The Lost Duchess Read Free Page A

left arched over the cushion giving her no leverage toescape. She tried to push him off, tear at his face, punch his throat – anything to stop him. But he dragged up her rope farthingale and pushed the bands over her arms, smothering her fists and face with her petticoats. Then he pulled up her shift and yanked down her drawers, and she felt the cold air touch her where no other man had seen.
    She could only hear him.
    ‘This is what you want; don’t deny it, my love.’
    He pushed her legs apart with his knees, and grabbed at her skirts to uncover her eyes. ‘My sweet,’ he murmured, crouching over and kissing her. ‘You do not need to fight to show me your purity.’
    She tried to bite him, but he leant back quickly, and for a moment, in horror, she saw what he was about to put in her. She shut her eyes tight.
    A scream welled in her throat but she clenched her jaw to hold it back; she must not cry out. If they were discovered
in flagrante
the shame would be hers.
    She would be ruined.
    His fingers pushed into her, and the pain that came next was like being stabbed with a blade in her most sensitive parts. He was tearing her apart. Only let him finish and it would be over.
    The pain went on and on, and each time he almost withdrew it grew even sharper. The more she fought, the worse it became. She tried to tear at him with her nails but he bowed his back and thrust into her even harder.
    ‘God’s death!’ He shuddered, thrashing against her and pumping frenziedly. ‘Oh, Lord!’
    She must endure it. She was contorted in agony, and her shouldersburnt as they were rubbed against the floor. She turned her head, eyes closed though she wept, and with her ear against the boards she heard sounds from below: the Queen calling in anger and the soft lilt of music.

2
Guarded
    ‘Am I not well guarded today, with no man near me who wears a sword at his side?’
    —Queen Elizabeth I in conversation with Sir Christopher Hatton while out walking in Richmond Park in 1586, on seeing the would-be assassin, Robert Barnewell, and meeting his eye after recognising him from a portrait of the ‘six gentlemen’, led by Anthony Babington, who had undertaken to murder her in what later became known as the Babington Plot
    ‘Mistress Emme, please wake; the Queen calls you!’
    The Queen
. Emme’s eyes flicked open in panic to see her maid, Biddy, hovering over her.
    Her tongue felt swollen and her mouth almost too dry to speak. A wave of pain flared through her from her belly to her private parts. She curled over and hugged herself, feeling the bulk of the rags between her legs that she had tied in place before climbing into bed, remembering that she had been bleeding the night before. Butshe was conscious of much more than spotting from the place that hurt; in the rags was the hot stickiness that had become familiar to her every month.
    ‘
Thank God
,’ she whispered to herself while Biddy told her the time.
    ‘It’s five of the morning, mistress.’
    Daybreak after the night she had been spoiled, but surely she could not have been got with child; her menses would drown any seed in her womb. She wanted to ask Biddy whether she agreed this must be so, though all she did was look at her maid’s simple face, from her starting eyes to her buck teeth just showing above her full lower lip.
    Others were moving about the room: ladies of the royal household and servants. Her young companion, Bess Throckmorton, called out to her shrilly.
    ‘Emme, I’ll see you outside. Come quickly.’
    Biddy held out her gown. ‘Her Majesty is going walking in the garden and you must go with her now, she says.’ Biddy lowered her eyes. ‘You seem to have displeased her, mistress.’
    ‘What has she said …? Oh, no,’ Emme gasped, hearing a flurry of running footsteps and the thud of a door below. ‘I must get up.’
    She dragged the gown over her shoulders and slipped out of the truckle bed, clutching Biddy as she stood, for a moment creased