The Queen's Secret Read Online Free PDF

knuckle, the broad sinews of his wrist. Then another hand came down to grip hers and, with a grunt, he lifted her straight off the ground and up the side of the grassy bank.
    Gaining a foothold, Lucy released his hand and climbed the rest of the way herself, not caring how dirty she made her gown, clambering up just in time to see the Queen’s party approaching.
    ‘Thank you,’ she said breathlessly, and looked up into the face of a young man as black as herself and only slightly taller. ‘You … You’re …’
    ‘Hush.’ He smiled, though seriously, as he pointed down the bank towards the Brays. ‘The Queen is here.’

Four

    THE SIBYL, WHO had appeared to greet the royal entourage before the earthworks that marked the entrance to Kenilworth, gave a deep curtsey as her elaborate speech drew to a close. Thin as a cat, hair adorned with flowers and one shoulder bare in the Grecian fashion, scarcely decent in her sheath of white silk, the girl – fourteen, maybe fifteen years of age – peered up at her master the Earl of Leicester with praise-hungry eyes as if to ask, ‘So, was my speech performed well enough to please you, my good lord?’
    Elizabeth, one gloved hand clenched on the rein of her horse, tried to keep the sting of jealousy from her voice.
    ‘A worthy protégée, my lord.’
    At a nod, the girl backed away, her flowered head so low she was almost bent double, a courtesy no doubt hampered by the immodestly tight wrap of her costume. The royal entourage swayed forward once more, the Queen’s yeoman guards riding further back than her advisers had suggested. Elizabeth held herself erect in the saddle. She refused to enter Kenilworth as though afraid for her life, despite the usual rumours of plots and threats against her.
    By God, she was tired, though. She ached after the long day’s ride, and her heavy cloth-of-gold gown, encrusted with jewels from hem to ruff, was stifling on this warm evening. Yet she could see the crowds ahead lining the broad walk and leaning precariously from Kenilworth’s battlemented towers, heedless of danger. They had come to see their queen, and she would not disappoint them by sagging in the saddle like an old woman or calling for her chair, to be carried in like her father towards the end of his reign, sick and barely able to walk. Tonight, though, she felt her forty-two years. Her skin hung baggy under her eyes, and no amount of white paint could disguise her pockmarks at close quarters.
    Nonetheless, the signs of ageing did not seem to have lessened Robert’s desire to marry her. A queen was still a queen, regardless of saggings and wrinkles, and the Dudleys had always been an ambitious family.
    As they approached the Gallery Tower, a black shadow loomed out of the dusk and swung low above their heads with a rustle of wings. A mutter ran through the packed mass of people on the grass banks above her, close enough to see what was happening, their white flags glimmering at intervals like will-o’-the-wisps.
    ‘Bats! Bats!’
    Pale upturned faces in the crowd turned to watch the path of the creatures as they disappeared into the twilight.
    No doubt the people thought it a good omen for the bats to be leaving the castle at her approach, and perhaps it was. John Dee had taught her to watch for such signs of significance in nature, and to use them to her advantage where possible; so here it would be said that her arrival drove out darkness and brought light back to Warwickshire.
    Elizabeth gazed up at the tower, craning her neck to see better as Robert brought the court to a halt before its closed gate. High on its battlements stood inhumanly tall figures with vast trumpets – some five or six feet long – glinting in the light of the torches below.
    ‘What’s this? A guarded gate and tower, and locked against Your Majesty’s arrival? Where is the porter?’ Pretending anger, Robert raised his voice. ‘You, within! Heave open this gate for your queen, you insolent