Connecticut Vampire in Queen Mary's Court

by Hall, Ian

  “But what happens if history changes once we’re here?”

  “It can’t, I’ve proven that before; we can’t change anything.”

  But Steve seemed determined to push his point. “You didn’t prove it, you only think you did. What happened with Arthur may have just been coincidence.”

  I know I teared up more. “But no matter what I did to help the situation, Prince Arthur still died.”

  “But it was a contagious disease, Richard. Half the country caught it, how could you have stopped it?”

  I gave his question a fair bit of thought. “So we might still be Sam Becketts, and have work to do for Elizabeth?”

  “Maybe. When does she start as Queen?”

  “Now that I don’t know, because if I did, I’d just run away to Europe for a year or two, and come back in time for the coronation. It could be ten days, it could be ten years. I didn’t study this period of time.”

  Steve nodded. “I know what you mean.”

  “DeVere?” came a voice from down below.

  “It’s Fakenham,” I said to Steve, then looked over the edge of the parapet. “Yes?”

  “I have new orders.”

  Two minutes later we were out of the cold breeze, and into the warm of his old office at the Tower. The room had been stripped bare; when the Queen had moved to Westminster, all his books and papers had obviously followed.

  “Two prominent heads have gone to ground,” Fakenham began. Steve and I stood wondering what would come down the pipe. “Sir Peter Carew is missing, supposed fled to mainland Europe, and Baron Exeter is under extreme suspicion too, considering he harbored the bitch we beheaded today.”

  My ears pricked up at the mention of Exeter’s name. “Our job to bring them in, sir?”

  But Fakenham shook his head. “I don’t want trials. They’ll only put more pressure on Mary to punish Elizabeth, and we both know she’s innocent.”

  “So what do you want from us?”

  “I just want you to scour the countryside, find ringleaders, and kill them.” He handed me a sheet of parchment. “There are sixteen names here, and where they live, where they were last seen. As Renard would say; you have carte blanche.”

  I walked with new vigor, almost having a bounce to my step that hadn’t been there for quite some time, but as I walked out of his office, I couldn’t help feeling something wasn’t quite right with the whole mission.

  The same evening, as we neared Ashridge House, I began to feel ill, then clutched my belly in pain, my ears ringing, then, just as I’d done months before, I doubled over and vomited.

  By the time I’d gotten to my room, I almost had to be carried. I sent Steve for some brandy, as it had done the trick before, but when he returned, he looked as white as I felt.

  “What’s wrong?” He handed me a note, already opened. “What’s this?”

  “Just read it,” he said. “Read it out loud.”

  “The mission from Fakenham is a ruse. He wants you out of London. They conspire to behead Bessy. Wait here for instructions. Z.”

  I looked at him. “Where did you get this?”

  “A woman gave it to me, just now, downstairs by the drink closet.”

  “Then we need to question her.”

  “She vanished.”

  “Well, we’ll have to chase her down.” I suddenly felt much better. “She’ll be here somewhere.’

  “No, Richard, you don’t understand. She disappeared, like a vampire.”

  “Lady Jane!” I enthused. “Bright eyes, pale complexion, freckles?”

  But to my disappointment, he shook his head. “No, this woman looked darker, perhaps even of Romany descent; possibly the most beautiful gipsy I’ve ever seen.”

  “Busty?”

  He nodded, his widened eyes telling me more.

  I had but one thought. “Abigail.”

  And then of course, I had to tell Steve about Abigail’s help back in 1501. By the time I’d brought him up to date, I felt as good as new again, stomach back to normal.

  “But how would she know we were here?” he asked.

  “More to the point,” I sipped my brandy, although it proved now for purely cosmetic reasons. “How the heck did she know about our mission? I mean, we just got it an hour ago, and yet she knew.”

  “And why sign it Z, like we did the Renard letters?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m all for staying here for a couple of days, ‘getting ready to travel’, and see what pops up. I don’t think we should hurry to get on with this ‘mission’.”

  “That works for me.”

  So we stayed at Ashridge under the guise of readying ourselves for our mission, and watching Elizabeth delay her journey to London.

  We practiced our archery in the grounds, fenced together and with some of Elizabeth’s guard, then sipped brandy into the wee hours.

  Then, at last, as a deputation of soldiers arrived to labor the point, Princess Elizabeth announced herself ready to travel.

  Except she’d chosen an open carriage in February; I feared for her life at every moment.

  And the journey took days instead of the hours it should have. It seemed to be more of a procession of innocence than a journey. She wore a dress of white and cloth of gold, and waved at everyone who lined her route.

  The expression on her face was a brave attempt at innocence and love of her people, but I could see the fear and trepidation behind the mask. Elizabeth believed she travelled to her death.

  So, despite Fakenham’s mission, we rode at her side, watching the crowd, just as I’d done for Queen Mary six months before.

  When we arrived at Westminster, the word had spread of her journey and the crowds were ten deep at the side of the road. The cheers morphed to chants of “‘Princess Elizabeth”, and “God Save.”

  I entered the palace at her side, but the guards refused to allow her to enter court.

  “I seek, my sister the Queen,” she said, her voice quivering slightly.

  But again and again the refusal came. In the end she asked for writing materials, and wrote a letter.

  I looked over her shoulder, pacing back and forth. As she finished, she scrawled a zigzag pattern to the bottom, where she carefully signed it. “I will have no words added to this missive that are not mine,” she said firmly.

  I marveled at her fortitude and astuteness at such a pressured time.

  The servant promised to deliver it directly into Queen Mary’s hand, then Elizabeth got shown to rooms in another wing of the palace.

  It came as little surprise when a deputation from the Privy Council arrived the next day with an arrest warrant; Princess Elizabeth would be taken to the Tower.

  “Damn if the letter from ‘Z’ wasn’t right,” I said to Steve as we watched her protest her innocence.

  “But we can’t fight it on our own.”

  “No.” A plan formed quickly. “But we can influence.”

  “Oh, a ‘Not the droids you’re looking for’ kinda thing?”

  “Exactly.”

  We started to make plans.

  After an afternoon talking about it, our course seemed clear. We’d begin with the higher-up members of the delegation, having a ‘vampire’ word with as many as we could. The message would be simple and clear; Elizabeth is innocent of all charges of treason, and she had not conspired against her sister, the Queen.

  The next day, still barred from seeing her sister, Elizabeth climbed on a large rowboat, and got taken to the Tower. With tears in my eyes, I watched her walk calmly through Traitor’s Gate and upstairs into the large cell. She had a bed, a desk, and a single chair.

  Against every grain of fiber in my body, and despite every effort of ours, Princess Elizabeth was now firmly under arrest, in the Tower of London.

  As the guards walked away, I checked the door myself; locked.

  But of course, Fakenham found us on the premises, and demanded to know why we hadn’t le
ft on our assignment.

  “We just did our last duty for the Princess,” I said, watching his every expression. I’d seen Tim Roth in “Lie To Me”, I knew about micro-expressions, the tell-tale signs of stress and lies. “We’ve kept her under our own arrest for months. We’re just making sure nothing if anything went awry, then it could not be blamed on us.”

  “And now you have done your duty to the princess, it is time to do it for your Queen.”

  “You know she’s innocent, don’t you?”

  “I do, but the Privy Council will conduct a full investigation.”

  “But she didn’t do a thing!” I almost roared at him.

  Fakenham looked very annoyed, but I didn’t care.

  “Calm yourself, Sir Richard,” he said, his eyes darting from side to side. I felt Steve’s hand on my arm, and realized I’d reached for my sword. “Are you the Queen’s man, Sir Richard, or do you now play for Elizabeth?”

  Well, of course, the question hit the wrong chords with me. I knew who I sided with, but couldn’t tell Fakenham the probable future course of history. That might have lost me my head.

  “The Queen, of course.” I bowed slightly. “There is no conflict within me.”

  “Good. Justice must be seen by the public, Richard.” Fakenham stepped back from us. “For there to be punishment, we must show the crime. And for the crime to be shown, we must show the head of the plot.”

  “But she has not been contacted.” My words were firm, yet contrite.

  “When the ringleaders are executed, Elizabeth will be set free. I guarantee it.”

  I wished I could have placed my trust in his words, but knowing he too would be subject to Queen Mary’s machinations, I knew I could not.

  “We leave for Exeter in the morning,” I said, hoping he’d be convinced.

  “Good day, gentlemen.” Fakenham bowed, turned, and left us standing.

  “So do we leave for Exeter?” Steve asked as we watched Fakenham’s retreating figure.

  “Let’s have an ale or two at the King’s Head, and discuss it,” I said.

  But before we got close to the inn, I became already aware we were being followed; clumsy, amateur, but there all the same.

  “What do we do?” Steve asked.

  “We assume they’re reporting back to either Fakenham or Renard, and we make a big show of leaving town tomorrow, horses; the whole shebang. We ride until we lose our tails, then we follow them back to their lair.”

  “Sounds like a good plan.”

  The landlord greeted us warmly, obviously looking for some payment on our always available rooms, and handed me a small note.

  “Woman delivered it, sire. Pretty one, too.”

  “Let me guess, gipsy, pretty one?”

  He nodded. “Dresses as a lady, but aye, she looked gypsy-ish. Very pretty.”

  This time, a wax seal sat on every fold. I opened it carefully, not wanting to tear it.

  “Your tails are Fakenham’s. He’s allied with Renard. Leave by the back door very early tomorrow. Operate in DEEP disguise. I will lead your tails out of town. Z.”

  Chapter 19

  March 19th, 1554

  DEEP in Disguise

  “How do we know Abigail’s on our side?” Steve asked, and to be honest, I knew down deep inside he had a very valid point. Fallon had already shown his influence in corrupting my Lady Jane, he could also have found Abigail, and done the same. And while on the subject of Lady Jane Winterbrooke, where the heck could she be? I’d expected her back before Christmas, and here now we headed into an English spring and no sign of her anywhere. “Richard?”

  “Eh?” My mind had wandered.

  “Abigail? Is she on our side?”

  I nodded. “I just know she is.”

  “Maybe we should lie in wait for her tomorrow, find out what she’s doing.”

  I shrugged. “We already know what she’s doing. She’s anticipating every move we make.”

  “Yeah. How the heck is she doing that?”

  I shook my head. “If it is Abigail, I think she could have taken us both out if she’d wanted to. I remember her being fast, and I’m not talking out my ass here.”

  “So if we go into deep disguise, like she says, how do we do it?”

  “New personas, new digs, new clothes; new life basically.”

  “Masked vampire ninjas, operating only at night.”

  At first his idea seemed ludicrous, but then, as I thought it through, it had some merit. “We continue with our work of corrupting the Privy Council, we just operate in disguise.”

  “So we follow these Privy Councilors during the day, find out where they live, watch their movements, and we hit them at night with suggestions, scare them out of their wits.”

  “We don’t need all their votes.” Steve nodded, catching my flow. “Just the ones we can manipulate.”

  “Or blackmail,” I said, my mind racing. “Perhaps we’ve gone about this altogether too vampirey. Maybe we just need ordinary persuasion.”

  “Delivered in a vampire fashion.”

  We talked of our plan into the night, and probably slept longer than we should have. When I woke, I had fresh pangs of bellyache, and that sick feeling. I got out of bed sluggish and feeling downright queasy.

  Then my door exploded in, and a fierce Abigail stalked in. “You need to get out of here if this plan’s going to work!” she snapped.

  “Nice to see you, too,” I flipped glibly, although my stomach felt like it churned with rotten milk. “How have you been these fifty years?”

  She threw clothes at me and pushed me out of the room. “Steve, right?” she asked my nodding friend, who trailed after us, still throwing his arms into his doublet. “Get this idiot out of here. Race north. We’ve not got much time.”

  And we were out the back door, breakfast smells lingering in our nostrils for many minutes, speeding away along the deserted streets of London.

  “I’d like to get together with her one day,” Steve said as he ran beside me.

  I felt much better after getting on the road. Okay, we’d left a fair bit of kit behind us, but we could steal or buy more. “She’ll probably let you!” I shot back.

  “I can’t wait.”

  When the houses began to diminish, we slowed, and ultimately stopped. Grassy fields and chewing cows surrounded us.

  “So what now?” Steve asked.

  “Let’s get a full list of the Privy Council, and we’ll get right to work.”

  “And deep disguise?”

  “Shave off beards, shave heads, new clothes, the lot.”

  So we checked in to the first half-decent Tavern we could find, paid for two rooms, and began to collect our ‘deep disguise’ kit.

  But of course, that doesn’t just take a day. We were quoted weeks for doublets, and eventually, we decided to quicken up supply. We shot off along the main road for a hundred miles or so, found two travelers we liked the clothes of, and simply robbed them.

  Screw it, we were on a mission to save a timeline from collapsing around us, we couldn’t hang about.

  A list of Privy Council sounded like an easy thing to find, but there wasn’t a Who’s Who on the shelves and no Wikipedia to look up.

  In the end, we had a half-decent list of the larger fish, and we divvied it up between us.

  First guy on my list?

  John De Vere, the 16th Earl of Oxford. Would you believe it?

  Once I’d determined his identity, De Vere proved easy to distinguish from the crowd by his height and large mop of greying hair. I followed him for most of the day. I listened at walls, and I hid in rafters, only to find him a pleasant old guy, with no chip on his shoulder.

  He made rude, burpy coughing noises when angry, and had been in the council for years.

  I almost felt sorry for him when I struck that night.

  I held him by the chin, as I breathed over him. “How are your sentiments on the Princess Elizabeth?”

  “I have none,” he an
swered dryly.

  “Is she guilty of treason?”

  “I doubt it. Perhaps she’ll make a more grateful Queen than her sister.”

  Oh, that came as a bit of a shock. “I thought you campaigned to get Mary onto the throne?”

  “I did, I just didn’t think I’d be forgotten about after doing so.”

  I shook my head. “Elizabeth is innocent, forget me, sleep.”

  I walked away, my mind in turmoil; I’d not expected that from one on Mary’s biggest supporters.

  So I mentally chalked De Vere off the list, but determined to visit the family one day, see if there had been any historical connection between our two families.

  And Steve and I did this for two weeks. There were more than forty men in Mary’s Privy Council, and by the end, I’m pretty certain we’d visited them all; the Earl of Sussex, the Marquis of Winchester, Sir William Petre, Sir William Paget, Earl Arundel I had met before, so he got added to my list. Stephen Gardiner, perhaps the harshest man on the Council, insisting on being present at all interrogations, Sir Henry Jerningham, Queen Mary’s own appointee as Captain of the Guard. We visited these men by night, breathed under their noses, and spoke of Elizabeth’s innocence. The list went on; Robert Rochester, Edward Waldegrave, Edward Hastings, the Earl of Oxford. Henry Howard; Earl of Surrey, and Edmund Sheffield, 1st Earl of Sheffield completed the list, royal names, names that had actually governed England for centuries.

  Then, a curious piece of news drifted over the usual tavern chatter. Peter Fakenham had been arrested, torn out of the Queen’s court by the captain of the guard, Sir Henry Jerningham.

  So the same evening, I visited the Tower, sniffing at windows, and asking guards the correct questions as I slid a piece of gold into their cold hands.

  I followed the guard’s directions until at last I approached a heavy studded door. I opened the snibbed trapdoor, opening a small barred window. “Ahoy in there, wake up!”

  I heard the rustle of straw, then the padding of feet on the damp stone floor. “Richard?” Fakenham’s voice had a low unusual croak to it. “Is that you?”

  “What happened?”

  He gave a snort. “I trusted her too far, Richard.” He coughed into his cuff. “Well, to be more accurate, I trusted Renard too much. He’s been assembling evidence against Elizabeth. The Queen won’t listen to any other.”