The Tudor Secret - C. W. Gortner [68]
“Sidney, it’s me,” whispered Barnaby. “Quick. Open up.”
The door swung inward, a covert entry masked by the wainscoting of a small but well-appointed chamber. The first thing that struck me was the heat. It was stifling, emanating from scented braziers set in the corners, from a fire burning in the recessed hearth, and from the tripod of candelabra illuminating the scarlet and gold upholstery of the chairs, the curtains at the alcove, and the damask hangings shrouding a tester bed.
A young man with lank blond hair faced Barnaby, his fine features haggard. “What are you doing here? You know his lordship ordered you away. You must not…” His voice faded. His blue eyes widened. Elizabeth stepped around Barnaby, cast back her cowl.
I stood behind her. Beyond the breath-quenching heat I began to detect another smell in the air—something very faint but also fetid, barely masked by the herb fumes from the brazier.
Elizabeth noticed it, too. “God’s teeth,” she murmured, as Sidney dropped to his knees before her. She stepped past him. “There’s no time for that,” she said faintly, moving toward the bed. On a crosshatch a falcon watched, its ankle tethered to its gilded post; candle flames reflected in its opaque pupils.
“Edward?” she whispered. She reached out to the bed hangings. “Edward, it’s me, Elizabeth.” She drew back the hangings. She gasped, staggered back.
I rushed to her side. When I saw what she stared at, I went still.
The stench in the room came from a shrunken figure supine on the bed, the flesh of his emaciated legs and arms blackened, festering. Propped on the pillows like a decaying marionette, only the rise and fall of his chest indicated the young king’s heart still beat. I could not believe anyone in such a state could be conscious. I prayed he wasn’t.
Then Edward VI’s gray-blue eyes opened, and his anguished gaze, as it rested on us, showed he was fully aware of his torment and that his sister stood before him. He opened caked lips, struggled to mouth unintelligible words.
Sidney hastened to his side. “He can’t speak,” he told Elizabeth. She had not moved, her face pared to an alarming transparency.
“What … what is he trying to say?” she whispered.
Sidney leaned close to the king’s mouth. Edward’s talonlike fingers gripped his wrist. Sidney looked up sorrowfully. “He begs your forgiveness.”
“My forgiveness?” Her hand crept to her throat. “Blessed Jesus, it is I who should beg for his. I wasn’t here. I wasn’t here to stop them from doing this … this horror to him.”
“He is beyond such concerns. He needs you to forgive him. He had no power to gainsay the duke. I know. I have seen everything that has transpired between them, from the day Northumberland began to poison him.”
“Poison him?” Her voice turned hard, cold. I thought I would never want to be the recipient of the look she now cast. “What are you saying?”
“I’m talking of the choice, Your Grace, the terrible choice they forced on him. He was ill with fevers; he coughed up blood. Everyone knew that he could not live; he too knew his end was near and he’d made his peace with it. He’d also made his decision about who must succeed him. Then the duke transferred him here and ordered his physicians dismissed. He brought in the herbalist, who began treating him with some mixture of arsenic. He was told it would help him, and it did—for a little while. But then it got much worse.”
Sidney glanced at Edward, who lay there with his eyes distended in his appalling, skeletal face. “He began to rot from within. The pain became an unending torment. Northumberland was at him night and day, without respite. He signed in desperation, because he could take no more, because they had promised him relief and he was burning in a never-ending hell.”
“He … he was forced … to sign … something?” Elizabeth had trouble speaking; I could see the veins in her temples. “What was it? What did they make him sign?”
Sidney averted his eyes. “A device naming Jane Grey as his heir. The duke made him disavow your and the Lady Mary’s claims to the throne.