‘Last year we spoke at great length to all who serve Her Majesty,’ Essex spat out angrily, ‘and dismissed all those we could not trust. But these serving men come and go each year, and more are employed whenever the Queen moves residence. Besides, my men tell me this villain who attacked the Queen was not known to them. An outsider, they said. He must have bribed someone to let him into the palace—’
‘Bribed someone? But if all here are so loyal to the Queen, who would be open to a bribe?’
Queen Elizabeth clapped her hands, bringing both men to attention. ‘Enough! I cannot think!’ She paced the room, barely seeming to notice the weight of her elaborate gilt-edged ruff, her jewelled slippers peeping out from under the heavy golden skirts of her gown. ‘My lord Essex, I know you have worked hard to secure my palaces against would-be assassins. Yet it is also true, as Cecil suggests, that any blame for this event must fall on your shoulders. You said one of your own men was stationed here in my household, watching the other servants for signs of treachery. Is he still here? Did he miss this attacker?’
Essex pointed to Goodluck standing against the door, and the nobles parted so the Queen could see him more clearly.
‘That is the man, Your Majesty, and Master Goodluck is his name. He left the palace some days ago, against my clear instructions, following the trail of a fellow spy instead of watching for conspirators here. He returned just in time to see this Catholic traitor make an attack on your royal person.’
Queen Elizabeth clicked her fingers at Goodluck, who came forward at once and fell to his knees before her.
‘You, sir, Master Goodluck,’ she said coldly, ‘you will be so good as to explain yourself. I have been attacked by a traitor within my own household, the very crime you were set to watch for, and now it seems you were not even on hand to prevent this villainy.’ The Queen stared at his bent head. ‘Speak, sirrah, what do you have to say for yourself?’
Lucy watched in silence, struggling to keep her emotions hidden, though her nails were cutting into her palms.
‘Forgive me, Your Majesty,’ Goodluck said plainly, looking up at his queen. ‘Lord Essex speaks the truth. I have indeed failed Your Majesty on this count. Though if I may be permitted to speak in my defence, some months ago I recounted my suspicions to his lordship about a serving man in your household, whom I had never seen but heard, and was told not to pursue the matter any further.’
He hesitated, glancing warily at the door to the Privy Chamber as it swung open. But it was only the Earl of Southampton being admitted, no cap on his head, the youth’s hair in disarray, his fair face flushed. Lucy saw his untidy appearance and shivered, for she could guess what it meant; that he and Shakespeare had been sporting with each other when the earl was informed of the attack on Her Majesty.
‘As for not being on hand in recent days, that also is true,’ Goodluck continued, his face sombre. ‘But I have been following the trail of a suspected traitor, who met his death today in most dreadful circumstances. I absented myself from court in an effort to discover more about his activities, and for no other reason. This I will gladly swear on my life.’
‘Which should be forfeit anyway,’ Essex muttered savagely.
‘This traitor’s name?’
Goodluck looked cautiously at Essex, who shook his head. ‘You must excuse my disobedience, Your Majesty, but his name may only be disclosed in secret, not before this company. The question of his treachery is not yet certain.’
The Queen turned from him and paced back and forth, fanning herself, her face still white and pinched with strain.
‘My lord,’ she asked Essex without looking in his direction, ‘is it true that your attention was drawn to this serving man by Master Goodluck, and that you did nothing to discover his identity?’
Essex had folded his arms across his chest, a look of sullen rage on his face. ‘The matter is more complicated than you can grasp, Your Majesty.’
‘Being a mere woman, and therefore a simple-minded fool?’ she threw icily over her shoulder at him.
‘I believed this other man to be pursuing the traitor on my behalf.’ Essex sounded bitter. ‘I had paid him handsomely enough for his loyalty, after all, and thought him a true Englishman.’
‘And all the while he was working for Spain behind your back?’
But Lord Essex refused to be drawn. ‘That remains to be seen, Your Majesty. Either way, the man was a danger and had to be removed.’
Queen Elizabeth stopped pacing and stared at him. Her lips opened, then closed again abruptly, as though she had remembered that they were not alone.
‘Very well,’ she began tartly, ‘since I cannot find it in myself to condemn him for having done his best to uncover this traitor’s identity, I shall demand no punishment for Master Goodluck.’
At these words, Lucy felt herself sag in relief. Still on his knees, Goodluck glanced at her briefly, a slight frown in his eyes. Carefully, she looked away, schooling herself not to react so openly again.
‘But you, my lord Essex, will leave court immediately and dwell on your mistakes at Essex House until I give you leave to return.’
Essex stared at the Queen in disbelief. ‘You are punishing me for his failure?’
‘I entrusted you with one task, my lord, which was to discover all secret movements against my throne and person. Tonight I was nearly murdered in my own palace, in front of the whole court.’ She shook her head, not bothering to hide her anger. The other nobles shrank as she gazed round at them, her tone accusing. ‘I hold you to blame for this, my lords. Think how the heads of Europe will laugh when they hear how vulnerable my court is to such attacks. As for King Philip, he will be sending assassins over by the bushel-load when he hears of this, for if one lone man can almost accomplish my slaughter, it stands to reason that several at once would be more successful. After all, a monk killed poor Henry of France in the same way, a lone fanatic with a knife. Why should they cavil at murdering a queen in the same cowardly manner?’
The Queen gestured Goodluck to stand. ‘Get you gone, Master Goodluck, and in future you will take your findings to Sir Robert Cecil there.’ She indicated Cecil, deliberately snubbing Essex by favouring his rival. ‘Is that clear?’
Goodluck said nothing, but bowed his head. Lucy saw the hard flush in Essex’s cheeks, and thought she had never seen him look so humbled and ashamed.
The Earl of Southampton started forward with a cry. ‘Your Majesty, do not put this shame on Lord Essex. He does not deserve such a burden. Nor does this creature,’ and he pointed forcefully at Master Goodluck, ‘deserve your mercy. For he has not failed through Lord Essex’s fault, but through his own hardened lust for one of your own ladies, whom he has bedded on many occasions, here in this very palace.’
Lucy could hardly breathe. She stared from him to Goodluck, and then, terribly, turned her head to face the Queen.
The Queen had frozen where she stood. ‘If this is a lie, my lord Southampton—’
‘It is the truth, I swear it.’
‘And which of my ladies has Master Goodluck been bedding? Or do you lack the courage to name her openly?’
‘I lack no courage, Your Majesty, and will name her in front of the whole court, if need be.’
To her horror, Henry Wriothesley swivelled on his heel, ignoring Goodluck’s instinctive movement to protect her, then looked directly at Lucy. The earl seemed almost to be smiling, his eyes narrowed in malice, the jerk of his head contemptuous.
‘The woman he has been panting after is none other than that black slut, Lucy Morgan. Her serving maid, Catherine Belton, will swear to it, for she has several times followed Mistress Morgan on my instructions and seen her enter the spy’s room … not to emerge again until dawn.’
Rigid with outrage, the Queen beckoned Lucy forward, and watched with stony eyes as she knelt before her. ‘Speak, is this true? Have you lain wantonly with this man?’ Then she held up a hand. ‘Wait, is this some poor jest on the earl’s part, or else
some error? Goodluck is your guardian, is he not?’
‘He was, Your Majesty,’ Lucy agreed, trembling.
‘And now?’
She could lie to save them from punishment and imprisonment. She could claim they had spent the night together chastely, as guardian and ward reunited. She could tell them that Cathy was lying, that her old friend wished her harm, though she did not know why.
Lucy looked at Goodluck. He returned her gaze for a long moment, then nodded. It was time, he seemed to be urging her. Let the dice roll.
‘Now he is my lover, Your Majesty.’
As soon as the tide was favourable the next morning, they were escorted to the Tower on separate barges. Goodluck had been bound hand and foot in case he attempted to escape. Yet his look had been proud as he was pushed aboard, her last glimpse of him standing between the guards’ raised pikes, not cowed by his punishment at the Queen’s hands but fierce with longing as he gazed back at her.
‘It will not be for ever, Lucy,’ he had called to her over the water as the barge danced on the spring tide. ‘Keep patience, my love.’
One of the guards struck him, harshly bidding him, ‘Be silent!’, but Goodluck did not fall. He straightened stiffly after the blow and looked ahead to their destination, the grey ribbon of the Thames leading them to London, just as though he were sailing for the New World and their liberty, not under guard to the Tower.
Lucy herself was taken aboard her prison-bound barge with gentler hands, though some of the guards eyed her sideways. She had forgotten how discomfiting such lewd stares could be from a stranger, it had been so many years since she had returned to court and the protection afforded by its rules of etiquette, where a courtier might look but not touch, and a servant must keep his head bowed when a lady passed. Behind closed doors, sinful outrages might take place, and often did, but never publicly. So to find herself suddenly at the mercy of these common men, the youngest cupping his crotch in a suggestive way when she glanced in his direction, was not an easy thing to face.
Her hands mercifully unbound, she gripped the rail all the way down the river. It was a long and chilly journey, for the sun was behind clouds that morning and the river breeze was cold, snatching at her hood and cloak. Her fingers were soon numb, but it seemed pointless to dwell on such a trifle. After her arrest for unchaste behaviour, a serving woman had been sent scurrying away with the order to ‘Pack a bag for Mistress Morgan,’ and to fetch her travelling clothes. It seemed her gloves had been forgotten in the woman’s haste.
She did not wish to consider Cathy’s terrible betrayal, nor how Goodluck had looked at her with such fortitude when the Queen pronounced their fate: ‘To the Tower with both of them, and let Master Goodluck be flogged until he is bloodied!’ All she could think of was how to obtain Goodluck’s release.
Even if she herself must agree to live and die within the Tower’s confines, Goodluck must be freed. She owed him that for all the times he had helped her when he was her guardian. Lucy smiled, remembering his words of comfort. ‘It will not be for ever.’ Brave to the end. She could face any torment if Goodluck was at liberty, living out his days peacefully on his brother’s farm.
By the time the barge drew alongside the high, forbidding walls of the Tower, bobbing uneasily at the watergate while the men secured it with ropes, she felt sick and frightened. But she refused to show it.
Taken ashore, suddenly dizzy after the constant movement of the boat, she stumbled and fell in the damp, breezy space before the steps. The stones hurt her hands and knees. When she looked down at them, both palms were bleeding.
The young guard beside her grinned, dragging Lucy back to her feet. ‘You’re to enjoy a show before they take you to your cell. Your lover is to get his shirt and then his skin stripped off his back.’ He pretended to shiver, glancing up at the clouds. ‘A sharp day for it, but the whip will soon warm him up.’
Sure enough, as she entered the Tower confines and began to ascend the steep slope to where the guard had said she would be housed, she looked ahead with trepidation and saw a low wooden platform on the green. Standing on it with his legs set wide apart, bare-chested and bare-headed, his hands bound to a wooden post, was Goodluck. Behind him stood a man with a sturdy leather whip, his face impassive as he waited for the signal to begin.
Goodluck saw her in the assembled crowd before the platform. He made no comment this time, but his eyes tried to reassure her.
‘I’ve seen women faint and strong men weep like girls under that whip,’ the guard remarked, looking at her sideways. ‘It’s no disgrace. They say the pain is more than flesh and blood can bear once the skin is cut.’
She gripped her hands together, acutely aware now of how foolish and reckless they had been, loving each other in breach of the Queen’s command. Some of the others in the crowd had turned now, staring openly at her, and she forced herself to watch without flinching. This flogging would be hard enough for Goodluck to bear; she would not disgrace him further by crying out. To watch her lover being flogged was part of her punishment, and it was only thanks to the Queen’s great mercy that she too had not been sentenced to a flogging. Though she would gladly have changed places with Goodluck now, given the agony he was about to endure as his reward for lying with her out of wedlock.
Silence fell. One of the gentlemen on the platform lifted his hand in a signal. The man with the whip raised his fearful burden, then brought it down hard between Goodluck’s shoulders, and she saw him jerk in response.
After that first stroke, Goodluck’s face set hard. He stared directly ahead at nothing, as though determined not to break. But his stoicism could not last, and after twelve strokes he gave a muffled cry, and closed his eyes. His back was already a mass of ugly red stripes.
A few strokes later, his knees sagged, and one of the guards stepped forward to dash a bucket of water into his face. He revived at once, gasping and spluttering, and the flogging began again. This time Goodluck cried out in pain after each stroke. Lucy wanted to hide her face in her hands, but she made herself keep watching, though she could hardly bear to see him suffer so cruel a punishment. By the time it was over, he was clinging to the post like a dying man to a raft, his back bloodied from the terrible welter of shallow cuts.
Goodluck was cut loose and fell to his knees, groaning and bowing his forehead to the wooden platform.
The guard steered her away from the green, handing her into the care of a well-dressed gentleman who examined the papers that had come with her from Richmond, then asked her a few questions. He spoke in a friendly enough way, assuring her that she would not be molested while in his charge, but Lucy could not bring herself to reply, merely staring at him blankly.
A stern-looking woman in a coarse black gown appeared at his side. Her new jailor, she guessed. This woman led the way up a winding stair in one of the towers and into a small, low-ceilinged room which smelt as though bats had nested there. It held one rough-looking stool, one table and a straw pallet for a bed. But it was not a horrid dark little room, as she had feared, and from one narrow side window Lucy could even look down to the boats on the greyish-green river.
‘My name is Mistress Hall, and these will be your quarters here,’ the woman declared coldly, ‘until Her Majesty sends further orders.’
Quietly, Lucy asked if she was allowed ink, quill and paper. The woman agreed that she was, albeit with obvious reluctance, and swept away to procure some.
As soon as the writing materials had arrived and she was alone in her prison cell, Lucy sat down at the uneven table and began to draft the most difficult letter of her life.
To his noble lordship, she began, the Earl of Essex …
Seven
WILL OPENED HIS eyes and stared up at the fine embriodered silk hangings of the bed in which he was lying. The curtains had been drawn against the coming dawn while it was still dark, but he could tell it was morning now. And a fine June morning, by the sound of it. Outside the high windows of the earl’s Lo
ndon residence he could hear the watermen at their work below, calling for trade and shouting to each other as they ferried goods and passengers across the broad grey flood of the Thames. Servants were moving about in the old palace in the same way; he could hear voices in the antechamber, kept low for fear of disturbing their master, and the rumble of cartwheels in one of the back courtyards as a delivery arrived. Everyone was awake, it seemed, except his lordship himself.
Rolling over, Will stared into the young man’s face. Sleeping, Henry Wriothesley resembled one of the solemn-faced cherubs from the pages of Will’s grandmother’s old Catholic Bible. A somewhat dissolute cherub, to judge by the amount of wine they had consumed the night before, and the delicious sins they had committed together before the fire. Yet charmingly innocent, almost childlike, in his sleep.
Kit Marlowe came into his head unbidden. He was sleeping now. He would sleep until Doomsday. What a waste of a great talent. He had not quite believed it when he heard of the playwright’s death. Or murder, rather. Some brawl in Deptford that had brought about his end.
He reached out, tentatively brushing the curly hair back from his lover’s forehead.
‘My lord?’
The earl stirred, then opened his eyes. For a moment they stared at each other and the world stopped moving, the globe still and silent as it waited for one of them to speak.
‘Will.’
Henry smiled drowsily, and the world moved on. The cries of the watermen came again under their window, and now Will could hear the lapping of the tide against the wooden spars below.
‘So I did not dream last night’s pleasure. And this time you did not melt away with the dark but stayed to keep me company.’ Henry pinched Will’s shoulder. ‘Solid.’
Her Last Assassin Page 26