Elizabeth: The Golden Age Read Online Free PDF Page B

but Mary relished the show of loyalty, knowing that if Elizabeth were gone, she would have a stronger claim to the English throne than anyone. She opened her mouth to reply and was silenced by a sharp, warning cough from her chaplain. The warden of Chartley Hall entered the room. Knowing full well that he appreciated his captive’s beauty, Mary gave him a teasing smile.
    “Here’s my scholarly jailer. How bored you must be, sir, by such dull company.” She held out a soft hand for him to kiss, putting the other, holding the letter, behind her back for Annette to take and hide. Sir Amyas Paulet opened the book he was carrying. “Beauty is never boring, ma’am. In the words of the poet”—he started to read—
    “Her cheeks like apples which
    the sun hath rudded
    Her lips like cherries charming
    men to bite
    Her breast like to a bowl of
    cream uncrudded—”
     
    “Enough!” She was careful to imbue her tone with a deliberate harshness, leaving only the smallest hint of flirtation in her voice. “You take liberties.”
    “The poet Spenser, ma’am. Not I.”
    She dropped her eyes, paused for a calculated instant, then looked up at him. “But you allow me no liberties.”
    “Command me. I am your servant.”
    “I suspect you of being determined to keep me for yourself.” Seeing that he was about to speak, she put a finger to his lips, silencing him. “Speak to Elizabeth again. Tell her my heart aches to see her.” She held up the petticoat she’d been embroidering. “Tell her how I pass my time in my lonely prison.”
    “Charming, ma’am.” Now it was his turn to pause, but there was nothing deliberate about it. He was flustered. “Distractingly charming.”
    Enjoying his response, Mary ran her hand over the cool silk, caressing it, then pressed it against her body. “Such a pretty undergarment. But for whose eyes?” Sir Amyas only stuttered, incoherent as his prisoner watched him, wicked mischief behind her smile. She could afford to play now that men of action had begun their plan.
    
    On a small back street in London, the pistol weighed heavy in John Savage’s hands as he examined it in detail, its smooth wooden curves and cool metal barrel elaborately decorated, artful beauty at odds with deadly purpose. “Show me how to load it,” he said. He’d never held such a weapon before—he’d grown up in the country, the son of a gentleman, but a poor one. A poor one who had not the sense to hide his faith, who’d been arrested and released, but not after first having suffered a brutal interrogation. A man whose complacent forgiveness of those who’d harmed him had spurred his son to action.
    The armorer took the gun in his rough hands, knuckles swollen with arthritis, skin discolored, and began the fiddly process of loading it. He measured powder from a horn, pouring it without spilling even one grain. “So what’s it for, my young friend? Not for shooting rabbits, I’m guessing,” he said, pushing the wadding and an iron ball the size of a hazelnut into the barrel.
    “We live in dangerous times,” Savage said, studying each of the armorer’s actions, memorizing what he would need to do to arm the weapon on his own.
    “We do that. They say the Papists are getting ready to murder us all, like the Pope tells them.” No one in England was ignorant of the violence Protestants had suffered in Europe. Thousands were killed in France during the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, and the Pope, Gregory XIII, had rejoiced. Gregory and his successor, Sixtus V, were both strong supporters of the king of Spain, whose brutality gossips painted as legendary.
    Rumor said that as Philip sat, gleeful, watching heretics burned at the stake, he’d taken no small dose of pleasure in the bloody work of the Inquisition. And rumor said that he was ready to bring what he considered the true faith to England, and with it, his fires to burn those who would not accept conversion. Rumors. Rumors that Savage