Much to my relief, the royal pair had not seen our intimacy.
‘Meg,’ the Lady Elizabeth said, turning to me with a large single pearl on her palm. Her smile was strange and unnerving as the beautiful pearl glinted in the moonlight. ‘A gift from His Majesty. Look after it for me, would you?’
‘Yes, my lady,’ I murmured, and slid the priceless pearl into the small leather pocket hanging from my belt.
There was another rustle from the bushes behind us. I looked round, but there was nobody there – not even my betrothed. Alejandro too had vanished, along with the nightingale’s beautiful song.
There was no time to regret his absence. Elizabeth snapped her fingers and I busied myself with her gown, lifting the trailing silk and lace off the damp ground as the King and the Lady Elizabeth walked back towards the rest of the courtiers, still talking together merrily, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English.
Back in the dimly-lit safety of her rooms later that night, Elizabeth tore at her gown with angry fingers. ‘Get me out of this!’ she insisted, and stared furiously out of the window as Alice and I struggled to release her intricate and expensive clothing.
‘What is it, my lady?’ Alice asked, rather daringly I thought, given Elizabeth’s notorious temper. ‘Are you unwell again?’
Elizabeth shook her away impatiently, turning her sharp eyes to me instead. ‘Meg, did you not see her in the bushes?’ she hissed.
I was bewildered. ‘Who, my lady?’
‘One of the Queen’s ladies. That stiff-necked old Spaniard who served her mother, Queen Katherine of Aragon. She was there amongst the trees tonight, I tell you. I saw her clear as day when the moon came out from behind a cloud.’ Elizabeth gasped and leaned against the wall, holding her side as though it hurt. ‘She was watching us!’
‘Watching us?’ I repeated stupidly, thinking of how Alejandro had kissed me, of what we had been whispering about. Could we have been seen or overheard in the shadows? And what of my spell, drawing down the nightingale to sing for us? I had been foolish and reckless to work magick in the open like that, where anyone could have seen me.
To my relief, I realized Elizabeth meant the lady-in-waiting had been watching her and King Philip. ‘No doubt she will be taking great pleasure right now in telling the Queen how I went apart with the King, alone and unaccompanied. How we came out laughing like lovers, and how her husband gave me that enormous pearl as a gift.’ Elizabeth’s face drained of colour as she stared at nothing, seeming to remember what had passed between herself and the King when they were alone together. ‘God knows what else she might have seen!’
‘Forgive me, my lady. I was watching but saw no one. I heard a gentle rustling in the bushes that I thought was the wind.’
Elizabeth drew a hand across damp eyes, then nodded and gestured us to continue undressing her. ‘No matter,’ she muttered. ‘My sister has been sending her spies to watch me ever since I arrived, looking for an excuse to banish me from court again. Now I will be able to leave court and live quietly elsewhere for a while.’
Alice’s eyes bulged. ‘Elsewhere?’
‘Hatfield House,’ Elizabeth said determinedly as we unlaced the kirtle from her hips and left her in nothing but her thin shift and woollen stockings. ‘After this, my sister cannot continue to refuse me permission to return to my old house at Hatfield. Mary may wish to have me at court where I can be kept under close watch, but she will not want her husband constantly fluttering about me like a moth at a candle flame.’
Leaving court. That would mean leaving Alejandro.
My chest hurt dreadfully but I said nothing, bending to put away her finery in the wooden chest.
I looked up to see an odd smile on the Lady Elizabeth’s face. She was standing perfectly still while Alice brushed her long reddish-gold hair, staring at nothing and smiling.
I felt a flutter of rage and amazement as I understood. ‘You did it deliberately. You knew your sister’s spies were watching and you wanted them to tell her.’
Elizabeth looked at me sharply. ‘And what if I did? I am sick of life at court. It is little better than a prison, and Mary would never have released me otherwise.’
I said nothing but looked hurriedly away, sensing something boiling under the surface of her calm. There was a terrible stillness about her slender frame that made me wary.
As I held out her nightgown a moment later, the Lady Elizabeth suddenly stamped her foot and hissed, ‘Leave us, Alice!’
Startled by this outburst, Alice dropped the hairbrush with a clatter and almost ran from the bedchamber.
I had frozen at her order, nightgown in hand, but as Elizabeth turned to me I took a step backwards, only too aware of her appalling temper. But I was wrong; the princess was neither laughing nor angry, but distressed. Her eyes were full of tears, her lip trembling.
‘I had no choice tonight,’ Elizabeth whispered, staring at me. ‘I had to force the Queen’s hand. If I stay at court any longer, he will ruin me. You understand?’
I nodded, then instinctively held out my arms and embraced her. Her thin body shook against mine as she sobbed.
I was taken aback by her torrent of emotion, and said the only thing I could think of that might comfort her. ‘Don’t cry, my lady. We will go to Hatfield if Her Majesty permits it and never come back to court.’
‘It is so hard, Meg.’ Her voice was muffled against my shoulder. ‘I was born to be Queen and can never forget who I am. You are lucky to be a servant. I am not like you, free to love or be loved. Whatever happens, whatever choices I make, I must always remember that I may one day be Queen of England.’
I am not free to love or be loved either, I thought, but did not contradict her.
After a few moments the tears stopped and Elizabeth straightened, wiping her eyes. I picked up the nightgown and gently helped her into it. Then I took up the fallen hairbrush and finished Alice’s task for her, counting in my head as I brushed the Lady Elizabeth’s hair one hundred times.
‘We will never speak of this again,’ she said into the silence.
NINE
A Vile Thing
To our amazement though, the Queen did not allow her sister to leave court for the quiet retirement of Hatfield House. Three days after the incident in the garden, Queen Mary descended from her apartments in a stiffly swaying gown of black silk and lace, clustered about by her Spanish ladies-in-waiting in their severe gowns and black lace headdresses. The royal party swept through the high-ceilinged corridors of Hampton Court like a storm, with courtiers falling to their knees as the Queen passed, heads bowed, their smiles gone as they saw her grim expression and still-bloated stomach.
It was whispered that Her Majesty’s chief steward had dismissed the doctors assembled for the royal birth, and warned them not to speak of the Queen’s condition under pain of death. But that had not stopped the gossip. The abrupt and unexplained loss of the Queen’s pregnancy was the only talk on everyone’s lips.
The King accompanied the Queen into the gardens after lunch, his face averted from his wife. It was hard not to wonder if the royal couple had argued. But about what?
There was a muted feast that first evening, with music and dancing to follow. King Philip, much to my surprise, asked the Lady Elizabeth to dance the too-intimate galliard more than once, as though deliberately flaunting his interest in front of his wife.
Hunched on her chair like a sick black crow, Queen Mary glared at the two of them with reddened eyes. Elizabeth smiled carefully for the King, not quite daring to refuse his invitations to dance, but her discomfort was apparent to everyone.
The next morning, the King and Queen held a joint audience in the Great Hall, hearing petitions and speaking at length with their courtiers. The rest of us stood against the walls and listened as the petitions dragged on for hours, only able to converse in whispers in case we disturbed the royal couple’s deliberations.
Finally summoned forward to the dais, the Lady Elizabeth dropped ligh
tly onto both knees and kissed the ruby ring on her sister’s swollen finger. ‘Your Majesty,’ she murmured in a reverent tone, her head still bent. ‘I am glad to see you so much improved today. It has been too long since Your Majesty graced the court with your royal presence.’
Watching them, my skin began to creep. My heartbeat became sluggish, and the room was suddenly darker than before. It felt as though a storm was coming.
I looked at Blanche Parry beside me, and saw her eyes widen, intent on what was happening on the dais. The princess’s lady-in-waiting had not noticed anything amiss. Nor had anyone else, by the calm look of the courtiers around us.
Yet something was wrong. What?
Glancing up, my attention caught and snagged on the wooden roof beams of the Great Hall. My blood chilled at what I saw there.
There was a thing on the ceiling. A vile thing. I did not know how else to describe it, except perhaps as a bloated black shadow, clinging like a vast upside-down bat to the curved beams that supported the roof.
There was no doubt in my mind that this black creature came from another realm, not our world of daylight. Yet it was no conjuration. It possessed form and substance, and had come with some deadly intent into that place. Whatever demon or spirit had produced it, it was a creature of utter malevolence, I knew that much, whose mission was to make mischief of the most deadly kind.
Two or three old spells came faltering to my mind, spells of dispersal and scattering, though I knew they would be too weak to hold sway against such an emanation of pure evil.
I tried to speak, to drive the creature out with a spell, but found I could not make a sound. My mouth was dry, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
No one else seemed to have noticed the malignant black shape creeping across the ceiling towards the Queen’s throne. If I was the only one able to see it, perhaps it was a mere fancy of my mind and not real. Was I going mad, I wondered in horror?
I had heard talk of witches whose minds had snapped under the pressure of power, who had writhed in fits upon the floor and called out for the witchfinder to take them to Hell.
‘Here, Your Majesty.’
Miguel de Pero and the other black-robed priests of the Inquisition passed me, approaching the dais. I lowered my head, my skin prickling at their presence. It was hard not to imagine myself back in de Pero’s cell, tortured as I lied to save my skin.
At their back came Alejandro in a fashionable red doublet, but with his silver crucifix dangling from his neck as though to proclaim his faith. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of my betrothed, though I was careful not to give myself away; with the Inquisition watching everything so closely, we dared not acknowledge each other in public. At his side limped white-haired Father Vasco, stooped over a stick, his gaze moving across my face without recognition. I felt a stab of guilt that I had laid a memory spell on such an elderly man, then reminded myself that his great age would have been no barrier to Father Vasco naming me to the Inquisition as a witch.
My aunt Jane had often said, ‘Lay no spell or curse against the weak and innocent, yet do what you must to protect yourself from discovery.’
As the priests came level with me, I sank into a curtsey and did not look up, not sure I could trust myself to conceal my feelings for Alejandro.
Once he had passed, and it was safe to raise my head without catching his eye, I glanced up at the roof again. The intricate arch of beams above our heads was empty.
I did not know what to make of it. Had I really seen a vile black mass creeping from beam to beam above the dais? Or was it some sick fancy, the product of a feverish brain after my long hours of torture at the hands of the Inquisition?
‘Señor de Pero,’ the Queen greeted the Spanish priest eagerly, ‘you and your men must accompany the court to Oatlands too. I could not be without your reports.’ She signalled the Inquisitor to rise from his low bow. ‘How goes the true faith in England? I pray each night for my subjects to come with one accord to the Lord’s feast, though in my heart I know many of them are stubborn and wanting in faith.’
‘Their stubbornness will be burnt out of them, Your Majesty, as you have so wisely decreed. There is no greater trial for a heretic than fire. No fewer than five and twenty have gone to their deaths unrepentant this month, and I expect that number to rise as the summer passes into autumn.’
Queen Mary nodded, her narrow dark face solemn. ‘Those wretched unhappy people. I hate to think of their suffering, both in death and in Hell. But I know it is the Lord’s work we do in this heathenish country. You are right, Señor de Pero. After so many years under false priests and teachers, there is often no remedy but to burn these unbelievers as an example to the rest. Only remind your Inquisitors we are not barbarians. Do not fail to offer any Englishman mercy if he will agree to embrace Catholicism with all his heart.’
Miguel de Pero bowed his head at her command. ‘You are a merciful Queen indeed. The question is asked of each man and woman as they are sentenced, Your Majesty, and yet again as they are whipped to the stake. A few accept the wickedness of their error, and so gain their lives. But I fear the English must be thick-headed as bulls,’ he told the Queen, and I could hear contempt in the priest’s voice, ‘for many still consent to be led to their deaths in the marketplace like holy martyrs, their hearts all swollen with pride for having refused Your Majesty’s edict. Poor fools! These heretics will dance in Hell for ever after our bonfires have put them on the path to the Devil.’
The Queen looked over his shoulder at Alejandro. ‘I recognize that young man.’
De Pero gestured Alejandro forward. His tone was reserved. ‘Your Majesty, may I present Alejandro de Castillo, the eldest son of one of Spain’s most respected noblemen? De Castillo serves as a novice in the Order of Santiago, one of our most prestigious orders, only open to the highest families in the land.’
King Philip leaned forward to gaze at Alejandro with interest. ‘An eldest son in the church? That is most unusual.’
‘An accident of fate, Your Majesty,’ de Pero explained, turning to his sovereign. ‘Alejandro entered his priestly training as a younger son. But now his elder brother has died, he stands to inherit his father’s title and estate. Indeed, his family have requested that he should return to them at once. Nonetheless, I am told by his masters that de Castillo has a great career ahead of him in the Order of Santiago if he wishes to pursue the priesthood.’
This was news to me. Alejandro’s brother had died and he was now the heir to his father’s title? I tried not to appear too interested, for fear of betraying my feelings.
Queen Mary looked down at Alejandro as he swept off his cap and knelt respectfully before her throne. Her eyes narrowed assessingly on his figure. ‘You were in attendance on my sister at Woodstock with the venerable Father Vasco.’
‘I was, Your Majesty,’ Alejandro agreed, his dark head bent.
‘I remember your reports. They were always very welcome to me, even when not wholly positive.’ The Queen’s mouth tightened and she glanced briefly at the Lady Elizabeth. It struck me for the first time that her care for the princess was not wholly driven by malice and resentment, but also from a very real fear for her sister’s soul. She gestured her sister to stand, for the Lady Elizabeth had been kneeling all this while. ‘You did well to ensure my younger sister continued to attend daily Mass during that time. However, I fear her lax nature has reasserted itself since then. Some who are close to the Lady Elizabeth tell me she has slipped from such strict observance since returning to court.’
Elizabeth’s eyes widened at this, a flash of anger in her face, but she said nothing, moving silently to the left of the dais.
‘This lapse may be partly my fault,’ her sister continued, a slight flush rising to her cheeks. ‘I have been too long in my own apartments and have taken Mass there privately instead of before the court. It is the duty of a prince to teach by example, after all. But once we are at Oatlands, I would have you attach yourself to my
sister’s train and serve as her spiritual advisor. She is a young woman, and it may be that she will heed your teaching more keenly than that of an older priest.’
Miguel de Pero stirred uneasily at this startling suggestion. I remembered how he had warned me to stay away from Alejandro, and knew it would not sit easily with him to know that Alejandro was being given such an elevated status within a royal household.
‘Your Majesty, I am not sure if such an honour would be entirely appropriate,’ he said smoothly. ‘There are other priests better placed to undertake this duty, if you would permit me to suggest one or two names. Father Vasco must soon return to Spain and I had hoped young Alejandro would accompany him. While his reports from Woodstock may have been glowing, I am far from convinced this was because your sister—’
King Philip held up his hand, interrupting the priest. ‘We have heard your objections. The Queen has made her decision. Your novice will attend the Queen’s sister as her spiritual advisor and make weekly reports to Her Majesty as before.’
The Chief Inquisitor hesitated – and I swear his nostrils flared – then swept them both an exaggerated bow and backed away from the dais, his head low. ‘Forgive me, Your Majesties.’
The Queen looked at her husband with a shy smile, no doubt to thank him for his intervention. But King Philip did not smile in return, glancing away as though he could not bear to look on her, his English-born wife who had not produced their longed-for heir – no, nor ever would now, for many believed Mary too old to bear a child.
The Queen’s countenance fell and she stammered, ‘My lord King,’ then fell quiet, twisting a handkerchief between her fingers.
As I watched, Queen Mary summoned the Lady Elizabeth to her side. For a few moments, with the whole court holding their breath, she spoke to her sister in a low tormented voice. Elizabeth nodded and curtsied to her sister, then left the Great Hall with only Blanche Parry in tow, her reddish head bent over a rosary, her skirts rustling gently in the silence.
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