‘But Cecil …’
His face darkens. ‘I will stay with you. I will keep you safe. I would lay down my life for you. I …’ He chokes on what he wants to say.
I step back. So it is just as his wife fears, and she was fool enough to tell me. He has fallen in love with me and he is torn between his old loyalty to his old queen and his feelings for me. I take my hand from his. It is wrong to torment such a serious man. Besides, I have had enough from him. When the moment comes, I think he will let me go. I really think he will. Whatever he says now, I believe that he is so engaged in my cause that he will disobey his queen, dishonour his proud name, play traitor to his country when the moment comes. When the army of the North has us encircled and demands that I am released to them, I am certain he will let me go. I know it. I have won him. He is mine, through and through. He does not even know it yet. But I have won him from his queen and I have won him from his wife. He is mine.
1569, November, Ashby-de-la-Zouche Castle: Bess
It is impossible to get reliable news, the countryside is alive with gossip and terror, the villages empty of men who have run off to join the army of the North. The women left behind, their stupid faces bright with hope, swear that the good days will come again. These imaginary good days will be the end of me and the destruction of my fortune. If this other queen, Mary Stuart, conquers and becomes the only queen, then she will not look kindly on me. And the first thing she will do is restore the old church. They will want their buildings back, they will want their wealth restored. They will want their gold candlesticks returned from my table, their Venetian glassware, their forks, their gold ewer and ladle. They will want my lands, my mines, my quarries and my sheep runs. When the Scots queen is on the throne she will remember me well enough as the woman who pretended friendship but spat out jealousy one fatal night. My promises to be her saviour will make little impression when the whole of England is her best friend. If this Northern army conquers England and puts their queen on the throne, I will lose my houses and my fortune, my place in the world and everything I have ever striven for.
My husband cannot help me; he will fall too. My friends will not protect me; we are all Protestants, we are all newly arrived at wealth, we are all building on abbey lands, dining off church silver; we will all be forced to return our goods, and thrown down together. My poor children will be paupers and inherit nothing but debts. The old church and their new queen will take everything from me and I will be poorer than my mother; and I swore never to be brought so low.
I drive along the wagons with the goods and the provisions as fast as I can, feeling more like a poor peasant fleeing before an army than a countess moving from one beautiful castle to another.
And all the time I am fretting for my home and for my children. My mother and my sister are at Chatsworth, right in the line of march of the Northern army. No army led by noblemen like Westmorland or Northumberland would harm women; but they will be bound to take my cattle and my sheep, they will march through my wheatfields and camp in my woods. And Henry my son and Gilbert my stepson are at court with the queen, and wild for adventure. I pray that Robert Dudley absolutely forbids them to ride out. Henry in particular is a scamp, mad for any excitement, he will offer to scout for the queen, or join the citizens of London to defend her. Robert is my true friend, I know he will keep my boys safe. Pray God he keeps my boys safe. They are my inheritance as much as my houses and all are in danger tonight.
How I wish I could be with my husband the earl, my George. Fool or not, in this crisis I miss him bitterly. His loyal faith and his determination to do his duty by his queen steadies me when I could cry out in panic at the sudden change in our fortunes. He does not plan and foresee and twist and turn in terror as I do. He does not have wagon-loads of stolen goods to keep safe. He does not have false promises on his conscience and a knife in his bag. He has not promised the queen her safety and yet been ordered to kill her. He knows his duty and he does it, he does not even have to think about what he should do. He is not clever like me, he is not false-hearted like me.
Maybe he is in love with the Queen of Scots. Perhaps he has enjoyed her looks, and who could blame him? I admit myself, I have never seen such a beautiful woman. Perhaps he has relished her company. Why not? She is as charming as any Frenchwoman raised in vanity and idleness. Perhaps like a man, like a foolish man, he has desired her. Well, he won’t be the first to make that mistake.
But it does not go deep with him, God bless him. When Queen Elizabeth sent him an order he did at once as he was bid. He said he would tie the other queen to her horse if he had to. I love him for that alone. He has faith and loyalty. He has constancy; when all I have is a hunger for wealth and a terror of being poor again. He is a nobleman of honour and I am a newly made woman of greed. I know it.
And then of course it is easier for him; how should he be so plagued with fears like me? He does not have the hunger for land and the fear of loss that I have. He was not raised by a bankrupted widow, he did not have to scrape and serve his way into a good place. He never had to choose his friends on the basis of what they would do for him, he never had to sell himself to the highest bidder, yes, and run the auction too. He does not even know that these are the abbeys’ gold candlesticks on his table and their flocks of sheep on his land. His purity is founded and protected by my greed and calculation. I do the hard and dirty work in this marriage and tonight, for once, I would like to be as clean as him.
We stop for the first night at the castle at Ashby-de-la-Zouche, one of Hastings’ houses, and though Queen Mary is only here for a night she has to be royally served, and it is my task to make sure it is so. More than ever I want her to see that we are doing the best we can for her. I have to send outriders ahead of her guards to make sure that the house is ready for her arrival; Hastings had shut it down while he was at court, and so my servants have to open it and air the rooms and light the fires. Then I have to catch up with them as quickly as I can so that I can have the wagon of her special goods unpacked and in her room ready for her dinner, I have to have her bedroom fit for a queen before I dream of sitting down to eat. She has to have her special carpet from Turkey on the floor beneath her bed, she has to have her own linen sheets on her bed, lavender-scented, she has to have a change of clothes for the next day, two changes of linen, starched and ironed, and her little dog washed and walked.
Yet all the time that I am fussing about her missing Belgian lace handkerchiefs I am waiting for the news that the army is upon us and closing fast. My wagon train lumbers slowly in the rear, forever getting stuck in the thick mud or having to go round rivers swollen with winter rain, and I have to be with it as we scramble for Coventry. I am unprotected, all the guards are around her, two hours ahead of me. If the army of the North come upon us tomorrow it will be me they find first, with a wagon-load of Papist treasures, quite without defence. At any moment they could ride down on us and all I will have to protect myself is a Turkey carpet, a dozen linen sheets and the queen’s stupid little dog.
1569, November, Ashby-de-la-Zouche Castle: George
One by one they are taking the towns of the North, raising their troops and manning each for a siege. The kingdom of the North is unrolling before them like a welcome mat, they would seem to be unstoppable. This is not a campaign, it is a triumphal progress. The army of the North is cheered everywhere that they march. The wet weather does not delay them, they are greeted as if they were spring itself. A brief note from Cecil to Hastings (for it seems that I am not to be trusted with news) warns us that they have taken the great city of Durham, without a shot being fired. They ordered Mass to be said in the cathedral, they threw down the Protestant prayer book and returned the altar to the right place. People flocked to be blessed and the priests blazed out in their vestments. The statues are reappearing in the shrines, the candles are lit, the good times have come again, the country will be free. They have restored the old faith in the land of the Prince Bishops and once again the
cathedral arches have rung to the true word of God in Latin. Hundreds came to hear Mass, thousands more were told of it and are filled with joy, flocking to their own parish churches to ring the bells backwards to show that the new order is turned upside down again, running to fetch their sickles and their pitchforks, desperate to fight a war on the side of the angels. The priests who were forced on pain of death to put out the Bible where anyone could see it, as if it were a common book, but hide the holy bread, can now follow the church’s orders once again and take back the Bible into their keeping but show the holy bread to all who come to worship it. The stone altars are back, the stoops are filled once more with holy water, the churches are warm again, murmuring with prayers. Once again you can buy a Mass for the soul of a beloved, once again you can claim sanctuary. The old religion has returned and the people can have its comfort. Elizabeth’s peace and Elizabeth’s religion are tumbling about her ears together and Bess and I will fall over and over in the ruins.
Cecil writes with fragile bravado that Queen Elizabeth is sending an army north, they are mustered and marching as fast as they can. But I know they will be too few and too late. These will be men from Kent, men from Wiltshire, they will be tired by the time they get here, and they will be far from home. They will be disinclined to fight men of the North, on their own lands, proud of their own religion. The Southerners will be afraid. We of the North are known as hard men, men who take no prisoners. When the North rises, no-one can stand against us. Those who remember the stories of the bitter years of the war of York against Lancaster will prefer to stay home and let these rival queens battle it out between themselves. No-one wants to join in another war between the North and the South. Only the Northerners are eager for battle because they know that God is on their side, and they have nothing to lose and are certain to win.
Many – both Southerners and Northerners – will believe that Queen Mary has every right to her freedom and should fight for it. Some, I know, will think that she has a right to the English throne and will not join an army against her. They will not march against a legitimate heir to the throne; who would raise a sword against good King Henry’s own kin? The grandchild of his beloved sister? Such a true Tudor should be defended by every Englishman. So hundreds, perhaps thousands will come north to fight for her and for the old religion, and for the ways that they love. Most of the country would go back to the old ways if they could, and this is their greatest chance. The earls have raised the banner of the sacred wounds of Christ. The people will flock to it.
Cecil has no news of Howard; and his silence to us shows the extent of his fear. When the duke brings his men into the battlefield he will outnumber any that Elizabeth could arm. He will turn out half of England with him. The Howard family have commanded most of the east of the country for generations, as princes in their own liberty. When the Howards declare for the king on the throne, half the country goes with them, as thoughtless as hounds to the horn. When the Howards reject a king, it is to announce a usurper. When Howard stakes his standard for Queen Mary, it will be over for Elizabeth.
Cecil is afraid, I would stake my honour on it. He does not say so; but he writes from Windsor, which means they have surrendered London, in order to arm the only castle they can hope to defend. This is worse than anything in living memory. King Henry never abandoned London. Nor did his father. Even Queen Mary, facing Wyatt and a mighty Protestant rebellion, never surrendered London. Little Queen Jane bolted herself into the Tower. But Queen Elizabeth has abandoned her capital city and is readying for a siege, with no hope of any relief from abroad. Worse: she has foreign armies massing against her. No king in Christendom will come to the aid of Elizabeth, they will let her fall and be glad to see her die. This is the harvest that Cecil reaps from his policy of suspicion. He and his queen have made enemies of the French, they hate the Spanish, they are divided from their own people, they are strangers in their own kingdom. She has aligned herself with pirates, with merchants, with Puritans and with their paid informers; and now she declares war on the nobility of her kingdom who should advise her.
I should be there at Windsor Castle, I should be there with my equals, with my queen. She should have the advice of her peers, men who have served the throne for generations, men who have taken arms for the safety of the English king for centuries. She should not be dependent on that clerk Cecil who comes from nowhere and was a nobody until yesterday. How can he counsel caution and good sense when he himself is filled with terror? How can he bring the people together when it is his fears and his spies who have driven us apart and made us enemies to each other? How can the lords advise her when she has accused most of them of treason? The best men in England are in the Tower or under house arrest.
God knows, I want to serve her now, at the time of her terror. God knows, I would tell her not to arm, not to raise the troops, I would tell her to send in friendship to the Scots queen and parley with her, promise to return her to Scotland, to treat her like a good cousin and not an enemy. More than anything else, I would advise her to listen no more to Cecil, who sees enemies everywhere and, in so seeing, makes enemies everywhere.
Well, I cannot serve the queen under siege in Windsor Castle, but I will serve her here. This is my task, and it is not a light one. I shall serve her here by guarding the woman who would take her throne, by avoiding, if I can, the army who would free her, by praying to my God in my own way – since truth be told I don’t know any more if I am Papist or Protestant and I don’t know how one knows, and I don’t care – that this war may be, by a miracle, averted and that cousin shall not war with cousin in England again. And when I have formed that prayer I whisper another one, to the sweet queen’s namesake: ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, keep her safe. Keep your daughter safe. Keep your angel safe. Keep my dearest safe. Keep her safe.’
1569, November, Coventry: Mary
A note from my ambassador Bishop Lesley, balled up and held tight in the brown fist of little Anthony Babington, is dropped by him into my lap in our temporary quarters at Coventry, the best house in the town and a mean dirty little place at that.
I write in haste with great news. Our campaign is underway. Roberto Ridolfi is returned from the Spanish Netherlands, and has seen the armada. They are ready to sail to support you now. They will land at Hartlepool or Hull, either city will declare for you, and then the Spanish troops will march to free you. Elizabeth has raised a reluctant army from the merchants and apprentices of London but they are making slow progress, losing men at every stop, there is no appetite for battle.
Your own army is triumphant, every city and town in the North is throwing open its gates, one after another. We have Elizabeth’s Council of the North pinned down in York, unable to get out of the town, surrounded by our army. Their leader, the Earl of Sussex, stays faithful to Elizabeth but he does not have the men to break out of the city and the county all around is yours. Your army now dominates every town and village east of the Pennines. The true religion is restored in every parish church in the North, the kingdom of the North is yours to command, and you shall be freed within days and returned to Scotland, to your throne.
I read in haste, I cannot stop myself smiling. He writes to me that the Northern earls have played a clever hand. They have declared that they will not rebel against Elizabeth, there is no question of treason, this is emphatically not a rebellion. The battle is against her evil councillors and their policies. They insist only that the church be restored, and the Roman Catholic religion freely practised in England again, and me returned to the throne of Scotland and acknowledged as heir in England. It is the moderation of these demands which attracts support as much as their righteousness. We are triumphant. Not a man in England would disagree with such a programme. All we lack is Elizabeth’s herald under a white flag, asking to parley.
Bishop Lesley urges me to be patient, to do nothing that might lead Elizabeth and her spies to think that I am in touch with the Northern army. To be a jewel, carried silently from one
place to another until it finds its final setting.
‘Deus vobiscum,’ he ends. ‘God be with you. It cannot be long now.’
I whisper ‘Et avec vous, et avec vous, and also with you,’ and I throw his letter into the fire that burns in the small fireplace.
I shall have to wait, though I long to be riding at the head of the army of the North. I shall have to be rescued, though I long to free myself. I shall find patience and I shall wait here, while poor Shrewsbury paces the walls of the town and forever looks north in case they are coming for me. I shall find patience and know that this cruel game of wait and fear which Elizabeth has played with me has suddenly turned in my favour and in days, in no more than a week, I shall ride back into Edinburgh at the head of the army of the North and claim my throne and my rights again. And now it is she who has to wait and fear; and I who shall judge whether I shall be kind to her. I am like a precious ship which has been waiting outside the harbour for so long, and now I can feel the tide has turned and the ship is pulling gently at the anchors, the current is flowing fast for me, and I am going home.
1569, November, Coventry: Bess
Just because we are far from our own lands does not mean that anybody eats any the less, but now everything has to be bought at market prices and the gold I brought with me is running perilously short. There are no fresh vegetables to be had, and no fruit because of the winter season, but even dried fruits and winter vegetables are priced beyond our means.
I write to Cecil to beg him to send me money to supply the queen’s household, to send me news of the army of the North, and to send me the reassurance that he knows we are faithful. I write to Henry to ask him news of the court and to command him to stay with Robert Dudley. I command him as his mother not to dream of taking arms for the queen and not to come to me. If Cecil only knew the terror I am in, the smallness of my little hoard of coins, the depletion of my courage, he would take pity and write to me at once.
Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Page 122