The Virgin's Spy (Tudor Legacy #2)(40)

And when I see the plethora of priests and the sternness of their countenances and obvious discomfort with our—one might infer, contaminating—presence in Spain, I am grateful for England’s precarious balance between old and new. For the most part, our Spanish attendants have refrained from conversation of a religious nature. Though Pippa says that one of the women asked her if Princess Anne ever reads the religious books the Spanish priests send her through her father.

Pippa wisely did not tell her the truth.

Of the children, it is Kit who is surprisingly most at ease. I am accustomed to Pippa being the one to lead the way among others, to subtly show her brother how to behave in new situations. But Kit has grown up when I wasn’t looking. Every now and then I catch a glimpse of Dominic in his expressions. Of course Kit could not stay young and carefree forever, but I am disquieted at this new intensity.

And, uncharacteristically, I am almost afraid to ask him why.





3 May 1582


Torrelodones, Spain


Tomorrow we enter Madrid, where King Philip and Queen Mary await us at the Royal Alcazar. Considering the state of luxury in which we have thus far traveled, I can only imagine the beauties that await us.

Fortunately, we are English. We are not easily seduced by beauty.



From the moment they’d landed near Bilbao, Kit had been making notes of the many things he wanted to tell Anabel. At night he penned disjointed phrases and descriptions and partial stories to serve as an aid to his memory when he could sit with her in future and paint her a vivid picture of her father’s homeland.

It was almost painful, to be experiencing all this while knowing that Anabel herself never could. She would never witness the colours and sounds and tastes of the country that, by blood, was half hers. Did she feel the loss of it? Kit wondered. Beneath the English culture and education, were there strains that called to her in whiffs of incense and whispers of chants and hints of exotic spices? Was there a seductive Spanish beauty beneath the impeccable red-haired princess? He imagined being in Spain with Anabel, and then he couldn’t bear to imagine it. Instead he took his careful notes so that he could share it with her later as best he could.

It was illuminating traveling overseas with his parents. He was so accustomed to being with them at Wynfield or Tiverton or the English court that he hadn’t realized there might be new things to learn about his parents elsewhere. But there were, if not all of them entirely surprising. Dominic traveled like a soldier: every moment of the day accounted for beforehand and always alert to subtle shifts in behaviour or surroundings. Kit didn’t know if his father truly expected a physical attack on Spanish soil, but if it came, he would certainly be prepared.

Not that he was hostile. Just, as always, contained. Quiet. Remote, even harsh, one might think—if one didn’t consider how he behaved with his wife. Again, Kit was now of an age to appreciate how unusual his parents’ marriage truly was. The Spanish, even more so than the English, were rigid in their hierarchies and their expectations of behaviour from men and women. Their women—especially the most aristocratic—almost seemed to inhabit a different, parallel world to that of the men. Kit could only suppose Pippa would be paying attention to those things he could not by virtue of his sex.

Not that one or two Spanish women along their route to Madrid hadn’t offered to pay him rather closer attention, but Kit would have said no simply because he was here on the business of queen and court even if he hadn’t been traveling with his parents. Also, how could he make an accurate report to Anabel if he left out something as significant as his first…He was uncomfortable phrasing it even in his own head. Put it this way—he didn’t intend his first woman to be one who couldn’t even understand what he said in his native tongue.

He hadn’t set out to reach the age of twenty a virgin. He hadn’t really thought about it at all. Well, no, that was hardly right. Of course he thought about it. He wasn’t maimed or dead. And he had some experience. Just not the experience. Stephen, Kit knew, had somehow crossed that line without any great soul-searching that he was aware of. Shouldn’t it have been the older, responsible, perfect brother who kept himself pure, and the younger, charming, reckless brother who behaved badly?

Only in the last year had Kit sometimes dreamed of a specific woman. The fact that the woman was Anabel might, he knew, have some bearing on his present state of chastity. But he refused to consider that puzzle deeply, because it could not possibly end well. He would simply have to get over it at some point.

Just not on this visit to Spain.

Taken in all, Kit’s mind and senses were already overflowing with impressions and emotions by the time they reached Madrid. Philip had moved his court from Toledo to Madrid twenty years before, and the city’s architecture was a mix of foreign influences and the restrained aesthetic of Catholic Spain. The gray slate spires and red brick of the buildings around Plaza Mayor were distinctly, unmistakably, Spanish.

The English party entered the city with a guard wearing the royal badge with its three crowns—for Castile, Aragon, and Portugal—and its Latin motto, Non Sufficit Orbis—“The World Is Not Enough.” That motto encapsulated all that most worried England about Spain, for it meant the Spanish made decisions based on a certitude of faith that overrode the autonomy of even its own people. Hence the Inquisition, in force in Spain for nearly a hundred years now, whose sole purpose was to protect the purity of the Catholic faith—even at the cost of destroying its own citizens.