Her Last Assassin

by Victoria Lamb

  His tongue invaded her mouth and she bit down on it.

  ‘God’s blood!’ the young man exclaimed, springing back with a furious expression.

  He lifted a jewelled hand and swept it across her cheek, knocking her to the stone floor. Lucy hit her head and lay winded and in pain, trying to gather the strength to crawl away. The young man stood above her, breathing hard, a dark silhouette against the flickering torchlight, and for one terrible moment she feared he was not finished with her, that he planned to rape or murder her.

  ‘Take that as a warning, Lucy Morgan,’ Henry Wriothesley told her, breathing hard. ‘Never forget you are only one step from an African slave, however fine the gowns and jewels you have been permitted to wear in Her Majesty’s presence. Such favours are easily stripped from a whore. Next time perhaps you will be more welcoming when one of your betters lowers himself to your body.’

  He turned contemptuously on his heel. ‘Speak of this,’ he threw over his shoulder, ‘and news of your misdemeanours will reach the Queen.’

  After Southampton had gone, Lucy dragged herself into a sitting position and felt gingerly for her swollen lip and cheek. Her mouth was bleeding where he had struck her.

  She forced herself to stand, then made her way slowly back to the large chamber she shared with the other ladies-in-waiting at Richmond. Cathy was not there, so she lit a candle, then dabbed the blood from her face as delicately as she could.

  Struggling out of her gown on her own, she lay down on her mattress and hid her face from the other women when they came in later, chattering and laughing after the masque. Her mouth throbbed painfully, feeling twice its usual size, and she feared that her face would be badly bruised in the morning.

  She would have to lie to the Queen, pretending that she had slipped on the stairs in the darkness and cut her lip open on the stone.

  Why was Henry Wriothesley so furious that she had been sleeping with a common player? The Earl of Southampton felt no love for her himself, that much had been clear from the way he struck her so violently to the ground. Perhaps his nature was warped, so that he took delight in causing women cruelty and pain. She had heard of such men, and knew there to be other courtiers whose tastes ran that way.

  One thing was clear; she must not go into London again to see Will. The consequences did not bear thinking about. Nonetheless, she should get secret word to Will about the threat she had received tonight, or he would assume she no longer loved him. Yet if Will came to court himself and confronted the earl, he would risk the disclosure of their adulterous affair.

  Perhaps it would be better to let Will assume the worst. He might hate her for it, but at least he would not have to face the Queen’s fury.

  Three

  IT WAS A warm spring day in rural Oxfordshire. Goodluck spurred his horse out of the knee-high sweet meadowgrass and on to a narrow track bordered by old beech trees in full spread. His brother’s farmhouse stood at the northern end of the hamlet, set back from the Oxford road at the edge of an old forest. The house had belonged to Agnes’s father, a ramshackle affair when last he had visited it under cover of darkness. He had been a young man then, his heart smarting with shame and rage at how their Protestant family had been treated under Queen Mary’s violently Catholic reign.

  But it seemed the farm had grown more prosperous since Elizabeth had come to the throne. There was a stout wall protecting the vegetable plot and orchard, the farmhouse had a fresh coat of whitewash and, by the look of it, new thatch on the roof.

  Hens scattered indignantly before him as he rode through the dusty yard. A slender, fair-haired girl straightened from feeding them corn, her eyes curious as she shielded them against the setting sun.

  He swung off the hired horse, nodding courteously to the girl. ‘Good evening to you. Is Mistress Goodluck within?’

  Slowly, the girl looked him up and down before answering, from his dust-covered boots to his plain cap. She was cautious, he thought, and unwilling to give out information unnecessarily. He liked that, it was an excellent quality in these days of trouble.

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  He told her drily, ‘My name is Goodluck.’

  The girl’s face drained of colour, and he suddenly realized that she must be his niece, his brother’s daughter. If her father lay on the brink of death within, she would hardly find that name amusing.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said more warmly, dragging off his gloves and offering her his hand. She took it, still staring at him wildly. ‘I am Master Julius’s younger brother. Mistress Goodluck wrote to me in London, asking me to come at once. I am sorry if I startled you.’

  ‘You are Faithful,’ she whispered.

  He hesitated, then nodded. ‘Are you a Goodluck too?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. My name is Eloise.’

  ‘Then I must be your uncle.’ He drew breath, asking the question whose answer he had been dreading all the way from London. ‘And is your father still living?’

  To his relief, Eloise nodded. ‘Will you come inside and see him, sir? My mother will not leave his bedside, just in case …’ Her blue eyes filled with tears. ‘The physician says …’

  ‘Hush now,’ Goodluck murmured. He took off his cap and gave her an ironic bow. ‘We Goodlucks are tough, Eloise. It is hard to shake us from this world. If your father has survived this long after his fall, let us hope for the best and not give him up just yet. Now let me tie my horse to this post before he thinks to wander off into the forest, then show me the way to my brother.’

  A servant stopped clearing the old rushes in the hall as he entered and stared instead, just as Eloise had done. His young niece, whom he guessed to be about thirteen years of age, led him upstairs to a bedchamber on the first floor. She scratched at the door, then entered, beckoning him after her.

  A woman with neatly bound hair sat by the bedside, her back to the door. Although her hair was fair, it showed some streaks of silver, and when her head turned, he recognized the woman his brother had married many years before, and at whose wedding he had danced.

  ‘Faithful!’ she cried, jumping up. She took his hands and squeezed them hard, her face lined now, no longer young as he remembered, and grey with strain. ‘I am so glad you came. I was afraid …’

  ‘I was away in the Low Countries,’ Goodluck murmured, answering the unspoken question in her face, ‘and did not receive your letter until two days past. Then I came at once.’

  His glance moved past her to the man lying still and silent on the bed under a rich red counterpane, his face white as alabaster, his eyes closed. His heart sank at the sight of that strange mask-like stiffness and pallor, for he had seen men look like that before, in the final hours before their death.

  ‘How is my brother?’

  ‘There has been very little change since Julius fell from his horse.’ She drew him towards the bed. ‘He has been bled, and we try to feed him strong wine and physic to keep him alive, but he can barely swallow. I speak to him and touch his face, and poor little Eloise comes to sing to him, hoping that her father may hear her. But he does not wake.’

  Agnes looked at him with desperate eyes. ‘Will you try to rouse him, Faithful? I know it has been many years, and harsh words were said at your parting. But you are his brother, and you know him better than any other man alive. Julius may wake for you where he would not wake for us.’

  He sat beside his brother and took his hand. Julius’s skin was cool and limp. His brother’s hair was grey, where once it had been dark, and his face, though smoothed out in sleep, showed signs of age, with deep-set lines about his eyes and mouth. Goodluck wondered if he would soon look the same, for there were but ten years between them, his brother well into his sixth decade. Now it seemed he would not see his sixtieth year. Though to own the truth, as youths they had not thought to live so long, for as Protestants growing up under Queen Mary they had all been marked for a heretic’s death.

  Julius had escaped that fate by accepting the Catholic faith,
only returning to his true beliefs once Queen Elizabeth had ascended the throne. Goodluck himself had travelled abroad, unable to accept the taste of Roman faith in his mouth. There, he had learned to hide in a crowd and to lie as easily as breathing. He had turned to acting soon after, to earn a crust and a roof over his head, and discovered a talent in himself for cunning speeches and dissimulation. A theatrical-turned-spy took him in, one harsh winter when money was scarce, and soon he was running errands that would have seen him hanged if caught.

  Julius, of course, had ordered him not to go abroad. ‘Your place is here, at our mother’s side. To flee is cowardice.’

  ‘If it is cowardice to flee death by burning, then yes, I am a coward.’

  ‘Use your head, Faithful. You need not burn if you will bow the knee to Rome. It means nothing.’

  ‘It means everything!’ he had insisted angrily. ‘How can you so easily abandon what our father taught us?’

  ‘God knows what is in every man’s heart. It is to God you should look, not to our dead father. His refusal to accept Catholicism is what brought him to the stake and took our lands along with his honour. Now our family is ruined. And for what? One man’s refusal to go to church along with everyone else in this land.’

  Now his brother lay still and pale on his bed, a broken man.

  ‘Julius, it’s me, your brother Faithful.’

  No response.

  He thought for a moment, then said quietly, as though the two of them were alone together, ‘Do you remember when we were young, Julius, and I fell from my pony? You made me climb back on, though I clung to its neck sobbing like our sister Marian all the way home, terrified that I would fall again. Now you lie there like a dead man and cannot stir. What, sir, have you forgotten that you are a Goodluck?’

  He watched, but his brother did not move, nor did he give any sign of having heard his voice. His daughter Eloise gave a little cry and fled the room. Agnes followed in tears, calling out her daughter’s name.

  Goodluck said nothing more but bent his head, still holding his brother’s hand.

  He had thought long on his journey from London, remembering his childhood at the old manor house, how his father had been first accused and then charged with heresy, how Goodluck and his brother had been unable to prevent their father’s death. Grown to manhood with such horrors, he had believed himself beyond tears. Now, sitting beside his brother as he lay dying, Goodluck knew himself to be as frail as the day he had watched his father burned to death as a heretic.

  He dragged a hand across his eyes. ‘I swear, I never thought the day would come when I would weep over you, Julius. How you would laugh if you could see this.’

  The hand in his jerked slightly.

  Goodluck glanced up, surprised, to find his brother looking back at him. ‘Julius!’

  His brother’s voice was a bare thread of sound. ‘What, are you here, Faithful?’

  ‘Let me call Agnes for you.’

  His brother frowned. ‘Wait!’ He gripped Goodluck’s hand. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You fell from your horse.’ Goodluck saw the question in his brother’s eyes and could not lie. ‘It’s bad, Julius. Your back may be broken. You’ve lain here nigh on a week without waking. Indeed, Agnes feared you might never wake again.’

  ‘My good wife has no faith. Unlike you, Brother.’

  Goodluck managed a smile. ‘She has been in great distress. Let me call her for you.’

  ‘Not yet.’ Julius fixed him with an unwavering stare. ‘I was sorry to hear our sister Marian had died. One of her sons sent a letter a few months later, and some small effects she left me in her will. Were you with her at the end?’

  ‘I was in France when Marian died.’

  His brother’s lips twitched. ‘On a mission of the utmost importance to England, no doubt.’

  Goodluck saw that he was not accused of neglect. ‘Can you doubt it?’

  ‘No, you were always the bravest of us all, dashing off to break your neck in some adventure. But not all men are cut out to be soldiers and adventurers. Some of us prefer the plough to the sword.’

  ‘Truly.’

  Julius gripped his hand more tightly. ‘Promise me you will look after my wife and daughter when I am gone.’

  ‘You are not gone yet, Brother,’ Goodluck said drily.

  ‘Swear to it.’

  He nodded. ‘I swear it.’

  ‘On the Cross.’

  Goodluck hesitated. Then he drew his dagger, placing his hand over the hilt where it formed the shape of a cross.

  ‘I swear on the Holy Cross that I will protect your wife and daughter as best I can in the event of your death. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ his brother echoed in a whisper, then looked at him hard. ‘So you will stay?’

  Goodluck considered that question. Stay at his brother’s farm and become part of a family again? He had lived alone too long to enjoy such a prospect.

  And yet why not? His old spymaster was dead, and his house in Cheapside dark and cold as the tomb. No one there would miss him. Not even Lucy, who had young Shakespeare to keep her warm.

  ‘It would be my pleasure.’

  ‘Good, you are welcome to share what little we have here.’ Julius closed his eyes, clearly exhausted even by that small effort, and seemed to lapse back into sleep.

  Goodluck went to the door. ‘Agnes!’ he called urgently along the corridor. ‘Mistress Goodluck, your husband stirs! He is awake!’

  Agnes came running at once, her full skirts clutched in her hand, face still blotchy with tears. At the sight of her husband lying on the bed with closed eyes like a dead man, she turned to Goodluck in furious accusation.

  ‘What mischief is this, Faithful? You have called me for nothing. You said my husband was awake!’

  ‘And so I am,’ Julius croaked, opening his eyes again. ‘It will take more than a fall from a horse to kill me, dearest mutton-head.’

  His wife stared, then burst into sudden noisy tears as she realized he was back with them, first embracing him, then hiding her face in her hands.

  ‘Thank the Lord for this deliverance! Oh thank you, sweet Lord Jesus, for answering our prayers!’ Agnes prayed, half laughing and half crying, then called for a servant to ride for the physician, her husband having woken from his long sleep.

  Eloise stumbled into the chamber amid this noise and chaos, her blue eyes wet with tears, confusion on her face. No doubt she had feared her father lost to her for ever.

  Goodluck said nothing but stood aside for the young girl, knowing she must see the miracle for herself.

  Eloise stared at the man on the bed, clearly astonished to see his eyes open, then took a hesitant step forward.

  ‘Father?’

  Four

  ELIZABETH WAS PLAYING at quoits in the riverside gardens at Richmond when her ladies parted and a red-faced servant came running through them. He dropped to his knees before her, the late summer sun full on his face. ‘Your Majesty,’ he gasped, sweat on his forehead, too out of breath to continue.

  ‘Speak, what is it?’ she demanded impatiently, her knees still bent for the throw, a quoit hoop in her hand. ‘Can you not see we are at play here? What is the score, Master Raleigh?’

  ‘You are winning, Your Majesty. By five points.’

  ‘You see, man? I am ahead by a margin of only five points. All depends on this next quoit. Your interruption may mar the game.’

  ‘Forgive me, Your Majesty,’ he managed hoarsely, ‘but it is the Earl of Essex and many horsemen … They are at the gates.’

  ‘Yes?’

  Turning her back on him, she threw the quoit with great concentration, as though unconcerned by his news. To her satisfaction, it looped about the post, shuddering on its way to the ground, and the watching courtiers applauded her skill.

  ‘A ringer, a veritable ringer!’ Raleigh exclaimed. ‘Three points. Bravo, Your Majesty!’

  ‘I am glad his lordship has finally answered our summons and returne
d from France,’ she commented, turning to look at the messenger for the first time. ‘His failures have been much in our mind lately. Let the earl approach, but not his camp followers.’

  The servant withdrew, bowing.

  ‘You may take my next turn, Helena,’ Elizabeth murmured, and stood aside to watch the rest of the game from the shade of a handsome chestnut tree. She refused Raleigh’s courteous offer to fetch her a seat. ‘I am not yet in my dotage, sir. I am well able to stand and do not need your assistance.’

  Sir Walter Raleigh bowed and returned to the game, but she had seen the surprise in his face. She had betrayed her nervousness.

  How foolish she was. And over a young man whose headstrong nature had led him to insult and disobey her too many times since he had first come to court in his stepfather’s shadow. Yet he reminded her so forcibly of Leicester with his fits and sulks, and his arrogant refusal to do her bidding!

  Soon there was a stir at the tall iron gates to the garden. Elizabeth turned and saw a party of young noblemen descending upon the game, pushing aside the guards with pikes who would have prevented their approach.

  Essex strode at the front of this unruly pack, undoubtedly their leader, his face shining with determination in the sunlight. His cloak had been thrown back over one shoulder, as though to display the hand which clutched at his sword hilt, his feathered cap set at a bold angle, his expression proudly stubborn.

  He came to a halt before her and bowed, flourishing his cap. ‘Your Majesty, I have returned from France at your command. Though I am at a loss to understand why I was so prematurely recalled. I have to tell you, madam, that you have done the French King great disservice by thus disenfranchising me as the deliverer of his people. Without our aid, Normandy may be quite overrun by the Spanish. Now that I and my men are no longer on hand, I fear they will be.’

  She looked from Essex to his followers, recognizing many noble faces among the crowd, though not one of them could be much above five and twenty years.