Cue for Treason

by Trease Geoffrey

  The play went smoothly on. No one knew that the most important cue of all had never been taken.

  25. After the Play

  THE play was over.

  I sat in the tiring-room while the actors changed and chattered round me. Burbage and Shakespeare had been summoned to receive the Queen's congratulations on the play. Kit had been spirited away by a lady-in-waiting.

  ‘The Queen will want to see you when she hears,’ Shakespeare had said. ‘You can't go like that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Pass yourself off as a boy to Her Majesty? She'd be furious if she found out afterwards.’

  ‘All right,’ said Kit, too weary to rebel, and she let her-self be led away.

  I sat on, answering everyone's excited questions between mouthfuls of the first food I had tasted since dawn.

  John Somers had been marched off to another part of the palace, and Sir Robert sent for. Our work was over. All I wanted to do was sleep. But Sir Joseph Mompesson appeared at my elbow and began pump-handling my arm with the vigour of his congratulations.

  ‘Comb your hair, and come along,’ he said. ‘The Queen's waiting.’

  I must have looked anything but a young hero as I tottered through the palace beside him, for my knees were weak and I could scarcely stand upright after so many hours in the saddle. I was thankful when we came to a door with two halberdiers in front of it.

  Four people looked up as we entered: the Queen, Sir Robert Cecil, Sir Walter Raleigh, and a girl in a flame-coloured skirt and bodice, whom I did not recognize for a moment, but who must (I knew) be an extremely important and favoured personage, for she was sitting beside the Queen.

  ‘Peter Brownrigg, Your Majesty!’ said Sir Joseph, and I knelt to press my lips to the gnarled old hand extended to me. The brown fingers were knobbly with too many rings.

  ‘You may take a stool, Peter Brownrigg,’ said a brisk voice above my head. ‘It's not good for young people to sit about too much, least of all in the presence of their sovereign; but I understand that you and this girl have been at some pains to prolong my wearisome existence.’

  As I sank on to the stool which someone pushed forward, I realized that the young beauty in the flame-coloured dress was Kit. My jaw dropped. Not even on the stage, not even as Juliet, had I ever seen her looking like that. Was this Court lady the Kit I knew? She must have guessed what was going through my mind, for, as the Queen turned to whisper something to Sir Walter, Kit smiled encouragingly at me. I saw the candles dance in her eyes, and I knew then that she was still the same.

  We told our story then, much as I have told it here. The

  Queen exclaimed loudly at several points and swore when we began to list the names of the conspirators. Sir Joseph slapped his thigh when I described my escape from Ullswater, and I saw that in his mind's eye he was following every step I had taken that evening on Helvellyn. Even Sir Robert broke silence to join in the laughter when we told of Sir Philip's capture.

  ‘He shall be dealt with,’ the Queen promised grimly. ‘And then you rode straight here?’

  ‘It sounds as though they flew,’ said Sir Walter.

  ‘It's well they didn't dawdle,’ retorted the Queen. She turned to Kit. ‘Nice goings-on for a young girl! Very unladylike! Gallivanting about the country on stolen horses disguised as a boy! Scandalous! Well,' she barked, ‘what have you to say for yourself?’

  Kit blinked under this unexpected attack. Then she sat up straighter, so that her cropped head showed funnily against the snow-white cambric of her ruff.

  ‘Your Majesty, there are no words better than your own: “Though I have the weak body of a woman, I have the heart and stomach of a man!” ’

  The Queen laughed her harsh laugh, till her ear-rings shook. ‘Well answered, Miss Impudence. Though, God help me, it's a far cry since the day at Tilbury when I said that. Ah, well…’ She sighed. ‘But it won't do as a general thing, you know. Mind that, Robert – find your spies elsewhere, not in the nursery!’ I could see Kit boiling at that. Elizabeth went on:

  ‘Your guardian doesn't seem to have taken very good care of you, child. We must alter that. I've a fancy to make myself your guardian. Would you like to be a ward of the Crown, eh?’

  ‘If I must have a guardian,’ said Kit tactlessly.

  The Queen tapped her cheek with her fan. ‘Only for a year or two, child. You'll give me as much trouble as Ireland, I don't doubt. Soon you'll be old enough to choose a husband, and I'll be rid of you.’

  ‘I don't want one, Your Majesty.’

  ‘You will, you will. Just wait. And – you may go farther and fare worse.’ She swung round to me. ‘And what can I do for you, boy? At this moment, I mean.’ And her wicked old eyes swung back to Kit with a meaning which made us both go scarlet. ‘Well,’ she went on, ‘don't you crave a boon, boy? People always crave boons when they serve their sovereign. Eh, Walter? What's it to be? Make it reasonable. I'm a poor woman.’

  I looked at her. What did I want? We Brownriggs have always been simple statesmen, holding our land from the Crown, beholden to nobody. We have never sought wealth or honours – your true statesman will not take even a knighthood. We have farmed our fells, and held our land against all comers, asking no favours.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Your Majesty,’ I said, ‘there are some common lands which have been ours and our neighbours' from time immemorial. Sir Philip stole them and enclosed them for himself. Will you hand them back to us, and confirm us in possession of them for ever?’

  She stared at me. Then she turned to Sir Robert with a chuckle. ‘I think we might grant this boon, eh? After all, it won't cost us anything.’

  So it was that Sir Philip's wall went down even before his head under the axe on Tower Hill.

  What else is there to tell? Only that the Queen proved a shrewder prophet than we, and lived to send us a wedding gift. As I lay down my pen, I look through the fine glass window across the silver mirror of Ullswater, and hear from the garden the shouts of laughter as Kit shows my sons how to climb the apple-tree.

  * Money then was worth roughly ten times as much as today.

  * Spelling was slacker in those days, and one might write of a ‘peel of bells’.