Christie Dickason - The King’s Daughter

This time, we rode almost unseen through the dark streets. Two watchmen raised their lanterns curiously but quickly lowered them again at a sign from my escort. This time, in spite of the warm welcome given me by a Mr Hopkins of Earle Street, a close friend of Lord Harington, I felt like a prisoner. The two men-at-arms stationed outside my door seemed more like warders than guardians.

‘You can sleep at ease tonight, your grace,’ Mr Hopkins told me. The citizens of Coventry had posted an army of guards around the house in case the Papist army attacked. No one, he said, could get in, or out.

Seeing my person secured, Lord Harington assured me one last time that all would be well. Free for the time of his great charge, he rode off in visible high spirits to confront the Popish army now rumoured to have gathered on Dunsmore Heath.

Again, I waited. Three days passed. I received no official visitors or delegations. I heard no news from Combe, London or anywhere else. I dined alone in my chamber. I tried to eavesdrop through my half-open door but heard nothing. I smiled at an endless string of different grooms and maids who found an excuse to have a look at me, but none could be induced to gossip. I read, I stitched, I walked in the small walled garden. I began to write a heroic poem but tore it up. I practised scales on my new lute though I could not find it in me to sing. At noon on the fourth day, I heard a disturbance in the stable yard, then men’s voices on the floor below. Footsteps climbed the stairs. I left the door and sat on a chair by the fire.

My maid opened the door to a strange man-at-arms. Like my escort to Coventry, he wore no identifying livery badge.

‘What news?’ I demanded.

He stepped aside to escort me from the room.

A small lop-sided shape waited for me below in Mr Hopkins’s great parlour. There was no mistaking him for anyone else. This was a far greater man than my temporary host.

‘My Lady Elizabeth.’ He sketched an off-kilter bow.

He should have been in London questioning traitors in the Tower.

Robert Cecil, now Lord Salisbury and the English Secretary of State. My father’s chief advisor. Here in Mr Hopkins’s large parlour, his sharp, intelligent eyes on my face. He cleared his throat.

If we were to stand side-by-side, he would reach no higher than the top of my ear. The fur collar of his loose gown did not quite disguise the uneven slope of his shoulders. Why then, did he cause such fear in me?

I struggled to hold his gaze.

Neither of us spoke. It was my part to speak. Unlike my conscience, my mind was blank.

‘Has something more happened?’ I asked at last.

‘More than…?’

‘About…?’ I tried to wipe my thoughts clean, leaving only what Lord Harington had told me. But I could not remember clearly. ‘About the fearful plot?’ I was certain at least that Lord Harington had told me about a plot.

‘And did your guardian tell you about the quick wit of the king, your father, in perceiving the threat?’

I could not remember.

‘My father?’ I echoed.

I had seen no attendants waiting in the hall. No secretary waited behind the little table below the window. Cecil was alone. I could think of no good reason why he had come here in apparent secrecy.

After another pause, Cecil pointed to a high-backed, unpadded chair-of-grace.

Flushed and angry with myself for needing his prompt, I sat. I noticed that he had slender, long-fingered hands, like a woman. Then I remembered to nod for him to sit as well.

‘Thank you, your grace.’ He perched at the front of a second chair-of-grace and smoothed the skirts of his robe over his knees. He cleared his throat again and spoke a little too loudly, as if I might be deaf. ‘The king, your father was the agent of his own salvation. Praise God.’

‘Praise God,’ I echoed.

‘A loyal subject had brought me an anonymous letter.’ He looked away.

‘A loyal subject?’ I echoed again. Thank God, Harington had prepared me for the letter. I laid my hands on the arms of the chair and closed my fingers carefully around the oak grape leaves carved on the ends.

He nodded. ‘A warning from a loyal Catholic lord.’ He met my eye with a half-smile. His words rolled on smoothly. ‘Which I showed to the king. His majesty saw at once what had escaped me—that it concerned the hidden intent to blow up the opening of Parliament.’ He paused. ‘The terrible plot was uncovered. Thanks be to God!’

I murmured an incoherent piety.

Not my letter after all! I felt my hands fly into the air like startled doves and quickly clasped them together in my lap.

His small lumpy bulk leaned forward. He braced his elbows on the chair arms, so that his long feminine fingers dangled from awkwardly suspended hands.

I looked away. I wished those eyes would stop looking at me and at my clasped hands. I wished the room were not so strange and close, nor hung with tapestries of bloody battle scenes. I ached to be back at tedious, familiar Combe. I had misplaced all my rehearsed lies. I was sick with waiting.

‘Why are you here, my lord?’

He hesitated. My throat tightened. I tried to swallow but had forgotten how. I saw his eyes go to my throat. He watched me struggle. I managed to swallow on the third try.

‘His majesty has instructed me to speak with you.’ He looked back at my eyes. ‘About these recent dreadful events.’

I stared back, afraid now to trust any sound that might come out of my throat. With effort, I unclenched my fists.

‘Were you ever acquainted with Sir Everard Digby?’

I shook my head, cautiously truthful. To my knowledge, this was no lie.

‘A traitor whom I have recently examined in the Tower, along with several of his companion devils.’

‘Is he one of those who would have blown up Parliament?’ The frog in my throat was quite natural, I told myself. In the circumstances.

Cecil smiled slightly, inviting me into complicity. ‘This young knight, Digby, had a very different task—to take you prisoner.’

I met his invitation as blankly as I could. All I could see in my head was Digby—for that must be his name—standing with the coins of sunlight dancing on his shoulders and head.

Go away! I begged him. Get out of my thoughts! A treacherous heat began to bloom in my chest.

‘A plausible young knight,’ said Cecil. ‘Well-formed and fair-haired. His family’s estate is not far from Combe. Until he married, I’m told that many ladies had their eye on him.’

All at once, I saw the truth, Digby had confessed. He had confessed to our meeting in the forest. Cecil knew!

I shook my head, helpless to stop the red fire that stained my chest and flooded up my neck. Cecil knows everything, I thought.

‘I never met a man who gave that name.’ I frowned slightly, as if trying to recall. I understood very well. Digby had taken me down with him just as I feared. Had not taken my advice to flee, not in time. Good man or bad, he had turned out to be a trowie after all.

Cecil watched the telltale blush reach my cheeks and rise upwards until the roots of my hair felt ablaze. ‘You might perhaps have smiled on him once?’ he prompted gently. ‘Perhaps not knowing who he was? He’s held to be handsome and is only a few years older than your grace. Any young woman might smile on him.’

The Chief Secretary was toying with me. I could bear it no longer.

‘Is this an examination, my lord?’ I demanded.

‘Should it be?’ he asked mildly. He looked around the room. ‘Do you see a clerk? Or witnesses to an examination? Should you be examined?’

‘No,’ I whispered.

On the far wall, one of the tapestries heaved. ‘By God, it is an examination!’