Blood and Ink by Marley DK

Author:Marley, DK [Marley, DK]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The White Rabbit Publishing
Published: 2018-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

XXII

A ll it took was a beer barrel and three strokes to sever her head from her shoulders. That and my services, Kit mused. The Queen of Scots now rotted in a wooden coffin with her neck shredded after a monstrous beheading. That service courtesy of Walsingham and an inept executioner.

​ Kit stood sentry at the execution in the courtyard of Fotheringhay Castle, hovering behind the shoulders of Walsingham and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The disastrous first blow caught on the right side of her neck and a gash across her shoulder. She raised a bit, her mouth affixed in a silent oval and the shock of pain shuddering her eyes. The second made a path across the back of her head, causing many ladies in the crowd to faint and two noblemen vomited near the castle wall. The last and final stroke affirmed the butchery as the executioner took to sawing the last of her skin from the body. He lifted the head by the top of her red hair, declaring 'Long Live the Queen,' but the head fell free of the wig and rolled into a heap of blood-soaked straw. No one that day will forget Mary's lusty terrier breaking free of the lady-in-waiting's arms and his yelping cries, nor banish the image of the hint of a serene smile curling on the Queen of Scot's loose head.

​ As if she knew, at the last dying moment, what her death would bring like the flash of lightening before the thunder rolls and the spark of a flint before a raging bonfire. And it came, the storm and the inferno, and whipped Marlowe right into the stir.

​ From the time he left Rheims, hot on the trail of John Ballard, Walsingham maneuvered the pieces in place toward this end. Whatever means necessary to protect his Sovereign, he always told Kit. Rumors spread for many years that it was he who cast the final stroke against Mary's own mother, the infamous and powerful Mary of Guise, luring the French seductress to take him to her bed and, sometime during the night, poisoning her. Kit found the story hard to believe, not that his instructor might kill her, but that the beauty would incline to take a man like Walsingham to her chamber.

​ Sir Francis was clever, to be sure, and the plot against the Scottish Queen flowed as easily and quickly as the Thames at high tide. Almost too easy, Kit thought at the time, as he switched aliases and masks to fit his different spy personas. He met with Walsingham on his return from Rheims, as did Baines, who gave him the job of spy upon spy, making sure those whom Walsingham placed near the Queen of Scots were not double-crossing him. Baines scowled as they sat in the Master Secretary's chamber while Walsingham paced in front of him and blasted him for his ineptness. With a flick of his finger, Sir Francis cut him loose from the fold. Kit gazed over his shoulder as he stood at the window and caught the fire burning in Baines' stare.

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