by Susan Kay
The same thought found an echo in Mary’s mind, but on a note of ecstasy rather than despair. She could not tear her eyes away from him, this handsome symbol of her unity with Spain and the Catholic Church, her husband—her lover! She kept him endlessly at her side, while they conversed in broken foreign tongues, but at last, with her rigid sense of etiquette, she knew she could delay the moment of parting no longer. One more night alone in the big state bed and then tomorrow—oh, tomorrow!—she would be a woman at last.
“What shall I say?” His hand was on her arm, his bland face vaguely anxious; he had a horror of losing his dignity in public, of being made to look foolish and inadequate. “What shall I say to your court, madam, as I take my leave—the correct form of address?”
His French was surprisingly poor, it took her a moment to follow his meaning. And then she smiled gently.
“Goodnight, my lords and ladies,” she said slowly, in English.
He practised the phrase with grave persistence and Mary listened indulgently. They had told her he was serious and moody, that he never smiled, but he had smiled upon her tonight—smiled upon everyone. She never noticed how cool and expressionless the china-blue eyes remained. She thought only how truly Renard had spoken; they had indeed sent her perfection itself!
Philip bowed courteously to the nobles of England and mumbled the objectionable line; and at long last his duties for that day were behind him.
A lifetime of unremitting duty lay behind Philip, who had spent his twenty-seven years mastering the rigid servitude of a Spanish prince. In all of Europe there was no court which equalled the cold formality of Spain and Philip had learned to subordinate his own personal desires beneath the needs of the state. This would be his second marriage. The fruit of the first remained behind in Spain—Don Carlos, a deformed, half-witted creature of whom Philip was secretly bitterly ashamed. No one spoke openly of Carlos’s disabilities because nobody dared to; but Philip knew the Emperor looked now for a sane heir, rather than a gibbering lunatic. He was stuck in this miserable, rain-sodden land until he produced the goods and this time the raw materials were less than promising. A withered old maid in place of the lusty little cousin he had first married—he was frankly less than hopeful. He lay alone in his bed the night before his wedding, stiff as a sacrificial offering on an altar, and wondered why God, whom he had always served so faithfully, should have chosen to lay this extra burden upon his shoulders.
For if he had to marry one of Henry Tudor’s misbegotten daughters, surely it was only human to wish that it might have been the younger one.
* * *
Winter crept on Woodstock, making the tumbledown palace bleaker and more uncomfortable than ever. Sir Henry Bedingfield felt old and cold. Seven months of his prisoner’s company had changed him almost beyond recognition, into a weary elderly man pressingly aware of his years.
He had come to this post in full command of his faculties, a wooden, uncompromising, vigorous knight who knew his orders and his own mind. Accordingly, he had been quick to dismiss Elizabeth Sands, an outspoken girl overready to complain on her mistress’s behalf. He had believed that by exerting his authority so early and in so cavalier a fashion, he would totally demoralise his prisoner. With the loss of her friend, she was quite alone in a house full of unfriendly women and he ought, from that time on, to have had little further trouble with her.
But the incident merely served to mark the beginning of his problems. Nothing cowed her. Nothing discouraged her endless, outrageous demands for one indulgence after another. She had even asked for an English Bible, in spite of the Heresy Bill which was presently in Parliament. He couldn’t understand her. She was like an irritating moth flitting round him in a dark room and there was no way he could avoid the touch of her wings against his face. Slowly he was being ground down, reduced to a state of dithering mental anarchy which found him “marvellously perplexed whether to grant her desires or say her nay.”
There were times when she flatly refused to speak to him. She would withdraw to her room in a huff and against his will he would find himself coaxing her out again, wooing her to walk in the gardens. Day after day he scurried between her rooms and his own like a hunted lackey. Her pitiful tears wrung his hard heart; her continual indispositions caused him countless hours of anxiety; her outbursts of temper unnerved him. And her smile—he had learnt to fear her smile above all else; it manipulated him mercilessly. He was like a puppet dancing jerkily on the strings of her emotions. She even persuaded him to act as her secretary and write her long list of complaints to the Council in his own hand. Afterwards, he was in such a flat panic at what he had done that he was forced to send a desperate covering note with the document excusing, “this my evil writing, trusting Her Highness will forgive my rudeness, and you, my lords, also.”
What had happened to him? He did not know. He only knew that he was behaving like a fool and that all his letters to the Council marked him as a very silly old man, so interminable and confused were they.
He resorted frequently to his written commission from the Queen, by now much thumbed and rather crumpled, seeking desperately for some indication of where he had gone wrong.
“Item: he shall, at convenient times, suffer our said sister for her recreation, to walk abroad and take the air in the garden…as he himself shall be present in her company.”
Behind this apparently innocuous instruction lay long hours of panting up and down the winding gardens locking and unlocking endless gates behind the teasingly restless figure of “our said sister.”
“Item: he shall generally have good regard not only to the Princess, but shall also do his best to cause the country thereabouts to continue in good and quiet order.”
But down in the village the Bull inn was swarming with her undesirable friends, of which the most suspicious was her Steward, Thomas Parry, who complained loudly of the fare provided for his mistress and exhibited “great doubts” over the strain on her funds.
Bedingfield was so terrified of what might be hatching down at the Bull, that he summoned three of his brothers from their comfortable estates and begged them to keep watch for treason.
But inside the house, he was mesmerised by the endless circles Elizabeth ran around him. At every opportunity he besieged the Council, with many apologies, to grant “the importunate desires of this great lady,” and he wrote “this great lady” without realising how much it betrayed his capitulation to hostile outsiders. He was harassed from morning to evening by an endless series of small crises, while his charge mimicked his orders to his face and called him “gaoler,” and uttered all manner of reproaches “too long to write.”
But the day she called him gaoler, he went down on his knees and begged her not to give him that harsh name.
“I am only an officer appointed to serve you and guard you from danger on the Queen’s instructions.”
“God bless the Queen,” observed her sister sharply, “and from such good officers, dear Lord deliver me!”
She looked down on his bowed head and knew a moment of intense satisfaction. This old stallion had had more kick in him than most—but she had broken him in the end and could now trot him off to that menagerie which still housed Sussex and Arundel, elderly pets of whom she was mildly fond.
And they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks!
She turned away hastily lest he see the smile which hovered at her lips.
Woodstock held more than one prisoner…
* * *
Philip was utterly bemused by the muddled accounts which came in a steady stream from Woodstock.
“My dear,” he ventured one evening, looking up at his wife in irritation, “was this old dotard the best custodian you could find?”
“He wasn’t a dotard when I appointed him.” Mary flung her embroidery across the room. “Oh, don’t you see, have I not said it often enough?—it’s her! She cor
rupts all men with her evil wiles. If you had met her you would understand what I mean.”
“But I have not met her,” said Philip pointedly.
“No!—nor will you!” Mary leapt from her chair. “Oh, I will hear no more of her, no more, do you understand? As for those disguised and colourable letters of hers—I swear I shall not receive another one. She shall be forbidden to write—absolutely forbidden.”
He shrank from the scene he had provoked and turned away to his letters; he hated these hysterical outbursts, so undignified, so ugly, so frequent. In Spain, no one ever raised their voice—even orders for torture and execution were given with placid courtesy. It seemed to him that the English, as a race, had no self-control and that everyone from the Queen down to the rabble mob delighted in making an exhibition of their emotions.
He was ill at ease in this marriage; and in this adopted country of his, where he seemed like a fish out of water. Every night as he climbed reluctantly into the state bed and regarded the Queen’s withered little body, eager enough—oh God, almost indecently eager!—but scarcely inviting, he reflected that some duties were decidedly more distasteful to perform than others. It was then that his thoughts turned unwillingly to the sister-in-law of whom he had heard so many odd tales. He was assured on every side that she was a bad lot, and the more firmly he was assured, the more perversely his unhealthy interest grew.
Loneliness was growing on him steadily, and loneliness was an emotion to which Philip was a complete stranger. Since childhood, he had possessed those recluse-like qualities which would have placed him happily in a silent Order, so this restless, unaccountably strong desire to meet Elizabeth was quite beyond his understanding. Why should he feel such vulgar curiosity about an ill-bred courtesan, whose very existence placed him at risk in this realm? Barring the little Queen of Scots, whip-hand of his French enemies, Philip honestly considered Elizabeth to be the most dangerous person in Europe. Oh yes, he wished to get the measure of that tricky young lady—but was that the only reason he was quietly manoeuvring to get her back at court?
He put his pen down and leaned his chin moodily on his hands. He had precious little to look forward to in this land, beyond that meeting. Eighty of his disillusioned grandees and retainers had already left for home, and those who remained complained pitifully that, “We are miserable here, much worse than in Castile…the English cannot bear the sight of a Spaniard, they would rather see the Devil.” There were open brawls on the streets between the two races and in every shop and market-place the Spaniards were mercilessly fleeced. Even the religious settlement, effected by Mary’s cousin, Cardinal Pole, showed little sign of bringing peace and reconciliation. The Papal Legate had been escorted to England by no less a person than that “very honest man,” Sir William Cecil, and the country was now officially Catholic. Yet no one would part with church lands plundered during Henry’s break with Rome, and Protestant opposition remained vociferous in the streets.
Compromise had failed and the rigours of persecution were slowly taking its place. Gardiner’s Heresy Bill had legalised the examination and punishment of all heretics who publicly persisted in practising their creed and in February the first martyrs had gone to the stake. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, had been forced to watch while Bishops Latimer and Ridley burned, and knew his turn would come.
The burnings had not increased Philip’s popularity. Indeed, if Mary should die while he was still in England he would be fortunate to escape with his life. The rabble howled against him and circulated crude lampoons which mocked his dignity and his manhood. Even Mary no longer spoke hopefully about his coronation. The heir to half the world had been reduced to the status of a stud horse, but at least there his selfless devotion to duty had achieved its purpose.
The Queen—God be thanked!—was with child at last.
* * *
They told this to Elizabeth and in the next breath asked her the fatal question.
Did she believe that the bread and wine at Communion was transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ?
Her fingers tightened on the rosary beads which hung from her waist. Her life depended on her answer. If she denied belief in the Sacrament she would burn as a heretic; if she publicly avowed belief she would lose her Protestant support and be cut adrift in the future like a rudderless ship.
It was a moment of terror and supreme loneliness, that showed her the gulf between herself and the rest of the world. For to her this issue was a dispute over trifles which threatened to tear the Christian world apart. She saw no purpose in dying for any creed—did that make her wicked? Certainly it made her different; she knew, as she gazed into the bigoted faces around her, that her mind stretched out beyond the narrow confines of this century towards a more enlightened age of tolerance.
When I am Queen I swear I will make no windows into any man’s soul…
But now she had to speak and mock the infallibility of this test of faith. And suddenly, the words revolving in her head resolved themselves into a neat little riddle.
“Christ was the Word that spoke it,
He took the bread and broke it.
And what His Word did make it,
That I believe…and take it.”
Slowly she raised her eyes in a coolly defiant gaze that dared them to probe any further. And one by one they lowered their eyes to the ground. Not a man of them took up her pointed challenge, for the slight emphasis on “take it” had been unmistakable and they were all well acquainted with her dutiful attendances at Mass. Too clever by half was the general opinion, but they had no knife long enough to reach her; and at length they had to let her go.
Bedingfield was waiting to escort her back up the narrow staircase to her room, and once there she went across to the window where the light of a bleak day was rapidly failing. Somewhere in the distance she could hear a milkmaid singing as she crossed the meadow to the barn with two pails swinging from a yoke across her shoulders.
“Your Grace is weary,” ventured Bedingfield with cautious sympathy.
“Weary of this miserable existence,” Elizabeth muttered, “I wish I were that milkmaid out there.”
“Madam.” He laid his heavy hand on her arm. “You must not despair. The Queen is with child and will surely soften towards you in her great joy. We must all rejoice in the news and pray for a son.”
Elizabeth looked out into the dusk through blurred eyes and wondered if she would ever set foot again outside her prison door.
“Yes,” she said dully. “We must all rejoice and pray for a son.”
Pray—oh, God forgive me—that it is still-born!
* * *
Philip had been sitting for over an hour at his meticulously tidy desk, staring at the letter he had received from Renard, recently recalled to Spain. It was full of advice on what to do with Elizabeth and, frankly, what to do with Elizabeth was rapidly becoming a very urgent question.
Renard had been blunt, as was his wont.
“Should the Queen’s pregnancy prove a mistake the heretics will place their hopes in Elizabeth, and here you are in difficulty whatever is done, for if Elizabeth is set aside the crown will go to the Queen of Scots.”
Philip frowned. That was Elizabeth’s trump card, should he choose to set her free and let her play it. In due course, the Queen of Scots would be Queen of France. Add the crown of England to Scotland and France and you altered the entire balance of power in Europe. And Mary Tudor, nearing forty and in poor health, was at a dangerous age for bearing children. If he should lose wife and son at the birth, Elizabeth was all that stood between France and England.
“Before you leave the country you should see the Princess yourself and on your part promise that you will be her friend and assist her where you can find opportunity.”
Philip folded the letter and locked it in his desk. A sound fellow, Renard—he’d always thought
so. Well then, there was no choice, was there? He must see the Princess and become her friend—he owed it to himself and to his father. Self-defence, common sense, nothing more, he told himself firmly. And yet that subdued, lecherous dog, kennelled in the cellar of his mind, was sitting up with wagging tail and drooling tongue. He felt extraordinarily pleased with himself as he made his way to his wife’s apartments.
“Bring her to court?” echoed Mary, wild-eyed against her pillows.
“She should surely be there to witness the birth.”
“She should be dead!”
“My dear, you had the opportunity to take her head and let it slip away.”
“Next time I may not be so foolish.”
He came out of the shadows and looked down on her in alarm.
“Next time?”
Mary stared at him with tired jealousy.
“How careful you are of her safety. Is her power so great it can enslave a man she had not even met?”
“You are distressed,” said Philip coldly. “You must not excite yourself in this manner—it is bad for the child.”
Mary turned away to hide her tears in the pillow.
“Once you set eyes upon her you will go the way of all the rest. I know it.”
He was vaguely offended by the suggestion.
“You think I cannot handle the young lady? You are mistaken, madam. I am no callow boy to be taken advantage of by a pretty woman. I merely make a political suggestion in the spirit of duty.”