The Queen's Secret (42 page)

‘That, we shall see,’ the Queen replied in a dry voice. ‘Now come closer. Here, at my feet.’

She waited while Lucy rose and approached the foot of her high-backed cushioned seat, dropping into a curtsey.

‘Do you have anything you wish to tell me, child?’

So the moment had come at last, here in front of the whole court, and with Lord Leicester listening!

Her heart hammered violently against her ribs and she heard herself stammer in reply, ‘No, Your Majesty. Forgive me.’

There was a horrible pause. Then the Queen’s voice softened, almost indulgent. ‘Come, child, it is not a difficult matter. You may rise and whisper in my ear if you are afraid to speak in front of all this crowd.’

‘I … I have nothing to say, Your Majesty. I most humbly beg Your Majesty’s pardon.’

‘Nothing?’

Somewhere behind her on the lake the first fireworks shot up with a violent, resounding crack. The crowd gasped and several
of
the Queen’s ladies clapped their hands in delight. The evening’s entertainments had begun, perhaps at some unseen signal from Leicester. No doubt he thought a distraction would save them both from this interrogation, but it seemed he had underestimated the Queen’s persistence.

‘Nothing?’ she repeated.

Another firework exploded overhead, blood red, and the royal pavilion was lit up for a moment by its passage, every face seemingly turned up to stare at the night sky.

Lucy heard the fury in the Queen’s voice but still did not dare speak the truth. To do so would almost certainly condemn both his lordship and the Countess of Essex to death. The weight of that knowledge was an iron band across her shoulders.

She bowed her head, almost sobbing out her wicked denial. ‘I know nothing, Your Majesty.’

The fierce slap that followed caught her by surprise. Lucy fell sprawling, and knocked her head painfully against the wooden dais. A gasp went up around the court, but just as swiftly the courtiers’ faces turned upwards to watch the dazzling streaks of the fireworks, not daring to anger the Queen by staring. A shout of ‘For England and Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth!’ rang out across the lake, and the water battle commenced with a series of explosions, a deafening roar of cannon fire and the drifting, acrid smell of smoke.

And above the noise of the water battle she heard the Queen’s command, ‘Get out of my sight, ungrateful whelp!’

One of the older courtiers helped Lucy discreetly to her feet, his face not unkind, then turned back to the spectacle. Terrified, she slipped the necklace about her throat with trembling hands, concealing the expensive pearl beneath her high-necked bodice, then curtseyed low to the Queen and backed away into the shadows.

Far from the circle of torches by the bridge over the lake, it was possible to mix unnoticed with the crowd, most of whom were too busy admiring the flashes and furore of the water battle to glance at the black girl passing among them, head bent to hide the blood trickling down her face.

A great ‘Ooohhh!’ went up from the common people pressing
hard
against her back and shoulders, followed by an ecstatic cry of ‘Triton! Triton!’

There was blood in her mouth, a warm sour taste. But at least her head was still on her shoulders. She could hardly hear the bang and crack of the fireworks over the lake for the thundering of her heart.

She had sung for the Queen, as his lordship had insisted she must. Now all she wanted was to escape this noise and merry hell, and find somewhere quiet, some secret hideaway where no one could witness her shame and disgrace. The faces about her swam. Where was Goodluck?

Forty-four

ELIZABETH SAT STRAIGHT-BACKED,
clutching the arms of her seat, shaking with fury. Damn that girl! Impudent dark eyes staring up out of her black face, like the Devil himself, mocking her failures. The fireworks shooting over the lake in fiery streaks dazzled the Queen’s eyes, but she refused to lower her head, staring blindly ahead so the courtiers nearest her would not see her defeated. The people shouted ‘Triton! Triton!’ and she saw the vast weed-covered creature approach the bridge where they sat, lifting his trident and calling aloud to her. Beneath the seated Triton swam a great false mermaid dressed with shining scales, glinting in the torchlight. It must have taken many months to create, and on any other day would have been a cause of great delight and admiration for her. Yet tonight she could hardly bear to look at it, her face set like stone.

Robert bent to her ear again, his voice low and urgent. Elizabeth dismissed him with an angry gesture. He wanted to know how she had received his song. His song!

The other courtiers knew something was amiss, and some were staring covertly. She could see the gleam of their curious eyes, while others carefully avoided the swivel of her Gorgon’s stare. She was suddenly, forcibly, reminded of the court’s careful, politic silences whenever her late father had lost his temper, and knew a gnawing sense of despair.

Did they see her as no better than tyrannical old King Henry,
her
temper just as dangerous and incontinent when crossed?

She had struck the Moorish girl, but that was nothing. Lucy Morgan was a servant, and her refusal to speak, to admit a role in carrying messages between Robert and Lettice, had infuriated her. Walsingham had told her everything, had exposed their secret meetings, the part Lucy Morgan had played in bringing them together. He had been more than generous in doing so, for she knew it pained him to speak ill of Lettice. No, the truth could not be hidden so easily. Foolish, wicked child, to defy her queen. She had deserved her public disgrace, to be slapped down and sent away. But this terrible desire to call for her soldiers, to have Robert and Lettice arrested and placed under close guard until she could manage their executions …

In God’s name, I must not act rashly
.

Elizabeth’s fingers bit into the arms of her seat and she rocked forward, staring wide-eyed at the spectacle out on the lake, pretending an interest she did not feel as Triton sped across the waters, riding his giant mermaid. But she was oddly satisfied to realize how much Robert had spent to put on this show for her, digging so deep into his private coffers he must have all but beggared himself. And for what?

She would not marry him. Nor would he understand her reasons. First, that he was unfaithful. Yes, all men betrayed their wives, she knew that as well as any other woman – and kings more than most. But with Lettice? Her own cousin, strikingly like her younger self, still strong and vivacious, still capable of bearing children. Her gorge rose at the thought of them together.

The bleeding and the pain. She forced herself to dwell on that instead. It was God’s sign that she should not become a wife. To bleed so heavily after each night spent with her husband would weaken her, even leave her close to death if it continued.

She summoned Helena to her side. ‘Where is Lady Essex?’

‘She is still abed, Your Majesty.’

‘Still?’ Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed suspiciously on the younger woman’s face, whose beauty seemed almost a conspiracy of nature – her perfectly smooth, white complexion made even more striking by a mass of red curls. ‘The countess seemed to be
recovering
from her sickness when last I saw her. Has she been seen by a physician? What ails my cousin?’

The beautiful Helena looked frightened. Her voice dropped to a discreet whisper, barely audible over the crash of the water battle behind her. ‘Your Majesty, nobody seems to know. Though some believe …’

‘Well? Speak up!’

‘The physician claims she must have eaten something bad, Your Majesty. That she may have been
poisoned
.’

Heads had turned now, and Elizabeth felt the strength of the court’s interest, their eyes on her face, watchful and intrigued. A delicate flush rose in her cheeks as she stared at her Swedish-born lady-in-waiting. ‘What nonsense!’ she rapped out. But she could not hide her discomfort. If Lettice were to die now, with this talk of poison in the air, the whispers would say it had been done on Elizabeth’s account. That she had ordered her own cousin’s death, as punishment for this clandestine affair with Robert. Or to remove the threat of Lettice’s beauty.

She caught a sudden movement at her shoulder, and turned to see Robert staring at Helena too. He was pale, a haunted look in his eyes. For an awful moment she could not help but remember his wife, the sickly Amy Robsart, whom she had always despised and forbidden him to bring to court – she too had died under mysterious circumstances, and the tongues at court had wagged for months, blaming her for the woman’s death.

‘Have the physician give me his report directly,’ she said, dismissing Helena with an irritable nod, though she knew she ought not to take it out on the Swedish girl. She, at least, was a respectable widow, and sworn to chastity at her queen’s side once again, for all her beauty and passion.

As soon as Helena had withdrawn, Robert was there at her side, bowing so low he might as well have been on his knees, his hand clutching at her own.

She did not attempt to pull away, but her hostile look and unfriendly silence sent out a message only a fool could fail to understand. Only a fool, or a man so blindly pursuing his own ambition that he could no longer read the signs.

Robert drew her hand to his lips and kissed it warmly, lingering
over
her long jewelled fingers. She fought not to remember him inside her, moving urgently with the sharp pleasure of their coupling, but her cheeks flared with the memory.

‘Lord Leicester?’

‘I am sorry Lucy Morgan angered you.’ His voice was ragged. ‘But do these poor entertainments please you, Your Majesty? And the song the Moorish girl sang for you tonight … I know you are a woman of deep feeling. Did my words reach your heart?’

All of a sudden, her body weakened and she became inexplicably wretched. Tears filled her eyes and she stared at Robert longingly, his broad shoulders, his still handsome face, roughened from riding out in the summer heat, and his mouth hard, not easily given to compromise. Why could her sweet Robin not become her husband, the bridegroom she had always dreamed of?

Because she was the Queen, and it was too late to say yes to him now. She could never share her throne. Nor could she allow herself to become a poor womanly fool like her sister Mary, forever bleeding, and watching herself for the signs of a child, and suffering when they failed to come.

‘As always, you have my admiration for your efforts, Lord Robert,’ she managed out loud. Then she dropped her voice: ‘I am sorry I had to forbid you my chamber but I was not well.’

‘I only wished to bring you comfort.’

‘I know it.’ She struggled to find the words. ‘But even your company could not have done me any good. This sickness, this thing that dogs me, is between me and God alone.’

There were lines etched in his forehead, beside his eyes, his oddly sombre mouth. ‘Your Majesty,’ he began haltingly, ‘may I beg you …’

She encouraged him to go on, smiling, though her heart sank. She knew what was ahead.

‘Make our good news public,’ he whispered, raising her hand once more to his lips. This time his kiss was dry, and his lips trembled against her white skin. ‘Allow me to announce our betrothal to the court and set a date with the Privy Council for our marriage.’

‘I cannot.’

‘Your Majesty, I had your promise on this.’

‘You must not ask me again.’ She pulled her hand away, and her voice grew hard, strengthened by anger. Robert was not a man of weak intellect. He must be made to understand why he could not hope for more. That what they had enjoyed in secret was all that could ever happen between them. ‘I gave you no such promise, my lord. There is nothing to announce.’

Robert rose and stared down into her face.

She avoided that accusing gaze. Oh, let him stare, let him brood and consider rebellion. He might be one of the most powerful men in England but he was still her subject; he had no power beyond what she had already given him. Yes, she had made a promise, of sorts. But what a woman might whisper to a man in passion was no binding oath but merely the words of love. A foolish, undisciplined love at that.

Robert knew all this as well as she did. To pretend otherwise was simply political coercion. And she would not be coerced.

He drew breath, and she heard the anger in his voice. ‘Then do I have permission to leave your presence, Your Majesty? There are a few pressing matters to which I must attend. I will return before the battle has finished.’

Robert wanted to go to
her
, that much was written clear in his face; to run to Lettice’s bedside and see how the adulterous she-wolf was. The impulse to scream ‘No!’ warred in her chest with a violent desire never to see him or his rutting bitch again. Though to allow them both to quit the court could be dangerous. It should not be forgotten that an alliance between her cousin and Leicester, however adulterous, might in time constitute a threat to her throne.

‘You may leave us,’ Elizabeth coldly agreed, returning her gaze to the spectacular battle on the lake, not even waiting to see her lover go. Should he, or the Countess of Essex, be suspected of making the slightest move against her person, by letter or by deed, she would issue warrants for their joint arrest, trial and execution. However much agony one of those deaths, at least, must cause her.