It was four in the morning before the letter was finished. The queen had a tendency to make wildly dramatic statements, but I was sure it would strike home more directly if she spelt out simply and plainly that she could never again live in England if the Parliamentarians were allowed the kind of powers they wanted. So we drafted and redrafted it, and finally, I put it into the code. As I handed it to her to seal, the candle on the table burned to its end, and flickered out.
* * *
For four weeks, stormy weather stopped letters from England. Every day the shadows under the queen’s eyes grew darker, and the worry made her so irritable that even Bonbon took to keeping out of her way. As August slid into September, we were tallying up ammunition orders when Susan came in, holding a letter from the king. The queen stood over me as I deciphered it. The first three lines held the news that must have been swirling around England for weeks. The king had issued a proclamation, asking his loyal subjects to fight alongside him. The war had begun.
Chapter Twenty-seven
We spent the early hours of our first night back in England cowering in a ditch outside the village of Bridlington, and before we’d even passed a night on English soil, I watched a man die.
It was six months since the king’s proclamation; by the time the queen had bought all the arms she could afford, winter had closed in, and we had to wait out the worst of it before we could sail. News from home was scarce, but it was clear that the hoped-for quick victory wasn’t going to happen. The entire country was split: the north and west were loyal to the king, but the Parliamentarian army held London – no surprise to me after that day at the Exchange – and the south-east all the way down to the coast, as well as a belt of towns across the Midlands. Yet when we stepped onto the quay that bitterly cold afternoon, the scene was peaceful. A thin blanket of snow lay on the ground, and a few flakes were still drifting down from a pure white sky. Soldiers had been sent to protect us, but in truth, I couldn’t see what from.
A little knot of villagers had gathered on the snowy quayside, and as the queen picked her way across the slippery cobbles, a fat man stepped forward, swiping the woollen hat off his head and bowing low.
‘Welcome, your majesty,’ he said. ‘We’re honoured to have you here. We’re for the king in Bridlington, and so’s everyone else in these parts.’
He ducked back, blushing, as she thanked him, then she laughed as a little girl peering from behind her mother’s legs said in a loud whisper:
‘Where’s her crown then?’
‘I never wear it in the snow,’ said the queen. ‘It doesn’t do to let it get wet.’
They made us welcome, each of the cottages along the harbour front finding room for three or four of us to sleep. There’d obviously been competition for the honour of hosting the queen; we were to eat dinner with the fat man and his family, but sleep in a cottage a few doors along.
It was a long time since I’d seen her as happy as that night. We shared a simple meal with the family, their three little boys’ wide-eyed stares divided between me and the queen. The wife apologised that there was only salted fish, but the queen said she’d rarely eaten a nicer dish, which made the woman blush to the tips of her ears. On a chest in the corner, there was a box made of beautifully polished wood, the lid covered with seashells, and the queen commented on how pretty it was.
‘Jem made that,’ said the wife, beaming at her husband.
‘It’s just something to do in the winter, on days we can’t take the boats out,’ said the man, his cheeks flushing.
He looked questioningly at his wife, and when she gave a little nod, he said, ‘I have another, almost finished, your majesty. I could finish it tonight, and I’d be honoured if you’d have it. As a memento, you might say, of your time here.’
She protested that she didn’t want to put him to any trouble, but he wouldn’t be swayed, and when she accepted the offer, the man and his wife went so red I was afraid their heads might burst.
The family we were to stay with were equally welcoming, insisting the queen, Susan and Elizabeth take their bedroom, and Henry and I the little chamber where their children usually slept. Before we retired, the queen insisted on writing to tell the king she’d arrived safely.
‘Do you remember how it was all those years ago?’ she said, as I sat translating her letter into code. ‘How I missed France, and my family?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘I never thought England would feel like home. But when I stepped onto that quayside today, I felt it in my bones. This is my country. And with God’s help, we can save it from those barbarians. They can’t win, not when good people like these support us.’
* * *
The first cannonball hit the cottage next door, at about three in the morning. Before I knew if I was awake or dreaming, an even louder bang shook our cottage, and the roof fell in, showering down shards of wood and clouds of dust and soot.
On the stairs, Susan was hurriedly wrapping a cloak around the queen. A soldier appeared at the door.
‘Your majesty, we need to get you away. They’ve got ships in the harbour, they know you’re here.’
People were spilling out of the houses, dragging screaming children as they fled from the seafront.
‘Tell us where to go,’ she said.
‘The edge of the village,’ said the soldier. ‘There’s a natural shelter, we’ll take you there.’
‘No, we can find it. Get everyone away. Henry, help them, we’ll be fine.’
As we ran, following the villagers, shots thundered through the air and the quayside filled with smoke. I’m not ashamed to say I was terrified; none of us had expected an attack like that.
‘Bonbon!’ said the queen, stopping suddenly. ‘I left her behind!’
She darted back towards the cottage. Susan shouted after her, but there was no point. Not when it came to that wretched dog. We ran to catch her, but with all the villagers fleeing in the opposite direction, Susan couldn’t dodge through them as easily as I could. By the time I reached the house, the queen was already running upstairs, shouting Bonbon’s name.
Just as she bent to yank the covers off the bed, a shot blasted clean through the wall, whistling above her head. We threw ourselves to the floor as bits of stone and mortar spattered the room, and there, under the bed, huddled against the far wall, was Bonbon. I squeezed underneath and wormed my way across, only for the blasted animal to bare her teeth and snarl at me.
‘You bite me, and I’ll leave you to die,’ I said.
She gave a huffy little growl, but let me drag her out. The queen took her from me and we ran. Shots were still flying as the soldiers hustled the last few people out of their houses.
The queen was faster than me, so she was well ahead when a shot whistled behind us. I turned: the fat man was hurrying out of his cottage, clutching a box with seashells on the lid. One minute he was there and the next he was blown apart. The shell box fell to the ground, quite unharmed. For a second my legs wouldn’t move and I stood there as the snow turned red with blood. Then another shot blasted out and I ran.
* * *
The natural shelter the soldier had told us to head for was a ditch, with walls twenty feet high, that ran along the edge of the village, built as some sort of defence centuries before. For three bitterly cold hours, we huddled there, as shots boomed out into the night. Not until dawn, when the tide forced the ships to withdraw, could we finally emerge.
‘How lucky this place was here,’ said the queen brightly, as we clambered out, limbs stiff from the cold. ‘You see, God is on our side.’
With my ears still ringing from the shots, and my nose clogged with dust and soot, I stared at her. Did she really understand what was happening? If God was on our side, how had the Parliamentarian ships been able to sneak up on us, and all the defenceless villagers, in the middle of the night? Then she looked at me, and I saw in her eyes that she’d been as frightened as I was. She just didn’t want anyone else to see.
I didn’t tell her the man with the shell box had died going back to fetch his present for her. But I couldn’t stop thinking it might have been her blood, or mine, staining the snow red that night.
Chapter Twenty-eight
We knew now what we’d returned into: they’d stop at nothing to kill or capture the queen, and anyone associated with her. But she was determined to get the arms and the troops she’d brought to the king. He’d made his headquarters in Oxford, but between Yorkshire and Oxfordshire there was a solid belt of Parliamentary territory, and we’d be rats in a trap travelling through it. So it was decided that we’d go to York, and wait there until the king’s forces cleared the route ahead.
As we rode through a reassuringly large and solid city gate, the horses’ hooves clattering on the cobbles, a great roar went up. Even though it was a bitterly cold day, hundreds of people had turned out to welcome the queen, and they were packed into the narrow streets within the walls, cheering and waving makeshift pennants.
‘Well, we should be safe from being shot in our beds tonight,’ said Henry. He glanced up and tipped his hat to a buxom young woman who was leaning out of the window above an apothecary’s shop. ‘And don’t take offence but, since we’re clearly very popular with the locals, I might find better company than yours to share mine with while we’re here.’
‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘I had enough of your snoring last night.’
‘Seriously though, I’m glad of this.’ He nodded at the queen, who was riding ahead of us. ‘Bridlington was a lucky escape. If the king’s got any sense, he’ll tell her to send the arms and the men on, and stay here, where she’s safe.’
* * *
The king didn’t tell her to do that, and she wouldn’t have listened anyway. After all those months she’d spent gathering arms and men for him, and learning about tactics and strategies as she did it, she wanted to play her part – not least because she didn’t trust him to stand firm on his own. There was a letter waiting for her when we arrived at the house near the Minster where we were to stay. Impatient for news, she read over my shoulder as I decoded it. He was negotiating with Parliament, he said, but only so that no one could claim he was the one prolonging the fight. She threw up her hands.
‘Negotiating, he says. With traitors?’
His letter finished with loving words about how much he missed her, but I hadn’t even written those down before she started dictating her reply:
‘If you make peace with these people, it has all been for nothing…’
Any agreement, she told him, would leave him worse off than he was before. The current Parliament had to be defeated and disbanded, and if he accepted anything less than that, she would go straight back to France, rather than risk falling into their hands.
* * *
We were staying in the home of the Ingram family, who owned quite a lot of Yorkshire. The house had been newly built from the ruins of the old archbishop’s palace, sparing no expense, as its owner, Sir Thomas, insisted on telling us, in more detail than anyone required, over dinner that first night.
‘We’re honoured to have you here, your majesty,’ he said, when he’d finished explaining exactly which part of Florence the wall hangings had come from. ‘Of course this is the smaller of our homes, but I think you’ll find it comfortable. And Lady Frances…’ He nodded at his young wife, who hadn’t yet opened her mouth and looked petrified at the thought that she might now be expected to, ‘… will be pleased to arrange your entertainment. We were thinking, perhaps a ball, nothing too extravagant, just local families.’
‘Oh no,’ said the queen. ‘Please don’t trouble yourself, our time here will be fully taken up. But of course I would be happy to receive those from the locality who support the king.’
If he thought she meant to meet them for polite conversation, he was soon disabused of that idea. Within days, she’d persuaded three local landowners to give money and men, and when the Ingrams ran out of wealthy friends to call on, she wrote to the governor of Scarborough, who was for Parliament but was rumoured to be considering switching sides, suggesting ‘friendly talks’. That resulted in him defecting to the king, and bringing with him not just a useful port but a ship laden with arms, previously destined for Parliament’s army.
It wasn’t long before word of her successes reached them, of course. Realising she was now very much part of the fight, they wrote to invite her to London, to talk about their proposals for peace – but warned that if she refused, she could expect their forces to do all they could to stop her delivering the arms to Oxford. She kept them hanging for a week or so, but they must have known she’d never agree and, two months into our stay in York, came the news that told us they’d given up all pretence of making an agreement with her.
She was dictating a letter to the king when Henry brought in the newsbook that had reached York’s streets that morning. He started to explain but she took it from him and read the words herself.
‘Impeached,’ she said, when she’d finished. ‘You know, after all these years, I still find English so strange. Such a pretty word for such a nasty thing.’
I thought back to that day in Whitehall, when we’d first heard that they might accuse her of treason. She’d been so afraid, shrinking back into her chair, but now she hardly seemed to care.
‘At least now they’re honest: it’s a fight to the death, between me and them,’ she said. ‘But we all know, it’s been that for a long time.’
* * *
We finally set out from York on a fine summer’s day, three months after we’d arrived. The troops were in high spirits now we were finally on our way: over the clip-clop of the cavalry horses we caught snatches of singing from the hundreds of foot soldiers bringing up the rear, the queen pretending not to hear the bawdier choruses. Determined not to show fear, she’d refused to travel in a coach and instead rode at the head of the train, laughingly calling herself their ‘she-generalissima’, but deadly serious as she discussed tactics with the troops’ commander Lord Newcastle, a florid Yorkshireman who very much enjoyed the sound of his own voice. Before we left, there’d been days of discussions about the route we should take; although the Royalist forces had won strongholds we could aim for, out in open countryside we’d still be vulnerable to attack. During one such conversation, I’d ventured to make a suggestion and Lord Newcastle had looked at me with much the same expression he might have worn if Bonbon had suddenly pointed out a weakness in his argument. Then he laughed, and said, ‘Comical little chap! But leave the fighting to the men, eh?’ A few minutes later Henry, who hadn’t been listening, put forward the same idea, and Lord Newcastle nodded and said, ‘Exactly what I was thinking.’ After much the same thing happened twice more, I kept my thoughts to myself.
Late that first afternoon, Lord Newcastle was delivering a long anecdote that was clearly going to culminate in yet another example of his remarkable military acumen, when a rider appeared in the distance, pelting towards us and shouting something we couldn’t hear. He halted the troops and the great procession clattered to a stop.
The rider was a young woman. As she pulled up on the fine-boned white horse, the hood of her soft woollen cloak slipped back, releasing long red curls.
‘Thank goodness,’ she said. ‘Mother thought you’d come this way, but I wasn’t sure, and I know I’m supposed to curtsey, your majesty, but there isn’t much time, if I don’t get back soon they’ll realise I’ve gone and—’
‘Stop,’ said the queen. ‘Get your breath back.’
The girl took a deep breath.
‘There’s a plot,’ she said. ‘They’re going to kidnap you.’
The queen’s face went white, all bravado gone. We’d heard enough news of ambushes over the months to know that in the confusion of a surprise attack, anything could happen. Even surrounded by soldiers, she wasn’t safe.
The girl, Arabella, spoke quickly and to the point: her family were Catholics, and for the king, but their home, Denham
Hall, had been invaded by Parliamentarian troops a few nights before. Her father and brothers were with the king’s army in Oxford, leaving only her, her mother and a handful of servants; there’d been nothing they could do when the soldiers took over the place. They’d been forbidden to leave, and ordered to turn any visitors away with the excuse that there was sickness in the house.
‘They said if we disobeyed, they’d kill us. Our steward argued with them and the main man, Major Sarenbrant, he lifted his pistol and shot him. Just like that. He was sixty, Peter, he couldn’t have harmed a fly. But he shot him dead.’ She closed her eyes for a second, as if she was trying to clear the picture. ‘I heard them talking, and we knew we had to warn you.’
‘Do you know how they plan to do it?’ asked Lord Newcastle.
She shook her head, the red curls tumbling round her face.
‘No. I was just taking ale to the ones in charge – our best ale, of course, they don’t stint themselves – and they stopped talking when I came in. I heard them say they had to get you before you reached Doncaster, that’s all.’
‘How many soldiers are there?’ asked Lord Newcastle.
‘About as many as you’ve got, I’d say. They’re camped in our fields. Major Sarenbrant comes and goes, but when he’s there, he sleeps in the house. And there’s always half a dozen of them around the house, guarding us.’
‘If we strike by night, we can take them,’ Lord Newcastle said to the queen. ‘We’ll work out where best to attack from and—’
‘Wait,’ said Arabella. She looked from the queen to Lord Newcastle. ‘What do you mean, attack? You can’t attack our house.’
‘Young lady,’ said Lord Newcastle. ‘You don’t—’
‘If they see so much as one soldier, they’ll kill everyone. You won’t be able to stop them. I’ve already put us in danger, riding here to tell you. I thought you’d just turn back.’
The Smallest Man Page 13
