Linda Barlow (71 page)

The manner of his death was really the only issue to be decided. Someone of his rank was usually dispatched by an ax-wielding headsman. But depending on the whim of the court, he could legally be killed far more hideously—hanged by the neck, cut down while still alive and disemboweled, his entrails burned before his eyes, then bound limb by limb to horses and divided into four pieces—mutilated, ripped apart.

He shook his head to clear it of such hellish images. "I wish you would not come. There will be nothing but pain and torment for you in London, I fear."

"Roger, you must have hope. All is not lost. All is never lost as long as there is life in our bodies and love in our hearts." She took his hands and pressed them to her still-flat belly. "You are my husband, the father of my child. I have no wish to be a widow, to raise our babe alone. I will fight for you. You must do the same. Promise me. Promise me you will never surrender to despair."

"Alix, I beg you to be realistic. I don't think you understand the seriousness of the charges against me."

"I do understand," she said with a shudder that convinced him that she did. "But something may happen, something
will
happen to save you. I feel, I
know
that you and I will live for many years together." She smiled cheerfully into his brown eyes. She had ordered herself to banish terror, banish despair. She would not give in to mournful speculation. She would concentrate on the image of Roger free, Roger safe, Roger alive and in her arms.

He looked down into her brave, determined face and felt a fierce upsurge of love. There was no one to match her. She was his Amazon, his guardian angel, his bright and beautiful love. If she could face the future with such hope and courage, so could he. For her sake he would fight his fate with all his wit and skill and strength. For her sake he would try to stay alive.

"Come here." He pulled her tight against him and kissed her deeply. Her arms wound around his neck, her sweet breasts nestled to his chest. She was soft and fragrant, his wife, his lover, his soul's true partner until the end of time. "I adore you, Alix. We will be together again."

She tilted her head back slightly. "Swear it, Roger. Promise me."

He pressed her to his heart. "As God is my witness, I do so swear."

They held each other close until her father came back insisting that it was time for them to part.

As Roger Trevor rode down the road that led south from Whitcombe, a prisoner surrounded by a troop of twenty men-at-arms, he turned his head to see Alix smiling and waving to him from the church steps. He waved too, until he rounded a bend in the road and could see his beloved no more. So he missed the sight of Alexandra's jauntily waving hand falling limply to her side; he did not see her sway and fall, nor did he hear her heartrending whimpers of terror and grief. He did not see her mother kneel beside her and take that shining red head into her lap, nor was he aware of Merwynna slipping out of the crowd around the church to touch Alexandra gently and press an herbal potion to her lips. No, he remembered her brave and strong and smiling, which was exactly what she had hoped. That cheerful image, delivered at great cost and taxing her acting abilities to the utmost, had been her parting gift to him.

Part IV

London, January 1558

But true love is a durable fire,

In the mind ever burning,

Never sick, never old, never dead,

From itself never turning.

—Sir Walter Raleigh

Chapter 42

Alexandra touched an anxious hand to the front of her gown as she awaited her summons from the queen's chamberlain. When she was finally allowed to enter Mary of England's private chamber for the audience she had requested a week ago, she was outwardly calm, but inside she was trembling. As if in sympathy, the child within her kicked and rolled. "Oh, love, we must do our best now, mustn't we?"

The queen was sitting at her writing table, with piles of documents in front of her, as always. A tireless worker, she was dedicated to the task for which she believed herself chosen by God. If He was failing to reward her devotion in any obvious manner, surely her spiritual goods must be piling up in heaven—was that what Mary was telling herself these days? Her life, certainly, had been joyless and cruel.

Although Alexandra had been announced, Mary ignored her slow approach. She was hunched over her papers, scribbling something with her quill. The same quill with which she had signed the warrant condemning Roger? Alexandra drew a deep breath and prayed for calm, for courage, and for eloquence.

The queen raised her head and Alexandra sank in a deep curtsy. It was a move she had practiced. She was not yet ungainly, but still, a six-month child created certain problems, particularly since she was doing her best to conceal her pregnancy from the queen. Her farthingale had been skillfully positioned to hide as much of the evidence as possible.

"Ah. Alexandra," said Mary without inflection.

"Your Grace."

"It has been some time since we have looked upon your face."

"Yes, your Grace." She moved a little nearer, startled at the way her monarch had changed. Mary looked old. She was meticulously dressed, as always, but her face was lined and sunken about the eyes, and her skin had an unhealthy pallor. Her eyes were dark and tragic, and something was gone from her—that old spirit that had held her stalwart and strong, no matter what adversities were haunting her. She was indeed a haunted woman, and ailing, the gossips whispered, since her husband had abandoned her again last summer.

"I have thought of you often," the queen went on, lifting her quill from her papers and tapping it against the fingers of her other hand. "I have particularly missed the potions you so kindly used to brew for me. My physicians are fools. I feel almost constantly unwell."

"I am so sorry, your Grace."

There was a pause, and Alexandra wasn't sure whether to break it or wait for the queen to speak again. Surely she knew why she was here.

"Your father is in good health, I trust?"

"Aye, your Grace."

Mary's sharp eyes looked right through her. "And your husband?"

Alexandra straightened her shoulders. "As you know, he is condemned to death. You signed the warrant last week."

"Last week? The sentence has not yet been carried out?"

Alexandra's voice seemed to come from someone other than herself. "He is due to be executed two days from now. Unless you cancel the warrant. Which, as you must realize, is what I have come to plead for you to do."

The queen shuffled her papers. "I have read my clerks' accounts of his trial. He has been condemned of treason, and there is no question in my mind of his guilt. Since he declared himself no follower of such archfiends as Luther, Calvin, and Knox, the charges of heresy were dismissed. The charges of abduction and rape were dropped when the chief witness against him—you—refused to testify. Indeed, this complex case has caused a tangle in my courts. But about his treason, there has never been any doubt, although he did, I understand, defend himself quite skillfully during his trial. An interesting man, your Roger Trevor. It is sad indeed that he chose to put his considerable talents to such villainous use."

Alexandra moved closer. "Your Grace, I love him. He is not a heretic, has never been a heretic. His only crime was to help some people whom he misguidedly considered less fortunate than himself. He was not disloyal to you; the man he worked with—the same man with whom he later fought a duel of honor—had a hold over him which has now been broken. He is no threat to you. If you cancel this warrant and let him live, he may one day prove of great value. You need a man like him to broaden England's Mediterranean trade. The war with France has been costly. My husband can sell good English cloth and tin to the East for the silver and gold that are sorely needed in the coffers of state. He can also—"

"Enough," the queen interrupted. "He is one of many mariners, and besides, I do not employ traitors for such missions. No. There is nothing to be done. The warrant is signed and your husband must die. Now, leave me, please; my head is aching. I will pray for you."

She could not fail. She
could not.
To attempt her next argument was to move into treacherous waters indeed, but she had nothing left to lose. "Your Grace, wait. Hear me out, please. Hear me not as a monarch, but as a woman. You too have loved a man. You too have lost him; not to death, thank God, but to his duties, as they were ordained by God."

She noted, with trepidation, the look that came over Mary's face as she raised the subject of Philip of Spain. "Please God, he will soon return to give you a child," she added, although she knew that this was unlikely. There had been a rumor during the autumn that the Queen might have conceived before her husband had left the country, but she would have been big with child now had it been true. Mary was old for childbearing and very likely barren. "But in the meantime, you have known the unhappiness of yearning for your husband. You know what I suffer; you have shared my pain." She raised her eyes boldly to the queen's face. "You once asked me for a beauty enhancer, which I concocted for you. You told me then that you would grant me any boon. I asked for nothing at the time, your Grace. I ask you now for Roger Trevor's life."

There was a deathly silence. The pitfalls in this were legion: the reminder that the queen had once required a beauty enhancer, the memory of happier times with Philip, times that had not lasted, beauty enhancer or no. The only thing that was working in her favor, Alexandra knew, was the queen's highly developed sense of honor. She had promised Alexandra a boon. Would she keep her vow?

"I should have had you put on trial with him," Mary said harshly. "Do you have any idea how much evidence I have against you? You could be dying at his side."

"I would gladly die at his side."

"Yes, I believe you would." Mary’s eyes ran over the front of Alexandra's kirtle. "But we could not kill you, of course, until the innocent life within you is delivered."

Alexandra swallowed uneasily. So the Queen had heard of her pregnancy. She had hoped that, preoccupied with the war on the Continent, Mary might not be aware of that gossip. The queen's own failure to achieve pregnancy and give England an heir was the greatest tragedy of her existence, a sad fact that was likely to make a mockery of her lifework. With no Catholic heir to the throne, Mary's sister Elizabeth would be the next Queen of England. And Elizabeth, though she now diplomatically attended Mass, had been raised as a Protestant.

"My child is innocent, as am I," she stated. "I am guilty only of loving one man too much. But 'tis a sin I will never regret. My boon, your Grace? Will you grant it, or not?"

"You ask too much, mistress." The queen's voice rang with undammed passion. "Trevor must die. His child will live, and you will be permitted to retire to your home in the north, with the lands and the title intact for your son, should you bear a son. Be grateful that such a rare favor will be granted to the widow of a traitor, and do not dream of asking me for anything more. Now, get thee gone from my sight."

It was her pregnancy that did it, she told herself later. She was overwrought, weakened, and greatly dispirited after suffering through the long weeks and months that had marked Roger's imprisonment and trial. Mentally and physically she was at the end of her endurance. Her lips began to tremble and she flung herself to her knees at the queen's feet. "Please, your Grace.
Please!"
She said it quietly at first, but soon her voice rose. "Tear up the warrant, I beg of you!"