Read The Queen's Gamble Online

Authors: Barbara Kyle

The Queen's Gamble (6 page)

Adam said, an apology in his voice, “Isabel, it’s the coming child that matters.” She looked back at him and he said, “I care very much about the child.”

She saw that he
did
care, deeply, and it touched her. But she had had enough of being shut out of this family. She put all the steel she could into her voice. “If you want me to do this, if you want me to see to the welfare of your wife and child, then tell me everything. If you won’t, I swear I will book passage on the very next ship bound for Spain and then sail home to Peru. Decide, Adam. Now.”

4

The Borderland Threat

“Y
ou always were the stubborn one.” Adam’s frustrated smile told Isabel that he was going to tell her what she wanted to know. They set out walking again, and although she still felt tender and bruised from the rough handling of her attackers, she kept up with her brother’s stride, impatient to hear. Turning south on Walbrook, they passed a cluster of livery halls—Chandlers Hall, Cutlers Hall, Skinners Hall—but Adam didn’t speak until they turned onto Thames Street. A warren of narrow streets led down to the river a few hundred feet away. He guided her down one.

“First,” he said, “Father is advising the Queen’s council about buying munitions in the Low Countries. No one knows Antwerp better than he does, and its merchant networks.”

Of that much, Isabel was well aware. As a wool cloth merchant with business on both sides of the Narrow Seas, their father had always kept a house in Antwerp. When she was a child the family had lived there for a time. But what was this business about munitions? She put that question aside for the moment and asked, “And Mother?”

“She helped arrange a visit of the Scottish Earl of Arran, all in secret. She kept him in Sir William Cecil’s house on Canon Row, and the Queen met him in private.” He added with some vigor, “The rumor that the Queen wanted to talk marriage with the Earl is nonsense. It was just a political meeting. She sent him back to Scotland. He can do some good there.”

Scotland. She remembered her parents whispering at the supper table about Scotland. “Who is the Earl of Arran?”

He looked at her as if to say, You don’t even know
that?

She tried to keep the angry frustration out of her voice. “As you said, I’ve been away a long time.”

They had reached Adam’s destination, the Old Swan Stairs, one of the city’s oldest wharfs, and they stopped at the street edge that overlooked the busy jetty. Seagulls shrilled over the fishwives at their stalls and over the housewives and servants shopping for the day’s catch. On the water stairs wherrymen beckoned customers into their boats. A young lordling in a crimson cape trimmed with fox fur led a painted lady by the hand into a tilt boat and they disappeared under its canopy.

“You’ve come home at a crisis, Bel,” Adam said. “There’s no other way to put it. Look around you. By spring, London could be occupied by French troops.”

She gaped at him. The thought was appalling. “How? Why?”

“The Auld Alliance.”

“The what?”

“That’s what the Scots call it. Goes back over two hundred and fifty years. A pact between France and Scotland, signed by every one of their monarchs for over two centuries, as a hedge against
us
. They’ve sworn that if either country is attacked by England, the other will invade English territory.”

“But I don’t understand. England hasn’t attacked anyone.”

“That’s not the point. Over the centuries the alliance has fused the two countries together. Twenty years ago the Scottish King James married a daughter of the mightiest family in France, the house of Guise, the power behind the French throne, and since then Scotland’s been a vassal state of France. Even more so since James died with no son, so his baby daughter, Mary Stuart, became Queen of Scots. The French sent her to Paris and married her to their king’s son. That son became king a few months ago, so the sixteen-year-old Queen of Scots is now Queen of France, too.”

“Then who rules in Scotland?”

“Her mother, Marie de Guise. She governs as the Queen Regent. And back in Paris her Guise brothers, five of them, from dukes to bishops, advise their teenage king. They’re the real rulers of France. But here’s the thing. Not all Scots have been happy with France running Scotland. Their nobles have been seething for years at how Frenchmen dominate the court in Edinburgh, and the Protestants among them have been seething at Catholic rule. Now they’ve come together under a leader named John Knox. He’s not a lord or even a gentleman, just a common Scot, a Protestant preacher. But he’s a fiery one, and clever, and he’s organized their forces, and a month ago they rose up against their French overlords. The French responded by sending thousands of soldiers to Scotland. They’re about to put down the rebels. That’s—”

“Adam, stop. What has all this got to do with England? You said there’s a crisis. How?”

“Because of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. She has Tudor blood, and since Europe’s Catholics consider our queen illegitimate—damn their hides—the Queen of Scots has declared to all the world that
she
is the rightful queen of England. Do you see? The Guise family, running both France and Scotland, are poised to crush the Scottish rebels and then look south to the bigger prize—us. They’re using the rebellion emergency as a chance to flood our northern border with troops as a first step to invading England and putting Mary Stuart on the throne.”

Invasion
. The word held terror for Isabel. Images of blood splashed her mind—slaughtered English defenders, raped Englishwomen, scorched English fields.

“The Scottish lords have asked England for help in their fight,” Adam went on. “Our Queen has been reluctant to take sides, but she did meet secretly with the rebel Earl of Arran because he has a claim to the Scottish throne. Her support of him will give the rebels heart.”

“Sir Adam,” a man called.

They looked down at the jetty where a boat nudged the water stairs. Isabel recognized the man standing in the bow—Adam’s friend who’d helped fight off her attackers. The boat was a ship’s longboat, and six sailors sat behind him at the oars.

“Rogers,” Adam called back, “come up here.” As the man jogged up the steps, Adam said to Isabel, “My lieutenant.” When Rogers reached them, Adam said, “See this lady home, would you? It’s not far, Bishopsgate Street. Meet me back at the ship.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Give us a moment first.” The lieutenant ambled to a diplomatic distance to wait, and Adam said to Isabel, “I must be off.”

“But we’ll fight them if they dare attack,” she said, her mind locked on the French threat. “Queen Elizabeth will surely beat them back.”

“How? She has no standing army. She took over a country that her sister left bankrupt. And as I’ve told you, she inherited a navy that’s just a handful of run-down ships.”

He made it sound terrible. Isabel had had no idea things were so bad.

“What’s worse, she can’t be sure of the loyalty of half her subjects.” Adam’s voice hardened. “The Catholics. Many of them practice their religion in secret, and with growing hostility. Especially in the north—Yorkshire, Northumberland—where the old ways are so rooted. And some of them are very powerful lords. The Queen just dismissed the Earl of Northumberland as Warden of the East and Middle Marches, which is basically the whole Scottish frontier, because he’s a known Catholic and she can’t trust him if it comes to choosing sides.” Isabel bristled at that, but Adam barreled on. “Elizabeth’s hold on the throne is so precarious, people are laying bets throughout Europe on whether her reign will see a second year.”

His use of the Queen’s Christian name sounded shocking. So intimate. “You call her Elizabeth? To her face?”

He scowled. “Isabel, have you heard what I’ve said? Her throne is threatened from within and without the realm. The French are poised to attack us, and the Catholic holdouts—English traitors—may well join them. She may not survive as Queen.”

“I do hear you. But invasion? It seems impossible. The French would not find England easy to subjugate, you know that.
They
must know that. Englishmen will fight fiercely for their liberty. And as for the Catholics here, respect for the old faith does not make any Englishman a traitor. They too will fight for their Queen.”

“Think you so?” He sounded unconvinced, and added with cool sarcasm, “If you’re wrong, I won’t be able to say ‘I told you so’ when Father and I are swinging as gallows fruit.”

She stared at him, horrified.

“Now you understand,” he said in deadly earnest. “If Elizabeth falls, our family falls.”

He turned to beckon his lieutenant, but stopped with a look of surprise as footmen set down an open litter beside him and his wife climbed out, the effort a challenge in her very pregnant state.

“Thank heaven I’m not too late,” Frances said, looking flushed. “I was afraid I’d missed you.”

Adam seemed mystified. “What is it? Is there some problem?”

“No, no. Please, don’t worry.” Her eyes glowed with affection. “It’s just that . . . I got your note.”

“It was only to inform you,” he said coolly. “There was no need to come.”

She tried to hide her hurt. “I wanted to come. You may be gone for . . . so long. I had to say farewell.”

He looked out at the waiting boat as if eager to be on it, while Frances clearly ached at the prospect of his going. Isabel did not know the source of their discord—it was hard to understand their marriage—but she felt sorry for Frances. No woman could look more in love. Isabel wanted to pinch Adam. Could he not bring himself to give his wife one kiss of farewell? Or just a tender word? She could not imagine such aloofness if Carlos were about to leave on a campaign. On the contrary, they would make a spectacle of themselves.

Adam gave a formal bow of the head to Frances, scrupulously and coldly polite. “Thank you, madam. Now, get you home and rest yourself. I must go.” He called his lieutenant to escort Isabel, made a last rudimentary bow to his wife, and then went smartly down the stairs to the jetty.

Frances gazed after him. Isabel took pity. “I shall visit you, Frances. Soon, I promise.”

“So, I want your opinion on it,” Richard Thornleigh summed up, “as a military man.”

Carlos looked up from the fire’s embers. Thornleigh was waiting for an answer. They were sitting in the parlor, legs stretched out in front of the hearth, while Nicolas played on the floor beside them, lying on his belly to race his wheeled wooden caterpillar back and forth. The thought struck Carlos that anyone would think he and his father-in-law were relaxing over a talk about hunting dogs or horses, not about preparations for war.

Thornleigh added, like an apology, “I know it’s a lot to consider.”

Too much for Carlos’s liking. Not the facts of the situation in Scotland that Thornleigh had just laid out. It was Thornleigh’s own deep involvement, both his and his wife’s, that bothered Carlos. He had the uncomfortable feeling that his father-in-law wanted an assurance that he, too, would be eager to get involved. For the sake of the family.

“Here, more wine,” Thornleigh said, lifting the pitcher from the hearthstone and refilling their cups.

Carlos raised his in thanks and took a mouthful, though he’d already had enough. “It’s good,” he said, wanting a minute to think. Easy to give an answer right now, but should he?

“Aye, the best burgundy. The French do some things right.” He fixed his eye on Carlos. “But can they do
this,
that’s what I need to know.”
This
meant invade England. “It isn’t the first time they’ve threatened us from Scotland. You know that as well as anyone. You fought there.”

Carlos nodded. “For this Queen’s brother.”

“Unlike her, though, he had a full treasury. In forty-nine he could afford to hire the finest mercenary troops from the Continent.”

“Forty-eight,” Carlos corrected him mildly. Eleven years ago. The battle of Pinkie Cleugh. Carlos had brought a company of forty light horse over from Germany. They had joined the English army of sixteen thousand as they faced the combined force of twenty-four thousand Scots and French. In all his years of soldiering, at all the godforsaken bivouacs and battlefields he’d seen, whether in Spain, the German lands, the Low Countries, France, or Portugal, he had never been in a place as bone-chillingly miserable as Scotland. Thank God his soldiering years were behind him.

“And despite the odds,” Thornleigh said with obvious relish, “you won.”

Carlos took another mouthful of wine. Armchair commanders. They saw victory as so simple.

“Oh! Mi oruga!”
Nicolas cried.

Carlos glanced at his son. A wheel had fallen off the toy.

“Es quebrada,”
the boy said in dismay. It’s broken.

“English, Nico.”

“But, how do you say . . .” He held it up.
“Oruga.”

“Caterpillar.”

“Bring it here,” Thornleigh said. “I’ll fix it.”

Nicolas took it to him, carrying the three-wheeled toy as gently as if it were an injured pet. Carlos watched his son and the old man bend their heads together as Thornleigh set the thing on his knee. He straightened the axle pin to fit the wheel back on, Nicolas watching with grave concentration.

Carlos had to smile. It was good for Nicolas to have met his only grandparents. He knew that Isabel was upset about not being a party to their doings, but it seemed to him natural that they had their own life here. Considering what he had expected to find in getting off the ship—her family destitute—the reality was all good, in his view. Her parents were thriving. They were rich. He settled back, stretching his legs out farther to the fire, content to be in this fine room in this fine house, and yet sensing again—an odd feeling that sometimes struck him—that he didn’t belong in it. Strange, since he was worth as much as Thornleigh, maybe more. He wondered if he would ever get used to the fact of his own wealth. Him, the bastard son of a camp follower. Never even knew who his father was. And look at me now, he thought, feeling more wonder than pride. In his mind his success was linked with Isabel. He had done it all for her.

Other books

Pretty Little Liars #14 by Sara Shepard
False Advertising by Dianne Blacklock
Who Is Frances Rain? by Margaret Buffie
These Few Precious Days by Christopher Andersen
The Dawn Country by W. Michael Gear
The Dark King's Bride by Janessa Anderson


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024