The Noble Assassin. Christie Dickason

and the loss of his doublet, he must have seen the cart that is to follow me with my belongings as it stood being repaired in the stable yard. Or the chests standing open in the hall. Or the ale kegs and small stack of hams in the screens passage. He must have heard the noisy chase after a dozen laying hens and their indignant squawks at being crammed into their travelling crate.

      ‘Back to your poets and lovers?’

      ‘You know that I can’t afford poets any longer.’ I weaken, foolish enough still to hope for a word of approval. ‘I have a purpose that will benefit us both.’

      ‘Another of your schemes?’ He hugs his shattered arm to his chest, swaddled in its fur muff. ‘What will this one cost us?’

      ‘Less than my ride to Berwick.’

      He rolls his eyes to Heaven. God spare me her impudence!

      But he waves his good hand to dismiss me. ‘Do as you will, madam. I’m too weary to fight you. I don’t care where you go or whom you see. You’re of no use to me.’

      I take that as his formal permission. I have already sent word to our London house that I am coming.

       Chapter 10

      ELIZABETH STUART – CUSTRIN, GERMANY, DECEMBER 1620

      ‘Are you ordered to turn us away?’ Elizabeth demands.

      The castle steward shifts uneasily on his horse. ‘The Elector of course welcomes you, if you truly wish to stay. In the circumstances.’ He had intercepted them at the bridge before they could enter the town.

      From behind him on his horse, Elizabeth stares over Hopton’s shoulder. Custrin Castle looks very much like the grim fortress described in the Elector of Brandenburg’s letter.

       . . . the walls are without tapestries, the cellars empty of wine, the granaries bare of corn. From my own sense of honour . . .

      Elizabeth had snorted when she read that word ‘honour’ in Berlin. Now all impulse to laugh has left her. She could have recited the vile letter word by word.

       . . . I cannot allow Your Majesty and your attendants to suffer the inconvenience of lodging in a place devoid of food and fuel, without fodder for your horses.

      ‘I wish to stay,’ she says. ‘Just for one night. No civilised man would make a pregnant woman sleep in a snowdrift, even if she were not a queen.’ The child in her womb heaves and kicks as if infected by her fury and despair. A belt of muscle tightens around the base of her gut.

      The steward shrugs and turns his horse back to the castle. Hopton kicks his mount to follow. Elizabeth grabs clumsily at his belt with numb hands to keep from being jolted off when the horse slips on the ice on the bridge.

      We are turned enemy, she thinks, still disbelieving the speed and distance of their fall. One moment at dinner together in Hradcany Palace, monarch and ally. The next moment in wild flight, the guest no one dares to entertain.

      The great fireplace in the hall of Custrin Castle stands cold and cave-like. The huge iron firedogs are empty of logs. No waiting fire has been laid. The bare stone walls ooze damp. Although the absence of icy wind makes the interior of the castle warmer than the back of a horse, her teeth still rattle. Her feet are numb, untrustworthy blocks. The tight belt of muscle around the base of her belly has slackened, but she knows it will tighten again at any moment.

      ‘There must be firewood in the village, if you have none here,’ says Elizabeth. ‘We badly need fires. And food.’

      Someone in the village must have food, even if the castle larders do not.

      ‘Your Highness.’ The steward looks past her, wild-eyed, at the shivering crowd of attendants and royal children.

      The Elector must have believed that the English princess would understand the true message of his letter. He had given no orders what to do if Her Highness ignored it.

      ‘I’m certain we can find enough for one night,’ the steward says. He would have to see that the captain of the castle garrison doubled the night watch.

      The child shifts in her belly. Elizabeth pulls off her gloves and flexes her icy fingers.

      The Elector did not lie in his letter. The place does not suit a queen. Cold air flows down from the small, high windows. Icy currents seep under the door and wash around their ankles. Everywhere she looks, she sees only more grey dampness.

      But she is in.

      ‘I assume that you have a suitable chamber for me, with clean sheets on the bed,’ she says. ‘And chambers for the Prince, the Princess and my ladies. The rest can be laid out on pallets so long as there are fires. The carters and drovers, too.’ She gazes around the grey, grim hall. ‘I’m quite sure that your master has a few bottles left in his cellars for just such emergencies as this one.’

      ‘Madam.’ The man bows and begins to back away. ‘I must just . . .’

      As he is about to leave the hall, she adds, ‘And bring me pen and ink. Tomorrow morning, I will give you a list of my needs for the next month, including a midwife. As soon as we have fires, I will also write to the Elector to tell him that I have decided to stay here at Custrin until my child is born.’

      If he dares to throw me out, she writes to friends in England, . . . let him try to explain to the English people – and to their King – why an heir to the English throne was born – and very likely frozen to death – in a German snowdrift.

       LUCY, DECEMBER 1620

      Her letter reaches me just before I leave Moor Park for London. She is not only alive but sounds like her former undaunted self. The tale is almost comical as she relates it, but her anger glints through her words.

      She must learn to be more guarded in what she writes, I think. Or at least use a cipher. I put this letter with her other ones in my writing chest that will travel under my eye on my horse’s hindquarters.

       Chapter 11

      LONDON, JANUARY 1621

      I turn my horse left out of St Martin’s Lane. The house stands ahead of me on the north side of the Strand, as lanky and narrow-shouldered as I remembered it. I have never liked Bedford House, built in London for my husband by his father in the days of the Old Queen. It strikes me as unfriendly, with its long roof, seven steep sharp gables and the empty posturing of a mock-military turret tower. It looks south across the Strand, past York House, home of the Lord Keeper Francis Bacon, to the Thames. Only being near to the river is in its favour.

      I can hear the distant shouts of boatmen from the different water stairs as I let my horse pick his way through the frozen rubbish in the street. After passing under the arch of the gatehouse at the far end of the house front, my small party clops into a large, irregular, open courtyard.

      A tall, fair-haired man bursts out of the higgledypiggledy wing on my left. ‘I hear that a new horse has arrived for the stables! And it’s not half-dead, neither.’

      ‘Sir Kit!’ I cry.

      He runs to take my horse as if he were still a groom, but I’d had Christopher Hawkins made up to knight as soon as he was old enough – one of the first favours I asked after arriving in London with the new queen. The young groom who had ridden with me to Berwick is now my London Master of Horse. When he married the year after his advancement, I persuaded Edward to give him the lease of a small house in the tangle of streets that abut the west wall of Bedford House, along with a small annual income. So far as I know, he survives the paltry stipend granted to him by Edward by teaching the aspiring sons of successful London merchants how to ride.

      Now I look down at the delight in his face and watch him stroke my horse’s nose with a broad callused hand. Here is one of the few men I know I can