The Noble Assassin. Christie Dickason

the North Sea. The long rumbling of war on the Continent between Catholic and Protestant powers has suddenly turned to the thunder of guns that can be heard in England.

      She will be frightened and confused, though, as always, she will seem to command. She will fear for the children. They are all in danger.

      I know I should not feel happy. How dare I rejoice?

      I duck down under the covers to warm my hands on the brazier, curling like a cat in the small warm cave.

      I am being given another chance. If I can think how to take it.

      The next morning I rise as if the world were not changing. I dress, eat my frugal breakfast of bread and small beer. Wearing old fur-lined gloves with the fingers cut off, I sign orders to buy sugar and salt that we can’t afford. I approve the slaughter of eight precious hens. I count linens as they come back from the washhouse, and the remaining silver returned from being washed and polished in the scullery. While Lady Agnes frowns at a peony she is working in tiny knots to hide a patch on a sleeve, I try to do my own needlework. But I prick myself so often that I throw the torn pillow cover across the room.

      Agnes tightens her mouth and ignores me. After a time, I pick up the pillow cover myself.

      After the midday meal, I write to my old friend from court, Sir Henry Goodyear, begging for news. I would have written to Elizabeth, but do not know where to send a letter. I take out her many letters to me and re-read her joy at her babies, her excitement at moving to Prague, her confession how she had offended her new subjects by misunderstanding their early gifts.

       . . . So I made certain to display the gift of a cradle for the coming babe on the dais in the great hall, as if it were a holy icon. I believe that the people were puzzled by this strange English custom, but pleased . . .

      She had always trusted me with her indiscretions as well as her joys. I press the letter to my forehead.

      If she were dead or captive, Edward would have told me. Therefore, she must still be alive and free.

      As the early winter darkness closes in, to get through the time, I try to write verse as I had once done so easily at court.

      Remembering the good-natured, bibulous, literary competitions, I attempt to write an ode in the style of Horace – a challenge we had often set ourselves after dinner, made arrogant by wine and youth. But my metres now trudge heavy-footed where the Roman poet’s had danced and skimmed like swallows.

      No thoughts or words seem important enough to distract me. All my being waits trembling on the surface of life. It should be anguish, but I confess that, even while tearing up my attempt at Latin verse, I feel alive once again.

      Above all, I need more news. Even without the distortion of malice, accounts of past or distant events are always slippery. The truth often proves to be, insofar as one can determine it, a little less vibrant than the tale as told. The tale is almost always simpler. The true narrative most often proceeds by bumps and hiccoughs, not in great sweeps.

      I need a letter from Elizabeth. She has clung to England by writing letters, first from her husband’s German Palatine, more recently from Bohemia. I know she will write to me as soon as she can.

      Goodyear writes back by return of messenger. He has heard that Elizabeth and her children struggled down the mountain to spend the first night in Prague, in the house of a Czech merchant near the Old Town Square across the Vltava river from the palace. There, she waited while Frederick and his generals argued whether to try to defend Prague. With Hapsburg soldiers already looting the Hradcany Palace, the cavalcade of carriages and carts left the city by the West Gate just after nine o’clock the following morning.

      There seems to have been wide-spread panic, he writes. The royal family were deserting Prague! Frederick was forced to make a speech to reassure the terrified mob that the Bohemian officials, who were in truth escaping with them, would escort the royal family only a short distance then return to defend the city. The heaviest snow caught them on the Silesian border.

      The world has changed. And I see a part for myself in this new world. Not at Moor Park.

      Her first letter reaches me at last, from Nimberge.

      My Dear Bedford (Elizabeth writes), I have no doubt that you have heard of the misfortune that has come upon us and that you will have been very sorry. But I console myself with one thing. The war is not yet over. Frederick has gone into Moravia in search of reinforcements. I will await him in Nimberge. I have also written to my father, the King, begging that he send immediate assistance to the embattled King, my husband . . .

      By the time I receive this letter, she has almost certainly moved on. I must track her flight. Find her. Go to her. Elizabeth’s need and mine will meet. Her need will rescue me, just as her mother’s need had rescued me once before.

      I can do it again.

      But the first ti me I changed my life had been half my lifetime ago. I had been just twenty-two years old and known that I could do anything as well as any man, if I set my mind to it.

       Chapter 4

      LUCY – EAST ENGLISH COAST, JUNE 1603

      My right knee had cramped around the saddle horn. My thoughts jolted with the thud of the horse’s hoofs. The pain in my arse and right thigh was unbearable.

      For tuppence, I’d have broken the law, worn a man’s breeches and ridden astride. Then I could at least have stood in the stirrups from time to time to ease the endless pounding on my raw skin.

      But I could not break the law. I was the Countess of Bedford. Even if I had not been riding at this mad, mudflinging pace, strewing gold hairpins and silver coins behind me, my progress would have been noted and reported. Therefore, I had to ride side-saddle like a lady and wear a woman’s stiffened, laced bodies and heavy, bulky skirts.

      . . . worth the pain . . . worth the pain . . . worth the pain . . . Two days in the saddle so far, one more to go. A man rode ahead of me to confirm food, lodging and the next hired horse. I had never before ridden so far, so fast, nor for so long. Our speed and the effort of keeping my seat at this constant killing pace prevented coherent thought. A woman’s side-saddle is designed for stately progresses and the occasional hunting dash, not for this hard riding.

      But a gentlewoman riding full tilt, scantly accompanied, leaping from one post horse to the next, was not invisible. I dared not risk man’s dress lest word of my crime reach the wrong ears and ruin my chance for advancement forever. Meanwhile, my body screamed that I was murdering it.

       . . . worth the pain . . . worth the pain . . .

      I pointed my thoughts ahead along the green tunnel of the forest track, to Berwick, on the eastern coast just south of the Scottish border, where the new queen of England would arrive the next day on her progress from Edinburgh to London.

      Elizabeth, the sour Virgin Queen, was dead. Good riddance to Gloriana! England now had a new king, James Stuart, who was already King of Scotland. This new king brought with him a new queen, Anne of Denmark.

      Berwick on Tweed . . . upon Tweed . . . upon Tweed . . . The hired post horse wheezed and panted, throwing his head up and down in effort as his hoofs drummed out the rhythm of my destination.

      Sun flashed through the trees. We splashed through pools of white light on the wide dirt track, where I rode at the side to avoid the ruts ploughed by wagon wheels.

       . . . a new queen . . . a new queen . . .

      Days and miles behind me, other would-be ladies-in-waiting advanced on the royal prey at a more sedate and comfortable pace. Even my mother, as ambitious as I but with an ageing woman’s need for bodily comfort, had fallen behind me. I would be the first to greet our new queen. My best pair of steel-boned bodies, finest green tuft taffeta gown and ropes of pearls jolted behind me in my saddlebags, with my collapsed-drum farthingale lashed across the top like a child’s hoop.