Cate of the Lost Colony - Lisa Klein [18]
One day I saw the spymaster, his cap pulled closely about his ears, enter the queen’s privy chamber. With him was the Earl of Shrewsbury, who guarded Queen Mary at Sheffield Castle. While Emme kept watch in the hallway, I tiptoed to the door and listened at the keyhole. The queen was speaking. Her voice was sharp and urgent.
“We threw Mendoza out of the country, but his spies are everywhere.” Mendoza was the Spanish ambassador, whom everyone knew to be a devious little man. “No doubt they hide among my cousin’s servants, seeking the chance to free her.”
I heard Walsingham reply, “You underestimate me, Your Grace. Many of Mendoza’s spies are in fact my spies.”
But the queen was not pacified. “Mary betrays me and she bleeds me dry. She keeps a household of fifty at my expense. I cannot trust a single one of her servants. Dismiss them all.”
“But Your Majesty insisted that she be treated with the respect due a fellow monarch,” Shrewsbury said.
“You coddle her,” accused the queen. “Has she has turned your head, too? Bewitched you with her charms?”
Shrewsbury began to protest but Elizabeth interrupted him. “Read every letter that goes in or out, search every scrap of linen sent to the laundry, every barrel, box, and hogshead of wine that is delivered, even check her chamber pot.”
“We already do, Your Majesty,” said Walsingham. “Be assured that I shall ferret out any evil. It shall not harm you.”
“Let no one harm her, either,” said the queen in a dire tone. “But be warned, My Lord of Shrewsbury, if a rebellion occurs while she is in your care, then you have betrayed me as well!”
Emme and I hurried away before anyone should open the door and discover us. Back in our dormitory, I asked Emme why the queen so hated her cousin.
“Why, Queen Mary is younger than our Elizabeth and said to be very beautiful. She has been married twice already, and she has a son.”
“While our queen has no one to succeed her,” Frances put in, overhearing us with her big ears.
“So she is jealous of her cousin, and afraid of her, too,” I said, finally understanding. “But what will she do if she finds proof of a plot?”
“Why, she will have Queen Mary’s head cut off. That is the punishment for treason,” said Frances with relish.
I shuddered. With the queen so jealous and fearful of betrayal, it would be unwise of me to meet her favorite courtier in secret. So I wrote to Ralegh that I could not see him, but he persisted in sending me letters and verses. I read them with pleasure, then tied them in the handkerchief embroidered with the queen’s initials and hid the bundle in the bottom of my coffer, beneath a pair of shoes I had outgrown.
It would have been wiser to burn them.
In September, Walter Ralegh’s ships returned and word sped through Whitehall that the captains had brought back not one, but two savages. They dwelt at Durham House, where Ralegh saw them daily. I wrote to him—an innocent letter, begging only for a description of them—but I received no reply. Nor had he sent so much as a scrap of poetry in a month’s time. But how could I be jealous, when it was not another lady but two warriors who had captured his fancy?
Finally the day arrived when the savages were to be presented to Queen Elizabeth. Rumors abounded concerning their great stature, fierce aspect, and the sharpness of their teeth. But had they been more dangerous than a menagerie full of wild animals, nothing could have kept me from court that day.
For the occasion the queen wore a new gown of brown velvet and a green taffeta bodice. The matching skirt was embroidered in gold with leaves and birds. I believe she was almost as excited as I was, for she could barely hold still as Lady Veronica tucked pins into her ruff, her bodice, and her train to hold them in place.
“I would be appareled like the Earth herself,