Cate of the Lost Colony - Lisa Klein [39]
She whirled around and began to revile me. “You crook your knee to me, Catherine Archer? You with the wayward, crooked heart.”
My heart clenched to hear her say my true name, and with such a dire tone.
“What do you mean, Your Majesty? My maiden heart is true.”
“Are you a maid?”
“How can you doubt that?” I cried, sinking to my knees.
And yet I knew the answer. I heard a rustling and, without even looking up, I knew she was holding Sir Walter’s letters. Whoever had stolen them had waited until the Scottish queen was dead and Elizabeth could turn to new intrigues.
She unfolded a page and read aloud, “At a table spread with treats, One tasty morsel tempted me. Did Sir Walter bite that morsel? On the lips?” She threw the letter aside and picked up another. “Double words do double duty, Praising one and another’s beauty. This is what I think of your double dealing!” She ripped the page in half. The two pieces fluttered to the floor in front of me. She read from a third letter—one that had never reached me—crumpled it, and threw it at me.
“How did you come by them?” I asked in a hoarse whisper.
“No, how did you come by this?” She flourished the embroidered handkerchief in front of me.
“Sir Walter gave it to me,” I said, forgetting Emme’s advice to deny everything. What was the point in lying now? “And those letters are mine, too,” I added.
For a moment the queen was silent. I think she expected me to deny the letters. “Everything is mine,” she said coldly. “Get up.”
I obeyed. Her eyes, level with mine, flashed with anger and hurt.
“You deceived me, Catherine. I expect to be betrayed by papists and Spaniards, even by my own cousin,” she said. Her voice trembled, then grew firm again. “Not by those I have entrusted with the care of my own person.”
Her words stung me, so unjust did they seem. I knew I should beg her forgiveness, but for what? Nothing in those letters could harm her.
“How do I betray you by loving another?” I heard myself say. “Are you the only one who can be loved?” I went on, more boldly still. “I can love Sir Walter without diminishing the love I owe Your Grace.”
“Sir Walter cannot be yours. He. Is. Mine!” She threw the words at me one by one, like a handful of stones. “I have made him from nothing and lifted him over the others.” Her forehead and cheeks were bright red with anger. “You were also nothing until I favored you. But I see you have entirely forgotten that.”
“No, I have not forgotten,” I said forlornly. I could see my good fortune sinking like a wrecked ship. What was left for me to cling to but my pride? So I looked my queen in the eye and said, “I would gladly be nothing again, and thus be free to choose my own love.”
“So be it,” she said, shaking with rage. “You will not serve me or feel the warmth of my favor ever again. You are nothing to me.” She threw open the door and shouted to her guards, “Take her to the Tower!”
The Tower? Too stunned to protest, I let the guards lead me away. Over my shoulder I could see the queen feeding pages into the fire, its red glow illuminating her face.
I never saw my royal mistress again.
Part II
Chapter 15
In the Tower
It was not the queen’s grand barge that carried me down the Thames to the Tower but a creaking wherry pitched to and fro by the waves. Garbage bobbed on the water and a drowned cat floated by. I leaned over the side and retched, sick with misery and dread. I had left Whitehall without being allowed to say good-bye to anyone. I took with me only what I could fit into my small trunk, the one that had held the letters that undid me. Water sloshed around my feet. The wherry passed the wharf where we disembarked on my first visit to the Tower. It slipped under a rusted portcullis known as the Traitor’s Gate, where the filth of the river gathered, and bumped against a jetty green with slime. Climbing out of the wherry I slipped and nearly fell in the water, but the guard caught me. And so, like a criminal I entered the Tower, my sodden skirt dragging behind me, my heart