"It is a full month since he ordered me to make that jewel. I believed that it was for the Queen. Now we know differently. It was made for a purpose. Only this afternoon he said that maybe it would be worth its great cost. He has arranged all for this night" "But why thus? This charade?"
"That I do not know. Save that he is James and has a mind of much subtlety."
"I think that he would have no more plots around the Lady Arabella," Alison put in, "Therefore, instead of locking her up in the Tower, as Queen Elizabeth would have done, he binds her to his side thus-and lets all the world see that he does so. It would be a bold faction, would it not that now sought to use Arabella against the King?" "M'mmm. Yes, that could be…" "You heard it all, then?" Heriot asked.
"Yes. We were behind the side-scenes. Watching through slits. The Queen. The Duchess. Many ladies. The Queen was very wrath. Over the Lady Arabella. In especial the jewel. She all but issued forth…"
"That would have been foolish. The letter, that was strange. Think you it was a forgery? Planted to embroil the plotters. Brooke and the others?"
"I think not," Lennox said. "I would not doubt that James would use forgery, if need be. Or Cecil. But if what Arabella said was true, that she had received another such letter, it might not be necessary. And forgeries are chancy things-they can be two-edged, when it comes to trial. A sealed and signed letter, displayed before all, would make dangerous evidence, forged."
"How much do the seals mean? Clearly that letter had been opened before. James and Cecil had both read it"
"Seals can be softened, opened, and hardened again, yes. All it means is that Arabella received it earlier, handed it over to James, or Cecil, but then was given it back to present to the King thus strikingly. For better effect"
"What I do not understand is why the Lords Cobham and Grey were not arrested with the other two?" Alison wondered. "We know that they were in the plot. They were there-and Sir Robert Cecil said that there were other names in the letter. Of more note. Why not arrest them then?"
'There would be a reason," Heriot assured. "Those two know what they are at. Possibly they are baiting their hook to catch still larger fish?" "You mean… Raleigh?" Lennox asked.
"It could be. Raleigh, if indeed he is implicated, could be hard to catch. A clever man, of notable fame. Idol of the people. Cecil hates him, they say although he used to be his friend, profited from his enterprises. They could be laying a trap for Raleigh." "Are they sufficiently clever for that?"
"Who knows? But I believe they may be. It seems the King scarce needed our good offices!"
Alison laughed, with her unfailing enjoyment of most situations. "It is the English plotters who need help! They need the Master of Gray, I vow, to teach them how to plot! He would never have bungled it thus." Her companions did not contest that.
PART TWO
"VICKY," Queen Anne exclaimed, "of God's mercy, go get him! This is beyond all! I vow, if he does not come back forthwith, I shall return to Whitehall by boat! Now. Tell him so. It is cold. I will not wait here, thus. Aye, and as you go, have that woman Arabella's coach moved further back. I will not have her coming immediately behind myself, as though she was some great one. Tell Cecil he must change it"
Lennox began to speak, checked himself, and sighing, shrugged. "As Your Majesty says." Signing to a groom to hold his horse, he bowed and strode off down the lengthy column. He did not catch his cousin Arabella's eye as he passed her white and gold open coach directly behind the Queen's. That was not difficult, for she looked at the Duke as little as possible, resenting the fact that he now held the Lennox lands in Scotland which she conceived should be hers.
He had to pass numerous other coaches and actually turned a corner from Tower Hill before he could find Cecil who stood, frowning impatiently, with a group of other notables-for the Tower of London was scarcely the best place conveniently to assemble a mile-ling procession, with open space at a premium, no length of straight streeting and the strung-out but stationary cavalcade winding away through a network of side-streets and lanes most awkwardly.
"My lord," he said-for Sir Robert had been created Baron Cecil of Essendine and Viscount Cranborne-"Her Majesty commands that the Lady Arabella's coach be removed further back. Will you see to it?"
"But I cannot do that, my lord Duke," the Secretary of State objected. "She is there on His Majesty's express order. Next to the Queen's coach," he said.
"It is difficult," Lennox admitted. "But… you could try to move the coach back a little way, to insert some of the Guard to march between, perhaps? That might serve."
Cranborne inclined a large but disapproving head barely perceptibly.
Sir Edward Coke, the Attorney-General, and related by marriage to Cecil, stood beside him, a brilliant but irascible man. "This is intolerable-this delay!" he snapped. "We have been waiting here fully an hour, already. What in God's good name is the King doing?"
'That, sir, the Queen commands me to go see. But-His Majesty will conduct matters his own way, I have no doubt!"
Coke muttered something probably treasonable for anyone other than the Attorney-General.
Lennox retraced his steps, and turned in at the main gatehouse of the Tower-as indeed had James himself an hour before, when he also wearied of the waiting involved in marshalling the procession. Where was His Majesty, he demanded of the guard-captain of Yeomen?
"The Menagerie, sir," he was told. "He is gone to the lions. You can hear them roaring."
Hurrying across the outer and inner baileys, the Duke came to the pit, surrounded by cages, in which the royal lions and other animals were kept James had been relieved to hear that the creatures had survived the plague without loss, even producing a couple of lion cubs. He was now, apparently, investigating their condition.
The noise of angry lions and screaming yelps brought him to the King, with young Prince Henry, leaning over the rail round the pit, and experimenting to discover how different varieties of dog reacted to being pushed into the lions' dens. At sight of Lennox, he hailed him happily.
"Come you, Vicky, and see. The little dog is best. Mair spry and spirited. And lasts longest. Yon mastiff was no good. Humpit there in a comer, and had its back broke with the first whang o' a paw. The bulldog wasna much better. It attacked but was picked up like a kitten and the life shaken out o' it. Yon's it the lioness is eating. But the little sma' terrier, now, is still alive and jumping around like a flea. It has agility and wit, baith-as well as muscle and teeth, see. There's a lesson for you there, Henry laddie-aye, a moral."
"Let it out, Sire," the boy pleaded. "It has done sufficient well. The terrier. If you please. Look, it bleeds…"
"Na, na-there's sphit in it yet The danger brings out the sphit, see you. This is the high moment o' the bit dog's life, Henry. Facing and outleaping lions. You'd no' deprive it o' its moment? There is much to be learned here, boy." "Please, She-save it now…"
"Quiet, boy 1 Be a man. Sir Edward," James turned to the Lieutenant-Governor of the Tower, Peyton, father of the young man so dramatically knighted at Berwick Bridge, "hae you nae mah dogs?"
"Alas, Majesty-these are all my dogs. Or were!" the other said sadly. "A bear, perhaps? Or a wolf…?" "No sport wi' a bear. A wolf, maybe…"
"She," Lennox intervened, "may I ask that this entertainment be left, meantime? Taken up again later, perhaps. All wait. Hundreds. Thousands. And it is cold. This March wind. The Queen asks that you will deliver her out of it That you will allow the procession to move off. All is long ready."
"Nae doubt, Vicky. But there is mah to life than processions provided for the rascal multitude. Belua multorum capitum!"
'Your loyal London subjects, She. Who have suffered greatly. And now would welcome you."
"Ooh, aye. Crowds. Vulgar, ignorant folk. Unlettered, untutored. Odi profanum vulgus I'll no' hurry for the likes o' them."
"Perhaps not, She. But the Queen talks of returning to Whitehall Palace. By river, as you came. Now. She is chilled w
ith waiting in this March wind. Cecil-or Cranborne-and Coke also urge a move. Much is planned en route, for your state entry into your English capital…"
"I ken better than you what's planned en route," James interrupted. "It's my entry, man-and they'll no' can start without me!" He chuckled. "Eh, Vicky-be not so concerned for what doesna signify-you that might ha' been a king." "I thank God that was your fate, not mine, James!"
"She-look! The terrier-another wound. Oh, Sire-save it! It cannot last much longer, I swear. It tires. Save it, She-and, and may I have it if it lives? It is a brave dog."
"Och well, laddie," James relented. "If Sir Edward says so. It's his bit tyke."
So the terrier was rescued on the end of a hooked pole, and with Henry clutching it, panting and bleeding, to his fine white satin, pearl-seeded breast, an unhurried return was made to the waiting parade.
James noticed that Arabella's carriage had a posse of Yeomen of the Guard between it and that of the Queen and ordered this to be removed. Anne pointedly looked the other way as her husband passed.
The procession was most carefully marshalled, in theory, according to precedence, in the English fashion. The Earl Marshal, the Duke of Norfolk, having been proscribed and executed by Elizabeth in 1572, his brother the Lord Henry Howard, now Earl of Northampton, took his place and organised it all, assisted by his great-nephew the Earl of Arundel, rightful Duke of Norfolk. First of all came the King's judges, splendid in their robes-and glad of them in the wind-led by the Lord Chief Justice Popham. Then the great officers of state, under the new Lord Chamberlain, another Howard, the Earl of Suffolk, and still another, the Lord Admiral, Earl of Nottingham. Then the Privy Council behind the Lord Chancellor Egerton, newly created Lord Ellesmere for the occasion. There followed the Knights of the Garter, then the mass of the nobility, four by four in seemingly endless ranks, succeeded by the Knights of the Bath. Then the bishops, mitred and chasubled in coped glory behind Archbishop Whitgift of Canterbury. There followed the royal household under Captain of the Bodyguard, Sir Thomas Erskine of Dirleton, a kinsman of Mar's, replacing Sir Walter Raleigh who remained at the Tower-in a cell. The heralds under Garter, Clarenceux and Norroy Kings of Arms, brilliant in colour, came next, before the royal group.
All this enormous column had to move off in as orderly a fashion as was possible, at the same time, westwards, interspersed with trumpeters, many bands of instrumentalists, choirs of singers and the like. This was to be effected by trumpet-call signals, but owing to the long delay certain constituent groups had become dispersed-even into wine-shops-and much trumpeting and toing and froing of courtiers was necessary before any consistent forward movement could be achieved. James had some-tiling to say about that
When eventually the start was accomplished, the royal party came almost two-thirds of the way down the lengthy column. First young Henry rode, alone on a white Barbary mare, small back straight, upright, bowing gravely right and left, his fine white satin only slightly sprinkled with terrier's blood Two scarlet Yeomen marched at his horse's head. Then yards behind came the King, on a white jennet, scowling rather, in orange, purple and green, so padded and stuffed as to seem as broad as he was high, his lofty-crowned hat with its diamond-studded band sprouting multi-coloured ostrich plumes. Over his head was borne a handsome canopy embroidered with the royal arms and carried on ribboned poles by eight Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, all looking daggers at one another, Herbert-now Sir Philip and a Knight of the Bath-Southampton and six Scots including Sir John Ramsay, Sir George Home and James Hay, newly created Viscount Doncaster, the King having been busy filling up the House of Lords, for financial and personal as well as political reasons. Large contingents of Yeomen of the Guard flanked this group on either side, three deep, to ensure that the populace was kept at a suitable distance.
Immediately behind came a band of musicians consisting entirely of drummers-James's own arrangement; on the whole he preferred percussion to harmony, providing always that he was prepared for the outbreak, it being only sudden noise which upset him. This company certainly gave of their best, decibel-wise-and if they flagged, the monarch turned round in his saddle and apostrophised them as to their duty and privilege in no uncertain style.
The Queen's white-and-gold carriage, drawn by two snow-white mules, followed, with Anne frequently clapping hands over her ears to seek to temper the thunderous beat from in front on oversensitive ears. She was blue with cold, for, though mercifully dry, the March wind off the Essex marches was particularly chilly, and she was dressed in silks and satins more apt for the boudoir, with a notably low neckline, the extravagant starched ruff round her throat being neither comfortable nor warming. Her own ostrich plumes, inserted with such pains into her elaborate coiffure by Alison Primrose and Margrete Vinster, had succumbed rather to the breeze and long wait and required constant adjustment Nevertheless, Anne smiled and bowed and waved with great amiability and royal beneficence. But she never turned her head fully either right or left, in case she should glimpse, out of the corner of an eye, Arabella Stewart in the identical carriage behind, now close up again.
The Duke of Lennox, as vaguely royal, rated a horse, the only other in the entire cavalcade-and he kept as far behind his monarch, consort and cousin and those drums, as he decently could. Thereafter came carriage after carriage of the Court and well-bred hangers-on, forming the most cheerful section of the entire procession-for they had had the foresight to bring considerable liquid refreshment with them, and moreover had three choirs of boys from London churches accompanying them, who vied with each other in the ribald wording they could contribute to selected stately melodies, with the courtiers joining in with mounting enthusiasm and invention.
Seven-year-old Princess Elizabeth had measles at Coombe Abbey, where she had been placed in the care of Lord and Lady Harington.
The so-called state entry took a three-mile route westwards from Tower Hill, by the Byward where, from the churchyard of All Hallows by the Tower, three hundred boys from Christs' Hospital sang sweetly; and some dislocation was caused by James pressing on up Mark Lane, after only a brief pause and a nod, to the resumption of drumming, while Anne waited to hear out the chorus. The coach drivers thereafter, concerned to catch up, went rocketing up Mark Lane and down Fenchurch Street at a spanking pace, the carriages lurching and heaving, despite their occupants' cries -and the choirboys behind raced, leaping and hallooing in joy, to the alarm of many lieges who, assuming the procession was over, had started to stream homewards. However, at the foot of Fenchurch Street was erected the first of no fewer than seven triumphal arches, where a speech of welcome from the city guilds had had the effect of holding up the King, so that continuity was more or less re-established. This arch had a cunningly devised model of the entire City of London balanced on its apex, a contrivance which so intrigued James that he all but cricked his neck in peering up and trying to identify the various buildings represented, moving his horse from this side of the arch to that in the process, much lessening the tedium of the speeches.
The next archway, at Gracechurch Street, was still finer, quite splendid indeed, as became the work of London's Italian colony- although James pointed out roguishly that it might be said to be something Papistical, and might not find favour with all of his Council. Anne again got delayed here, admiring the artwork and priceless pictures of saints-and with her, of course, the second half of the column-so that there had to be another tally-ho along Cornhill, passing the third arch at the canter-much to the indignation of the apprentices' body which had erected it.
At the Royal Exchange the powerful Dutch trading community, representing some of the richest men in the city, had still another arch, symbolising the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands; and here there were more speeches, lightned however by being in Latin, to which James at least was prepared to pay consideration- and indeed to put right the orators on one or two occasions, drawing Prince Henry's attention to slips and alternative usages. Here George Heriot watched from am
ongst the crowd and was interested to hear the comments of London's loyal citizenry on their new monarch.
In Cheapside, a reunion was effected with the first half of the company, Justiciary, Privy Council, Church and the rest, who, not having had to listen to speeches, had made much more expeditious progress, and indeed had not seen the sovereign for some time. Here an elaborate Fountain of Virtue actually ran wine, of fair quality, and moreover was serviced by scantily-robed virgins who, in the chill wind and waiting, were to be excused a certain amount of previous ware-sampling, so that the virtue demonstrated was hearty rather than chaste. This well suited the processionists, even the majority of the bishops-amongst whom Puritans were not prominent-and enabled the crowned heads to catch up. Gold cups-empty, by some mischance-were here presented to King, Queen and Prince, and the marathon was restarted in better fettle. Unfortunately the drummers and choirboys got left behind at the wine fountain, by an oversight
Fleet Street delighted the Queen, at least, by producing an orchestra playing traditional Danish airs, at the sixth triumphal arch, so that there was another disjunction, resulting in Anne arriving late, with the majority of the Court, at the Temple Bar final archway, where James was being presented with the city sword by the Lord Mayor, plus a jugful of gold coins, which someone had had the good sense to arrange. James was much displeased at this interruption of the most serious part of the programme, but managed to contain himself sufficiently to knight there and then the Lord Mayor, the two Sheriffs and, by chance, the Master of the Soapmakers Livery who had somehow got pushed into a forward position-all without further financial arrangement. Thereafter, suddenly becoming weary of the entire proceedings, he announced, to nobody in particular, that he was going back to his bed at Whitehall, and that his Annie and the laddie could continue with the remainder of the programme-seeing they seemed to be enjoying it Himself, he had a bellyache and enough was plenties.
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