The King’s Daughter. Christie Dickason

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!’

      I leapt to my feet and turned. I had heard that Scottish bellow before. In the corner of my eye, I saw Cecil wriggle off his chair.

      With a flash of rings, my father knocked aside the edge of a woven battle and stepped out of the alcove behind it. ‘Anatomise her, man! Ye’re too nice!’ The king staggered in his excitement, his restless body made clumsy by the urgencies of his mind.

      Cecil stared at the floor.

      The king stopped in front of me, blocking my view of Cecil. ‘Aye, Bessie! Y’ know very well it’s an examination! And you’d best thank God to be here in Coventry and not locked in the Tower with your friends!’

      ‘“Friends”?’ I repeated faintly.

      ‘You’d be examined there, right enough! And not so gently, neither!’ The king turned on Cecil. ‘Why didn’t you ask the questions I prepared? What have y’done with them?’

      ‘I meant to come to them by degrees, your majesty.’

      ‘There’s no degree in being dead! And no degree in treason!’ The king held out his hand. ‘Give me my questions and act as my clerk. I will play Solomon. I’ll examine this treacherous whelp of mine, who seems to have terrified you into degrees!’ His over-large tongue dammed and slowed the flow of words pouring from his brain. His bright, hungry magpie eye probed at me.

      From the table beneath a window Cecil took a densely written paper and gave it to the king. He returned to the table and sat on the stool behind it. Now I saw the waiting pen and ink.

      ‘That devil Digby’s in the Tower,’ said my father. ‘We know by his own confession that he and his fellow fiends meant to make you queen of England! After I…your king and father…had been blown sky-high, murdered, along with your precious brother.’

      ‘Never, my lord father!’ I whispered.

      ‘What do ye have to say to that?’

      ‘What sort of queen would I have been…?’

      He jabbed a finger at me. ‘A compliant one. Controlled by Papists, ruling at the will of Rome.’

      ‘I had rather been murdered in Parliament with you than wear the Crown on such condition!’ I spoke that truth with all my heart.

      The small eyes skewered me. ‘Fine words!’ He pulled at his lower lip with finger and thumb. ‘What are you?’

      ‘I don’t understand.’ I glanced at Cecil but he was head-down at the table, recording our words.

      ‘What…are…you?’ the king repeated slowly and loudly, as if I were simple. ‘Do I know you?’

      ‘I’m your loyal daughter, sir.’ I felt my own temper begin to rise.

      ‘D’ye think me a fool?’

      ‘I think you many things, sir, but never a fool!’

      We both drew breath and stared at each other. Cecil’s pen stopped scratching.

      The king shook his list of questions in my face. I blinked but did not move. ‘I ask you, just as your friends in the Tower were asked,’ he said. ‘Are you a Papist?’

      Refusing to step back, I fixed my eyes on my father’s thick padded jerkin, diamond hatched with stitching that held the thick lining in place to turn aside attacking knives. ‘Never!’

      ‘I know that you are a Papist!’

      Like my mother? I wanted to ask but had just enough good sense not to say.

      ‘Do you mean to accuse my guardian too?’ I asked instead. ‘Lord Harington hears me pray at his side five times a day.’

      The close-set eyes studied me. The king scratched under his doublet. He tugged at his cuffs. He twitched his neck in his collar and seemed to chew on his tongue.

      I had seen people ape those mannerisms, and then laugh. I did not find my father laughable. He terrified me.

      I can make you obey where you ache to scorn, his behaviour seemed to say to those who aped him. That’s real power!

      The king bit at a fingernail. I felt the swift current of his thought tugging at me. ‘Why should I let you keep your head?’ he asked.

      ‘Because I’ve done nothing!’

      We both pretended to listen to the scratching of Cecil’s quill.

      ‘Don’t think, madam—you and your brother—that public acclaim is the same as power! From the common people it’s worth nothing! It’s a river that drowns all virtue.’

      ‘I don’t want acclaim!’ I cried. ‘I don’t want power! What would I do with power?’

      ‘Don’t think I wasn’t told how the people cried out in the streets,’ he said, now just as agitated as I was. ‘Singing out as you and your brother went by. “The golden pair!” “The golden boy, the golden girl!” “England’s best hope!” Don’t think you’ll bury me, either one of you! Don’t imagine you’ll ever warm your arse on the English throne!’

      ‘I don’t want the English throne!’

      ‘…because I shall marry you as far away from here as I can arrange. I’d marry you to the Great Cham, if I could, and send