Assassin by Lady Grace Cavendish Read Free Book Online Page A

quarters the Court and so they catch the evil Frenchman sent by the Guises to kill the Queen….
    But that’s not what happened. My mother drank the Queen’s wine and took terribly sick.
    The first I knew was when Mrs. Champernowne came and woke me up and wrapped her own furry dressing gown round me. I was too sleepy to walk straight, so she gave me a piggyback—I can hardly believe she did it, when she’s so sharp and cross, but she did. And then she brought me into the Queen’s own bedchamber.
    I could see the Queen was putting pen and ink away and she had tear tracks all down her cheeks. There was incense burning in a little dish, but you could still smell a nasty, dusty, bitter scent in the air. Mrs. Champernowne was crying, too, and I started as well, though I was still too sleepy to know why. Then I looked at the Queen’s bed, and saw my mother lying there with her stays open. She had been bled, for her arm was bandaged. And I woke up properly.
    My mother’s eyes were shut, and her face lookedlike candle wax. There was a kind of yellow froth at the corners of her mouth.
    I rushed to her. “Is it plague?” I whispered.
    “No, Grace,” the Queen replied gravely. “If only it were, for she might recover. I think she has taken poison meant for me. The doctor has gone to look at the vomitus.”
    The door opened and my uncle, Dr. Cavendish, hurried in, wrapped in a fur-lined gown. He came to the other side of the Queen’s bed, took my mother’s pulses again, felt her brow, and opened her mouth and eyes.
    I concentrated on holding her limp hand. I knew she was going to die and leave me. Did you know that when your heart breaks, it really feels like that? I thought I had a big crack all down the middle of my chest, it hurt so much.
    Uncle Cavendish shook his head at last. “Yes, Your Majesty,” he said heavily. “It is poison. From the yellow staining on the mat in the Withdrawing Chamber where she dropped the goblet, I am afraid it is darkwort.” His face was quite grey because he had always liked my mother a lot.
    “I have a piece of unicorn’s horn in my cabinet,” said the Queen, “and a bezoar stone.”
    “ Alas, Your Majesty, not even they will help against essence of darkwort. It will not be long now…”
    “I have called the Chaplain,” the Queen told him.
    They were speaking quietly but I heard them. I cried and put my arms round my mother as if I could hold her back. “Don’t go,” I whispered. “Stay with me, Mama. Please, stay…”
    But she was too deep asleep to hear me.
    I felt Uncle Cavendish standing behind me. “She has no pain,” he said to me. “She can’t feel anything now.”
    He might be a doctor, but I know that when I took my mother’s hand to kiss it, I
know
I felt her grip my fingers to say goodbye. Then I kissed her face.
    The Queen came and kneeled next to me and wrapped her arms round me and didn’t mind when all my tears made her velvet bodice damp. She rocked me a little, silently, and I felt her crying, too.
    My mother died at a little past midnight, St. Valentine’s Day, 14 February 1568, the worst day of my whole life. I was only a babe when my father died serving the Queen in France, so I didn’t really know about it. But my mother dying … I can’t describe how terrible it was because I don’t know enoughlong words, and anyway, I’m not a poet. It made a huge hole in the world.
    Everyone has been kind to me over this last year, especially the Queen. She comforted me whenever I was really sad and promised me she would never send me away to be brought up by a stranger. Lord Worthy volunteered to be my guardian and administer my estates until I could marry and have a husband to do it for me. My Uncle Cavendish couldn’t do it because he was ill, or so they told me. I think he is just drunk most of the time. He was always very fond of my mother and I don’t think he has ever recovered from not being able to help her.
    Oh yes, they found the poisoner. He