The Last Crusaders: Ivan the Terrible Read Online Free Page B

if the matter was closed. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Whitehall Palace, ten o’clock in the morning. Her Majesty will see you then. And – leave your friend behind.’
     
    He grasped Hodge’s hand in the outer chamber.
    ‘Cheek,’ muttered Hodge. ‘Well?’
    ‘I need a drink. And more than small beer. That man knows everything.’

    The second time in his life he had come before Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Henry, Enemy of Rome.
    Today she was wearing a gown of old gold, embroidered with pearls and gold beads and the shapes of aged oak leaves. Nicholas wasn’t quite sure it matched her red hair but he thought it wiser not to say. He bowed low.
    Cecil stood close by her. She feigned forgetfulness. ‘Remind me who you are.’ He explained as clearly as he could. She waved a slim white hand. ‘You have taken a long time to complete the account we asked you for.’
    ‘Alas, yes, there was an estate to run, and my sisters—’
    ‘You have taken a very long time.’
    He bowed low again, teeth clenched. ‘I have taken a very long time.’ Much as he revered his monarch, it angered him to grovel. ‘Yes, Majesty. My regrets.’
    ‘As well I did not command an account of your entire life, or it would have taken you a lifetime to complete.’
    He laughed gracefully. ‘I am not a fast writer, Majesty.’
    ‘Evidently. Fortunately I am a somewhat swifter reader, and read your account in a single night.’
    Three hundred pages? Quite possibly. She was a woman of awesome intellect, as powerful as any man’s – more powerful than many men’s, indeed.
    ‘You are with your … friends at Wapping?’
    Nothing was named directly in this world. She would never use the phrase ‘Knights of St John’. All was double talk and allusion.
    ‘I am with my old comrade Hodge. The others lodge elsewhere.’
    ‘Your old friends have experience of the court of Constantinople which will be invaluable. We have had some communication with them. The family of one, the Stanleys, are an old family, largely Protestant, loyal servants. But you do not need to trouble yourself with the complex business of high politics, you a simple, slow-­witted yeoman farmer.’ She smiled. ‘So you are under new command from us, firstly to sail for Constantinople.’
    ‘As spies?’
    ‘As ambassadors and merchants,’ said Cecil sharply. ‘Merchandise and money are welcome the world over, regardless of religion.’
    So it was true, what Smith and Stanley had hinted before to him. They were bound for Constantinople! The heart of the enemy itself. Fabled city of minarets and bazaars, palaces and fountains, negro slaves, sherbet, secret assignations in dark streets under the crescent moon …
    ‘You will take gifts from us, to the Sultana Safiye herself,’ said the Queen. ‘You know of her?’
    ‘I have some idea – she is Italian by birth, is she not?’
    Elizabeth eyed Cecil, and he spoke in a voice like an encyclopaedia. ‘She was born Sofia Bellicui Baffo, in Venice, about 1550. Her father was governor of Corfu. The romantic tale goes that she was captured by Mohammedan pirates, forced into concubinage, earned the favour of the Sultan Murad, the third of that name, and by great good fortune became the mother of his first-born son, the future Sultan Mehmet. So now she has become Sultana, most powerful woman in the Ottoman Empire. She is still only some twenty-four years of age, and reputed a great beauty—’
    Elizabeth, over thirty years of age and no great beauty, though often flattered as such, interrupted sharply. ‘Or perhaps she is just a common Venetian whore who has crawled to the top with her usual harlot’s bag of bedroom tricks. What matters is that she has written us a letter, requesting friendship and sending gifts. She writes to us in most eloquent terms, sends us – as I recall – “so honourable and sweet a salutation that a choir of Nightingales could not attain the like, for the love we have for each other is