The Tudor Vendetta Read online

  He shrugged. “I obey Cecil’s instructions. He wrote first to advise me of the queen’s illness, after it was discovered that her pregnancy was actually a malignant tumor in her belly. He relayed he would make the necessary arrangements when the time came. Passage had to be booked, passports obtained; I had to oversee the closure of this safe house and transfer of its contents. There are papist spies here, watching for us as surely as we watch for them. We must leave without rousing notice, part of the crowd of English Protestants who went into exile and now return at Elizabeth’s behest. Secrecy remains of the utmost importance.” He flipped the lid of his box shut. “We’ll depart the day after tomorrow at first light. You can start packing.”

  I glared at him. I had nothing to pack, save for my clothes and a few books. “I can be ready in under an hour,” I said through my teeth.

  His brow lifted. “Then I suggest you cultivate patience. The very fact that I have to remind you of it proves you’re far from ready.” He turned to the doorway, his coffer tucked under his arm. “We’ll take an hour and then go over that cipher you couldn’t break last night.” His tone hardened as I began to lift protest. “Until we are back at court, Master Prescott, you remain under my charge. Is that understood?”

  I gave terse assent, the letter announcing Elizabeth Tudor’s accession crunched in my fist. If I could have, I would have swum back to England that very hour, my fear of deep water and his charge over me be damned.

  Walsingham’s snort as he walked out indicated he knew it, too.

  LONDON

  Chapter Two

  By the time we landed in Dover four days later, waited for our luggage to be unloaded from the hold, and shoved our way through hordes of travelers to find the inn where the mounts Cecil had arranged for us were waiting, I almost wished I’d opted to swim instead. Crossing the Channel at any time of year was arduous enough, its currents and sudden tempests unpredictable as a vicious child, but in mid-November, with winter clamping down, the journey had been a purgatory that emptied my very guts.

  I must have looked as terrible as I felt, for Walsingham arched his brow at me. “I trust you can ride? We’ve still a long journey ahead to reach the city and I’d rather not pay an exorbitant price for some lousy room in one of these overcrowded dockside inns.”

  “I can ride,” I muttered, though I staggered like a newborn foal and could still taste the rot of sea-churned bile in my mouth. Coming upon the forlorn mares awaiting us, I realized I couldn’t wait to reclaim my Cinnabar, whom I’d had to leave behind in Cecil’s manor, and hoped someone had thought to bring my horse to court. “Though I hardly see how we’ll get far on these,” I said, as we strapped our bags to the saddles and sidestepped the muck of the yard to mount. “They look half-dead on their feet.”

  “Messengers have been racing back and forth across the Channel since Elizabeth took the throne,” said Walsingham, as he fastidiously arranged his cloak over his saddle. “There probably aren’t enough of these nags to satisfy the needs of those who send and receive intelligence. We’re lucky to have obtained horses at all. We could have found ourselves crammed into public transport with the rest of this mob.” As he spoke, he passed disdainful eyes over the city, its white-stone royal fortress brooding on the chalk cliff that overlooked the cluster of winding streets and crooked buildings, punctuated by a multitude calling, cursing, and shouting at each other. Squalling gulls and rooks wheeled overhead. Walsingham’s nostrils flared as if he could detect individual smells within the general miasma of ordure, unwashed skin, and garbage.

  “We’ll be overwhelmed at this rate,” he said, “all these exiles returning; there are too many of them and too few of us. I daresay, nobody’s passport is even being checked. Anyone with a purse and able tongue can bribe their way in.”

  I paused. A chill went through me. His countenance had darkened. With another appraising stare at the city, he said to me, “Mark it well. This is how chaos sneaks in.”

  Yanking his mare about, he led us onto the road.

  * * *

  He proved as taciturn on horseback as he had on the ship, conveying only what was necessary to advance our progress. Still, we had no choice but to halt for the night. While our horses had proven hardier than their dejected attitudes suggested, we needed rest, and Walsingham chose a roadside inn after we’d gone far enough to outpace the multitude of carts and carriages departing Dover for the four corners of the realm.

  Our room was a mean affair, containing a dirty mattress and rickety stool. We opted to sleep on the floor instead, wrapped in our cloaks with our bags as pillows, as neither of us was of a mood to be infested by vermin. Nevertheless, I ended up squashing numerous fleas and was scratching welts on my neck and arms in the morning. By the time we took to the road again after a breakfast of stale bread, flat beer, and moldy cheese served by a scowling wench with a boil on her lip, I was beginning to realize Basel’s astringent Protestant air and scrubbed cobblestones had much to commend them.

  Walsingham made no comment, though he too must have marked the contrast. We’d vacated a tidy home in a tidy Reformed city for a three-day ride through the Low Countries and along the coast to Calais, where we’d boarded a vessel to be tossed about like a child’s toy, only to arrive unceremoniously back in our homeland along with hundreds of other refugees, who cluttered Dover like cattle. What did he make of it, this upheaval that had overtaken our existence? Even as we rode past the copses of oak trees on the side of the road, avoiding waterlogged ditches that reflected a leaden sky threatening rain, all around us the foundation of our world was shifting.

  Yet Walsingham rode as if he were impervious, and soon the bite of the wind sinking its teeth in my neck subsumed my own ruminations. Muffled in my doublet and cloak, my cap pulled low on my brow, I anticipated the proverbial crack of thunder and gushing release of icy rain. Other travelers began to appear, walking in groups and riding on mules or carts, some driving livestock, shepherd dogs barking at their ankles. The road grew wider and more crowded, so that we had to slow our pace. I sensed a quickening in my nag’s gait. Peering ahead through the dusk, I discerned a smoky haze hanging over the glittering breadth of the Thames. The river coiled like a dragon’s tail, spanned by the great Bridge on its twenty stone piers. Beyond it clustered the city, having outgrown its ancient lichen-spotted walls—a patchwork of orchards, gardens, and affluent suburbs spilling beyond the main gates.

  My chest tightened. Every time I had been in London, I’d ended up risking my life; this city was never safe for me, and as if he sensed my trepidation, Walsingham gave me a pensive glance. I thought he would merely rebuke me with his stare. Instead, he said quietly, with more consideration than he had thus far ever shown me, “Returning home is never easy, unless one is a fool. But here is where you belong. It is what—”

  “We do,” I interrupted, with a taut smile.

  He nodded. “Indeed. Never forget it. On us now depends everything.”

  * * *

  We left our horses in Southwark at the designated return stable, Walsingham muttering that he was in no temper to contend with the crowds lining up at the Great Stone Gate to traverse the Bridge. Night was falling, along with curfew, and a tide of impatient, tired travelers queued up for public wherries at the landing jetty of St. Mary Overy. The stench of churned-up leavings and the dirt in the streets were just as I recalled. I also detected, even here in this pleasure-loving district across from the City, where brothels, gaming dens, taverns, and baiting pits abounded, a tangible air of suspicion and impoverished fear. Gaunt figures hustled to various assignations without so much as a glance at each other, when in the past I’d noticed that Londoners, while invariably wary of visitors or foreigners, were usually pleasant to their fellow citizens. A lone gibbet near the Great Stone Gate revealed a potential cause: the rotting carcass of a Protestant, headless and limbless, so decayed its crow-gnawed ribs showed through tattered shreds of skin. I had no doubt that the rest of whoever this poor soul had
been was hung on other gates, as was the habit with traitors, and averted my eyes as I had to force myself to look away from the many beggars, crawling on gangrenous stumps into doorways for the night. Emaciated dogs snarled and competed with feral urchins for leavings in the trash heaps.

  A tribe of these orphans assaulted us as Walsingham whistled and called out for a private boat, thrusting out grubby hands to implore us for alms, their pitiful eyes and scrawny faces unable to hide a pack-like cunning as they circled us, angling to filch whatever they could. I’d contended with these Southwark wildlings before and tucked my purse, dagger sheath, and anything else that could be stolen into my clothing; with a disgusted moue, Walsingham yanked out a groat and tossed it as far as he could.

  The children scattered to pursue it, snarling like curs. A wherry arrived just in time. Shouldering our bags, we boarded and I took my seat square in the middle of the bench, gripping it as Walsingham gave me a long look.

  “To Westminster,” he told the boatman. “And quickly, before the tide turns.”

  He wiped clotted dirt from his cloak as the vessel swirled into the Thames, the lights of Southwark winking behind us like distant stars. The boatman’s lantern bobbed on its hook and cast erratic shadows over Walsingham’s face, deepening the hollows of his cheeks. “Order and control,” he said, as if to himself, “must be her first order of business. All that”—he sniffed, as if to rid himself of a distasteful smell—“evidence of papist savagery must be removed.”

  I heard an unusual undertone of fury in his normally reserved voice, but before I could remark on it, the boatman said, “Aye, Bloody Mary would’ve burned every last one of us, no matter that she gained her throne with our support. Good riddance to the bitch, I say; she might have been queen but no one’s sorry she’s dead.”

  His words plunged me into my last memory of the queen who’d been dubbed Bloody Mary by her own subjects, glaring at me in her chamber at Whitehall with her soiled gown gaping at her thin breast, ravaged by the knowledge that nothing she did or said could ever overcome her sister’s magnetic appeal.

  “She’d have seen our Bess dead, too,” the boatman added, hawking phlegm over the side. “Mark my words: She’d have taken the princess’s head sure as we sit here.”

  “Yes, well,” said Walsingham tersely, “she’s gone to judgment now, my good man.”

  “Hellfire’s all she deserves. Let her get a taste of what she served up. Some might pray to the saints to see her through Purgatory but I hope she’s headed straight to the Devil.”

  Walsingham grimaced. A staunch Protestant, he eschewed both the concept of salvation through Purgatory and the cult of saints; the boatman’s declaration must have been an uncomfortable reminder of how religious unease still held sway over England. For many, the old faith and the reformed one had coalesced into a barely understood construct that people adapted to their particular needs. To Walsingham, this very idea was anathema. I could almost hear him making a mental note to address the issue of religious uniformity as soon as he had opportunity for audience with our queen.

  Thoughts of Elizabeth quickened my blood as we reached the public water stairs at Westminster. We disembarked for the short walk to Whitehall. Night pressed in around us, inky cold; cresset torches in brackets shed soot as we came to a halt at the Holbein clock tower. Here, Walsingham produced documents, sent by Cecil, I assumed, to ensure our entry. While the guards inspected our safe conducts, I let my gaze pass over the imposing brick façade of this palace that I’d left in disgrace.

  The mullioned casements were blazing with candles, the silhouettes of passing courtiers wavering behind the flame-lit glass. Faint laughter reached me; gazing into the enclosed great courtyard past the gates, I espied a couple muffled in sable and velvet, entering the palace through an archway. Whitehall was less a cohesive structure than a bewildering warren of interconnected buildings, an elephantine and still-unfinished pastiche. It had consumed the old palace of the archbishops of York, which King Henry confiscated from Cardinal Wolsey after he failed to bring about the annulment the king needed to marry Anne Boleyn. Wolsey had died for his failure, on his way to the Tower; six years later, Queen Anne, Elizabeth’s mother, met her own fate at Henry’s hands. I wondered how Elizabeth must feel, knowing that she was now ruler of the very palace that had seen her mother’s rise and fall and nearly her own demise.

  I started at the press of Walsingham’s fingers on my elbow. “Come,” he said. “We’ll have to find our own way to the hall. It seems Her Majesty holds a reception tonight and there are no available pages about to bring word to Cecil of our arrival.”

  The jolt of life we encountered upon entering the palace presented vivid contrast to the last time I’d been here, when every access had been shuttered and guarded following an aborted rebel attempt to depose Mary. Now, Whitehall’s wide tapestried corridors and numerous galleries shimmered with glamour, jewels winking and laughter echoing as courtiers moved in satiny stampede toward the great hall. I’d resided in Whitehall, experienced life-altering and heartbreaking events within its walls, but never had I seen as many people as I did at this moment, so that I fretted over my disheveled appearance until I realized no one paid us the slightest mind. At my side, Walsingham moved with soundless stealth, his black-clad figure a feline shadow among the peacock herd. His jaw clenched under his beard; he did not need to say a word for me to know he disapproved of such uncontrolled access to the queen’s very person.

  At the great double doors leading into the hall, we paused to check our cloaks but weren’t given time. Behind us, courtiers pressed like an unstoppable tide, sweeping us into the expanse, the hammer-beamed painted ceiling suffused in smoke high above us, a fogbound sky; the black-and-white tile floor strewn with trampled rushes, which formed a slippery meadow under our feet.

  The cacophony was deafening; the air was suffused with the heat of dripping wax from the many candelabras in corners and hanging on chains overhead, of musk and perfume splashed on bare skin, of sweat, grease, and spilt wine. A posse of ladies sauntered past us; one of them, pretty enough in her dark blue satins, shot an unmistakable look at me. As unexpected heat kindled in my groin, I recalled with a start that I’d not been with a woman since—

  I looked away, banishing the memory, even as my admirer’s companions tugged her away into the crowd, one of them whispering loud enough to ensure she was overheard: “Comely enough, I suppose, but did you smell him? I warrant he hasn’t bathed in weeks! Only a papist would dare come to court bearing such a stench.”

  Walsingham commented dryly, “So, we’re papists now, are we?” Even as he spoke he searched the crowd, devising a path to the raised platform, where a cluster of privileged, bejeweled figures could be glimpsed. Having navigated crowds in this hall before, I appreciated the challenge. I doubted we could approach the dais without being detained, given our unkempt persons.

  “Perhaps we can take a drink first,” I said, eyeing a page as he hustled by with a decanter. I was suddenly parched and had my goblet in my bag.

  Walsingham said sharply, “Drink?” as if I’d suggested we swim across the Thames. Thrusting his bag at me, he marched forth, carving his way like a blade, his determination causing those in his path to shift aside, scowling and grumbling. I followed in his wake, carrying our luggage, and caught a fleeting glimpse of my admirer to my left. She winked at me. Her friends nudged her, giggling.

  Then, all of a sudden, yeomen in green-and-white livery barred our passage with their pikestaffs. Behind them stood the wide dais with its empty throne, situated by one of Whitehall’s famed Caen-stone hearths. The privileged nobles gathered about it turned to stare. I had a discomfiting impression of hawkish noses, trim beards, and contemptuous eyes before they parted, revealing another man, his hand casually poised on the throne’s upholstered armrest.

  It was none other than my former master, Lord Robert Dudley.

  Chapter Three

  He looked better than expected, though in t
ruth I hadn’t been expecting him at all. I cursed under my breath at my lack of foresight. He wore rich, ash-gray velvet slashed with ivory silk, a profusion of seed pearls picking out his family emblem of bear and ragged staff on his sleeves. His broad shoulders offset the muscular legs he was so vain of; he looked nothing like the gaunt prisoner I had last seen in the Tower, and without warning all the pent-up rage inside me surged. Ever since I had been a foundling in his family’s care, Dudley had delighted in tormenting me. I could tell by the hatred igniting his dark eyes that he had not forgotten it, either.

  He took a step forward. “What,” he hissed, “are you doing here?”

  I met his stare. I too had shed all vestiges of the youth he had known. Hardened by my training, confident that in a fight I could more than match him, I was no longer afraid of his bark. Before I could react, Walsingham said with appropriate deference, “Begging my lord’s forgiveness, but I was summoned by my lord Secretary Cecil. This is my manservant and—”

  Dudley snarled, “Manservant? Since when was this cur anyone’s servant? He’s incapable of it; he bites every hand that feeds him. And by God, I’ve a mind to tie him in a sack and drown him myself.” He was actually starting to step down, fists curled at his sides, when an authoritative voice called out, “My lord, if you please! These men are here at my invitation.”

  Relief overcame me as I turned to see Cecil coming toward us. I was in no mood to contend with Robert Dudley now, though judging by his frozen stance and the glare he directed at Cecil I had no doubt that I’d have to deal with him later.

  Cecil was somewhat out of breath from his brisk walk across the hall. He quickly assessed us with that expert ease that made everything he did seem perfectly timed. He looked tired. Having reached his thirty-eighth year, he’d started to display a middle-age paunch, no doubt from all the hearty fare he enjoyed at his country manor with his devoted wife Lady Cecil, but his russet beard remained free of telltale gray and he still retained a keen air.