieving over the suffering carved in his dark angel’s face. I remembered the day of the tournament, his armor gleaming, his athlete’s body powerful. The Tower had whittled away his flesh until he seemed a different man. But it was his sleeve that broke my heart. His right cuff hung empty.

I started toward him, but my guard caught me. The spymaster’s inscrutable gaze flicked to Gabriel’s wrist. “Let her go to him.”

I rushed to Gabriel, held him, reassured myself that he was alive. Gabriel wrapped his arms around me, my belly big between us. I could feel he still feared for me, and for our child. Walsingham frowned. “I still think it is a shame that your husband would tell us nothing, Mistress Wyatt.”

“I am the one shamed because I doubted him.”

A breathless page burst in, announced: “Her Majesty the queen.”

But Elizabeth brushed him aside, ordering him to leave. He shut the door behind him with a thud.

I stared at her as if I had never seen her, as if she were Mab the fairy queen, brittle as glass and as unreal. Her skirts rustled, taffeta shot with gold, her perfume filling the air, its scent worlds away from prisons and dried blood. I hated her, even before I saw our death sentence in her hand—the scrap of cloth I so rashly hid in my writing box.

“Where did you get this?” she demanded, thrusting it beneath my nose.

“Eppie gave it to me.”

Two flames darkened the queen’s cheeks. Her lips tightened, bloodless. “That witch! Is it some sort of charm, then? Part of a wicked spell?”

For a heartbeat I froze, then imagined what Gabriel might say, his mind so quick. “It is nothing but a remembrance of my nurse’s love. This scrap is all that was left from the gown she made my favorite poppet when I was a child. I know you can understand my cherishing it, Your Majesty, loving Lady Ashley as you did.”

I hoped to remind her of the hours we had spent together during Kat’s illness, stir in the queen’s memory how she had trusted me with the fate of a person she loved most in the world. Yet I feared I might have gone too far, comparing simple Eppie to the governess Elizabeth loved. The queen stared as if measuring my resolve. Gabriel had already shown her his.

“So you keep your silence, even now?” Elizabeth marveled. “After all you have endured. Everything I might yet do? It seems I can still be surprised after all.” She turned to Gabriel. “I did not mean to let them take your hand, though it was my right under law. My advisers convinced me to sign the sentence. By morning I regretted it. I rescinded the order, but it was too late.”

Walsingham must have rushed to the Tower as soon as she signed the order, determined to carry it out before she could change her mind. It was a small thing, knowing the queen had tried to save Gabriel once her anger was past. Small, but precious.

The queen paced to the window, running her fingers over the smooth diamond pendants known as the Three Brothers. I thought of how often I had made the same nervous gesture with my astrolabe, trying to sort out the tangle my world had become. Suddenly the queen turned, fixing Walsingham with a regal eye. “Leave us.”

“Majesty?”

“I would speak alone with Mistress Wyatt.”

“Your Grace, I would not advise—”

“That is very wise, since I do not recall asking for your opinion, Sir Francis.”

“Your Grace,” Gabriel said. “I would not leave my wife.”

“So it would seem. You, Lord Robert, and Sir Francis may pace outside the door and complain about the vagaries of women while my maid and I engage in one final scientific debate.”

What could the three men do? They bowed, then retreated through the door. The panel closed, leaving Elizabeth and me alone.

My heart hammered with fear that this might be some device concocted earlier between the queen and Sir Francis, one last attempt to trick me into disclosing what I knew. Worse still, what if Walsingham was signaling the guard? Having them lead Gabriel away? I could not help but peer over my shoulder at the door, my fears naked on my face.

“You are in love with the very man I warned you against, are you not, Mistress?”

“I did not mean to be. It . . . happened, Majesty. I could not prevent it.”

“An excuse I have heard before. Even spoken myself when I was young like you.”

My surprise registered in my eyes. The queen smiled self-deprecatingly. “You are amazed I admit my folly? Why? My youthful indiscretions have all been written down, part of records generations in the future will see. I could order them destroyed, and yet . . .would that not make me seem guiltier than I am?”

I dropped my gaze to the hem of her skirt. I remembered the tales of Thomas Seymour holding the princess down, slashing her gown to ribbons.

“I did not mean to wound my stepmother’s heart, not after she had been so generous in giving hers to me. No one sets out to do evil. Always there is an excuse. Justice, religion. Mine was not knowing who I really was, a Tudor princess, heir to the throne, or Lady Elizabeth, who was of no importance to anyone save my nurse.”

“My mother said Katherine Parr loved you. Even after.”

“She did. She had a mother’s heart. It grieves me still that she did not live to watch her own daughter grow. Yet, it seems some are destined to be cheated of their deepest desires. Now you are a wife, perhaps soon a mother. I am destined to be neither. So I told Lord Robert when I was eight years old.”

“I am certain in time Cecil will find a husband to suit you.”

“Let my council delude itself as long as they choose. Their labors will be in vain. If I take a husband, he will be as God instructs—my lord and master. I would no longer be sole ruler of England. Were I to lavish my attention on one child of my body I would cheat a country full of unruly children I must lead. No, I am best as I am. Wed to England, and perhaps to the legacy my parents left me. The grim truth that marriage makes prisoners of us all.”

“I believe you are wrong. Marriage can be like the lands adventurers are discovering. A lifetime can be spent mapping boundaries, unearthing its wealth.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Spoken like a true scientist. It is unfortunate Dr. Dee is to lose two of his most brilliant disciples. But he will find others.” Was she saying we would die? I held my breath until she continued, “As for what you have suffered these past months—time blunts ugliness, scrubs it from your memory like the stains Kat scolded me over when Robin and I played in the mud as children. Perhaps all will fade.”

Was she saying she would allow us to live? Hope warred with truth. “I cannot forget. I will remember every time I see Gabriel’s cuff hanging empty.”

“There are more terrible things to have severed. The gifts God offers to women. The passion of a man in the marriage bed. The feel of life growing inside you. Hope you will grow old together. It is not easy to surrender such comforts, Elinor.” Elizabeth’s voice dropped low. “It is not easy to surrender you.”

She hesitated and I tried to decipher what she meant to say. After a moment she squared her shoulders. “Of all the maids of honor who have ever served me, you have been the closest match to my mind and the deepest in my affections. Perhaps it is because we are scholars. Wise enough to know sometimes there
are
no right answers. It is better to let questions remain.” She fingered the scrap of bed curtain, tracing a silvery moon.

“My father used to say that we will never run out of wonders to explore. But we must not get tangled in what needs to be left behind.”

“Did he?”

I was straying into dangerous territory, yet instinct urged me to reach out this one last time, challenge the intellect I had traveled so far to know. “You see, there was a man named Copernicus who believed the earth is not the center of all things.”

“There are many who would condemn such an idea.”

“But I believe he was right. My mother tried to teach that truth to me. The center of my world is right here.” I laid my hands upon my swollen belly.

Elizabeth peered at the place where my child grew. “I would envy you, Elinor Wyatt, if I dared. I must inhabit a far wider world. Alone. Summon the gentlemen waiting outside the door. No doubt they are chafing and angry as we women so often are. There are some pleasures, you see, even in being a queen.”

I
DID AS
she bade me. Lord Robert, Walsingham, and my Gabriel came in, lines of temper and uncertainty etching their faces. Gabriel crossed to me, eyes full of questions as he slipped his arm around my waist.

After a moment, Elizabeth faced us. “I have made my decision. Sir Gabriel and Lady Elinor Wyatt, I command you to leave this court.”

“You mean to set us free?” Gabriel gasped, stunned as I was.

“Your Majesty,” Walsingham faltered, “are you certain?”

“It is done!” She turned, throwing something into the fire: the cloth, I think. It flared, burned to ash, consuming the last link between us. Elizabeth paced toward me, peered at me with unreadable eyes. She grasped a lock of my hair between her white fingers. A mother’s touch? Or a warning?

“I will miss your mind, Elinor. One as like to mine as the color of your hair. But I must never see you or your husband again.”

I swallowed hard. “You will not, Majesty. There is nothing for me here.”

Elizabeth gave a wry smile, weighed down with a weariness I did not envy. “Thomasin once said exactly the same thing, you know. Yet you came anyway, Elinor. Perhaps, if your child is a girl, she will be drawn to my court as well.”

“I would lock her away first,” I said so grimly the queen’s mouth softened. I glimpsed a hint of old pain.

“Young girls are reckless to a fault,” Elizabeth said. “Like a horse yet to be bridled. The world will beckon, their hearts will race. They will not be wise. I remember . . .” Her voice trailed off. After a moment, she seemed to shake herself. “You must have better angels than most mortals, to escape the perils you faced. To survive our follies, Elinor. Sometimes that is miracle enough.”

Her eyes shifted to Robert Dudley. I saw the man cast me a look stricken with despair and wonder. He turned to the queen with a love that chased back the years. And I guessed at why he did not tell the queen when he knew I was with child. Did he sense something in me? Perhaps the pale reflection of the young princess he once loved? Did the earl feel a confused loyalty to a child in his imagination, one he wished might be his daughter?

I never knew what words they spoke after Walsingham ushered us out of the room.

Am I Robert Dudley’s child conceived when Elizabeth was banished from court by Queen Mary? My mother was ever vague about the year of my birth. Did I spring from Thomas Seymour’s lust? Or am I neither? Just part of the elaborate imaginings of an old woman who loved me enough to believe I was a princess? Only the queen will ever know for certain. But it did not matter anymore, my past. Gabriel and I had a future.

S
OME WOULD CALL
it madness for a woman so far gone with child to brave traveling even in such an unusually mild winter. But we dashed a missive off by messenger to my mother, then hastened toward Calverley as if the devil were behind us, neither believing we could truly be free. Gabriel’s barge carried us up the river I had traveled down as a child. I bade farewell to the beautiful gardens, the great houses, London Bridge. I buried my face against Gabriel’s doublet as we neared the bridge’s arch, remembering my childish fascination with the grisly warnings mounted there—traitors’ heads for all to see. “It might have been you,” I said, remembering father’s tale of how Sir Thomas More’s brave daughter had gone to the bridge at night to steal her father’s severed head, give him a decent burial, lay him to rest. I knew were matters different, I would have done the same thing. Gabriel kissed my forehead as if to drive such thoughts away.

“You are safe now, sweeting,” he murmured, his warm breath on my skin. “Safe.”

“But why? I still do not understand.”

He drew back so he could see my face. “Because the queen—”

“It is not the queen that confuses me. It is you.” I grasped his arm, drew his stump to my lips. “Why did you not tell Walsingham what he wanted to know? I would never have blamed you.”