The King’s Daughter. Christie Dickason

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      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 you to his queen in Tartary. I’d marry you to the Devil himself, if only he wanted a wife!’

      He shoved his face close to mine. ‘Listen to me, Bessie. If I choose to let you live, I mean to marry you off as soon as I can. Do y’hear me? Catholic, Protestant, doddering fool or dribbling babe—I’d give you this moment if your husband would take you and your ambitions away from England, out of my sight for ever!’

      He folded the list of questions. ‘We’re not done with these yet. You don’t deceive me. But first, I’ll hear more of what your friends in the Tower have to tell us. Then I’ll decide what’s to be done with you.’

      There’s no point in lying further, I thought with despair. My father would make those prisoners say whatever he liked.

      I opened my mouth to defend myself with the truth. Yes, I had met Digby, but not by my own will. I had refused to go with him, no matter what he might claim in his confession. I had threatened to kill myself rather than agree to do as the plotters intended.

      Behind the king, Cecil gave a minute shake of his head.

      I closed my mouth and stared past my father’s shoulder in astonishment. Again, a tiny warning shake, no mistake. Then Cecil looked back down at his notes.

      Then I saw how close I had been to disaster. My guilt or innocence in the treason plot did not matter. It had never mattered, once I had reported Digby’s kidnap attempt to Henry alone. Not to the king or Cecil. That failure alone made me a traitor in the king’s eyes. And if I had confessed, I would have dragged my brother down with me.

      ‘My mother had friends like yours.’ My father handed the folded questions back to Cecil. ‘You should choose better acquaintance, lassie. With less taste for regicide. First your old governess Lady Kildare and her husband, now these Papist gallants. To be twice touched by treason is no accident.’

      The king turned to Cecil. ‘Come, Wee Bobby! Let’s leave the “golden” lassie to her thoughts, while she still has a head to think them.’ He struck the door with his fist. It opened. He left without looking back.

      Cecil wiped his pen and inserted it into a leather roll. He gathered up his papers and tapped them to align the edges. ‘Don’t fear,’ he said, so quietly that I might almost have imagined it.

      ‘And lest her thoughts remain confused,’ shouted my father from the corridor, ‘I’ll arrange a sight to clear them.’

      ‘My lord…’ I began.

      Cecil held up his hand to silence me. ‘As Lord Treasurer, among all else,’ he continued, to the tabletop, ‘I must advise the king that he can’t afford to throw away even one of his two most valuable assets.’

      When the door closed behind the two men and their footsteps had faded, I finally let my knees dump me back into my chair.

      Cecil would have warned me to keep silent only if he knew what I was about to confess. But if he knew, why was he protecting me?

       8

      Bonfires were lit across England to celebrate my father’s deliverance from his brush with the fires of hell. From my window in Coventry, I saw arcs of glowing orange spring up against the night sky. No one invited me to attend any of the fires, nor the dancing, feasting and drinking that accompanied them. But even in the guarded household of Mr Hopkins, I felt a feverish exhilaration.

      Something terrible had been averted, even if the details were blurred. The consuming darkness had been defeated. Demons had been slain. Those captured alive would soon be executed. The king declared that the anniversary of his deliverance would become a yearly holiday. Each year, on the fifth of November, the fires would burn. The threat to Henry and the Members of Parliament dropped from mention.

      Once it was believed that all of the Gunpowder Plotters, as they became known, were either dead or in the Tower, I was returned to Combe. Lady Anne, left behind to avoid advertising my flight, was still agog with scraps of news. She lacked the discretion of Mr Hopkins, or perhaps his wariness, and eagerly poured her snippets into my ear.

      The leader of the plot, Robert Catesby, had been killed at Holbeche House, not far beyond Coventry, with several others, including Thomas Percy, a cousin of the Duke of Northumberland.

      Robert Catesby, I thought. ‘Robin…’

      ‘He was a known Papist trouble-maker,’ said Anne. ‘Even though he was a gentleman. A single bullet struck down both him and Thomas Percy, whose cousin the Duke of Northumberland lives at Syon and has been himself examined by Lord Salisbury and the king, your father.’ I felt in her the same feverish excitement I had found in Coventry.

      ‘My uncle had such a wondrous fire lit here,’ she went on happily. ‘He even permitted me to watch the dancing, though of course, I was not allowed to romp in a field with the tenant farmers.’ She leaned closer. ‘I did manage to snatch a mug of eau de vie distilled by our estate manager, but don’t tell Uncle.’ She looked at me for approval. She so seldom had daring to offer me.

      ‘What of the other plotters?’ I didn’t want to mention Digby by name.

      ‘You must ask Uncle. I know only what I hear on the estate.’

      I went to ground, and waited. I wondered what my father had meant by ‘a sight to clear her thoughts’.

      Christmas passed with the social restraint and well-fed decorum you would expect in a household where СКАЧАТЬ