The Queen's Christmas Summons

‘Nay, Elena, you must never say that. You are all to me. I would rather be here at the end of the world with you and Alys than be a king in a London palace.’

Alys peeked carefully through the crack in the door and watched as her father took her mother tightly into his arms as she sobbed on his shoulder. Her father’s expression when he thought his wife could not see was fierce, furious.

Alys tiptoed down the stillroom stairs, careful to make no sound. She felt somehow cold and fearful. Her father was almost never angry, yet there was something about that moment, the look on his face, the sadness that hung so heavy about her mother, that made her want to run away.

Yet she also wanted to run to her parents, to wrap her arms around them and banish anything that would dare hurt them.

She made her way to the bustling kitchen to leave the herbs with the cook, hurrying around the soldiers who cleaned their swords by the fire, the maids who scurried around with pots and bowls. London. It was there that lurked whatever had angered her father. She knew where London was, of course, far away over the sea in England. It was home, or so her father sometimes said, but she couldn’t quite fathom it.

When he showed her drawings of London, pointing out churches and bridges and palaces, she was amazed by the thought of so many people in such grand dwellings. The largest place she knew was Galway City. When she went to market there with her mother, Father said London was like twenty Galways.

London was also where Queen Elizabeth lived. The Queen, who was so grand and glittering and beautiful, who held all of England safe in her jewelled hand. Was it the Queen who angered him now? Who slighted her mother?

Her fists clenched in anger at the thought of it as Alys stomped across the kitchen. How dared the Queen, how dared anyone, do such a thing to her parents? It was not fair. She didn’t care where she lived, whether Galway or London, but she did care if her father was denied his true place.

‘How now, Lady Alys, and what has you in such a temper?’ one of the cooks called out. ‘Have the fairies stolen away your sugar and left salt instead?’

Alys had to laugh at the teasing. ‘Nay, I merely came to give you some of my mother’s herbs. ʼTis the cold day has me in a mood, I think.’

‘It’s never cold down here with all these fires. Here, I need a spot of mint from the garden and I think a hardy bunch still has some green near the wall. Will you fetch it for me? Some fresh air might do you some good, my lady.’

Alys nodded, glad of an errand, and quickly found her cloak before she slipped out into the walled kitchen garden.

The wind was chilly as she made her way to the covered herb beds at the back of the garden, but she didn’t care. It brought with it the salt tang of the sea and whenever she felt sad or confused the sea would calm her again.

She climbed up to the top of the stone wall and perched there for a glimpse of the sea. The outbuildings of the castle, the dairy and butcher’s shop and stables, blocked most of the view of the cliffs, but she could see a sliver of the grey waves beyond.

That sea could take her to London, she thought, and she would fix whatever there had hurt her family. She would tell the Queen all about it herself. And maybe, just maybe, she would see that handsome boy again...

‘Alys! You will catch the ague out here,’ she heard her father shout.

She glanced back to see him striding down the garden path, no cloak or hat against the cold wind, though he seemed not to notice. His attention was only on her.

‘Father, how far is London?’

He scowled. ‘Oh, so you heard that, did you? It is much farther than you could fly, my little butterfly.’ He lifted her down from the wall, spinning her around to make her giggle before he braced her against his shoulder. ‘Mayhap one day you will go there and see it for yourself.’

‘Will I see the Queen?’

‘Only if she is very lucky.’

‘But what if she does not want to see me? Because I am yours and Mother’s?’

Her father hugged her tightly. ‘You must not think such things, Alys. You are a Drury. Your great-grandmother served Elizabeth of York, and your grandmother served Katherine of Aragon. Our family goes back hundreds of years and your mother’s even more. The Lorca-Ramirez are a ducal family and there are no dukes at all in England now. You would be the grandest lady at court.’

Alys wasn’t so sure of that. Her mother and nursemaid were always telling her no lady would climb walls and swim in the sea as she did. But London—it sounded most intriguing. And if she truly was a lady and served the Queen well, the Drurys would have their due at long last.

She glanced back at the roiling sea as her father carried her into the house. One day, yes, that sea would take her to England and she would see its splendours for herself.

* * *

‘That lying whore! She has been dead for years and still she dares to thwart me.’ A crash exploded through the house as Edward Huntley threw his pottery plate against the fireplace and it shattered. It was followed by a splintering sound, as if a footstool was kicked to pieces.

John Huntley heard a maidservant shriek and he was sure she must be new to the household. Everyone else was accustomed to his father’s rages and went about their business with their heads down.

John himself would scarcely have noticed at all, especially as he was hidden in his small attic space high above the ancient great hall of Huntleyburg Abbey. It was the one place where his father could never find him, as no one else but the ghosts of the old banished monks seemed to know it was there. When he was forced to return to Huntleyburg at his school’s recess, he would spend his days outdoors hunting and his evenings in this hiding place, studying his Latin and Greek in the attic eyrie. Making plans for the wondrous day he would be free of his father at last.

He was nearly fourteen now. Surely that day would be soon.

Edward let out another great bellow. John wouldn’t have listened to the rantings at all, except that something unusual had happened that morning. A visitor had arrived at Huntleyburg.

And not just any visitor. John’s godfather, Sir Matthew Morgan, had galloped up the drive unannounced soon after breakfast, when John’s father was just beginning the day’s drinking of strong claret. When John heard of Sir Matthew’s arrival, he started to run down the stairs. It had been months since he heard from Sir Matthew, who was his father’s cousin but had a very different life from the Huntleys, a life at the royal court.

Yet something had held him back, some tension in the air as the servants rushed to attend on Sir Matthew. John had always been able to sense tiny shifts in the mood of the people around him, sense when secrets were being held. Secrets could so seldom be kept from him. His father used to rage that John was an unnatural child, that he inherited some Spanish witchcraft from his cursed mother and would try to beat it out of him. Until John learned to hide it.

It was secrets he felt hanging in the air that morning. Secrets that made him wait and watch, which seemed the better course for the moment. A fight always went better when he had gathered as much information as possible. Why was Sir Matthew there? He had only been at the Abbey for an hour and he already had John’s father cursing his mother’s memory.

And it had to be his mother Edward was shouting about now. Maria-Caterina was always The Spanish Whore to her husband, even though she had been dead for twelve years.

John glanced at the portrait hung in the shadowed corner of his hiding place. A lovely lady with red-gold hair glimpsed under a lacy mantilla, her hands folded against the stiff white-and-silver skirt of her satin gown, her green eyes smiling down at him. On her finger was a gold ring: the same one John now wore on his littlest finger.

One side of the canvas was slashed, the frame cracked, from one of Edward’s rages, but John had saved her and brought her to safety. He only wished he could have done the same in real life. To honour her, he tried to help those more helpless any time he could. As he had with that tiny, pretty girl once, when she was hit in the head with the football. He sometimes wondered where she was now.

He heard the echo of voices, the calm, slow tones of his godfather, a sob from his father. If Edward had already turned to tears from rage, John thought it was time for him to appear.

He unfolded his long legs from the bench and made his way out of the attic, ducking his head beneath the old rafters. He had had a growth spurt in his last term at school and soon he would need a larger hiding place. But soon, very soon by the grace of his mother’s saints, he would be gone from the Abbey for good.

He made his way down the ladder that led into the great hall. It had been a grand space when his great-grandfather bought the property from King Henry, bright with painted murals and with rich carpets and tapestries to warm the lofty walls and vaulted ceilings, but all of that had been gone for years. Now, it was a faded, dusty, empty room.

At the far end of the hall, his father sat slumped in his chair by the fire. He had spilled wine on his old fur-trimmed robe and his long, grey-flecked dark hair and beard were tangled. The shattered pottery remains were scattered on the floor, amid splashes of blood-red wine, but no one ventured near to clean it up.

Sir Matthew stood a few feet away, his arms crossed over his chest as he dispassionately surveyed the scene. Unlike Edward, he was still lean and fit, his sombre dark grey travelling clothes not elaborate, but perfectly cut from the finest wool and velvet. With his sword strapped to his side, he looked ready to ride out and fight for his Queen at any moment, despite his age.

What had brought such a man to such a pitiful place as Huntleyburg?

Sir Matthew glanced up and saw John there in the shadows. ‘Ah, John, my dear lad, there you are. ʼTis most splendid to see you again. How you have grown!’

Before John could answer, his father turned his bleary gaze to him, his face twisted in fury. ‘She has cursed me again,’ he shouted. ‘You and your mother have ruined my life! I am still not allowed at court.’

Sir Matthew pressed Edward back into his chair with a firm yet unobtrusive hand to his shoulder. ‘You know the reason you are not allowed at court has nothing to do with Maria-Caterina. In fact, she is the only reason your whole roof did not come crashing down on your head years ago.’

John looked up at the great hall’s ceiling, at the ancient, stained rafters patched with newer plaster. It was true his mother had been an heiress. But that money was long gone now.

‘She cursed me,’ Edward said pitifully. ‘She said the monks who once lived here would take their rightful home back and I would have naught.’

Sir Matthew gave him a distasteful glance. He poured out another goblet of wine and pressed it into Edward’s hand, smiling grimly as he gulped it down.

‘We have more serious matters to discuss now, Edward,’ Sir Matthew said. ‘Maria-Caterina is long gone and you have tossed away any chance you may have had. But it is not too late for John.’

‘John? What can he possibly do?’ Edward said contemptuously, without even looking at his son.

‘He can do much indeed. I hear from your tutors that you are most adept, John, especially at languages,’ Sir Matthew said, turning away from Edward and beckoning John closer. ‘That you should be sent to Cambridge next term. Do you enjoy your studies?’

Somewhere deep inside of John, in a spot he had thought long numbed, hope stirred. ‘Very much, my lord. I know my Greek and Latin quite well now, as well as French and Spanish, and some Italian.’

‘And your skills with the bow and the sword? How are they?’

John thought of the stag he had brought down for the supper table, one clean arrow shot. ‘Not bad, I think. You can ask the sword master at my school, I work with him every week.’

‘Hmm.’ Sir Matthew studied John closely, tapping his fingers against his sleeve. ‘And you are handsome, too.’

‘He gets it from his cursed mother,’ Edward muttered. ‘Those eyes...’

Sir Matthew peered closer. ‘Aye, you do have a dark Spanish look about you, John.’ He poured out even more wine and handed it to Edward without another glance. ‘Come, John, let us walk outside for a time. I haven’t long before I must ride back.’

John followed his godfather into the abbey garden. Like the house, they had once been a grand showplace, filled with the colour and scent of rare roses, the splash of fountains. Now it was brown and dead. But John felt more hope than he had in a long while. School had been an escape from home, a place where he knew he had to work hard. Was that hard work finally going to reward him? And with what?

‘You said I might be able to do much indeed, my lord,’ he said, trying not to appear too eager. To seem sophisticated enough for Cambridge and a career beyond. Maybe even something at court. ‘I hope that may be true. I wish to serve the Queen in any way I am able.’ And maybe to redeem the Huntley name, as well, if it was not lost for good. To bring honour to his family again would mean his life had a meaning.

Sir Matthew smiled. ‘Most admirable, John. The Queen is in great need of talented and loyal men like you, now more than ever. I fear dark days lie ahead for England.’

Darker days than now, with Spain and France crowding close on all sides, and Mary of Scotland lurking in the background at every moment? ‘My lord?’

‘The Queen has always had many enemies, but now they will grow ever bolder. I hope to raise a regiment to take to the Low Countries soon.’

‘Truly?’ John said in growing excitement. To be a soldier, to win glory on the battlefield—sure that would save the name of Huntley. ‘Might there be a place for me in your household there, my lord?’

Sir Matthew’s smile turned wry. ‘Perhaps one day, John. But you must finish your studies first. A mind like yours, adept at languages, will be of great use to you.’

John hid his flash of disappointment. ‘What sort of place might there be for me, then?’

‘Perhaps...’ Sir Matthew seemed to hesitate before he said, ‘Perhaps you have heard of my friend Sir Francis Walsingham?’

Of course John had heard of Walsingham. He was the Queen’s most trusted secretary, the keeper of many secrets, many dangers. ‘Aye, I know of him.’

‘He recently asked me about your progress. If matters do come to war with Spain, a man with connections and skills such as yours would be most valuable.’

John’s thoughts raced, a dizzying tidal pool of what a man like Walsingham might ask of him. ‘Because I am half-Spanish?’

‘That, of course, and because of your intelligence. Your—intuition, perhaps. I noticed it in you when you were a boy, that watchfulness, that—that knowledge. It is still there. Properly honed and directed, it will take you far.’

‘You think there will be danger from Spain soon? Is that why you are going to the Low Countries to fight them there?’

‘There will always be danger from Spain, my dear lad. Who knows what will happen in a few years, when you have finished your studies? Now, why don’t you tell me more of your schooling? What have you learned of mathematics there, of astronomy?’

John walked with Sir Matthew around the gardens back to the drive at the front of the house, where a servant waited with his horse. He told him about his schooling and asked a few questions about court, which Sir Matthew answered lightly.

‘Keep up with your studies, John, and do not worry about your father. I will see he comes to no harm,’ Sir Matthew said as he swung himself up into his saddle. ‘I must go now, but you will think about what I have said?’

‘Of course, my lord.’ John was sure he would think of little else. He bowed, and watched his godfather gallop away.

John looked back at the house. In the fading sunlight, Huntleyburg Abbey looked better than usual, its patches and cracks disguised. He would so love to restore it, to see its beauty come back to life, but he had never known how he would do that. Mayhap he could do it with secrets—Walsingham’s secrets, England’s secrets. But what would that be like? What path would his life follow? He wasn’t sure.

But he knew that if it took spy craft, working in the shadows, living half a life to restore the Huntley name his father had so squandered, he would do it. He would do anything, make any sacrifice, to bring back their honour. He vowed it then and there, to himself and his family. That would be his life.

Chapter Two

Galway—early summer 1588

Alys, carrying a basket of linen to the laundry above the kitchens of Dunboyton Castle, heard an all-too-familiar sound floating up the stone stairs—the wailing sobs of some of the younger maidservants. Their panic had been hanging like a dark cloud over Dunboyton for days.

Not that she could blame them. She herself felt constantly as if she walked the sharp edge of a sword, about to fall one way or the other, but always caught in the horrible uncertainty of the middle. They said the Spanish Armada had left its port in Lisbon and was on its way to England, to conquer the island nation and all her holdings, including Ireland. Hundreds of ships, filled with thousands of men, coming to wage war.

She wished she could somehow banish the rumours that flew like dark ghosts down the castle corridors. It made her want to scream out in frustration.

Yet she could not. She was the lady of the castle now, as she had been in the nine years since her mother had died. She had to set an example of calm and fortitude.

She stepped into the laundry, and put down her basket with the others. She saw that the day’s work was not even half-finished, with linens left to boil unsupervised in the cauldrons, the air filled with lavender-scented steam so thick she could barely see through it.

‘Oh, my lady!’ one of the maids, young Molly, wailed when she saw Alys. ‘They do say that when the Spanish come, we will all be horribly tortured! That in their ships they carry whips and nooses, and brands to mark all the babies.’

‘I did hear that, too,’ another maid said, her voice full of doomed resignation. ‘That all the older children will be killed and the babies marked so after all might know their shame of being conquered.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ the old head laundress said heartily. ‘We will all be run through with swords and tossed over the walls into the sea before we can be branded.’

‘They say the Dutch in Leiden burned their own city to the ground before they let it fall into Spanish hands,’ another said. ‘We shall have to do the same.’

‘Enough!’ Alys said sternly. If she heard once more about the rumoured cruelties of the Spanish, people who were nowhere near Ireland, she would scream. What would her mother have said about it all? ‘If they are sailing at all, they are headed to England, not here, and they shall be turned back before they even get near. We are in no danger.’

‘Then why are all the soldiers marching into Fort Hill?’ Molly asked. ‘And why is Sir Richard Bingham riding out from Galway City to inspect the fortifications?’

Alys wished she knew that herself. Bingham had a cruel reputation after so bloodily putting down the chieftains’ rebellions years before; having him roaming the countryside could mean nothing good. But she couldn’t let the maids see that. ‘We are in more danger of a shortage of clean linen than anything else,’ she said, tossing a pile of laundry at Molly. ‘We must finish the day’s work now, Armada or not.’

The maids all grumbled but set about their scrubbing and stirring. As Alys turned to leave, she heard the whispers rustle up again. Whips and brands...

The stone walls felt as if they were pressing down on her. The fear and uncertainty all around her for so many days was making her feel ill. She—who prided herself on a sturdy spirit and practicality! A person had to be sturdy to live in such a place as Dunboyton. The cold winds that always swept off the sea, the monotony of seeing the same faces every day, the strangeness of the land itself, it had all surely driven many people mad.

Alys didn’t mind the life of Dunboyton now. Even if she sometimes dreamed of seeing other lands, the sparkle of a royal court or the sunshine of her mother’s Granada, she knew she had to be content with her father and her duties at the castle. It was her life and dreaming could not change it.

But now—now she felt as if she was caught in a confusing, upside-down nightmare she couldn’t wake from at all.

She had other tasks waiting, but she had to get away for just a few moments, to breathe some fresh air and clear away the miasma of fear the maids’ gossip had woven. She snatched a woollen cloak from the hook by the kitchen door and made her way outside.

A cold wind whipped around the castle walls, catching at her hair and her skirts. She hurried through the kitchen garden and scrambled over the rough stone wall into the wilder fields beyond, as she had done so often ever since she was a child. After her mother died, she would often escape for long rambles along the shore and up to the ruins of the abbey, and she would see no one at all for hours.

That was not true today. She followed the narrow path that led down from Dunboyton’s perch on the cliffs down to the bay. The spots that were usually deserted were today filled with people, hurrying on errands that she couldn’t identify, but which they seemed to think were quite vital. Soldiers both from her father’s castle regiment and sent from Galway City and the fort swarmed in a mass of blue-and-grey wool over the rocky beach.

Alys paused halfway along the path to peer down at them as they marched back and forth. Everyone said the Spanish were sweeping ever closer to England in their invincible ships and would never come this far north, but obviously precautions were still being taken, enough to frighten the maids. They said the Spanish had come here before, to try to help the chieftains defeat the English rulers, but they had been driven away then. Why would now be any different?

Whips and brands...hangings. Alys shivered and pulled her cloak closer around her. She remembered her mother’s tales of Spain, the way the candied lemons and oranges sent from her uncles in Andalusia would melt on her tongue like sunshine, and she could not reconcile the two images at all. Could the same people who had produced her lovely, gentle mother be so barbarous? And if so, what lay deep inside herself?

Her father was banished from the royal court, sent to be governor in this distant place because of her mother’s birthplace. What would happen to them now?

‘Alys!’ she heard her father call. ‘It is much too cold today for you to be here.’

She turned to see him hurrying up the pathway, the wind catching at his cloak and cap, a spyglass in his hand. He looked so much older suddenly, his beard turned grey, lines etched on his face, as if this new worry had aged him.

‘I won’t stay out long,’ she said. ‘I just couldn’t listen to the maids a moment longer.’

He nodded grimly. ‘I can imagine. Spreading panic now will help no one.’

‘Is there any word yet from England?’

‘Only that the ships have been gathering in Portsmouth and Plymouth, and militias organised along the coast. Nothing established as of yet. There have been no signal fires from Dublin.’

Alys gestured towards the activity on the beach. ‘Bingham is taking no chances, I see.’

‘Aye, the man does love a fight. He has been idle too long, since the rebellions were put down. I fear he will be in for a sharp disappointment when no Spaniard shows up for battle.’

Or if England was overrun and conquered before Ireland even had a chance to fight. But she could not say that aloud. She would start to wail like the maids.

Alys borrowed her father’s spyglass and used it to scan the horizon. The water was dark grey, choppy as the wind whipped up, and she could see no vessels but a few local fishing boats. It had been thus for weeks, the weather unseasonably cold, storm-ridden and unpredictable. This was usually the best time of the year to set sail, but not now. The Spanish would be foolhardy to try to land in such an inhospitable place, for so many reasons.