The Queen's Secret
Page 36
The character of Master Goodluck is based on the model of the Tudor theatrical spy, familiar to us from the story of the playwright Christopher Marlowe, who may have been secretly working for the government at the time of his murder in 1593. The best of these spies were probably intelligent, highly educated and inventive men, gifted in languages, yet also mavericks and loners, choosing to lead dangerous and unconventional lives. Masters of disguise, trained in the ways of codes and ciphers, such men would have moved regularly between a dubious existence on the fringes of the court and the dangerous back streets of Europe. Although the name Goodluck appears in parish records of Tudor London, my character here is entirely fictional, the younger son of a disgraced gentleman, forced to make a living from his wits under an assumed name. The need for such versatile men in and around the English court was a daily reality during Elizabeth’s reign.
Indeed, it is likely there were far more plots against the Protestant Queen’s life than we have evidence for. Some of these, like the 1577 conspiracy planned by Don John of Austria, would have been thwarted at an early stage by the ever-watchful Francis Walsingham, not only Elizabeth’s principal secretary by this stage but her spymaster too. Walsingham ran a comprehensive network of spies both at home and abroad, their covert activities often funded out of his own pocket. The reason for such a network is clear. Catholic nations like Italy provided no end of zealous would-be assassins and plotters, the most famous of whom was Roberto Ridolfi, a Florentine double agent whose daring 1571 plot to overthrow Elizabeth led to the execution for treason of her cousin, the popular Duke of Norfolk, and would have done nothing for Elizabeth’s sense of security.
The plot against Elizabeth during her stay at Kenilworth is, of course, pure invention. It was inspired in part by Robert Laneham’s mention of a travelling Italian acrobat so flexible he seemed to have no backbone but ‘a line like a Lute string’. This gave me my troupe of Florentine acrobats. There is also a curiously detailed account in Laneham’s letter of the Queen’s horse being startled in the woods by a Savage Man – another of Leicester’s play-actors – a minor incident which seemed to alarm everyone present to a surprising degree. This is suggestive of a general uneasiness around Elizabeth’s personal safety when out in public, and indicates that assassination was still considered a real and present danger. So it is not unlikely that there were a number of plots against the Queen during the mid-years of her reign, and that some were hushed up to prevent what might now be termed ‘copy-cat’ conspiracies.
In imagining the particulars of my Italian plot, I have taken certain liberties with the geography of the castle and its environs. The castle was reduced to ruins during the later civil war, to prevent it being used as a stronghold, so what we know of its infrastructure is based on a combination of old maps and drawings, a few preserved documents, and architectural conjecture. Many of the places mentioned can still be seen today, including the strongroom below the Queen’s apartments where her most precious possessions would have been stored, which now stands open to the elements. Others are based on guesswork and imagination, such as the medieval roof hatch used by the acrobats to gain access to the Queen. The room itself exists, but the ceiling is long gone. Equally, some events mentioned in Robert Laneham’s letter have shifted to other locations about the castle, for the exigencies of the plot. I have also, in consultation with experts at Kenilworth Castle, used a pinch of imagination when describing the duties of some of Leicester’s staff, such as the fictional Caradoc, one of the steward’s assistants, and Tom Black himself.
Writing this novel has been the achievement of a personal dream. I fell in love with history at school, flirted with it at university while studying Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, and have now committed some of that love affair to paper. The past is not always so very different from our own age, after all. Although my Lucy Morgan is a partly imagined character, a woman who existed in official records (though perhaps not as I have depicted her), she represents a type of brave, aspirational and passionate young woman familiar to us today, a character whose talents and shining personality raise her from poverty and obscurity to the Tudor version of celebrity.
Victoria Lamb
Warwickshire, August 2011
1 British Museum Egerton Manuscript 2806, ff. 148, 152v, 167v.
2 Peter D. Fraser’s essay ‘The Status of Africans in England’, in From Strangers to Citizens (Sussex Academic Press, 2001) edited by Charles Littleton and Randolph Vigne, makes an excellent introduction to this fascinating topic.
Select Bibliography
I consulted a wide range of books, papers and pamphlets during the writing of this novel. The titles that follow are those to which I owe the greatest debt, with my personal triumvirate consisting of Robert Hutchinson’s masterly portrait of Walsingham and his secret network of spies, Elizabeth’s Spy Master, the marvellously detailed account of Elizabeth I’s visit to Kenilworth, Robert Laneham’s Letter, for which Tudor historians must be forever grateful, and Elizabeth’s Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen by the talented and insightful Tracy Borman.
I am also deeply obliged to Peter D. Fraser for his essay ‘The Status of Africans in England’, in From Strangers to Citizens, pp. 254–60, and to Kathy Lynn Emerson, for her Who’s Who in Tudor Women (http://www.kateemersonhistoricals.com/TudorWomenIndex.htm), an online addition to Wives and Daughters, The Women of Sixteenth-Century England (Whitston Publishing Company, 1984).
The song ‘Ah, Robin’ is by William Cornysh (d. 1523).
The editions cited below are those consulted, even where earlier or revised editions exist.
Archer, Jayne and Goldring, Elizabeth and Knight, Sarah (eds.), Portraiture, Patronage, and the Progresses, Oxford University Press, 2007
Arnold, Janet (ed.), Lost From Her Majesties Back, The Costume Society, 1980
Borman, Tracy, Elizabeth’s Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen, Jonathan Cape, 2009
Drew, John Henry, Kenilworth: a Manor of the King, Pleasaunce Press, 1971
Furnival, F. J. (ed.), Robert Laneham’s Letter: Describing a part of the Entertainment unto Queen Elizabeth at the Castle of Kenilworth in 1575, Chatto, 1907
Gristwood, Sarah, Elizabeth and Leicester, Bantam 2007
Haigh, Christopher, Elizabeth I, Longman, 1988
Hotson, Leslie, Mr W.H., Hart-Davis, 1964
Hutchinson, Robert, Elizabeth’s Spy Master: Francis Walsingham and the Secret War that Saved England, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2006
Jenkins, Elizabeth, Elizabeth and Leicester, Phoenix Press, 2002
Jones, Philippa, Elizabeth Virgin Queen?, New Holland Publishers, 2010
Levin, Carole, The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the politics of sex and power, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994
Littleton, Charles and Vigne, Randolph (eds.), From Strangers to Citizens: the integration of immigrant communities in Britain, Ireland and colonial America, 1550–1750, Sussex Academic Press, 2001
Malcolm-Davies, Jane and Mikhalia, Ninya, The Tudor Tailor, Anova, 2006
Martyn, Trea, Elizabeth in the Garden, Faber, 2008
Neale, J. E., Queen Elizabeth I, Penguin, 1990
Palliser, David Michael, The Age of Elizabeth: England under the late Tudors 1547–1603, 2nd ed., Longman, 1992
Strong, Roy, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry, Thames and Hudson, 1977
Weir, Alison, Elizabeth the Queen, Vintage, 1998
Acknowledgements
I dedicate this novel to the memory of my mother, the romantic novelist Charlotte Lamb, whose pen-name I have adopted in tribute to an amazing global career which encompassed both historical and contemporary bestselling fiction over a thirty-year span. I’m sure my mother would have read The Queen’s Secret avidly, and then told me precisely what was wrong with it.
My grateful thanks go to my agent, Luigi Bonomi, whose warmth and helpful advice has been such a boon to me, and to Selina Walker, Jess Thomas and
all the team at Transworld for their belief in this book.
While researching The Queen’s Secret, I drew on a number of sources for the character of Lucy Morgan, including Leslie Hotson’s Mr W.H. and Kathy Lynn Emerson’s Who’s Who in Tudor Women. For these, and for Kathy Lynn Emerson’s help in tracking down various elusive citations, I am extremely grateful, as I am for Trea Martyn’s helpful responses to my queries concerning the Elizabethan gardens at Kenilworth. I would also like to extend my thanks to staff at both the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and Warwick University Library for their support in accessing relevant texts.
Thanks also to the English Heritage staff at Kenilworth Castle who have made me welcome during countless visits over the past two years, especially Stefanie Van Stokkom for her patience and historical expertise. Any liberties I may have taken with events and geography are despite her very useful advice, not because of it.
I also wish to mention Summersault, a jazz café-restaurant in Rugby, where much of this novel was written. Many thanks for not turfing me off my favourite table once my coffee was cold.
And I reserve a special mention for the Romantic Novelists’ Association, whose glittering parties and camaraderie are second to none.
Lastly, I acknowledge the loving support – and occasional acceptance of washing-up duties – of my husband, Steve. Sine qua non.
About the Author
While studying Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights at university, Victoria Lamb had a desire to write a series of novels about Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’. Now a busy mother of five, she has finally achieved that ambition after much research. Daughter of the prolific novelist Charlotte Lamb, Victoria lives in Warwickshire – also known as Shakespeare Country – only twenty minutes from Kenilworth Castle where The Queen’s Secret is set. She is presently working on her new novel featuring Lucy Morgan.
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First published in Great Britain
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Copyright © Victoria Lamb 2012
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