Nicola Cornick: House Of Shadows: Discover the thrilling untold story of the Winter Queen

There was no doubt, the man lacked deference. As the grandson of a farm labourer he should not have had a manner so easy it bordered on insolence. Yet Elizabeth found she liked it. She liked the way he did not flatter and fawn.

The silence started to settle between them. It felt comfortable. She knew she should go before the ceremony ended; before Frederick came looking for her. She had told him she wanted no part of the ceremony tonight and to be found here would invite questions. Yet still she did not move.

‘You are not one of the Order?’ she asked, gesturing towards the door to the water chamber.

He shook his head. ‘Merely a humble squire. I don’t believe—’ He broke off sharply. For the first time she sensed constraint in him.

‘You don’t believe in the principles of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘You don’t believe in a better world, in seeking universal harmony?’

His face was half-shadowed, his expression difficult to read. ‘Such ambitions seem worthy indeed,’ he said slowly, ‘but I am a simple man, Your Majesty, a soldier. How might this universal harmony be achieved?’

Ten years earlier, Elizabeth might have told him it would be through the study of the wisdom of the ancient past, through philosophy and science. She had believed in the cause then, believed that they might build a better world. But the words were hollow to her now, as was the promise that the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross had held for the future.

‘… Scrying in the waters.’ Craven’s voice drowned out the clamour of her memories. He sounded disapproving. ‘Sometimes it is better not to know what the future holds.’

Elizabeth agreed with that. If she had known her future ten years ago she was not sure she would have had the strength to go forwards towards it.

‘The Knights have powerful magic.’ She could not resist teasing him. ‘They can read secret thoughts. They can pass through locked doors. They can even turn base metal into gold.’

She thought she heard him snort. ‘As the son of a merchant, I know better than most how gold is made and it is not from base metal.’

Their eyes met. Elizabeth smiled. The silence seemed to hum gently between them, alive with something sharp and curious.

‘Are you wed, Lord Craven?’ she asked on impulse.

Craven looked surprised but no more so than Elizabeth felt. She had absolutely no idea as to why she would ask a near stranger such an impertinent question

‘No, I am not wed,’ Craven answered, after a moment. ‘There was a betrothal to the daughter of the Earl of Devonshire—’ He stopped.

A Cavendish, Elizabeth thought. He looked high indeed for the son of a merchant. But then if he was as rich as men said he would be courted on all sides for money, whilst those who sought it sniped at his common ancestry behind his back.

‘What happened?’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘I preferred soldiering.’

‘Poor woman.’ Elizabeth could not imagine being dismissed with a shrug and a careless sentence. That was not the lot of princesses. If they were not beautiful men pretended that they were. If they were fortunate enough to possess beauty, charm and wit then poets wrote sonnets to them and artists had no need to flatter them in portraits. She had lived with that truth since she was old enough to look in the mirror and know she had beauty and more to spare.

‘Soldiering and marriage don’t mix,’ Craven said bluntly.

‘But a man needs an heir to his estates,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Especially a man with a fortune as great as yours.’

‘I have two brothers,’ Craven said. His tone had eased. ‘They are my heirs.’

‘It’s not the same as having a child of your own,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Do not all men want a son to follow them?’

‘Or a daughter,’ Craven said.

‘Oh, daughters …’ Elizabeth’s wave of the hand dismissed them. ‘We are useful enough when required to serve a dynastic purpose, but it is not the same.’

His gaze came up and caught hers, hard, bright, challenging enough to make her catch her breath. ‘Do you truly believe that? That you are the lesser sex?’

She had never questioned it.

‘I heard men say,’ Craven said, ‘that King Charles believes he gets better sense from you, his sister, than from his brother-in-law.’

Insolence again. But Elizabeth was tempted into a smile.

‘Perhaps my brother is not a good judge of character,’ she said.

‘Perhaps you should value yourself more highly, Majesty.’ His gaze released hers and she found she could breathe again.

‘History demonstrates the truth.’ Craven had turned slightly away, settling the smouldering log deeper into the fire with his booted foot. ‘Your own godmother, the Queen of England, was a very great ruler.’

‘I think sometimes that she was a man,’ Elizabeth said.

Craven looked startled. Then he gave a guffaw. ‘In heart and spirit perhaps. Yet there are plenty of men lesser than she. My father admired her greatly and he was the shrewdest, hardest judge of character I know.’ He refilled the cup with water; offered it to her. Elizabeth shook her head.

‘Did not the perpetrators of the Gunpowder Treason intend for you to reign?’ Craven said. ‘They must have believed you could be Queen of England.’

‘I would have been a Catholic puppet.’ Elizabeth shuddered. ‘Reign, yes. Rule, most certainly not.’

‘And in Bohemia?’

‘Frederick was King,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I was his consort.’ She smiled at him. ‘You seek to upset the natural order of things, Lord Craven, by putting women so high.’

‘Craven!’ The air stirred, the door of the chamber swung open and Frederick strode in, his cloak of red swirling about him. In contrast to Craven, austere and dark, he looked as gaudy as a court magician. Craven straightened, bowing. Elizabeth felt odd, bereft, as though some sort of link between them had been snapped too abruptly. Craven’s attention was all on Frederick now. That was what it meant to rule, even if it was in name only. Frederick demanded and men obeyed.

‘The lion rises!’ Frederick was more animated than Elizabeth had seen him in months. Melancholy had lifted from his long, dark face. His eyes burned. Elizabeth realised that he was so wrapped up in the ceremony that he was still living it. He seemed barely to notice her presence let alone question what she was doing alone in the guardroom with his squire. He drew Charles Louis into the room too and threw an arm expansively about his heir’s shoulders.

This is our triumph , his gesture said. I will recapture our patrimony.

‘The lion rises!’ Frederick repeated. ‘We will have victory! I will re-take Heidelberg whilst the eagle falls.’ He clapped Charles Louis on the shoulder. ‘We all saw the visions in the mirror, did we not, my son? The pearl and the glass together prophesied for us as they did in times past.’

A violent shiver racked Elizabeth. The mirror and the pearl had shown Frederick a war-torn future. She remembered the flames reflected in the water, turning it the colour of blood.

‘The lion is the Swedish king’s emblem,’ she said. It was also Frederick’s heraldic device but she thought it much more likely that it would be Gustavus Adolphus whose fortunes would rise further whilst Frederick would lie where he had fallen, unwanted, ignored. He was no solider. He could not lead, let alone re-take his capital.

She caught Craven’s gaze and realised that he was thinking exactly the same thing as she. There was a warning in his eyes though; Frederick was frowning, a petulant cast to his mouth.

‘It was my emblem,’ he said, sounding like a spoilt child. ‘It was my lion we saw.’