Chapter Eighteen

 
 
 

It was like racing down the freeway at a hundred miles per hour and driving right into a bridge support. Sudden stop didn’t even begin to describe the sickening jolt as my consciousness exploded into a body and fought its way into the brain. I doubled over and began coughing, struggling to breathe. Why the hell was every time different? A little consistency would have been nice.

“Lady Blanche, are you unwell?” It was Lord Winston’s voice.

I forced myself to sit upright as I struggled to breathe normally. “No, I am fine,” I croaked out, even though I wanted to start screaming and pulling down wall tapestries and breaking ale mugs and sticking the burning candles into Winston’s eyes. God’s blood, I was back in 1560 again.

We sat in a room I didn’t recognize. There were two other men with us, the two who’d been with Winston in the bowling green.

“Good, then it is settled,” Winston said with a slap to his knee. “We will put our plan into action tomorrow night. Thanks to Blanche’s intelligence, we know Dudley will be climbing the rear staircase to the Queen’s bedchamber around midnight. Lady Blanche will descend and delay Dudley with idle court gossip as Charles and I come up the stairs behind him. William, you will descend behind Blanche so Dudley will be trapped. Lady Blanche, you then leave us and return to Her Majesty’s chambers. We will do the rest.”

Great, just great. Blanche had continued to participate in the stupid murder plot. And now, of course, I had to deal with what she’d arranged. “One question. Must we kill Dudley? Why not wound him or frighten him instead?”

Charles snorted. “My God, Lady Blanche, you change your mind more often than Her Majesty changes gowns. Do you think a man such as Dudley frightens easily? He expects to be King within a few years, for it is said his wife is gravely ill.”

William leaned forward, resting his elbows on muscular thighs. Clearly, he was in excellent shape and could do Dudley bodily harm. “As for wounding him,” William said, “that would only incite the Queen’s sympathies and perhaps those of others in the kingdom. No, to protect the realm Dudley must die. Were he to become King, the country would split wide open, thus encouraging the French or the Scots to begin a war.”

Winston stood, tugging at his breeches and gathering his cloak together. It was too warm to actually wear it, so he slung it over his arm. “We have been over this ground before, Lady Blanche. You will encounter Dudley in the back stairs tomorrow at midnight and play your role in this necessary action.”

I stood, unable to think of any way to stop this plan, so I nodded weakly. Charles escorted us out onto broad brick steps lined with green hedging. Behind me, the house rose three stories, the roof holding many chimneys. At the base of the steps waited a carriage. When the footman saw me, he stepped forward and offered his hand. Thank God someone knew where I was to go. I climbed into the carriage, which rocked slightly, then settled back on worn velvet cushions. I was greatly relieved not to be negotiating the streets of London by foot again.

Within minutes, the carriage horses turned smartly, and we entered the palace grounds. After being helped from the carriage, I stood there watching all the activity. The many buildings of the palace loomed over me, and I couldn’t bear to once again enter its dark hallways and rooms, some lit only by candlelight in the middle of the day. Damn Rajamani for not figuring this out in time.

Instead, I wandered around the gardens, finally landing on a marble bench near the raised bed of roses. The scent of blooming flowers and wet earth calmed me a bit, but I still scanned overhead, willing a streak of heat lightning to split the agonizingly blue sky.

I blocked out the sounds of palace life, humming to myself the Beatles’ “Back in the USSR,” and then, unfathomably, switching to Captain and Tennille’s “Muskrat Love.” What a nightmare.

Rattling metal cart wheels snapped me out of it. An elderly gardener with round shoulders, black-stained nails, and a hound dog face stopped his cart when he saw me.

“Aye, m’lady, sorry to disturb. I’ll be returning later.” His cart was heaped with white-flecked black soil and must have been heavy.

“No, please. Stay and work. You won’t bother me.”

“If the lady is sure.…”

I smiled to seal the deal, tired of snooty courtiers. An earthy gardener was just what I needed. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Feedin’ the plants, m’lady. They gets so hungry they eat up all the goodness in the soil.” He began shoveling soil from the cart and laying it gently along the base of the trimmed hedges. “This here is chicken dung that’s been sittin’ for some time. Now mind you, dove’s dung is the best but hard to come by so I’m usin’ fowl dung. Next best after that is ass, then donkey. Then you got your ox and cow dung, then swine. Horse is the most vile of dung, and I won’t use it on Her Majesty’s gardens. It burns too hot.”

I smiled with interest as the man continued to expound on the various dungs. He was a welcome distraction. I wondered where sheep dung fell in his ranking.

“Lovely day, is it not, Lady Blanche?”

Before I could rise or protest, Robert Dudley himself joined me on the bench.

“Yes, it is,” I said, faltering a little. If I couldn’t stop it, this lovely but irritating man would be knifed to death tomorrow night.

“Ho, gardener. Leave us.” He flicked a wrist, and the man bowed arthritically and pushed his cart down the path of red brick dust.

Dudley smiled, his teeth surprisingly white behind his moustache. In this era black rotted teeth signified you were wealthy enough to consume great quantities of sugar. Elizabeth had such a sweet tooth that by the end of her life, all her teeth would either fall out or be black.

“Lady Blanche, I am delighted to have found you, for I wish to speak to you on an important matter.”

I adjusted my skirts so the man’s knees weren’t so close, since it was just too hot to touch anyone, man or woman. “Of what did you wish to speak?” I almost called him Sir Robert, but he wouldn’t be given this title for a few more years…if he survived, that was.

Dudley’s face was earnest as he leaned closer. “It is Her Majesty. She has so many offers of matrimony before her, and I know each one distresses her. But when I ask if she is any closer to a decision, she merely smiles and changes the subject. I would know her mind, Blanche, and you are the closest to her of all her ladies.”

Kat Ashley was closer, having been with Elizabeth since the Queen was a child, but Dudley knew Kat would never say anything. Blanche, however, must have had a reputation as being less than loyal.

The breeze shifted enough I could now smell the gardener’s applications. “The Queen’s rule is that politics are never to be discussed in her inner chambers, so matters of state such as her marriage are not aired before me.”

Dudley waved off my comment. “I know that, but surely Elizabeth speaks of matters of the heart in her chambers. That is what I am interested in.” He cocked one eyebrow with such humor that I could see how Elizabeth had fallen under his spell years ago, when she was still a princess and he just a rich boy living nearby.

“You wish me to violate her trust and reveal to you the true path of her heart?”

His sheepish grin nearly won me over. “She says she holds me above all others, but what if she says this to every suitor?”

What a jerk. “I understand you wanting to know. But is there not a Mrs. Dudley awaiting you at home?”

Dudley’s mirth and earnestness shut down immediately. “My dear Amy and I had several good years together, but we are in no way compatible. She abhors court, and I thrive on it. She despises the city, and I require it. Also….” And here his voiced softened enough that I truly believed his emotions. “…my wife is not well. Some infirmity of the bone has overtaken her, making her as brittle as clay baked too long in an oven. She cannot travel, even should she wish to join me here at court.”

I rose and gathered up my skirts in both hands so I could launch myself without tripping. “A true husband would therefore be at his wife’s side at such a time. I will not grant your wish to know Her Majesty’s heart, for you do not deserve any affection she may have for you.” And with that, I stormed out of the garden and through the nearest palace door.

I retired to my room, relieved to not have encountered the Queen and been swept up in the day’s activities. Instead, I lay down on my bed and stared at the table leg where I’d been scratching the days off from the moment I’d arrived. I’d been in the past for over thirty days, then back in my own life for nine days. At least thirty-nine days had passed.

I sat up. Had Blanche gotten her period while I’d been gone? While back in the future I’d researched Elizabethan menstruation and learned the women used rags. I dug through Blanche’s trunk of gowns, sleeves, and collars until I found a bundle of rolled-up, clean rags. They smelled musty like the trunk, so they’d been in there a while. They hadn’t been used while I’d been gone.

I returned to the bed. The lack of a period. The nausea. The vomiting. Winston’s reference to taking Blanche in the park.

Fire truck. Goddamned fire truck.

I was pregnant.