The Tudor Secret - C. W. Gortner [61]
“Oh?” She tilted her head. “Why? Surely friends have nothing to hide?”
“We do not,” he said. “But it is treason to speculate on such a matter, as you know.”
Her laughter rang out. “I’m relieved to hear someone in your family still has a conscience! And that, apparently, my brother still lives. It would no longer be treason to speculate if he did not.” She paused. “I thought you said I could have anything I desired. Would you fail me now in my hour of need?”
“You toy with me.” He sprang to his feet, overpoweringly robust against her slimness. “I did not come to play games. I came to warn you that your right to the throne is in danger.”
“I have no right,” she retorted swiftly, but I detected a weakening in her voice, a supple yielding. “My sister Mary is heir, not I. Thus, if you must warn someone, let it be her.”
Robert reached for her hand. “Come now. We’re not children anymore. We needn’t see who can outwit whom. You know as well as I that the people will not have your sister for their queen. She represents Rome and the past, everything they’ve come to detest.”
“And yet she is their rightful—their only—heir,” said Elizabeth. She yanked her hand from him. “Besides, who’s to say? Mary could change her faith, as so many these days are apt to do. She’s a Tudor, when all is said and done, and we’re not ones to let religion stand in our way.”
Robert regarded her with a discomfiting familiarity. I hadn’t thought about how much history can be collected in a mere twenty years, how much two children reared on a diet of intrigue and deception can come to rely upon each other.
“Do you take me for a fool?” he said. “You know Mary would defend her faith to the grave if need be. You know it, the council knows it, your brother the king knows it, and—”
“Your father knows it best of all,” said Elizabeth. “You might say, he anticipates it.” She eyed him with calculating intimacy that made him look like an amateur. “Is that why you wished to see me? Have we danced around each other these past two days for you to tell me that my sister mustn’t take the throne because she reveres the faith in which she was raised?”
“God’s blood! I came to tell you that in the eyes of the people, you—and only you—have the right to be queen. You are the princess they revere; you are the one they await. They would rise in arms to uphold you, if you would say the word. They’d die in your defense.”
“Would they?” Her voice was a cruel caress. “There was a time when they would have done the same for Mary’s mother. At that time, it was Katherine of Aragon who was the rightful queen and my mother the hated usurper. Would you have me step into a dead woman’s shoes?”
The air between them was charged, the tension so palpable it set my teeth on edge. There was indeed history between them, and far too much emotion. It was my first glimpse into a passion so deep, so volatile, that were it unleashed it would destroy everything before it.
“Why must you always banter with me?” Robert’s voice quavered. “You fear Mary taking the throne as much I do. You know it would mean the end of the Church your father built so he could wed your mother; the ruin of any hope for peace or prosperity. She’ll set the Inquisition upon us within the year. But not you; you have no desire to persecute. That is why you have the people on your side and most of the nobility. And me. Anyone who dared question your right will suffer my sword.”
She regarded him in silence. From my hiding place I could see her hesitation, her terrified understanding of all that was at stake and all she might gain by it. My legs tensed like an animal’s about to spring, imagining her struggle to justify a past smeared by her mother’s spilt blood. Then she spoke. “My right, you say? Is it my right, truly? Or do you mean, ours?”
“It’s one and the same,” he said quickly. “I live to serve you.”
“Inspiring words. They might stir me, had I not heard similar ones before.”
It was the first time in my life I had seen Robert Dudley