by Barbara Kyle
It was noon when Carlos cantered through the rain toward St. James’s field a mile west of London Wall.
All morning in Westminster he had paced, waiting for orders in a crowded corridor while the commanders and the council bickered over troop placement. Carlos had finally left. He had rubbed down his horse, eaten a cold meal of bread, cheese, and ale, honed his sword, then had come back and waited again in the corridor, growing ever more disgusted with the leaders’ delays and confusion. Finally, Abergavenny, stomping out of the meeting, had thrust a paper at him. “You’re posted to Courtenay, the Earl of Devon.”
“Where do I find him?”
“St. James’s field, mustering with the others.” Abergavenny had added darkly, “Devon could use some help.”
“I will take Lieutenant Wentworth, yes?”
“Take whoever you want,” Abergavenny had said, striding away.
St. James’s field was churning with men and horses. Carlos and Wentworth trotted past groups of archers, pikemen, and arquebusiers, each company going through flustered motions of drilling on the soggy grass. Carlos thought, The arquebuses will be useless in this rain.
A lieutenant directed him to Devon’s troop. Carlos took heart as he approached, for he saw at once that it was a decent looking squadron of cavalry he’d been posted to. The sergeant pointed out the commander to him. “The Earl’s yonder, under the elm,” he said.
Carlos looked toward a dripping tree under which the young nobleman sat a strong white stallion. Devon’s long yellow hair was straggly in the rain, and the purple plume of his hat drooped soggily. He was leaning over his horse’s mane, struggling to disentangle the reins which were twisted over one of the horse’s ears. Leaving Wentworth with the sergeant, Carlos trotted over. He pulled off his gauntlet to tug out the paper under his breastplate. Handing it over to the Earl, Carlos explained that it set forth his orders to join the Earl as his captain.
“Orders?” Devon snapped. “No one told me. Blast Pembroke! Lord Commander, ha! I will not suffer many more of his insolent ‘orders,’ I can tell you!” As he petulantly flicked his reins, his hat slipped off and tumbled onto the muddy grass.
Carlos was about to draw on his gauntlet again when an itch on his cheek made him raise his hand to scratch. He hesitated. It was the spot where Isabel had spat at him yesterday. He half expected that if he touched it he might feel a small crater where her spittle had burned. It had felt like that, like boiling pitch, her hatred on his skin.
Shaking off the thought, he scratched his cheek, then drew on his gauntlet. He had a job to do here.
He looked around the field. Not far beyond it, toward the river, the towers of Whitehall Palace loomed through the slanting rain. He looked south. Wyatt would come from that direction, from Kingston, heading for the city. He surveyed the field itself, crowded with men and horse and small cannon. Some archers were confusedly following orders togroup. Some horsemen’s mounts were slipping on the wet foothold. The Queen’s forces did not have discipline, Carlos admitted that. But they did have numbers—maybe eight thousand now compared to Wyatt’s three. And they did have cavalry.
The rain streamed. Wyatt’s soldiers trudged silently along the road over Putney Heath, their feet squelching in the mud. The cannon carriages thudded over the water-filled pits. Mules alone could not pull the cannon over these huge depressions and through the thick mud, so teams of men were helping, straining with ropes over their shoulders, their clothes spattered with muck to the waist. Even so, the cannon constantly bogged down and had to be wrenched, pulled, lifted, and rocked free.
Thornleigh marched beside Wyatt who was mounted on his bay. Though keeping pace with his men on foot, Wyatt seemed eager, impatient. “Time is everything now, Thornleigh. Cannot disappoint our London friends, eh? They’re ready to welcome us. It’ll be just like in Rochester, and in Southwark. Think of it, not a jot of resistance, all the way we’ve come since Maidstone! Yes, England wants our victory, Thornleigh. And though we may not have the French beside us, by God we’ll have the Londoners!”
Thornleigh looked up. “Not the French?”
Wyatt shook his head soberly. He lowered his voice, and Thornleigh heard bitterness in it. “Ambassador de Noailles has been building castles in the air. This,” he said, gesturing to the trudging army around them, “is all we have.” His smile returned. “But these are brave men. And London awaits us. And once the capital is ours, the rest of the country will clamor to join us. I feel it!”
Thornleigh watched him, thinking it was no wonder Wyatt was happy to be marching. The days of inactivity had been hard on him—twelve days since he’d first raised his standard for rebellion. He seemed excited now, and every few minutes he would ride back to check the cannon, dismounting and walking beside the men hauling the ropes, encouraging them. Then he would ride up to the vanguard to urge the company on. Thornleigh forced his aching legs through the sucking mud and said nothing. The men, he thought, needed rest and food and dry clothes more than the commander’s cheering words.
The company dragged on past Wimbledon Common and the deer park of Richmond Palace, and finally trooped down into the riverside town of Kingston at four o’clock in the afternoon. The rain had not abated. It had taken them ten hours to cover twelve miles.
Kingston bridge was a narrow wooden causeway resting on piles. About thirty feet of it had been broken down by the royalists to prevent Wyatt’s crossing, though the piles still stood. A guard of some two hundred royalist soldiers were posted on the remainder of the bridge and on the far bank.
Wyatt did not hesitate. “Bring up the guns!” he commanded. The great naval guns were jostled forward, loaded, and aimed. Wyatt gave the signal to fire. The cannon boomed and roared. The Queen’s soldiers on the bridge and on the far bank turned and ran in terror. Wyatt’s men cheered wildly. Thornleigh smiled to himself. Perhaps a little encouragement was what the men had needed after all.
Wyatt ordered the repair of the bridge. As his soldiers held dozens of torches, he had his sappers bring up ladders, planks, and beams which they roped together. While the work was going on he gave the rest of his men leave to snatch a few hours’ sleep in the town. With fingers numb after hammering at bridge planks, Thornleigh wolfed a bowl of gruel in a widow’s cottage while his cloak steamed beside her small peat fire to dry. He hunched on a stool by the hearth, bone-weary, and stared into the peat’s red glow, remembering Carlos’s description of Sydenham’s red hair. Thornleigh did not sleep.
By nine o’clock in the evening the bridge was repaired. By ten o’clock the entire company had trooped across thebridge. In the darkness, lashed by the icy February rain, they started back toward London.
Frances Grenville shook Queen Mary’s shoulder as the Queen lay in bed. “My lady, wake up!”
Frances had tried to be gentle, but the Queen’s eyes sprang open as if a cannon had blasted. She jerked the bedcover to her chin and cringed. “Blessed Mother of God, are the rebels upon us?”
Frances squeezed the Queen’s hand comfortingly. “Not yet, my lady,” she said, careful to keep her voice calm, “but here are my Lord Bishop and divers gentlemen come urgently to speak with you. You must rise and dress.”
“Bishop Gardiner? Here? Now?” Queen Mary lifted her head from the pillows and peered past Frances toward the door. Frances’s trembling maidservant, who stood by with a candle, stepped nervously aside to allow the Queen to see. Three gentlemen stood just outside the doorway anxiously looking in, their faces mottled with shadows from the glow of the antechamber hearth. Soldiers with poleaxes crowded in behind them. The Queen, shortsighted and confused by the muzziness of sleep, blinked at them. She glanced across the room at the brass clock, a gift from the Emperor. Frances looked too. It was three in the morning.
“Your Majesty, all is lost!” Bishop Gardiner cried. Abandoning decorum, he pushed into the Queen’s bedchamber. “Wyatt has taken Kingston Bridge and crossed! You must flee!” The two other gentlemen, Paulet and Riche, rushed
in after him.
“Flee?” The Queen propped herself up, staring. Her face was white above her white linen chemise. “Flee where?”
“To Windsor!” Riche cried.
The Queen fumbled with her cover, trying to rise. Frances snatched up a fur-trimmed velvet gown and threw it around the Queen’s bare shoulders. The Queen got to her feet, then wavered as if dizzy, and groped for Frances’s hand. Frances guided her down to sit on the edge of the bed. “Windsor?” the Queen asked faintly. “Now?”
“Now!” Gardiner cried. “There is not a moment to lose!”
“A barge awaits, Your Majesty,” Paulet urged. “Do, please, rise and come!”
“Yes, yes, of course, my lords, if you think—” The Queen stopped suddenly. She stared at her prie-dieu as if struck by a thought. “My lord Ambassador. Is he here?”
“Renard?” the Bishop asked, bewildered.
“Yes, send for him,” the Queen said.
A servant was sent running down the corridor to Renard’s chamber. The Queen picked up her prayer missal, then sat immobile on her bed, the furred gown awkwardly askew on her shoulders. Gardiner went to the window, fretfully looking out left and right into the darkness. Paulet, subdued by fatigue, sat on the far corner of the Queen’s bed and buried his face in his hands. Riche stared vacant-eyed at the prie-dieu, obsessively picking at a scab on his neck. Some of the Queen’s ladies could be heard whispering in fear in the antechamber. The maidservant sobbed quietly in a corner. Frances alone seemed able to function. Quietly, efficiently, she laid out clothes for the Queen.
Simon Renard arrived slightly out of breath. Paulet jumped up. Gardiner twisted around. “You have heard the news, Renard!” he cried. “Tell Her Majesty that she must leave for Windsor now. From there we can get her to the coast and across the Channel. Tell her!”
Renard’s eyes widened in surprise. But he quickly recovered. He rested his keen gaze on the Queen and spoke calmly. “If you leave England, Your Majesty, rest assured that you will be safe under the Emperor’s protection, and that you will live in ease and luxury in whatever part of the Emperor’s domains you wish to make your home. But be aware also that by running you throw away your crown. Your flight will be known and the city will rise up. They will seize the Tower and release the prisoners. The heretics will massacre the priests. Your half-sister Elizabeth will be crowned Queen—a Protestant Queen. Holy Mother Church in England will perish.”
Gardiner gaped. Paulet thudded back onto the bed.
“And,” Queen Mary whispered, “I will have eternally desecrated my mother’s memory.” She looked at her English councilors with suddenly hard eyes. “I thank you for your advice, my lords,” she said, with a bitterness Frances had never heard from her. “But I will stay.”
Thornleigh hugged himself against the wet and cold as Wyatt’s army marched on through the low, marshy land between Kingston and Brentford. March? Thornleigh thought, wincing. More like stagger. The whole force was staggering, shivering, sopping—silent in their misery. There was only the incessant sound of boots and hooves and carriage wheels, all sucking through mud. Thornleigh glanced at the grim faces around him. Some who had started out beside him were gone. Hunkered down in Kingston when the trumpet blew to march out, they had stayed put. But the ones still here, Thornleigh judged, would stay until the end. What choice had they? Only victory now could save them from the noose. Thornleigh had his own reasons for carrying on.
Wyatt plodded on his horse beside Thornleigh, as wet as any of his men. At one point, when a young soldier collapsed on his feet, George Cobham asked Wyatt why they needed to push on so punishingly. “It must be near three in the morning,” Cobham said. “Why not find shelter in a village and let the men rest?”
“Cannot do it,” Wyatt said. “Got to be there before daybreak.”
Thornleigh understood. If success now depended solely on Wyatt’s friends inside London, then it was essential to attack before dawn. In the sleepy, small hours Londoners could find courage to risk opening the gates for the rebels, but their courage might fail them once their neighbors were about and the Queen’s soldiers amassed. Dawn, Thornleigh thought. It will be Ash Wednesday.
“Look out!” someone shouted. There was a crash. A man screamed. Thornleigh twisted around to look. Two of the cannon carriages had collided in a pothole with a crunch of heavy wheels. A man had been trapped between them, and one of the great guns had crashed down, smashing his leg. Voices rose in a clamor. In the darkness, the men milling at the scene were mere shapes to Thornleigh, but the whimpers of the injured man and the shouting around him were proof of great confusion.
The cannon barrel was wrenched up and the man was pulled free. But the gun was hopelessly mired in the mud, and a wheel on each carriage was shattered.
Wyatt looked at the ruin, aghast. “Wheelwrights!” he shouted. “Torches! Lieutenant, get this mess repaired!”
A team of steaming men worked, their tools hasping in the rain, their curses flying as the splintered wood and slippery metal refused to reshape themselves in their numb, raw hands. An hour slid by. Then another. Thornleigh went to Wyatt. “You said we must get to London. Why not leave the guns behind?”
“Impossible.”
“Why? You have three more cannon.”
“Good God, Thornleigh, ordnance like that could make or break the day!”
“But wasting time here can only break us.”
“I will not leave the guns!” Wyatt insisted. “Guns kept me from crossing London Bridge. Guns won me Kingston Bridge. Guns can win me London!” He lowered his head, and collected himself and said wearily, “Look, Thornleigh, the enemy is strong. I dare not abandon any advantage that might help even the odds. Understand? We will not leave the guns.”
But Thornleigh understood what Wyatt had forgotten: the enemy now was time.
* * *
It was four in the morning of Ash Wednesday, and in the palace chapel Father Weston wore a breastplate beneath his robes as he said a private mass for Queen Mary and Frances Grenville. He dipped his thumb in a saucer of ashes and drew a black cross on each woman’s forehead.
The Queen and Frances returned to the Queen’s bedchamber. While soldiers ran shouting down the corridors, and the Queen’s ladies sobbed in the antechamber, Mary and Frances kneeled before the prie-dieu. They prayed for over an hour.
But Frances’s thoughts strayed to Edward. She had memorized the words of the note he had sent her the day before. Such a loving note! In it, Edward had assured her that the Thornleigh girl would leave his house the next morning. This morning, Frances thought, glancing at the night-black window. Ash Wednesday. She wished she could hurry the dawn.
She looked back at the Queen’s drawn face beside her. Although the Queen still hugged her missal and stared at the jeweled cross before them as if in a trance, her lips were now still, and Frances judged it safe to interrupt her devotions. Frances herself felt satisfied that God had heard her own concise prayers. “My lady,” she ventured, “might I ask a small favor?”
“Of course, Frances. What is it?”
“There is talk of looting if the traitors breach the city gates. I am worried about some valuables in my family’s townhouse, things my father entrusted to me. A silver rosary that belonged to my great-grandmother and was blessed by the Pope. And a locket with a relic that my father gave me.”
“The locket with the hair of St. Theresa?”
“The same.”
“A sacred treasure, Frances.”
“Yes, my lady. And a sacred trust. But I fear for its safety. Might I go and bring these valuables back to the palace for safekeeping? Could you spare me?”
The Queen looked anxious. “You will hurry back?”
“I will not leave you long, I promise.”
The Queen smiled wanly. “Take my carriage. And a guard. I shall send with you my personal order for the night watch.”
Within an hour Frances was approaching Ludgate. The guard at the gate passed t
he Queen’s written order to the watch, and the heavy timber double doors shuddered open to let the carriage through, then clattered shut behind it. But Frances did not go to her family’s townhouse on Bishopsgate Street. She went to Lombard Street, to Edward’s house. She stopped on the opposite side from the house, and sat back in the carriage to watch the front door, waiting to see the Thornleigh girl leave, waiting for the dawn.
At four in the morning Isabel heard drums beating in the street, and heralds calling all fighting men to wake and arm themselves. She was sitting in the window seat—sleep had been impossible—and she let her mother’s book slip from her lap as she jumped up to look out. She pressed her cheek against the cold glass, trying to see past the corner of the orchard to the street, but all she could make out was the moving glow of torches, their wavering light making the bare limbs of the fruit trees seem to twitch.
The drums rumbled again. People ran past shouting. This is the moment, Isabel thought. Wyatt is coming. She stepped back, telling herself to be calm, reminding herself there was nothing more she could do for now. She could imagine three possible outcomes. Wyatt would be victorious, and then she would go out and find her father and all would be well. Or Wyatt would fail but her father would make it through Ludgate thanks to Sydenham’s instructions to the archers. In that case, she would still have to reach him—she could run to Ludgate in ten minutes—then get him out to van Borse-len’s ship. The third possibility, that Wyatt would fail and herfather would be killed, she did not allow herself to consider. In any case, all she could do now was wait.
Her door swung open. Isabel whirled around. It was Sydenham. He had not knocked, and he stood in the doorway looking lost. His face was very pale. “I see you cannot sleep either,” he said. “No one can, of course. The servants have all run out. I must go soon, too. I am just waiting for John Grenville’s summons. I wonder …” He hesitated. Isabel realized that he was very frightened. “I wonder if you would join me downstairs?” He added quietly, “This time, it is I who need company.”
