The Noble Assassin. Christie Dickason

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СКАЧАТЬ for her father to decide.’ I have asked a foolish question. Then he smiles and shrugs. ‘King James is England’s self-styled “rex pacificus”. Draw your own conclusions.’

      ‘There’d be no honour in his “peace” now.’ I wish I could say that my feelings at that moment are pure, generous and patriotic, but honesty insists otherwise. A sudden jolt of excitement runs through my horror.

      ‘The Bohemians might prefer to call their leaders “heroes” not “rebels”,’ I say mildly while my racing thoughts drown both Edward’s voice and his quiet malice.

      I survived my first seven years of marriage chiefly by pretending to ignore my husband. He had soon proved to be a master of the puzzled tone, the helpless shrug, the meaningful glances over my head. He let my words fall to the floor as if they had no meaning. Or he would seize on one and examine it with puzzled incomprehension before tossing it away. Or he shook his head sadly and told me what I had meant to say. In the company of other men, he ignored me altogether. When he managed to provoke me past endurance, he would smile with satisfaction. Look at her! See what a harridan I have married!

      Having once again failed to goad me into an unseemly outburst, my husband now purses his lips. I scarcely notice.

      If what Edward tells me is true, I know that the future of England has just changed. My future could change with it. I see escape from Edward and from Moor Park. I see the return of warmth and true companionship. I see purpose for my life again. I confess that I begin to listen to his news of unfolding disaster in Bohemia with a heart turned suddenly light with renewed possibility.

       Chapter 2

      ELIZABETH STUART – PRAGUE, BOHEMIA, NOVEMBER 1620

      In the royal palace in Prague, the King, Queen and guests pretended to eat. The young, Scottish-born Queen of Bohemia, Elizabeth Stuart, jumped at a sudden boom and spilled the sauce from her silver spoon. She set the spoon down on her plate and picked up her French fork. She looked at the fork, unable to remember what she should do with it. With its two long sharp tines, it resembled a weapon. She found herself gripping the gold mermaid of its handle in her fist.

      They no longer pretended to converse, in any of the several languages spoken around the table. All words had now deserted them. Up and down the long polished table, people stared at their food as if puzzled by it or chewed on morsels that they forgot to swallow. All their senses seemed to have deserted them except that of hearing. Sir Edward Conway, one of the two ambassadors sent by James from England to parlay for peace with the Hapsburg enemy, sat with one hand at his hip, resting on an absent sword hilt. Even the servers standing behind each chair forgot to offer the food they held, frozen in listening.

      Cannons had begun to boom far too close, from the west.

      The child in her womb jumped.

      Elizabeth could almost have persuaded herself that the guns were summer thunder bouncing off the mountains.

      ‘It’s noisy for a Sunday that was meant to be a day of truce,’ said the other English ambassador, Sir Richard Weston.

      ‘We’re high here,’ said Elizabeth. Her unspoken meaning – the Hradcany Palace, home to the King and Queen of Bohemia, sat on a rocky summit high above the Vltava river. Sounds from far away reached them with unnatural clarity. Therefore, the fighting was not as close as it sounded. She was reassuring her white-faced husband as much as the rest of them.

      Her husband shook his head. Frederick, elected King of Bohemia for a little more than a year, had been weighed down beyond his strength from the age of sixteen by his leadership of the German Union of Protestant Princes. ‘They’re fighting on the White Mountain. I should be there, not at table.’ He stood abruptly. Fabric rustled and stool feet squeaked on the stone floor as everyone else rose with him. Then he paused uncertainly, head lifted, listening to the sounds of the battle.

      The forces of the mighty Catholic Hapsburg Empire had engaged Frederick’s twenty-five thousand German mercenaries and Protestant Bohemians less than half an hour’s ride from the city.

      ‘But we have them outnumbered,’ said Frederick. ‘They’re only seventeen and a half thousand men.’

      ‘Go tell the stables to prepare His Majesty’s horse,’ Elizabeth ordered a serving groom.

      The fear and relief on the boy’s face as he ran from the hall made her question whether he would take her order to the stables or flee from the castle entirely.

      ‘You must go arm yourself, my love,’ she told her husband quietly.

      ‘Oh, Lizzie!’ He looked at her with terror in his large dark eyes. ‘I fear that we can’t . . .’

      ‘I shall come serve as your armourer, myself.’ Elizabeth, First Daughter of England and child of its King, married to Frederick at fifteen, now the twenty-four-year-old Serene and Puissant Queen of Bohemia, took her King firmly by the arm and led him towards the door of the great hall.

      ‘You must leave Prague at once,’ said Frederick. ‘Go early to Bresslau.’ She was to spend her confinement in Bresslau. He had already ordered some of her furniture sent there.

      She shook her head. ‘I stay here in Prague as long as you do.’

      The doors had no sooner closed behind him than they opened again on bad news. The arriving messenger smelled of gunpowder, blood and horse. Elizabeth could scarcely hear his words through the thunder of cannons inside her head.

      The messenger finished speaking.

      Behind her, Elizabeth heard screams and the crash of falling stools. Courtiers ran past her out of the hall, pushing and jostling in the door.

      ‘Where are the other German princes?’ she demanded. ‘Our allies? Where’s Thyssen? Bethlem Gabor and his Hungarians? Are they on their way to relieve us?’

      ‘I don’t know, Your Majesty. But our army is on the run with the Imperial army on their heels.’ The messenger looked back at the door.

      ‘Go run with the rest of them, then!’ she said with contempt.

      She stood in a small still centre of the maelstrom unleashed by his message. She saw a man run by her carrying two jewelled goblets from the royal table.

      ‘Your Highness, do you wish me to take your knives and forks?’ A voice at her elbow, her chief lady-in-waiting, balanced on her toes, wanting to run, but still at her English mistress’s side.

      She looked back and saw a waiting woman rolling up one of the Russian carpets on the royal dais.

      Reality hit her. A hostile army was about to invade this very space in which she was standing.

      Feeling unnaturally calm, she nodded at her lady-in-waiting. ‘And all my jewels.’ She turned to the two English ambassadors, still present, heads together. ‘You must return to England and tell my father to send soldiers and money at once!’

      Weston nodded, but looked away.

      Into the maelstrom, a white-faced, trembling Frederick returned. ‘It’s too late, Lizzie. My army has deserted. Even Anhalt and Hohenlohe were clamouring at the city gate in the midst of their own soldiers, begging СКАЧАТЬ