by Jane Feather
Rosamund accepted the wordless answer and left him alone with his muse. She took her own thoughts up to the peace of her bedchamber, where she sat on the window seat beneath the open window. Below, her brother was walking with Frizer, conferring in a low voice. She watched them idly, certain that neither love nor lust was between them. The very thought made her shudder, although it occurred to her that it was possible that Frizer, in his own fashion, loved her brother. His loyalty was certainly unshakable, and he would do anything Thomas demanded of him. And it was abundantly clear that Frizer had no liking for Marlowe. She had seen him watching her brother’s lover with an expression of vindictive malice . . . jealousy, even.
Did Thomas love Kit Marlowe? Or simply lust after him? Probably the latter, she decided. What would happen when Thomas took a wife? He would have to do that at some point. Edmund and his various doxies were unlikely to produce a legitimate Walsingham heir, so it would be up to the younger son to fulfill the family obligations.
She wondered if the idea of making love with a woman was as repugnant to Thomas as it was to Marlowe. But her brother was very different from Marlowe. Thomas’s emotions were fickle and ran close to the surface. He was inclined to do what suited him best at any one time, and perhaps he could turn his attentions to either sex without difficulty as circumstances demanded. She felt compassion though for this putative wife. Thomas would never be a faithful husband, his eye would always rove, in one direction or another.
Arnaud paced his chamber in the Golden Cock Inn on the Strand as he waited for Agathe. After the disaster at the joust he had prudently left the court before any official notice to do so had come from the queen, and now he kicked his heels in ever-increasing impatience while the town and the court buzzed with the excitement of a fantastic conspiracy to assassinate the queen. He couldn’t bear to be so far from the heart of events, from the center of talk. Agathe kept him informed as far as she could, but she had no nose for sniffing out the underlying meanings of remarks, or the ramifications of incidents, accidental or deliberate. He felt helpless, and it was as previously unknown a sensation as it was detestable.
When he heard her light step on the stair, he yanked open the door before she had reached the top step. “Well? What is happening now? What have you heard?” He bombarded her with questions as she entered the chamber.
“Arnaud . . . Arnaud, give me a moment to catch my breath,” she exclaimed, fanning herself briskly. “ ’Tis so hot on the street.” She sat on the broad window seat. “May I have a cup of wine, please. I am parched.”
He controlled his impatience with difficulty and poured wine into a pewter cup. He handed it to her, then perched on the corner of the table, one leg swinging carelessly as he sipped from his own cup. “So, tell me.”
“Well, it is said that the prisoners are being put to the question and Walsingham and Burghley are trying to persuade the queen to bring charges against Mary of Scots. But it is said that she will not listen to them.”
Arnaud nodded. “The queen is always excessively cautious.” He regarded Agathe thoughtfully over the lip of his cup. “Is aught said of my departure from court?”
She shook her head, knowing that this was the question closest to his heart. “The queen has not issued a decree of banishment, so your departure is considered voluntary.” She gave him a placatory smile, seeing the frown in his eyes. “It means, mon amour, that it is for you to decide when to return to court.”
He grunted. “A dangerous choice. Too soon and I risk permanent banishment, too late and I will appear ashamed and cowardly. The queen cares for neither.”
“At least you did not kill Lord Morganston,” Agathe pointed out. “He has a broken leg and will no doubt limp for the rest of his life, but he lives.” She watched Arnaud to see what effect her cheerful tone was having. His expression did not lighten by much. She tried again. “So many matters of state now occupy her majesty that it’s likely your situation has slipped from her mind. It is good that you left when you did, but I believe she no longer thinks of the joust.”
A tight smile crossed his lips. “Maybe, ma chère, you have an entrée into her majesty’s innermost thoughts, although I doubt it. However, I seem to have no choice but to continue to keep out of her majesty’s sight and memory for a while longer.” He set down his cup and reached for her hands, drawing her to her feet. “I have need of distraction. I trust you are willing to provide it.”
Agathe’s skin prickled as she went into his arms. “Always, mon amour.” She fell back on the bed looking up at him as he stood over her, his gaze dark and hungry.
* * *
Sir Francis Walsingham and Lord Burghley stood waiting as they had been for several hours in the antechamber to the queen’s privy chamber in Greenwich Palace. They knew why she kept them cooling their heels, she didn’t wish to hear what they had come to discuss, but they were accustomed to their sovereign’s methods and waited patiently. As the senior members of her council they had to be granted an audience eventually.
Finally they were summoned to the royal presence and entered, bowing in unison. Elizabeth was standing in front of the windows, the midday sun setting her red wig alight so that it seemed to throw off a halo above her richly jeweled, open ruff.
“Well?” Her tone was haughty, her gaze cold.
“Madam, the conspirators appeared this day before the commissioners at Westminster, where they were charged with high treason,” Burghley said.
“In what condition were they?”
“It was necessary to carry Ballard into court in a chair, his interrogation has been severe,” Walsingham said. “For the rest, they were able to walk.”
“And did they confess their guilt?”
“In interrogation, yes. In court they denied it. But we have all the necessary witness statements as well as the confessions under interrogation. A verdict of guilt is foregone, but the trial will, of course, follow precedent. It must be seen to be a clear and just rendering of English law.” Burghley stroked the furred lapels of his black robe as he spoke.
“Inform me when sentence is passed.” Elizabeth gestured in dismissal to the door, but her advisers didn’t obey.
“Madam, there is one other most urgent matter we must discuss.” Walsingham spoke hurriedly before she could interrupt him. “The matter of the Queen of Scots, madam, must be resolved. She must be tried.”
“I have told you countless times, Master Secretary, that I will not spill the blood of a queen regnant. Such a thing has never happened in English law, and I will not be responsible for the precedent. Think of the political consequences. We would have Scotland in arms against us. James might be willing to turn a blind eye to his mother’s strict confinement, but I cannot expect him to countenance her death. And what of France? Mary is queen dowager, they will not stand idly by while another nation executes a member of their royal family.”
“Madam, at the very least she must be imprisoned more straitly,” Burghley said. “Your council believes she should be held in the Tower.”
“No. I will not have her in the Tower. Or any other prison you may have in mind.”
Walsingham tried once more. “Madam, the people are uncertain and frightened. There are rumors of a French landing in Sussex under the Duc de Guise, and a Spanish force at Newcastle under the Duke of Palma. There is talk of civil war, and some even believe that your majesty is already assassinated. The unrest grows dangerous and we must do something to stop it. Strong action against Mary Stuart will do that.”
Elizabeth turned away, back to the window, her hand upraised as if to silence them. “I will hear no more of this. If the people need to see that I am alive and very much their queen, then I will show myself in procession through the streets of London.”
The two men looked at each other, then as one accord bowed to their queen’s averted back and left the privy chamber. “Paulet writes that he is uneasy keeping Mary at Chartley,” Walsingham said as they paused in the antechamber. “She must be
moved somewhere more secure.”
“Then send for Paulet. Let him put the case to her majesty. Mayhap she’ll listen to him.” Burghley shook his head. “Mary Stuart must be brought to trial, the council is of one mind on this. Parliament is of the same mind.”
Walsingham pulled at his neat beard. “Let us wait until the trials of these others are completed and they have met their deaths. Then I will go before Parliament and ask them to petition the queen. She cannot hold fast against her council and her Parliament.”
“I wish I shared your optimism.” Burghley offered a small bow and strode off.
Walsingham made his way to Westminster, where the trial continued throughout the long afternoon. The defendants were permitted no defense counsel as there could be no defense for their crime and their guilt was already proven. The interrogations had brought to light fourteen conspirators in all, but Master Secretary had the most interest in the seven principals, led by Ballard, Babington, and Savage. They were his pigeons, carefully nurtured, educated, cosseted by his own people so that they would fly along the designated path and be the means by which England would once and for all be rid of the Catholic threat to the throne.
But if Elizabeth could not be persuaded to do her part, then all his elaborate scheming and these deaths would be for naught.
When the prisoners were removed from the dock to be returned to the Tower, Sir Francis went back to Seething Lane to pen a summons to Sir Amyas Paulet. Maybe Mary Stuart’s jailer could be more persuasive than the members of the queen’s council.
He was about to leave his study when there came a scratching on the door. “Who is it?”
The door opened a fraction and Ingram Frizer slid into the room like an unsavory wraith. “Information you wanted, sir.” He leaned against the door, letting it shut with his weight, and surveyed his master.
“About what?” Francis sat down again. Frizer’s information was always pertinent.
“You wanted me to take a look at that Chevalier de Vaugiras, sir.” Frizer sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Something interesting came up . . . concerning Master Thomas.”
“Oh?” Francis sat up, leaning his forearms on his desk. “Pray tell, Frizer.”
“Well, it seems that the chevalier and your honor’s cousin had a quarrel, years ago it was, when Master Thomas was but a young lad out of the university. He was in Paris and it seems there was a youngster involved . . . one that the chevalier had an interest in. He took offense when Master Thomas had his own interest and there was a fight. Master Thomas wounded him and he’s been sworn to avenge himself ever since.”
“A youngster? Boy or girl?” Walsingham demanded. Such details were important to a man who collected other men’s secrets.
“Boy, sir. Lad of about fifteen. Master Thomas took him away after the fight, when the chevalier was wounded and couldn’t do nothing to stop him. ’Tis said on the street, sir, that the chevalier don’t ever forget an insult or a grievance.” Frizer sniffed again and scratched the side of his nose with the broken nail of a filthy finger. “A man not given to a fondness for Walsinghams, sir.”
“I see.” Francis nodded, reaching into the drawer of his desk for a golden noble. He flicked it across the room and Frizer caught it deftly. “You’ve a nose to rival a bloodhound’s, my friend.”
Frizer inclined his head in acknowledgment, pocketing the coin. “One other thing, I heard talk of a wife . . .”
Walsingham leaned forwards ever attentive as Frizer continued his tale. At the end of his exposition, as he took his leave, Frizer said over his shoulder, “Mistress Rosamund seemed to have a fondness for the chevalier’s company.”
“What?” Francis was finally startled out of his composure. Frizer often left the best for last, tossing it out as if it were a mere bagatelle. “Are you telling me he was responsible . . .?”
“Don’t know about that, sir. But, as I say, she seemed to have a fondness for his company.” Frizer slipped away as discreetly as he had come.
Francis sat in frowning reverie for a long time. Had the chevalier used Rosamund as a means of revenge on Thomas? Had he debauched his enemy’s sister? It was a perfect vengeance, well suited to a devious mind. A grim smile touched the secretary’s thin mouth. The chevalier had not taken into account that in one Walsingham at least he would meet his match.
Francis opened the drawer in his desk and took out one of Rosamund’s sketches. It had interested him, although he had not thought of an immediate use for it. Now, however, he could see exactly what he would do with it.
* * *
Rosamund had been sketching in the orchard on a green and gold September day when the messenger arrived from London. When she walked back up to the house for dinner, she found Thomas issuing orders to the stables for his horse and Master Marlowe’s.
“What’s happened, Thomas? Where are you going?”
He turned at her question. “Oh, there you are. We’re going to London. The conspirators have been found guilty and sentence is pronounced. Their executions will be the occasion of much revelry and rejoicing throughout the city. Sir Francis writes that if you wish to come, since you have been in some part involved in this success, you will be welcome at Seething Lane.”
A trip to London for whatever reason was not to be sneezed at. Life at Scadbury was pleasant, but Rosamund found that once she was used to its peaceful routine again, it quickly palled. The prospect of a little variety was appealing. “Are we to leave now?”
“No, we will dine first. You had better pack now, only a few things for a short visit.”
Rosamund went up to her bedchamber, hauling out the small leather trunk from beneath her bed. She packed what she would need for a few days and went downstairs for dinner. Kit seemed oddly morose during the meal, drinking deeply as always, and eating sparingly. He spoke hardly at all, ignoring Thomas’s various jocular comments, until finally Thomas demanded, “What in God’s name is the matter, Kit? You are as sullen as a whipped schoolboy.”
Kit refilled his wine cup. “I like it not, this rejoicing at the closing of the trap. We make merry while men hang at our behest. It sickens me.” He drained the contents of his cup, then thrust it from him with such force that it bounced across the table and fell to the floor. A violent push sent his chair tumbling and he left the dining room, the door slamming behind him.
Thomas shrugged and refilled his own cup. “When Kit is in drink, he makes for poor company” was his only comment.
Rosamund pushed the suckling pig on her trencher to one side. She too had lost her appetite. “What time do we leave?”
“At five, time enough to reach London before nightfall.” Her brother drank and with the tip of his dagger speared the apple from the mouth of the suckling pig on its carving board in front of him.
Rosamund got up with a word of excuse and left her brother to his dinner. She wasn’t sure now that she wanted to go to London and join in this celebration. She was not proud of the work she had done. She found Kit in the study, scribbling on a tablet.
“Why go, then?” she asked.
“Because Thomas goes.” He didn’t raise his eyes from the paper. “Isn’t that obvious?”
“But you do not always go where my brother goes.”
“Not if my steps take me in a different direction. On this occasion they do not. Besides, I feel a certain moral obligation to see the conclusion. To see what I have wrought.” He looked at her then. “Do you not?”
Rosamund shook her head. “No, no obligation. I will not attend the executions.”
They rode in silence, even Thomas accepting that his companions were in no mood for cheerful discourse, and reached Seething Lane just as the sun was setting. “The executions are set for tomorrow morning.” Thomas helped his sister dismount. “You will attend with Sir Francis and Lady Walsingham. It will be a great spectacle.”
Rosamund made no comment. She glanced at Kit but he was steadfastly staring ahead. She wondered that a man considered an ath
eistical heretic by many should hold to such an unusual moral compass. Even his play Tamburlaine, so full of bloody carnage and violent tyranny though it was, made moral judgments. Not religious judgments, or not as such things were generally understood, but right and wrong was clearly delineated in those lines. It seemed so strange that a man who could describe with such seeming relish hideous scenes of bloody degradation found it hard to contemplate witnessing the public executions of would-be assassins of his queen. Strange that he should feel so strongly his own guilt in bringing about those executions, when men such as Thomas, Sir Francis, and she guessed all those others, including Will, involved in Master Secretary’s elaborate machinations relished only the success of the enterprise.
She turned and went into the house. Ursula greeted her with her usual warmth, plying her with a hot posset and questions about how she had spent the last weeks at Scadbury. Sir Francis came in later and greeted her amiably enough, bidding her welcome, and when she went to bed in the chamber now considered to be her own, Rosamund felt she was at home again, the street sounds of nighttime London as much music to her ear as the nightingale at Scadbury.
Chapter Twenty-six
“MADAM, I WOULD prefer to stay here this morning.” Rosamund spoke quietly but definitely when Ursula, still in a nightgown, came to her bedchamber early the next morning.
Ursula, who had been examining the contents of the linen press, turned to the bed with a look of surprise. “Not go? Why ever not, child?”
“I doubt I have the stomach for it,” she said frankly.
“Nonsense. It is a salutary lesson for all to see the queen’s justice in action.” Ursula took out a petticoat and laid it on the bed. “Men who seek to kill the queen must face the punishment decreed for treason. . . . This petticoat needs some attention, the lace is torn. I will tell Henny.”
She turned to the armoire. “I have some ribbon that will refurbish the green gown, and I have an ell of a most delicate embroidered damask that will furnish you with a new gown. It shall be made up for you while you’re here.”