Not if Sir Thomas Wyatt had anything to say about it!
The conspirators had been hoping that the negotiations for the queen’s marriage would be long and drawn out, so that their uprising would be delayed until the spring, a much better time of year to launch an offensive. And then had come the news that the marriage was not to be after all; the prince was to marry his Portuguese cousin instead of the queen of England. At this welcome news Sir Thomas had been much relieved; the plan to march on London with an armed force had always left his bowels feeling as if they were made of water. If the queen’s foreign marriage had been halted by a pre-contract, so much the better. And then hard on that had come the announcement of the ratification of the marriage contract, and the imminent arrival of the prince.
Courtenay was in London, and it had been agreed that once the announcement of the queen’s marriage was made public, he would send a pre-arranged signal to the conspirators to start their plan in motion, but strangely, he had not done so. After waiting three days and hearing nothing, Sir Thomas had sent the signal from Kent. He had issued a public proclamation denouncing the marriage. The news would take longer to reach the other conspirators than if the signal had been raised in the capital, but it would serve. Once the proclamation was made, he had begun quietly mustering his adherents; he now had nearly 3,000 men ready to march at his command.
But what of the others?
And so here he was, riding hard through the night for the Royal Manor of Sheen, where the Duke of Suffolk was still under house arrest. Henry Grey was the closest to him of the conspirators; the rest were supposed to be waiting in London. Sir Thomas had agreed to remain in Kent in case it turned out to be more feasible for him to hie to the coast instead of to London, to stop the prince from debarking. He had not realized until this moment how vague their plan was, how many loose ends there were, how many uncertainties. And now that the timescale had been moved forward significantly, things were even more unclear.
He thanked God that it was a moonlit night; he could see quite clearly and was able to ride all the faster for it. The dead white light of the moon eerily reflected the glittering ice that coated every tree, and glowed lifelessly off of the snow. The snow was just deep enough to muffle the pounding of his horse’s hooves without hindering his speed. He was making good time; he hoped to reach Sheen before midnight.
He did not realize that he had dropped off in the saddle for a moment until his head jerked up, which caused him to twitch the reins; his horse shied, slid, and almost went down. He righted himself and the horse just as he came up over a rise; and there, at the bottom of the hill, he could see the reflection in the moonlight of the creamy stone of the priory in the distance, beyond which was the manor house.
When he rode into the courtyard and made to dismount, he found that his legs were either asleep or frozen. He clung to the side of the heaving animal, who turned to look at him in puzzlement. The horse’s breath was warm and he held his hands out to its blowing nostrils. Finally, he was able to stump to the door, holding tight to the bridle to keep himself upright. It was a side door where he knew a page should be stationed. He rapped quietly but insistently.
Finally the door opened to reveal a sleepy young man with tousled hair. Sir Thomas started barking orders in a low voice. “Sir Thomas Wyatt to see the duke. Wake a groom to see to my horse. He is to be rubbed down immediately and then fed. Not too much water at first, he has been ridden hard. Hie, boy!” he said with an impatient wave of his hand. The sleepy page turned on his heel and ran off without uttering a word. The horse was trained to stand and would have done so until the end of time unless someone came to lead him away; Sir Thomas stepped inside the door and blew on his frozen fingers. The corridor was almost as cold as the outside. Cresset lights burned in sconces on the walls, but they offered little warmth against the bone-chilling cold.
At long last the sound of muffled voices met his ears, and before long he saw a lantern bobbing and weaving in the hand of someone who was coming towards him.
# # #
“What the devil can be keeping Courtenay?” demanded Wyatt, as he warmed his hands at the hearth in the Duke’s privy chamber. His clothes started to steam in the heat of the small room.
Henry Grey, the Duke of Suffolk, studied his fingernails. “I know not,” he finally responded. “But what I do know is that I have never been easy with the idea of including His Grace in our plans.”
“Plans!” scoffed Wyatt. “What plans are those? Wait for Courtenay’s signal, rise up simultaneously and march on London. But what are we to do when we get there? What of the queen? All I have ever wanted was to impress upon Her Grace that the Spanish marriage is the very worst thing for England, and to convince her that it must not be. The populace agrees; just consider the reaction in London to the announcement that the marriage contract has been finalized! Beyond that…”
Suffolk raised his eyes to Wyatt’s. “Beyond that there is my daughter Jane.”
Wyatt scoffed again. “That is treason! Think you to depose the queen?” He was Catholic, but had always been in lock step with King Henry’s stance; Catholic, but without Rome and the pope. Suffolk, he knew, was a Reformer, and the Lady Jane Grey’s reputation as a religious fanatic even at her young age was well-known. Religion was not his aim; preventing the Spanish from infesting England and making her subject to the Holy Roman Empire and a slave to the Spanish Inquisition was his only goal.
“Treason?” repeated the Duke. “Any man who thinks to march on London with an armed force will be thought treasonous, regardless of his good intentions.”
“Then think, man!” expostulated Wyatt. “You yourself are only free from the Tower on the queen’s sufferance, and because your lady wife is the queen’s cousin! And your daughter still languishes there! Have you given no thought to how your own rising in the Midlands will be viewed?”
The duke’s countenance took on a petulant expression, his lower lip thrust out. The darkness of the room and the leaping flames gave him a sinister look. Wyatt had always thought Suffolk a fool; and this fool was uneasy, by his own admission, that the conspirators had included Courtenay in their clique, who was yet another fool! He began to sweat profusely, and it had little to do with his proximity to the hearth. Was the whole thing about to unravel? He simply could not let that happen; at all costs, at any cost, the Spaniard must be stopped.
Wyatt bit his thumbnail. “What news of Carew?”
The duke shifted in his chair. “I fear me that he may have roused some suspicion most recently. Sir Peter departed from the court without seeking leave and returned to Devon. When the Lord Chancellor called him back, he refused to return to London. And now it seems that may have been prudent; once word reaches him of your own proclamation, and it may have done so already, he will be on the spot and able to begin mustering his forces.”
Fool! Thought Wyatt. Was the man simple? “And why would Carew have departed without first having been given the agreed signal? No, something must have happened to alarm him.” But what? He, too, had always been uneasy about including Courtenay in their plan. He wondered just how much these men suspected of each other’s secret ambitions, those which they had not shared with the others. He had always believed that putting his daughter back on the throne was Suffolk’s motivation, a suspicion now confirmed; for Carew, Crofts and the handful of others who were privy to the planned uprising, Courtenay was instrumental because they meant to aid him in his plan to marry Elizabeth and make himself king. What had Courtenay promised them in return for their support? Money? Lands? Titles?
He felt as if he were caught in a spider’s web; trapped. He had known that the others each had their own reasons for supporting his plan to march on London to stop the Spanish marriage; but that was as far as it went for him. He had no wish to depose the queen, only to stop her from marrying Philip of Spain. But he saw now, too late, that he was hopelessly embroiled in a much larger plan. A very dangerous plan; a treasonous one.
&nb
sp; “Well, let us hope that Sir James has departed for the Welsh border,” said Suffolk. “With Carew already in Devon, and yourself in Kent, all that is needful is for myself to raise the Midlands. I shall depart for Leicestershire on the morrow. But the price of my participation is that my daughter is to be restored to the throne.”
Sir Thomas gazed at Suffolk stony-eyed, but there was no sense in arguing. He needed all four risings to be successful in his purpose. And it was vital that his purpose did not fail. But first things first; they must work together to stop the Spaniard. The others could settle between themselves later which candidate would seize the throne. He wanted none of that part of the plan, and he would make this clear to the queen as soon as he was able to make her see reason.
“The queen has published the marriage treaty,” said Suffolk. He stared into the fire as he spoke, and might just as easily have been talking to himself. “A copy of it is plastered to every church door and ale-house in London. The terms are quite generous.”
Wyatt, who had been pacing the room in his agitation, stopped in his tracks. “And well might they be!” he snapped. “But what is to stop the Spaniard from agreeing to everything and then doing as he pleases once he and his men are in England?”
Suffolk leaned towards the fire and held his hands out to the blaze. “Do not concern yourself overmuch,” he said. “If Carew or Crofts should fail us, I have enlisted the support of another.”
Wyatt was instantly alert. “Another?” he asked warily. “Whom?” Fool! Knave! he longed to shout. If Suffolk had been uneasy including Courtenay in their cabal, he himself had always been extremely nervous about including Suffolk. The man was one step away from the gallows as it was; association with him could prove to be deadly.
Suffolk puffed his chest out and said proudly, “The Earl of Huntingdon.”
Wyatt stood stock still and jerked his head around; it would not stop jerking and he shook as if with a palsy. “Did I hear you aright? Did you say the earl of Huntingdon? Do you mean Sir Henry Hastings?”
Suffolk turned and squinted at Sir Thomas. “Of course, sir, the very same.”
In two strides Wyatt stood in front of Suffolk. “Are you mad? The queen’s own kinsman?”
Suffolk raised his brows and pursed his lips, another of his petulant expressions. “Sir Henry has no desire to see the Spanish marriage take place, any more than we do.”
Wyatt narrowed his eyes and his voice became dangerously quiet. “How much does he know?”
Suffolk seemed genuinely surprised. “Why, everything, of course. I told him all.”
Suddenly it all made sense; Carew’s premature flight to the west, Crofts’ silence. Courtenay’s failure to post the proclamation in London against the Spanish marriage. All the signs pointed to it; Courtenay had given them up. There was nothing for it now but to hie back to Kent with all speed and raise the insurrection. The plan was still on, but they would have to move now, and move fast.
Whitehall Palace, London, January 1554
As Mary paced the room she held tight to her mulling poker. It was a shorter poker than that used for stoking flames, to make it easier to use in the mugs and cups used for mulled beverages. Occasionally she would slap the shaft into her left hand; when she did so it made a sharp snapping sound. Everyone in the room, had they but known it, shared the same fear at that moment; that the queen would lash out in her anger and use the deadly poker on one of them.
Finally she stopped and glared at Bishop Gardiner. “How dare you keep such a thing from me?” she shouted.
The Lord Chancellor unconsciously held up his hands to protect himself.
Mary noticed the gesture, understood it immediately, and thrust the poker aside. It fell to the floor with a clatter. The looks of relief on the faces of Gardiner and the others were so patent that she almost laughed out loud, but she checked herself just in time. For she knew that had she done so, her laughter would not have been pleasant to hear; it would probably have sounded maniacal.
“And you!” she shouted at Courtenay. “Is this how you repay my magnanimity towards you? Is this how you treat your kinswoman, and that kinswoman a queen?”
Courtenay had lost all of his bravado; he was at that moment such a pathetic figure that she waved her hand at him in disgust. Lady Gertrude stared shamefacedly at the floor.
The weather had broken at last and the rain lashed the windows in torrents. Whereas for weeks on end the cold had been unbearable, now the temperature had risen and it had been raining for days. And not a soft, gentle rain; it was a veritable deluge and like the recent frigid weather, showed no signs of abating. The roads were quagmires and the people outside the windows of the palace, who struggled to make headway against the strong winds, looked like so many drowned rats. The rain was so heavy and the wind was blowing so hard that one could see no more than a few feet in any direction. And it was still cold; the freezing weather had abated or all of England would have lain buried under a thick blanket of snow, but it was still miserably cold.
Gardiner took a deep breath and said, “Your Grace, I pray you, do not blame the boy…” He loved Edward Courtenay like a son and could not bear the thought of the dire consequences that the earl’s complicity in such a dastardly plot as they now knew existed could have. It was treason, and no less.
Mary rounded on him stoutly. “Boy?” she railed. “He is no boy, sir! He is a man and accountable for his actions.”
At this threat to her beloved son, Lady Gertrude could not restrain her grief and she moaned aloud.
“What I would like to know, good sirs,” and this she addressed to both Paget and Gardiner, “is why I had to hear news of an insurrection and the threat to my throne from the Imperial ambassador, and not from your own lips!”
Mary in a rage was truly something to behold; had she been a man, she would have been even more formidable. Paget had witnessed, and on occasion been the object of, many a Tudor rant from the master himself, the queen’s lord father. Still, he thought it wise not to antagonize her. Had he had the stomach to rebut her, he would have pointed out that since she treated the Imperial ambassador as a private counselor, she should have expected no less than to hear about the uprisings from Renard first instead of her own Council. But he held his tongue. His early support for the Spanish marriage had won him great favor with the queen; he meant to do nothing that might diminish his newly regained stock with the Tudor monarchy. In point of fact, Renard had come to him directly with rumors of a plot, but he had disregarded him; Renard had cried wolf too many times before for the Council to heed his womanish fears. And now look what had happened!
Suddenly inspiration took him; a sideways thrust was always better than a frontal attack. “I am puzzled by the timing of this thing,” he said, almost as though he were ruminating to himself. “The Council was informed of the plans for this rising only yesterday when the earl of Huntingdon informed us of his extraordinary conversation with the Duke of Suffolk. But surely you, my Lord Chancellor must have known of this days before?” Bishop Gardiner was almost like a father to Edward Courtenay; if the signal that Courtenay was to have sent to his compatriots was supposed to have been sent when the announcement of the ratification of the queen’s marriage treaty was made, then there was an unexplained lag of time between then and when the earl of Huntingdon had stunned the Council with his message.
Mary, who had been pacing the room like a lion, swung around to face Gardiner once again. “That is right!” she said.
All of sudden Courtenay burst into tears.
The bishop was furious, he glared at Paget, but did his best to hide his anger. “I had no desire to start yet another false rumor, Your Grace,” he said smoothly. “All know that the boy…” he could think of Courtenay in no other wise than as a boy, “…is unstable from having spent the better part of his life, and all of his youth, locked away in the Tower. I but meant to ascertain…”
“God’s teeth!” Cried Mary. “Will you continue to protect a confessed
traitor at the expense of your own head?”
At this Lady Gertrude began to wail along with her son.
But Mary was not without compassion. “Gertrude, stop that noise at once! I have no intention of executing my own cousin. He could not even commit treason properly! Banishment will be his lot; but at the moment I have much more important issues to deal with than my spineless kinsman.” She turned again towards Gardiner with an angry countenance.
Even though Courtenay’s treasonous behavior and cowardly collapse reflected badly upon his mentor, Gardiner had never believed for a moment that the queen would have him hanged, drawn and quartered; he also did not believe that the queen truly meant to threaten his own head. “Your Grace, had the boy been able to enjoy a normal life…”
“Oh, get you gone and take the miserable wretch with you! Place him in the care of Sir John Gage!” Mary glared at both of them; Lady Gertrude lay across a divan, prostrate with grief; and Paget simply looked smug. Sir John Gage was the Constable of the Tower; it was the safest place for Courtenay until she could get him out of the country. While Lady Gertrude could only see doom in the banishment of her son back to the Tower, Gardiner saw the sense of it; he nodded, took the sniveling Courtenay by the arm, and led him away.
“Now,” said Mary, as she watched the retreating backs of the Courtenays and the Lord Chancellor, “let us get down to cases. What is to be done, Paget?”
Here was an opportunity to curry favor and spread the blame for any failure at the same time! He smiled sweetly and said, “Why Your Grace, I believe that several heads are better than one in a crisis. We must call a meeting of the full Council, of course; and also let us call in the Imperial ambassador; surely we shall benefit from the advice of such a one as he.”
The Baker's Daughter Volume 2 Page 42