The Twylight Tower

by Karen Harper

  “Bella couldn’t convince or constrain Hester to take up needlework and the womanly arts,” John Harington’s words rolled on. “But her music—the girl was obsessed with her music.”

  Elizabeth indicated they should sit and partake of the wine and their favorite dishes she had had prepared for them. “Always good mixed with ill,” the queen tried to comfort them, however distressed she felt at what they’d said. “Joy with sadness, hard times with prosperity.”

  “Your Majesty,” John said, clearing his throat, “though I have failed you in the past, I would die to protect your reputation here and anywhere.”

  Elizabeth stayed her goblet halfway to her mouth. “Why do you stress my reputation now, my lord?”

  Bella shifted in her seat. The months away had made this tall, big-boned companion of Elizabeth’s youth seem to grow in the queen’s mind, and not just because she was showing a belly now. Bella was beautiful, yet athletic and determined as an Amazon. And John looked, as ever, stalwart but a bit willful, with his slightly unruly mustache and beard. That and the single gold hoop in his left ear gave him the air of a brigand, but his eyes were steady and his mouth firm. The queen fought not to see Felicia’s face when she gazed upon him now.

  “Your Grace,” Bella spoke up, turning her goblet around in her hands without drinking, “even in the countryside, your subjects say the wildest things about court doings. I’m sure it is exaggerated, but …”

  Bella glanced at John as if for support. He nodded.

  “Your Majesty,” Bella plunged on, “we mean not to be harbingers of bad news when we are so glad to be back with you, but the likes of cowherds and carters say you will marry Robert Dudley one way or the other.”

  The queen cracked her goblet on the table, slopping crimson claret. She banged her other fist down too, and things rattled a second time. “Then the likes of cowherds and carters—courtiers and foreign queens—are much mistaken! ’S blood and bones, I cannot wed with Robert Dudley because he is already wed, and that is that. And the next person who says different shall spend time in Windsor’s old dungeon under the Round Tower! Now drink and eat,” she muttered, sliding the sweetmeat dish over the bloodred stain she’d made on the table carpet.

  AMY HAD BEEN TOO TIRED EARLIER TO GO FOR MUCH OF A walk with Robert’s lutenist. But after dark, when Mrs. Pirto was sleeping sitting upright in her chair, she sneaked out to meet the musician again. It was all so delicious and forbidden, Amy thought with a little shudder. It reminded her of when she and Robert used to meet for trysts when he first courted her.

  She didn’t like it, though, that Felicia refused to come into the house, so at supper that evening she had cleverly solved the problem. She couldn’t wait to tell Felicia, who said she was staying at an Oxford inn but wouldn’t say which one. She feared the queen would track her there and be angry she was singing Robert’s songs for Amy.

  “Oh, there you are,” Amy called out as she followed the muted lute music around the far side of the tower. “Good news! Besides this apple tart I brought you, I mean,” she said, and extended it to the girl. “You know, I worry about you being out in the dark, not that there’s been any trouble with ruffians or such. Robert should have sent Fletcher or one of his men with you.”

  “I’m quite all right, and dedicated only to making you feel better in all ways,” Felicia said, and sang,

  The smoky sighs, the bitter tears,

  That I in vain have wasted,

  The broken sleep, the woe and fears,

  That long in me have lasted,

  Will be my death, all by thy guilt,

  And not by my deserving,

  Since so inconstantly thou wilt

  Not love, but still be swerving.

  “Oh—did Robert write me that—send me that?” Amy asked, her voice shaken. “But it’s so sad, and I thought he meant to cheer me.”

  “He sends it to apologize for any possible grief he has caused you,” Felicia said, pleased she’d planted the seed. “He admits guilt for staying away.…”

  “But it speaks of death and I … like not to think on that—though I do sometimes.”

  “Do you? Then no more of that song. Off with the head of whomever wrote it, though I truly think the more melancholy songs are the best sometimes, the most truthful.”

  “I—yes, I suppose. But what I wanted to tell you is that I’ve talked nearly everyone in the house but an old woman, who sleeps away the afternoons, into going to the fair in Abingdon on the morrow, and I shall stay here and you shall sing me songs all day. Then I can feed you and reward you, for I mislike a musician of the queen—especially one who is defying her— staying in an inn. So we shall have a special day to remember.”

  “Yes, a special day, as you say.”

  Amy patted her hand even while she was playing a lively ballad and hurried back toward the house.

  “YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL, JUST RADIANT, DESPITE ALL THESE other wretched goings on,” Kat told the queen as her ladies bedecked her for her birthday banquet and dancing. Still, even left-handed, Kat kept fussing with the little details of curls and lace ruff and the way her scented pomander hung. The women, without Katherine Grey, whom the queen had banished to her room, oohed and aahed. As Mary Sidney held a mirror for her, the queen straightened the huge strand of pearls Robin had given her an hour ago. They were big as chickpeas and the double strand looped to her waist. She’d partly pinned them to her with a big brooch so they wouldn’t bounce right off her shoulders during the dancing.

  A knock sounded on the door, and Kat answered it even as the queen’s women swept out to complete their own last-minute preparations. When the swish of skirts and chatter quieted, Elizabeth could hear Kat whispering.

  “Who is it, Kat?” she called, fully expecting that Robin had come calling a bit early to escort her.

  Kat bustled back in. “Two things, Your Grace,” she began. “One, Katherine Grey is insisting she be allowed to attend the banquet.”

  “She will not. What else?”

  “You realize she’s got everyone saying the queen will permanently imprison her next, just as you did Felicia Dove, only this time in the deepest, darkest dungeon of the realm for her affinity of blood to you.”

  “How dare she! I am trying to save her from that by teaching her a lesson now, though, God knows, she deserves exactly that or worse!”

  “Yes, Your Grace. I just wanted to add that Katherine Grey seems to have known that Felicia was sprung from her prison nearly as soon as it happened.”

  The queen arched her penciled brows. “Did she? Then, as much as I mislike dealing with her, she needs to be questioned again, but not today, not this special night. She and Felicia and their ilk shall not ruin this night!”

  But as Robin escorted her toward the great hall a few minutes later, the queen noted Ned Topside standing at the top of the staircase where he shouldn’t be, waving his hand and gesturing toward the musicians’ gallery. If the knave was just going to tell her that the lack of Felicia would make the music sound shallow until she was replaced, she already knew that.

  “Wait, Robin,” the queen said, halting at the top of the stairs, though all those below looked up and a hush held the crowded room. “Ned Topside,” she said, keeping her voice down as she turned her back on the others, “this had better be good.”

  “It’s bad, but best you know now,” he told her, somber-faced. “A note was delivered by a town boy to your chief lutenist—chief, now that Felicia’s flown.”

  “A note from her?” Elizabeth whispered. When he nodded, she ordered, “Then trace that boy, find out where he got the note. Find her!”

  “Jenks and I are already working on that, though it may be a dead end.”

  “I want no dead ends. And the note?”

  He pressed it into her hand, all folded up. “At least your lutenist in the gallery could tell it was a song he should not sing, not today or ever. And now, Your Gracious Majesty,” Ned said, his actor’s voice booming, “your musi
cians and players wish you the bounty of this day and look forward to entertaining you before the dancing!”

  In his best bombastic style, Ned swept his arm and graceful body into a low bow. Elizabeth descended the staircase, treading carefully in her long skirts, holding tight to Robin’s steady arm. The applause was deafening and the smiles and blinking gems in lantern- and candlelight quite blinding. Surely she could put all the pain of Felicia Dove away for this one evening, Elizabeth tried to tell herself. But the note burned a hole in her hand and she opened it behind the banquet table on the dais to read it.

  To men that know you not

  You may appear to be

  Full clear and without spot

  But truly unto me

  Such is your wonted kind

  By proof so surely known

  As I will not be blind

  My eyes shall be my own.

  And so by sight I shall

  Suffice myself as well

  As though I felt the fall

  Which they did feel that fell.

  The poem or song lyrics were attributed to Sir Edmund Knevet, but the queen knew he’d been gone for several years, dead by his own hand. But none of that mattered. This was utmost defiance thrown in her face, a fierce admission of guilt but also a challenge. More than that, it threatened that she was yet being watched and hinted that there were more falls to come. Whether from a tower or from a throne mattered not at all. However much grief it would cause the Haringtons, Felicia Dove—Hester Harington—must be found and stopped before she lived another day to do more destruction.

  “LADY DUDLEY,” AMY HEARD ROBERT’S STEWARD, ANTHONY Forster, calling up the staircase as the last of the inhabitants of Cumnor House—but for the Widow Owens, who was staying in her rooms—departed for the fair, “his lordship has sent a gift for you!”

  Amy hurried into the hallway and down the top flight of shallow stairs to the landing above the lower flight. “Another gift for me?” she gasped, looking down at him.

  “Allow me to bring it to you,” he said, and hurried up the stairs. “I didn’t want to startle you by just appearing, since we and the old lady are the only ones left in the house.”

  “But who brought it?”

  “His favorite man, Fletcher, my lady, who said he had to head direct back to court. I suppose there is a note with it, but you know how they say good things come in small packages.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that.”

  As he extended the small leather satchel to her, he added, “It was kind of you, my lady, to insist everyone, even the servants, go for the day. Have a care then,” he said, nodding with a half bow. He hurried down the stairs and went out the front door.

  Amy stood listening a moment until he rode away, then hurried into her chamber to signal Felicia from the window, waving the fringed shawl Robert had brought her on his last brief visit. It was most unusual for Fletcher not to stay the night, but whatever was this second gift?

  She pulled a flat, blue, crushed-velvet box from the satchel and opened it with trembling hands. It was lined with white satin. A short, single string of fat pearls, so fine. And with it a note that said, “As promised … a gift fit for a queen. R.”

  But, Amy thought, if the pearls were that gift, what of the lutenist? She heard her come in the front door downstairs, as Amy had bid, and then a stair creaked. Lute music came closer.

  It mattered not, Amy decided, that there was a bounty of gifts from Robert. That was good, not bad.

  She hurried down the landing and looked over as Felicia came up strumming and smiling. “Look at the other gift my lord sent me,” Amy cried, and reached up to fasten them, despite the ache of pain that spread through her breast and arm again.

  “How generous he is!” Felicia declared, and leaned the lute carefully against the banister. “Let me help you.”

  Eyes shining, Amy turned her back and let the other woman fasten them around her neck. She thought the lutenist hesitated for one moment but she must have simply been fumbling with the clasp. And then the weight of pearls fell against her slender throat and neck, so heavy and so huge.

  Chapter the Thirteenth

  My life is strife

  My ease disease

  A friend a foe

  My mirth is woe

  No peace but pain

  For all is vain.

  — ANONYMOUS

  “COME THEN, MY LORD CECIL—MINE, NOT the queen’s anymore,” Mildred called to her husband, gesturing for him to join her at the shuttlecock net their children had just deserted for a game of noisy bowling-on-the-green across the hedge. Sitting in the shade where he looked up from his book, Cecil saw his wife stood in full sunlight, hands on hips, as if daring him not to obey. He’d been reading the same paragraph repeatedly anyway, without retaining one thing, so he got up from the bench.

  “I haven’t played such in years,” he protested. His mental inactivity and lack of purpose, even when he kept busy with the family, was driving him to distraction, and maybe Mildred too. He removed his jerkin to play in his shirt. Trying to appear in a good mood when he was not—for this woman could ferret out secrets better than a master torturer in the Tower—he picked up the wooden battledore and playfully smacked her across the back of her skirts.

  She laughed and shoved her sleeves up to her elbows as he took his place across the net. He had to smile. What would he ever do without Mildred? But then, in truth, what would he ever do without Elizabeth? He had not sent her his formal resignation yet, but neither did she summon him to court, so she must be furious with him. She was closer to Robert Dudley than ever, closeted with him at all hours while her kingdom seethed with rumor. If only he could treat the volatile, spoiled queen like a father would and pound some sense into her.

  “Not so hard, Will!” Mildred chided when he smacked the little cork-and-feather shuttlecock far over her head. He tried to settle down, concentrating on hitting it back to her, but he soon sailed it wayward again.

  “Your mind is elsewhere, and I know where,” she declared, plucking it out of the hedge and hitting it back. “Mired in the depths of despair, that’s where you are.”

  “I can’t help it,” he countered with a whack of the paddle. “More than my shuttlecock game will go to perdition if Dudley helps Her Grace rule this realm. I fear he already rules her heart and there are so few ways of”—he smacked it again—“reversing that.”

  “But there are ways?” she asked as a coil of hair bounced loose from under her big-brimmed hat. “And if so, you are desperate enough to try them.”

  “Don’t read in overmuch. Though I admit that if Lord Robert thinks he’s in paradise now, I’d much rather see him in that great paradise beyond, one way or the other.”

  “Will, the servants might hear,” she protested, and let the shuttlecock nose into the grass. She came to the net and plucked nervously at it. “The careful, cautious lawyer and counselor I wed seems sometimes dangerously foolhardy lately. My love, if what you just shouted was overheard, someone might construe that you had a plot afoot to dispatch Lord Robert to that very place.”

  “Ridiculous,” he declared, approaching the net, “however tempting. No, he may hang himself if given enough rope. The problem is, he is stringing up Her Grace too, and I cannot bear to let that happen. Yesterday was her birthday, and for the first time since the throne was hers, I was not with her.…”

  “And de Quadra?” Mildred asked, obviously refusing to allow his own foolish sentiments, so unlike him, to pull him down. “You mentioned he needed watching. Do you think he’s doing more than setting up a plan to elevate Katherine Grey if the queen stumbles?”

  “The queen has already stumbled, and I fear a great fall.”

  “Like Humpty Dumpty? And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men … But do you think de Quadra would try to harm Dudley or the queen? Mayhap not a direct assassination attempt, but something else, something subtle? There would certainly be no one else to strike at to separate the two
of them or to bring her down.”

  “There is one …” Cecil muttered, frowning and hitting the paddle against his thigh in a regular beat that reminded him of one of Felicia’s songs.

  “Who?” Mildred prompted when his voice drifted off.

  As astute as she was, she—and therefore most people—did not see that subtle way out of this damned dilemma, Cecil mused. De Quadra no doubt did, for he knew all the angles. As for Dudley himself, he’d probably not see beyond how it would free him, for the man was the shortsighted type, one who had trouble looking past his own desires and advancements. He might mistake temporary deliverance for ultimate victory.

  “My lord, you are woolgathering again,” Mildred’s sweet voice broke into his agonizings.

  “Suffice it to say, God only knows what de Quadra’s really thinking or doing,” he muttered, turning away so she wouldn’t read his face.

  “And the same with my beloved William Cecil,” he heard her say with a sigh. “God only knows …”

  Whatever else she said was drowned by the children screeching across the hedge about whose turn came next at bowls.

  “SUCH A GRIEVOUS PITY YOU LIVE HERE WITHOUT YOUR LORD,” Felicia sang to Amy. “You, not she, should be loved and adored.”

  Her feet on a padded stool, leaning back in the cushioned chair while Amy slumped in hers across the table, Felicia took another swig of wine and bite of apple before she went back to singing. Amy had ceased crying, ceased protesting that Robert could not have meant all these sad, cruel songs for her. She now just stared into space, though she had stuck her fruit knife into the wooden tabletop in her frustration. It was a pretty, sharp little knife with an inlaid handle, but Felicia really thought she’d best stick to her original plans. Amy seemed not so much afraid now as somehow resigned.