The King's Deception (Cotton Malone 8)

“I live here.”

She just wanted him gone. The sight of him turned her stomach. She could not remember exactly when the attraction had turned to loathing. But when someone else showed her interest, one so opposite from the calculating soul she’d spent the last year with, the opportunity had been too inviting to resist.

She’d planned on phoning later today to tell him.

“It’s over,” she said again. “Now leave.”

He sprang at her with a suddenness she’d not expected. A hand clamped onto her throat, her spine slammed down onto a tabletop, the robe open, exposing her naked body. The force of his attack lifted her feet from the ground and she was now pinned to the table, legs dangling.

She’d never been physically attacked before.

He brought his face close. Breathing was difficult for her. She thought about resisting, but everything she knew about this man signaled that he was a coward.

He’d only go so far.

She hoped.

“Rot in hell,” he said.

Then he shoved her to the floor and left.

She’d not thought about that day in a long time. Her hip was sore for a week afterward. Antrim had tried to call, leaving messages of apology, but she’d ignored them. A month before that last encounter he’d written a glowing recommendation for her SOCA application. He’d volunteered to do it, revealing to her then his CIA employment and saying a good word from him couldn’t hurt. She’d been debating whether to forgo the law and become a law enforcement agent, but their violent parting convinced her.

Never again was that going to happen to her.

So she learned to defend herself, carry a badge, fire a weapon.

She also developed a reckless streak, and often wondered if that happened because of Antrim or in spite of him.

Men like Blake Antrim lived by convincing themselves that everyone else was inferior to them. Believing yourself on top was far more important than actually being there. And when that fantasy became fouled by a conflicting reality the response was violence. There was something unhinged about him. Never would he go back. He couldn’t. He not only burned bridges, he left them radioactive, forever impassable.

Forward was the only way for him.

Mathews may have been wrong about this.

Her approaching Antrim, after ten years, could be harder than anyone thought.

Sixteen

8:30 PM

KATHLEEN ALWAYS LIKED RETURNING TO OXFORD. SHE’D spent four years studying there. So when the narrative on the laptop directed her to drive sixty miles northwest, she’d been pleased.

A town had existed since the 10th century, and the Normans were the first to erect a castle. A college was established in the 13th century. Now 39 distinctive institutions, each independent and fiercely competitive, filled the honey-colored Gothic buildings. They carried names like Corpus Christi, Hertford, Christ Church, Magdalen, and Trinity, together forming a federation, the oldest in England, known as Oxford University.

The Thames and Cherwell rivers merged here, and Kathleen had enjoyed many an afternoon punting down the placid waterways, becoming quite apt at maneuvering the flat-bottomed boats. King Harold died here. Richard the Lionheart was born here. Henry V was educated and Elizabeth I entertained and fêted among the spires, towers, cloisters, and quadrangles. This was a place of history, theology, and academics, where great politicians, clerics, poets, philosophers, and scientists were trained. She’d read once that Hitler supposedly spared the town his bombs, as he planned to make it his English capital.

Oxford was exactly what Matthew Arnold called it.

The city of dreaming spires.

She’d thought about Blake Antrim on the drive. The prospect of seeing him again seemed revolting. He was not a man to let go of anything. His ego was far too fragile to seek forgiveness. How many women had there been since her? Had he married? Fathered children?

Mathews had provided no relevant information on this second briefing, telling her only to head straight to the hall at Jesus College, which sat in the heart of the city, among the shops and pubs. Founded by a Welshman, but endowed by Elizabeth I, it remained the only one of Oxford’s colleges created during her reign. Small, maybe 600 students among undergraduates, graduates, and fellows. She’d always loved its unmistakable Elizabethan feel. She knew its great hall, which reminded her of the one at Middle Temple. Same rectangular shape, carved wooden screens, cartouches, and oil portraits, one of Elizabeth herself dominating the north wall above the high table. But no hammerbeam Tudor ceiling here, only plaster stretching overhead.

She’d wondered about campus access, considering it was a Friday night, but the gate at Turl and Ship streets was open, the hall lit, and a woman waited for her inside—short, petite, her graying blond hair drawn into a bun. She wore a conservative navy suit with low heels and introduced herself as Dr. Eva Pazan, providing a title, professor of history, Lincoln College, another of Oxford’s long-standing institutions.

“I actually studied at Exeter,” Pazan said, “and I understand you attended St. Anne’s.”

Both were part of Oxford’s thirty-nine. St. Anne’s had always been more open to students from a state-education background, like herself, as opposed to the private preparatory schools. Gaining admission had been one of the highlights of her life. Kathleen was curious, though, about Pazan’s age, as she knew Exeter had been all-male until 1979.

“You must have been one of the first women in?”

“I was. We were changing history.”

She wondered why she was here and Pazan seemed to sense her anxiety.

“Sir Thomas wanted me to pass on some details not provided to you in London. Information that is not written down for reasons that will become obvious. He thought I would be the best person to explain. My expertise is Tudor England. I teach that at Lincoln, but I occasionally provide historical context to our intelligence agencies.”

“And did Sir Thomas choose this locale?”

“He did, and I concurred.” Eva pointed across the hall. “The portrait there, of Elizabeth I. It was presented by the Canon of Canterbury, to the college, in 1686. It’s illustrative of what we are going to speak about.”

She glanced at the image of the queen in a floor-length dress. Geometric patterns from the puffed sleeves and kirtle complemented one another, the hem edged with pearls. Two cherubs held a wreath over Elizabeth’s head.

“It was painted in 1590, when the queen was fifty-seven years old.”

But the face was that of a much younger woman.

“That was about the time all unseemly portraits of Elizabeth were confiscated and burned. None was allowed to exist that, in any way, questioned her mortality. The man who painted this one, Nicholas Hilliard, ultimately devised a face pattern that all painters were required to follow when depicting the queen. A Mask of Youth, the Crown called it, which portrayed her as forever young.”

“I never realized she was so conscious of her age.”

“Elizabeth was quite an enigma. Her countenance was strongly marked, though always commanding and dignified. A hard swearer, coarse talker, clever, cunning, deceitful—she was truly her parents’ daughter.”

She smiled, recalling her history on Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

“What do you know of Elizabeth?” Eva asked.

“No more than what books and movies portray. She ruled for a long time. Never married. The last Tudor monarch.”

Eva nodded. “She was a fascinating person. She chartered this college as the first Protestant institution at Oxford. And she was serious about

that. Thirty local priests, all fellows of colleges, were executed during her reign for either practicing Catholicism or refusing to recognize her as head of the church.”

She stared again at the portrait, which now seemed more a caricature than an honest representation of a woman dead over 400 years.

“Like her father,” Eva said, “Elizabeth surrounded herself with competent, ambitious men. Unlike her father, though, she remained loyal to them all of her life. You received a preview of one earlier.”

She did not understand.

“I was told you saw a page from the coded journal.”

“But I wasn’t told who created it.”

“That journal was masterminded by Robert Cecil.”

She knew the name Cecil, one of long standing in England.

“To understand Robert,” Eva said, “you have to know his father, William.”

She listened as Eva explained how William Cecil was born to a minor Welsh family that fought alongside Henry VII, the first Tudor king. He was raised at the court of Henry VIII and educated to government. Henry VIII’s death in 1547 set in motion ten years of political turmoil. First the boy, Edward VI, reigned, then died at age 15. His half sister, Mary, daughter of Henry’s first wife, then occupied the throne. But she gained the title bloody because of her propensity to burn Protestants. During Mary’s five-year reign Cecil kept the young princess Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, at his home, where she was raised away from court. In 1558, when she finally became queen, Elizabeth immediately appointed William Cecil her principal secretary, later titled secretary of state, a position that made him chief adviser, closer to her than anyone else. Her reliance and trust in Cecil never failed. No prince in Europe hath such a counselor as I have in mine. Over forty years Cecil was the great architect of Elizabethan reign. I have gained more by my temperance and forebearing than ever I did by my wit. One observer at the time noted that he had no close friends, no inward companion as great men commonly have, nor did any other know his secrets, some noting it for a fault, but most thinking it a praise and an instance of his wisdom. By trusting none with his secrets, none could reveal them.