Harper Karen - [Elizabeth I 02] Read online

  Within the deep acreages of the mansions lay stables, gardens, orchards, bowling greens, and lawns. Each property was backed by a tall brick wall with a gatehouse through which came and went carts, carriages, and horses. The gates were now closed against the press of the rabble in the mud-rutted but frozen Strand.

  Though Lord Arundel rode in the procession as the queen's Lord Steward, those he'd invited enjoyed the hospitality of his city mansion. As crowd noise from the street swelled, guests strolled toward the gatehouse viewing site along paths lined by a collection of Greek and Roman statues in the frost-blighted gardens.

  The older generation of guests was first to climb the stairs to the second story, from which to see the passing panoply. Awaiting them were brass foot warmers and trays with heated wine and plates of comfits.

  "Oh, how kind of his lordship," Isabella Harington observed to Lady Frances, the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk. "Drink and sweets to toast our dear queen. And benches so we won't have to stand, for she'll no doubt give a speech after the play scene here, and you know she can speak long and loud, just like her sire."

  "Mmph," Frances replied, settling her bulk on the center of the bench at the right window-always the seat of honor at tournaments-while Bella and her husband, John, took the left one. Their winter cloaks and her skirts took up such space that their foster son, Jack, and Bella's sister Penelope would have to stand behind when they arrived, Bella thought.

  "Are you quite comfortable, dearest?" Adrian Stokes, Frances's ginger-haired husband, asked, hovering over her. His breath puffed out clouds in the chill when he talked. He was as pleasant-looking a man as Frances was formidable, Bella noted, and hardly deserving of the whispers behind his back, for she blamed that Tudor-blooded harridan Frances for all their troubles.

  Adrian was sixteen years younger than Frances. Pregnant with his child, she had wed him but a week after her husband had been executed with their daughter Lady Jane Grey, the nine days' queen, for trying to usurp the crown from Queen Mary. Though Frances had been the wife and mother of traitors, her heritage as King Henry's niece had assured she was treated well. Especially, Bella noted again, by poor Adrian, however rudely she used him.

  "Shall I fetch Katherine and Mary, my dear?" Adrian was asking, for Frances's two surviving daughters lived with them, and he fretted for their well-being. "They must be dawdling over the statues."

  "Or cannot bear to rejoice after what befell their sister and father during the last queen's brief reign," Frances said with a sniff. "Then too, my Katherine is this queen's lawful heir and should be soon recognized as such and not be relegated to-to a gatehouse as if we were all a ragged band of lickspittles."

  Frances stared Bella down as if to dare her to repeat that. Bella looked away. She knew Frances was proud, but not that she was foolhardy after she'd almost lost everything four

  years ago. Or did people not yet realize the power Elizabeth meant to wield and the strength with which she would therefore deal with any hint of a plot?

  "Well then, go on," Frances commanded Adrian over the noise outside. "Go see what is keeping the silly chits."

  "John," Bella said, plucking at her husband's sleeve, "if Jack and Edward miss this, I shall skin them alive."

  "And what about pretty Penny?" John asked, rising so fast his sword clanked and his boots creaked.

  His nickname for her younger sister annoyed her, especially in front of the duchess. Penelope was so fair and beguiling that she could pull the wool over any man's eyes.

  "Penelope," Bella said, emphasizing each syllable, "vowed she would be here, so don't bother beating the bushes for her."

  John frowned, then followed Adrian down the stairs to gather the latecomers.

  "Then wherever," Frances said, still fussing with her hair ribbons, which Bella thought looked entirely silly on a forty-three-year-old dowager, "did Penelope Whyte, Lady Maldon, disappear to-oh, a good half hour ago, while the rest of us finished our repast inside?"

  "Did you not hear her say she felt indisposed, duchess," Bella replied, trying to sound pleasant, "and went to lie down?"

  "Oh, yes, indeed, lie down," Frances intoned with a smirk to make Bella realize her sister's reputation as a light skirt must be even more far-reaching than she'd feared.

  "And I believe you heard her remark," Bella said quickly, hoping to shift subjects, "she adores the idea of a young, fashionable queen, and I'm certain she will be here soon-Penelope, that is, as well as Her Majesty."

  "Mmph," Frances snorted again, and slid slightly forward on the bench to peer down at the crowd. "We shall just see, shall we not?"

  IT WAS THE THIRD painted canvas-over-scaffolding triumphal arch of the day, this one all gilded with flying cherubs, but it pleased Elizabeth mightily. Despite a few snowflakes and a biting wind, she ordered her procession halted and her canopy moved away so that the crowd in the upper windows might see her. Each time she smiled, nodded, or waved, their voices roared to the skies.

  She remained seated in her elevated litter, nodding during the short play scene given by adults and children. This crowd, she noted, was a brew of the common folk and their betters. It was obvious that the second and third floors of the taverns and gatehouses commanded the best views. They sprouted courtiers, especially women, for many of the men were in the procession.

  Elizabeth smiled and nodded to Meg and Ned when she saw their eager, proud faces in the crowd again, right up in front. Where had she seen them last along the way? When she but closed her eyes, around her spun arches and more arches; the three-storied buildings and gatehouses slanted out over the street to make an arch of people waving pennants all around the triumphal arch. She was getting dizzy with exhaustion as well as exhilaration, and her face muscles ached from smiling. Her nose was starting to run too, but nothing would make her haste away this blessed day.

  Then she realized exactly where she was. The wooden and canvas arch had been erected between the homes of the executed Seymour brothers, Edward and Tom. She sniffed hard and forced her mind back to the lengthy recitation of her womanly virtues two children were reciting. When it was over and the cheers swelled again, the queen rose to make a speech of thanks.

  "Good people all," she called out.

  It took a moment for the crowd to realize she would speak. Some began to shush or shout down others. Behind her someone signaled a trumpet fanfare to quiet everyone.

  "Just as the stream of the Strand pours itself into the larger Thames"-her voice rang out as she turned and gestured to both sides of the street-"the stream of your loyalty and love flows now into my new life as queen." She stared out, suddenly awed, over the sea of heads, the men's uncovered, some folks with children on their shoulders. She found her voice again. "I vow to you that in the years to come, with one heart and mind, we shall make our England safe from invaders so we shall live in a new age of peace and profit to you all."

  When she nodded and gave a stiff-armed wave, the noise exploded. God knows, she thought, but her people had suffered under Queen Mary. The currency had been devalued, the treasury bled dry, Catholic France and Spain were covetous of her crown and country, and the towns were full of vagrants and unpaid soldiers.

  But now she heard trumpets, cheers, a dog barking, horses, and then a woman's shrill shrieks somewhere here in the crowd. One of her mules jerked, and she sat down hard and fast. Two horses ahead whinnied and reared. Suddenly Robert Dudley was at her side, still mounted, leaning toward her at eye level.

  "We must push on," he told her. "Some disturbance in the crowd."

  Her eyes darted wildly. More than one woman was screaming now. Yet others still cheered and hurrahed as if nothing were amiss. "Robin, show no alarm. Go on but slowly."

  He spurred his mount ahead to speak to the man holding the first white mule. Though shaken, Elizabeth sat stoically, still nodding and waving. Robin did not let them halt even when an old woman rushed forward with a nosegay of dried rosemary extended in her upraised hand. He put his horse betwee
n the woman and the queen and leaned down to snatch it himself. He laid it in Elizabeth's lap as he rode beside her.

  Her thighs tingled where his hand had brushed and where the nosegay lay cradled. She gripped it as her canopy bearers rushed to catch up with her and the litter swayed on, past Arundel House. In the second-storied gatehouse window she glimpsed her dear friends Bella and John Harington, leaning out, smiling, waving wildly as if nothing in the world could ever be amiss again.

  "SO," BELLA SAID TO HER HUSBAND, "Her Grace looked right at us and smiled. It's a good thing I went to fetch you and Jack, or you'd have missed that."

  "You might know," John said, hardly listening, as he brushed again at the smudges and snags on his fine dove gray velvet doublet and hose, "I'd be chased by a rabid dog right through the rosebushes. Can you see Jack out there on the street? He stayed here but a moment before he wanted to be out in the excitement again. It's in his blood." He whispered the last words.

  "Silly of the boy," Frances put in as if they had addressed her, "not to watch from here, where he would not be jostled by the rabble."

  Frances's daughters, Katherine and Mary Grey, stood stiffly behind her now like ladies-in-waiting. Though she should have been long grown, Mary was a tiny girl, but four feet, almost a dwarf. Katherine was tall and fair of face, but, Bella thought, she might as well have been one of those icy marble statues on these grounds for all the warmth she showed.

  And you'd think, Bella fumed silently, considering their dour expressions, the Suffolk party had just watched a funeral cortege. At least Mary had not held back her smile earlier, and Adrian, who'd missed most of the parade anyway, fetching cherry cordials for his ailing wife, had leaned forward to watch and hear the queen's speech avidly, but mayhap that's how he did everything.

  "And," Frances said with a sniff, "'tis unforgivable for Penelope to miss this since she was rattling on so about the queen's pretty person, as if one's countenance or gowns have aught to do with being a good queen."

  "I'm certain Penelope saw the whole thing from a better vantage point than we." Bella thought she'd best try to defend her sister again, though she was furious with her. "But I must say I'm going to see if she is still unwell. She's excitable and rather hard to bridle-"

  "Indeed," Frances muttered, standing with her hands on both Adrian's and Katherine's arms as Edward Seymour walked in, quite out of breath. "I vow," she went on with a sly wink at Edward, "if I ever caught my Katherine dallying about with a young man the way Penel-"

  "Enough, duchess," John insisted. "Bella and I are doing our best to counsel her to virtue and wisdom while she resides with us."

  Bella nodded, flushed with anger, but her high color was naught next to the hue of boiled radish poor Edward Seymour had taken on. So, Bella thought, and tucked it away in her mind to tell the queen, mayhap young Seymour bore watching with the young woman who was by blood Elizabeth's heir, though Her Majesty would no doubt be loath ever to name her so.

  ON THE HE STAIRS, following the Grey party down, John whispered to Bella, "The old raven's right about one thing. We can't leave if Penelope's lying down or gadding about, not with such a crowd outside. But I've no stomach for searching for her after that mad dog came in off the street and nearly bit me. I'd like to have run him through, but the cur went back out through the postern door that stood ajar. And if your sister has run off to some liaison d'amour, I'd like to run her through."

  "Please, my lord," Bella protested, lifting her index finger to her lips. At least, she thought, only a serving girl edging her way up the stairs could have heard as the duchess's party was chatting among themselves.

  "Excuse me, sir, madam," the wench said as she plastered herself against the wall to let her betters pass, "but I saw a fair-haired young lady going upstairs a bit ago."

  "That can't be," Bella said. "She never came into the room."

  "Those stairs," the girl said, pointing upward to the narrowed staircase that went to third-floor garret under the eaves.

  "I suppose," John said, "it would be a loftier vantage point, but Arundel said it's full of my Lord Seymour's old boxes and such. I recall," he went on as the Duchess of Suffolk stopped below to look up and listen, "it's where he planned much of his . . ."

  "His rebellion, his treason?" Frances put in, her voice cold as river wind. "Spit it out, man. We've all been touched by both and can only pray there will be none such in this new reign."

  "Amen to that," Bella whispered.

  John surprised her by tugging away and heading up the steps. Excusing herself, lifting her skirts, Bella hurried after him.

  "Penelope, are you up here?" she heard John call.

  Dim, dust-drenched, the chill room was gabled with a beamed roof and crowded with waist-high draped boxes covered with old brocade coverlets and velvet curtains. This upper room had broad windows on two sides, yet the shutters were closed but for a single shaft of light that stabbed itself into the floorboards.

  "No one's here or has been," she said, and sneezed. "Let's go look for her at the house."

  "It's a damned lot colder up here than below," he said as if he weren't listening again. To her dismay, before she could snatch his arm, he clomped across the wooden floor to throw open a shutter. She sneezed again at the dust he had disturbed and some strange, acrid smell.

  It was then Bella saw the familiar shoes peeking out from between two big chests. Satin shoes with legs in them, the buff-hued stockings wrinkled and uncharacteristically loose-gartered. As Bella gasped and leaned forward, bare, splayed thighs came into view. The left one above the knee bore the distinctive rose-shaped birthmark. Layers of petticoats and the green gown were twisted up about naked hips.

  John jolted so hard when he saw he jerked back into the shutters to make a hollow bang. He began to retch. But that, like the remnants of crowd noise outside, was drowned by Bella's piercing scream.

  Chapter The Second

  WHERE ELIZABETH WONDERED, WAS BELLA Harington? Surely, she dared not be late for this.

  Of the thirty-nine women lined up behind her, each pulling a sixteen-yard-long train of costly velvet, Bella was missing from her place. Worse, Kat was whispering to Elizabeth's Principal Secretary, William Cecil, who should have been long seated with her Privy Council in the Abbey just a short walk away.

  Elizabeth stood bedecked in a cloth of gold and brocade gown. The ermine robes lay so heavy on her slender shoulders that they gave her pause. The Keeper of the Jewels had warned her that the crown would be heavy too, as well as the jewel-encrusted orb and scepter she would touch for the first time in the ceremony this morning.

  Did they think because she was a young, slight woman, she could not bear up under all that was to come? As soon as she was crowned, she would set them all straight, and quickly too.

  But where was Bella? Elizabeth raised her voice above the excited whispers and constant hum of crowd noise from the packed street outside. "Kat Ashley and Lord Cecil! To me!" Looking as if they'd been caught filching sweets, they came posthaste.

  "I warrant I am the one who should be overwrought, not you," Elizabeth insisted when he dropped a swift, smooth bow and she a curtsy. "Your countenances could curdle milk. Is there some stir to compare with the mere crowning of the queen? And where is Bella Harington?"

  They dared exchange quick looks without answering. Finally Cecil cleared his throat. "She is indisposed, Your Majesty."

  "Sore ill? I saw her but yesterday along the route of my procession, looking hale and hearty, her lord too."

  "Suddenly ill," Kat put in, gripping her hands along the broad expanse of her waistline. She shot another glance at Cecil. "After the ceremony we'll have time to talk of such."

  As if that settled the matter, Kat began to fool with the gold-edged neck ruff Elizabeth wore. She ignored her fussing and stared Cecil down over Kat's bent head. "I have charged you, my lord, not to fail to tell your queen what she must know."

  Wily lawyer or not, the man looked surprised. Aha, then,
she had guessed something was afoot besides the entire populace of London waiting for her outside these palace doors.

  "Your brilliance and perspicacity never cease to amaze me, Your Grace," Cecil said with a nod. "But we did not wish to have anything sully the beauty of this day for you. Bella's younger sister has died under circumstances we are trying yet to ferret out. The matter is in competent hands, and I shall have a complete report for you after the long morning in the Abbey, which must begin now."

  "So Bella is not ill but shocked and grieved?"

  "Sick at heart," Kat put in.

  "I understand. John too, of course." The queen commiserated, realizing how much she had recently profited from her own sister's death.

  Bella had also suffered a falling-out with her sister, Elizabeth recalled, but hardly one as dire or momentous as that between the royal Tudor sisters. She shook her head, which taught her not to shake her head. Wearing her long red-gold hair loose to remind them all she was a maiden yet but with her father's blazing hair was all well and good, but her tresses kept snagging in her ruff and crimson cap.

  "Kat," she said as her dear friend saw her plight and reached to free her hair, "is it not sad the Haringtons have come so far with me, seen me at my lowest ebb, and then must miss this crest of my life to-"