The Lost Duchess Read online

  ‘Who?’ she asked softly, fearing the answer might be a friend.

  ‘Anthony Babington.’

  She nodded with a shiver, remembering him as a vain gallant and a rumoured Catholic, and that she had been introduced to him once. ‘I have met Master Babington at court.’

  Secretary Walsingham’s hooded eyes slid towards her. ‘If you spot him here again then inform the guards immediately, though I think it unlikely that he will dare to show his face, and if he does then he will be disguised. You might bear that in mind.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Her Majesty is aware of the danger.’

  His jaw clenched in a grimace, and she sensed his hatred of anyone who would think of harming the Queen; it clung to him like sweat – a hatred which must have been inflamed because a would-be assassin was still at large, even making it prudent for him to warn her. She watched him turn his head slowly, looking from side to side; then he hunched his shoulders.

  ‘Now what did Lord Hertford say?’

  She looked at him in amazement. How did he know she had spoken to Lord Hertford? Someone must have seen her near him, presumably in the gallery. But could they have been spotted leaving together by the tower stairs? Could Secretary Walsingham have guessed where they had gone? He could not possibly know what the Earl had done to her; the door had been locked …

  ‘I …’ She saw him smile thinly as she began. ‘I only spoke with Lord Hertford briefly.’

  He would not be interested in what had happened to her, she tried to reassure herself while panic surged through her like cold lightning. All Secretary Walsingham ever wanted from her was intelligence concerning the powerful and to know what others were saying about affairs of state. Though Lord Hertford was important, what he had done to her was not, at least not in the greater order. Her humiliation would be of no concern to Secretary Walsingham. Her worthlessness was absolute. Oh God, she wanted the ground to swallow her up, and to turn her back on the tawdry affairs of the world. She wanted to die. But life would not let her go so easily. She gritted her teeth and stared at a knot of clipped box like a miniature maze. She supposed she must satisfy Walsingham with snippets as she usually did.

  ‘… He told me that Sir Francis Drake had taken all the men from the fort in Virginia and that Sir Walter Raleigh would be angry since he had invested a fortune in the venture, most especially since he had sent Sir Richard Grenville with fresh supplies. He thought Sir Walter would soon be arriving from Ireland.’

  ‘That he will,’ Secretary Walsingham put in, with his head on one side as if waiting for more.

  They were approaching the moat, and Emme took her chance to step ahead and enter the covered bridge first. Their conversation came to a halt as Lady Frances Howard took her arm.

  ‘Hurry, Mistress Emme. We must get ready.’ The lady’s fingers dug in as Emme glanced back, but Walsingham was already talking again with his clerk. She noticed Biddy waiting ahead and waved her on.

  Lady Howard spoke breathlessly. ‘I hope you will help me, dear Emme.’

  Help in what way? ‘I will, if I am able, my lady.’ Emme was taken aback, the more so when Lady Howard kept looking over her shoulder and peering into stairwells and doorways. ‘Only tell me how.’

  ‘Not yet,’ the lady whispered, ‘I will tell you in private,’ though they were soon far enough removed to have little chance of being overheard.

  What concerned her? Emme glanced at the lady askance, loath to be drawn into sharing another’s troubles when she had troubles enough of her own, wanting only to sit and try to order her thoughts. Yet Lady Howard had always been good to her, despite a manner usually so reserved that Bess Throckmorton considered her conceited, and Emme would not fail anyone in real need. Her surprise was that the lady might consider confiding in her at all. Lady Frances Howard was almost past the age of marriage, effectively made a spinster by her loyalty to the Queen, and Emme could not imagine her having any problems she might be coy about revealing yet wish to share with someone like herself – someone much younger with far less claim to nobility. Once they had climbed the tower stairs, Lady Howard looked down into the courtyards through every window they passed. She was plainly anxious, and Emme looked through the windows too, wondering whether there could be a connection between the threat to the Queen and this strange behaviour of Lady Howard’s, seeing men too far away to identify wandering about in the shadows below, and light slicing in shafts across the pale limestone walls.

  But whatever privacy Lady Howard might have hoped for, it was not going to be found in their dressing room for a while. Opening the door, they were confronted by Bess having her sleeves sewn in place while her white silk skirts were pinned in falling pleats over a bell farthingale and her veil was attached to a huge heart-shaped wire frame behind her head. The only parts of her unadorned by an extravagance of white dress were her face, her hands, and her soft milk-white breast. As soon as she saw Emme, her face lit up, though her body was immobilised by all the pinning and tucking.

  ‘Emme, hurry, you haven’t much time. You must put on your best for Sir Francis Drake. I cannot wait to meet him,’ she added, with a shy smile at Lady Howard as if she had only just noticed her. Then she whispered to Emme, ‘I’ll swoon at his feet if he so much as looks at me.’

  ‘You will do no such thing.’ Lady Howard eyed her sternly and circuited past her to reach the bedchamber. ‘Your attention must be on the French Ambassador as the Queen has commanded. And why should Sir Francis look at you?’ She surveyed Bess up and down with a dismissive tilt of her chin. ‘Come, Mistress Emme.’ She beckoned Emme into the next room, giving Bess another shrivelling look. ‘I have something special that you might consider wearing.’

  Emme followed, and Lady Howard unlocked her chest, rattling the key in the lock, and throwing back the lid with a thud. Then she closed the door, and pressed her back against it, an expression of worry on her pinched and tired face.

  ‘Have you seen Lord Hertford?’

  Emme drew breath sharply. ‘What makes you think …’

  ‘Snuff told me,’ Lady Howard forestalled her. ‘He saw you meet in the gallery.’

  ‘But how …?’ Emme grasped for an explanation while the name ‘Snuff’ flashed through her mind. Snuff: Lord Leicester’s man and the Queen’s favourite jester. She had not even realised he was back at court, but it was typical of him to reappear and not be noticed. He was the kind of character who could be anything – an invisible nonentity or the uproarious centre of attention. Wasn’t he meant to be with his master on campaign in the Low Countries? But Snuff often delivered messages back and forth. He must have returned and made himself inconspicuous so as to pick up observations he could take back to Lord Leicester. Did it matter who had seen her? She had been spotted; she had to accept it. Wherever the court was based, the palace walls had eyes and ears. She thought back to the gallery when Lord Hertford had accosted her, remembering it as being empty near the side door where he’d stood. All she had noticed was a side table and tapestries; could Snuff have been behind an arras or underneath the carpet covering the table? Whatever the explanation, there was no point in denying she had met the Earl; Secretary Walsingham also knew she had.

  ‘Lord Hertford greeted me last night,’ she said. ‘I believe he has come to see the return of Sir Francis Drake.’

  Lady Howard sat down, and Emme watched her carefully, wondering how much had been observed, and what exactly Lady Howard had been told. She was clearly struggling to stay contained; her face trembled then set in a mask of despair, only to quiver again before she spoke.

  ‘Did Lord Hertford mention me at all?’

  ‘No,’ Emme answered, puzzling over the question while not even wanting to think of it. Lord Hertford and what he had done to her festered like a foul canker in her mind. She would have given everything she possessed to erase all awareness of him. But she could not say that to Lady Howard. She tried to keep her tone light.

  ‘Why should the Earl have spo
ken of you to me?’

  ‘Oh, Emme,’ Lady Howard spluttered, then leant over towards Emme and sobbed against her chest. Emme took the lady in her arms without understanding her distress, only that it was real and she needed comfort.

  Lady Howard wailed into Emme’s gown. ‘He is here and he has sent me no message. He ignores me as if I mean nothing to him. I cannot bear it any longer …’ She collapsed into blubbering incomprehension.

  Emme hugged her, gently rubbing her back, guessing that the lady must feel some fondness for Lord Hertford, though wanting to scream that he was nothing but a vile rake.

  ‘I see you care for him.’

  ‘Of course I care! This pretence is killing me. Know the truth because I must tell someone.’ Lady Howard looked up and grasped Emme by the arms, her hands shaking as her grip tightened. ‘He is my husband!’

  Emme stared, dumbfounded. Could that possibly be true? She thought of the Earl with herself. Could he have taken his pleasure with her, after gaining her confidence with lies, and moreover betrayed this noble lady, if Lady Howard was indeed his wife?

  Lady Howard clung to her beseechingly. ‘Believe me. We have pledged our troth before a priest, but no one else knows of it because of the Queen.’

  ‘Why because if her?’

  ‘She will not hear of it. She flew into a rage when I ventured to ask her permission. She says I must have nothing to do with him, that my lord would not care for me …’

  ‘Perhaps she is right,’ Emme said with conviction.

  ‘But she does not know him as I do. He is good, kind, generous and most honourable.’

  ‘You cannot know that for certain …’ Emme bit her tongue, on the point of revealing her own anguish, but realising that she might well not be believed, and, even if she was, Lady Howard would probably blame her for leading the Earl on. The ignominy would be hers. A woman of lesser standing would always be held responsible for the transgression if a man knew her carnally outside wedlock. She was not fool enough to think that Lady Howard would give her real sympathy. As one of the Queen’s most senior ladies, Lady Howard would be most concerned to ensure there was no scandal at Court, and next she would be concerned to preserve her own position and Lord Howard’s. She would probably see Emme banished back to the countryside or a nunnery, condemned to isolation for the rest of her life. Emme forced herself to keep silent as Lady Howard went on.

  ‘The Queen disapproves because she cannot bear the idea of anyone close to her finding happiness in marriage. You know what she is like: always railing to us about the woes and dangers of wedlock. She has still not forgiven my lord for his first marriage to Lady Catherine, and because she will not recognise it, his sons remain bastards denied their titles.’

  Lady Howard gave a few racked sobs while Emme tried to make sense of what she had said. The Queen’s reaction she could understand, since Lord Hertford’s sons by Lady Catherine Grey might be in line for the throne if they were recognised as legitimate. The Queen had been furious with him for getting the lady with child, and perhaps she would not now want to see him marrying Lady Frances, further binding together the powerful families of Howard and Seymour. Yet Emme could still barely accept Lord Hertford’s deceit. Why had he abused her when he already had a wife?

  The lady took a few deep shuddering breaths.

  ‘If the Queen found out he had wed again to me, she might throw him back in the Tower. She must not know. So we behave like strangers. We have not even dared share a bed for fear I might conceive and our secret be revealed. Yet I cannot bear to continue to act this false part, unable to show my love to my lord as a wife should, always separated, always wondering whether his affection is now waning because we have never been able to know one another fully.’

  ‘The marriage has not been consummated?’ Emme asked in a state of shock. If it had not been consummated then it was no marriage at all, and what did that make her? She had exchanged promises with Lord Hertford in banter, and then he had forced an act of love-making upon her. Was she now truly his wife?

  ‘No,’ Lady Howard said, weeping with her face in her hands. ‘We have not dared to take the risk. Oh, but I love him.’ She raised her head and looked at Emme, wiping vainly at the tears that streamed down her cheeks. ‘I love him so much.’

  Emme put her arms across the lady’s shoulders and bent her head close to hers. What could she say? That the lady had married a rogue; that she was not wed to him truly and should do her best to forget him? But to justify that she would have to reveal her own ugly secret and hurt the lady even more. She could not do it. She patted Lady Howard’s arm, and she hated herself for compounding the lady’s delusion.

  ‘I am sure he will seek you out as soon as he has an opportunity, and the Queen’s objection may well soften with time. He is already in favour enough to be welcomed back at court.’

  ‘Yes, you are right.’ Lady Howard straightened her back and wiped at her eyes. ‘We may not have much longer to wait before we can announce our union before the world.’ She composed her face and stood up proudly. ‘Please forgive me for a moment of weakness and burdening you with a confidence I should have kept to myself.’

  ‘It is no burden, and I shall tell no one; have no fear of that.’

  ‘You are a darling, Mistress Emme.’ Lady Howard kissed her then took a step away. ‘Now let us prepare, or Sir Francis Drake will be upon us before we are even properly dressed.’

  They were soon engulfed in a ferment of activity. Sleeves and kirtles were matched with gowns and bodices, all in the black and white prescribed by the Queen. Maids tightened laces and secured garments with neat stitches; they tugged and pinned, pleated and tucked. Eventually Emme was transformed into a rigid walking ornament. Her waist was crushed so small she knew she would not be able to eat, and the wooden busk at the point where her bodice tapered over her groin meant she would not even be able to sit. Her hair was scraped back until she winced, and her feet were squeezed into tiny slippers. Whitening stiffened her face and kohl inflamed her eyes. She was ready and she was not. In appearance she was finished once a chain girdle and pomander were hung over her hips, and a pendant necklace with a rope of pearls was hooked around her neck. But her mind remained in turmoil, and she left the chambers of the ladies-in-waiting to try and find somewhere quiet before the arrival of the guests. She walked past bustling servants through rooms smelling of new tapestries and freshly scattered herbs. She wandered down winding staircases, and along galleries and passages, until she came to the tower by the watergate and the covered bridge over the moat that led to the old friars’ meadows. From here she could walk beside the river in peace. She nodded to the yeomen guards as she stepped outside.

  Bright sunshine warmed her and the gentle sounds of the Thames reminded her of a calmer life. She breathed in the languid summer smells of hot grass and marsh. There was a semblance of freedom even if the reality was different: that she was trapped in a role from which she could not escape, bound in duty to the Queen, subject to Her Majesty’s commands and the wishes of her father, unable to leave court without permission, and that unlikely unless a husband was found for her of whom the Queen approved, yet now she had been damaged in a way that would make no decent gentleman want her. Perhaps, if Lord Hertford were to insist upon it, and proclaim the matter in public, she would have no choice but to accept she was already tied to him in matrimony. But she doubted he would do that, and she would not recognise it meekly. She pulled at a head of tall grass and ripped the seed into her hand. She would not willingly be Lord Hertford’s wife, his duchess or anything else. She loathed him. He had posed as her friend and then foully abused her trust. She wanted nothing more to do with him, and surely, if she avoided him, then he would not really put himself at risk of once more incurring the Queen’s wrath by admitting to another clandestine marriage? She could not believe that he ever meant to wed her, only that he had sought to satisfy his lust. If he was going to admit to any marriage then common sense dictated it would be to gr
acious Lady Howard. She tore the seeds off another grass stalk and threw them towards the river. Her situation had been made worse, but she would have to find a way of coping. Man’s life was full of sorrow, but a woman’s sorrow was greater; all she could do was endure. She felt another wave of pain and took some comfort in that; at least she would not be carrying Lord Hertford’s child. She must ensure that he never got an opportunity to take advantage of her again and make that prospect a possibility.

  Looking downstream, she gazed at the Thames as it turned west between wooded banks, thinking of the twists and turns it would take to reach Hampton Court, and then the great city of London with its thousands of people. She saw the russet sails of the wherry boats glowing orange in the sun, and the herons standing sentry around the nearest river ait, just visible amongst the reeds. Mallards paddled by, honking; swallows skimmed over the shining water; and above a skyline broken by a distant church steeple and the hatched stripes of open fields, clouds seemed to hang in a stupor, fat, puffy and white, while her mind span in anguish, conscious of the hurt to her maidenhood afresh. What should she do? What could she do?

  Then she heard the faint sound of music: sackbuts, shawms and flutes, and, from around a large willow-covered island, a glittering barge slid majestically into view. It was rowed by a score or more oarsmen all dressed in red livery; from poles behind its canopy flew pennants in Tudor green and white, the standard at its stern bore the cross of St George, and amongst the heraldic shields that adorned its gilded upper-works she recognised the white waves on black with two stars of Sir Francis Drake. He was here. She must get back. As she hurried towards the watergate, a fanfare resounded from atop the tower.

  Rushing through the long gallery in the Privy Lodgings, she made for the north gate to cross the bridge, and so through Fountain Court to reach the Great Hall where the visitors would be received. But her skirts hindered her steps, and her corsets meant she could barely breathe; she slowed every time she passed a guard, and her dash came to a standstill once she entered the courtyard beyond the moat. There, in the shadow of the fountain, she saw Lord Hertford stoop to refresh himself from one of the fountain’s beasts and roses. He straightened, wiped his mouth and looked towards her in a ray of light. She shrank into the nearest doorway as he blinked, his leathery face twisting into a sardonic smile, eyes narrowed, lips pulled back from his yellowing teeth. She opened the door and stepped inside, closing it behind her fast. She glanced at him from a window and saw him sauntering towards the Hall’s entrance. If she went that way she would risk encountering him, yet the visitors were approaching; she could hear music and cheering, trumpets and drums. Her only sure hope of reaching the Hall in time lay in dashing across the courtyard and entering behind the Earl. She would not do it.