By Slanderous Tongues

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Not alone,” she said, trying to sound shocked herself. “My guards and grooms are always with me and usually Lady Alana. The other girls say I ride too hard. But if you think I should, I will take Margaret and Agnes with me while Lady Alana is away. The other maids of honor do not ride at all.”

  “Do you mean you have been sending messages to Lord Denno about where and when to meet you?”

  “Oh, no.” Elizabeth sounded horrified. “I would never send him a message without first showing it to you, Your Highness. You know I did so when I ordered that brocade for a stomacher. But I always ride at about the same time and Lord Denno meets me somewhere along the route.”

  “But how could he know?”

  Elizabeth giggled, thinking of the air spirits that carried word as soon as she arrived at the stable and of Miralys, who could leap from London to Chelsea in a moment.

  “I think,” she said, “that he set his servants to watch for me and when they told him the times and the route, he was able to come to meet me.” She giggled again. “He says he is besotted with me, that I am the little daughter he will never have.” Then she sobered and put out a pleading hand. “Do not be angry with me or with him, Your Highness. He is such a lonely man. He has no one in the world he cares for or thinks of as family except me.”

  Catherine’s lips had parted to utter a stinging rebuke, but she remembered Lord Denno telling her almost the same thing when he brought the furs, that he had no one in the world to spoil and cosset except Elizabeth. And it was no ill thing, Catherine thought, to have a merchant of such wealth as a friend who would provide luxuries that otherwise would have to be foregone or paid for out of a limited income.

  Nor was she in defiance of Tom’s will; he had said he did not want Denno hanging around her. She smiled at that memory, but was aware of a sinking feeling of sadness at the same time. Tom did not seem as possessive of her now that she was carrying his child. And she could not think Lord Denno any danger to her charge. He was an old man, not likely to waken the fancy of a girl of fifteen, and never flirtatious in his manner.

  “Well, it was wrong of you to meet Lord Denno without telling me,” she said mildly.

  “I am very sorry, madam,” Elizabeth said at once. “I just never thought about it. Anyone will tell you, Kat or the guardsmen, that Lord Denno has been riding out with me for many years. It was never forbidden. We never dismount and only talk about my lessons or the strange places he has visited. It was so common to me, that I never thought of mentioning it.”

  “Oh well.” Catherine smiled. “Now you have mentioned it, but be sure to take your ladies with you while Lady Alana is in London.”

  Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. “I will, madam, I promise, but they will be dull rides, all slow walks. Margaret and Agnes fear to be unseated if their mounts move any faster.”

  “It will only be for a few weeks, until Lady Alana returns, or I would approve a message to Lord Denno asking him not to meet you until Lady Alana returns to you.”

  “Perhaps that would be best,” Elizabeth said easily.

  She was very glad she had agreed. Catherine looked relieved, as if she were worried about Elizabeth seeing Lord Denno so often and was pleased that Elizabeth acted as if lacking his company would not matter. Since Elizabeth knew she would be with Denno every night, the fact that she would not see him during the day was not important. They always enjoyed being together and Denno had wanted her servants to remain accustomed to seeing him with her, but a few weeks’ absence would not matter.

  The note was duly written and sent with Ladbroke, who accompanied Lady Alana to London. Elizabeth knew that Lady Alana would explain what had happened and, of course, she could herself explain when Denno came for her that night. Note or no note, Elizabeth invited Margaret and Agnes to ride with her on the two times she went out the following week and the week after. They were witness to the fact that no one joined the riding party.

  Two weeks was all Elizabeth could endure, however. Then she sent a message to the stables telling Ladbroke to exercise her horses since she could not face any more rides plodding carefully along the graveled paths at a slow walk with those two fearful slugs. To fill the time when she usually rode out, she set herself to translating Electra by Euripides, which Master Ascham had said was too difficult.

  That was a challenge Elizabeth could not resist, and it made her quite cross to discover that Master Ascham had been correct. The translation did not flow as those he had chosen for her had done. And yet, it was not the words themselves that were the difficulty. Elizabeth knew what most of the words meant; the concepts they described did not seem to make much sense, which made her suspect that she was using the words she recognized in a mistaken context.

  By the end of the week she lost patience with Blanche and sent her to the laundress and with the maids of honor, who were sitting apart from her with their sewing or embroidery and giggling about something. Earlier Alice Finch had been bemoaning the fact that Elizabeth would not go out into the garden. She had tried that the previous day and found herself distracted by sunlight dappling the grass, clouds moving across the sky, and birds flitting from tree to tree.

  “Oh, go out to the garden, do,” she said to the girls. “I really cannot think when you talk and laugh about such nonsense. Kat won’t mind, I am sure. Just tell her that I cannot believe that Electra is trying to convince her brother to murder their mother. I must have misread something and I cannot find where I have gone wrong.”

  “Convince her brother to murder their mother!” Frances Dodd repeated. “Perhaps, Lady Elizabeth, Master Ascham had good reason not to want that play translated.”

  “Perhaps,” she agreed, glancing uneasily toward the door where she would not have been surprised to see Master Ascham looming; she had thought he had asked some suspicious questions yesterday. “But,” she added stubbornly, “I will never know if I do not work it out for myself. Go out, do. I will come and join you soon.”

  They all trooped out, tsking to each other about Lady Elizabeth’s unnatural taste for learning, but closing the door behind them so that servants passing in the corridor would not disturb her. Elizabeth turned her attention to the text again, deciding to check over the early lines which had seemed straightforward. Perhaps they held a hidden meaning she had missed.

  The maids of honor turned left out of the corridor that led to Elizabeth’s apartment, went down the stairs, and passed the queen’s parlor, talking happily about what they should do. Their voices were raised a little in reaction from trying to be quiet while Elizabeth was studying, and Eleanor Gage commented wonderingly that their lady would rather sit bent over a dull book than come out in the sun and play.

  Near the door of the public parlor, which they had just entered, Thomas heard what they said. At first the remarks were meaningless to him. Catherine had wavered slightly on her feet, and her hand had tightened on his arm. He looked down at her and set his teeth. Sick again! He led Catherine toward the other end of the room and seated her in a cushioned chair. After studying her pale and sweating face for a moment, he took her hand and patted it.

  “I fear you are feeling unwell again,” he said, trying to make his voice soft and sympathetic, which made him feel even more irritable. “Let me fetch your maid to you, dear.”

  “Thank you, Tom,” Catherine sighed, then added somewhat plaintively, “but don’t run away. I will be better in a little while.”

  He bent over her and kissed her brow. “I will only give the potion a chance to work so my voice does not make you wince.”

  Catherine smiled and pressed his hand. “I love your voice,” she assured him; well, usually she did enjoy his boisterous good humor, so she was being only slightly untruthful.

  “Your woman will be with you in a brief moment,” he said as he walked back to the door.

  When he reached to open it wider, the ruby Otstargi had given him gleamed blood-bright on his finger. He rubbed it with his thumb, as he so often did, and suddenly h
e recalled what Eleanor Gage had said. The maids of honor had been sent out, so Elizabeth was alone in her rooms. Had she known that Catherine was expecting Lord Russell? Of course she did.

  Alone in the corridor, Thomas chuckled. Told the maids she was preparing some lesson or other. They thought it unlikely … and so did he. Elizabeth must know that he would not remain with Catherine during Lord Russell’s visit; Russell had had the impudence to question what he was doing about the pirates.

  The ring flashed again when he pulled the door closed. Clever girl, Elizabeth. As soon as she was rid of Lady Alana—he had seen to that by having Catherine send that clinging vine to London—Elizabeth sent all the other maids of honor out into the garden where they would surely lose track of time.

  Thomas smiled. No reason for him to run Catherine’s errand. That was what servants were for. Yes, there was a footman. Thomas explained that the queen needed her maid immediately and turned back the way he had come. Doubtless the footman would think he had returned to his wife, but he passed the half-closed parlor door, heels clicking on the polished wood, and walked swiftly up the stairs. At the head, he turned right—a way he knew very well by now—into the corridor that led to Elizabeth’s apartment.

  Elizabeth frowned at what she had written, changed a word, looked another up, heard the snick of the door latch. She bit her lip and swept everything together, thinking retribution in the form of an angry Master Ascham was about to fall on her. Then she looked up, with a guilty smile on her lips … a smile which froze as she came to her feet and turned to face Thomas Seymour.

  His smile, broad and triumphant, answered the one frozen on her face, the smile meant to appease Master Ascham.

  “How clever of you to get rid of your maids after I finally got Catherine to send that Lady Alana away,” he said. “How you can bear the way she hangs on you I do not know. And that face! A pudding is prettier.”

  Elizabeth swallowed hard. Thomas had paused while he spoke. “I thought you were Master Ascham,” she said, her breath quickening as he started forward.

  Thomas laughed. “Oh no you did not, you mealy-mouthed little sneak. You knew I would not stay with Catherine once Lord Russell arrived. You knew I would come up here. Lessons from Master Ascham is it? I will teach you a lesson you will greatly prefer to his.”

  “No. No. I was working on a Greek translation that was giving me trouble. Electra—”

  Thomas Seymour did not love learning, but his tutor had pounded some knowledge into him. The story of Clytemnestra, who had committed adultery while her husband was away at war and murdered him when he returned, and her daughter Electra’s revenge was the kind of story that would stick in his mind. He laughed.

  “Enjoying the queen’s love life, are you?”

  “There is nothing of love in Electra,” Elizabeth said, drawing herself up indignantly.

  Thomas laughed again and started toward her. Elizabeth sidestepped to take herself out of his direct path, but Thomas was better schooled in fencing than he was in Greek literature. His body responded at once to her movement, and he was coming directly toward her again. Elizabeth again tried to dodge and he again responded. Desperately Elizabeth muttered the spell for stickfast … but it was too late. When his feet froze to the floor beneath them, he tipped forward, arms outstretched, and caught her tight against him.

  In the public parlor, Catherine had called out for Thomas to come back a moment after he had walked out the door. The sudden wave of nausea that had made her think she might be unable to control the need to vomit had passed as quickly as it had seized her. She sighed and shook her head. She could not take the chance that she would lose her breakfast in Thomas’ presence.

  A little frown creased Catherine’s brow. Men were the strangest creatures. They were not the least disgusted nor did they blame a drinking companion who vomited up his excess, but a woman more blamelessly nauseous became an object of revulsion. She sighed again and then smiled as the light, high voices of Elizabeth’s maidens drifted from the garden through an open window.

  That Elizabeth. Catherine shook her head slightly. She knew what Elizabeth was doing. It was because Master Ascham had said Electra was too difficult—and, of course, Elizabeth had taken that as a challenge. But she should not have sent all the maids away and remained alone.

  The thought was interrupted by the click of heels on the corridor floor. Catherine smiled. Tom had sent a servant to fetch her maid and was coming back to stay with her. How good of him. She knew how much her sickness distressed him …

  But the footsteps in the corridor did not pause at the door. They went on toward the stairway. A little shriek and laughter came from the garden. Catherine drew a hard breath. Was Elizabeth doing Greek translation or was she waiting for Tom to come to her? Why should she send her maids away to do a translation?

  Catherine got to her feet, ran across the room, and flung open the door. When she stepped out into the corridor, she saw her maid was walking swiftly toward her. She gestured for the woman to go into the parlor and herself ran to the stairs. She needed to slow down to climb them; she was already awkward and, in addition, breathless with rage and pain, but she picked up speed along the corridor and pulled open the door to Elizabeth’s parlor.

  When his feet inexplicably stuck to the floor a bare step away from Elizabeth, Thomas flung out his arms for balance. The speed of his advance toward her, increased when she tried to get away, threw him forward. An instinctive need to save himself from falling wrapped his arms around her just as his feet came loose. Elizabeth’s own arms were trapped under his, her face lifted to his. He was quite ready to ignore the horror in her expression; what he saw were her half-parted lips. He bent his head and pressed his mouth to hers.

  “What are you doing?” Catherine shrieked.

  Chapter 30

  There was but one way the discovery could have ended, and Elizabeth could not be unhappy about it. She was to be sent away. Thomas Seymour’s charm and bluff could avail him nothing this time. And though it was hard to see the terrible hurt in the queen’s eyes, the knowledge that she would no longer have to guard herself against Seymour’s unwelcome advances came as an absolute reprieve.

  But Elizabeth required a guardian. And one was swiftly found in Sir Anthony Denny.

  The promise Elizabeth had given Catherine was an easy one to make—and would be an easy one to keep. Elizabeth knew that Sir Anthony was a friend of Denno’s and that Sir Anthony regarded Denno as his own contemporary. He would certainly think of Denno as a safe companion for Elizabeth. Sir Anthony would not object to her riding out with Denno and dearling Denno’s conversation would certainly enliven the dinner table. Perhaps it would even amuse Master Ascham, who had been impolitely condescended to by Thomas Seymour and had suggested it was time for him to return to Cambridge.

  Moreover, as Sir Anthony’s household was much smaller than Queen Catherine’s, Elizabeth could rid herself of all but two of her maids of honor. Lady Alana asked for leave, having been in close attendance for so long this was granted. Elizabeth kept Margaret Dudley because her cousin, John Dudley the earl of Warwick, was high in the government and Denno had told her he was not totally committed to the Protector. The other girl she kept was Frances Dodd, who not only had nowhere to go but was terrified of horses and most unlikely ever to ride out with her.

  Considering the benefits accruing to her, Elizabeth was hard put to look properly mournful when the time came to part. She curtsied to the ground and kissed Catherine’s hands and begged her with real sincerity to take care of herself, but she stuffed Margaret and Frances into the traveling cart the queen had provided with Kat Ashley and Blanche and herself mounted her lively mare. Catherine frowned, but Elizabeth did not wait for her to ask if this behavior was careful and did not pretend she cared.

  She followed Gerrit and Shaylor and behind her came Dickson and Nyle, all armored and armed to the teeth. They were followed by Dunstan, Ladbroke and Tolliver, also armed, leading her extra horses
. The party was far too strong to be in any danger from the outlaws that infested the roads and attacked travelers, and Elizabeth knew that just out of sight of Chelsea, Denno would meet them. The weather was beautiful, Denno was as happy as she with her change of circumstances, and the prospect of being away from any possibility of Thomas Seymour’s attempts on her seemed to promise safety.

  To make up for that moment of sauciness, Elizabeth wrote to Catherine a few days after she arrived in Cheshunt, more humbly than she had been able to make herself speak:

  Although I could not be plentiful in giving thanks for the manifold kindness received at Your Highness’ hand at my departure, yet … truly I was replete with sorrow to depart from Your Highness, especially leaving you undoubtful of health: and, albeit I answered little, I weighed it more deeper, when you said you would warn me of all evils that you should hear of me; for if Your Grace had not a good opinion of me, you would not have offered friendship to me that way …

  The offer was important, since it was as close as Catherine could come to promising she herself would not speak of the compromising situation she had witnessed. Elizabeth was grateful, but in truth she was not sorry to be out of that household and under her gratitude was a thread of resentment over being blamed for Thomas’ careless lechery.

  Elizabeth settled easily into Sir Anthony’s household and to Lady Denny’s infinite relief was quiet and obedient. She seemed satisfied to concentrate on her studies with Master Ascham and did not demand excursions or entertainment. She was content with Lord Denno’s visits, and he did provide some entertainment, hiring players to come to Cheshunt to perform a masque or a newer form, a play. Lady Denny now and then wondered why the queen had found Elizabeth too difficult but loyally put such thoughts aside, particularly as she found Kat Ashley a most pleasant and congenial companion.