by Sam Burnell
“Will you leave me be, woman,” Elizabeth wrenched herself free.
“Three night’s apparently you’ve kept them awake, now let me look,” Kate admonished. “Will you hold still,” Kate pulled her round so the light from the window fell on Elizabeth’s face. “I can’t see anything inflamed. Which side? Point with your tongue.”
Elizabeth pulled back and started laughing, “I even had you fooled!” Kate’s face broke into a sudden smile and she flung her arms around Elizabeth, “I have missed you sorely, have they been looking after you well?”
“Well enough, and a little too closely,” Elizabeth replied.
“I’m afraid we are going to have to put on a little show for Travers. He thinks you are beyond the pale with pain; we can’t just give you a cup of spiced wine and expect him to swallow it. I’ll tell him you need a tooth out.”
“What! You’re not coming anywhere near me to pull a tooth!” Elizabeth backed away.
“Oh hush will you, all you need to do is provide the noises, I’ll do the rest. And we all know what a fair pair of lungs the Lord blessed you with,” Kate was headed for the door. “Wait here while I get my things and let Travers know what the problem is.”
Kate descended quickly into the kitchen, addressing the servant who’d carried her supplies, “You there: bring those boxes up, follow me,”
Travers asked, “Well, what can you do for her?”
“She needs a tooth taken out. I can do it but I’ll need to get it over quickly before she realises what I mean to do. Paul there can hold her while I pull it, unless you want to?” Kate asked.
Travers was quite sure he wanted to be no part of this and moved aside to let Kate and her servant set foot on the steps back to Elizabeth’s rooms above.
“It’ll be Kate that’ll be getting her teeth knocked out, not the Lady Elizabeth, you mark my words,” Traver’s wife pointed out.
†
“Put them on the table,” Kate instructed, and with relief, Richard banged down the two heavy chests and backed to put his weight against the closed door to ensure their privacy.
“Elizabeth, talk to him, you have but a few minutes.” Kate advised quickly.
Elizabeth’s brow furrowed as she realised who it was standing with his back to the door; she’d not seen him in months. “Richard, I thought you’d deserted my cause.”
“Elizabeth, there is much to tell, I will talk to you later. Let him talk to you now, we do not have long,” Kate urged, as she began pulling bottles from her medicine chests.
“This can’t be good news. One day, maybe you will come on the heels of good news but not in these dire days,” Elizabeth give him her close attention. He seemed changed. Thinner than she remembered, his face tired and drawn; but she did not say so.
“I am afraid you are right,” Richard spoke quickly. Elizabeth was about to speak but Richard raised his hand to silence her. “Kate’s right, we have moments only. The Guilds are planning to free you from Durham Place in the coming weeks and secure you a passage to Holland.”
“Holland!” Elizabeth gasped.
“The Protestant cause is strong there and they believe your supporters there will be sufficient to protect you until you can return to England as heir.”
“They’ll raise me up a puppet queen without a kingdom. Mary would never stand for that, or the nobles,” Elizabeth was thoughtful, then added, “or Parliament either.”
“That’s the risk, it doesn’t matter what you say, it is unlikely that, once they have your person secure on foreign soil, they will be able to remain quiet about it. They will raise you up, I would expect, as England’s Protestant Queen in waiting.”
“No, no, no.” Elizabeth’s tiny fist beat on the table. “If they do this I will lose everything. Have I not made my nerves of steel and braved out all that has been cast towards me. Can I not continue here to outwit them?
“My lady,” Richard continued calmly, “that was all the answer I needed.”
Kate handed Elizabeth a reddened linen square which she recoiled from.
“What’s that?”
“Your blood, and the tooth I am about to pull out. Well, actually, it’s a piece of horse tooth and ox dye, you have to admit looks fairly well like blood,” Kate had been busy in her chests while the pair had their brief exchange. “Now, count to five and scream while we get this tooth pulled.”
Elizabeth screamed, Richard threw over a heavy table and added the smashing of a hand basin.
Kate held up her hand for silence; she spoke in a quiet voice designed not to carry. “They will be up in a moment. And indeed, as Kate descended the stairs with Richard burdened once more behind her, Travers and his wife passed them on the way to Elizabeth’s room.
His reformist contacts had bought his way into Fairfax’s group. Richard’s loyalty though was not to the cause; it was to Elizabeth, always Elizabeth. He had very much doubted that she would want to leave England, indeed she had not for a moment even been tempted. That took courage; to slam the door on what very well might be her only escape route. Elizabeth had spent time in the Tower, closely questioned, and she must have feared for her life. One wrong word, one inappropriate action, one harsh accusation and he had no doubt she would be taken back again. He knew his role now had changed, no longer would he aid Fairfax, now his goal was to frustrate their plans, to ensure Elizabeth stayed in England and out of the hands of Fairfax’s Reformist mob.
Chapter Four
†
“There, put it there,” the old man barked from the chair near the fire.
The servant put down the wine glass on the table.
“Not there, man. God’s wounds. Put it where I can reach it, man.”
Without meeting his Master’s eyes he picked the glass up and placed it on the side of the table nearest to William Fitzwarren.
“Now, push the table closer,” William barked.
The wood of the table legs grated on the oak floor as it edged closer to the elderly man, the wine vibrating and swilling in the glass, dangerously close to the rim.
“Please don’t spill,” prayed Edwin, his eyes on the ruby liquid.
William reached out and satisfied himself that the wine was near enough.
“Now the fire; I don’t want to sit here and freeze. Put those two logs on,” William pointed with age bent fingers. “Push them to the back. I don’t want to sit here and roast like a pig,” Edwin dutifully obeyed the old man’s commands.
“Leave me, but stay outside in the hall, and listen for me tonight, not like last week when that dolt left me,” William’s voice commanded.
Edwin, breathing a sigh of relief, backed to the door. For the moment his duties were done and he’d escaped the old goat’s presence. Quietly he closed the door behind him and left the Master bathed in firelight. The flames flickered orange making the wine in the glass glow. William reached and took the goblet into his gnarled keeping; the arthritic, lumpy knuckled figures could no longer bend to hold the rounded form evenly. Too full, it tipped and spilled, wine pouring over the rim to the table.
Before William could shout for Edwin, a hand caught the stem righting the glass. Taking it from him, William’s visitor placed it down carefully on the table.
“I don’t think Edwin needs to share the moment, do you?” Richard voice was soft, speaking to his father for the first time in nearly a decade.
The shock left the old man and he dropped back in his chair, his shoulders straight, his face set and hard. “Well, I’d expect little less from you.”
“Little less?” Richard sounded amused.
“So what is it that you want then? I’m hardly thinking you’ve finally come to see me out of a sense of duty, have you?”
“Duty! How could you ever imagine I’d ever owe you anything?” Richard used in the same deceptively mild voice. Stepping back he propped himself against the fireplace to better observe his father.
“I’m still your father,” the aged, rough voice barked.
“Aye
you are, and I think you’re looking a little cold back there. Come here and warm yourself nearer the fire.” Before William had a chance to move, Richard moved around the back of his chair and pushed it a foot forwards. William’s right hand, outstretched, was inches short of the bell chain he’d been reaching for. His face was furious.
“Why should you have anything to fear from me?” Richard asked conversationally, “especially after we parted on such good terms?”
“You dragged our family name, my name, into the gutter. My only regret is that I was too soft on you; I should never have let you live.”
“Oh come now, let’s not dance around the lies. We both know perfectly well that I had no blame to bear. And I think you fairly well left me for dead. Has senility made your conscience clearer by deciding otherwise?” Richard was beginning to laugh.
“People still blamed you, powerful people. And it might not have been you on that one occasion but I’ve been fairly well assured that you’d made the Lady Elizabeth your whore well before Seymour got his hands on the bitch. She was, by then, well soiled…”
He didn’t see the blow coming: the back of Richard’s hand smashed into his cheek, a ring tearing a strip from the heavy jowls. His son’s hand clamped quickly over the dribbling mouth to muffle any noise William made.
“A step too far,” Richard growled in his ear. He removed his hand cautiously from his father’s mouth. “Now, I think I’d like to know who these ‘powerful’ people were.”
“It’s done. Does it matter?” William replied angrily wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
“It does, to me. Tell me who and tell me why?”
“Why should I?” growled William, “You’ve no name to clear, it’s too late. You’re a treasonous, untrustworthy whelp.”
“Untrustworthy?” still his voice remained calm and level. “I think we can both agree that any lessons I learned in that came to me from your hand, did they not?”
“Any lessons you got, boy, were well-earned and well-deserved.” William spat back.
“Let us not digress down that route again,” Richard warned.
William closed his mouth and returned the hard stare.
“So who? And why?” enquired Richard, his mild level tone had returned.
“And if you knew, would it matter? There’s nothing, nothing, you can do about it.”
“Well, let me worry about that…”
William cut him off. “Too powerful…you’ve no idea have you?” He laughed. William glanced quickly at Richard’s right hand and the laugh choked in his throat. He didn’t want another crack across the face.
“Well, maybe not, so why don’t you tell me?” Richard folded his arms and leaned with his back against the side of the fireplace.
William said nothing; Richard’s eyes never left his face.
“Oh, so this was no accident of fate then?” Richard asked.
William laughed, “Fate had nothing to do with it, nor did accident or coincidence. It was all by design.”
“Now we are getting to the heart of it. Whose design?”
“Think, you bloody idiot. Who’d want to hold something like that over Boleyn’s whelp, eh?” William spat.
“I don’t know, the list could be fairly long. How about you tell me?” Richard’s voice sounded dangerously quiet now.
“You’re nothing but a clod-head.”
Richard pushed his shoulders from the marble carved fire surround. “That maybe, so help me to understand. What did you do?” Richard hissed, reading his father’s thoughts.
“I gave them you. I didn’t care,”
“You didn’t care,” Richard echoed quietly. “Giving away sons has become quite a habit with you, hasn’t it?”
“No. It was a bargain. Clear and simple. They get to hold you to account, should they ever need to bring Elizabeth to heel, and I got a place on the Council.” William was chuckling now. “It was a security, that was all; they were unlikely to ever use it. What they had could ruin any prospect she ever had for a good marriage and bar her from the succession. Only if they wanted to.”
“Oh, and I would have been where, then, if that game had played out?” Richard said coldly.
“I’ll tell you where lad: on your knees with your head on a block, that’s where.”
“Very concise. I can see that. But for whom? Who wanted to bar her from the succession?”
William did laugh this time, Richard even glanced at the door expecting to see Edwin summoned by the unexpected noise from within.
“For God’s sake who do you think?” barked William.
Richard had more than a good idea, but still, he wanted to hear it.
“Thomas Seymour, of course.” William spat. “Henry Wriothesley worked for him, but he was also working for the Privy Council and between them they tried to control the crown. Lot of good it did them.”
“Seymour lost his head on the block and Henry Wriothesley, he’s been dead now at least three years,” Richard spoke more to himself.
“More like four,” mumbled his father. “That’s bloody stopped you, hasn’t it? You idiot. Wriothesley and the council wanted to control the succession, you were just part of their control over Elizabeth, should they need it. You are lucky they haven’t used it. Yet.”
“So he had a testimony?” Richard asked acidly.
“Of course, it wouldn’t be any good without it, now would it?” William replied, raising his bushy eyebrows.
“So who’s in Wriothesley’s place now?” Richard asked.
“How the Hell should I know? Do I look like I go to Court often? Eh? No, my days are spent in this eternal room, and I know there won’t be many more of them.”
“Spare me the self-pity, please,” Richard admonished an edge in his voice, and his elegant face hard.
“There’s nothing you can do about it. As you say, Seymour and Wriothesley are dead, but you can be sure that there’ll be a packet somewhere with those bawdy tales all tied up and ready to tell their story if someone on the Privy Council feels they need to use them.”
“Yes, quite, I can’t see the benefit in indulging in conjecture at the moment, can you?” Richard had retaken his place, leaning once more against the fire surround. “This has all been very pleasant. However, this is not the only reason I wished to see you again.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed.
“There’s the small matter of my inheritance,” Richard said cheerfully.
“Your inheritance?” William laughed out loud, “Is that what you are after? That idiot you call a brother couldn’t get you anything, so now you’ve come to see what you can press out of an old man. You are pitiful.”
Richard was silent, he was staring at William.
William’s eyes widened and his face cracked into an ugly smile, “Oh, that is funny. You didn’t know he’d been to see me?”
“When?” Richard demanded.
“Find out yourself,” William spat.
“No, I’ll find out now, or you’ll have no need of Edwin any longer.” Richard threatened, moving from the fire to stand close to William, a little too close.
William could sense his power. Seated, he was forced to tilt his head back a long way to meet those cold eyes. There was nothing of his wife in the face before him, Richard was made in William’s image, and he knew just how much strength he would have. It felt savagely unfair; all the power of youth, all the virility, all the strength of maturity that had deserted him by some cruel twist, he saw it all now vested in another. How he hated him. “A few weeks ago,” was all William conceded, then added, a sneer on his face, “He left empty-handed.”
Richard was quiet for a long time. “Did you feel nothing? He’s your son? He’d done you no wrong.”
“He’s a piece of gutter filth, bred in the byre…”
“He wasn’t bred in a byre, he was born to your wife, in your home,” Richard stopped William’s words.
“What does it matter? He’s a common ch
url, and if he’s not, then he does a bloody job of looking and acting like one,” William said hotly. “Robert told me you’d kept him with you. What did you expect to do with him? Eh? Did you keep him to taunt me with, a threat, was that it?”
Richard just shook his head.
“Robert had the chance to get rid of him and the fool didn’t take it, so it’s his problem now.” William continued.
“Yes, Robert did a bad job, did he not, of getting rid of me as well,” Richard agreed. “Such a shame. Anyway, we digress. I did tell him he’d get nothing from you. Where did he go?”
“How should I know? I raised the alarm, Edwin chased him from the house. If you want to find him go and start turning over every muck heap in London, I’m sure you’ll find him under one.”
Richard let out a long breath and pushed himself from the fireplace, “I would find him. If you hear from him would you get a message to me?”
“Why would I want to do that?” William’s eyes were wide and he leaned forward in his chair. “Why the hell do you think I would ever help you?”
“You have no idea just how bloody lucky you are.” There was disbelief in his voice. “I came here wholly expecting to leave with your blood on my hands.” William’s face drained of colour. “Now I have a use for you, that moment, it seems, has been postponed,” Richard continued patiently. “So, will you send me a message?”
“Why would I? If you are set to murder me, why would I hasten that end?” William asked carefully.
“Well maybe I’ll just leave your end to the natural course of things, you don’t look like to live that long anyway. That would be my bargain. I’ll let you die the rotting death of old age, rather than offer to end your suffering quickly,” Richard flipped a knife in his hand, “and only a little sooner. Or, if you choose a swifter end, I would only be too happy to help. Send your message to Christian Carter, I’m sure you remember him, he’ll pass it on to me.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” William asked quickly, watching the knife flicker in the firelight.
“Simple,” Richard smiled malevolently, “you don’t.”
†
Clement opened the letter; a smile flashed across his face revealing a row of stumped and rotting teeth. Robert Fitzwarren had expressed his gratitude and confirmed that he would, indeed, not only be continuing to use the lawyer’s services, but would be engaging his firm in some additional matters. He promised soon that he would visit and discuss these in person with the lawyer.