The Lost Duchess Read online

  He stroked her hair and nuzzled her cheek, and while she knew she should not allow any man to kiss her, he was not exactly doing that, so she did no more than try to wriggle away from him discreetly.

  ‘This palace is no better for you,’ he murmured. ‘It’s a prison, just the same: a gilded cage.’

  ‘I think of it so sometimes; then I tell myself I am a callow fool. I should be unreservedly thankful to live in the comfort I do, and have the honour of being close to the Queen in her service.’

  ‘Be thankful, darling mistress, but remember Her Majesty will not live forever and she does not know everything. You may always marry in secret,’ he whispered, ‘and then …’

  ‘Shush!’ She covered his mouth. ‘Do not speak in that way. Long live the Queen! I cannot think of aught else. Whenever she is defied, she always finds out. You must have heard that when she discovered Lady Mary Scudamore’s marriage she gave her such a beating that she broke the lady’s finger.’

  ‘I had been told the story. But I say again, she does not know everything. Does she see us now?’ He placed a kiss on her shoulder. ‘Does she know of this?’ He kissed her just below the collar bone, more a peck than a kiss; he did not touch her lips. Did that mean it was all right? In truth she knew it was not, and she wrenched free of him.

  ‘I must not do anything of which Her Majesty would not approve.’

  ‘Do not fret, my sweet.’ He took hold of her again. ‘She is below us now and knows nothing at all of what we do in this room. You are safe here.’ He wrapped her in his arms and brushed his hand over her breasts sending a sensation shooting through her that seemed deeply shameful.

  ‘No!’ She pushed his hand away, feeling her blood rushing to her face. ‘Prithee, no,’ she whispered between gritted teeth.

  She made for the door, and tried the latch, but of course it was locked. Looking back over her shoulder she saw him coming towards her, a solicitous smile lightening his wrinkled face.

  She stood straight and spoke firmly.

  ‘Please open the door. We have been here long enough, and Mistress Parry will be looking for me soon.’ She did not know whether that was right, all she knew was that the Earl now frightened her.

  As he drew nearer she shrank back against the wall. Then he put his hands to the wall-hangings, trapping her between his arms either side, and pushed his body closer until she felt him against her: thighs, chest and groin, and most of all his manhood hard against her crotch.

  ‘Do not worry, my sweet,’ he murmured. ‘I will give you everything you want, for by my troth I love you and I pledge myself to you, to take you for my wife and share all I have …’

  ‘No!’ she gasped. ‘You cannot mean …’

  With a kiss he silenced her, driving his tongue into her mouth along with a bitter taste of sack, while his hands dug for her breasts, pushing down under her chemise, and his hardness rubbed against her inducing a vile sense of heat between her legs.

  ‘We will be married …’ He panted between kisses, forcing her against the wall while his hips ground faster. ‘As you have promised, so I promise you.’ He dragged up her petticoats and touched the bare skin above her garters. ‘I will honour you with titles. You shall be my Duchess …’ He breathed the words between her breasts as she struggled to break free, but his arms were like banded iron, and when he raised his head his glassy eyes were dark and hooded, the smile gone from them. He did not seem to see her.

  ‘But we cannot marry!’ she cried out. ‘Not without a priest.’

  ‘We can.’ He dragged her away and pushed her onto the cushion where she had earlier sat, pinning her down with his weight. ‘Our union can be blessed later. All we need are our promises – I have yours, you have mine – and to be joined as man and wife.’

  ‘Joined. No!’ She pleaded in terror, struggling to get from under him.

  ‘Hush! Remember who is below.’ He took hold of her neck, forcing back her head until her shoulders hit the floor. Her buttocks and legs were left arched over the cushion giving her no leverage to escape. She tried to push him off, tear at his face, punch his throat – anything to stop him. But he dragged up her rope farthingale and pushed the bands over her arms, smothering her fists and face with her petticoats. Then he pulled up her shift and yanked down her drawers, and she felt the cold air touch her where no other man had seen.

  She could only hear him.

  ‘This is what you want; don’t deny it, my love.’

  He pushed her legs apart with his knees, and grabbed at her skirts to uncover her eyes. ‘My sweet,’ he murmured, crouching over and kissing her. ‘You do not need to fight to show me your purity.’

  She tried to bite him, but he leant back quickly, and for a moment, in horror, she saw what he was about to put in her. She shut her eyes tight.

  A scream welled in her throat but she clenched her jaw to hold it back; she must not cry out. If they were discovered in flagrante the shame would be hers.

  She would be ruined.

  His fingers pushed into her, and the pain that came next was like being stabbed with a blade in her most sensitive parts. He was tearing her apart. Only let him finish and it would be over.

  The pain went on and on, and each time he almost withdrew it grew even sharper. The more she fought, the worse it became. She tried to tear at him with her nails but he bowed his back and thrust into her even harder.

  ‘God’s death!’ He shuddered, thrashing against her and pumping frenziedly. ‘Oh, Lord!’

  She must endure it. She was contorted in agony, and her shoulders burnt as they were rubbed against the floor. She turned her head, eyes closed though she wept, and with her ear against the boards she heard sounds from below: the Queen calling in anger and the soft lilt of music.

  2

  Guarded

  ‘Am I not well guarded today, with no man near me who wears a sword at his side?’

  —Queen Elizabeth I in conversation with Sir Christopher Hatton while out walking in Richmond Park in 1586, on seeing the would-be assassin, Robert Barnewell, and meeting his eye after recognising him from a portrait of the ‘six gentlemen’, led by Anthony Babington, who had undertaken to murder her in what later became known as the Babington Plot

  ‘Mistress Emme, please wake; the Queen calls you!’

  The Queen. Emme’s eyes flicked open in panic to see her maid, Biddy, hovering over her.

  Her tongue felt swollen and her mouth almost too dry to speak. A wave of pain flared through her from her belly to her private parts. She curled over and hugged herself, feeling the bulk of the rags between her legs that she had tied in place before climbing into bed, remembering that she had been bleeding the night before. But she was conscious of much more than spotting from the place that hurt; in the rags was the hot stickiness that had become familiar to her every month.

  ‘Thank God,’ she whispered to herself while Biddy told her the time.

  ‘It’s five of the morning, mistress.’

  Daybreak after the night she had been spoiled, but surely she could not have been got with child; her menses would drown any seed in her womb. She wanted to ask Biddy whether she agreed this must be so, though all she did was look at her maid’s simple face, from her starting eyes to her buck teeth just showing above her full lower lip.

  Others were moving about the room: ladies of the royal household and servants. Her young companion, Bess Throckmorton, called out to her shrilly.

  ‘Emme, I’ll see you outside. Come quickly.’

  Biddy held out her gown. ‘Her Majesty is going walking in the garden and you must go with her now, she says.’ Biddy lowered her eyes. ‘You seem to have displeased her, mistress.’

  ‘What has she said …? Oh, no,’ Emme gasped, hearing a flurry of running footsteps and the thud of a door below. ‘I must get up.’

  She dragged the gown over her shoulders and slipped out of the truckle bed, clutching Biddy as she stood, for a moment creased over.

  Biddy took hold of her a
rm. ‘Dear mistress, are you sick? You look ghastly pale …’

  Emme straightened and pressed her hand. ‘My flowers have begun; that’s all.’

  ‘Do you need anything for …?’

  ‘No, thank you. I have to go.’

  She pushed her bare feet into pattens and secured the gown with a silk rope girdle, twisting her hair into a caul net as she left for the stairs. Biddy followed, panting softly, all the way from the canted tower, across the moat, through the herb beds and into the privy orchard. There, behind shrubs and fruit trees still blued with dawn mist, she saw the Queen walking at a pace that left her escort trailing behind her. Dainty Bess Throckmorton was amongst them, and Lady Frances Howard, the Lord High Admiral’s staid sister. The ladies’ maids followed with the Queen’s chief intelligencer, Sir Francis Walsingham, accompanied by his clerk, in their wake.

  Secretary of State Walsingham saw her first.

  ‘I would speak with you, Mistress Fifield.’ He inclined his head, fixing her with his dark hooded eyes while a thin smile formed on his long gaunt face.

  Could he have found out what had happened to her? Emme stared back at him in dread, aware that Walsingham knew everything; he was the eyes and ears of the Queen. But perhaps all he wanted was to extract more information from her of the kind which had so far kept her in his favour and for which her father had been rewarded in small ways. Walsingham seemed to value her opinion on what was being said at court out of the hearing of the Queen, and to trust her integrity in delivering him the truth. His interest should have been a credit to her, yet, at that moment, she could not have wished him further away. She smiled back at him uneasily.

  ‘Now, my lord Secretary?’

  ‘I will speak with her now.’

  The Queen’s strident voice sent a tremble down Emme’s spine. She looked ahead and saw that the Queen had stopped and was beckoning her closer.

  ‘Come, Mistress Fifield, and do not keep me waiting as you did last night.’

  Emme held her skirts and tripped forwards, eyes averted from those she passed, but feeling their looks like darts in her back. She curtseyed low over the damp camomile as Lady Howard and Bess Throckmorton stepped away, leaving her before the Queen alone.

  ‘Your Grace,’ she said, rising with her head still bowed.

  ‘Let us talk.’ The Queen walked on. ‘What were you doing yestereve?’

  ‘I was …’ Emme’s mind spun, turning with explanations, none of them convincing. She could not tell the truth, not the whole truth. She would not even mention Lord Hertford’s name. The Queen must not suspect that there had been any intimacy between them, that she had been defiled and was now no longer a virgin. She could not believe that Lord Hertford would openly admit to having ‘married’ her, far less to having ravaged her. He would say she had enticed him or had fabricated a fantasy, anything but accept that he was guilty of any wrong. The blame would be hers if their indiscretion became known. She would be vilified, ruined and sent back to her father in disgrace. No one must find out what had happened to her. Yet she felt as if her shame must show like dirt on her face. She could not lie; lying was anathema, against the deepest principles by which she had always led her life, and something about her demeanour would be sure to give her away. Most of all she could not lie to Her Majesty. If she was found out …

  ‘Well?’ The Queen quickened her steps making Emme hurry to keep up. Her proud face showed no gentleness when she turned for an answer. Unmade-up and wan, with deep lines either side of her thin-lipped mouth, her face seemed haggard and she looked every one of her near fifty-three years, though Emme was shocked to think it, even having seen her thus before.

  ‘I was abed,’ she said, clinging to the truth. ‘I was sick.’

  ‘Oh, give me reasons more convincing!’ The Queen’s voice rose, snapping back. ‘Every maid of mine who dallies with a courtier, making eyes when she should be doing my bidding, will tell me later that she has been sick. What sickness was it that kept you from your duty to your Sovereign yet the next day leaves you fit to walk and talk? You shared a bedchamber with Lady Frances Howard last night and she tells me she was not aware of you being ill. I have no doubt about what you were doing, and do not forswear yourself by denying it.’

  Emme bowed her head, seeing no choice but to be admonished for a failing not her fault.

  ‘I am sorry I did not attend on you as I should have done.’

  ‘Sorry! Yes, you should be sorry.’ The Queen spoke so loudly that Emme had to force herself to keep walking and not edge away, while the humiliation of knowing that everyone following must have heard was like a brand against her shoulders that made them shrink back.

  ‘I will not fail you again, Your Grace, I promise.’

  ‘Pah! Promises …’ The Queen waved dismissively. ‘Raise your pretty face, Mistress Fifield, and let me see you properly.’

  Emme looked at her, but not at her eyes.

  ‘You are very young,’ the Queen said in a much quieter tone.

  ‘I am twenty-one years of age,’ Emme responded. Not young at all, she thought, though she did not say so.

  The Queen gave a soft hollow laugh and turned towards the bright sunshine that was brimming over the palace walls. Then she wiped at her eye, perhaps because of the light, Emme could not tell; she spoke wistfully.

  ‘Young enough to think that the world can turn around a love sonnet, to have no cares beyond the attention of a favoured gentleman, to nurture ambition without limit, and think that death can never touch you. I know what it is to be that young.’

  Emme lowered her gaze, humbled by the Queen’s candour, both relieved that she had not suspected the truth and saddened that she supposed her carefree.

  ‘But I am a Prince,’ the Queen said in a harder voice, ‘and as a Prince I had to leave my youth behind. My duty has always been to England, as yours is now to me. We cannot put our own desires first, or rest from the burden placed upon us, or ever lower our guard.’

  She looked quickly round, and Emme followed her gaze, breathing in the fragrance of crushed camomile as she watched the ladies who were following some paces behind suddenly stop, while Secretary Walsingham raised his head from a conversation with his clerk. A hush descended on everyone, broken only by a cockerel’s crow and the faint tolling of a bell in the distance. Nothing moved until the Queen raised her chin, nodded, then turned and carried on walking. She spoke to Emme in a way no one else would hear.

  ‘I am loved by my subjects but all my life I have known that there are those who will pose as loyal with treason in their hearts, and they can reach me anywhere.’

  Emme felt a chill run through her. Did the Queen fear for her own safety now, here in the Privy Garden? She looked about, wondering what the shadows might hide.

  ‘I would lay down my life to protect you,’ she said softly.

  ‘I do not ask for your life,’ the Queen answered with a wry smile, ‘merely that you come to me when I ask for you, and, if I wish to take ease in a few moments’ diversion, that you are always ready to keep me company, even if only to sing to me.’

  Emme dropped to her knees. ‘Always, Your Majesty, I will always do your bidding.’

  ‘Rise, girl, and be of some use rather than mopping up the dew.’ The Queen gestured for Emme to get up, and chuckled quietly. ‘We have a pirate to receive, and an ambassador to keep in ignorance.’ She looked towards her ladies and signalled for them to come nearer.

  ‘Sir Francis Drake arrives this morning after almost a year spent pricking Spain’s pride in the New World and avenging us for past treachery. Let us honour him with a fit welcome, and ensure that His Excellency, the Baron de Chateauneuf, has news of our hero’s triumphant return which he may report to his Spanish friends, as well as his master, the King of France. But let the Baron not learn too much before I have spoken to Sir Francis alone. Therefore please stay with him, Lady Howard, and ensure that he speaks neither to Sir Francis nor his men. Charm the Baron to distraction, Mistress T
hrockmorton, and together keep him company in the Presence Chamber while I hear Sir Francis in private. Meanwhile you, Mistress Fifield, may ensure that any gentlemen Sir Francis brings with him are also entertained in the same place, and not left wandering in the Great Hall or Gallery able to converse with all and sundry. But keep them apart, good ladies, I particularly do not wish the French Ambassador to have a chance to question anyone newly returned from Virginia.’ She gestured them away then admonished them further as they drew aside.

  ‘Wear your finest gowns, but no colours, and leave your partlet off, Mistress Throckmorton; the day is already warm enough for your throat to be uncovered.’

  Emme noticed her friend’s fleeting frown as she curtseyed in response, and felt sorry for her, certain that the Baron’s attention would be below Bess’s throat. She herself would cover up as much as possible in case Lord Hertford was still at court, but if he was, and he saw her, what then? Should she try to avoid him or act as if nothing had occurred between them? Yet it had, and her whole body stiffened at the recollection of what he had done. Head down, she followed the Queen’s ladies last, and each step was a suppressed stamp on the thought of that man.

  ‘You are still in favour, I see.’

  The voice startled her, and she turned to find Secretary Walsingham picking his way like a lugubrious black stork at her side.

  ‘The Queen has forgiven you for whatever vexed her last night; that is good. Her moods change like the tide, and never more so than now when her life is in greatest danger.’

  Emme caught his eye in sudden apprehension. ‘Her Majesty hinted as much. Yet surely no one near her would cause her harm?’

  The Secretary of State inclined his skull-capped head.

  ‘There is a priest in the Tower as we speak, spilling out the names of those sworn to a new plot to murder her, and though we have apprehended most of the traitors, the ringleader has so far managed to evade capture.’