Emmie and the Tudor Queen

by Natalie Murray

  Alice moved beside me. “Father fears that our mother may one day return and feel a stranger without them. It troubled her heart to be rid of anything, but this is plainly a burden.”

  Blood rushed to my face, leaving me lightheaded. Only a classic hoarder could have this much garbage piled up at home. A hoarder like Jane Stuart—the eccentric lady who’d once lived on Bayberry Street in Hatfield, back in my time. Her garden had been a scrapheap of hoarder’s junk, which was where I found the time-traveling ring that brought me to this century in the first place. A cursed ring that was created in Tudor England and last seen with Alice’s mother, Susanna Grey, before it ended up in my world.

  It just had to be.

  I spun toward Alice’s face. Her caramel eyes were set with an almost permanent frown—the evidence of too many years of worry and uncertainty. Past her shoulder stood Violet—Susanna’s other daughter—who’d lost not only a mother but now a husband.

  “Is something amiss, Lady Pembroke?” said Francis, stepping forward.

  “I’m okay,” I said, short of breath. This family had been through too much suffering.

  As I zeroed in on Alice’s worn face, I made her a silent promise: I was going to go back to my time to find Jane Stuart and figure out if she really was the missing Susanna Grey.

  And if she was, I would bring Alice’s mom home.

  11

  In the few days we spent in Northamptonshire, I got to know Violet a bit better, who was endlessly polite and unassuming. It felt like a mean thought, but I could see why Violet never had a shot with Francis while Alice was around. Alice was as sharp, witty, and charismatic as Violet was naïve, serious, and hard to make compelling conversation with. I felt for Francis, who’d blown up the romantic headway he’d made with Alice by merely sitting beside Violet on a bench.

  When I gently reminded Alice that I was sure that Francis had feelings for her instead of her sister, she insisted that she only cared that he didn’t hurt Violet again. I hoped that she wasn’t sacrificing her own happiness out of some misguided theory that Francis could be the one to restore Violet’s heart—that’d be a classic Alice Grey move.

  There was no chance to talk to Nick about any of it. He’d spent days locked in council meetings until the early hours and had stopped visiting me late at night. When our procession departed for Buckinghamshire, I was downgraded from the king’s coach to the one housing my handmaidens so Nick could sit with Francis and talk shop. At first, I thought the king was pissed with me about the Kit disagreement, but all his councilors sported the same dazed gazes and unshaven edginess. Something grave had happened, and I prayed it wasn’t more war threats from the Spanish.

  When Nick’s coach ahead of ours made a squeaky turn toward the town of Aylesbury, my stomach clenched. Bridget’s cousin, the soothsayer Agnes Nightingale, lived in Aylesbury. Now that I wanted to go back to my time and find out if Jane Stuart was really Susanna Grey, I felt more determined than ever to get some answers about the blue-diamond ring that was still carefully locked inside my traveling chest.

  Peasants jogged alongside our coach as it lumbered through the gates guarding the township. Guards used their pikes to block beggars from entering as we were eaten up by swarms of spectators scrambling for a rare sighting of their king. Bored babies fussed on the shoulders of men in tattered hats, while mothers gripped the grubby hands of little girls in tiny coifs. I considered unclipping my pearl earrings and tossing them down to a scrawny street urchin who beamed up at me, but I was worried she’d get trampled for them.

  Right after we’d checked into our chambers at Aylesbury Manor, my shoulders slumped at the sight of Nick already behind closed doors in another meeting. For all I knew, we could be torn out of Aylesbury by morning to attend to whatever was troubling the realm. If I was going to try to find Agnes Nightingale, I had no time to lose.

  The stifling air in my modest dining chamber was laden with pungent smells from our supper of mutton soup, fried beans, fritters, and aged cheese tarts. Alice, Bridget, Lucinda, and Violet chatted cheerfully while I silently fretted whether to ask them about Agnes or attempt to see the soothsayer on my own. Witchcraft was illegal in Tudor times, and Bridget had spared no mercy when sharing her opinions about her heretic cousin. Even worse—what if involving Alice or Bridget got them into trouble? Before I risked that, I had to at least try on my own. As for Nick, I could think of a million reasons why I needed to leave him out of this…not least of which was because he’d wanted to toss the enchanted ring into a fire.

  The incoming winter had brought some luck by steering in an early nightfall. With the blue-diamond ring securely on my thumb, I told Alice that I was going to see the king, making clear that we weren’t to be disturbed. I hated giving her orders, watching her curtsy like a lackey, but I needed to be sure that no one would come and look for me.

  In the unlit corner of the corridor outside our chambers, I threw on an unadorned traveling cloak. Draping the hood over my hair and keeping my head low, I waited for the patrolling guards to disappear around the corner and hurried in the opposite direction to the rear staircase that led to the buttery and pantries. The downstairs walls were plain brick instead of expensively paneled with linenfold, confirming that I’d reached the servants’ zone.

  Getting past the rear door guard was straightforward—none of us were under lock and key, and plenty of nobles came and went from the manor, visiting friends or conducting business in the village. To be safe, however, I kept my head bowed beneath my hood and gave the guard the name “Mistress Grey”, mentally apologizing to Alice for stealing her identity for a night. I wasn’t planning to get into any trouble, but I didn’t need the guard alerting the overprotective king that his fiancée was heading out on the town.

  I stepped outside into the frigid night air, my embroidered boots scuffing the gravel as I hurried along the narrow roadside, past wild pigs sloshing in the open drains. I pulled the cloak over my nose to block the stench of sewage and continued down the muddy street, careful not to slip.

  When I reached the dim glow of a lantern marking the entrance to an alehouse, I halted, my throat tightening with fear. I considered turning back to the warmth and safety of the manor, but instead, I pushed open the rickety wooden door, my palms slick with sweat.

  Inside the dingy alehouse, hard-faced men huddled over flagons of ale. They watched me as I crossed the earthen floor over a sleeping dog, looking for a bar, but there were only self-service barrels of ale. I caught the eye of a skinny man clearing empty mugs.

  “Thy a pretty thing to be out late,” he said to me, his lean jaw overwhelmed by a thick blonde beard.

  I licked my lips, but they stayed bone dry. “I’m looking for a lady that lives in this town. Her name is Agnes Nightingale.”

  His bushy brows met in the middle. “I want no trouble here, madam.”

  “No trouble…I just want to see Mistress Nightingale. Do you know who she is?”

  “What doth thee accuse me of?” He stepped back, his gaze roaming down my cloak to the embroidered tips of my costly boots. “Thee be here with the king? Raif!” he called, and a gorilla-sized fellow stepped out of the shadows. “This mistress be maketh trouble. Lookin’ for Mistress Nightingale. Best she be on her way.”

  The bouncer took my arm and walked me to the door like a dog on a leash. My cloak slipped off my head, and a drunk guy whooped at my pearled hood. “Please,” I said to the doorman, “I need to find Agnes Nightingale tonight!”

  “Thee shall find her in the market square,” he said, shoving me into bitingly cold air. The door banged shut behind me, and I darted away from it like ghosts were chasing me. The few crumbling lanterns that actually worked barely lit the street. I hurried farther from the manor until the tangle of black-and-white buildings widened into an uncluttered space that I assumed was the market square. I’d heard of witches leaving markings outside their residences, and I hastened along a row of small doorways, searching for unusual motifs, hangi
ng talismans, or any other signs of black magic. I leaned in to examine a scribble of graffiti on a door when a mangy dog lurched at me through an open window, barking loudly enough to wake my mom in the twenty-first century.

  Spinning to escape the alarm the dog raised, I found myself facing the silhouette of a figure hanging by the neck from a wooden frame. My feet dragged me closer in spite of my hammering chest. A young woman dangled from a noose in the dark, her pale face swelled to distortion, her brassy-red curls the only shade of color left in her lifeless body. A picture of a flower within a circle had been scratched into one of her cheeks, leaving streaks of dried blood. The girl hung there in the cold, broken and brutalized, and no one had cut her down.

  I backed away, stumbling into a thin figure in a tawny-brown cape. I shrieked, but it was a gentle-faced woman who removed her hood, her startled expression mirroring mine. She smelled like moldy herbs and vegetables.

  “They took my daughter,” she said to me. “My daughter, they…they took her and they…” Her prominent chin pointed toward the hanged woman. “They hath said it was allowed, that she would not be…you see, they took my daughter.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I stammered. “This is your daughter?” I motioned to the pallid corpse. “Who took her?”

  “The king. The King’s Majesty. My daughter maketh her dinner this day, and they…they took her.”

  “The king took her?”

  “The king’s men…the king’s men.”

  “Why?” I cried. Nick couldn’t have done this. “Who’s your daughter?” What did she do to deserve this?

  “Mistress Nightingale,” the woman replied, gazing over the girl’s body like it was a sculpture she was considering. “They took my daughter.”

  “Agnes Nightingale?”

  She nodded. “The king is here, you see…and they took Agnes. They took my daughter.”

  I should’ve done something to help the poor mother, but a thousand bricks crushed my chest as I turned back toward Aylesbury Manor, striding toward it with a fury that could’ve set the whole universe on fire.

  He’d killed her. I’d been clear to Nick that I wanted to visit Agnes Nightingale—to find out what I could about the blue-diamond ring—and he’d killed her without even talking to me about it first.

  I couldn’t get up the manor stairs fast enough. I marched through the king’s chambers and into the oak gallery, pushing through a luxurious curtain of purple velvet.

  Expecting to find Nick engaged in another meeting, I halted mid-stride. He was alone, strumming his lute in a straight-backed wooden chair. His linen shirt was loose and untied, his hair unkempt. Moonlight lit up the blue illustrations in the magnificent stained-glass window behind him.

  “You come to complain of my distance,” he said without looking at me. “Forgive me. I have been well occupied with matters of importance.”

  “I just went to see Agnes Nightingale,” I replied flatly. There would be no sugarcoating this. Nick gaped up at me as I continued speaking. “I wanted to ask her about the cursed ring, as I told you already. I know you didn’t want me to, but it’s something I needed to know, and I’m a grown woman, so I went. I found Mistress Nightingale hanging from a rope in the market square. Her mom was there, too shocked to speak properly, but she said that the king did it…that the king’s guards came and took her daughter away.” I stepped forward as if being nearer to Nick would draw out the truth. “Did you have Agnes Nightingale hanged today?”

  For a painfully long moment, he just sat there, blinking at me. When he finally spoke, his voice was stiff. “You would do well not to pursue these discussions, Emmie. You will not question my deeds, nor will you speak to me on matters of business. As for you taking leave in the dead of night, in Aylesbury of all places—”

  “So you did do it! You executed Agnes Nightingale, just like you probably killed Norfolk, Wharton, and all those councilors that no one has spoken of since!” I turned away, dropping my face into my hands as I crumpled inside. The stark silence of Nick sitting behind me—doing nothing to console me or to tell me I was wrong—swallowed me whole. The thought came so fast and violently that it sliced right through me: This relationship is never going to work. We’re just too different.

  “Emmeline, look at me,” he said, but I refused. “Agnes Nightingale was a known heretic who does the work of the devil,” he said evenly. “You may feel otherwise, but in this realm, that is an act of treason against God.”

  I spun back to face him. “Tell me the truth, Nick. You killed Agnes so I could never prove that the enchanted ring is safe to use and that I’d be forced to never leave this place again.”

  “Speak not for me!” he snapped, before glaring at a guard who popped his head through the curtain. The guard quickly disappeared, and Nick leaned toward me. “Here is the truth you seek: A villager here made a claim that Mistress Nightingale threatened his person. Days after, the man’s daughter died of no known cause. The witch was then justly tried, and judgment passed upon her. When she refused to give penance, I had her die by the rope, rather than the fire. That I did for you, knowing how you despise prolonged death. Yet you remain not gladdened.”

  I shook my head. “For me? God, Nick, who are you?”

  Frustration rippled across his brow. “If you do not know that by now, then I am not sure you will ever. Christ, nothing is ever enough for you, Emmie—you wish for only a world and a set of rules that I cannot provide.”

  I didn’t reply, and the room turned silent—the sort of unbearable stillness that I’d only known in the Tudor period. I’d expected Nick to shout at me—perhaps kick something like a petulant child—but he just sat there with his head in his hands.

  “Are you okay?” I eventually mumbled. Guilt grabbed me by the throat. All this time, I hadn’t considered what my brazen, modernistic views might do to this sixteenth-century king; how they might make him question his own worth and place in the world. Part of Nick’s job was to execute people convicted of heresy, and I was laying the guilt trip on thick like he was the criminal.

  None of it changed the fact that he’d just had a young girl killed—and one that he knew I’d wanted to see.

  “I’m going to bed,” I said, my voice hoarse with exhaustion. “You better take some deep breaths, so you don’t kick off your asthma.”

  He nodded, wiping an eye with the heel of his hand. I spun away as fast as I could. I couldn’t bear to see him cry. I also didn’t want to run into the arms of an executioner. With fists at my side, fighting the urge to turn back, I headed to my chamber and crept over my sleeping ladies and into the bed.

  Bridget received word of her cousin’s death at first light. I gave her the morning off, wanting her to sleep and not have to think about mindless things like my hair and makeup, but she staunchly refused. The last thing Bridget wanted was to be seen grieving over a dissident, but I could tell she was shaken up. Before we could chat about it any further, the king ordered all the courtiers staying at Aylesbury Manor into the Great Hall after breakfast.

  Nick emerged in head-to-toe Tudor glamor, and I questioned whether he was making a point to me that he was still brilliant and beautiful. Gemstones glittered from the intertwined serpents stitched into his jade-green doublet as he announced that we were all to head back to Hampton Court as fast as possible. The French king had soured on the alliance, and—fueled by Spanish support—the Catholic Viceroy of Ireland was now raising an army in the north of England.

  Gasps rumbled through the hall, including mine. Nick wouldn’t look at me, but I studied his drained face. This was what all the meetings had been about. A Catholic rebellion was looming, with troops already on English soil. I nearly bit through my lip. Was this also because of our marriage?

  Not surprisingly, I wasn’t invited into the king’s coach for the ride home. We made one stop overnight in Hertfordshire, where I didn’t even see Nick. By the time we reached the lofty redbrick turrets of Hampton Court Palace, the courtiers were yawning a
nd dragging their feet. Nobles hurried away to the heat of their lodgings, leaving me standing in a windy courtyard, searching for the king. Things felt so unfinished between us. But Nick never appeared.

  I returned to my rooms with the girls, grateful for Violet’s infectious enthusiasm at lodging in a royal apartment at one of the king’s palaces. After we’d all washed, we sat around nibbling cheesecake and macarons. I collapsed into freshly cleaned sheets and didn’t move the entire night.

  After a long and dreamless sleep, something soft stirred my arm. My eyes fluttered open, before sinking closed again. A soft pat roused me again, and I sluggishly rolled over to meet the source. Nick’s angelic face watched me from where he sat on the bed.

  “A good morrow to you,” he said tightly.

  I elbowed my way to sit up, too stunned to consider my bed hair. “What are you doing here?” The pinkish light piercing the shutters had me guessing it was nearly sunrise.

  He rubbed his neck, releasing a gentle waft of roses. “The hour is early; forgive me. I wished not to depart without bidding you farewell, but I cannot delay any longer.”

  “What are you talking about?” I registered Nick’s traveling cloak and the leather gloves resting in the upturned flat cap beside him.

  “I must journey to Lancashire to demonstrate support for my troops and to prevent more idiots giving heed to the Irish savages.”

  I couldn’t move nor breathe. The agitation polluting the air we shared had spread like venom, and now Nick was off to a battleground. He might never come back.

  “Emmie, I feel this parting may do us good,” he said grimly, unable to look at me. “I shall be gone weeks, and it would be a favorable time for you to call upon your conscience and decide whether you trust me…whether you wish to live in a place of war and the necessary protection of princesses…and, perhaps mostly, whether you wish to love a king bound by his duty to punish heretics who refuse their penance.”