The Marriage Game Read Online Free Page B

open to that again?”
    “Calm yourself, dear madam,” Parker soothed, his brow troubled. “You are Queen now. None may gainsay you or make you do what you do not wish to do. And Your Majesty is loved by all. No loyal subject would allow harm to come to you, even from a husband.”
    “Enough! The matter is threadbare!” Elizabeth snapped. “I do not want to hear the word ‘husband’ again!”
    When the next council meeting broke up, Cecil handed Elizabeth a letter.
    “This arrived today,” he said. “It is not official business but something personal to Your Majesty, which you may prefer to read in private.” His voice was gentle, his eyes kind.
    Elizabeth took the letter. A sense of foreboding filled her.
    “What does it treat of?”
    “It comes from a Scottish divine, Alexander Aless, who lives in Saxony. He was in England in 1536, and acquainted not only with the late King Henry, but also with Master Secretary Cromwell and Archbishop Cranmer. The letter contains information he felt he should disclose to you about your mother, Queen Anne.”
    At the mention of Cromwell, Elizabeth shivered. He had been the man responsible for her mother’s fall, and the bogeyman of her childhood dreams, who had lurked in dark places, in cupboards, tree trunks, behind doors or under the bed. For as long as she could remember, the name Cromwell had had the power to disturb her. And yet, as a ruler herself, she recognized that he had been an administrator without peer and a tireless servant to his royal master—except for spinning a web of lies about his master’s wife!
    Cecil was watching her compassionately. “I am sorry if this letter distresses you,” he said. “I thought hard about whether I should show it to you, but decided I had no right to keep it from you. Would you like me to stay while you read it?”
    “No, William,” Elizabeth said. “Leave me now.” Cecil departed, telling the ladies waiting in the outer chamber that the Queen would call when she was ready.
    Slowly she unfolded the letter. The spiky black writing danced before her eyes as she steeled herself to make sense of it.
    Aless wrote vividly—too vividly, it would prove. He took Christ to witness that he spoke the truth, a truth he felt the Queen of Englandshould hear. And he went on to describe how, at sunrise on the day on which Queen Anne was beheaded—although he had not known it was to happen—he’d had a dream or vision; he knew not if he was sleeping or waking, but in it he saw the Queen’s neck after her head had been cut off. It was so clear to him that he could count the nerves, the veins, and the arteries …
    Elizabeth felt sick. She realized that she was trembling, and rose to pour a little watered wine to steady herself. She was not squeamish by any means, and had seen blood shed in her time, but this was her mother of whom the insensitive Dr. Aless had written. And although he had seen this horror in a dream—she could not credit that he’d been vouchsafed a vision—he described what would become reality only hours later.
    She did not know if she could read any more. But she had to, of course. She had to know the truth.
    Aless wrote that he had been so terrified by the dream that he immediately arose from his bed and crossed the Thames to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s palace at Lambeth, hoping to see Cranmer and ask for a spiritual view of it. He found the Archbishop walking in the garden; he too had had trouble sleeping. Elizabeth knew that Cranmer had been one of her mother’s most ardent supporters, a chaplain to the Boleyns, and a great advocate of Church reform, as was Anne herself. Small wonder that he was disturbed in his mind.
    The Archbishop asked Aless why he had come so early, for the clock had not yet struck four. When Aless answered that he had been horrified in his sleep, and told him of the dream, Cranmer continued in silent wonder for a while. Then he asked, “Do you not know what is to happen today?”