Free His Dark Lady by Victoria Lamb Page A

for a clean whore has grown beyond my slender pockets now.’
    ‘Whoring has become an expensive habit of late,’ Twist agreed ruefully. He leaned back in his chair and looked at Goodluck. ‘So you got out of Rome alive. You were away so long, I was beginning to wonder if I should come after you. What happened?’
    ‘Someone gave me away.’
    ‘You were betrayed?’ Twist frowned. ‘Do you know by whom?’
    ‘Not yet. But I intend to find out.’ Goodluck met his gaze. ‘Now to the letter I sent. Did you find the man I was looking for?’
    Twist shook his head. ‘I’m still asking around the town. But it’s difficult. No one is talking. The Catholics are lying so low right now, you could trip over one in the street and not notice. Every day brings rumours of a fresh plot against the Queen. Walsingham’s agents are all around, but some of them play both sides of the net, and there’s no guessing their allegiances until it’s too late. It can be dangerous to draw attention to yourself by asking too many questions of the wrong man.’
    Goodluck smiled. ‘I learned that lesson the hard way in Rome.’
    ‘Torture?’
    ‘I didn’t talk, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ Goodluck called the girl over for another tankard of ale, deciding to make a night of it. ‘You’re safe enough.’

Seven

    Whitehall Palace, London, winter 1583
    ‘IF YOU WOULD only allow me to rub in some oil of cloves again, Your Majesty, the pain would abate. I swear it.’
    ‘Fool, your vile oil burns, and I will have none of it!’ Elizabeth roared, and knocked the tiresome apothecary away, his tray and bottles clattering to the floor.
    Toothache again! The unfairness, the injustice of it. The sunlight hurt her eyes. Why had the shutters been thrown so wide open on her bedchamber windows? She stared about at her women in silent accusation. Was she expected to rise and be dressed and rule the country in such agony? Did nobody care how she suffered?
    ‘Where are my doctors?’
    Lady Helena was at her side at once, offering a cup of wine and a fresh platter of lavender-steeped cloths. She at least knew how to treat a queen. ‘They await your pleasure, Your Majesty, in the antechamber. You told them to … to go hang themselves yesterday. Shall I send them in?’
    God’s blood, her jaw was on fire!
    ‘Yes, yes, send them in at once,’ Elizabeth managed, clasping a dampened cloth to her cheek, where the pain throbbed most viciously. When would this agony cease? God had sent her this repeated affliction as a punishment. No woman was intended to rule alone, and she had been given chances to marry, only to spurn them. Her monthly courses, never easy to predict, had grown strange and difficult of late. Her womb ached some nights and prevented her from sleeping. What other explanation could there be? She should have married and produced a child. Instead her body was beginning to tumble down like an old tower under siege, more broken and ramshackle with every year that passed.
    Her physicians came in, dark-cloaked and hatted, with long staffs and impressive wooden chests of medicaments, bowing and making their customary noises. ‘Your Majesty, the remedy is simple.’ She waited for the inevitable, glaring at them, daring them to say it. ‘The tooth is rotten and must be drawn. There is no other cure for the toothache.’
    ‘I will not lose any more teeth!’
    She rocked in pain as her tooth throbbed violently, as if a hot wire was being drawn swiftly back and forth through her body. Her spine was on fire, tendrils of flame reaching even to the tips of her fingers. Her body would be left hollow soon, like a burned-out tree, nothing remaining but the pain of this tooth still smouldering in the ashes. Give me a mallet, she thought. A great bloody mallet to smash this jaw into pieces and grant me peace. Let someone drive a stake through the top of my head and pierce the agony where it grips me.
    No, no, no. Her mind groped for