Rival to the Queen

by Carolly Erickson

  RIVAL TO THE QUEEN

  Also by Carolly Erickson

  HISTORICAL ENTERTAINMENTS

  The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette

  The Last Wife of Henry VIII

  The Secret Life of Josephine

  The Tsarina’s Daughter

  The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots

  NONFICTION

  The Records of Medieval Europe

  Civilization and Society in the West

  The Medieval Vision

  Bloody Mary

  Great Harry

  The First Elizabeth

  Mistress Anne

  Our Tempestuous Day

  Bonnie Prince Charlie

  To the Scaffold

  Her Little Majesty

  Arc of the Arrow

  Great Catherine

  Josephine

  Alexandra

  Royal Panoply

  Lilibet

  The Girl from Botany Bay

  RIVAL

  to the

  QUEEN

  Carolly Erickson

  ST. MARTIN’S PRESS

  NEW YORK

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TITLE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  EPILOGUE

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  RIVAL TO THE QUEEN. Copyright © 2010 by Carolly Erickson. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Erickson, Carolly, 1943–

  Rival to the queen / Carolly Erickson. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-312-37974-2

  1. Leicester, Lettice Dudley, Countess of, 1543–1634—Fiction. 2. Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 1533–1603—Fiction. 3. Leicester, Robert Dudley, earl of, 1532?–1588—Fiction. 4. Nobility—Great Britain—Fiction. 5. Queens—Great Britain—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3605.R53R58 2010

  813'.6—dc22

  2010025197

  First Edition: October 2010

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Charles Spicer

  with heartfelt thanks

  ONE

  Flames crackled and rose into the heavy air as my father’s servants piled more bundles of brushwood on the fire. Smoke rose grey-black out of the flickering orange tongues, the heat from the rising fire making my younger brother Frank draw back, fearful that we too might be singed or burned, even as the stench of burning flesh made us put our hands over our noses and recoil from its acrid, noxious reek.

  I did not step back, I held my ground even as I heard Jocelyn’s agonizing cries. I held my breath and shut my eyes and prayed, please God, make it rain. Please God, put the fire out.

  It was a lowering and cold morning. The overcast sky was growing darker by the minute, and I had felt a few drops of rain. I thought, it wouldn’t take much rain to douse this fire. Please, let it come now!

  A large strong hand clamped onto my shoulder—I could sense its roughness through the sleeve of my gown—and I felt myself pulled backwards.

  “Get back, Lettie! Can’t you see the fire is spreading? Stand back there, beside your brother!”

  “But father,” I pleaded, my voice nearly lost amid the roar of the flames and the sharp snapping of twigs and branches, “it’s Jocelyn. Our Jocelyn. I am praying that the Lord will send rain and save him!”

  I looked up into my father’s anguished face and saw at once the ravages of pain on his stern features. His voice was hoarse as he bent down and whispered “I’m praying for him too. Now do as I tell you!”

  The fire was growing hotter. I was sweating, my flushed face was burning though the day was cold and once again I felt a spatter of raindrops on one cheek. I moved back to join my brother, who was weeping, sniffling loudly, and took his hand. At first he had tried his best to be manly, to resist the strong tug of emotion that we all felt. But Jocelyn had been his tutor, our tutor. He taught us our letters, and our writing hand, and, later, gave us our lessons in Greek and Latin. I had studied with him for seven years, Frank for nearly six. We loved him.

  And now we were being forced to watch him die.

  He was being burned for heresy. For professing the Protestant faith, as we did. For refusing to obey Queen Mary’s command that all her subjects attend mass and revere the pope and renounce the church of Luther, the church her father Henry VIII and her late brother Edward VI had officially embraced, in sharp opposition to the age-old Roman belief.

  Many felt as Jocelyn did, but most hid their convictions, and attended mass despite them. My father, who was always a practical man, did as Queen Mary ordered and told us to do the same.

  “What we do outwardly does not matter,” he told us. “It’s what we believe in our hearts that makes us members of the true faith. The Lord sees what is in our hearts, and protects and favors us.”

  But Jocelyn, who was very brave, and very learned, a scholar from Magdalen College and a student of the ancient texts of the church, was not satisfied. To pretend allegiance to the pope and the mass was wrong, he said. To disguise the truth. And so he had spoken out against the queen and her Catholic mass, and had been seized and thrown into a dungeon. And now, on this day, he was condemned to die.

  I had watched him, looking thin and gaunt, as they made him walk across the damp grass to where the reeds and split branches were being piled knee-deep. In the center of the pile was a three-legged stool, and he had been made to stand up on it. But before he did so he reached down to pick up some of the reeds and kissed them reverently.

  “See how he blesses the reeds! See how he embraces his martyrdom!” I heard people in the crowd exclaim. “Surely he will be with the Lord in paradise!” But they kept their voices low, for they did not want to be put in prison or forced to submit to punishment, and we were all aware that there were guards and soldie
rs everywhere, listening for blasphemous words against the church of Rome.

  Then the torch had been put to the twigs and branches, and the fire had blazed up, and Jocelyn, praying loudly for the queen who had condemned him and for my father and the servants who had built the fire, had at last been overcome by pain and began screaming.

  I heard my father, in anguish, call out to Jocelyn, asking his forgiveness. But the only response was a loud wail of agony, and hearing it, I saw my proud, stern father shed tears.

  Young as I was, only sixteen on the day Jocelyn was condemned to die, I realized that my father was being punished alongside our tutor. Queen Mary was making him suffer. She knew well that he had been a faithful servant of the crown ever since he was a very young man, serving in King Henry’s privy chamber and, after the old king’s death, serving King Edward as an envoy and councilor. He was unwaveringly faithful to the monarchy—but he did not, in his heart, profess the old religion, and she resented him for this. She was vengeful, everyone said so. Now she was taking vengeance against my father by forcing him to carry out the sentence of death against the young man she knew he was fond of, Jocelyn Palmer.

  All of a sudden a strong wind blew up, I felt it lift my skirts and draw its raw breath against my neck. I let go of Frank’s hand for a moment as he pulled away from me, escaping the glowing sparks that blew toward us.

  The wind was putting the fire out. I dared to look at Jocelyn. His hair was burnt away as was most of his clothing, and the skin of his face was scorched and blackened, but his lips were moving.

  He was singing, a hymn tune. His voice was scratchy but I recognized the tune. Others joined in the singing as the fire died to embers.

  “Dear Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon me,” Jocelyn cried out. “Let it end!”

  Soldiers approached my father and spoke to him, standing so near to him that I could not hear what they were saying. I looked up at the darkening sky. Surely it would rain soon, a hard rain. The sign of God’s mercy.

  Then my father was giving orders and fresh loads of brushwood and branches were being brought and the fire rekindled. But not before a burly guard had reached up to strap two swollen sheep’s bladders around Jocelyn’s waist.

  “No,” I cried to my father. “Spare him! Let him live!”

  Once again my father grasped my arm, bending down so that he could speak to me, and to me alone.

  “I must do as the queen commands. Otherwise we all face Jocelyn’s peril. But there is one last mercy I can show him. The bladders are filled with gunpowder. When the fire reaches them, they will explode, and he will die. He will be spared much agony.”

  Torches were put to the wood and the fire began to blaze up, though I could feel drops of rain falling now, the rain I had prayed for, and smoke rose with the fire, black, choking smoke that was blown into our faces, and with it, the stink of Jocelyn’s flesh. I thought then, I cannot bear this.

  I felt my gorge rise. I doubled over. My legs felt heavy, and it was hard to breathe. Minutes passed. All around me I could hear people weeping and sighing and coughing from the thickening smoke. I glanced at Frank. He had closed his eyes and bowed his head. His fists were clenched at his sides.

  With a bright flash and a loud crack the bladders of gunpowder exploded, but there was to be no mercy for Jocelyn. The blasts went outward, tearing away part of one of his arms but leaving his blackened torso intact.

  How I found the courage to look at Jocelyn then, in his last extremity, I will never understand. His legs were burnt, blood seeped from the fingers of one arm and his eyes were charred sockets. Yet his swollen tongue moved within what was left of his gums, and I knew that he prayed.

  “Lord Jesus,” I heard my father say in a broken voice, “receive his spirit!”

  Then with another loud crack the skies opened and rain began to pour down in thick sheets, flooding the grass and quenching the fire and turning the ground to thick squelching mud underfoot.

  It was the rain I had prayed for, but it came too late. What was left of Jocelyn’s body hung limp and lifeless, the flesh of his face—a face I had loved—so burned away that I could not have said whose face it was.

  I felt Frank reach for my hand and we clung to each other, standing there in the drenching rain, until the crowd scattered and my father gave the order to wrap the body in a burial cloth and take it away.

  TWO

  We left England shortly after Jocelyn died. We had no choice, father said, and mother agreed. England was no longer a safe place for the Knollys family.

  It was not just that my father, Francis Knollys, could not bring himself to preside over any more cruel executions of fellow Protestants—or of Catholics either, for that matter—for he was, deep down, a tenderhearted man. Or that Queen Mary was growing more and more vengeful, ordering more and more men and women to their deaths because they would not conform to her Catholic beliefs. Or that some said she was mad, crazed by anger and sorrow over her inability to give birth to a living child to succeed her on the throne.

  It was more than all these things, a deep-rooted taint of blood that made us vulnerable to the queen’s wrath. For we were related to Queen Mary’s half-sister Princess Elizabeth, and Elizabeth, just then, was imprisoned in the Tower of London, accused of treason.

  My beautiful mother Catherine was Princess Elizabeth’s aunt, and I and my brother and sister were the princess’s cousins. Queen Mary believed that everyone related to her half-sister was suspect, and probably dangerous to her throne and to the peace of the realm, and certainly immoral.

  My mother had explained our family history to my sister Cecelia and Frank and me when we were quite young. It all began, she said, early in the reign of our famous King Henry VIII, many years before we were born.

  “You see, our late King Henry, when he was married to Queen Catherine, his Spanish wife, needed a son to inherit his throne. But all Queen Catherine’s baby boys died, and nearly all the baby girls too, all except for Mary, who is now queen.

  “If only Queen Catherine had died!” she went on, a little wistfully. “Everything would have been so much easier. But she did not die, she just went on having more and more babies, and they kept on dying. The poor king thought that God was cursing him, and maybe He was. So in time King Henry honored other women and let them become the mothers of his children. One of those women was my mother, your grandmother Mary Boleyn.”

  Our grandmother Mary Boleyn had died when I was a very small child, far too young to remember her, but I had seen portraits of her, painted when she was young. A lovely girl, with light brown hair and blue eyes. An innocent girl, or so one would have thought from the look of the portraits. Yet I knew from what my mother said that she had the reputation of being far from innocent.

  “She had a husband, William Carey,” mother was saying. “Yet she also had the king’s love. And his was the stronger.” The last words were almost whispered, as though mother were confiding to us a precious secret.

  “So you are the king’s daughter!” I cried. “And we are all his royal grandchildren!”

  My mother smiled, an enigmatic smile.

  “Some people say that, but only my mother knew for certain. And she would never say. I think the king made her swear to keep everything about our birth a secret. Certainly King Henry always favored me, and your uncle Henry too.”

  Our mother’s brother Henry was a frequent visitor to our family home at Rotherfield Greys. He was a tall, muscular man, an exceptional horseman and fine athlete. Yes, I thought. Uncle Henry could very well be the son of the late King Henry, who had had the reputation of being able to match or exceed any man at his court for height and strength and was a champion riding at the tilt.

  “So you are a princess, and Uncle Henry is a prince,” I said. “You should be granted royal honors.”

  My brother and sister nodded enthusiastically. “You should, mother,” they urged.

  But mother only laughed. “I am no princess—at least I was never ack
nowledged as such. I am plain Catherine Carey, daughter of Mary Boleyn Carey and Will Carey of the privy chamber. And brother Henry is of the same lineage—officially. In truth I do not know who my father was, the king or my legal father Will Carey, who died when I was very small. Or possibly some other man, for my mother was said to have other lovers. I have no desire to make exalted claims to the throne, or to be a rival to Queen Mary.”

  “Yet you look like him,” I insisted. “You have reddish hair and blue eyes and are very fair, just as he was.” I knew only too well what King Henry had looked like, all the royal palaces were full of his portraits, and there was a sculpture of his head and shoulders in a place of honor in our family home.

  At this my mother nodded, but then she went on, in quite another tone.

  “Whoever my true father was, there is a far darker aspect to our family story. It concerns your grandmother Mary’s sister Anne.”

  We all knew of Anne. The witch. The harlot. The evil woman who had cast a spell on King Henry and used her magic to force him to divorce good Queen Catherine and marry her instead. The wicked queen who had been beheaded.

  I had heard the servants gossip about Queen Anne for as long as I could remember. They often crossed themselves—in the Catholic fashion—when they spoke of her, as if to ward off her potent evil that lingered on, even though she had been dead for many years. My parents never spoke of her at all—at least not in my hearing—so mother’s mention of her made me pay particular attention to her words.

  “My aunt Queen Anne Boleyn never liked my mother. They were very different. Mother was a soft and comforting sort of woman, who liked to laugh and dance and had a sunny nature. She loved to eat and drank more wine than was good for her.”

  Hearing this I glanced at my sister, and caught her eye. We quickly looked away again, but each of us knew what the other was thinking: our mother also drank more wine than was good for her.

  “My aunt Anne was a shrewd woman,” mother was saying. “I liked to think that she saw the world through narrowed eyes. She thought Mary was a fool—though in truth I think it was Anne who was, in the end, the more foolish. My mother was happy most of the time, while Anne, for all her shrewdness, never was. At least I never saw her when her face was lit with happiness.”