The Twylight Tower

In thine array, after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown did from her shoulders fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small,
And therewithal so sweetly did me kiss,
And softly said: dear heart, how like you this?

— SIR THOMAS WYATT, the Elder

ON THE ROYAL BED, KAT ASHLEY CAREFULLY laid out the garments the queen would wear to welcome Robert Dudley formally back to court that afternoon. She even checked the points at which the ribbons and eyelet holes would lace together the separate pieces of bodice, sleeves, and skirts. And then Kat realized the ninnies had not brought the right farthingale. This one had bell-shaped whalebone ribs knit by canvas strips, and the huge, black-and-silver skirts draped over them would drag. The new-fledged style of the fuller, wheel-shaped underpinnings was needed for this gown.

“God save us, but the fan’s the wrong one too,” Kat muttered. “Nary a tinsel ribbon on it.”

She was horrified to realize the slip-up might be her own. But that would never do. Furious, she did not bother to send someone to fetch the right ones, but went herself, hauling the farthingale and fan, however out of breath she felt, down the gallery toward the three rooms that housed Elizabeth’s modest traveling wardrobe.

Kat was not only First Lady of the Bedchamber but also Mistress of the Robes, so she oversaw the staff that cared for the queen’s garments. In London for the long winter, an entire suite and additional storage building were used to house the royal array, but on summer progress they had to make do.

Kat didn’t begrudge the young queen’s passion for clothes, not after all the years the princess had been out of favor and sometimes even declared bastard. Exiled from court, the poor, thin thing had been clad in outmoded or overworn clothes. And after the nearly disastrous scandal with that smooth seducer, Thomas Seymour, Elizabeth had purposefully dressed in plain, dark garb. Now Kat only prayed that the queen’s dazzling rainbow of fabrics and fashions with which she adorned her slim body was not to seduce Lord Robert Dudley.

“ ’Tis Mistress Ashley!” she called out to the keeper of the keys, and rapped her knuckles on the door that led to the wardrobe rooms. “Let me in this instant, or I’ll have your thick heads on a platter!”

The door swept open, and Kat swept in. “You sent the small farthingale and the French fan,” Kat told the guard and two girls who were rubbing crushed lavender—the queen’s favorite summer scent—on the rows of heavy, hanging garments. Bodices hung separate from sleeves; petticoats from kirtles. Smocked, embroidered, and patterned undergarments, which the queen changed daily, were rotated to take their weekly turns at the vast royal laundry down by the main kitchen block.

“This fan, you lackbrains,” Kat said, snatching the one she wanted from the clothes press shelf. “And fetch that biggest wheel farthingale forthwith!”

When the wardrobe girl hesitated, Kat stepped forward to unhook the disjointed, skeletal thing herself, but she nearly tripped over a basket of lavender.

“Oh, sorry, milady,” the girl gushed, and bent to scrape the sweet-scented flower heads back in. “The queen’s strewing mistress just been up with these fresh from the gardens and coming back, she is.”

Kat glanced down at the tipped basket and saw amidst the pale purple bounty a man’s shirt. “Men’s clothes in here?” she demanded. “Surely that shirt is not Meg Milligrew’s.”

As the girl shrugged, then spread the shirt out on her knees, Kat knew from whence it came. Meg had been hiding or hoarding the shirt Geoffrey Hammet died in. Its red malmsey stain was clearly etched as if it were faded blood, right over where the man’s heart would be. And the shoulder where the poor wretch hit the pavement was filth-smudged.

Kat gathered the clattering whalebone farthingale to her. Perhaps her leaving the meeting in the stables early last week had made Meg and the others decide not to keep her apprised of their investigation. Or was the shirt a mere keepsake for the girl? Had she stubbornly wanted to make it smell sweet instead of reek with drink?

“Give me that shirt and open the door,” Kat ordered gruffly. She cut a huge swath down the hall, the loose-boned farthingale swaying, the fan in one hand and poor Geoffrey’s shirt over her arm.

But just when she was certain nothing else could go amiss, she nearly bumped into that smug chit Katherine Grey, coming full speed around the corner. “Best heed where you are going, my lady,” Kat said, her voice sharp. She hoped the girl took that as a warning against attracting a Catholic rebellion to her as well as against charging about the palace like a knight at a tilt rail.

“Oh, dear,” Katherine said, a little grin twisting her saucy lips. “Now Her Grace has you fetching and carrying for her too.”

She was off like an arrow but not before Kat saw full well that Edward Seymour, whom Katherine had been told to steer clear of, waited down the hall. Not only did the queen keep an eye on who her ladies tarried with, but Katherine’s ties to royalty would eventually make her marriage an affair of state—or if forbidden, treason.

“The only one worse than Edward Seymour she could be rushing to would be that Spanish ambassador so they could hatch a plot together,” Kat muttered as she managed to open Elizabeth’s bedchamber door without calling a guard. Most of the ladies were outside attending the queen on her morning stroll, thank God, so Elizabeth would never know the truth that Kat had forgotten to specify which pieces of wardrobe she wanted, then blamed the staff for it.

Still fretting, Kat surveyed again the pieces of garments on the bed. The clothing was slightly mussed. Someone had dared not only to move them, but perhaps to try them on, or at the very least, to hold them up, mayhap in front of the mirror. Katherine, the snippet, surely it was she.

As Kat laid the farthingale down and began to rearrange and smooth out the garments, she saw she still held Geoffrey’s death shirt. Tucking it up under her own voluminous skirts, she vowed to discuss it with Meg Milligrew later. Just like these garments waiting to be mixed and mated, the clues to Geoffrey’s death had endless possibilities.

THOUGH ELIZABETH WAS ARRAYED TO OUTGLITTER ANY earthly queen, she awaited Robert’s arrival in a rustic setting, the apple orchard hard by the Thames. Amy Dudley liked uncomplicated country matters, did she? Elizabeth fumed. She would show Robin her version of that. And she wanted him to realize the gulf between them, for it frightened her how much thinking of him with Amy, especially in bed at night, had tormented her.

So she sat on a pile of ivory silken cushions, eating an apple with only Kat and Mary Sidney in attendance, though her other ladies and guards were spread along the covered walkway Robert must traverse. Meg had strewn rose petals everywhere, and Franklin provided the music.

Elizabeth Tudor’s heart beat hard and she almost choked on the fruit as Robin strode straight to her and went down on one knee, head bowed. Yet, devil take the man, he seemed not a bit awed or humbled. And despite her orders that he join her here forthwith, he had obviously bathed and changed his riding garb to jade green and sapphire garments that made him glitter like a rare gem.

“Here I am,” he said, looking up boldly despite her intentional use of his formal name, “looking for the queen of England and queen of my heart, and I find Eve with an apple in the garden. And I would take that seducing bite should it cast me out of paradise forever—were it offered me.”

Despite herself, she gaped at him, then as if mesmerized, extended the half-eaten apple to him. He smiled and stepped closer to kneel again, his knees nearly in her skirts. He reached for her wrist and turned it just so and took a huge chomp from the fruit.

“I am glad you are back,” she admitted, not saying what she had intended. She had wanted to make him suffer a bit, to wait for her goodwill.

Robin chewed and swallowed his bite of fruit with gusto. “Time drags into eternity when we are parted, but I have a gift for you, my queen, so you realize my thoughts were ever with you.”

To her surprise, he turned to Franklin and flicked his wrist. The lutenist nodded and came closer, going down on one knee. “I am bid to tell you, Most Gracious Majesty,” Franklin’s high, melodious voice recited, “that the words to this song come from the heart of him who wrote it and sent it to me for you. I ne’er learned to write myself, you see, and concoct my own verses in my head—but I can read well enough to learn Sir Robert’s beauteous lines.”

Franklin played and sang a song called “Chi Ama Crede,” He—or She—Who Loves Trusts. It was achingly beautiful and swept her defenses down and away. Surely, surely, of all the men that ever were, she could trust this one, her Robin.

ELIZABETH AND ROBIN STROLLED THE CONVOLUTED, covered passages of Richmond, dined together, then stood in the huge oriel window of the royal rooms to watch the sun sink.

“There is one thing that is business, my lord, I would speak of,” she murmured.

He held her hand tighter. “I would go to the far reaches of Araby or the frozen plains of Muscovy for you, business, pleasure, anything.”

“Dear heart, this only entails seeking out Bishop de Quadra in London and telling him you think Katherine Grey would make a good heir for me.”

He muttered a string of curses and turned to her so their shadows merged and shut out those who stood behind them. “You’re going to name her as your—”

“Hardly,” she said, placing three fingers on his lips to still his protest. “Kat tells me she’s been not only flippant but perhaps lurking some places where she should not be of late, and I know she will do anything to vex me. I said merely tell him you favor Katherine. I want to see how readily he goes for that bait. The man bears watching.”

Elizabeth smiled. If she did love and therefore must trust Robin, why did she still feel some dark, creeping unease? The sensation that someone was spying on her had been just as sharp when he was away as now. She squinted into the bloodred sun, balanced on the horizon like a ball on a table, before it was sucked into oblivion.

IT WAS LATER THAT NIGHT, WHILE KAT WATCHED THE opening of the dancing with the stately processional of the pavan—her memory no doubt tweaked by the sway of the queen’s huge farthingale—that she recalled she wanted to scold Meg Milligrew. She rose unobtrusively, edged around the moving, shifting crowd, and went to locate the girl. She finally found her in her distilling room back by the kitchens, making rose water from plucked petals.

Kat stood in the doorway of the room, watching Meg measure out a peck of salted petals, then one quart of water. Once the first boiling extracted the natural oil, the remaining water was siphoned off, then run through again to make the fragrant double distillation. As steam escaped the hissing pot behind Meg, she seemed some sort of bedraggled witch at a cauldron, for the room was hotter than the hinges of Hades.

“Ouch,” the girl cried as she obviously brushed her knuckles against the still.

“No, but I thought I could save you from that if I came myself.” Kat surprised Meg by ruffling up her petticoat, then reaching up under it to pull out Geoffrey’s wrinkled, stained shirt. The girl looked so glad to see it, Kat let her have it back.

“In your lavender basket in the wardrobe rooms,” Kat said. “But saved for a keepsake or a clue?”

Meg sighed and leaned back on the table, dipping her scalded knuckles in the vat of saltwater. “Both, I guess. I just—we—can’t let Geoffrey’s death go the way the queen evidently can. Ned learned Geoffrey was having dizzy spells, or at least had one. He got that kitchen slut Sally to admit he nearly toppled over after he sneaked to her pallet and lay with her the other night.”

“Ned or Geoffrey lay with her?” Kat asked, stepping into the room and closing the door.

“Geoffrey, of course, though I don’t dupe myself that Ned probably hasn’t enjoyed her wares too, the lying churl.”

“Meg,” Kat said, her anger ebbing when she saw again how the poor thing cherished the pompous Ned, “a man’s getting light-headed and nearly toppling over after enjoying a wench may not mean he’s prone to dizzy spells fierce enough to make him fall off a tower height—after putting his lute down.”

“But it could mean something. It’s a clue, and if Her Grace would only help us, she could figure it out!” Meg wailed.

“Don’t wager on our queen solving mysteries ever again,” Kat warned. “She can’t even understand herself of late, and I’m afraid there’s no help for her.”

Meg looked so frightened that Kat put her hands on her shoulders, wishing she could comfort Elizabeth like this. The two of them stood unmoving until the pressure in the still began to build and hiss, and Meg turned away to tend to it.

“I AM IN DEEP DESPAIR ABOUT THE QUEEN,” WILLIAM Cecil admitted to his wife as they lay abed in their small country house at Wimbledon. Mildred snuggled closer to him, her bottom in his lap as if they were a pair of perfectly matched spoons. At least she had been happy to see him, disrobing sensuously and luring him to bed tonight as if they were new-wed. The queen could hardly abide him in the week Robert Dudley had been back at court, as if her Principal Secretary’s mere presence made her feel guilty.

“She ignores her duties,” he complained to Mildred, “romping with that man all day and half the night. She makes mockery of official visits by ambassadors.…”

“And by her principal adviser who helped save her from her bloody sister during hard times and loves her dearly.”

“It’s true,” he muttered, “I do love her, but not— never—the way that I do you.”

“I know that. Family, duty, queen—that should be the motto emblazed on your escutcheon, my lord.”

Cecil turned Mildred to face him in the twist of mussed sheets. “As of now, you are the wisest woman in the kingdom,” he told her solemnly. “You have stood by me even as I have stood by Elizabeth, and now I have a favor—a great boon—to ask you.”

“I—yes,” he said, amazed at her again. “I thought it would be a blow to you after how long and hard I’ve strived to reach this pinnacle. But I am praying my threat to resign will rattle her into ending this disastrous summer. I have intelligence that says de Quadra has actually been telling other high-placed ambassadors in London that the queen may lie down one night a queen and wake up with herself and her paramour in prison!”

He sat up in bed and put his head in his hands. “When I tried to tell her how dangerous the Mary, Queen of Scots, situation could become—and then there is the threat of others swarming around Katherine Grey—she lost her temper and would not heed me. But I have to try again, my love.”

“But only because I had great faith our Lord God had destined Elizabeth Tudor to rule and rule well. Only because I had hitched myself to her star and now she—she has tumbled from the sky.”

“No. I go into the lioness’s den alone—if she will take the time to see me.”

“My dearest, is there no way you can use Robert Dudley to your benefit, perhaps make some deal to work with him to bridle her?”

“I’d rather die first,” he admitted, throwing the covers off and getting up to pace, “but then, indeed, it may come to that.”

“At least the dungeons of the Tower are a good distance from Richmond,” he mused, going over to his desk to try to write down the points he must make to the queen tomorrow. “Though one of Her Grace’s musicians fell off a tower at Richmond to his death, and I warrant if I cross her the wrong way, she might give me the heave-ho off that very parapet.”

He gave a little laugh but saw that Mildred had begun to cry quietly and went back to comfort her.

IT TOOK CECIL MOST OF THE DAY TO GET TO RICHMOND BY horse and barge and most of the evening to get a privy meeting with the queen. He had decided to face her without his usual sheaf of letters, warrants, and writs, hoping that would convince her he was serious about leaving if she could not give the realm’s business her time and attention. But on his way into the presence chamber—he had heard she had pulled herself away from playing cards to receive him—he ran into his nemesis.

“Secretary Cecil. I can only hope you are not here to counsel Her Majesty to wed some foreigner again. I swear, anyone who urges such advice on her is as good as a traitor and—”

“And you, Horse Master, certainly should be an expert on traitors—entire families of them,” Cecil replied, holding his ground when Dudley advanced several steps on him. “I warrant you were just playing cards with her and I tell you, my lord, you are showing your own hand and have wagered entirely too much to win in the end.”

“You’re sounding desperate, Cecil,” Dudley responded with a smirk. “We could work together, you and I, on intelligence gathering, on counsel to Her Gr—”

“Has she appointed you yet?” Cecil interrupted, his choler rising. “ ’S blood, man, if you truly cared one whit for her future, you would urge her to stop this midsummer night’s madness and get back to business.”

“Ah,” Robert said, obviously enjoying this, “what are those lines from Proverbs Her Grace quoted to me but the other day? Oh, yes, I have it: For by wise counsel you will wage your own war, and in a multitude of counselors there is safety. In short, she needs more advisers than the one who always lectures and preaches to her that—”

“Preaches? I believe it is you who just quoted Scripture to me. But,” Cecil countered, clenching his fists and hoping his fury did not betray his control, “Proverbs also says that the monarch’s heart must be in the hand of the Lord. The Lord God, Dudley, not some upstart blackguard who knows how to glitter, cajole, and seduce.…”

They might have come to blows if the double doors had not been opened from within. Dudley stepped back into the shadows and was quickly on his way as Cecil turned to face the queen, seated far across the large, lighted room on the slightly raised dais under the swag of drapery emblazoned with the huge, ornate E R. He strode quickly to her chair, and as the guards closed the door behind him, he saw they were indeed alone in the chamber.

“Is there some uprising or rebellion that you demand to see your queen the moment you arrive and without summons?” Elizabeth began as soon as he bowed and stood facing her again.

“Indeed, Your Gracious Majesty, a rebellion of sorts. Mine. I cannot serve you in such fashion where I must stand in line with the kingdom’s essential business in hand to await the whims of dancing, boating, or gambling at cards, while all the time you gamble with your own future. I honor and admire you far too much to see that happen.”

She probably, he noted, would have cut him off, but she looked so shocked, she gasped for words. Good, he thought. He had her full attention at last.

“You—you are resigning?” she choked out. “I’ll not allow it! You are but vexed I have for once taken some time to enjoy myself before my return to London.”

“London, Your Grace, where people are muttering that you will wed Robert Dudley.”

“I cannot wed Robert Dudley!” she shouted, and jumped up to come at him, then swerved to pace before the throne. “The man is married, for heaven’s sake, Cecil.”

“Your father’s being married never stopped him when he desired to wed, that’s what your subjects are remembering. And rumors say Amy Dudley is ailing and—”

“Rumors?” she cried, flinging out both arms. “I am indeed doomed if my chief adviser is making his decisions on rumors. Are you demented, my lord?”

He nearly dared to ask her the same. “Your Grace,” he said, choosing each word carefully, though he couldn’t recall one of his well-rehearsed pleas, “you have said you wish to rule by the goodwill of your people. I am only asking that you hold personal affairs more at arm’s length and return to state affairs in London to assure the country and the watching world that you are the ruling queen of England, not only the reigning one.”

“I could put you in the Tower for such insolence.” She leveled a stiff arm and trembling index finger at him. “You are speaking sedition, if not treason, and I can hardly allow a man who knows so much of the state’s business to go about scot-free.”

He thrust his wrists forward as if they were in shackles already. “I will gladly go to the Tower to rot there rather than see all my dreams rot here, Your Grace. I told Mildred I had almost feared you might have me cast off one of the towers here, but I just might do it myself.”

“Do not jest with that,” she said, her voice quiet for the first time. “But no, you may not resign. I will return to London, my lord, but later, after a little while at Windsor. Yes, have you not heard? I’ve ordered the court to progress to Windsor on the morrow as this place does not please me now.”

He saw her eyes dart around the room. He felt instantly protective of her, just as he had for years. “Because of the death of your musician?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper.

She shrugged. “I know not. Something—I feel someone is watching me, wanting to harm me. It’s a foolish fancy.”

She stared straight at him, nostrils flared and fists clenched. He was certain she would strike or banish or even order him imprisoned.

“Be on my barge tomorrow and bring your—my—most important papers,”she said, and swept from the room.

When he was alone, he realized his legs were shaking so hard he had to lean against the wall behind the throne until he felt steady enough to leave.

BUT ON THE BARGE, DESPITE CECIL’S HIGH HOPES, THINGS weren’t much better. The queen signed papers without reading, half listening to Dudley’s chatter and her lutenist’s eternal repetition of some song entitled “Chi Ama Crede.” She kept up a running patter with her cousin, Lord Hunsdon, who—God bless him—understood Cecil’s dilemma and tried to steer Her Grace back to business. And besides seeming to hearken to everyone and everything but state papers, she kept squinting at the passing shoreline as if some enemy was hidden there. She had Gil Sharpe, her mute little lad of an artist, sketching faces and bringing them to her to comment on. More than once she sent Lord Hunsdon’s new young protégé—some handsome family cousin named Luke Morgan—on errands to order the bargemen to row faster or put in for a few moments. Cecil ground his teeth.

“Everyone had best hold on,” Luke announced to the entire barge when he returned to sit at the queen’s feet for the fortieth time. “The barge master says the rain in this area’s been bad and the rapids below are up a bit.”

Several ladies giggled in anticipation, though Cecil could see no white water ahead. Perhaps it was rocks newly hidden in the swirls that made the danger, for the bottom of the barge bumped and scraped. Cecil saw Dudley immediately seize the queen’s arm to steady her. At least, Cecil thought, the blackguard wouldn’t let her perish in the water, even if he was willy-nilly drowning her reputation.

“It’s Dove, your lutenist, Your Grace,” Dudley’s sister Mary cried. “Perched on the side, he’s fallen in!”

“Fetch him out!” Her Majesty shouted, rising to her feet despite the barge tilting on the rock. She shoved several, including Robert, aside to clamber to the back of the barge near where the lad had popped up in the rush of water, still holding his lute. Shivers shook Cecil. Whatever her flaws, the courage of Elizabeth Tudor was magnificent.

Before her oarsmen or guards could reach an oar to help, Luke jumped off and fought his way through coursing currents to the lad. At first they were swept too far to reach the oars, but Luke half dragged, half swam them toward the barge. Oarsmen towed them in, both sputtering and hacking river water.

Men cheered, ladies applauded, and Elizabeth leaned over the side to take the lute from Franklin and clap the sopping Luke on the back. She refused to step back even when the two men were hauled over the side and drenched her skirts.

“I believe, Franklin,” Her Majesty said, “I must indeed let you use Geoffrey’s lute now, as this one will warp.” Mary Sidney threw a swag of satin bunting over the boy and sat him down in the back of the barge. Cecil saw the queen speak to Luke and shuffled closer to hear.

“But Your Grace,” Cecil heard him say, out of breath, “I led you wrong about the lad’s being a eunuch.”

“What?” she asked as the others made their way back to their places to hold on while the oarsmen got the barge off the rocks. “You could tell when your hands were on him? You could feel he’s not been gelded?”

“I could feel,” he gasped out, “full breasts that were bandaged tight and popped free under that sopping shirt. Majesty, your he—your eunuch—is a she.”

Chapter the Fifth