The Noble Assassin. Christie Dickason

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СКАЧАТЬ can be made. You no longer receive fees for granting licences, patents, monopolies. You might lose all the rights formerly granted to you – the income from harbour fees and taxes on imported goods. You lose the gifts of gratitude given in exchange for favours, like access to the Queen, or a kind word spoken into a powerful ear, or finding a position for a young female cousin as a lady-in-waiting, or placing a young son as a groom in a noble house. You can no longer grant favours for favours in return.

      I tie the purse around my waist and tilt my Italian glass to be certain that my petticoats hide the bulge.

      Voilà! No purse.

      A week later, while my maid Annie, assisted by my chamberer, makes piles of clean linens and matches stockings, I start to pack a few books into my travelling chest. To Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford, begins one of them. To the Countess of Bedford, begins another. And, To My Golden Mistress . . .

      The only verses I truly value have been written but not yet published.

      To the Most Esteemed . . . I snap the book closed and return it to the cupboard.

      A poor woman cannot serve as patron to poets and playwrights. A poor woman is not called ‘the Morning Star’ or ‘Brightest star in the Firmament’ in exchange for putting food on a poet’s table.

      But poverty means more than merely losing the flattery of your protégés. Or even scrimping to buy feed for your horses or the lack of fashionable gowns. It means hopelessness. It blocks the means by which you can hope to prosper and progress. Poverty closes doors. It stitches up your pockets so that no money can enter them. It dulls your senses and your wits with constant grinding need.

      I know that I should be grateful. Compared to a beggar, I am rich.

      I know that the soul should rise above such worldly concerns. It should console you for lack of material goods by a richness of the mind and hope for the Next Life. But in truth, I have never met an artist or poet who did not tell me that poverty crowds out the imagination and dulls the action of the wits with its endless round of the petty problems of daily survival. I share their conclusion.

      On the other hand, I think as I brush the feathers on my beaver hat, if you’re poor, no one marries you for your money. I try on the hat and assess my reflection in my glass.

      Plausible, though not impressive. If I squint, I can ignore the tracks of Time on my face. Praise God, my hair still keeps its original bright red-gold.

      I set the hat on top of my folded winter cloak.

      My route is not yet clearly mapped, but I know where I am headed. I can take the first step.

      To London.

      I will let the whispers and raised eyebrows in Whitehall roll off me like water off wax.

      And then . . . when I have found Elizabeth and brought her back, and we are close again . . . The excuses and closed doors that drove me away from court will be retracted and opened again. And I will forgive, or not, as I decide. Lucy Russell, born a Harington, is not finished yet.

      When I am ready, I go to Edward’s chambers. He looks up from his brooding examination of his fire, startled to see me there. His old nurse pauses in her folding and smoothing of a shirt to glare at me.

      ‘I leave for London tomorrow,’ I say. ‘All is arranged. I will send back word how the house and gardens have been tended in our absence.’

      He does not pretend surprise. If he has failed to notice the dressmaker 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.

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