The Noble Assassin. Christie Dickason

cannot be commanded of another person, nor bought, nor wrestled into being. It was delicate and fleeting, as I knew very well. You must stalk it, surprise it. It’s a seed that may or may not grow. You can’t force it, but you can dig out the stones, till the ground and stand by with expectant heart and watering cans. Among other things, I was also a gardener. I knew how to make the desert bloom.

      The Queen had tilted her head, not looking at me now, listening.

      ‘Madam, at my birth I was christened Lucy . . . lux, lucis . . . light. In your service, I swear I will earn the right to my name.’ I held her now in my thoughts as gently but firmly as I would trap a moth. ‘If the light and laughter ever fail, you may banish me.’

      I heard her draw a deep breath.

      Quickly, to lighten my earnest words, I threw open my arms, imitating a player-warrior accepting the fatal sword thrust. ‘And I must beg your forgiveness already, madam. I dare not risk another curtsy or I will sprawl at your feet.’

      To my horror, she did not smile at this extravagance. Instead, tears welled in her eyes. I had misjudged and cut too near the quick.

      I had made the new queen cry in front of everyone. Now she would hate me. I had dared to pity her and let her know it. Shamed her in public, before those tight-lipped, but almost certainly loose-tongued, women. I had made a second fatal error. Back to Chenies after all.

      Then she swallowed. ‘Thank you, Lady Bedford.’

      The gowns of the waiting women rustled. There was a tiny pause.

      I tried to think what to say, unable to hope that I might somehow, perhaps, survive my own mistakes for a second time.

      Then she pointed at my swollen hand. ‘You must have that hand bandaged. I shall ask my doctor to see to it.’ She waved away my renewed attempt to curtsy. She was mistress of herself again.

      And she had offered me her own royal doctor.

      ‘Thank you, madam.’ I dropped my arms. ‘I am honoured . . .’ I caught her eye and noted the slightly raised royal brows and the waiting chilly half-smile. I bit down on the formulaic gratitude.

      Lightly, Lucy, lightly now.

      She saw me catch myself. Her brows stayed up. But she knew that I had understood her.

      I glanced at the row of cold eyes and tight mouths behind her.

      She needed a playmate in the pursuit of joy.

      ‘I will limp gratefully from the field for treatment,’ I said. ‘But before this herald retires injured, she must first deliver urgent news. Two thousand richly jewelled royal gowns await Your Highness in the royal Wardrobe in London.’

      ‘That’s good news for any woman, royal or not!’

      Her Scottish women laughed politely.

      Now the Queen was reading me as closely as I had read her. ‘And tell me, Lady Bedford, who brings such good tidings, can you give me more good news? Does it truly rain less in London than in Edinburgh, as I have been told?’ Even through her double-layered accent, I heard a testing playfulness.

      ‘I could never speak ill of Scotland, Your Highness. Even when the truth demands it.’

      She smiled at last. The air around us loosened. We exchanged another assessing look. Together, we had averted danger. We exchanged the most minute of nods. Miraculously, we seemed to stand at the first fragile beginning of friendship. The way ahead felt as tentative as a garden path marked out in sand, but it held the same implied promise that it might be laid, rod by rod, in brick and stone.

      In the next days before setting off for London, I tested what gave our new queen pleasure. I soon learned that she did not share my taste for debate and philosophy but did like music and dancing, just as rumour had said. Above all, she needed to laugh.

      Therefore, I brought these pleasures together. I taught her – and several of her women – to sing two English songs whilst I played the fool with a borrowed lute and one good hand and made her press her fingers in place of mine onto the strings so that together she and I made a single musician and all of us almost fell off our stools with laughing.

      She liked to gossip and would be living among strangers.

      Therefore, I improvised scurrilous rhyming couplets to help her, and her Scots ladies, to remember the different English courtiers waiting in London.

      ‘“Her flattering portrait is like Lady C . . . Only in this – that they both painted be”,’ I recited.

      ‘Does she still whiten her face with lead?’ Her Majesty clapped a hand to her mouth in mock horror. Her women clucked ‘tut-tut’ and shook their heads. One or two touched their own hair or mouths thoughtfully.

      She fancied herself a poet. Therefore, we began together to devise her first masque to celebrate her arrival at the court of Whitehall.

      When she grew weary, I made herbal tisanes to help her sleep. I quickly learned not to mention children or the King.

      I watched her shoulders loosen. Her eyes began to sparkle. Once, at some trivial jest of mine, she laughed so immoderately that I feared she would veer into uncontrolled tears. Then she patted her breastbone, wiped her eyes and stood up to foot-fumble her way into a half-remembered Danish country-dance, which she promised to teach me when I had two good feet again.

      I had ridden north driven by cold ambition and need, in search of advancement. I had won royal favour just as I had intended. I did not expect to have my ambition disarmed by my heart. The more I saw that I was able to please Queen Anne, the more she captured my love. She needed me when no one else did. She needed Lucy in all her brightness. I loved her for her need and shone ever more brightly in the effort to give her joy. It was more than I deserved.

      I had ridden into my rightful life where I was needed and where my skills had value. Chenies did not need me as the new queen did. My husband’s other estates at Woburn and Moor Park did not need me. He too would profit from my renewed royal favour. I was saving us both.

      I heard the mutters among the disappointed English women who arrived three days after I did. No lady would have done what I did, they said.

      But the truth proved them wrong. Three evenings after I had ridden into Berwick, hatless, hair flying, limping and with a wrist like a ham, I was made first lady of the bedchamber to Queen Anne, wife of the new Scottish King, James VI of Scotland who was now also James the First of England. I was elevated to be chief among all the court ladies-in-waiting. If that was not lady enough for anyone, I cannot say what would be.

      My new position even silenced my mother when she arrived in Berwick with the other women. This was a woman who, when she later died, was widely said to have gone to see that God remembered to wash behind His ears.

      I was twenty-two years old when I rode to Berwick. Power and privilege were in my grasp again. I was happy. I thought I had tamed the future.

      This time I don’t know where to point myself. Time is now the enemy. Elizabeth is on the run and may be taken prisoner at any time. She is expecting another babe.

      She has not written to me since that first letter.

      I must go where powerful men gather intelligence, where news and rumour are born. Someone will know where Elizabeth is. I will ask until I learn. Then I will go to her, on the run or not, however it can be done, and persuade her to come home so that I can help her find joy again as I once helped her mother. She will keep me by her, and I will have a purpose again.

       Chapter 6

      ELIZABETH STUART – BERLIN, DECEMBER 1620

      Elizabeth understands the message she holds in her gloved hand. The letter’s language is formal. It twists and turns, slithering around the brutal meaning without ever quite arriving. But the message is clear.

      No.

      She