by J. D. Davies
The white mask was impassive. She waved a hand, and the guards turned, gesturing for me to accompany them. But before I left the hall, I saw the Queen take the paper from the chamberlain, unfold it, and read.
Nicholas Iles:
It had rained for days. The roads were at best quagmires, at worst entirely impassable, forcing long detours onto rocky upland tracks that were full of drovers and their herds, heading in the opposite direction. Great mountains rose up all around, water flooding down their sides in torrents. The inns were damp and vile, not fit even for the meanest English beggar. The people were shifty and incomprehensible. Yet I felt a lightness in the heart that I had not known in months. I was free of the spectre of Laszlo Horvath, and the even more menacing wrath of Robert Cecil. I had been true in my duty to the Earl and the Countess. I had acted the part of a man of honour, and played it well: so well that the part had become the man I really was.
But now I was playing another part, and at last, my destination opened up before me. An extraordinary vast harbour, many miles long, yet very nearly devoid of shipping. But in a bay near its mouth, a small man-of-war lay at anchor. She was taking on water, the barrels being rowed out to her from a beach that lay beneath a decayed old fort of King Henry’s time. If I were King Philip of Spain, I thought, I could surely devise no better place to invade the Queen of England’s realms than here at Milford Haven.
A large, aged, white bearded fellow, clad in scarlet satin finery distinctly at odds with his circumstances, watched my approach with interest.
‘You’ll be the man Lord Ravensden recommended, I’ll wager,’ he said as I reined in before him, his accent the broadest Devonian.
‘I am. My name is—’
‘I know what your name is. Or at least, the name that you and Matt Quinton have conjured up between you. Don’t matter a jot to me. Only matters that he’s paying good gold for me to enter you on my ship’s books as a gentleman volunteer. Not that you look much like a gentleman, nor like a fighter, come to that. But that don’t matter a jot neither. The noble Earl and I, we have an understanding that goes back twenty years, since he went out with me on his first voyage as a young gentleman volunteer, as I expect he told you. We owe each other more debts than the Fuggers and the Habsburgs, My Lord and I. Besides, you’re not likely to see much fighting on the Irish station – Lord Tyrone and his rebellious papist hordes don’t like getting their feet wet, that they don’t.’ The old man held out his right arm. ‘So welcome aboard Her Majesty’s ship the Halcyon, my friend, and accept the hand of Captain Griffin Rugg.’
The Dowager Countess:
It was only after the key turned in the latch that I realised the enormity of it all. I had offended Queen Elizabeth herself, to her face, before her entire court. I had been arrested, and placed in a cold, barely furnished tower room, with a view of the Thames far below. Perhaps I would shortly join my husband in the Tower. Perhaps we were both destined for the block, and then what would become of little Beth? Alone with nothing but my fears, I began to sob.
I must have been there for two or three hours. I sobbed. I prayed. I sobbed again. Then the key turned once more, and the chamberlain who had been present in the Great Hall stood in the doorway, gesturing for me to follow him. Without a word, he led me down a stairway, through a tapestried gallery, down another stairway, along a bare stone corridor, courtiers and servants becoming fewer and fewer with every step we took. Finally, we came to a great oak door, guarded by two halberdiers. The chamberlain knocked and entered.
I followed him into the splendidly decorated room, and fell at once into a curtsy even deeper than the one I had executed in the great hall.
Alone in one of her most private apartments, the Queen seemed infinitely taller than she had in the vastness of the hall. Indeed, she seemed like a giant, a blazing scarlet sky framing the setting sun through the great window behind her.
She held the paper I had given her, and raised it slowly, as though contemplating it for the first time.
‘This is a copy, My Lady Ravensden. Thus it might well be a forgery, for all I know,’ she said. The Queen now spoke in flawless French, rather than the English she had employed in public. ‘You have the original?’
‘No, Your Majesty,’ I lied. ‘But my husband can obtain it readily enough, if he were free to do so, that is.’
‘You seek to bargain with me, Lady Ravensden? With the Lord’s Anointed? The Queen of England does not haggle like a fishwife in Billingsgate, madame.’
‘No, Your Majesty. I crave your pardon for my presumption. But you must know my husband is no traitor – he has been unjustly maligned by an alien named Horvath—’
‘Rich words, coming from a fellow alien!’
‘By birth, perhaps, but by marriage a Countess of England, Majesty, despite my clinging to a faith that you and your people find hateful beyond measure—’
She raised a silk-gloved hand.
‘Your faith is of no concern to me, Lady Ravensden, in spite of what it might be needful for the Queen to say in public. I have said before, and often, that I will not make windows into men’s souls, although there are many in this land who would have the windows broken with hoe-staves and the souls sent directly to hell.’
‘Your Majesty is most gracious. But whatever cause the man Horvath has for his malice towards my husband, he cannot prove a charge of treason. The second witness he procured proved true to My Lord, and is now dead in any case.’
‘Dead, is he? Secretary Cecil doubts that, Lady Ravensden, and I have learned to take the Secretary’s doubts very seriously. But no matter. Whether he lives or feeds the worms is of no real concern to me. What is of concern is your claim that your husband can obtain the original of this letter. If he were truly loyal, he would offer it up to his Queen freely, and then depend upon divine mercy. That is to say, my mercy.’
‘My husband is…constrained…in that, Your Majesty.’
Her eyes narrowed. I sensed the fury coursing through her. I expected the full force of royal wrath to strike me at any moment. She would order her guards to take me away again, to rot, forgotten, in a cell.
Instead, the Queen’s next question was unexpected, and mildly worded, almost whispered.
‘You know the contents of this letter?’
‘I do, Your Majesty.’
I decided it was best not to tell her that I was the one who had copied it from the original, which nestled at that very moment in a secret hiding place within Ravensden House.
‘Then you and your husband will know its importance to me. Its importance to England, perchance.’ The Queen turned away, walked to the window – a slow, slightly unsteady walk – and looked out over the Thames to the bank beyond. To her England. ‘I would have the original. So I have a proposition for you, Lady Ravensden. Your husband’s release – but for appearance’s sake, it will not be a full and immediate release. House arrest, I think, at Ravensden Abbey, if he has finally put it into enough of a state of repair to be habitable. Bedfordshire should place him sufficiently far from the court, and above all from the attentions of Secretary Cecil, who will disapprove of my acting thus, beyond doubt. In return, the original of this letter to be delivered to me by Lady Day.’
I could not resist a thought: is this not haggling like a Billingsgate fishwife after all, Your Majesty? Instead, of course, I merely curtsied deeply and offered up a silent prayer to the heavenly Virgin Queen, in grateful acknowledgement of the royal mercy displayed by England’s great Elizabeth.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Laszlo Horvath
Iles has disappeared. Matthew Quinton has been freed from the Tower. My condition is not what I would wish it to be.
Indeed, I fear my condition will soon become worse. Secretary Cecil refuses to see me. It is clear that he regards me as a broken reed, and has no further use for me. Even Master Trevor, no doubt following the lead of the hunchback, will have nothing to do with me. And it is as certain as night follows day that some time, very soon, the Earl of Ra
vensden will seek me out, to be avenged upon me.
I consider returning to Hungary, to the life I once had and the war I know so well. But I chide myself that these are the thoughts of a coward. I have come this far, and I have sworn an oath upon my mother’s grave.
No. I must look to the future. And that future rides into Whitehall, one March day, preceded by the foulest noise imaginable, made by men in skirts who appear to be blowing into sacks.
I still have enough coin to be able to buy information from a knowing fellow selling knives by the Charing Cross. The dignitaries, it seems, are Lords Mar and Kinloss: ambassadors of James, King of Scots. For a second coin, my informant tells me the tale that is sweeping the kitchens of Whitehall Palace, that place where the truest information in the kingdom is to be found. With the Earl of Essex dead, my informant says, there is nothing to stop Secretary Cecil supporting King James as the successor to England’s throne – nothing but the hunchback’s previous support for the Infanta, and the King’s consequent suspicion of him. So this embassy will repair the breech between James Stuart and Robert Cecil, and make it even more likely that the former will be the next monarch of England.
Yes, I must look to the future, and as I watch the ambassadors ride into the heart of the palace, I know that my future lies in Scotland. It lies there until one old woman’s overlong life finally comes to its end.
The next morning, I set out to ride north.
Nicholas Iles:
‘This is what you meant by very little fighting on the Irish station, Captain Rugg?’ I shouted, above the roar of the firing of our forward chase guns.
‘A lesson I learned alongside Drake and Hawkins back at San Juan de Ulua in Sixty-Eight,’ said the old man, gruffly, ‘and that I taught to Matthew of Ravensden in his turn. A simple rule of life, my friend. Whenever you see a fucking Spaniard, open fire.’
We had stumbled across the small galleon an hour earlier, when we rounded a headland to the west of the town called Sligo. She was at anchor, as large as life, as though she had every right to be there. Every right to take her ease within the Queen’s own waters, off Her Majesty’s own coast. She cut her cables briskly and sailed directly eastward upon the breeze. But surely there was no escape to the east –
‘He’s running for Sligo,’ said Rugg. ‘Red Hugh’s territory. He knows he’ll be safe there, under the rebel guns.’
‘Red Hugh, Captain?’
‘Hugh O’Donnell, the Earl of Tyrconnell. Leader of the rebellion in these parts, just as O’Neill of Tyrone is over in Ulster. Cunning bastard, the O’Donnell, but brave with it. And he’s got a Spanish ship visiting him. Now why would that be, I wonder?’
Our bow guns fired again, but the splashes fell well short of the Spaniard, who now had all sail set. Rugg pressed the Halcyon forward, bellowing orders to the men in the tops, berating the helmsman for his tardiness.
‘Too foul,’ he said, ‘too fucking foul by far. I wanted to careen at Milford, but would My Lord Deputy Mountjoy allow it? No, My Lord Deputy Mountjoy would not, despite him being an old friend of Matt Quinton and knowing my connection to him. “You must be on station, Rugg, to burn cottages on the shores of Munster and kill a few flocks of papist sheep.” Words to that effect, at any rate. We’re a sixteen-gun pinnace and should be the fastest ship between here and Cadiz, but can we even outrun a Spanish slug? Damnation if we can, friend Nick, damnation I say.’
We were only a mile or two off shore, a featureless level landscape broken only by occasional tower-castles flying the Irish colours from their ramparts. It was meant to be part of Queen Elizabeth’s empire, but it looked very much like an enemy nation. That impression was heightened as the Spaniard passed into the estuary that led up to the walls of Sligo, and the batteries at the mouth of Sligo Bay fired a mighty bombardment to warn us off. Griffin Rugg judged the limits of the Irish gunners’ range as revealed by the fall of shot, listened to the leadsman’s shouts as he reported the depth of water, and finally gave order to drop anchor.
‘Well, then,’ said the captain of the Halcyon, ‘our Spanish friend isn’t going to stay there for ever, you can be certain of that. King Philip’s accounts will need balancing, so he’ll need to be back in Lisbon or the Groyne by a certain date, whatever that might be. Which means the Don’s going to have to come out some day, and when she does, we’ll be waiting for him.’
The Dowager Countess:
We left Ravensden House at dawn and went north in the Earl’s coach, an extravagant contraption similar to that used by my King Henri; our fellow road users must have cursed us for the depth of the ruts we created. The road to Bedfordshire was busy, full of carts, wagons, horsemen and above all beggars, their hands extended toward each and every passer-by in the hope of alms, most of them shuffling slowly south toward the promised land of London.
Finally, we crossed into the demesne lands of the Earls of Ravensden, and my husband breathed a great sigh of relief. If he was not yet entirely a free man, returning to his own estate was a form of liberty beyond measure.
‘I remember when all this land was wooded,’ he said, ‘and that land over there was all ridge-and-furrow. Now look at it. My father had all the trees cut down, and enclosed the old open fields. Progress, he called it. Following the fashion, he said. More profit, he promised. And perhaps, one day, he will be proved right. But sometimes, I regret the passing of the old England that I knew. The England of bountiful harvests and good cheer, before the people turned fearful and began to see Jesuit murderers and Spanish plots everywhere. The days when we had a great Queen, and great ministers serving her.’
He fell silent, lost in thought, and I knew better than to disturb him.
Finally, Ravensden Abbey itself came into view from the window of our coach, and my husband brightened. The Earl pointed out this glory and that wonder, this historical curiosity and that architectural novelty, but all I saw were ruins.
‘My grandfather planned to demolish the chancel,’ he said, ‘especially after the roof collapsed, but my grandmother, the Countess Katherine, was determined that it should stand, and out of respect to her, I have kept it standing too. I think she secretly prays that the monasteries will be restored one day, and Cistercians will perform their holy offices within its walls once again. So the fourth Earl converted the nave into a great hall, the transepts and crossing into the principal rooms, the monastic refectory and chapter house into—’
‘Your grandmother,’ I said. His grandmother is a hundred years old, and cannot die. ‘She is here? At Ravensden?’
‘She is,’ said my husband, with evident discomfort. ‘In a room high up in the south transept. We shall have to pay our respects to her, of course, but she will not know we are there. She does nothing but sit in her window, looking down at the graves in the chancel. It is a miracle that she has lived so very long, and a tragedy that she has buried all her children. And their wives. Her grandchildren, too, but for me.’
‘And your mother?’
‘Her wits gone beyond all hope, these last five years.’ His mother is mad, and has been locked away in a tower for years. ‘We keep her in the dower house across the valley, Quinton Hall.’
I fell silent, thinking of the terrible nightmare that had afflicted me during the loss of my twins. And now I was living it, for in all truth, I was surrounded by nothing but dead countesses on the one hand, and mad countesses on the other. Was I destined shortly to be one or the other? Or, perchance, each in turn?
For the first time, I doubted the wisdom of marrying Matthew Quinton.
Nicholas Iles:
We lay at anchor off Sligo for seventeen days.
In the past, I would have used such an opportunity to write a sonnet or two, or to work on some scenes of a play. But somehow, I no longer had the appetite for words. More and more, though, I had the appetite for action. Thus when Griffin Rugg proposed a cutting-out expedition, I volunteered eagerly.
‘You’re certain, young Nick? Cutting out can be a furious
business. An uncertain business, too. If you fall into the hands of the Dons, well, that’s one thing, if you fancy the rest of your life as a galley slave. But if you fall into the hands of the Irish…then God help you, my friend.’
I was undeterred, and that was how I found myself upon a moonless night in the lead boat of four, being rowed into the bay of Sligo.
‘Coney Island to starboard, Rosses Point to larboard, Oyster Island ahead,’ murmured Larkin, the square-shouldered boatswain of the Halcyon, pointing to each low, dark mass in turn. ‘The Spaniard’ll be dead ahead, behind Oyster, close to the north shore where the deep channel is, close to Sligo town.’
The oars cut the water quietly and slowly, so as not to make splashes that might be seen from the shore. The Halcyon’s crew were greatly experienced in such expeditions, it seemed. And at last, there ahead of us, was the Spaniard, as Larkin predicted. The hull was black, the masts and yards only dimly visible. There was no sign of light at all. The Dons were asleep, and we would bring this off exactly as Rugg had explained it. Two boats to the bow, two to the stern, board silently, kill silently, cut the anchor cables, tow her out before the Irish batteries flanking Rosses Point and Coney Island knew what was happening –
‘Madre de Dios! El Inglés!’
I saw a sudden flurry of movement on the beakhead, and knew at once what it meant. The ship’s head was there.
‘Christ’s fuck,’ said Larkin, ‘that one of them needed a shit at this time of the night!’
The Spaniard had been there long enough to get his night sight, for we were still a good thirty yards short of the bow. But there was now no chance of reaching it. I saw the flash from the forecastle of the first musket’s match, then heard the report. A moment later there was a second gun alongside it, then a third. A bell was being rung with the ferocity of an alarm against the horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Larkin picked up a primed musket and handed it to me.
‘You know how to fire one of these?’
‘I have mock-fired one upon the stage—’