I steadied myself. However furious Walsingham might be, he would be hard put to it to claim that I had committed a crime of any kind. I was not really likely to find myself faced with the block. ‘I agree with the queen, Sir Francis.’
‘I daresay. I expected nothing different from you.’
He had been holding a quill pen in his fingers. Now he threw it down on the desk and pushed his chair back, violently. ‘Many of us on the Council are uneasy about the queen’s marriage plans but as well you know, we don’t want them disturbed by the ruin of her reputation. Janus was her protector; one of the best we have ever had. And now! Well, George Harrison will be tried soon and he will assuredly hang, unless he dies first. He seems to have a lung complaint. He is in a common prison. Robert Harrison, by the queen’s orders and because I pleaded for him – she did listen to me to that extent – is in the Tower, though in reasonably comfortable conditions. He will appear at the trial alongside his father but the queen has already decided that finally he will be returned to the Tower for as long as it pleases her, and privately she has said to me and my lord Burghley that she will release him after a year or so. But she will never agree to his reinstatement as one of her agents. You, my dear Ursula, have blindfolded England, put plugs of wax in her ears, tied her hands. Are you pleased with yourself?’
‘I am sorry,’ I said.
‘It’s too late for that. Please go away now. The queen does not know that I have sent for you, and I don’t wish you to see her. You may stay at Richmond overnight. You will remain in your rooms and your meals will be brought to you. Tomorrow morning, you will return home and stay there and henceforth keep out of affairs of state.’
‘And if the queen should summon me herself, at any time?’
‘Then you will have to obey, of course.’ Walsingham snorted with exasperation. ‘That is another matter.’
I said slowly: ‘She may do so – if and when the Duke of Alençon returns. She will probably ask me to … to stiffen her resolve to proceed with the marriage. I don’t want to anger you again, sir. What would you wish me to say to her, if she does call on me?’
The fury faded from his eyes at last. ‘Dissuade her if you can. It is possible for treaties to be ratified and kept, without the help of marriages. Without hazarding the lives of queens. Only, the scheme must be ended without scandal.’ He leant back, and his face sank into lines of tiredness and, I thought, of pain. He was probably having an attack of the gripes.
‘She is half in love with Alençon,’ he said. ‘Such things have no place in affairs of state, but they still happen, especially when a woman is concerned. If she summons you, try, as I said, to dissuade her. Otherwise, be good enough to stay out of the business of government, and spare us all your simple-minded womanly ideas of morality. The queen is the queen and that must be accepted but I find your presence in affairs of state decidedly annoying.
‘I have no doubt,’ he added, in a sudden echo of the Harrisons, ‘that you see yourself as being on the side of the angels. No doubt the queen thinks the same about herself. Real statesmen have to be a little more subtle. Lord Burghley feels as I do. You disobeyed him as well as me. Now go away. I wish never to see or hear from you again.’
He picked up a small gavel from his desk and rapped loudly with it. His secretary at once reappeared. ‘See Mistress Stannard to her suite,’ said Walsingham. He picked up his quill again and seemed to immerse himself in his work at once. Silently, chastened, I followed the secretary out of the room.
Something odd was happening to me. My legs felt shaky and a dull pain had started in my lower abdomen. The secretary left me at the door of my suite and once inside, I went straight to my bedchamber and examined myself. Then I called Dale.
‘Dale, I’ve come on.’
‘Oh, what a relief if you have, ma’am! Thank God!’
I have never known whether I was only suffering from the shock of what de Lacey had done to me, or whether I had really conceived by him. I am inclined to think that I had. The course that I had started was unnaturally heavy, was accompanied by extremely violent cramps and made me unwell for days, which never happened as a rule. But the danger of pregnancy was over now, without the help of Gladys’ illegal and possibly dangerous potions after all.
I was too unwell to leave the court the following morning, but three days later, feeling better, I set out for home. Walsingham might be furious with me, but if that meant that I would henceforth be left alone and not repeatedly dragged from my home to undertake alarming tasks for the state, it wasn’t such a bad thing. Walsingham’s outrage, I thought with wry amusement, had done well by me. I could go back to Hawkswood and take up my life there and be happy. Before being called back to court, I had made some enquiries and decided that Master John Hewitt, who had tutored the daughters of a lady I knew, would be suitable as a tutor for Harry, and the first thing I would do once I was home would be to write to him. After that …
I spent much of the ride mulling over the pleasant times to come.
On the way, we once more had an escort in the shape of a Queen’s Messenger, but this was pleasant, too, because it was Christopher Spelton, bound on one of his regular journeys to deliver and collect correspondence from somewhere in Kent. And, of course intending to call on Mistress Kate Lake on the way.
‘Another visit of condolence?’ I asked him.
‘Yes. Offering advice and help if she needs them, and to get her used to me,’ said Spelton, grinning. ‘To train her, if you like, to rely on me.’
‘Good luck to you both,’ I said. ‘I mean that with all my heart.’
I meant what I said. A quiet life at Hawkswood was what I desired most of all. Yes, I had received a gift that I had coveted for a long, long time and hoped to keep.
Unless, of course, the queen had need, once again, of my support. She was in love, yet she was still afraid of love and she had her reasons.
I understood them. I too was afraid, and for her.
A Deadly Betrothal Page 24
