The Noble Assassin

Frederick appeared on his horse, armed for war. ‘I’m giving the order to go forward.’

She nodded at him through the open square of the window. ‘To Berlin.’

He leaned close and said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, Lizzie.’ ‘Don’t be a fool,’ she said. ‘We’re having another adventure.’

‘Do you think we’ll survive?’

‘I shall. And I don’t like the prospect of widowhood, however you imagine you might arrange it.’

He nodded, then swallowed. ‘If I could face your father to win you, why should I fear the army of the Hapsburg emperor?’

She smiled more brightly than his sally warranted, to reward him for attempting it at all. They clasped gloved hands through the carriage window. The ends of his dark curly hair were tipped with snow. Flakes were already settling on her skirts.

‘I’ll see you safely to Berlin,’ he said. ‘Then I must ride north to try to raise more men. I’ve learned that it was only the mercenaries who deserted, not our local troops. The people of Bohemia will defend us yet.’

‘And I will give you all my jewels to pawn to pay them.’ She held up the curtain and watched him dematerialise again as he rode away to the head of the long line.

Her carriage jolted forward, throwing her back against the seat. Behind her the shouts of the drivers travelled like a wave back along the line of carts and carriages. The carriage dropped suddenly as its wheels slid into buried ruts in the frozen mud. The seat banged the ends of their spines.

‘Dear Lord!’ exclaimed her lady-in-waiting. Elizabeth heard the horses groaning and blowing. Behind them, oxen protested. The carriage swayed and creaked like a ship in a storm. She dropped the curtain across the window. She needed both hands to clutch the front of the seat. The interior of the coach was now dark and no warmer, but the curtain at least kept out the snow.

‘Stop!’ A scream rose behind her. She leaned from the window again, into the icy needles of snow. A voice fought its way to her against the wind, through the shouts of the carters and coachmen and the protests of the horses. ‘Wait, Your Majesty . . .!’

Then the wind blew the voice into ragged tatters.

‘Stop!’ she cried. Cold air filled her open mouth. Her teeth ached from the cold. ‘Who is that?’

It’s too late, she thought. We’ve been overtaken.

‘Your Majesty!’ The voice shouted again.

Then she saw the man staggering and sliding through the snow alongside the track. Not a Hapsburg soldier: one of Frederick’s gentlemen. Clutching a bundle of cloth in his arms, he fought his way forward towards her carriage.

‘Your Majesty,’ he shouted again. He overtook the carriage behind hers. ‘Dohna, the King’s Chamberlain went back . . .’ He slipped and almost fell into a drift. ‘. . . into the castle to check that everyone was gone . . . That nothing valuable had been left . . . Look!’ He stumbled alongside, panting, beneath the carriage window, holding up the bundle of cloth. ‘I was in the last carriage. Dohna threw him in . . . left behind in the nursery!’

The bundle gave an angry wail.

The carriage slid sideways. Elizabeth nearly fell from the window as she reached out. The man shoved the bundle up into her hands just before he fell. Elizabeth fumbled, re-gripped and fell back into her seat. It was her youngest son.

‘Rupert!’

One of her ladies whimpered.

Alive. Very much alive. She could now hear his steady screams and feel the pumping of his breath. The scrap of his face that showed amongst the wrappings was brick red. His body arched with rage.

Frightened faces stared back at her across the carriage.

‘Where’s the prince’s nurse?’

But she already knew. She remembered now. She had not seen Rupert’s nurse waiting with the others. The woman had fled.

Behind her she heard the coachmen and carters cursing and shouting as their beasts piled into the ones in front of them, trying not to run into her carriage.

‘Onwards,’ she shouted through the window and heard the order reverse itself back down the line. As the carriage lurched forward again, she braced herself against the motion, with her son pressed against her guilty heart. For the first time, she truly felt the enormity of what had happened to them all, of what was happening, and would go on happening. However calm she had pretended to be, what had happened was so terrible that it had almost made her leave behind her youngest child.

Chapter 3

LUCY – MOOR PARK, 1620

I lie in my cold bed, breathing out warm clouds, my feet close to the iron brazier filled with coals at the end of the mattress. My maid Annie snores gently from her pallet on the floor. A nodding house groom tends the fire.

I think about the news Edward has given me. The daughter of the King of England – my Elizabeth – is in flight, pursued by the armies of a Catholic empire that rules most of northern Europe from Russia to Flanders, only a short sail away across the North Sea. The long rumbling of war on the Continent between Catholic and Protestant powers has suddenly turned to the thunder of guns that can be heard in England.

She will be frightened and confused, though, as always, she will seem to command. She will fear for the children. They are all in danger.

I know I should not feel happy. How dare I rejoice?

I duck down under the covers to warm my hands on the brazier, curling like a cat in the small warm cave.

I am being given another chance. If I can think how to take it.

The next morning I rise as if the world were not changing. I dress, eat my frugal breakfast of bread and small beer. Wearing old fur-lined gloves with the fingers cut off, I sign orders to buy sugar and salt that we can’t afford. I approve the slaughter of eight precious hens. I count linens as they come back from the washhouse, and the remaining silver returned from being washed and polished in the scullery. While Lady Agnes frowns at a peony she is working in tiny knots to hide a patch on a sleeve, I try to do my own needlework. But I prick myself so often that I throw the torn pillow cover across the room.

Agnes tightens her mouth and ignores me. After a time, I pick up the pillow cover myself.

After the midday meal, I write to my old friend from court, Sir Henry Goodyear, begging for news. I would have written to Elizabeth, but do not know where to send a letter. I take out her many letters to me and re-read her joy at her babies, her excitement at moving to Prague, her confession how she had offended her new subjects by misunderstanding their early gifts.

. . . So I made certain to display the gift of a cradle for the coming babe on the dais in the great hall, as if it were a holy icon. I believe that the people were puzzled by this strange English custom, but pleased . . .

She had always trusted me with her indiscretions as well as her joys. I press the letter to my forehead.

If she were dead or captive, Edward would have told me. Therefore, she must still be alive and free.

As the early winter darkness closes in, to get through the time, I try to write verse as I had once done so easily at court.

Remembering the good-natured, bibulous, literary competitions, I attempt to write an ode in the style of Horace – a challenge we had often set ourselves after dinner, made arrogant by wine and youth. But my metres now trudge heavy-footed where the Roman poet’s had danced and skimmed like swallows.

No thoughts or words seem important enough to distract me. All my being waits trembling on the surface of life. It should be anguish, but I confess that, even while tearing up my attempt at Latin verse, I feel alive once again.

Above all, I need more news. Even without the distortion of malice, accounts of past or distant events are always slippery. The truth often proves to be, insofar as one can determine it, a little less vibrant than the tale as told. The tale is almost always simpler. The true narrative most often proceeds by bumps and hiccoughs, not in great sweeps.

I need a letter from Elizabeth. She has clung to England by writing letters, first from her husband’s German Palatine, more recently from Bohemia. I know she will write to me as soon as she can.

Goodyear writes back by return of messenger. He has heard that Elizabeth and her children struggled down the mountain to spend the first night in Prague, in the house of a Czech merchant near the Old Town Square across the Vltava river from the palace. There, she waited while Frederick and his generals argued whether to try to defend Prague. With Hapsburg soldiers already looting the Hradcany Palace, the cavalcade of carriages and carts left the city by the West Gate just after nine o’clock the following morning.

There seems to have been wide-spread panic, he writes. The royal family were deserting Prague! Frederick was forced to make a speech to reassure the terrified mob that the Bohemian officials, who were in truth escaping with them, would escort the royal family only a short distance then return to defend the city. The heaviest snow caught them on the Silesian border.

The world has changed. And I see a part for myself in this new world. Not at Moor Park.

Her first letter reaches me at last, from Nimberge.

My Dear Bedford (Elizabeth writes), I have no doubt that you have heard of the misfortune that has come upon us and that you will have been very sorry. But I console myself with one thing. The war is not yet over. Frederick has gone into Moravia in search of reinforcements. I will await him in Nimberge. I have also written to my father, the King, begging that he send immediate assistance to the embattled King, my husband . . .

By the time I receive this letter, she has almost certainly moved on. I must track her flight. Find her. Go to her. Elizabeth’s need and mine will meet. Her need will rescue me, just as her mother’s need had rescued me once before.

I can do it again.

But the first ti me I changed my life had been half my lifetime ago. I had been just twenty-two years old and known that I could do anything as well as any man, if I set my mind to it.

Chapter 4

LUCY – EAST ENGLISH COAST, JUNE 1603

My right knee had cramped around the saddle horn. My thoughts jolted with the thud of the horse’s hoofs. The pain in my arse and right thigh was unbearable.

For tuppence, I’d have broken the law, worn a man’s breeches and ridden astride. Then I could at least have stood in the stirrups from time to time to ease the endless pounding on my raw skin.

But I could not break the law. I was the Countess of Bedford. Even if I had not been riding at this mad, mudflinging pace, strewing gold hairpins and silver coins behind me, my progress would have been noted and reported. Therefore, I had to ride side-saddle like a lady and wear a woman’s stiffened, laced bodies and heavy, bulky skirts.

. . . worth the pain . . . worth the pain . . . worth the pain . . . Two days in the saddle so far, one more to go. A man rode ahead of me to confirm food, lodging and the next hired horse. I had never before ridden so far, so fast, nor for so long. Our speed and the effort of keeping my seat at this constant killing pace prevented coherent thought. A woman’s side-saddle is designed for stately progresses and the occasional hunting dash, not for this hard riding.

But a gentlewoman riding full tilt, scantly accompanied, leaping from one post horse to the next, was not invisible. I dared not risk man’s dress lest word of my crime reach the wrong ears and ruin my chance for advancement forever. Meanwhile, my body screamed that I was murdering it.

. . . worth the pain . . . worth the pain . . .

I pointed my thoughts ahead along the green tunnel of the forest track, to Berwick, on the eastern coast just south of the Scottish border, where the new queen of England would arrive the next day on her progress from Edinburgh to London.

Elizabeth, the sour Virgin Queen, was dead. Good riddance to Gloriana! England now had a new king, James Stuart, who was already King of Scotland. This new king brought with him a new queen, Anne of Denmark.

Berwick on Tweed . . . upon Tweed . . . upon Tweed . . . The hired post horse wheezed and panted, throwing his head up and down in effort as his hoofs drummed out the rhythm of my destination.

Sun flashed through the trees. We splashed through pools of white light on the wide dirt track, where I rode at the side to avoid the ruts ploughed by wagon wheels.

. . . a new queen . . . a new queen . . .

Days and miles behind me, other would-be ladies-in-waiting advanced on the royal prey at a more sedate and comfortable pace. Even my mother, as ambitious as I but with an ageing woman’s need for bodily comfort, had fallen behind me. I would be the first to greet our new queen. My best pair of steel-boned bodies, finest green tuft taffeta gown and ropes of pearls jolted behind me in my saddlebags, with my collapsed-drum farthingale lashed across the top like a child’s hoop.

When the new Danish-born Queen Anne had been married to the King of Scotland, Scotland became her country. Now she was moving again willy-nilly with her husband-King to yet another of his strange kingdoms and another strange tongue. Queen or not, she was a mortal woman with mortal fears and must surely be wondering what, and whom, this new foreign country would bring her.

If I had my way, it would bring me. Before any other English woman, I would be the first to make her feel welcome in her new country. I would be the first in her thoughts and in her royal gratitude. The first to receive her favour.

My thoughts drummed in my head with the beat of the horse’s hoofs.

Edward pretended not to know what I did. If he had seen me at this moment, he would have paled like a slab of dead fish and railed yet again against the day he let his aunt Warwick persuade him to marry me, my modest bloodline redeemed only by the size of my dowry. But now that he had spent my money, the Third Earl needed me to succeed in this venture as much as I did myself.

When I had been married at thirteen and become Countess of Bedford, I was not fool enough to hope to love a man so much older, with a noble title, no self-control and an empty purse. But secure in my innocence, youthful confidence and the protecting glow of my dowry, I had never imagined that our chief bond would grow to be rage, at circumstances and each other.

Though I had fought him at the beginning of our marriage, when we still lived at Bedford House in London and were still received at court, my husband’s scorn had burrowed into my head and replaced my childhood nimbleness of mind with a sluggish anger. In the pit of my stomach, I soon began to carry a heavy worm of resentment and guilt.

I could write verse well enough to be admitted, as an equal, to the company of poets, wits and literary men at court, known as the ‘wits, lords and sermoneers’. Among our other games, we competed to write ‘news’ in set rhythms and poetic forms. But my paper and ink were too costly, Edward said, even before his own stupidity had cost us everything. Why did I imagine that I could write like a man?

From the first days of our short time at court, he ridiculed my early gestures of patronage. ‘Why waste money that we don’t have on playing patron to cormorant poets and playwrights?’ he asked. Surely, I must know that they wrote their flattering lies only to earn a free meal at my expense!

And of what use were my languages? We couldn’t afford to entertain anyone, English or otherwise. My closest friend at that time, and fellow poet, Cecilia Bulstrode was no better than a whore. Our former acquaintances of good repute would sneer at our growing poverty. I should concern myself with beds and linens, not the houses that contained them. What other wife created uproar and muddy disorder by building pools and fountains, or wasted money on infant trees when she had not yet produced an infant heir?

Then his actions put a stop to our life at court, to my literary life and to all my hopes of becoming a patron. After his folly, we could no longer afford even to buy my books, nor strings for my lute and my virginal, nor trees for my gardens. No matter how distant and faint, my singing gave him megrims.

Because of his treason against the Old Queen, which might have cost him his stupid head, I was trapped with him in exile from court and all that I loved best. Exiled from the place where I was valued, where my skills and education had purpose and employ. The worm of resentment gnawed. The rich life in my head was going quiet. I was losing myself, spoiling from the core like a pear.

I was already twenty-two years old. The new queen just arrived in Berwick was my chance for escape.

‘Why would she favour you when she has all the nobility of England to choose from?’ my husband had asked when I told him what I meant to do.

I dared not tell him. The avid rumours circulating in London, which had reached me in letters, even in exile from court at our country seat at Chenies in Buckinghamshire, where we then lived. I had heard the same from my dear, faithful friend Henry Goodyear, from the incorrigible gossip Master Chamberlain, and from my friend Cecilia Bulstrode, who collected a terrifying amount of pillow-talk. All three wrote the same vital news. The new queen was said above all else to love drinking, music and dance.

I kissed their letters in a passion of intent. Tenderly, I refolded them, to trap in the folds their promise of escape from Chenies. All my skills that my husband disregarded would serve me at last.

My father had educated me like a boy in the Ancient philosophies and languages, including Greek, Latin and a little Hebrew. I spoke French and could write passable verse in both Latin and English. But I also had been taught the female skills. I sang, danced, played the lute and plucked out not-bad original tunes. I could stitch well enough. Like either sex, I could tipple with the best, having learned young (and to the outrage of my mother) how to drink from court poets, musicians, artists and playwrights.

Even my lowly birth, so disparaged by my husband, would soon be put right. My father, a mere knight, a sweet, gentle man, had just been appointed guardian to the King’s young daughter, the Princess Elizabeth Stuart. A baronetcy was sure to follow soon.

In short, I would make the perfect companion for a lively young foreign queen who loved to drink, dance and sing – if I could get to her before she chose another.

In truth, my husband could not lose in permitting me to ride for Berwick. If I succeeded in my aim, I might restore both our fortunes. If I broke my neck in the attempt, I would set him free to seek a wealthier wife. And if I failed, I would give him the pleasure of punishing me with his disappointment for the rest of my life.

. . . worth the pain . . . worth the pain . . .

A new time had begun for England with the death of the sour Old Queen and the naming of King James VI of Scotland as her heir. A new time had begun for me, Lucy Russell, the young Countess of Bedford. The new king would not hate my husband, like the Old Queen, for having been fool enough to entangle himself in the Essex rebellion against her. If I succeeded, I would entreat the Queen to ask the new king to end our exile from court. He might even forgive my husband the Old Queen’s punishing fine.

But I knew that good fortune is not a reliable gift for the deserving. You have to see where it lies and ride towards it. The future will find you, no matter what you do. Why not take a hand in shaping it?

. . . upon Tweed, upon Tweed . . .

We crested a hill, broke briefly out of the tunnel of trees, plunged down again, taking the downward slope at a reckless speed.

Two sets of hoofs drummed and flung up divots of mud. A single armed groom, Kit Hawkins, rode with me. Like me, he was still young enough to delight in the brutal challenge of our shared journey north.

My knee had set solidly around the saddle horn in a constant blaze of pain. I would scream if I could not straighten it.

Just a little longer . . .

You promised the same an hour ago! shrieked my muscles and bones.

Just another mile, I coaxed, as I had been coaxing myself for most of the day. Then you and the horse can rest . . . for a short time. Less than half a mile now to the next inn . . . a quarter of a mile . . . then a little water for the horse – but not too much. A short rest, no eating for either of us yet or the galloping pace would cramp our bellies as hard as rocks. Then just one more hour of riding, to our arranged stop for the night and the next day’s change of horse.

And then . . . My thoughts escaped from my grip . . . I would dismount, straighten my leg if it would obey . . . lie down . . . sleep for the night on a soft, soft bed. Sleep . . . lying still, flat on my back . . . on tender down pillows . . . quite, quite still. Not moving a single sinew. Heaven could never offer such pure bliss as that.

I felt a jolt, something amiss, too quick for me to grasp. The horse buckled under me. Still flying forward, I detached from the saddle and felt the horse’s neck under my cheek and breast. Sliding.

His poor ears! I thought wildly. I somersaulted over his head.

Don’t step on me!

The world rushed past me, upside down.

Stones!

A crashing thud.

As I emerged from darkness, I found that I could not breathe. I sucked at air that would not come. Searing pain burned under my ribs. Dark mist in my head blurred my sight. My several different parts felt disconnected from each other, like the limbs of a traitor butchered on the scaffold. An ankle somewhere in the dark mist began to throb. Then an arm.

‘Madam!’ said a tiny, distant voice.

The mist cleared a little more. I blinked and moved my eyeballs in their sockets, still trying to breathe in.

A wild accusing eye met mine, only a few inches away. It did not blink.

With a painful whoop, I breathed in at last.

My groom, Kit, stooped beside me. ‘Madam! Are you badly hurt?’

Whoop! I gulped at the air. Then took another wonderful breath. I swivelled my head. My neck, though jarred, was intact. I tested the throbbing leg. Also not broken, so far as I could judge. My left hand felt like a bag of cold water, but my fingers moved. ‘Not fatally . . .’ I sucked at the air again. ‘. . . it seems.’

‘Thanks be to God!’ He offered his hand to help me rise.

In truth, he had to haul me up. I stood unsteadily. My left ankle refused to take my weight. ‘Did you see what happened?’

‘No . . .’ He inhaled. ‘. . . madam.’ He was having as much trouble breathing as I. ‘No hole in the road . . . just stumbled and fell without reason . . . that I saw.’

‘How does he?’ Carefully, I turned my head.

We blew out long shaky breaths.

The hired gelding lay with forelegs crumpled awkwardly under him. Flecks of foam marked the sweaty, walnut-coloured neck. Wind stirred his near-black mane. White bone showed through the skin on his knees. The wild, staring eye still did not blink. The arch of ribs hung motionless. The stirring mane was only the illusion of life. He had not stepped on me, not fallen on me, had saved me but not himself.

We stared down at the long, yellow, chisel teeth in the gaping mouth.

The absolute stillness, where a few moments before had been heat and pounding motion, pricked the back of my neck with incomprehension. I had seen the sudden death of a vital creature before in hunting, more than once. But I could never grasp the sudden nothingness – one moment alive, the next moment a carcass that could never change back.

One of the horse’s ears had been turned inside out in the fall. I pulled off my right riding glove with my teeth, knelt painfully with Kit’s help and straightened the ear with my good hand, as if this act might somehow help undo what had happened. I brushed away a fly already crawling on the horse’s eyelash and looked again at the long, yellow teeth. An old horse. Too old for our pounding pace. I had killed him with my ambitious urgency.