The Heart of a King: The infamous reign of Elizabeth I (The Tudor Saga Series Book 6)

by David Field

  ‘To judge by the smell, your circumstances have hardly improved. I take it that the Queen has not only failed to grant you an estate, but has punished you by employing you in this way?’

  Tom led her into the open air, then guided her down the side of a yew hedge, where they would not be visible from the castle. ‘Clearly my current employment is but a ruse. True it is that I currently have no estate such as would impress your father, but at least we are back together. Do you still serve the Lady Mary?’

  Jenny nodded. ‘Her favourite attendant, anyway. Mary Seton, mind I mentioned her? She is currently breakfasting with Mary and I must return shortly in order to attend to the irons when my mistress dresses Mary’s hair. I came down here in order to satisfy a curiosity I formed yesterday, when looking out of a chamber window in our prison and saw you exercising a fine mare in the inner keep.’

  ‘That was a deliberate ploy on my part,’ Tom announced proudly, ‘and it was clearly successful. I was advised that you were all housed in the south-west tower — it looks better than your lodgings in Carlisle, anyway.’

  Jenny took his hand, pulled him towards her, then recoiled from the smell of his clothing. ‘Forgive me if I do not embrace you, but be assured that when you smell less like a horse’s back end I shall not hesitate to do so. I have missed you and feared that you would not know that we had been transferred from that awful castle in Carlisle. At least here we are better accommodated. Mary is allowed more servants and we are all better fed. But what does Elizabeth intend shall be her fate? If the block or the gallows, then surely she would not treat her so well?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘The Queen does not consult me in these matters,’ he told her, ‘but she has — or rather, my master Cecil has — sent me back north for any further information I might glean of Mary’s plotting against Elizabeth’s crown.’

  ‘And once again I am to be your eyes and ears, even though the last intelligence I gave you did not yield you an estate?’

  ‘If you could undertake to do so, that would of course bring our marriage that much closer,’ Tom said. ‘But do you not feel guilty, betraying your mistress?’

  ‘Not with marriage to you as the prize. In any case, Mary Stuart is not my mistress, Mary Seton is. As for Mary Stuart, the looks she gives me suggest that I belong somewhere under her shoe, in the same way as that gong from the stables appears to have made a permanent home under your boots.’

  ‘So have you anything to report?’ Tom asked eagerly.

  Jenny looked down at the ground, as if reluctant to reply. ‘You must not be offended or disheartened in any way by what I have to impart, but must keep always in mind that I do what I do in order to speed the happy day when we become man and wife. Anyway, I have learned that Mary is in secret contact with one of your most important nobles — a man called the Duke of Norfolk. You know him?’

  ‘I know of him,’ Tom assured her. ‘What do you know of any communication between him and Mary?’

  Jenny looked into his eyes questioningly. ‘You will not think ill of me?’

  ‘I could never think ill of you,’ Tom replied encouragingly. ‘So what have you learned?’

  ‘Well, it seems that this Duke of Norfolk is presently in the Tower, but has been allowed certain freedoms, one of which is the maintaining of correspondence with the world beyond his prison walls. He has taken to writing to the Lady Mary, making use of what I have heard described as “ciphers”, whatever they might be. I hear loose talk between Mary and my mistress on those occasions when I am instructed to accompany her, so as to make Mary’s audience seem all the more grand. She is most vain in that regard. Anyway, there is much talk — well, giggles, really — regarding this Norfolk’s request for Mary’s hand in marriage in return for placing her on the throne of England. There is a wealthy man from Florence who is to send money for troops to achieve this and it is to happen soon. One of their first actions will be to release Norfolk from the Tower, then I believe that they will seize the Queen’s person.’

  Tom was stunned. Then he remembered Cecil’s caution regarding the reliability of any information passed on by Jenny. Was she inventing all this — perhaps at Mary’s instigation — in order to see how Elizabeth reacted? Was it designed to cause the Queen to over-react and look either stupid or vindictive in the eyes of the world? He desperately wanted to believe what he was being told, but it was not for him to decide its truth or otherwise. He would need to speak urgently with Walsingham.

  ‘Why do you grow silent?’ Jenny asked.

  Tom was obliged to mask his suspicion. ‘I was simply wondering how we can be certain that these letters that are being delivered to Mary come from Norfolk.’

  Jenny looked crestfallen as she replied, ‘That is why I asked a moment ago that you not be offended or disheartened.’

  ‘Why would I be?’

  ‘Well, the messenger who always seems to arrive just before Mary receives news that seems to make her happy and almost like a young girl at a village fair, claims to be Norfolk’s senior secretary. His name is William Barker and he boasts openly to me of how he is entrusted with his master’s most confidential communications — in the hope, I believe, of becoming better acquainted with me and perhaps engaging my affections. You are not angry with me? Only it seems to me that by playing him along I can learn much of the intrigue that is afoot in there,’ she concluded as she jerked her head back towards the south-west tower.

  Tom treated her to a broad smile that took every effort on his part to fake. ‘Of course not, my sweet, but I must hasten in order to pass on this vital information to someone nearby who can convey it to the Queen without delay.’

  He retrieved his horse from the stables and rode hard to Leyburn, where he was just in time to see Walsingham climbing onto his own horse from the mounting block outside The Kestrel. He frowned as Tom cantered up alongside him and repeated every word of what Jenny had told him. Then he nodded sagely.

  ‘This may explain why I am summoned back to London in haste. At least I will have something to report in return for spending three nights in this dreadful whorehouse. Resume your intelligence duties here until instructed otherwise,’ he ordered Tom as he kicked his horse’s flanks and made off along the southern track towards York.

  Elizabeth looked fearful as she sat staring at Cecil and Walsingham, who had not slept for two days and who had been rushed into the presence by Cecil when he passed on what Tom had learned.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ she said, ‘what do you propose that I do? The rumours come from three independent sources and cannot go unheeded.’

  ‘Indeed they cannot,’ Cecil confirmed,’ and what Walsingham has learned seems to confirm what we have been advised by others.’

  Three days previously, Robert Dudley had returned urgently from one of his regular journeys to Plymouth, bearing news from Captain Hawkins. Hawkins was the chosen mariner to convey Spanish Ambassador de Spes from Spain to England and back home again, while engaged in his many duties. Because he paid well, Hawkins always made sure that there was ample reward in the form of food and drink and the Ambassador had grown too fond of the rum that Hawkins regularly brought back from the Indies. In his cups he would reveal far more than was appropriate for an ambassador and from him Hawkins had received a slurred confidence regarding a change of monarch that was being planned for England.

  Philip of Spain had apparently acquired the services of an Italian banker called Roberto Ridolfi, who could travel around Europe with large sums of gold and a heavily armed escort without attracting undue notice. He in turn was in regular communication with an English noble who could convert that gold into armed men and lead a rebellion against Elizabeth that would see an end to her rule and the restoration of the true faith in England under Mary Stuart.

  While this might otherwise have been discounted as the wild ramblings of an inebriated and self-important little Spanish emissary, what he was confiding had been partly confirmed by an urgent dispatch that Cecil had received,
in his capacity as Secretary to the Queen, from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo de Medici, who was alarmed at the recent increase in the Spanish presence in Italy and anxious to promote warfare between Philip of Spain and other monarchs of Europe. Cosimo himself was the son of a wealthy banking family, had learned of Ridolfi’s intrigue with Spain through mutual associates and was hopeful that by alerting Elizabeth to the plot against her life and rule he would provoke her into declaring war on Spain. In this he had been unsuccessful, but he had at least sounded enough early warning to prepare her for what was about to occur.

  ‘How sure can we be that my cousin Norfolk is implicated in all this?’ Elizabeth asked.

  Cecil inclined his head to the side. ‘At present it is no better than the tittle tattle of one of Mary Stuart’s ladies, Your Majesty, but I have never known Tom Ashton to give me false information.’

  ‘Perhaps you have never sufficiently tested him,’ Walsingham replied grumpily, ‘but at all events we cannot sit and do nothing.’

  ‘No-one is suggesting that for one moment, Walsingham,’ Elizabeth replied testily, before turning to address Cecil. ‘How would it suit were we to have Norfolk hung drawn and quartered on Tower Hill? The mob have been starved of entertainment thus far during my reign.’

  ‘I was about to suggest that we release him with an apology,’ Cecil said.

  Elizabeth’s eyebrows shot up in sheer disbelief. ‘This is no time for jests, Cecil.’

  ‘I do not jest, Majesty,’ Cecil replied calmly. ‘As matters stand, he will deny any involvement, should we task him with it, or even have your torturer put him to the question. Far better that he be allowed his freedom and be led to believe that he is trusted. Then we keep him and his servants under close observation until we catch them at it, in circumstances that leave no room for denial. Then and only then, we give him a traitor’s farewell.’

  ‘Your man in Mary’s camp can be relied upon, I assume?’ Elizabeth asked.

  ‘He most certainly can,’ Cecil confirmed, ‘but I would have someone investigate more closely into the origins of the gentlewoman who supplies him with his information. Perhaps Walsingham here?’

  ‘No,’ Elizabeth replied firmly. ‘I wish him to travel to Paris without delay and relieve Throckmorton of his duties as our Ambassador to France. Is there no-one else you can send? No one you could trust with such a delicate business?’

  Cecil thought for a moment before replying. ‘There is my son Robert,’ he told her. ‘He is currently engaged as my Senior Clerk and there is little of love lost between himself and Tom Ashton, for reasons that date back to their youth, when Tom resided with me during his years of service to you when you were in peril from your sister Mary.’

  ‘Yes, I well remember his excellent service at that time, although I also seem to recall that he is something of a rogue and that Blanche Parry detests even the mention of his name.’

  ‘Indeed, Your Majesty, but he has talents that can be put to good use in England’s cause, as they are being now. However, I need to test the veracity of the information he is passing on from one of Mary Stuart’s coterie of women, since I have suspicions that this woman is playing him at his own game. I therefore propose to send my son Robert north to where Mary is being held, in order to replace Walsingham as my messenger and also to learn what he can of this woman’s origins.’

  ‘Do that, Cecil and with my blessing. As for you, Walsingham, rest here in London for a respectable period, then take yourself off to Paris.’

  It proved all too easy. Cecil had barely put the wheels in motion when he was approached, through an intermediary, by a Shrewsbury draper called Thomas Browne, who was actually shaking with apprehension as he explained to Cecil that he had recently been entrusted with a large heavy bag by two of Norfolk’s secretaries, William Barker and Robert Higford. He had been asked to deliver it to one of Norfolk’s officials in York. He begged Cecil’s forgiveness for having opened it and pleaded his innocence of what he had found inside it when curiosity got the better of him, due to its weight, as he stayed overnight at an inn in Gainsborough. There was over six hundred pounds in gold from the French Ambassador, a collection of letters written in a cipher of some sort and instructions to the recipient that the gold was to be smuggled into Mary Stuart’s prison apartments with the compliments of the Queen Dowager of France, Catherine de Medici.

  Browne was aware that Mary Stuart was currently a prisoner of Her Majesty and that Norfolk himself had only recently been released from the Tower following accusations that he had been behind the uprising in the north that had been visited with such brutal reprisals and he was terrified that he might somehow have become innocently involved in something treasonous. Cecil assured Browne that his loyal service would be reported to the Queen and he was given a hundred pounds in exchange for his silence.

  A man employed by Cecil who was skilled in ciphers was soon able to advise his employer that, so far as he could make out, the money was intended to be used to enable Mary Stuart to bribe appropriate men at Bolton Castle to facilitate her escape when word came that troops had landed in England to overthrow Elizabeth and that the balance of the money would ensure her a heavily armed escort as she journeyed south to York to be crowned. Barker and Higford were tortured in the Tower until they revealed that the master key to the cipher was to be found in the Howard House in Temple Bar. It wasn’t, but a thorough search by royal men at arms, under strict instruction from Cecil not to cease looking until they found something, eventually yielded a ciphered letter in Mary’s own hand, hidden under a doormat. The ‘Ridolfi Plot’ was at an end.

  Confronted with all the evidence against him, Norfolk reluctantly conceded that he had allowed his name to be used in order to persuade Mary to rise up and claim the throne of England, but denied any ambition to marry Mary himself, or any plot against Elizabeth’s life. A badly shaken Elizabeth had him tried on three counts of treason, her only concession towards the fact that they were cousins being that when he died on Tower Hill, Norfolk was merely beheaded and not hung, drawn and quartered, the usual penalty for treason.

  However, Elizabeth was less inclined to accept that Mary deserved the same. In an angry exchange with Cecil the day after Norfolk’s execution, she pointed out that ‘She could have been the innocent dupe of others, Cecil. I mind how I was blamed for every attempted uprising against my sister Mary, when in truth I knew nothing other than the fact that they acted in my name, but without my blessing.’

  ‘Even so, Your Majesty,’ Cecil argued, ‘as long as Mary is alive, there will be other attempts to place her on the throne, however innocent she may be of any such ambition.’

  Elizabeth glared at Cecil. ‘Cast your mind back a few years, Cecil. There was a time when I languished in the Tower because Wyatt and others sought to remove my sister from her throne in response to her insistence on marrying Philip of Spain. They claimed to act in my name without even consulting me — should I therefore have been taken out and beheaded, say you?’

  ‘The circumstances are different, Majesty.’

  ‘How? Tell me that, or remain silent!’ Elizabeth snapped. When Cecil made no reply, she gestured him out of the Audience Chamber with an angry wave of her hand. ‘Bring me a better case than this, before I will order the execution of a cousin and a rightful queen.’

  ‘I will, Your Majesty,’ Cecil assured her, ‘once I have satisfied myself that any further intelligence that comes from her servant is not tainted by mischief.’

  XVII

  Elizabeth sat, open-mouthed and shaking slightly, as Cecil read out loud the long dispatch from Francis Walsingham in Paris, written originally in cipher and copied into readable form by one of the several cipher clerks employed by Cecil for that purpose. The news that it contained was devastating and had serious implications for future English foreign policy.

  Put shortly, there had been a massive massacre of Protestants in France. On the eve of the Feast of Saint Bartholomew, only days after the marriage of
the Catholic royal princess Margaret of Valois to the Protestant Henry of Navarre in what many had hoped would be an end to the religious wars in France, up to thirty thousand ‘Huguenot’ Calvinist Protestants had been slaughtered. It had begun in Paris, allegedly on orders that originated in the Palace and had spread around the country like a fast-moving forest fire.

  Cartloads of Protestant corpses had been heaved into the Seine, but a small handful of those who had survived, mainly those of a noble or wealthy origin, were currently experiencing a nervous sanctuary in the Paris home of the English Ambassador Walsingham, who to judge by the tone in which his dispatch had been written was clearly traumatised by the entire affair and was pleading to be recalled to London.

  When Cecil had finished, he found Elizabeth staring into his eyes with the same look of helpless innocence that she had displayed on her first day as Queen and he realised that for all her bravado and occasional cruelty towards those who frightened her, she was still the same girl whose service he had entered all those years ago and he softened.

  ‘You wish to know what I would advise you to do?’ he asked gently.

  She nodded. ‘Yes please, Cecil, but not the death of Mary this time, since she surely had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘No, Majesty, and if anything quite the contrary. We must unite with all those nations that can assist in stemming the flow of Catholic violence and we must lead the Protestant opposition to it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘An alliance, first of all, between England and those in France who have always protected the Huguenots, even though Catholic themselves. Then a further alliance with the Low Countries, with the objective of assisting them to throw off the Spanish yoke.’