The Spymaster's Daughter (26 page)

Anne Warwick put her hand on Frances's arm. Did her distress show so plainly?

Always the lady closest to the queen wherever she was, Anne was also the wife of the Earl of Leicester's brother, thus doubly tied to Elizabeth. The queen had been without Leicester's close comfort while he was in Holland these last many months. She would have him there as general of her army, but she would have him also by her side. Thus, Elizabeth was ever unhappy, often angered by what she herself had commanded.

Even a queen could not always have the man she wanted.

Elizabeth had not married the earl when young, but had never been quite able to let him go, despite the ugly suspicion by many that he had murdered his wife, Amy Robsart, or hired a stealthy murderer to break her neck. The scandal had ruined any hopes Leicester or the queen might have had of a closer union. Even after his later marriage to Lettice Knollys, Her Majesty's beautiful but detested cousin, Elizabeth would never allow the wife to come to
court. Essex was Lettice's son by her first husband, Walter Devereux, although it was said in close whispers that he looked the image of Leicester as a youth.

The old scandal made Frances look upon the queen as a woman with a history that was easily understood. The court was full of such intrigues and tangled possibilities for endless tittle-tattle. Frances would not be made such a target.

Determined to bring her thoughts under control so as not to be a subject for such gossip, which would probably have her mourning Essex, Frances paid close attention while Chateauneuf, the French ambassador, droned on about imagined and real insults to his person and embassy in London's Salisbury Square. Londoners hated the French and Spanish, and unruly apprentices often threw street offal at their carriages.

After what the queen considered enough time spent listening to a recitation of wrongs, though the ambassador obviously had not concluded, Elizabeth grew impatient with Chateauneuf. This was made plain by the tapping of her long white fingers on the arm of her gilded throne chair. If she found a petitioner too rambling, she would lose her tolerance and dismiss him until he was better organized, or brought her a more pleasing proposition in the form of a gift.

Today, Her Majesty seemed distracted, as was almost every lady in the chamber. Frances knew the cause. Walter Raleigh, recently knighted by the queen, who had first sought to groom him for higher position, stood near the dais. His striking good looks made all the ladies present forget the Earl of Essex's absence. The two jealous courtiers had almost fought a duel, for which the stated punishment, never practiced, was the loss of a hand. With a giggle, muffled by a cough, Frances imagined that Her Majesty would never tolerate a court half-full of one-handed handsome men.

Raleigh was almost too well favored, his dark brown, curling beard snipped close to his jaw, his perfect features lit by bright blue
eyes. A large white lace-trimmed and pointed ruff, just an inch smaller than Elizabeth's own, sat on his neck, surely held there by wire, since no Dutch starch could keep such rigidity. Raleigh's magnificence was crowned by a velvet cap the color of his eyes and adorned with large jewels.

Every gaze, including the queen's, lingered long on him, though he had his eye on one of her ladies.

Anne leaned in to whisper, “Mistress Throckmorton has caught Sir Walter's attention. He needs be careful. The queen does not share her favorites…or her ladies.”

Frances smiled. These were well-known truths. Raleigh knew them, but he was an adventurer and naturally reckless. He was also after a position on the Privy Council. Perhaps he would trade love for a seat at that table? Or perhaps he thought to have both.

Though the queen toyed with the idea of elevating Raleigh, Frances doubted he would ever move up to the first rank of advisors. He was too uncontrolled and Elizabeth too good a judge of a man's worth to her and her kingdom. She would keep him dangling, with just enough favor, to decorate her court and write poetry for her—what woman did not want to be a Stella?—but she would never trust his self-serving advice.

“Sir Walter!” the queen said, talking over the French ambassador, who flushed pink from the slight.

“Majesty,” Raleigh said, sweeping his cap from his head, his curls falling in a most becoming fashion about his head.

“You have recently had your portrait painted by Nicholas Hilliard. When will you present it to your queen and the court?” Her tone was droll, leading Raleigh willingly into one of his rhyming jests.

“Your grace,” Raleigh said, advancing to kneel on the dais.

Laughter rippled through the courtiers.

Elizabeth covered her smile with her feather fan, since her teeth increasingly suffered from her love of sweets. Raleigh was well pleased with himself, and he bowed first to the queen and then to the court.

The Danish ambassador now stepped forward, but the queen rose, signaling an end to her patience and the morning audience. Frances gathered her skirts to join the entourage to the royal apartments, where Elizabeth would take a lone meal. She disliked dining with others unless it was with her ladies or a state affair.

Frances did not blame the queen. Whenever she sat down, someone approached to whisper a request for her favor.

Lady Stanley, her face carrying an unusual high color, her lips in a slack sneer, stumbled into Frances as both stepped from the dais.

Frances's patience quickly went the way of the queen's. “Have a care! My lady, if that was deliberate and Her Majesty saw your behavior, you could be sent from court.” Lady Stanley's face was twisted in pain at the rebuke. Frances knew she should hold her tongue, but she could not. “Your suitors would grieve the loss of your fortune, if not your person.” The words were hurtful, and for the moment she meant them to be. She was tired of the woman's childish tricks.

Frances began to regret her harsh words as she marched away, and she determined to beg the lady's pardon before the day was done. She heard a commotion behind her, but the queen's entourage was formed, and she fell into place behind the Countess of Warwick and the leading trumpeters, drummers, and halberdiers.

Later, she passed into the corridor, making a swift way toward her chambers. For the past several months, she had always looked
to the shadowy place Robert had stood when he waited for her as her servant. Today, to her surprise, he was there. He bowed. She hoped he had not seen her display of temper toward Lady Stanley. Should she stop and speak to him of the lovely weather or the excellent hunting in the deer park, or continue with a nod of recognition? Her cautious heart forced her to the latter, giving her another action to regret. She was no more than ten paces on when she turned swiftly back to ease her mind of the last fault.

R
obert watched as she passed. She was angry. He could not blame her. She could count on no one. Her father would care for her as he saw fit, but he would never give her the recognition that she wanted and needed. Frances required accomplishments and friends who recognized her need. She was richly adorned in her person by God and had no requirement for what most women of the court sought: clothing and jewels, a higher position and title. She needed the love he could give her, though such love could never be. Even as he thought it, his body warmed to her.

As he had hoped, he saw Frances walk swiftly back into the corridor, toward him. “Master Pauley, I beg your pardon for not speaking. I was too hurried,” she added.

She curtsied completely, an excessive courtesy she had seldom shown him. “Were you…waiting for me?” Though she spoke with stumbling words, she seemed to be trying hard to keep the customary tone of a mistress.

Dare he betray how much he had missed her?

He bowed again. “There is no need to explain, Lady Sidney. Indeed, I waited here for you on orders of Thomas Phelippes, though I would happily have waited to greet you of my own accord.”

Frances knew it was best not to respond to the latter, to ask what he meant, or whether he had missed her as she had missed him. She leaped to the other conclusion she desired. “Have you a new message for me to decipher?”

“Aye, my lady, perhaps two messages, one within the other, as with the first you deciphered,” he added, and looked up and down the emptying corridor. Most people were in the great dining room for their dinner at this hour. He had to take care not to be seen passing anything to her. The news would speed throughout the court. “May we walk along together?”

“Of course.” She did not care what people thought. She might later, but not now. She had missed his tall figure and stiff-legged stride, his deep, temperate voice.

As they moved on toward her chambers, they heard voices ahead, and he stepped into an empty alcove. She saw him slip his hand into a slash in his doublet sleeve and extract a small packet wrapped in green ribbon. “Phelippes and his clerks are near overwhelmed with messages from the Scots queen. Something is about, but we know not what.”

She took the packet and turned it over.

They heard voices receding, and she made a move toward her door.

“I may not enter your apartment, my lady. The guard…”

“You did not always follow orders, as I recall.”

“I seek to mend my reckless ways, Lady Frances,” he remarked drily.

“Always a good thing,” she said, suppressing a smile. He could forever bring her to amusement even when he only half tried. She sobered. “How is this message to be delivered, and to whom?”

“I will come for it at midnight in this alcove when the palace is asleep.” A nerve jumped under his eye. He turned his head so that she would not see how uneasy he was to be so near her again. He knew that he could not call on his strength of resistance any further. He had caught rare glimpses of her over the past few months, but never dared approach. What would he say? What business could he invent? Until today…

Were these his only words to her? He could keep his response
to business as well as she, though he ached to think that these months apart might have ravaged their friendship. Or had she found another to dote on her?

She frowned, her prideful face obvious. “If we have captured Mary's new cipher, what occupation is there for me? Is this some make-work you have invented out of an old kindness?”

He took her arm and pulled her into shadows away from the window, shaking with frustration. “What have I ever done that makes you eternally suspicious? I have not earned such distrust. Indeed, I have done everything to receive and hold your confidence.” His hand tightened on her arm. His voice dropped lower until she could barely hear him. “My lady, I speak the truth, and I believe you know it.”

He heard how tired he sounded, and how offended. He fought to control his tone. “There are too many messages from the Scots queen and many of them are meaningless…too many. Phelippes thinks there is a hidden cipher in this one that is the real message…a code within a code, and just the work for you. That is the truth. If you do not believe me, I will return the message to Phelippes with your regrets.”

He knew she was sorry and upset, now trembling, too.

“Forgive me, Robert. Since you left…my service…I am not used to kindness, or truth. This is a court of games and deceit.”

He swallowed and tightened his mouth, leaning toward her as if he would step into her arms. With an obvious effort, he straightened himself.

She spoke some stumbling words quickly to stop from happening that which neither could ever undo. “Phelippes trusts me…to find a hidden cipher?”

Robert took a cautious step away from her. “He trusts your intelligence, my lady, as do I.” With a further half bow, rigid and still hurried, he left her.

Frances stared after him until she heard the laughter of people
returning to their chambers from the great dining hall. She fled into her apartment and leaned back against the closed door, her hand trembling on the latch. She refused to think on what had happened or hadn't happened with Robert, although she knew that this night in the dark of her bed she would think of nothing else, wondering what he had seen and what she could have done in a different way…and what it all meant.

Quickly throwing off her full-cut oversleeves, which impeded any but the daintiest of movements, she sat down at her writing table and pulled the candles closer, past her dinner dishes, the food cold now, the gravy congealed.

Her quill was dull. She needed well-pointed ones. “Meg,” she called to her maid. There was no answer.

Walking through her sleeping chamber to the closet where the girl slept, Frances found her washingwoman laying out clean shifts and hose to be put in their proper chests. “Where is Meg?”

“She be gone, my lady.”

“Gone? Where?”

“I know not. She did not say. I must return below, m'lady. I left a tub of linen sheets a-boilin' that must be wrung and spread on bushes to dry.”

“Go, then,” Frances said.

When Meg returned, she would be dismissed. There had been all too many unexplained absences.

The washerwoman scuttled out with her empty basket, and Frances returned to her writing table to nibble at the cold fish and stuffed and spice-sauced pigeons. She did not take the time to heat the meal, but made it more palatable by swallowing it with pieces of fine white bread.

She found her penknife and sharpened what was left of the quill nib, then pulled Phelippes's message close, cut the ribbon on a new quire of paper, and extracted a sheet. The message as broken by intelligencers using Mary's new cipher seemed straightforward
enough. It was full of complaints about her lodgings at Tutbury Castle not being fit for a queen, though she saved her major grumbles for her keeper, Sir Amyus Paulet. That strict Puritan seemed to delight in finding new ways to restrict Mary Stuart's demanded privileges. After complaints about Paulet, the Scots queen added a long list of instructions for books, gowns, and new underlinen. It was said that she did not wear undershifts more than once, complaining of their rough texture when not washed in her scented French soap.