The Spymaster's Daughter (51 page)

T
HE
T
OWER

T
he winter's morn, made colder by the sodden wind whipping off the Thames, greeted Frances, Countess of Essex, as, heart pounding, she stepped through the postern gate of the Tower, leaving the last of her former life behind. Looking up, she saw the queen's standard being raised above the Bell Tower, Elizabeth triumphant.

Facing a pale sun beginning to light the sky to the east, Frances knew this would not be a sunny day in any sense. Spring would not come for many weeks yet. Even the recent plow day had not brought husbandmen to the fields.

There was a palpable hush in the streets, where vendors of every kind usually jostled and sang out their morning wares. It was as if all London prepared to mourn her husband, the long-ago hero of Cádiz. No Englishman had forgotten that Essex had burned that
enemy city and the Spanish fleet in the harbor. The queen had not been pleased when he had missed the treasure ships returning from the New World, but she had forgiven and favored him…until he defied her orders and made peace, losing the late Irish War and emptying her purse. She had sent him from court to house arrest and stripped him of his honors and his income. He would not have been lost had he not led a rebellion through the streets of London. Treason was the one crime Elizabeth could never forgive.

Behind Frances, she thought she heard the thud of the ax on the Tower Green block. She was certain of it when a faint cheer rose from behind the ancient walls, and, though she was warm under her cloak, she shivered, swaying.

I have nothing left but that which I must pay the queen
, he had written to her from his cell. Now he owed Elizabeth nothing. He had given her everything.

Frances was twice widowed now, first by Philip Sidney and now by Essex, both men who sought glory, only to find bitter death.

Faintly, she heard the street rhymers already hawking the earl's imagined last words.

Had it been his good night? Essex had refused to see Frances, his heir, Robert, or his young daughters, Frances and Dorothy. Instead, the earl had clung to his chaplain and so maniacally desired heaven and God's forgiveness that he had had no time to beg hers. She doubted he had thought it necessary, though she had borne him five children. Only three had lived, her firstborn son beside her now, his dark head high and his step firm, the strongest of them all, speaking to his good blood. Young Robert would be a comfort to
his sisters, playing their games and distracting them with his good humor. He had always spent more time with them than their father had.

Once in her life Frances had been loved for herself, and the memory was yet part of her, well hidden but utterly alive and breathing. It was that remembered love that warmed her now, as it always had and ever would.

The tall boy striding beside her clasped her hand tighter and spoke in the croaking voice of one near thirteen years. “Do not fear, Mother; I will have a care for you, always.”

She tightened her grip. “Yes, Robert, we will care for each other and your sisters as we have done.” It was true. Trying to smile at him, she felt her lips quiver and gave it up. She had never wished a traitor's death for her husband, but he had not sought her advice. He had thought to force her love, and when he could not, he had turned for opinion and caring to his sister Penelope, Lady Rich…
Stella, again and always
…a tragic mistake. That lady had advised him to rebel, then counted too much on Elizabeth's former love for her brother and went to beg his life. The queen had denied her entry, though Penelope had pounded hard on the great doors to Her Majesty's privy chamber. They remained unopened. Like her brother, Penelope never understood that the queen loved her throne more than any man, always had and ever would.

The carriage waited, her old horses Quint and Claudius restless in their traces, the golden crest of the Essex arms on the door spotless as the weak light glinted on it. The footman held the door open.

A movement in the shadow of the draper's shop across the cobbled street caught Frances's eye and stole her breath. Even after so many years, she knew him, and when he stepped stiffly toward her, his stride proved his identity. When he removed his hat, he was little changed, though she saw that white had sprouted in his hair.

“Come, Robert,” she said to her son. “I wish you to meet a worthy gentleman of old acquaintance.”

“Countess,” the man said, approaching, “I apologize for such an untimely intrusion.”

She looked up into the same steady, dark eyes, the same beloved face that had haunted her dreams these many years…so little changed…so dear. This meeting, this longed-for meeting, was almost too much on such a day. To lose a husband and to find her love again in the same hour.

“Robert,” she said to her son, “this is Sir Robert Pauley, a very old friend of my father's…and of mine.”

“Good day, sir,” young Robert said, looking curiously at the man's face. “I have many cousins. Are you one?”

“No, my lord, not a cousin.”

“Your face is familiar to me, sir. Have we never met?”

He smiled at Frances. “I have seen you at a distance, my lord, but…no, we have never met as we do now.”

Young Robert drew himself to his full height, his mouth, which started to tremble, held firm. “You do not have to call me ‘my lord,' sir. The sons of executed traitors lose their titles and estates.”

“Yes, I do know that, young Robert.” His gaze rose to Frances's face, and he spoke as much for her as for the boy. “But what is lost can be restored. I have lived long enough to believe that truth.”

“Thank you, Sir Pauley. I will remember your words.” He climbed into the carriage, on his face his clear need to be alone.

Frances swallowed hard. Was Robert saying that they might yet be together? Pray God it could be true. “I did not expect to meet you here, Robert.”

“It takes no great skill in cipher, such as yours, to know some things.”

She almost smiled, remembering the days when deciphering the Scots queen's messages had been her own triumph.

“Did you not know that I would be near?” he said quietly. “I have never been far from you, Frances.”

She bowed her head, shy and at the same time wanting to lean into him as she once had. “There were times when I needed to know such was true.”

“I hoped you knew it, Frances.”

“How could I? You have never written or approached me at court.”

“That was not possible. I wanted you to find your happiness.”

“Happiness?” The word almost choked her. “I knew such once, but now young Robert and my two daughters are my only happiness.” She turned her face away from the carriage and her son. “I never expected to have more.”

His voice was proud, his gaze telling her that he knew the boy was his. “Young Robert is a fine lad and must bring you much joy.”

“Yes.”

“You want more than you have?”

She stared at him, keeping all hope from her eyes. “What more is there for me?”

He looked long at her. “You did not believe me all those years ago, or do you not remember?”

She laughed, a small and bitter sound. “Believe what? Remember what?”

“All I once told you, all you once knew: Armies are vanquished, countries overrun, but…”

“I remember now,” she said, repeating the long-ago words he had planted in her heart. “Love is never conquered.”

This is a work of fiction. Although it is based on real people and events, the love story and adventures come from my imagination. Some dates have been changed, but wherever possible I kept to historical fact.

First, my sincere apologies must go to Sir Philip Sidney, magical poet of love and hero soldier. I took great liberties with his life for the sake of my story. There is little evidence that he was anything other than a good and loving husband to Frances Walsingham…except for one troubling find in 1964. An original manuscript by George Gifford, a clergyman who was present in the room in Holland when Sidney died, differed from its published version. This sentence, describing those gathered about the deathbed—“It was my Lady Rich…” —was deleted. I have to ask: Was Stella with him at the end and, if so, could that mean this work of my imagination might hold more truth than I know?

Sidney did not fall deeply in love with Penelope Devereux until after her forced marriage to Lord Rich in November 1581. He left court and over the next summer wrote 118 beautifully sad sonnets after realizing that he had lost the love of his life.

He never meant them to be published, but, as with so many secrets, they were passed about and eventually printed and handed down to us today.

Robert Pauley (or Pooley, Poley, or Poole; spelled many ways in records) was a real Walsingham agent and attached to Lady Sidney's household. He was described as “the very genius of the Elizabethan underworld” and was involved in breaking the Babington plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. His name also appears on a list of prisoners in the Tower. From these few facts, I wove my adventure and Robert and Frances's love story. Pauley surfaces again in history in 1593 when he is placed at the scene of Christopher Marlowe's stabbing death at the Bull tavern in Deptford. Since Marlowe was also one of Walsingham's agents, the men would have known each other. What involvement Robert had in Marlowe's death, if any, is unknown. During the later 1590s, Pauley served as a spy for Robert Cecil and Elizabeth's Privy Council in France and in the Netherlands, where he was jailed briefly for spying. After that, he disappears from written history.

In my story both Dr. Dee and Frances try unsuccessfully to break Johannes Trithemius's
Steganographia
code, a complex number cipher book written by the German scholar/monk around 1500 that claimed to be a way of delivering messages in a single day. At that time of slow travel, the book seemed to call on demons and was banned by the Catholic Church. There is no shame in Frances's and Dee's failure. The code was not broken until the 1990s.

And, yes, Dee was the original 007 and signed himself so in his communications with Elizabeth. My sense is that he was an internal spy, keeping abreast of what was going on within the court and nobility, for Elizabeth's eyes only.

Did Thomas Phelippes really add incriminating lines to Mary, queen of Scots' secret message to Sir Anthony Babington? No one knows. It was suspected at the time and Mary voiced her suspicions at her trial, but all was denied. There was no doubt that Mary thought herself the true queen of England and longed to claim her rightful place. She even thought that if she could only meet with Elizabeth, she could talk her way free. Since they never met, we'll never know.

Mary greatly overestimated her powers of persuasion and underestimated
Elizabeth's determination and sense of her own destiny. She was threatened on all sides during most of her reign, but she was Henry VIII's daughter and would not be intimidated. Elizabeth was the supremely strong ruler that Henry thought only a son could be and she remains an icon the world round. Anne Boleyn, beheaded because she did not bear the longed-for male heir, had the last laugh. For all things Tudor and Anne Boleyn, try
www.theanneboleynfiles.com
.

Although one source claims that the sheriff of Northamptonshire took Mary's head from Fotheringhay Castle and buried it secretly so that it would not provide a place for Catholic pilgrimage, there are several death masks claiming to be the real one. You can find one here:
www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh.../5236154.stm
.

Queen Elizabeth was right to worry about the repercussions of Mary's execution. Philip of Spain sent his huge armada against England in the following year. It failed spectacularly, thanks to Sir Francis Drake, John Hawkins, Lord Howard, and the God-sent English wind. “God blew and they were scattered” is a phrase used on commemorative medals. But Philip didn't give up, sending three more armadas during the next decade until he died and Spain was bankrupt.

Frances Walsingham Sidney did not have a happy marriage with Robert, Earl of Essex, although she bore him five children, three of whom lived. I think Essex was too selfish and involved in his schemes of glory to really love anyone but himself. He thought he was fit to sit on Elizabeth's throne, a flight of fancy that eventually led him to rebellion and the executioner's block in the Tower with his enemy Sir Walter Raleigh looking on. He “touched her scepter,” as Elizabeth famously charged, and that was unforgiveable.