“I think I shall have to go to Tiverton, if only not to make myself an utter liar. It’s where William will send for me. When he does, then I will return to court. Not before.” He hesitated, then said, “I’m surprised he hasn’t sent for you yet.”
“Like you, I will go when he sends for me. And then…” She left it for him to finish.
“And then we will tell him.”
She moved onto his lap and rested her head on his shoulder. “When will you leave for Tiverton?”
If he didn’t go at once, he might never go. “Tomorrow,” he answered.
“Then we shall make good memories tonight,” she whispered, before kissing him in a way that ensured she was all he could think of.
That dizzying sense of pleasure lasted through the night. An hour after dawn he was just managing to struggle into his hose and doublet, Minuette watching him from the bed with a mischievous smile, when someone knocked loudly on the door.
“Who is it?” Minuette called. Though no doubt the household knew all about where Dominic spent his nights, they were careful to preserve the fiction by not letting anyone see them together in Minuette’s chamber.
“It’s Carrie,” came the reply, in a tight and worried voice. “An urgent letter for you has come from Her Highness.”
Minuette shared a look with Dominic, then got out of bed and threw on a night robe. She opened the door. “Thank you, Carrie.”
Dominic could see the letter was short, just a couple of lines, but they were enough to make the light drain from his wife’s face. “What is it?” he asked, crossing the room to her.
She thrust Elizabeth’s letter at him, a simple and devastating message in untidy handwriting.
William has smallpox. His condition is grave. Come at once.
By the time Minuette and Dominic reached her at Hampton Court on December 11—more than a week since she’d sent her desperate note—Elizabeth felt as though she’d lived through months of despair and nightmares. There were moments when she could almost believe that none of this was happening, since she had not seen William for herself. After the debacle at Dudley Castle, she had returned to Hatfield and stayed there, raging over Robert’s betrayal, until her uncle sent for her. Rochford had written only that William was somewhat ill—it wasn’t until she’d arrived at Whitehall that she discovered how truly serious it was.
Rochford hadn’t let her even enter the palace walls. When she’d remonstrated, he pulled her into a near-embrace that allowed him to whisper in her ear. “It’s smallpox. The rash appeared last night. You must be kept elsewhere.”
Because smallpox was contagious, as deadly as it was swift. So she had traveled on to Hampton Court and sent a rider with a message to Minuette. When Dominic appeared at Hampton Court with Minuette, she was glad of it. Although she briefly wondered how the two of them had managed to arrive together when he’d been in the west, at Tiverton.
But there were larger problems at hand. “How is he?” Minuette asked at once, even as Elizabeth greeted them.
“The sores are widespread and have begun to form larger patches.”
Minuette paled. Smallpox was bad enough, but in those cases where the pustules combined into large patches, mortality was especially high.
“Is he awake?” Dominic asked roughly.
“Not from what I hear. They won’t let me…I haven’t seen him. All I know is what my uncle writes to me twice daily. He will certainly be scarred. It could hardly be otherwise.”
But it could be otherwise. He could be dead. That was why they wouldn’t let Elizabeth see him, why she hadn’t even been allowed inside Whitehall. William was king, and she was his heir.
For days now Elizabeth had been haunted by a guilty memory: John Dee telling her last Christmas that her hand was not only a woman’s hand, but a ruler’s. He had held her palm in his and Elizabeth had been mesmerized by his hints of knowledge, had felt that there were promises in his eyes and a word just out of her reach—
Queen.
Dominic broke her introspective despair with practicality. “I’ll go straight on to Whitehall and write you myself.”
“I want to go with you,” Minuette said.
“Absolutely not,” Dominic said firmly. “Elizabeth needs you. And William would never forgive me for exposing you to smallpox.”
“What about your exposure?”
“I am the King’s Shadow. It’s my job to stand by him whatever peril he is in.”
He shared one last look with Minuette, the two of them seemingly having an entirely wordless conversation that left Elizabeth feeling like an intruder.
