Blood of my Blood Read online

  Blood of My Blood

  Book Six of the

  Elizabeth of England Chronicles

  By G. Lawrence

  Copyright © Gemma Lawrence 2018

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this manuscript may be reproduced without Gemma Lawrence's express consent

  “Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto thee.

  Hide not thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble;

  Incline thine ear unto me:

  In the day when I call, answer me speedily.

  For my days are consumed like smoke,

  And my bones are burned as in a hearth.

  My heart is smitten, and withered like grass;

  So that I forget to eat my bread.

  By reason of the voice of my groaning bones cleave to my skin.

  I am like a pelican of the wilderness:

  I am like an owl of the desert.

  I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.

  Mine enemies reproach me all the day;

  And they that are mad against me, are sworn against me.

  For I have eaten ashes like bread,

  And mingled my drink with weeping,

  Because of thine indignation and thy wrath;

  For thou has lifted me up, and cast me down.

  My days are like a shadow that declineth;

  And I am withered like grass.

  But thou, O Lord, shalt endure for ever;

  And thy remembrance unto all generations.

  Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion;

  For the time to favour her, yea,

  The set time, is come.”

  Extract from Psalm 102

  Dedicated to my dearest Nessa, for your support, friendship, and counsel.

  And for giving me what I think is the best line in the book, stolen from you with your kind permission.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Epilogue

  Author’s Notes

  Thank You

  About The Author

  Prologue

  Richmond Palace

  February 1603

  Somewhere in the corridor, a woman is singing.

  “Like what tender tales tell of the Pelican,

  Bathe me, Jesus Lord, in what thy bosom ran,

  Blood that but one drop of has the power to win,

  All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.”

  It is ‘Adoro Te Devote’, a hymn to Saint Thomas Aquinas.

  I turn to Death. “Do you know the tale of the pelican?”

  Death needs not answer. Death knows all stories; all that was, all that is, all that will be. He must know the future, for how else can He appear always on time to claim a soul? He knew where to be when the merchant of Baghdad tried to evade Him by travelling to Samarra… where to wait whilst three idle men fought over a hoard of coins in a forest clearing, and He knew when to come for me.

  Yet Death understands that even if He knows how all stories end and begin, this is not the point. What matters is the voice… the strange, unique perspective each of us brings to a tale. This is why we have gathered at glowing fires to tell stories since first night fell upon first day. It was not only flames that held back the darkness.

  Each time a story is told, it changes. Lit by sparks in the voice of the storyteller, a tale kindles, transforming. Another light is brought to shine. New shadows are cast. The story plunges deeper and soars higher, becoming richer, more textured, more real.

  To Death all stories have been told. Perhaps they have to us too. Perhaps there is nothing new, only old, brought out and polished up. All new tales are but strands of old ones, broken loose, flapping and bending in the wind until caught by a new hand. We hear a tale made new by a new voice, we see weary eyes sparkling with fresh life. The old becomes young, what was dead is reborn, what was lost is found.

  This is our power, one uniquely human; the power of stories.

  And our world is made of them. All we believe is myth. Countries are but lines drawn on parchment, and wealth an illusion based on metal discs. Mercy is a value we uphold, yet we cannot hold it in our hand and show it is real. Hatred, deceit, love… these are all stories we tell. They become real because we believe in them.

  But some stories are stronger than others. For stories to be powerful, they need to be fed. The more people feeding a story, the stronger it grows. I was to learn that to my cost. I thought, being Queen, that my stories would be more powerful than those of others, but stories care not for rank and title. They feed on repetition, on bending and altering.

  “The pelican loves its young,” I say to Death, “perhaps more than any mother. When she brings forth young, they strike her in the face, ungrateful for the life she granted them. The mother retaliates, and her great beak, so much stronger than theirs, kills them. Stricken with grief, the mother weeps, lamenting until, on the third day after their deaths, she opens her own chest, pouring blood o
ver her dead chicks, awakening them from death.”

  Death nods in silent assent, understanding my meaning.

  “I am the pelican,” I say softly.

  Chapter One

  Woodstock Palace

  August 1572

  “God’s blood, Cecil!” I exclaimed. “That Italian serpent is misnamed. Snakes strike but once, yet she has unleashed horrors the like of which the Devil has never attempted, and all to be rid of one man.” I paused, trying to control my furious heart. “And if Coligny had not stooped to tie his shoe, would only one man have died rather than thousands?”

  “It is probable, madam.”

  “Then for one twist of fate, for one man bowing when he should have stood, we have this nightmare.”

  “You would blame Coligny, madam?”

  “Hah!” I exclaimed. “It is tempting, is it not? Finally I understand why men are so keen to blame women for acts of violence inflicted upon them; to do so allows them to blame but one. One person who was incautious, reckless… allowing all who are careful to rest easy at night… But I will not fall into that trap. There is one to blame. Not the Admiral, our victim, but the cowardly snake slithering behind the French throne in her nest of bones.”

  “Some say it is to be expected, madam. She is Italian, after all.”

  I scowled at Cecil. There was great prejudice about Italians in England. Playhouses were stuffed with men portraying them as volatile, malicious, and deadly. I did not believe all Italians were formed of this reckless mettle, but in the case of Catherine de Medici, I had to admit tales had bred true.

  Not that the English were fair, either, about other races. Although it was often to my benefit for people to believe tales about Spaniards, I had no more liking for those stories. It was said that if the Spanish landed in England it would bring about the rape of all sons and daughters, as well as various livestock. I was sure the same tales were told of the English in hostile lands.

  We had been at Woodstock for some days, en route back to London where I must appear, and quickly, to keep my people under control in the wake of the St Bartholomewtide massacre in France.

  Wake? I thought, reproaching myself, for the massacre was hardly over. Rather than dying a death in Paris, the monster had grown another head, and another and another, striking out from its pit of suffering to march across France, bringing death to thousands. Reports of fresh uprisings against Huguenots in La Charite, Meaux, Rouen, Bordeaux, Troyes and other cities came each day. The beast of blood was not sated. He would go on killing until he drowned in a tide of gore. And what was more disturbing was that many reported the Catholics waging this war against their Huguenot neighbours were doing so in the name, and on the command, of their King.

  My Council feared the slaughter in France was part of a plot to destroy all Protestants in Europe, and preparations for war had begun. Forts on the south coast had been readied for invasion, the fleet had been dispatched into the Channel and the militia had been mustered. My personal bodyguard, the Gentlemen Pensioners, were about me at all times. All eyes were on the watch. All bodies poised. England was a cornered beast.

  Although France’s special emissary, Joseph de la Mole, had been sent home, King Charles had dispatched new men to me. I had ignored their requests for an audience, and my Council supported me, suspecting these envoys were assassins, dispatched to begin a reign of blood in England. I was certain Charles was not so foolish, and his men had been hurriedly sent to keep ties of alliance strong between us, but even so, his ambassadors could wait. I was in no mood to meet them. It would inflame my people and could be seen as sanctioning the violence in France.

  But there were questions to be answered. We had heard the Duc d’Anjou had urged the governor of Saumur and others to aid men slaughtering Huguenots. We had been told King Charles had ordered the killings. Three Englishmen had been killed in Paris, and that number, although inconsequential to the amount of innocent French souls who had perished, had to be answered for. It was important we received an apology for their deaths… as well as all the others. I was afraid too for the King of Navarre. He had escaped the slaughter in the palace, but was being held prisoner.

  He was not the only one. Walsingham was all but trapped in his house, able to leave only when the King’s Guard escorted him. Paris had cooled its rage, but killings were still going on, and Walsingham, not only a Protestant but an Englishman, was easy to recognise. As we had seen with Coligny, it only took one lucky shot, or a series of unlucky ones, to end a life.

  If some men were trapped, others were fleeing. Refugees were pouring into England by sea, stuffed, sweaty holds packed tight, as they desperately fled across the Channel to their brothers in faith. They joined those who had fled the Netherlands, running from conflict between William of Orange and Phillip of Spain. Refugees from Dieppe had been the first to arrive, bringing tales awash with blood to us.

  And as fresh stories of horrors, more ghastly than any nightmare, were told and retold, England ignited with anti-Catholic wrath. It was burning on hillsides, through damp forests, ravaging the heart of England. People were calling for Fenelon, the French Ambassador, to be expelled, and screaming for Mary of Scots to be executed. France was about to attack, they shrieked, and Mary would be set upon my throne. Preachers thundered through London, screeching for God’s retribution to be enacted by the Queen of England. The Devil was within all Catholics, they bellowed, and the massacre was evidence of a wider Catholic conspiracy to slaughter all Protestants. Spain and France were united, they claimed, and Rome stood with them. They meant to kill us and destroy all that was good in this world. The Guise would poison me, they shouted, and without an heir England stood alone, defenceless and in peril of a dark future. The Pope’s bull of excommunication upon me had been but the start of this, they screamed; the end would be written in blood. Printing presses, manned by Puritans, were working at a furious rate. Tales of bloodshed were battered into parchment, spilling word of popish horrors into the streets.

  The hysterical preachers were not alone. Courtiers wanted the Treaty of Blois repudiated, and my Council thought the same. Anyone who refused to be caught up in the wash of violent, rash and sudden lust for revenge was accused of being a Catholic sympathiser, and might expect rough handling.

  My people wanted me to call off negotiations of peace and marriage with France, and speak of war instead. But I could not.

  Cecil understood my dilemma. For the past two years, all diplomatic effort had been to appease France, remove its support for my troublesome cousin of Scots, and bring it to us as a shield against the might of Spain. And it had worked.

  But now all was about to come undone.

  St Bartholomew’s was a turning point, I could see that even then. The massacres were a wound not only upon the flesh of France, but all Protestant nations. Would this wound rend? Would my people turn on each other, Protestant on Catholic, Catholic on Protestant? Would I be able to retain control?

  And I despised Catherine de Medici. My feelings went deeper, but there were no words to describe the horror and revulsion I felt for a person who had unleashed such unholy hell upon her own people. Yet, with Spain always a dangerous, covetous neighbour, I could not break my pact of peace and alliance with France. To do so would earn England another enemy.

  I could not make common cause with other nations on the basis of religion alone, nor could I exclude them for the same. If I became the knight of all Protestants then any religious cry would have to be answered by England, drawing us into untold danger. And not only danger of death, but ruination. An Italian mercenary, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, who once advised the King of France, had said it the best when he claimed, “to carry out war three things are necessary; money, money and yet more money.” England would be undone if we rushed to aid all brothers in faith.

  I preferred to keep my policies political rather than pious. In doing so, I had kept England safe, balanced, a seat of toleration and safety in this chaotic world. I was not about to a
lter that now. Not for anyone.

  For the sake of my people, I had to keep friends with the Devil.

  But I wanted answers. How and why this tragedy had occurred and what part the French King and his kin had played in it.

  “I want a close eye on all cities,” I said to Cecil. “Do not allow the anger of the people to erupt. Do not permit English Catholics to be abused.” I stared into Cecil’s eyes. “Do not allow my people to surrender to this evil, Cecil.”

  Cecil inclined his head. Although angry would be a poor description of his emotions, Cecil was not about to have chaos unleashed upon England.

  “And Walsingham?” he asked.

  I bit my lip and turned my face to the window. Walsingham wanted to come home. His wife and daughter were already in England, mercifully unscathed, but Walsingham had remained. It was dangerous for him in France, and Walsingham was unwell. The troubles he had experienced with his kidneys had not abated, and his eyes were becoming weak as well.

  “I cannot bring him home yet, Cecil,” I said. As I heard breath hiss from his lips, I turned. “I cannot. Bring Walsingham home now, and all hope for peace with France is at an end, you know that… And whom would I send in his place? What man will agree to go now as blood still slips down the streets of Paris?” I shook my head. “I like it no more than you, Spirit, but Walsingham must stay. If we break contact with the King of France, we lose all that we have achieved these past two years.”

  “That may be lost in any case, Majesty. Your people are enraged. They call for retribution. They will not accept peace with France after this. Walsingham should be brought home in protest for the massacre, if not for his own safety.”