A Traitor's Tears Read Online Free

Norfolk turned round, took hold of the surrounding railing, and began to speak, the clerk began to write. He was recording Norfolk’s final words.
    I was near enough to see how white Norfolk was, and I could see that behind him, the chaplain, still clutching his prayer book, looked just as bad. It was difficult to hear, for voices carry poorly in the open air and Norfolk’s was trembling, anyway. But I made out some of his words.
    He said that he had only met Signor Ridolfi face to face once, and nothing had been said against the queen. I lost much of the next few sentences but thought he was saying that they had only talked of money matters. There was something about Ridolfi appreciating the tranquillity of England. A murmur broke out at that and I stiffened, too. There would have been little left of that tranquillity if any of Ridolfi’s schemes had reached fruition. He would have loosed a Spanish army on us, dragging the Inquisition in its wake. Norfolk’s next few words, though, did in a way admit as much, for he seemed to be saying that in his opinion, Ridolfi was ready for any wicked design. Then he said that God would witness that he, Norfolk, was a good Protestant and loyal to the queen.
    In the silence following his speech, he turned away, taking off his doublet. He handed it to the clerk, who put it over his arm, gathered up the paper he had been writing on, and then scurried down the steps to get out of the way. The headsman knelt and Norfolk gave him a purse. It was customary but I thought it must be a bitter thing, having to pay the man who was about to kill you. Presumably to make sure he did his best to make a quick job of it.
    The headsman stood up. Norfolk knelt at the block. The chaplain, who now looked as though he might collapse at any moment, read something aloud from the prayer book, but his voice was so faint that I couldn’t follow any of his words at all. The axe swung up and its polished blade glittered in that lovely morning sunshine. It swung down with speed and force and blood spurted up, splashing the headsman. He was presumably used to it but I flinched and drew back as though it had splashed me as well.
    Norfolk’s crouched body seemed to fold on itself and sink into a heap. The headsman leant down, picked up something round which dripped with red, and held it up by its blood-dabbled hair, as he declared: ‘So perish all enemies of the queen!’
    I swallowed hard, trying to contain a surge of nausea. Beside me, both Brockley and Ryder had gone rigid. I glanced towards Wyse, wondering how he had reacted and saw, to my astonishment, that Roland Wyse, of the pugnacious jaw and the chilly eyes, was in tears, and the friend at his side was anxiously patting his back, trying to give comfort.
    As I watched, Wyse turned his face into his companion’s doublet and, judging from the heaving of his shoulders, had abandoned himself to the most desolate weeping.

TWO

Gifts from a Queen
    T he summons to the queen came soon after our return to Whitehall. Indeed, I had barely taken off my hat, before a page came to fetch me. He led me to the queen’s private apartments and showed me through an outer chamber where a number of her ladies were stitching while one of them read aloud from a book of verse, and on into a small room that Elizabeth used as a study and for practising music. It had a mullioned window with glass panes leaded in a pleasing pattern, open this warm June day, so that birdsong came in from outside. The room was furnished with a spinet and a writing desk, a set of bookshelves, and a carved oak settle which just now was occupied by a mysterious object hidden under a silk drape.
    Elizabeth was waiting for me on a cushioned window seat. She was simply dressed, by her standards, in a long loose peach-coloured gown with neither ruff nor farthingale, but most people would have thought the damask of the gown, the profusion of pearls – rope, earrings, the