The Tudor Vendetta Read Online Free

last one of us, no matter that she gained her throne with our support. Good riddance to the bitch, I say; she might have been queen but no one’s sorry she’s dead.”
    His words plunged me into my last memory of the queen who’d been dubbed Bloody Mary by her own subjects, glaring at me in her chamber at Whitehall with her soiled gown gaping at her thin breast, ravaged by the knowledge that nothing she did or said could ever overcome her sister’s magnetic appeal.
    “She’d have seen our Bess dead, too,” the boatman added, hawking phlegm over the side. “Mark my words: She’d have taken the princess’s head sure as we sit here.”
    “Yes, well,” said Walsingham tersely, “she’s gone to judgment now, my good man.”
    “Hellfire’s all she deserves. Let her get a taste of what she served up. Some might pray to the saints to see her through Purgatory but I hope she’s headed straight to the Devil.”
    Walsingham grimaced. A staunch Protestant, he eschewed both the concept of salvation through Purgatory and the cult of saints; the boatman’s declaration must have been an uncomfortable reminder of how religious unease still held sway over England. For many, the old faith and the reformed one had coalesced into a barely understood construct that people adapted to their particular needs. To Walsingham, this very idea was anathema. I could almost hear him making a mental note to address the issue of religious uniformity as soon as he had opportunity for audience with our queen.
    Thoughts of Elizabeth quickened my blood as we reached the public water stairs at Westminster. We disembarked for the short walk to Whitehall. Night pressed in around us, inky cold; cresset torches in brackets shed soot as we came to a halt at the Holbein clock tower. Here, Walsingham produced documents, sent by Cecil, I assumed, to ensure our entry. While the guards inspected our safe conducts, I let my gaze pass over the imposing brick façade of this palace that I’d left in disgrace.
    The mullioned casements were blazing with candles, the silhouettes of passing courtiers wavering behind the flame-lit glass. Faint laughter reached me; gazing into the enclosed great courtyard past the gates, I espied a couple muffled in sable and velvet, entering the palace through an archway. Whitehall was less a cohesive structure than a bewildering warren of interconnected buildings, an elephantine and still-unfinished pastiche. It had consumed the old palace of the archbishops of York, which King Henry confiscated from Cardinal Wolsey after he failed to bring about the annulment the king needed to marry Anne Boleyn. Wolsey had died for his failure, on his way to the Tower; six years later, Queen Anne, Elizabeth’s mother, met her own fate at Henry’s hands. I wondered how Elizabeth must feel, knowing that she was now ruler of the very palace that had seen her mother’s rise and fall and nearly her own demise.
    I started at the press of Walsingham’s fingers on my elbow. “Come,” he said. “We’ll have to find our own way to the hall. It seems Her Majesty holds a reception tonight and there are no available pages about to bring word to Cecil of our arrival.”
    The jolt of life we encountered upon entering the palace presented vivid contrast to the last time I’d been here, when every access had been shuttered and guarded following an aborted rebel attempt to depose Mary. Now, Whitehall’s wide tapestried corridors and numerous galleries shimmered with glamour, jewels winking and laughter echoing as courtiers moved in satiny stampede toward the great hall. I’d resided in Whitehall, experienced life-altering and heartbreaking events within its walls, but never had I seen as many people as I did at this moment, so that I fretted over my disheveled appearance until I realized no one paid us the slightest mind. At my side, Walsingham moved with soundless stealth, his black-clad figure a feline shadow among the peacock herd. His jaw clenched