‘Good morning, Blount,’ Robert said quietly.
‘Something odd I thought you should know.’
‘Yes?’ Robert did not turn his head. No-one looking at the two men would have thought they were concerned with anything but horse care.
‘I came across a shipment of gold last night, smuggled in from the Spanish, shipped by Sir Thomas Gresham of Antwerp.’
‘Gresham?’ Dudley asked, surprised.
‘His servant on board, bristling with knives, sick with worry,’ Blount described.
‘Gold for who?’
‘For the treasury,’ Blount said. ‘Small coins, bullion, all shapes and sizes. My man, who helped unload, said there was word that it was for minting into new coin, to pay the troops. I thought you might like to know. It was about three thousand pounds’ worth, and there has been more before and will be more next week.’
‘I do like to know,’ Robert confirmed. ‘Knowledge is coin.’
‘Then I hope the coin is Gresham’s gold,’ Blount quipped. ‘And not the dross I have in my pocket.’
Half a dozen thoughts snapped into Robert’s head at once. He spoke none of them. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And let me know when Cecil starts his journey home.’
He left the horse with the groom and went to find Elizabeth. She was not yet dressed, she was seated at the window in her privy chamber with a wrap around her shoulders. When Robert came in Blanche Parry looked up at him with relief. ‘Her Grace won’t dress though the Spanish envoy wants to see her,’ she said. ‘Says she is too tired.’
‘Leave us,’ Robert said shortly and waited while the women and the maids left the room.
Elizabeth turned and smiled at him and took his hand and held it to her cheek. ‘My Robert.’
‘Tell me, my pretty love,’ Robert said quietly. ‘Why are you bringing in boatloads of Spanish gold from Antwerp, and how are you paying for it all?’
She gave a little gasp and the colour went from her face, the smile from her eyes. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That.’
‘Yes,’ he replied evenly. ‘That. Don’t you think you had better tell me what is going on?’
‘How did you find out? It is supposed to be a great secret.’
‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘But I am sorry to learn that you still keep secrets from me, after your promises, even though we are husband and wife.’
‘I was going to tell you,’ she said at once. ‘It is just that Scotland has driven everything from my mind.’
‘I am sure,’ he said coldly. ‘For if you had continued with your forgetfulness till the day that you called in the old coin and issued new, I would have been left with a small treasure room filled with dross, would I not? And left at a substantial loss, would I not? Was it your intention that I should suffer?’
Elizabeth flushed. ‘I didn’t know you were storing small coin.’
‘I have lands, my tenants do not pay their rents in bullion, alas. I have trading debts which are paid in small coin. I have chests and chests of pennies and farthings. Do tell me what I may get for them?’
‘A little more than their weight,’ she said in a very small voice.
‘Not their face value?’
She shook her head in silence. ‘We are calling in the coins and issuing new,’ she said. ‘It is Gresham’s plan – you know of it yourself. We have to make the coins anew.’
Robert let go of her hand and walked to the centre of the room while she sat and watched him, wondering what he would do. She realised that the sinking feeling in her belly was apprehension. For the first time in her life she was afraid what a man was thinking of her – not for policy, but for love.
‘Robert, don’t be angry with me. I didn’t mean to disadvantage you,’ she said and heard the weakness in her own voice. ‘You must know that I would not put you at a disadvantage, you of all people! I have poured places and positions and lands upon you.’
‘I know,’ he said shortly. ‘It is partly that which amazes me. That you should give with one hand and cheat me with the other. A whore’s trick, in fact. Did you not think that this would cost me money?’
She gasped. ‘I only thought it had to be a secret, a tremendous secret, or everyone will trade among themselves and the coins will be worse and worse regarded,’ she said quickly. ‘It is an awful thing, Robert, to know that people think that your very coins are next to worthless. We have to put it right, and everyone blames me for it being wrong.’
‘A secret you kept from me,’ he said. ‘Your husband.’
‘We were not betrothed when the plan started,’ she said humbly. ‘I see now that I should have told you. It is just that Scotland drove everything out …’
‘Scotland is at peace now,’ he said firmly. ‘And try and keep in your mind that we are married and that you should have no secrets from me. Go and get dressed, Elizabeth, and when you come out you will tell me every single thing that you and Cecil have agreed and planned together. I will not be made a fool of. You will not have secrets with another man behind my back. This is to cuckold me, and I will not wear horns for you.’
For a moment he thought he had gone too far, but she rose to her feet and went towards her bedchamber. ‘I will send your maids to you,’ he said, taking advantage of her obedience. ‘And then we will have a long talk.’
She paused in the doorway and looked back towards him. ‘Please don’t be angry with me. I didn’t mean to offend you. I would never offend you on purpose. You know how this summer has been. I will tell you everything.’
It was the moment to reward her for her apology. He crossed the room and kissed her fingers and then her lips. ‘You are my love,’ he said. ‘You and I are true gold and there will be nothing mixed with that to spoil it. Between us there will always be an absolute honesty and openness. Then I can advise you and help you and you need turn to no other.’
He felt her mouth turn up under his kiss as she smiled. ‘Oh, Robert, I do,’ she said.
Cecil allowed himself the indulgence of one night at home with his wife at Burghley before pressing on with his journey to London. Mildred greeted him with her usual calm affection but her grey eyes took in his lined face and the stoop of his shoulders. ‘You look tired,’ was all she remarked.
‘It was hot and dusty,’ he said, saying nothing about the several journeys he had been forced to make between Edinburgh and Newcastle to forge the peace and make it stick.
She nodded and gestured that he should go to his bedchamber where in the palatial room there was hot water and a change of clothes waiting, a jug of cold ale and a warm fresh-baked loaf of bread. She had his favourite dinner ready for him when he came downstairs again, looking refreshed and wearing a clean dark suit.
‘Thank you,’ he said warmly, and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Thank you for all this.’
She smiled and led him to the head of the table where their family and servants waited for the master to say grace. Mildred was a staunch Protestant and her home was run on most godly lines.
Cecil said a few words of prayer and then sat down and applied himself to his dinner. His four-year-old daughter Anna was brought down from the nursery with her baby brother William, received an absent-minded blessing, and then the covers were cleared and Mildred and Cecil went to their privy chamber where a fire was lit and a jug of ale was waiting.
‘So it is peace,’ she confirmed, knowing that he would never have left Scotland with the task unfinished.
‘Yes,’ he said shortly.
‘You don’t seem very joyous, are you not a blessed peacemaker?’
The look he shot at her was one she had never seen before. He looked hurt, as if he had taken a blow, not to his pride, nor to his ambition; but as if he had been betrayed by a friend.
‘I am not,’ he said. ‘It is the greatest peace that we could have hoped for. The French army is to leave, England’s interest in Scotland is acknowledged, and all barely without a shot being fired. This should be the very greatest event of my life, my tri
umph. To defeat the French would be a glorious victory at any time, to defeat them with a divided country, a bankrupt treasury, an unpaid army led by a woman is almost a miracle.’
‘And yet?’ she asked, uncomprehending.
‘Someone has set the queen against me,’ he said simply. ‘I have had a letter which would make me weep if I did not know that I had done the very best for her that could be done.’
‘A letter from her?’
‘A letter asking me for the stars and the moon as well as peace in Scotland,’ he said. ‘And my guess is that she will not be pleased when I tell her that all I can give her is peace in Scotland.’
‘She is not a fool,’ Mildred pointed out. ‘If you tell her the truth she will hear it. She will know that you have done the best you can, and more than anyone else could have done.’
‘She is in love,’ he said shortly. ‘I doubt she can hear anything but the beating of her heart.’
‘Dudley?’
‘Who else?’
‘It goes on then,’ she said. ‘Even here, we hear such scandal that you would not believe.’
‘I do believe it,’ he said. ‘Most of it is true.’
‘They say that the two are married and that she has his child in hiding.’
‘Now that is a lie,’ Cecil said. ‘But I don’t doubt that she would marry him if he were free.’
‘And is it him who has poisoned her mind against you?’
He nodded. ‘I should think so. There can be only one favourite at court. I thought she could enjoy his company and take my advice; but when I have to go away then she has both his company and his advice, and he is a very reckless counsellor.’
Mildred rose from her chair and came to stand beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. ‘What will you do, William?’
‘I shall go to court,’ he said. ‘I shall make my report. I am hundreds of pounds out of pocket and I expect no recompense or gratitude now. If she will not take my advice then I will have to leave her, as I once threatened to do before. She could not manage without me then, we shall see if she can manage without me now.’
She was aghast. ‘William, you cannot leave her to that handsome young traitor. You cannot leave England to be ruled by the two of them. It is to throw our country into the hands of vain children. You cannot leave our church in their hands. They are not to be trusted with it. They are a pair of adulterers. You have to be in her counsel. You have to save her from herself.’
Cecil, the queen’s most senior and respected advisor, was always advised by his wife. ‘Mildred, to fight a man like Dudley I would have to use ways and means which are most underhand. I would have to treat him as an enemy of the country, I would have to deal with him as a loyal man turned traitor. I would have to deal with him as I would with …’ He broke off to think of an example. ‘… Mary of Guise.’
‘The queen who died so suddenly?’ she asked him, her voice carefully neutral.
‘The queen who died so suddenly.’
She understood him at once but she met his gaze without flinching. ‘William, you have to do your duty for our country, our church, and our queen. It is God’s work that you do, whatever means you have to use.’
He looked back into her level grey eyes. ‘Even if I had to commit a crime, a great sin?’
‘Even so.’
Cecil returned in the last days of July to find the court on a short progress along the southern shores of the Thames, staying at the best private houses that could be found and enjoying the hunting and the summer weather. He was warned not to expect a hero’s welcome, and he did not receive one.
‘How could you?’ Elizabeth greeted him. ‘How could you throw away our victory? Were you bribed by the French? Have you gone over to their side? Were you sick? Were you too tired to do your task properly? Too old? How could you just forget your duty to me, and your duty to the country? We have spent a fortune in trying to make Scotland safe, and you just let the French go home without binding them to our will?’
‘Your Grace,’ he began. He felt himself flush with anger and he looked around to see who was in earshot. Half the court was craning forward to see the confrontation, all of them openly listening. Elizabeth had chosen to meet him in the great hall of her host’s house and there were people standing on the stairs to listen, there were courtiers leaning over the gallery; his scolding was as public as if she had done it at Smithfield market.
‘To have the French at our mercy and to let them go without securing Calais!’ she exclaimed. ‘This is worse than the loss of Calais in the first place. That was an act of war; we fought as hard as we could. This is an act of folly; you have thrown Calais away without making the slightest effort to regain it.’
‘Your Majesty …’
‘And my coat of arms! Has she sworn never to use them again? No? How dare you come back to me with that woman still using my arms?’
There was nothing Cecil could do under this onslaught. He fell silent and let her rage at him.
‘Elizabeth.’ The quiet voice was so filled with confidence that Cecil looked quickly up the grand staircase, to see who dared to address the queen by name. It was Dudley.
He shot a quick, sympathetic glance at Cecil. ‘My Lord Secretary has worked hard in your service and brought home the best peace that he could. We may be disappointed in what he has achieved, but I am sure there is no question of his loyalty to our cause and his devotion to our service.’
Cecil saw how his words, his very tone quietened her temper. — He says ‘our’ service? — he remarked to himself. — Am I serving him now? —
‘Let us withdraw with the Lord Secretary,’ Dudley suggested. ‘And he can explain his decisions, and tell us how matters are in Scotland. He has had a long journey and an arduous task.’
She bridled, Cecil braced himself for more abuse.
‘Come,’ Dudley said simply, stretching out his hand to her. ‘Come, Elizabeth.’
— He commands her by name before the whole court? — Cecil demanded of himself in stunned silence.
But Elizabeth went to him, like a well-trained hound running in to heel, put her hand in his and let him lead her from the hall. Dudley glanced back to Cecil and allowed himself the smallest smile. — Yes — the smile said. — Now you see how things are. —
William Hyde summoned his sister to his office, the room where he transacted the business of his estate, a signal to her that the matter was a serious one and not to be confused by emotions or the claims of family ties.
He was seated behind the great rent table, which was circular and sectioned with drawers, each bearing a letter of the alphabet. The table could turn on its axis towards the landlord and each drawer had the contracts and rent books of the tenant farmers, filed under the initial letter of their name.
Lizzie Oddingsell remarked idly that the drawer marked ‘Z’ had never been used, and wondered that no-one thought to make a table which was missing the ‘X’ and the ‘Z’, since these must be uncommon initial letters in English. — Zebidee — she thought to herself. — Xerxes. —
‘Sister, it is about Lady Dudley,’ William Hyde started without preamble.
She noticed at once his use of titles for her and for her friend. So they were to conduct this conversation on the most formal footing.
‘Yes, brother?’ she replied politely.
‘This is a difficult matter,’ he said. ‘But to be blunt, I think it is time that you took her away.’
‘Away?’ she repeated.
‘Yes.’
‘Away to where?’
‘To some other friends.’
‘His lordship has made no arrangements,’ she demurred.
‘Have you heard from him at all?’
‘Not since …’ She broke off. ‘Not since he visited her in Norfolk.’
He raised his eyebrows, and waited.
‘In March,’ she added reluctantly.
‘When she refused him a divorce and they parted in anger?’
; ‘Yes,’ she admitted.
‘And since then you have had no letter? And neither has she?’
‘Not that I know of …’ She met his accusing look. ‘No, she has not.’
‘Is her allowance being paid?’
Lizzie gave a little gasp of shock. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘And your wages?’
‘I am not waged,’ she said with dignity. ‘I am a companion, not a servant.’
‘Yes; but he is paying your allowance.’
‘His steward sends it.’
‘He has not quite cut her off then,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘He quite often fails to write,’ she said stoutly. ‘He quite often does not visit. In the past it has sometimes been months …’
‘He never fails to send his men to escort her from one friend to another,’ he rejoined. ‘He never fails to arrange for her to stay at one place or another. And you say he has sent no-one, and you have heard nothing since March.’
She nodded.
‘Sister, you must take her and move on,’ he said firmly.
‘Why?’
‘Because she is becoming an embarrassment to this house.’
Lizzie was quite bewildered. ‘Why? What has she done?’
‘Leaving aside her excessive piety, which makes one wonder as to her conscience –’
‘For God’s sake, brother, she is clinging to God as to life itself. She has no guilty conscience, she is just trying to find the will to live!’
He raised his hand. ‘Elizabeth, please. Let us stay calm.’
‘I don’t know how to stay calm when you call this unhappy woman an embarrassment to you!’
He rose to his feet. ‘I will not have this conversation unless you promise me that you will stay calm.’
She took a deep breath. ‘I know what you are doing.’
‘What?’
‘You are trying not to be touched by her. But she is in the most unhappy position, and you would make it worse.’
He moved towards the door as if to hold it open for her. Lizzie recognised the signs of her brother’s determination. ‘All right,’ she said hastily. ‘All right, William. There is no need to be fierce with me. It is as bad for me as it is for you. Worse, actually.’
Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Page 95
