The Virgin's Bastard

By Robert P. Wells

Epic in scope and scale, The Virgin’s Bastard features a large cast of characters to tell the dramatic story of the first two tumultuous years of the reign of Elizabeth I. Sir William Cecil, England’s leading statesman, guides his brilliant but inexperienced young Queen in her struggle to secure her throne against looming threats at home and abroad. Elizabeth inherits a broken realm from her incompetent half-sister, Bloody Mary—an England impoverished, religiously divided, weak and all but defenseless. To Catholics everywhere, she is an illegitimate ruler: Anne Boleyn’s royal bastard, and a heretic threatening their beliefs. Elizabeth relies on Cecil, her trusted chief advisor, in navigating England’s perilous situation as they confront political rivalries at court, diplomatic meddling, and international intrigue—especially treacherous French plans to invade and conquer England, to overthrow Elizabeth in favor of her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots.

As war threatens, her subjects expect Queen Elizabeth to marry a foreign prince for reasons of state. But her heart belongs to her favorite courtier, Lord Robert Dudley—an ambitious nobleman who loves her, and who covets a kingship, but who is married already. How will Cecil outwit France, their greatest adversary in Europe? Will Elizabeth surrender to her forbidden desires? And will Lord Robert conspire to be rid of his estranged wife Amy, so he can marry the Queen himself? Discover the surprising answers in The Virgin’s Bastard.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert P. Wells
• Release date: Nov 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463970065

Robert P. Wells

Dr. Robert Preston Wells, Ph.D. was born in Los Angeles in the middle of the 20th Century and graduated from UCLA (B.A., summa cum laude), the University of Chicago (M.A.) and the University of Edinburgh (Ph.D.), where he also won a postgraduate scholarship, Writer's Bursary from the Scottish Arts Council, and membership in the Scottish Arts Society. He has taught undergraduate courses at UCLA, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Melbourne, and Millikin University in Illinois. He spent almost 30 years as a senior executive in IT publishing (Australian Macworld, Mobile Business, Upside Magazine, Linux Magazine,Technology & Investing, Asia) before semi-retiring to write fiction, and become an indentured servant to dogs and cats. His books include "White Bear," "The Virgin's Bastard," "Overlord / Underhand," "Judith in Hell," "Three True Tales" (short stories), "Veteran's Day" (one-act comedy), and "Journeyman: Selected Poems."Contact the author online:Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/auldmakarTwitter: http://twitter.com/auldmakar

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The Virgin’s

Bastard

Robert P. Wells

Auld Makar Publications

First American edition

Copyright © 2019 by Robert Preston Wells

All rights reserved under the 1976 United States Copyright Act as amended, International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions, and all other global agencies protecting intellectual property. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, digital or analogue, or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise – without the prior written permission of the publisher, with the exception of quotes used in reviews and similar discussions.

The Virgin’s Bastard is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

eBook License Agreement: This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people without permission. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. And thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

The author’s approved typeface is Palatino Linotype, 11-point. Accept no e-reader substitution.

Cover art: Portrait of Elizabeth I (c. 1560s) by Hans Eworth [1520-74], unknown collection.

Published in the United States by Auld Makar Publications

Decatur, Illinois

ISBN: 978-0463-970-06-5

Also by Robert P. Wells

Journeyman: Selected Poems

Overlord / Underhand

(a novel of WWII espionage)

Judith in Hell – WRNS Officer Judith Burroughs, P.O.W.

(a novel of WWII, prequel to Overlord/Underhand)

Three True Tales – short stories

Veteran’s Day

(a comedy in one act)

For my Elizabeth—

Queen of my heart…

January, 1561

I think I hear them coming.

Each syllable of the wishful sentence out of the mouth of Sir Nicholas Bacon created a puff of frost in the bitterly cold night air.

He took one step forward to lean his rounded bulk into the narrow lane, and cocked his left ear to the north, toward the Strand, the thoroughfare fronting their residence, straining to listen. The soft crunch of his boot on the snow-covered gravel beneath his great weight barely registered.

Still. All was still.

He was grateful the sharp wind had died. Only a few random flakes now drifted silently out of the black sky to alight on his velvet cap or add to the white blanket of ice on the ground, snow that deadened all the sounds of Westminster and the boats on the nearby River Thames.

It was the fifth time Sir Nicholas had said and done this in the last quarter hour.

Patience, husband, Lady Anne Bacon advised, almost whispering. Between midnight and one of the clock, they said. They shall be along presently.

She shoved her gloved hands further into her swansdown muff and shivered under her heavy cloak, then added: Although I do hope they come before we freeze here. My ears ache. My fingers sting. And I cannot feel my toes.

Sir Nicholas sighed his agreement and stepped back inside the stone archway, opposite his wife, where they stood as furtive sentinels before the massive oak doors of the eastern entrance leading into York House, their residence.

The glow from the iron lanterns at their feet was the only source of light and warmth in the icy dark.

Sir Nicholas sniffed loudly.

He was perpetually rheumy, his health thought to be in constant peril because he was always out of breath and seemed to have a dreadful cold he could never shake.

Lady Anne looked over at her husband as he shifted his weight, foot to foot, as much from anxiety as the cold. His gloved hands were feeling absently beneath his extensive belly, an automatic gesture, as he stared into the dark. An old-fashioned 50-year-old, Sir Nicholas had only recently given up codpieces in favor of the day’s more fashionable short breeches, and he was used to storing his handkerchiefs in the compartments of his codpiece.

Suddenly aware of what he was fumbling for and that he was not wearing one, he remembered a linen handkerchief stuffed into the cuff of his ruffled sleeve. He drew it out to dab his watery eyes, and wipe his broad face and dripping nose.

Then he turned to his wife and pointed with it toward the high wall lost in the dark on the other side of their private lane, the wall enclosing the gardens of Durham Place, where their neighbor, the Spanish Ambassador, lived and worked.

Can you imagine it, my dear, he hissed at her, his fear palpable. "Can you imagine what mischief Bishop Quadra and his papist rebels would set afoot if he knew what we were about here tonight?"

Unthinkable, agreed Lady Anne in a hushed tone, nodding.

She was just as nervous as her husband about their clandestine midnight business, but she tried to keep her low voice steady, as she would when calming a child.

She changed the subject.

At least I no longer have to wear that uncomfortable pillow tied around me under my stomacher; and I can take the extra panels out of my dresses now that I have come to my ‘lying in’.

She smiled her relief as she referred to the visible signs of pregnancy she had been simulating for the past few months.

Yes, you conducted the ruse well, my love, his words of praise were tender. But at least you had given birth to our son just a few years ago, and you knew how it felt, how to move, how to rise slow and awkward from a chair—how to counterfeit pregnancy.

Sir Nicholas was accustomed to considering his second marriage late in life to Anne Cooke with wry gratitude, because his corpulence and ever-precarious health, and her slender frame and the great difference in age between him and his bride, was similar to that of Henry VIII and Catherine Parr, when the aging king married for the final time. No one expected that marriage to be fruitful either; and so the Bacons were joyfully surprised when five years later their son Anthony came along. And that surprise made the idea more plausible that Anne could become pregnant again, even though she herself had abandoned the possibility.

The rest of us are storm-tossed on a dark sea in this affair. He sounded almost mournful. "For who could we trust with this secret that would bring down a kingdom? The fewest possible—no grooms or yeomen, no boatmen, no torch-bearers, ourselves standing as maître d'hôtel and porter—only the most discreet and trusted servants to be admitted."

Lady Anne knew all this. She also knew it was wise to let him vent his fears without comment.

Ah, and that puts me in mind of your maidservant—Ellen? Can she handle all the work, the fire-lighting, the cleaning, the laundry, bringing in meals and clearing away?

Yes. Yes, my dear, it will be much ado; but she can manage. Childbirth is known as a time for women only. Whatever befalls, our serving-men would expect to stay well clear of that bedchamber.

"And Ellen knows never to break her sacred oath? That to gossip of this could bring death—not just her own death, but ruin for us all?"

Lady Anne’s silence served to acknowledge that she understood well their peril.

I shall order the other servants to stay out of the east tower altogether, he decided. And you? You can handle the midwifery? Are you certain? If anything should go wrong—

I have studied it, she assured him again.

Lady Anne was a renowned scholar, famed for her biblical studies and religious treatises; but she harbored a keen interest in medicine and the other natural philosophies as well.

Bear in mind my sister Mildred shall assist as well. Between us, we have been present at many births. And we have the Queen’s own physician, Doctor Masters, ready to attend upon us the instant he should be needed. He believes I am to give birth, so he knows no more than that.

Sir Nicholas nodded, satisfied, as if checking off a list in his mind.

He wiped his nose once more, stepped into the lane and cocked his ear – although conscious somewhere deep down that he would see lights approaching before hearing any sounds. Then he stepped back again to breathe warm air on his cupped hands, which stung with the cold, rocking in place.

It is not a mile from here to Whitehall. What could be keeping them?

Brother William had much to organize, she offered. Remember, he had to arrange transportation without exciting the suspicions of the Master of Horse. That cannot have been easy.

True enough, he conceded. But worry still gnawed at him. "Are you certain her privy bedchamber is ready, there is nothing lacking?"

Lady Anne bore patiently the irritating fact that he had asked her this numerous times, as if probing to see whether she might have thought of something in the meantime to change or embellish her report.

Yes, husband, all is in readiness. I sent to Greenwich, as she directed, and brought her mother’s own lying-in furniture out of storage, borrowed for my use here.

A writ from the Principle Secretary opens many doors, he agreed simply.

She smiled.

We aired and cleaned it, and set it in place for her coming abed, she said with a satisfied air. There is nothing wanting. We laid down the thick carpets in the bedchamber. We have also hung up the heavy tapestries, to admit no light, and to conserve the warmth from the stoves we lit three nights ago, when we set out the perfume pots. Without lamps and torches, the chamber is as dark and warm as the inside of a dog—but it smells like a garden.

Those tapestries—they depict the story of Saint Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins, do they not? Again he seemed to be testing her story.

Indeed. They are quite magnificent.

I wonder if she shall see the irony in that? he mused with a chuckle.

Lady Anne smiled again, shrugged, and went on with her inventory.

"We have bundles of swaddling clothes, and a fine baptismal cloth. There is a place set aside for her private oratory, with her own baptismal font as well. I was told she herself was first christened in it. And we have the two cradles, the carved wooden one that is painted gold for everyday use; and her cradle of estate, covered with crimson cloth of gold— Oh, my dear, so rich, with an ermine-lined counterpane that matches the one on her true bed of estate."

She extended a hand in her excitement. I’faith, husband, you should see it! It makes my own lying-in furniture look like I borrowed such things from the poorest fishwife.

Sir Nicholas smiled at her enthusiasm, for it sounded as if their careful efforts would prove worthy.

He would not visit the repurposed upper bedchamber to check for himself.

Not that it was forbidden to enter, when empty. But as attracted as men are by the mystique of the boudoir, they are often repelled in equal measure from the female mysteries of birth in the confinement chamber; and Sir Nicholas instinctively shied away from it.

That, and the four long flights of stairs required to reach the east tower of York House also proved discouraging for a man of his age, girth, and poor physical condition.

You can imagine her bed of estate! she went on happily, warming to her subject. Thick down pillows and an ermine-covered bolster. A broad mattress stuffed with wool, bedecked with the finest linens—all under a crimson velvet coverlet lined with ermine and edged with threads of gold. There is a matching crimson satin tester, and bed curtains, all richly embroidered with the royal arms—

They had become so engrossed in their conversation that the party for whom they had been so anxiously waiting was almost upon them before they looked up with a start at their quiet approach.

"God’s wounds, Anne, they are here!" Sir Nicholas exclaimed in a hushed voice, stepping forward to attention.

His wife stiffened smartly as well, stifling the urge to reprimand him for swearing as she prepared herself to receive her important guests.

A hooded man holding a lantern out with his right hand, and gripping the bridle beside him with his left, was guiding the lead horse carrying the litter. A second man mirrored him, pulling at the second horse at the rear.

Between the ghostly pale dray horses, swaying gently with the movement of their gait, loomed a sedan chair held aloft by a pair of sturdy wooden poles slung between special harnesses fitted to both horses, front and rear. The poles were slotted securely through holes made for them at the base of the chair.

A rather stout woman in a heavy cloak and wide hooded headdress walked beside the dark box of the sedan chair, her left hand pressed to its side, close enough to whisper to its occupant.

The sedan chair, had it been light enough to see it, was upholstered inside and out with russet velour and corduroy trim. It was one of three such chairs that had belonged to Henry VIII toward the end of his reign, when he was too obese and his gout too painful to allow him to walk, and he had to be carried about his palaces from room to room.

It had been spirited out of storage and hidden in plain sight among the Master of Revels’ scenery flats and theatrical props, then stripped of its ostrich plumes and gold ornaments that signified its ownership. It had been draped on all sides with black cloths hanging from the canopied roof, to shield the occupant from sight and to hide the Tudor arms painted on its doors – precautions taken before it was allowed to be pressed into service once again tonight.

Even then, the stable-hands rigging it were told tales of clandestine love, and warned of dire punishments should they ever speak of this night. The chair’s occupant, once seated inside, could neither see out nor be seen; and on this dark night the chair’s silhouette was merely an anonymous black rectangle.

When the litter came parallel with the Bacons, the horses stopped. The man in front set down his lantern and threw back his hood, scattering the snowflakes accumulated there as he turned to Sir Nicholas.

He first gave Anne Bacon, his wife’s sister, a playful wink.

My dear friends, he said with a mischievous smile, beaming like a man getting away with a dangerous prank. Such doubtful exercise I cannot recommend at so dull and early an hour.

Sir Nicholas smiled broadly in return as he clasped the hand of his brother-in-law, Sir William Cecil, Principle Secretary of the Privy Council, the leading statesman of England.

You are all most welcome, Bacon replied with relief.

Anne nodded toward the woman, who kept her place beside the sedan chair. Even in the dim light she easily recognized Kat Ashley, the wife of the Keeper of the Jewel-house and Chief Gentlewoman of the Bedchamber.

The man at the rear had thrown his hood back from his hat as well. Sir Nicholas acknowledged him with a nod, Cecil’s brilliant 23-year-old principle private secretary, Thomas Windebank.

A small handful of conspirators.

Sir Spirit? called a woman’s familiar voice from inside the chair. Are we arrived?

Yes! Yes, presently! Cecil returned, sotto voce. He gestured to Windebank. Quick, Thomas, attend!

He and Windebank hurried to assist the occupant of the sedan chair as Kat Ashley stepped aside and drew back the black drapery so the side door could be opened. Windebank turned the gold handle and swung the door wide, then dropped to his hands and knees in the snow. He held his back as stiff and as straight as he could.

Mind you be watchful, Sir William, advised Kat, supervising unnecessarily.

Cecil reached in and took the gloved and jeweled hand of the woman inside, and with his other slowly guided her fur-trimmed velvet shoe down to Windebank’s back, who winced involuntarily as he took her weight.

As the richly appareled woman emerged, slow and awkward, Sir Nicholas lumbered over as fast as he could to take her other hand, to steady her as she found the snowy ground, before both men stepped back; and then the woman gingerly leaned back upright, sighing, her bulging abdomen plainly showing the late stages of pregnancy.

"God’s blood, I am cold! And we all need to be abed," she announced irritably, brushing her sable cloak straight.

Cecil and Sir Nicholas bowed, hand to chest, and Anne Bacon made a deep curtsy.

Your Majesty.

1559

Two Years Earlier…

April

18 April. Spanish Embassy, Westminster

The small man leaned back against the padded leather of his ornate oak chair and exhaled a contented sigh.

That sigh betokened a happy man – a rich man gazing down on flourishing gardens beneath his windows awash with spring flowers running down to the Thames; a man whose beautiful young auburn-haired wife, embroidering in silence in the corner of the room, was blessed with child and four months pregnant; a man whose miserable exile to this pale of purgatory that is England mercifully would end next month.

The Spanish Ambassador to England, Gómez Suárez de Figueroa y Córdoba, the fifth Count de Feria, sat eagerly counting the days. He smiled to himself, contemplating his escape.

Feria had paused to gather his thoughts in the midst of writing a long report to his master, King Philip of Spain.

He expected it would one of the last letters he would ever have to write him from this God-forsaken realm of England before he could return to his kinsman and his king, Philip – one of the most powerful princes in all of Europe – and finally rejoin the Spanish court in Brussels.

Count de Feria took a warm pleasure in thinking his cousin, Philip II, valued him as one of his longest-serving, closest and most trusted advisors, holding a prestigious court position of wealth and influence which he prized as his natural right – a role he ached to resume.

By nature, the Count was ill-fitted to be an ambassador. He believed the role to be beneath his dignity, and recognized he would never deign to be subtle, sly, and honey-tongued.

Rather, he was notably impatient, even combative and sharp-tongued, for someone holding this office. Accustomed to giving plain orders, he expected others to defer to his wishes, and to accept that in his words lay God’s will and his King’s righteous plans, requiring obedience. He was unused to crafting mere suggestions for foreign princes and their counselors; and ill able to disguise his umbrage when they felt free to disregard him.

He used this blunt flaw first to request that a more skillful diplomat be sent and installed as his deputy, to assist him; and finally, after months of knocking his head against the proverbial wall in the person of Queen Elizabeth, to ask King Philip to recall him home. He confessed he had become a liability, no longer trusted by the English and therefore ineffective at gathering intelligence and influencing their policies.

And today, to his utter joy, he received word that his gracious King would grant him release, that next month would see the end of his torments here; and that his deputy, Álvaro de la Quadra, the Bishop of Aquila, would take his place as Spanish Ambassador.

When he broke the seal and read the letter in Philip’s own hand, he crossed himself twice, and gave God his laugh of thanksgiving – a whoop of delight that brought his baffled private secretary running from his outer office.

Relishing his relief, Count de Feria reflected he had only become the Spanish Ambassador by default, dispatched to London in a great rush early last November on the alarming news that Philip’s wife, Queen Mary Tudor, was dying, her condition pronounced hopeless by her physician, Dr. Nunez.

Arriving to find this report true, Feria immediately set about cultivating Mary’s reluctantly-named successor, her younger half-sister, the princess Lady Elizabeth, sequestered at her childhood home, Hatfield House.

Feria’s purpose – to continue a relationship with England most beneficial to Spain – was clear to both of them as they exchanged views about Elizabeth’s coming role, while awkwardly pretending that Mary would soon recover.

Long past reason, Queen Mary cherished the hope that the tumor growing in her abdomen was the son and heir she hoped to bear Philip, and so redeem her empty marriage.

But in her last few months Mary’s painful decline from cancer was swift; and she died within a fortnight of Count de Feria’s arrival, to the general rejoicing of her English subjects. Bloody Mary was gone! Long live the Queen – long live Elizabeth I, good King Henry’s other daughter, new ruler of England, Ireland, Wales and France!

A violent return to Catholicism and an unpopular and costly war were Queen Mary’s chief legacies, troubles handed on to her bright but ill-prepared sister.

Spain and England remained allies in Philip’s long-running struggle with France, the house of Hapsburg pitted against the house of Valois for control of Europe; and as Spain’s highest-ranking emissary in England at the time of Mary’s death, Count de Feria had been pressed by Philip to stay on to guide the 25-year-old new queen, and to advise her – in her brother-in-law’s name – as she assumed the throne.

To the Count’s irritated dismay, Elizabeth did not cherish such guidance, never mind heed it.

To begin with, Elizabeth dismissed – politely, to be sure, but firmly rejected – Count de Feria’s assumption that she owed her life and her crown to King Philip, and ought to defer to her dear brother in all important matters of state, as befits a mere woman.

She had hidden her surprise and her anger at his audacious claim behind a soft, disarming smile, and kept her voice even in dismissing such an illogical presumption.

She conceded it was true her brother-in-law had exerted his politic influence to protect Lady Elizabeth against his ill-tempered wife, as well as Mary’s suspicious councilors, who once imprisoned her in the Tower on false charges of sedition, and almost achieved their wish to execute the young pretender.

Yet, Elizabeth insisted, her rights as England’s Queen were enshrined in her father Henry VIII’s final Act of Succession. This was the same law, she had pointed out to Feria’s chagrin, which preserved the throne for Mary, overthrowing the nine-day queen, Lady Jane Grey, as a traitorous usurper. Elizabeth’s rights as legal successor were also affirmed by a declaration of Parliament upon Mary’s death; and, most of all, by the will of her people, who loved her.

These, she insisted, gave her rightful power, and would keep her on her lawful throne.

Count de Feria had to concede that Elizabeth immediately proved exceedingly popular with her subjects – radiant and youthful, energetic and vivacious, magnanimous and compassionate, wise beyond her years. Everything her sister was not.

But the temerity of this young woman!

Every good Catholic in Europe – and most of them in her own realm – considered Elizabeth to be unfit to rule England: she was illegitimate, a bastard, and a heretic!

Everyone knew her young cousin Mary Stuart, the Queen of Scotland since Mary was six days old and now the new wife of the Dauphin of France, had a better claim to the English throne as a direct descendant of Henry VIII’s sister Margaret. Feria had grown red-faced in hotly declaring that it was only Philip’s acknowledgment of Elizabeth’s rights to her crown, only Philip’s armies in Flanders, that kept France’s King Henri from invading poor, divided, undefended England, and making good that claim on behalf of his tender daughter-in-law.

Surely she understood this!

On the contrary, she had declared serenely: the English laws that preserved her divine right to the throne specifically excluded her father’s Scottish kin.

If England was divided, she argued, it was because her people had resented Mary’s foreign husband, and hated Spain’s terrifying use of its Inquisition to martyr more than three hundred believers in the pure Gospel, setting Christian against Christian in bloody civil broils.

If England was weak, it was because Queen Mary had bankrupt the realm by sending treasure and jewels, English soldiers and sailors, arms and munitions, out of the country to help Philip wage his wars in the Low Countries – with the disastrous result to England of crushing debt, military defeats, and the notorious loss of Calais, their last possession in France.

The tone of their interview, while still observing all courtesies, quickly soured from there.

And the Count learned soon after that Queen Elizabeth was a different breed of Tudor.

Her older sister Mary had been weak and indecisive, petty and vengeful, principled but unjust; and yet, although a queen, gladly subservient and deferential to her lord and master, yielding in all decisions to her husband Philip’s will, as God intended.

Elizabeth proved to be her opposite: intelligent, sharp-witted and coolly calculating, yet charming, plainly admired by her subjects, and far more magisterial.

She proved a charismatic leader, strong, to be feared and obeyed for her commanding manner and her determined will – as if she had been raised at her father’s knee instead of being estranged from his court all her life.

The Ambassador had to admit that Elizabeth, from the very beginning of her reign, was much more like Henry VIII than her half-Spanish stepsister Mary had ever managed to be.

Count de Feria, so used to maneuvering Queen Mary as he had wished in Philip’s name, felt appalled at the change; and he soon came to discover the newly crowned Elizabeth was determined to be advised by loathsome heretics – primarily her phalanx of Protestant privy counselors.

And she proved equally determined to be governed by no man.

In the Count’s subsequent audiences with Queen Elizabeth, he had tried various tricks to persuade or dissuade her, depending on his aims – flattery, warnings, cajolery, false promises, reproving judgments, citations of conventional wisdom, or dire hints at secret intelligence – everything but openly berating her for disappointing that Most Christian King, Philip.

Elizabeth, in turn, strained not to offend the noble emissary of Spain’s powerful ruler, England’s most valued yet distrusted ally. She admitted the Count readily to her presence with laughter and smiles, and listened attentively to his news, his arguments, his opinions, and his advice. Feria found she was fond of debate, and skilled at it.

Yet each time he tried to steer her from a course of true and certain ruin, she by turns flattered, warned, cajoled, dodged, dissembled, hinted at giving the firm answers he sought if only she were allowed more time, and did everything in fact but accept or act on his recommendations.

Often she did the opposite, even as she praised Feria for his kind and wise counsel, taking care to thank her brother Philip for his gracious support and unfailing goodwill.

Rarely did Philip’s desires for England and her own ever coincide – to the Count’s seemingly endless frustration. Five months of torture by a she-devil and her ministering imps, and utterly failing in his mission, had dragged like thick chains tethered in eternity.

But now – release! Soon his vexations would cease in this earthly extension of the Third Circle, with its constant icy rains and vile slush, and the company of even more vile people.

The Count idly brushed the feathered end of his goose-quill pen against his moustache as he reviewed the last sentence he wrote:

I am concerned your Majesty’s influence in England is waning daily. Even the Emperor, your uncle, sends his envoy to the Queen to ask for her hand in marriage on behalf of one of his sons, without first consulting you.

This decay was quite true – except that Philip’s influence in England had never been strong.

Upon his political marriage to Mary Tudor, he and his entourage of nobles – Count de Feria among them – had been openly despised from the start by most Englishmen, and secretly despised by the rest. The English were direct in wishing Philip would simply sire the next heir to the English throne and be gone, leaving the realm in peace; and Parliament forbade their Queen’s new consort any direct hand in governing, just as they forbade her from getting involved in her husband’s wars abroad.

The repugnance was mutual. Count de Feria and his fellow Spanish courtiers felt that King Philip – the favored son of the late Emperor Charles V, and nephew of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand – had married beneath him.

The Spanish had expected to be welcomed with gratitude as rescuers of a broken kingdom. Queen Mary’s English courtiers found them insufferably arrogant, vain and haughty, and instead treated them with icy disdain.

In the streets, the Spaniards experienced outright hostility – public quarrels, daylight robbery, merchants refusing to serve them, people spitting on them. The Spanish sailors who brought them all to London had to be confined to their ships in port for their own safety.

And when Queen Mary’s Spanish counselors urged England’s Catholic leaders to condemn and kill heretics – often hideous executions by disemboweling or burning Protestants alive – their own lives came under threat.

Thus King Philip had found it preferable to return to actual war in Flanders once he had planted his seed in what turned out to be barren soil, and leave this barbarous realm behind, to be exploited from afar. His influence had only ever lain in manipulating Queen Mary, who loved him deeply, and obeyed him always as his wife; and also in buying the loyalty of many key English prelates and Catholic noblemen.

Feria remembered well and resented keenly all of these stings, affronts and injustices. These colored his behavior and his dealings with the English, hampering his effectiveness in negotiating as an ambassador.

So his pardon, at last, from royal service at Elizabeth’s court fell on him as a true blessing, as the biblical miracle of manna had for God’s chosen ones, wandering the barren desert.

With Mary gone, and almost all of Philip’s English pensioners excluded from Queen Elizabeth’s government, King Philip’s influence over English affairs now came down to supporting disaffected English Catholics and rebels in Ireland, plus the futile efforts of his Spanish Embassy. The Count anguished over this, understanding they had not been successful in their dual mission of preserving England as a Catholic nation, and safely marrying off its queen where she would do Spain the most good.

He considered himself fortunate, then, that the Emperor’s wishes that Queen Elizabeth marry into the house of Hapsburg coincided with Philip’s own desires. Fortunate, too, that this plan worked to Feria’s advantage, freeing him from delivering on one of the main objectives with which Philip had charged him, an impossible and odious task that had kept him in England all winter: proposing his Majesty’s hand in marriage to his former sister-in-law Elizabeth.

Their royal courtship at a distance was tepid and halting because neither party was truly interested the match. But the ramifications of creating the right alliance by marriage were so strong that each felt obliged to pretend very earnestly.

For weeks the Count argued the good case for his master’s suit; while Elizabeth, playing the coquette, put off any decisions as she also entertained the emissaries of several other ambitious suitors, foreign and native.

Everyone – especially Elizabeth herself – understood her value in marriage: its implications for the safety of her realm, potential shifts in the balance of power in Europe to preserve her throne, the increase in territory she brought a noble partner.

Not to mention wealth, presumably a rich dower.

She was brilliant, alluring, young, and ripe for child-bearing. Overnight she had become, quite simply, the most eligible woman in Europe; and her list of distinguished suitors grew steadily.

Nor did she scruple to let the Spanish Ambassador understand how much she cherished her single state, and would never lightly surrender her freedom and her blesséd chastity.

Nevertheless, for all her many attractive qualities and her physical charms, Count de Feria secretly pitied the man who would marry Queen Elizabeth; and he prayed his king would not be forever yoked to her.

He felt sure she would prove a disobedient virago to him.

Since she had no parents or brothers, Philip believed it was his right as her brother-in-law – and therefore in his gift – to dispose of her in marriage.

She flatly rejected this presumption, insisting she was free to make her own choices, as would any sovereign ruler – just as the Count feared she would oppose Philip in everything he valued.

Feria understood Queen Elizabeth to be a vain, capricious, headstrong contrarian – and this despised willfulness included her religion.

He pitied his prince for deluding himself to believe she was merely unsettled in her principles, and could be made to see reason.

Count de Feria understood firsthand how devoted a Protestant she was, how she would cling stubbornly to the heresy in which she was raised, brought up according to the wishes of her father and her late brother Edward VI.

As well, King Philip proved a most reluctant bridegroom. He had no taste for it. He confessed to his ambassador from the start that he was only offering to marry Elizabeth for the good of Christendom, to convert her as his wife back to Catholicism and so reform religion in England, to preserve the realm’s obedience to the Holy Roman See.

The Count felt certain this was a fool’s errand, fearing Elizabeth and her heretic ministers were already very close to overthrowing the Pope’s authority here – along with all of Mary Tudor’s work – busily restoring England by law to the religion of her father.

Although success was as dreadful to him as failure in his pursuit of Elizabeth’s hand on his Majesty’s behalf, Feria persisted, as he had been commanded by his king.

And he trembled with pleasure, grinning now to think his role in that sham was over.

It finished for him at the beginning of April with the surprise announcement of King Philip’s betrothal to another Elisabeth – Elisabeth de Valois, the pale, slight, 14-year-old eldest daughter of France’s King Henri II and Catherine de Medici – cementing the new peace accord between Spain and France and their allies England and Scotland, ending their long, destructive, and expensive war.

Delighted at Philip’s bold and brilliant stroke, the Count enjoyed an immense relief, for not only would his king be spared a second unhappy Tudor marriage, Feria would no longer be needed in England – free to return to his proper place at Philip’s side.

Let his deputy, Bishop Quadra, deal with Elizabeth’s offended accusations that Philip was an inconstant lover, insincere of heart, quick to marry elsewhere before he had received a proper answer from her. Let the good Bishop conduct negotiations with the Queen on behalf of the Emperor to marry one of his sons. Quadra was as much the Emperor’s ambassador as he was Spain’s.

Feria understood the many advantages of marrying the English Queen into the Hapsburg family web – to tame her spirit and to undo the pernicious work of her apostate counselors, as well as to secure peace in Europe.

But lately something disturbing had occurred, a quite unexpected development that threatened to bar her marriage to any worthy suitor.

It worried Feria that since Philip’s announcement of his betrothal to his foe’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth had been showing an intense interest in one of her own subjects – her favorite courtier, a man whom she had raised up from recent disgrace and given a prominent position at her side, restoring him to wealth and influence – Lord Robert Dudley.

Feria considered Lord Robert to be Spain’s own creature, since it was Philip’s act of clemency that had spared him from a justly deserved beheading at the Tower a few years before; and in gratitude Dudley had fought in battles against French forces, as a Master of Ordnance commanding artillery with the Spanish army in Flanders.

Yet despite Lord Robert’s almost nine-year marriage to Lady Amy Robsart Dudley, he and the Queen were openly flirting and fawning on one another – a spectacle to all, when decorum and shame should forbid it. They were never out of one another’s sight; and court gossips darkly hinted they were carnally intimate already.

Feria assumed everyone saw it, that every courtier felt as aghast as he did at witnessing what they all took to be sure signs of lust.

The Count felt twinges of disappointment arise, again. It bothered him to think he might have been unsuccessful in trying to persuade Elizabeth that she should never hold herself less than her older sister by marrying one of her own subjects, but bestow herself worthily on a high-born foreign prince.

The least whiff of scandal could…

Feria shuddered.

He frowned, his exultant mood spoiled, and dipped his quill in the inkpot to write:

During the last few days, Lord Robert has come so much into favor that he does whatever he likes with affairs, and it is even said that her Majesty visits him in his chamber day and night. People talk of this so freely that they go so far as to say that his wife is very ill in one of her breasts, and the Queen is only waiting for her to die to marry Lord Robert…

A knock at his door broke his train of thought.

You are called to dinner, my lord, his secretary announced through the door, without coming in. And the Queen requests your presence at the hunt afterward. The steward has your horses ready.

Very well, Feria replied. He exhaled heavily, and put his quill back in the inkpot to keep it wet.

Finishing his report could wait until tonight.

***

20 April. Whitehall Palace.

Two days later, Count de Feria encountered Sir William Cecil, the Principle Secretary of the Privy Council and chief administrator of England. They met by chance in the eastern courtyard before the Old Palace of Whitehall, its green lawns and gray paving-stones bathed in bright mid-morning sunlight.

Cecil was rushing out to attend Parliament after consulting with the Queen, with whom Feria soon had an audience. But Cecil paused on the steps and raised his hand in greeting as Feria handed the reins of his horse to a waiting groom and came up to join him.

Mister Secretary, he nodded, the faintest possible polite smile flashing briefly on his round face.

My Lord Ambassador, Cecil returned, his expression bland. An unlooked for pleasure.

Feria barely arched one thick eyebrow, the only sign he gave to indicate he very much doubted the sincerity of that sentiment.

He was careful to take a position on the porch leading into the Great Hall, one step higher than where Cecil now stopped on his way out of it. Even then, the Count barely stood eye to eye with the man he considered the greatest foe to Spanish interests among their English allies.

Both were dressed in ministerial black, befitting the solemn dignity of their stations, from their soft leather boots to the velvet caps on their heads marked with their badges of office. They stood as black as a pair ravens but for their winter-pale faces and hands, and the starched white lace of their honeycomb ruffs at their collars and sleeves. Feria’s ruff was thicker than Cecil’s, as if he had no neck, and more heart-shaped than round, creating the impression of a head presented on a platter.

But unlike the clerks and clerics they resembled, their clothes were made of rich fabrics, from the silk of their black hose to the intricate brocade of their tunics, a row of gold buttons down the front of Feria’s, pearl buttons adorning Cecil’s.

Both were the same age, 38. Yet the Count, more choleric by nature and so more accustomed to inflicting heartburn than suffering it, seemed a little younger.

The more the Count aged those around him with his piercing black eyes registering scorn and disappointment, the less careworn he himself looked. He was growing plump in middle age. But he still had a full head of thick black hair, with a widow’s peak low on his forehead. He kept his hair and beard short; and he used beeswax to twist straight the ends of his moustache, a somewhat effeminate fashion that had not yet caught on in England.

Cecil, by contrast, always seemed to look preoccupied with weighty matters, lost in thought. He had a lean, spare frame but an erect carriage, and his short-cropped sandy blond hair was receding already, almost back to his ears. Although he was rather sanguine in character, and always ready to laugh – at himself as often as not – the burdens of his office and the unrelenting hours of business he kept gave his long face a more haunted, careworn appearance. He often had bags under his kind blue eyes. Such wrinkles, and his high furrowed brow, long aquiline nose, thick moustache and full beard with the first tinge of gray forking down either side of his chin, suggested a man carrying a heavy load he could never quite put aside.

Queen Mary Tudor had spoken the Spanish of her mother, so Count de Feria, while serving at her court, had never been obliged to learn English properly. Since Cecil had never served the late Queen, his Spanish was at best rudimentary. So the two ministers spoke to one another in Italian, or French, or Latin, depending on who else was present and might be listening.

Alone, they used Italian.

I have come to see her Majesty – only incidentally today – to let her know I am ordered by my King to return to Brussels, Feria explained. Bishop Quadra, my second in command, will take my position here as Ambassador next month.

Cecil said nothing and continued to look expectantly, as if awaiting more news.

Feria was annoyed to note his lack of surprise.

But then I suppose you already knew that, he suggested sourly.

No, indeed not, Cecil protested. He did, of course. But he was smooth in his denial, practiced. Her Majesty will be grieved to hear it. I have no doubt she will miss your lively discussions together.

If by ‘discussions’ you mean my sincere offers of good counsel, which she prefers to confute or neglect to her great peril, then I am certain she will, Feria remarked with a dry smirk.

Fortune has always favored her Majesty, Cecil offered mildly.

"In our…our debates, Feria continued, studying Cecil, she often seemed to know in advance what I was going to say. It was almost as if she could read my mind. Or had read my reports home."

Cecil smiled at the accusation.

It is not hard to understand what Spain desires, he said, suggesting no specifics. And you may take comfort to know that your private satchels here are as safe as ours are at his Majesty King Philip’s court.

His assurance did not comfort the Count at all.

Yet it was worse than Feria knew.

Cecil kept one drawer of his huge desk in his office filled with signet rings and official seals replicating those of all the major foreign powers attending Elizabeth’s court – ambassadors, special envoys, trade emissaries – taken from soft wax impressions of sealed documents and then secretly engraved for him by the finest goldsmiths in London.

He also possessed a collection of sealing wax in all available colors. So if a letter had to be opened and copied before its final dispatch, it could then be re-sealed without detection.

He also bribed many of the usual couriers used to convey officials’ messages to and from the kingdom. Bribes were costly, yet invaluable; and Cecil smiled to think King Philip was paying England’s expenses for espionage.

Last December, even before Elizabeth had been crowned, Feria had offered Cecil and several other highly placed English ministers an annual pension of one thousand crowns of the sun. The funds were to help ensure their friendship in recommending policies involving Spanish interests. Such pensions were expected, time-honored – even though Cecil famously could not be bribed.

He had been tempted to return the money to the Queen’s empty Treasury, where it had originated. But then this better use of the funds occurred to him.

As added comfort, Cecil had placed his own agents in the residences