Chapter the Sixth
I have endured pain and travail,
So much grief and misery
What must I do for you
To stand in your good grace?
With grief my heart is dead
If it look not on your face.
AFTER THE ROYAL BARGE SWEPT PAST THE palaces of Hampton Court and Oatlands, Meg saw the gray stone mass of Windsor Castle
hove into sight with the little town sprawled around its stony skirts. Though the
queen liked her other palaces well enough, the lofty view and fresh air of Windsor
always brought her back in late summer. Sometimes Her Grace complained the place itself
was like to tumble down about her ears, but she had plans to rebuild it when she got
the money.
Peering over the walls sat ornate St. George’s Chapel, where the queen had made Lord
Robin a Knight of the Garter in a fancy ceremony Meg had only heard about. Rising
above the chapel, the hulk of the old Norman Round Tower frowned down on them all,
but right now its heavy brooding could not outdo the queen’s.
Meg could tell Elizabeth was seething, but she wasn’t sure why. Even when Franklin fell in the river, Her Majesty had been in a soaring
mood, glad to see him plucked out. It was only his old lute he’d ruined, but now the
queen kept glaring daggers at the bedraggled lad. No, more like it was that the barge
had sprung a leak. Most of the men were bailing with hats or even boots, and the queen,
like the rest of her ladies, had sopped her skirts and shoes.
“Franklin,” Meg heard the queen say in a sharp voice, “or what must I call you now?”
Meg edged closer as Franklin shuffled through the four inches of water to the queen
and bowed very low. “In truth, Felicia Dove, Your Gracious Majesty, but I thought
if you knew I was really a—”
“Indeed,” the queen cut him off. “Evidently you deem yourself worthy to do my thinking
for me and to dupe me. When we dock, you are to go with Lord Hunsdon and Luke Morgan
to Eton and return to court only when I send for you—accompanied by one or the other
of those men.”
“If you please, I can explain, Your Maj—”
“I do not please. Go write songs about deceivers for that wet, warped lute, if you
can!”
Baron Hunsdon’s man Luke, as if he knew what the queen was ranting about, stepped
forward and seemed to take the poor lutenist prisoner. Felicia Dove? Meg thought. And then, when Franklin had to unwrap himself from the satin swag
he’d clung to like a shawl, Meg saw that the lad was indeed a maid. Despite the barrier
of the lute, the sodden shirt clung to a feminine form.
Meg gasped at the wench’s trick, crafty as Ned’s turning lads to ladies for the stage
with wigs, face paint, and padded breasts. Mercy, thought Meg, the queen had gone
about as a lad a time or two herself, so why hadn’t she discovered that ruse? Though,
of course, Meg and Ned hadn’t either. Still, she was certain more was expected of
queens, and that must be why Her Grace was out of sorts.
Set between town and castle, the royal barge landing was a bit past the bustling public
one. Under a grassy bank where Meg tended the queen’s rose and herb gardens, the palace’s
wooden dock soon swarmed with townsfolk who saw the queen’s barge. After her betters
had disembarked, Meg clambered out. The queen’s castle steward, a portly man whose
name Meg could not recall, greeted Her Majesty with a low bow. The royal litter with
carriers awaited her short ride up to the castle. Though it wasn’t far, someone produced
horses for Lord Robin and other men to make an escort.
“A difficult journey, I take it, Your Grace,” the steward intoned, “but we can no
doubt repair the barge.”
“Do so, but also send for another back in London,” the queen clipped out, settling
herself in her litter with Lord Robin’s helping hand. “And,” she said, speaking loudly
enough for everyone on the landing to hear, including the barge crew, “order new oarsmen
sent with it who know how to keep me off the rocks, hidden or not.”
Meg’s insides cartwheeled. Not only were the poor oarsmen shamed and dismayed, but Felicia Dove was also downcast. Her Grace’s command
could hurt Meg too. Meg’s estranged husband was an oarsman in London, and she’d told
the queen not one thing about him—not even that she’d been wed before she lost her
memory.
Meg had learned of him in London and seen him too, close-up, the ruffian. So every
time new rowers were hired for the royal barges, Meg shuddered to think one might
be Ben Wilton, come to work for Her Majesty. He would see Meg, whose name had once
been Sarah Scutea, and claim his wayward wife. And what if, like Felicia Dove, Meg
thought as she hurried to keep up on foot with the queen’s entourage, the queen cast
her off for lying? If she ever had to stop being Meg Milligrew and leave Elizabeth
Tudor, she’d just as soon throw herself off a tower, maybe like poor Geoffrey’d done.
As Meg hurried through the King Henry VIII gateway of the palace, she glanced up to
see fierce gargoyles glaring down at her.
For beneath the tile and stone, interred in lead caskets, lay her father and his third
queen, Jane Seymour. Somehow, whatever sermonizing tone the current cleric took, in
her ears it always turned to her father’s outrage at something she had done amiss.
You shall not speak of your mother in my presence! he had thundered once and stomped toward Elizabeth, favoring his sore tree trunk
of a leg. Be grateful, girl, you are not declared bastard again! You and your sister had best
learn to hold your tongues and tend to your brother’s wants, as he shall rule here
after me, not a weakling in petticoats. No woman shall sit on this throne without
a man to guide her, is that not right, my darling Tudor rose?
He’d softened then as he turned to beam at his young fifth wife, Catherine Howard.
He’d not gone closer to Elizabeth but chucked his Catherine under the chin while she
giggled and preened. And then the silly chit had trusted him and, worse, trusted a
young, dashing paramour and got her head cut off for following her heart.
Elizabeth jolted back to reality as Robin shifted in his seat beside her, bumping
her skirts. She forced her brain back to the sermon from the Old Testament about King
David.
“And David saw and coveted a married woman, wife of his trusted soldier Uriah. ‘And
it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed and walked upon the roof of the king’s house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing
herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.’ And the monarch sent Uriah,”
the elderly minister went on, “to be killed in battle so that he might possess another
man’s wife.”
Again Robin shifted sharply beside her. Elizabeth heard whispers, mayhap even titters
farther back in the congregation of courtiers. Her quick mind closed on the sermon
like a trap: Did this man dare to imply she, as monarch, was acting in like manner?
Did her own people believe she would dare to possess Robin and rid herself of his
spouse?
The queen stood. “Leave off, man!” she shouted at the cleric, who jumped back so far
he almost tumbled off his lofty lectern. “You have preached too long and too far.”
She turned to walk out. Her father had done such when the Papists preached against
his will. She needed not some pious insult about her and Robin. This preacher would
find himself lecturing the northern sheep of her realm next week, indeed he would!
The queen did not glance behind her until she left the long aisle of the chapel. Her
ladies followed her out in disarray and Robin, bless him, sat still and rose slowly,
as if the message had naught to do with him at all.
“ ’S blood!” Elizabeth muttered, and did not deign to explain herself when several
of her ladies asked if she were in pain. It vexed her too that Robin was packing to
go to London to try to cozen the Spanish ambassador on her behalf—and she was the
one who would miss him. And if it weren’t for her sister Queen Mary being besotted
by her husband, King Philip of Spain, the money to repair this terrace would not have
been squandered on a damned Spanish war. Planks and rails, some decaying, covered
the earth and stones at the top of the escarpment and made footing a bit slippery,
however lovely the blue-green vista below.
“Your Grace,” her cousin Harry called to her. Both he and Luke Morgan joined her,
with the lutenist between them as if she were some vile state prisoner. “You wished
to see Mistress Dove.”
Despite the muddy wooden walk and the fact she was finally garbed as a girl, Felicia
went down on both knees and stayed there. She was quite a fetching female, slender
as was the style.
“Rise and walk with me,” the queen ordered, treading the very edge of the terrace,
turning away to overlook the stretch of vibrant scene again. “Well,” she said when
Felicia stood at her side, shaking soil from her gray skirts, “is there some excuse,
some explanation?”
“Aye, Your Gracious Majesty. I feared you’d never take a mere lass in, not on a lute.
’Tisn’t done, no more than wenches on the stage, and I so longed—”
“Women play the lute and sing in their own homes,” Elizabeth interrupted. “I play
passably well, but not in public.”
“You play very well, Your Majesty, and I was thrilled you asked me for a bit of further instruction.
You see, I knew the music was God’s gift to me and I yearned to play for you, to know
you, to just be near you, a woman who is queen in her own right, and that is not done
either, as e’en your royal sister was wed.”
Elizabeth’s temper flared again, but this was not Cecil in some you-must-wed harangue.
“Well said, Felicia,” she admitted. “It is Felicia, with no more surprises, is it not?”
“Oh, yes, Your Grace. If I can no longer play in your gallery with the men, can I
not be your privy player and—”
“I have not decided,” Elizabeth interrupted, turning to study the girl’s eager face.
“I will not—cannot—abide those who deal treacherously with me, not a lutenist, not
the highest peer in the realm, not the dearest friend. I had friends who lied to me
the very month I was crowned, the Haringtons, and they are yet cooling their heels
in the country out of my sight.”
She saw that revelation startled Felicia. Elizabeth bit her lower lip and glanced
away again, remembering how she had sent her dear friend Bella and her Lord John into
rural exile. She longed to summon them back. Yes, perhaps it was time. With these unfair rumors about her and Robert
flying hither and yon, she needed all the friends she could grapple to her.
“Your Majesty?” Felicia broke into her thoughts, sounding even more shaken now. “I
admire you greatly. I am so honored to be at your court, so please do not send me
back to oblivion.”
“Not to oblivion, girl, but you cannot get off scot-free for such deceptions, and
you will remain in Lord Hunsdon’s household until I send for you again. He has a soft
spot for brilliant talent and, no doubt, a lute or two for you to practice on there.
Practice hard— lute playing and truth telling—and mayhap I shall decide to trust you
again.”
Tears puddled in the girl’s eyes, and her face flushed. She gripped her hands together
so hard in supplication that those skilled fingers turned white as sausages.
“Will you argue more?” Elizabeth challenged, sensing anger battled with the girl’s
shame. “N-no, Your Majesty.”
“What has saved you, Felicia, is your clever point that you dared only to do what
I have done in my own realm. We’ll show them, won’t we, those men who say a woman
cannot play in public, cannot rule?”
“He has?” Elizabeth cried, breaking into a smile and clapping her hands, astounding
Cecil. “He’s here? Then I must stop Robert’s plans to go to London.”
She jumped up from the table with the top document only half-signed. She threw her
quill down, spattering ink.
“Lord Robert was going to London to see de Quadra?” Cecil asked. “On what business?
I thought the bishop annoyed you, and why send Dudley?”
As she ran from the room, he cursed and hit his fist on the pile of papers. He gathered
his work, refusing to sit here waiting while the queen of England bounded after a
married man like some tavern doxy. On his way out, he ran nearly headlong into de
Quadra on his way in.
“She’s not here,” Cecil muttered as de Quadra wheeled about and fell into step beside
him down the long gallery.
“In other words, you told her I was coming,” the man said with a hint of a grim grin.
Cecil almost chuckled despite his frustration with the queen.
“I hear she’s been in a mercurial mood for days,” de Quadra continued, as careful
as Cecil not to talk when they passed clusters of courtiers in the hall.
“To put it mildly.”
“Even banished that brilliant new lutenist she was so enamored of,” he said matter-of-factly.
Cecil tried not to act surprised at the depth and breadth of the Spaniard’s knowledge
of the queen. “Your eyes and ears here keep you apprised of the most minute details,
bishop. Or should I ask instead if you have some other, special interest in the lutenist?”
“Now that he has been found a she, you mean?” he parried. “Why, my Lord Cecil, do
you suggest I covet the girl? I tell you, I do not take my vow of chastity that lightly.”
“I meant, bishop, that my eyes and ears tell me that your eyes and ears are someone
close to the queen, so why not a lutenist?”
“But a woman? Like Eve in the garden, as I hear Lord Robert called the queen, women
are too fickle and untrustworthy. Best guess again.”
They exchanged wary yet bemused looks of admiration. But Cecil’s observations of the
so-called Dove of the lute had convinced him, at least, that the lass was a survivor
and a clever one at that. Chameleons who could change their skin and story and had
fire in their fingertips and in their belly always were. After all, that was how Elizabeth
had survived to claim her crown.
She felt as caged as she had at home. You might know Lord Hunsdon thought Windsor
Palace so drafty and rickety he leased a place. Compared to Richmond Palace, these
rooms were small and dark. And that poxy lackey, Luke Morgan, hovered about as if
he were her father. He appeared now from some brief errand and sat at table with his
lord, glaring at her from time to time over the rim of his flagon. Hoping Lord Hunsdon
didn’t notice, Felicia glared back.
True, Luke had saved her from drowning—she couldn’t swim worth a fig—but she’d paid
the price. This was the second time he’d tat-taled to the queen about her for his
own advantage. It was bad enough she’d had to agree that her carefully crafted persona,
Franklin Dove, was a eunuch. Oh, how she’d like to cut Luke Morgan down to size and
condemn him to that very estate right now, the lickspittle.
And worst of all, how was she to keep herself flush with coin if she couldn’t send
court information to her secret sponsor? Cooped up here, she’d never get her daily
written missive to the courier who got them to her employer, whether nearby or elsewhere.
“Play ‘Greensleeves’ again, Frank—Felicia,” Lord Hunsdon put in, his voice slightly
slurred. “You play it the mos’ melancholy of an’one I’ve e’er known.”
“No wonder, seeing all my dreams are dashed,” she dared, and modulated into the minor
tones of that sad ballad again.
“But Her Grace sent for you righ’ away,” he said, stopping for another swig. Luke
was savoring his wine and had hardly eaten much for such a big man, she thought. Instead, the blackguard
had been watching her, as if he’d devour her for dinner. “And,” his lordship went
on, “if she forgives tha’ fas’, she’ll have you back in her service in a trice.”
“May I ask a question then, my lord?” Felicia said, not stopping her fingers through
the tune’s sonorous swells.
“Indeed,” Lord Hunsdon said with a hiccup and a grandiose gesture.
“Her Grace mentioned having banished someone called the Haringtons, someone who must
have been dear to her. I just wondered, in light of my own chastisement, what is their
plight and status now?”
“Suffice to say, she trusted ’em, and they misled her,” his lordship said, his sibilant
words coming out in a strange hiss. “Can’t tell you details, sworn to secrecy. But
don’t fret. She did not imprison ’em, as I believed she would, as I would’ve if I
were the queen—er, king.”
“So she didn’t ‘cast them off discourteously’?” she sang her next question to the
tune.
“As a matter a fac’,” his lordship said as Luke poured him more wine, “she helped
’em search for their wayward daughter, who’s Her Grace’s half niece—ill-illegitimate,
a course.”
“Through which of King Henry’s lovers, my lord?” Luke put in, pricking up his too-sharp
ears again.
“Mm, a certain Jane Dyngley in the parade of them, ’S I recall,” his lordship explained,
frowning as if trying to remember. “Any rate, their child—Audrey, I think’s her name—was fostered out. Great
Harry kept the court clean of bastards that way.…”
His voice trailed off, and he frowned into his goblet. Felicia knew servants’ gossip
said Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, could be one of the lusty king’s bastards, though
his mother, Mary Boleyn, had denied it.
“So,” his lordship went on as if speaking to his drink now, “this Audrey was Harington’s
firs’ wife, and their daughter, Hester, ran away coupla years ago—no doubt a wench
after your own heart, eh, my little revolting lutenist? Well, meaning you revolted
to run away from parents too, not that you were revolting, righ’, Luke? But Her Grace’ll
have you back and if she won’t, I’ll be your patron … pay you better than Her Grace,
the penny-pincher, ’spite a what you see.”
His lordship rose and fumbled to unbutton his breeches, leaning an arm on the mantel
over the hearth as if to use it for a chamberpot. She’d seen the practice even at
court, when they all thought she was a lad and the ladies weren’t around because the
queen didn’t allow it. But he evidently remembered his lutenist was female and strode
hurriedly from the room, listing a bit like Her Grace’s barge on boulders in the Thames.
“However much Lord Hunsdon would pay and coddle you,” Luke said, reaching out to spear
a hunk of bread with his dagger, “I believe you’d choose to serve the queen, even
if you had to pay her.”
“You should understand that, as you scramble hard enough to please her at cost to anyone,” she countered, stopping her playing with
a dissonant chord.
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black. I’ve watched you watch her, you see, Mistress
Dove. You adore her, even more than most of us do.” He laughed harshly and popped
a hunk of bread into his big mouth. “Poor, petty lutenist, you not only want to be
like her, you want—lust—to be her.”
Her heart began to thud. This man was dangerous. “You don’t know the first thing about
me—under the skin,” she countered, and rose from her seat in the window. Since the
lute was not hers and she needed no more accusations, she put it down carefully. Though
she’d not been dismissed by his lordship, she made for the door.
Luke leaped up so fast to block her way she panicked and jumped back against the wall.
Her small purse, stuffed with coins from Lord Robert Dudley and those that a lad at
Richmond had slipped her as another payment from the Spanish ambassador, clunked as
if it were one melted mass.
“What was that?” Luke demanded, swaggering closer, nonchalantly sheathing his dagger
as he came. “It sounded as if you have a lead bottom, mistress.”
“Let me pass. Let me and my affairs be.”
He stalked her the rest of the way to the wainscotted wall, both arms out stiff to
trap her there. He grinned wolfishly. “Would that your affairs, at least one of them,
were mine.”
He dared to lower one hand behind her to feel her bum, but his purpose must have been to find the purse. He cupped it in his palm and
bounced it once.
“Been earning extra on your back with your legs spread instead of those clever arms
and fingers spread?” he murmured, so close she could smell garlic on his breath. “Or
came you by this some other way?”
“ ’Tis my inheritance, so keep your filthy hands off of everything. You’ve already
caused chaos in my life!”
“And likely to cause more if you don’t do exactly as you’re bid and quit that lying—lying
with your lips, though I wouldn’t mind it if you’d lie with me tonight. Then I’d hold
my tongue on all your little secrets so—”
She shoved him back so hard he bounced into a table and sent a chair crashing to the
floor. Felicia was out into the hall and up the stairs to her tiny servant’s room
under the eaves with the bolt shot before she heard the dining room door slam far
below. And if that blackguard so much as told on her or touched her again, she’d be
sure he’d face royal wrath, and not the queen’s.