The Queen's Secret (17 page)

‘But they could have—’

‘Hush, don’t think of it.’ He stroked her hair, which was loose and decorated with a simple yellow ribbon. ‘Just promise me not to creep about the camp after dark again, listening outside strange tents.’

‘I couldn’t help it.’ She laughed at his expression, though she knew he was serious. ‘I felt drawn to listen. Do you understand?’

‘I only understand that I nearly lost you. It was a woman’s curiosity and my own foolishness in mentioning my business that led you to spy on a tent full of foreigners. But it ends here. Promise me not to interfere again in my affairs.’

‘I promise.’

‘On your heart, Lucy.’

She crossed herself soberly, bobbing a curtsey to him as she used to do as a young child.

‘Good.’ He seemed satisfied by this show of obedience. ‘Now, how did your first riding lesson go? And how do you like your teacher?’

Lucy knew he was teasing her and that Tom was listening intently to their exchange, but she refused to look embarrassed. ‘I do not like horses. They are too high.’

Goodluck laughed, throwing back his head with amusement. ‘That was no horse, but only a pony. You will soon grow used to the saddle. But what of your teacher?’ He tickled her under the chin, making her giggle despite herself.

Tom gave a slight bow in their direction and began leading the mare back to the stables. She watched him until he disappeared into the shadows of the gatehouse, then turned back to Goodluck.

‘You embarrassed Tom,’ she accused him.

Goodluck shrugged, slipping an intimate arm about her waist. ‘Then it will be his loss and another man’s gain. Indeed, if no one else will claim you, sweet Lucy, perhaps I should make you
my
wife.’

Goodluck was smiling as he said it, teasing her as he had done a hundred times before. But his powerful grip had tightened about her waist and she suspected he was at least partly in earnest.

‘A man must seize what is within his grasp, after all,’ he said softly. ‘If he does not, he is liable to lose his chance at the prize. And to a better man.’

Nineteen

THE NOTE OF
the horn changed and the pack of hounds switched direction, falling over themselves in a heaving, wriggling mass of warm dog-flesh, tails wagging, dozens of throats giving tongue to the chase. The deer had been sighted again and the beaters were out on the wooded hillside, calling to the quarry, driving it towards the hounds with stick and voice. Elizabeth drew rein under an ancient oak, holding up a hand for silence. Behind her she heard the hunt come to a staggered halt, horses whinnying in protest and cracking twigs on the forest floor as they jostled for space. Even her own horse shifted beneath her. Flanks shining with sweat, it nudged towards a stream close by, held back only by her grip on the reins.

Robert’s stallion pushed through the hunt and came alongside her own mount. The intimacy of the situation was not lost on Elizabeth, who revelled in the press of his knee against her rich gown. His gaze flashed to her face, and she knew he felt it too. Here they could touch as lovers and no one could raise a word, for every rider was hemmed in by the steaming crush of horses in that leafy space, ladies-in-waiting and gentlemen of the court alike, the Queen and her favourite unregarded.

‘You hear that?’ she demanded. The horn sounded again, ever more urgent, closer at hand as the hounds yelped and swam past the horses’ legs. Their mounts jostled, shoulder to shoulder. Her black gelding threw back its head, the bit and reins jangling, and
Robert
seized her bridle as though afraid she would be thrown. Clever, clever. She could not help but admire his daring, the sheer audacity of a man who would take every opportunity to push himself forward, however many times he was rebuked and rejected. ‘They’ve found the stag again. They’re driving him downhill.’

‘Elizabeth,’ he muttered, abandoning all pretence at courtly propriety.

‘Robert?’

Not caring that the whole court might see and recognize their intimacy for what it was, she leaned forward to hear him. If she were to accept him this summer, her subjects would have to grow accustomed to seeing their queen alongside her consort, their new king.

Yet how to restrain a man like Robert once he was on the throne? His charming audacity could only grow, given power and influence on that scale, until her own power became diminished.

She had studied history, diplomacy, politics, the classics, and knew how swiftly one prince might oust another from the throne. She had rivals enough already.

The stag burst out of undergrowth to their right, wild-eyed and panting, its majestic antlers trailing ivy, and the hounds started towards it in a triumphant rush, baying for its blood. Elizabeth could see the shock in its eyes – the deer must have thought to have shaken its pursuers off by quitting the open ground for the dense woodland surrounding the castle. Instead it had run from the noisily approaching beaters and found the hounds waiting.

Terrified, the stag leapt forward and made for the river bank, some five or six hundred yards downhill through the tight-clustered trees. The hounds pursued it, their full-throated cries almost deafening, and the sunlit wood echoed to the shouts of beaters further uphill, the throbbing horns of the hunters and the confused jostle of horses.

Robert dropped her bridle, his smile fierce. ‘Shall we give chase, Your Majesty?’

For answer, she jabbed her booted foot into the horse’s side and followed headlong as stag and hounds plunged down the hill to the stream. At her back, she heard rather than saw the entire hunt
catch
fire and take horse after her, crashing through the woods.

Elizabeth felt an almost unbearable excitement in the thrill of the chase. She suddenly knew that this must be how Robert felt as he pursued her, as he played the dangerous game of courtly love, his life in the balance, the throne of England his prize.

Like every Dudley before him, Robert played for the highest stakes. Was he really stupid enough to think she would take any affront? Did he not know how closely he was watched? Or perhaps he knew but did not care? Certainly his actions were not those of a rational man. He must realize that to betray her with that she-wolf, the Countess of Essex, was to invite death. Yet still he would not let go, stubborn hound that he was, his jaws locked tight about that forbidden piece of meat while still he sniffed about the Queen’s skirts.

He was at her shoulder now, ahead of the hunt, riding one-handed despite the brutal pace, controlling the horse with his knees, his fist on his hip.

Did he think he was still a young man
?

The arrogance and vanity of such a thought entertained her, yet there was something about her dearest Robert that made such weaknesses desirable. At forty-three he was only a year older than her, and still her soulmate.

‘He’s making for the water. Shall we let him go, do you think?’

‘You advocate clemency?’

‘Good sportsmanship, rather. This stag has run a worthy race today. He bested us in the fields, and will soon be in the river. He could be away if we do not allow the hounds to pursue him.’

‘So you would sue for mercy, in his position?’

Robert looked at her, perhaps catching something dangerous in her voice. ‘When it is a choice between life and death—’

‘I forget sometimes that you too have seen the inside of the Tower.’

Below them, the stag had splashed into the thigh-high water. The note of the hunting horn changed, warning the netsmen and beaters ahead to prepare their ambush. The first hounds had already followed it into the river and were swimming eagerly in its wake, their ears floating on the surface like glossy water-lily pads. The rest of the riders came down to the river bank and
reined
in, hesitating to go any further without permission, watching Elizabeth for the order to kill.

Looking over her shoulder, Elizabeth caught a sudden glimpse of Lettice at the back of the hunt, bold in a lavish black velvet gown, her sleeves slashed and puffed as large as her own, a huge feathered hat tilted provocatively on her head.

She recognized the gown as one she had been given by a visiting French countess some years before. It was a gown she had not worn more than once or twice, for she preferred the more glorious reds and golds. Had her wardrobe mistress gifted it to Lettice? She would have stern words with Mary Scudamore if she had, for Elizabeth was not sure she had ever given her permission to dispose of it.

More importantly, did Lettice really think to put herself above her queen with this extravagance of dress? If so, she must be brought to see the folly of her upstart ways – and swiftly too, before she gained more favour at court than was seemly.

For a few delicious seconds, Elizabeth imagined her beautiful younger cousin on her knees in one of the darkest, dampest cells at the Tower, her pretty hat tumbled off and her expensive gown dirtied in the stinking rushes, while a priest read her the last rites.

Then her head huntsman was before her. Sweating visibly in the early evening heat, he knelt in the muddy soil of the river bank, cap in hand, and begged her royal pardon.

‘What is your order, Your Majesty? To spare or to kill?’

She barely glanced at Robert, who was suddenly stiff and cold beside her. Her hand swept up and down in a chopping motion, and the hunt shouted, ‘Kill!’

One of the red-faced huntsmen lifted his horn and began to blow the triumphant staccato of the capture. Several men in leather hose and jerkins waded out into the middle of the river, throwing their nets wide. Within minutes, the proud stag was their captive, its eyes rolling wildly, mouth foaming, two fierce hounds clinging to its back. Three huntsmen yanked it by its vast stately antlers to land.

Forced to the muddied bank, the stag grunted and roared, but its efforts were in vain. Two of the men dragged its head backwards and, with an air of quiet deliberation, the chief huntsman
drew
a long knife from his belt and cut its throat, sidestepping the jet of hot blood.

The watching court applauded, and some of the older men began to sing a traditional song of the hunt, while the rest set to work cracking open the beast’s bloody ribs with their sharp tools.

The hunt is up! The hunt is up
!

And it is well-nigh day
,

And Bess our queen is gone hunting

To bring her deer to bay
.

Elizabeth smiled to hear her father’s favourite hunting song so affectionately adapted to her own name, and clapped her appreciation. Barking and yelping, the dogs milled restlessly about their feet, waiting to be thrown the umbles, the deer’s offal.

‘The stag’s heart, Your Majesty.’ The chief huntsman knelt before her horse at the water’s edge, respectfully holding up a gory mess of solid flesh wrapped in a swatch of leather for Elizabeth to inspect.

‘It was a noble death,’ she said to the watching court, waving the man and his grisly prize away. ‘Have it sent up to the castle kitchens with my compliments. And let every man here take a cup of ale before he returns. There will be more good hunting tomorrow, if the weather holds.’

She gathered the reins together and turned her weary horse round, glancing over her shoulder at Robert as she did so.

‘Asleep, my lord host?’

Robert shook himself, recovering his composure.

‘I am at your service, Your Majesty,’ he replied promptly, turning his stallion aside to allow her to go first on the trail. His voice was polite, courteous as ever, but all the fierce, pulsing excitement she had sensed in him earlier appeared to have dissolved with the end of the chase. ‘A noble death, indeed.’

Twenty

DISGUISED AS A
stout ribbon-seller of uncertain age, goodluck made his way across the ford – at a low ebb, thanks to the recent dry spell – and stopped at every lodging between there and Lower Farm, to make his approach more conspicuous and therefore less likely to arouse suspicion. He was watching for young Massetti, who had been allotted a room in Lower Farm, one of the larger houses beyond the ford in Kenilworth village. It had good grazing land to the rear and a fair prospect to the east where thick woodland had been cleared to make way for a new building.