The Virgin Queen's Daughter by Chase Ella March

Author:Chase, Ella March [Chase, Ella March]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Converted, Anne's Library
ISBN: 9780307394804
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2008-12-30T05:00:00+00:00

MY OWN MOTHER wished me dead. Day after day, every time I looked into Elizabeth Tudor’s eyes, I pictured the babe I had been, imagined being completely at her mercy. I could see the pillow growing larger, blotting out light, air, life. If she had been capable of murdering an innocent babe, how much easier would it be to kill me now?

I scarce ate. Dreaded sleep. With sleep came nightmares, all defenses swept away. I trudged through the days as they spiraled into weeks. Time was not weighed down with the stones that seemed to compress my chest. I still rose at dawn. Moll still laced me into my gowns. I still danced every morning in the Council Chamber and waited upon the queen when she required me. Nothing was different. Everything was changed.

I mapped the landscape of Elizabeth Tudor’s features to measure against mine. I listened for the merest inflection of her voice, the shift of her moods, fearful.

Thrice, my mother had written to me, each letter more worried. Are you well, child? The city air is noxious. Have you need of anything? Can you scrub my mind clean as you do Calverley’s stained-glass windows? I wanted to beg her. Wipe away the words Eppie said to me? Then I would not know the truth, Mother, and you would not fear I might be daughter to the queen.

I tried to grab tight to my anger, but the edges frayed with my loneliness. Would it be so terrible if I were to go back to Calverley? Anything would be better than court, this feeling as if the floor beneath me might crumble at any moment.

I glanced across the chamber to where the queen’s ladies gathered in the twilight. Isabella Markham’s fingers plied the strings of a lute. Mary Grey sorted a rainbow of embroidery threads Lettice Knollys had tangled in a fit of impatience. The queen stitched a tapestry, pausing now and again to bid Kat Ashley pop a strawberry into her mouth, releasing its sweet scent into the air.

Suddenly, I felt the queen’s gaze hard upon me. “Leave off playing, Bella,” Elizabeth commanded with a hint of petulance. “I weary of such a melancholy song. Mistress Elinor looks pensive enough these days.”

Lettice preened, catching glimpses of her new russet silk gown in a nearby looking glass. “Perhaps she is missing Sir Gabriel, absent these many weeks.”

That, at least, had been a blessing. I put aside my own stitching, the piece as snarled as my thoughts of late. “I am much relieved he is gone.”

The queen pursed her lips, stained from the berries; the uncertain light gave a chalky cast to her features.

“Sir Gabriel will be gone all summer,” Kat Ashley observed. “It is a hazard of being one of Lord Robert’s most trusted men. His lordship sent the Gypsy’s Angel on business, to oversee the transfer of the estates he gained with his new earldom. Then Wyatt is to ride to Maidstone and oversee the building of his own house.

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