Free The Lost Duchess by Jenny Barden Page B

capable at any moment of bursting into flame.
    ‘Yours,’ said the Queen, letting the plum drop into his hand. She folded his fingers around the fruit and pressed them into the flesh until a glistening drop of juice dripped from his fist to the floor.
    When she turned to leave, her mouth was closed tight as a sprung trap.
    Emme remained motionless for a moment until she shook herself into action. Then she took Bess by the hand and they left, Walsingham louring like a dark cloud at their backs.
    Emme looked round and saw him walking slowly behind, head bowed. She knew he would want to speak with her and inwardly sighed.
    ‘You go on,’ she murmured to Bess. ‘I shall not be long.’
    She drifted casually back and offered the Secretary of State a small curtsey, making as if to pass him.
    He nodded and turned to walk with her. They proceeded as far as the library where he ordered the yeoman guard to stand outside, beckoned her in and shut the door.
    The room smelt of paper and leather, refreshingly pleasant after the stink of the jakes at Richmond which had become so foul, after weeks of use by the hundreds in the royal household, that a change of palace had been deemed necessary. She was still adjusting to the new surroundings, taking delight in the long halls and galleries overlooking the river, her spirits uplifted by a private fantasy, one that had grown and strengthened in the six days since her visit to Durham Place. But Secretary Walsingham’s manifest gloom was a warning to her to hide the new-born eagerness she felt inside. She watched him prop his elbow on a high sideboard, rub his brow and close his eyes. Was he ill? Emme guessed he was suffering from one of the migraines that frequently pained him, especially when there was any tension in his relations with the Queen. She almost felt sorry for him, though wariness curbed her sympathy.
    Walsingham winced. ‘I was expecting to hear from you weeks ago.’
    ‘I have only recently found out the details of Sir Walter Raleigh’s plans for Virginia.’
    She moved nearer and looked down at a clock on a table. It bore a single hand like an arrow on a flat horizontal face supported by adome of gilded brass patterned in strands like fine waves. The arrow seemed frozen, pointing to the space between two Roman numerals, to the moment she had to fill. Beside the clock was a large, open book. It showed a heart-shaped map of the globe in which the New World lay stretched out and curved round near the circumference to the west. She brought her fingertip close to the word ‘
AMERIC
’ then ran it up through the southern continent to ‘
CANIBALES
’ near the top. Were there cannibals in Virginia? Master Harriot had led her to believe that the people there were naturally peaceable, but on the map all she could see were the spikes of mountains and the gaping jaws of river mouths where she supposed Virginia might lie. The place seemed a complete wilderness. She could not even make out any names. The clock ticked loudly as she considered what to say.
    Her thoughts went back to Durham Place and everything she had heard there concerning the planned expedition to found a new colony, and she tried to separate that out from the tangle in her thoughts about Mariner Kit, the way he had taken her hand and her reaction. Not that her awkwardness with him mattered now. He had probably forgotten all about her; she had not seen him since. Walsingham would want to know about what the Queen and Sir Walter had said. She drew breath and began.
    ‘Sir Walter is prepared to back another expedition led by Master John White as Governor with the help of assistants who will be charged to found a new city in Sir Walter’s name. They mean to establish a permanent settlement of around two hundred men, women and children in a bay north of Roanoke which is known as the Chesapeake. Sir Walter is prepared to offer every settler five hundred acres of farmland in Virginia, and Master White is