The Lost Duchess Read Free Page B

over.
    Biddy took hold of her arm. ‘Dear mistress, are you sick? You look ghastly pale …’
    Emme straightened and pressed her hand. ‘My flowers have begun; that’s all.’
    ‘Do you need anything for …?’
    ‘No, thank you. I have to go.’
    She pushed her bare feet into pattens and secured the gown with a silk rope girdle, twisting her hair into a caul net as she left for the stairs. Biddy followed, panting softly, all the way from the canted tower, across the moat, through the herb beds and into the privy orchard. There, behind shrubs and fruit trees still blued with dawn mist, she saw the Queen walking at a pace that left her escort trailing behind her. Dainty Bess Throckmorton was amongst them, and Lady Frances Howard, the Lord High Admiral’s staid sister. The ladies’ maids followed with the Queen’s chief intelligencer, Sir Francis Walsingham, accompanied by his clerk, in their wake.
    Secretary of State Walsingham saw her first.
    ‘I would speak with you, Mistress Fifield.’ He inclined his head, fixing her with his dark hooded eyes while a thin smile formed on his long gaunt face.
    Could he have found out what had happened to her? Emme stared back at him in dread, aware that Walsingham knew everything; he was the eyes and ears of the Queen. But perhaps all he wanted was to extract more information from her of the kind which had so far kept her in his favour and for which her father had been rewarded in small ways. Walsingham seemed to value her opinion on what was being said at court out of the hearing of the Queen, and to trust her integrity in delivering him the truth. His interest should have been a credit to her, yet, at that moment, she could not have wished him further away. She smiled back at him uneasily.
    ‘Now, my lord Secretary?’
    ‘
I
will speak with her now.’
    The Queen’s strident voice sent a tremble down Emme’s spine. She looked ahead and saw that the Queen had stopped and was beckoning her closer.
    ‘Come, Mistress Fifield, and do not keep me waiting as you did last night.’
    Emme held her skirts and tripped forwards, eyes averted from those she passed, but feeling their looks like darts in her back. She curtseyed low over the damp camomile as Lady Howard and Bess Throckmorton stepped away, leaving her before the Queen alone.
    ‘Your Grace,’ she said, rising with her head still bowed.
    ‘Let us talk.’ The Queen walked on. ‘What were you doing yestereve?’
    ‘I was …’ Emme’s mind spun, turning with explanations, none of them convincing. She could not tell the truth, not the whole truth. She would not even mention Lord Hertford’s name. The Queen must not suspect that there had been any intimacy between them, that she had been defiled and was now no longer a virgin. She could not believe that Lord Hertford would openly admit to having ‘married’ her, far less to having ravaged her. He would say she had enticed him or had fabricated a fantasy, anything but accept that he was guilty of any wrong. The blame would be hers if their indiscretion became known. She would be vilified, ruined and sent back to her father in disgrace. No one must find out what had happened to her. Yet she felt as if her shame must show like dirt on her face. She could not lie; lying was anathema, against the deepest principles by which she had always led her life, and something about her demeanour would be sure to give her away. Most of all she could not lie to Her Majesty. If she was found out …
    ‘Well?’ The Queen quickened her steps making Emme hurry to keep up. Her proud face showed no gentleness when she turned for an answer. Unmade-up and wan, with deep lines either side of her thin-lipped mouth, her face seemed haggard and she lookedevery one of her near fifty-three years, though Emme was shocked to think it, even having seen her thus before.
    ‘I was abed,’ she said, clinging to the truth. ‘I was sick.’
    ‘Oh, give me reasons more convincing!’ The Queen’s voice