Now, she pressed his hand against her thigh and said, “There’s nothing you can do that will hurt me.” She looked deep into his eyes. “Except leave me.”
He slipped his other arm around her waist and lowered her onto the woolsack and brought his mouth to hers. “Then, my love, there is nothing at all.”
24
Princess at the Threshold
January 1557
A
dam rode hard from Colchester, Elizabeth’s letter driving him on through gusting snow. The morning had brought sleet that made the road a treacherous slide of icy mud, and now the wind-whipped snow needled his face with such force he could hardly see the road ahead, but he did not slacken his pace. Just a note, she’d sent. Barely that. Two lines.
If you are within the realm and receive this by Twelfth Night, come in all haste, I beg you. If you fail me, I am lost.
He had barraged her road-weary messenger for information—What had happened? Was the Princess in danger? What was it she feared?—but the exhausted man had no answers.
It was dusk when Adam galloped through the gates of Hatfield House. The wind and snow had finally abated as though worn out by their assault on him, and he found the courtyard deserted and quiet. That eased one of his fears—the place had not been overrun by the Queen’s soldiers come to arrest Elizabeth.
“Here he is!” a voice called out.
Adam turned in the saddle, his neck stiff from the cold, and glimpsed a maid’s face at an open second-story window before she disappeared. Agnes? He’d gotten to know most of the household when he’d recuperated from his arrow wound—she had brought him his meals. A young groom dashed out from the house, calling over his shoulder, “He’s here!”
Adam swung down from the saddle, shedding a flurry of snow from his cloak even before the boy reached him to take the reins. “What’s going on, Tim? What’s the trouble?”
“I know not, Master Thornleigh. Only, we was told to keep an eye out for you.”
Burning to know why, Adam strode for the front door and was taking the steps two at a time when the door swung open and the chamberlain beckoned him in, looking anxious. “Blessed Jesu, what a storm you braved. Come in, Master Thornleigh, come in.”
“Where is she, Bates? I got word—”
A rustle of skirts at the top of the staircase, and then a cry. “You came!”
He knew the voice and whirled around, and there she was, rushing down the steps toward him. Relief flooded him to see her alive, unhurt. As beautiful as ever—more beautiful, her loose hair streaming behind her like liquid flame, her black velvet dress hugging her body. He bounded up the steps, tearing off his ice-stiffened gauntlets, and they met in the middle of the staircase. She stopped one step above him and stood eye-to-eye with him, and her look of pure trust fired him with such desire, he had to hold himself back from taking her in his arms. He jerked his head in a bow. “My lady, I got your letter. What’s happened?”
“There’s no time to waste. Come.” She grabbed his hand, then stopped in dismay, eyeing his sodden clothes. “Why, you’re freezing.” Her hand was so warm, he knew how icy his must feel.
“You said to come or you would be lost. What did you mean?”
She bit her lip, and he saw fear in her eyes as she murmured, “I may be lost yet.” She managed a small, tense smile and said, “But I knew you would not fail me.” Squeezing his hand, she turned on the step, bunched her skirts in her other hand, and pulled him up the stairs after her. She led him down the passage and into a bedchamber where two of her ladies, Bess Gordon and Mary St. Loe, stood watching with wide eyes as he came in, his spurs clanking, his boots dripping melted snow.
“Begin,” Elizabeth told them. “Be quick!”
They gaped at her. “Oh, my lady, are you sure?”
“Sure that I want to live? Please, Bess!”
The two exchanged an anxious look, then nodded to her. They burst into activity, one pulling out drawers in a high chest, the other opening a trunk. Before Adam could press Elizabeth to tell him what was happening, she called out, “Agnes! Dorothy!” and then hurried to her dressing table where she pulled the lids off jewel boxes. The two maids rushed in.
“Your Grace?” one asked.
“Help them pack,” she said with a nod at the ladies as she scattered her jewels on the table. “My red brocade gown, and the white silk sewn with pearls, and at least five others. And don’t forget my sables. Go!” The maids ran to a closet. The ladies were already busily folding clothes and packing shoes and hats into trunks. Elizabeth beckoned to Mary St. Loe. “Mary, go fetch your father. He must assign my escort.” Mary hurried out.
A voice came from the doorway. “So it’s true.”
Elizabeth’s steward, Thomas Parry, stood glaring at Adam. He came straight to Elizabeth. “My lady, this is rash. Do reconsider, I entreat you.”
“There’s no time for that!” she snapped.
“At least wait until you can consult your friends.”
“My friends are here.” She swept her arm to indicate the busy women, and Adam. “
They
stand with me.”
“You know my meaning. Sir John Thynne. Sir William Cecil. Lord Admiral Clinton. Sir William Paulet. Men of standing. Men of power.”
“But no power to help me!”
He looked pained. “If you do this—”
“You have said your piece, Thomas. You may go.” She was pawing through the jewelry—necklaces, rings, broaches, earrings, ropes of pearls—shoving selected items into a leather pouch.
“You, sir,” he said, glowering again at Adam, “I marvel that you will abet such a desperate scheme.”
Adam bristled. “Parry, I know not why I am here or what—”
“Silence!” Elizabeth cried. “Thomas, you are dismissed!”
Parry opened his mouth to protest, then closed it in frustration, turned on his heel, and walked out.
Elizabeth, fumbling with her jewels, knocked a large ring to the floor. “God’s wounds!” she cursed. Adam quickly moved to pick it up, an eye-sized diamond circled by sapphires. She went to take it from him, but he closed his fist around it, keeping it from her. He’d had enough of this. “Answers, madam. I need some answers.”
She went very still. Her eyes locked on his. Her face was pale. “Three weeks before Christmas I was summoned to court. I knelt before my sister and she gave me her command. I am to marry.”
It knocked the breath from him.
“Why so surprised, sir? It is the lot of women. Duchess or dairymaid, we must each of us be ruled by some man.” Her tone was bitter. She took the ring from his unresisting hand. “I must marry, and they have chosen my bridegroom.”
“Who?”
“My sister and her husband.”
“No. Who is he?”
She seemed to shudder. “The Duke of Savoy.”
Questions flooded his mind, but before he could speak Mary came back with her father, Sir William St. Loe, who marched in with his lieutenant. St. Loe, the veteran soldier, bowed to Elizabeth, asking, “Your orders, my lady?” She led him to the window where they looked down on the courtyard at the guards he commanded. There were now so many people in the room Adam could not hear all that Elizabeth and St. Loe said, but he heard them agree on the number of her escort—thirty men. Then she immediately came back to Adam and laid her palm gently on his chest, on the spot where he’d been wounded, and said warmly, for everyone to hear, “They will serve alongside my loyal champion, Master Thornleigh.”
The glowing look she gave him squeezed his heart. Now he knew why she had called for him. She was preparing to travel somewhere to be married, and she intended for him to take pride of place among her bodyguard. It horrified him—how could he hand her over to another man? He grasped at a mad, faint hope that the marriage contract could not have been concluded yet, not so quickly. She was royalty, and this foreign duke must be close to it. The two governments would have to hammer out details, negotiate terms. That took time.
Elizabeth went back to hurriedly sorting her jewels beside him. “His name,” she said tightly, as though making a great effort to remain calm, “is Emmanuel Philibert. A name for a player in a comedy, don’t you think? A mincing, perfumed dandy? But it is not so. For this is no play, sir, it is life in earnest, and my duke is made of sterner stuff. A military hero in Spain’s conquest of the people of Flanders. Lieutenant of the Netherlands, named so by Emperor Charles before he abdicated. He is a cousin of my brother-in-law, the mighty King Philip of Spain. His drinking crony, so I’m told. All one big happy Hapsburg family. When my intended is not bashing the heads of the stubborn Dutch who fail to appreciate the Spanish yoke under which they groan, he entertains Philip with nights of carousing, debauching the Dutchmen’s daughters—all in good fun, of course. This, sir, is my duke. Am I not blessed?”
Adam could find no words. He was lost in imagining her in this man’s bed.
“My sister wants me out of the way, and what better place than under the iron fist of a Hapsburg husband?” She dropped her pretense of jesting and looked at him with undisguised fear. “In truth, she wants me dead. But she has not yet convinced her council of the need of that, so this marriage will serve her, for it pleases her husband. Indeed, I understand it was Philip’s idea. It will strengthen his grip on England to have me the submissive wife of his Spanish kinsman, his chief general.” She shot a look at Bess and the maids, who had paused in filling the trunks and were listening with such sad faces that Adam realized they knew the situation. “I do not need your pity,” Elizabeth told them brusquely. “I need you to pack.”
They went back to it, and Elizabeth returned to her jewels, and Adam was left to his own tormented thoughts. He knew how it felt to be trapped into marriage. He had told no one about his betrothal to Frances Grenville. He’d spent the last six months plying the sea roads between Colchester, Antwerp, Amsterdam, and London, turning some profit in his father’s business, keeping deliberately far from Frances and avoiding her frequent letters. But Elizabeth was staring this marriage in the face.
She gave him a wan smile. “I was as stunned by my sister’s order as you seem to be, sir. So much so, I blurted to her that I must respectfully decline the duke’s hand.”
His heart jumped. “You refused?”
“I did.” She lifted her chin, defiant.
Adam loved her for that. But he knew her boldness was a mask. No one could defy the Queen and get away with it. “But she did not accept that answer?”
“She raged at my intransigence. Ordered me home, and told me to come back with a better answer by the time her husband arrives.”
Again he grasped at a lifeline. King Philip had not set foot in England for over a year and a half. “But he has made Flanders his home.”
She shook her head. “My sister is getting her way in all things. She has pined for her absent lord and now he is on his way. Since France broke its truce with Spain, he needs money to wage his war against King Henri, and Mary saw her chance. ‘Come home,’ she told him, ‘and I will command Parliament to grant you money.’” She took a sudden, sharp breath and her eyes glistened with tears. “She told me if I do not agree to the marriage by the time he arrives, she will have Parliament proclaim that I am not my father’s child. Proclaim my bastardy and disinherit me. And if I continue to refuse, she threatened me with death.”
Her mouth trembled. Her tears spilled. She clutched a handful of Adam’s doublet at his chest. He gripped her elbows, longing to pull her to him and hold her safe from the world, from the Queen, from the brutal Duke of Savoy. She ducked her head, using his body to hide her tearstained face from the others in the room. He stood still, her shield, while she quickly dried her eyes with her sleeve.
“So now,” he managed to ask, “you’re returning to give her your answer?” He held his breath.
She looked up at him. “I have only two choices.”
He couldn’t bear to imagine either one. Marry or die.
“Marry,” she said. “Or flee.”
For a moment, so mired in dread, he didn’t understand.
She said, with a new edge in her voice, “I will not marry with a sword to my throat. Where is your ship? Where is the
Elizabeth
?”
It crashed over him in a wave of excitement. “Colchester Harbor.” He threw all decorum to the winds and grabbed both her hands. “My lady, I am yours to command. As is my ship.”
She smiled her gratitude. “Thank you.”
“Where shall I take you?”
“The French ambassador has offered me safe haven.”
“To France, then. What harbor is safest for you?”
“I…had not thought. Calais?”
“No. Too many English merchants. Bruges might be best, then overland to Lille.”
That brought a wry smile. “In this, sir, it seems I am
yours
to command. I place myself in your good hands.”
It made him heady, like he’d drunk a mug of French brandy. “When can you leave?”
“As soon as they have me packed.”
He looked around at her friends and servants bustling to prepare her for the journey. Her ladies, her maids, the commanders of her guard. He marvelled, not for the first time, how all her people stood by her, no matter the risk to themselves. And the risk was great in aiding a princess to flee the realm—the Queen could make them suffer for it. Looking back at Elizabeth as she tugged tight the strings of the pouch with her chosen jewelry, he felt a pang. If the risk was great for anyone helping her escape, it was truly terrible for Elizabeth herself. What she was planning could be considered treason. It could lead her to the execution block. He thought of Thomas Parry’s brief attempt a few minutes ago to persuade her to reconsider.