The King's Deception

Tanya nodded. “In minute detail. I feel as if she is a close friend. It’s a shame that every written account that has survived describes her as not a womanly queen, but masculine in many ways. Did you know that she often spoke of herself as a man, dressing more in the style of her father or the lords of the time than the women? Once, at the baptism of a French princess, she chose a man as her proxy, which would have been unheard of then. When she died, no autopsy was allowed on her body. In fact, no one but a select few were permitted to touch her. During her life she refused to allow doctors to physically examine her. She was a thin, unbeautiful, lonely person with a nearly constant energy. Totally opposite of her siblings.”

Kathleen pointed back to the painting on the wall. “She looks like a lovely young woman there.”

“A fiction,” Tanya said. “No one sat for that painting. Henry’s likeness comes from a famous Holbein portrait that, at the time, hung in Whitehall Palace. As Mr. Malone correctly noted, Jane Seymour was long dead. The three children were almost never in the same locale. The painter drew from memory, or from sketches, or from other portraits. Elizabeth was rarely painted prior to assuming the throne. We have little to no idea what she looked like before age twenty-five.”

She recalled what Eva Pazan had told her yesterday about the Mask of Youth. “And what she looked like later in life is in question, too.”

“Goodness, yes. In 1590 she decreed that she would be forever young. All other images of her were destroyed. Only a few have survived.”

“So it’s possible that she may have died early in life,” Malone asked, “as Bram Stoker wrote?”

“It would make sense. All of her siblings, save one, did. Elizabeth dying at age twelve or thirteen would be entirely consistent.”

Kathleen wanted to ask about what it was that Bram Stoker wrote — Malone had failed to mention that nugget before — but knew better. The name was familiar. The author of Dracula. So she made a mental note to pass that information on to Mathews.

Tanya motioned for them to leave the Haunted Gallery, which they did through a doorway that led into the baroque sections of the palace — commissioned, she noted, by William and Mary. The tenor and feel of everything changed. Tudor richness was replaced with 17th-century Georgian plainness. They entered a room identified as the Cumberland Suite, decorated with chairs of richly patterned velvet, gilt-wood mirrors, candlesticks, and ornate tables.

“With George II, this was where his second son, William, the Duke of Cumberland, stayed. I’ve always loved these rooms. Colorful, with a playful feel.”

Two windows opened from the outer wall and a pedimented alcove held a small bed covered in red silk. Baroque paintings in heavy frames hung from the walls.

“Mary said that you read Bram Stoker’s chapter on the Bisley Boy,” Tanya said. “Stoker was the first, you know, to actually write about the legend. Interestingly, his observations were largely ignored.”

Kathleen made a further note. That book was obviously important, too.

“I brought something for you to see,” Tanya said. “From my own library.”

The older woman produced a smartphone and handed it to Malone.

“That’s an image from a page I made this morning. It’s an account from the day Elizabeth I died.”

“I see you’ve gone high-tech,” Malone said, adding a slight smile.

“Oh, these devices are marvelous. Mary and I both use them.”

Malone increased the image size and they were able to read.

To Lord Charles Howard Elizabeth confided that she was in desperate extremities.

“My Lord,” she whispered hoarsely. “I am tied with a chain of iron about my neck. I am tied. I am tied, and the case is altered with me.”

The Queen lay prone, speechless, cadaverous. All the life that was left in her was centered in one long, still beautiful hand which hung down at the side of her bed and which still made signs to express her wishes. The Archbishop of Canterbury had been summoned to pray for the dying woman, which he did with unction and enthusiasm. It was presumably the last sound that entered the queen’s consciousness. A few hours later the breath left her body. At three o’clock in the morning of March 24, 1603 her body was pronounced lifeless. It was prepared for burial by her ladies and was not dissected and embalmed as was the rigorous custom in those days for sovereigns. The leaden mask and the waxen effigy were prepared, but no man’s hand touched the body of Elizabeth after it was dead.

She went to her grave with her secret inviolate.

She and Malone glanced up from the screen, both amazed.

“Quite right,” Tanya said. “That last sentence is meaningless, except if you know, or suspect.”

“When was this written?” Malone asked.

“1929. In a biography of Elizabeth that I have always admired.”

What had the writer meant?

Her secret inviolate.