The Noble Assassin. Christie Dickason

friends here, neither. No room at the inn for the queen and children of a defeated king. They are enemies of the imperial House of Austria who are not known to forgive an affront. The rebellion of the Bohemian Protestants has been an affront. Daring to elect their own Protestant king in place of the Hapsburg Ferdinand has been an affront. Helping the fugitive king and queen will be an affront. The Hapsburgs would not forgive.

      With the back of her fur-lined glove, she wipes a clump of falling snow from her left eyelash. Snow is already blotting out the words on the paper she holds.

       . . . Madame, in spite of the great . . . in which I hold your esteemed husband . . . and your . . . circumstances alas . . . regret . . . unfit to entertain you in a way suitable to your elevated . . .

      Not possible, she thinks. I am the wife of a king, and daughter of the King of England. If these cowards don’t fear my poor Frederick, they must feel some respect for my father and for England! Surely, England would not tolerate such treatment of its First Daughter, even if she were not also Queen of Bohemia.

      The letter is from Frederick’s brother-in-law, who regrets his unavoidable absence. Even family lacks the courage to help them.

      She should have been prepared for refusal. The Imperial armies are close and marching closer. England is very far away. And, so far, resolutely refusing to take sides.

      The messenger stands respectfully, head bowed, awaiting her response. Behind him, at the far end of the snow-covered causeway, stand the closed gates of the city. Behind the gates lie the castle and lighted fires, heated wine, warmed beds. Roasted meats that have not frozen solid. Dry shoes.

      Her fingers, even gloved, are almost too cold to hold the Elector of Brandenburg’s message.

      With disdain, Elizabeth drops the letter into the snow. She tightens her grip on the belt of the man riding in front of her and re-balances her shivering, pregnant bulk on the back of the saddle. ‘Ride on.’

      Captain Ralph Hopton understands the spirit of her order as well as the words. He kicks their horse, turning it so that he forces the messenger to leap back out of their way. One large rear hoof drives the letter deep into the snow.

      They have lost carts and carriages to the drifts and to desertion. Looters had not waited until she was out of sight of Prague before beginning to strip the contents of the caravan.

      A wave of disbelief rolls back along the line behind her when the remaining drivers and horsemen see that they are turning away from the city. She hears shouts as men heave carts onwards out of ruts in the frozen mud. One by one, the straggling remains of the procession lurches into movement again.

      She looks back to see that the light carriages now holding the children and their nurses still follow Hopton’s horse. The first carriage slips on a frozen rut and lurches violently like a ship hit broadside by a wave. Then it rights itself and tilts to the other side. Behind it, straining horses and oxen are lashed by violent English, German and Bohemian curses aimed at the circumstances.

      She straightens her aching back and cradles her belly with her free hand. If their eight-month-pregnant queen can carry on, so could the rest of them. Those who remain.

      The child in her belly gives a violent kick. Her womb is riding very low, a sign that the birth is not far off.

      Not yet, she begs. Please, not until I find refuge! Or else, I may give birth to an icicle. You know you don’t want to be an ice baby.

      From here at the front of the line, she cannot see the end of the caravan, but she knows that farther back men and women are still slipping away into a familiar countryside. Back to their mountains, back to their villages. Like Rupert’s nurse.

      She imagines the nurse’s husband or lover, perhaps a soldier, pulling her by the arm away from her charge. Saying, ‘This fight is nothing to do with us. Leave the royal brat. Come home!’

      The army would not fight for us, she thought. If soldiers desert, why expect more of maids and grooms and ladies of the bedchamber?

      She ducks her head under her hood against sudden needles of sleet. If all her new subjects left her, she would manage perfectly well without them.

      Without a palace, what need did she have for so many people?

      Once past the approach to the city gates, the road divides. Before word of the onward advance has had time to reach the rearmost carts, Hopton asks, ‘Where do we ride, madam?’

      ‘Custrin,’ she says at once, with authority. Another of Brandenburg’s castles, just as unsuitable, he said. But she is running out of choices. ‘A few days more. Perhaps only two. At Custrin, we’ll have fires and real beds. Tonight we will find a sheltered place to stop and sleep in the carriages.’ Her ears catch the sound of a child crying behind her. ‘We shall curl up together as warmly as a litter of pups.’ She lays a calming hand on the agitation in her belly.

      There is still enough charcoal left to keep their braziers alight for another night. The two remaining cooks might even manage hot soup. They will lose a few more animals to exhaustion and the cold, but that can’t be helped. A few more men will slip away to warmer beds.

      ‘We won’t be able to wash,’ she says cheerfully. ‘But there are worse things than beginning to smell like a dog as well as sleeping like one.’

       Chapter 7

      LUCY – MOOR PARK, DECEMBER 1620

      ‘I must go to London,’ I say. We are at dinner in the damp, draughty hall at Moor Park, eating vegetable soup from pewter bowls, the silver plate having long been sold. The long table is half-empty. Though we still keep our personal retinues, they have shrunk. Only three servers stand behind our chairs, where once there would have been one for every diner. Once, musicians would have played while we ate. Once, when we had finished eating, we would have pushed back the table to dance.

      The Third Earl sets down his spoon, hugs his injured arm to his chest and looks at me over his barricade. ‘Why?’

      At the bottom of the table, our steward holds up a finger to signal the coming point of his story to the four heads leaning towards him, including that of my chief lady, Lady Agnes Hooper, the widow of a local knight. I have no patience with the strict Protestant protocol in which I had been raised, and keep an informal house.

      ‘To mend our fortunes,’ I say quietly.

      The steward’s listeners laugh, settle back on their stools and resume eating.

      I am tempted to add, ‘as I did before’. But my husband’s agreement would make my project easier and a great deal more pleasant.

      I chase a cube of turnip around my bowl, braced for the frown and pursed lips that always precede refusal.

      Even before his accident, Edward had preferred to say ‘no’. ‘Yes’ pained him. It suggested action, feeling, thought.

      ‘I believe that the muscles of your cheeks and lips will creak if you say “yes”,’ I had once observed.

      ‘No’ lets him purse his lips. ‘Yes’ hints at a smile. Whenever he is forced into agreement, his mouth stiffens with reluctance, as if it hurts him to stretch it wide enough to let ‘yes’ escape.

      The dislike I see in his eyes still startles me. Eyes that are too close together, huddled near his nose.

      ‘London?’ he echoes, puzzled and querulous like the old man he is rushing to become.

      I would have preferred him to shout.

      My tongue speaks of its own will. ‘You remember London, do you not? A city to the south of us, on the Thames? Less than a day’s ride . . .’

      He flinches. I have used a wrong word again. ‘Ride.’ He had been thrown from his horse, against a tree, while hunting. He could no longer tolerate the word ‘ride’. Even ‘horse’ makes him uneasy.

      Why