‘Because this way, I can ride as fast as a man,’ Queen Mary said, and that was the end to it, despite Bess’s murmur that it was no advantage to us if she could outride every one of her guards.
From that day she has been riding on her own saddle, astride like a boy, with her gown sweeping down on either side of the horse. She rides, as she warned Bess, as fast as a man, and some days it is all I can do to keep up with her.
I make sure that her little heeled leather boot is safe in the stirrup, and for a second I hold her foot in my hand. She has such a small high-arched foot, when I hold it I can feel an odd tenderness towards her. ‘Safe?’ I ask. She rides a powerful horse, I am always afraid it will be too much for her.
‘Safe,’ she replies. ‘Come, my lord.’
I swing into the saddle myself and I nod to the guards. Even now, even with the plans for her return to Scotland in the making, her wedding planned to Norfolk, her triumph coming at any day now, I am ordered to surround her with guards. It is ridiculous that a queen of her importance, a guest in her cousin’s country, should be so insulted by twenty men around her whenever she wants to ride out. She is a queen, for heaven’s sake; she has given her word. Not to trust her is to insult her. I am ashamed to do it. Cecil’s orders, of course. He does not understand what it means when a queen gives her word of honour. The man is a fool and he makes me a fool with him.
We clatter down the hill, under the swooping boughs of trees, and then we turn away to ride alongside the river through the woods. The ground rises up before us and we come out of the trees when I see a party of horsemen coming towards us. There are about twenty of them, all men, and I pull up my horse and look back at the way we have come and wonder if we can outride them back to home, or if they would dare to fire on us.
‘Close up,’ I call sharply to the guards. I feel for my sword but of course I am not wearing one, and I curse myself for being overconfident in these dangerous times.
She glances up at me, the colour in her cheeks, her smile steady. She has no fear, this woman. ‘Who are these?’ she asks, as if it is a matter of interest and not hazard. ‘We can’t win a fight, I don’t think, but we could outride them.’
I squint to see the fluttering standards and then I laugh with relief. ‘Oh, it is Percy, my lord Northumberland, my dearest friend, and his kin, my lord Westmorland, and their men. For a moment I thought that we were in trouble!’
‘Oh, well met!’ Percy bellows as he rides towards us. ‘A lucky chance. We were coming to visit you at Wingfield.’ He sweeps his hat from his head. ‘Your Grace,’ he says bowing to her. ‘An honour. A great honour, an unexpected honour.’
I have been told nothing of this visit, and Cecil has not told me what to do if I have noble visitors. I hesitate, but these have been my friends and my kin for all my life; I can hardly make them strangers at my very door. The habit of hospitality is too strong in me to do anything but greet them with pleasure. My family have been Northern lords for generations, all of us always keep open house, and a good table for strangers as well as friends. To do anything else would be to behave like a penny-pinching merchant, like a man too mean to have a great house and a great entourage. Besides, I like Percy, I am delighted to see him.
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘You are welcome as ever.’ I turn to the queen and ask her permission to present them. She greets them coolly with a small reserved smile and I think that perhaps she was enjoying our ride and does not want our time together interrupted.
‘If you will forgive us, we will ride on,’ I say, trying to do whatever she wants. ‘Bess will make you welcome at home. But we won’t turn back just yet. Her Grace values her ride and we have just come out.’
‘Please, don’t change your plans for us. May we ride with you?’ Westmorland asks her, bowing.
She nods. ‘If you wish. And you may tell me all the news from London.’
He falls in beside her and I hear him chattering to entertain her, and occasionally the ripple of her laughter. Percy brings his horse alongside mine and we all trot briskly along.
‘Great news. She is to be freed next week,’ he says to me, a broad smile spread across his face. ‘Thank God, eh, Shrewsbury? This has been an awful time.’
‘So soon? The queen is going to free her so soon? I heard from Cecil only that it would be this summer.’
‘Next week,’ he confirms. ‘Thank God. They will send her back to Scotland next week.’
I nearly cross myself, I am so thankful at this happy ending for her; but I cut short the gesture and instead put my hand out to him and we shake hands, beaming. ‘I have been so concerned for her … Percy, you have no idea how she has suffered. I have felt like a brute to keep her so confined.’
‘I don’t think a faithful man in England has slept well since that first damned inquiry,’ he says shortly. ‘Why we did not greet her as a queen, and give her safe haven without asking questions, God knows. What Cecil thought he was doing, treating her like a criminal, only the devil knows.’
‘Having us sit as judges on the private life of a queen,’ I remind him. ‘Making all of us attend such an inquiry. What did he want us to find? Three times her enemies brought the filthy letters in secret and asked the judges to read them in secret and make a verdict on evidence that no-one else could see. How could anyone do such a thing? To such a queen as her?’
‘Well, thank God you did not, for your refusal defeated Cecil. The queen always wanted to be fair to her cousin, and now she finds a way out. Queen Mary is saved. And Cecil’s persecution is thrown back to the Lutherans where it belongs.’
‘It is the queen’s own wish? I knew she would do the right thing!’
‘She has opposed Cecil from the very beginning. She has always said that the Queen of Scots must have her throne again. Now she has convinced Cecil of it.’
‘Praise be. What’s to happen?’
He breaks off as she has pulled up her horse ahead of us, and turned to call to me. ‘Chowsbewwy, can I gallop here?’
The track ahead of her is even, grassy and rises steadily uphill. My heart is always in my mouth when she thunders off like a cavalry charge but the going is firm and she should be safe. ‘Not too fast,’ I say, like a worried father. ‘Don’t go too fast,’ and she waves her whip like a girl, wheels her horse, and takes off like a mad thing with her guards and Westmorland trailing behind her, hopelessly outpaced.
‘Good God!’ exclaims Percy. ‘She can ride!’
‘She’s always like this,’ I say, and we let our horses go after her for a long breathless gallop until she pulls up and we all come tumbling up to her side, and find her laughing with her hat blown askew and her thick dark hair falling down.
‘That was so good!’ she says. ‘Chowsbewwy, did I frighten you again?’
‘Why can you not ride at a normal pace?’ I exclaim and she laughs again.
‘Because I love to be free,’ she says. ‘I love to feel the horse stretch out and the thunder of his hooves and the wind in my face and knowing we can go on and on forever.’
She turns her horse for she cannot go on and on forever, or at least not today, and leads the way back to the castle.
‘I have prayed every night to see her restored to her own again,’ I say quietly to my friend Percy; and I hope he cannot hear the tenderness in my voice. ‘She is not a woman who can be confined in one place. She does indeed need to be free. It is like mewing up a falcon to keep her in one small place. It is cruel. I have felt as if I were her jailor. I have felt that I was being cruel.’
He shoots a sideways look at me, as if considering something. ‘But you would never have let her go,’ he suggests in an undertone. ‘You would never have turned a blind eye if someone had come to rescue her.’
‘I serve Queen Elizabeth,’ I say simply. ‘As my family have served every King of England since William of Normandy. And I have given my word as an English nobleman. I am not free to turn a blind eye. I am honour bound. But it does not stop me caring for her. It does not st
op me longing to see her as she should be – free as a bird in the sky.’
He nods and compresses his lips on his thought. ‘You have heard she is to marry Howard, and they will be restored to Scotland together?’
‘She did me the honour of telling me. And Howard wrote to me. When did the queen give the marriage her blessing?’
Percy shakes his head. ‘She doesn’t know yet. She flies into such a temper over the marriages of others that Howard is waiting to pick his time to tell her. Dudley says he will broach it when the time is right but he is delaying too long. There are rumours, of course, and Norfolk has had to deny it twice already. He’ll probably tell her on the summer progress. Dudley has known from the beginning, he says he’ll introduce the idea gently. It makes sense for everyone, it guarantees her safety when she is back on her throne.’
‘What does Cecil think of it?’
He shoots me a quick hidden smile. ‘Cecil knows nothing of it, and there are those who think that Cecil can steep in his ignorance until the matter is signed and sealed.’
‘It would be a pity if he advised against it. He is no friend of Howard’s,’ I say cautiously.
‘Of course he is no friend of Howard’s, nor yours, nor mine. Name me one friend of Cecil’s! Who likes or trusts him?’ he demands bluntly. ‘How should any of us befriend him? Who is he? Where does he come from? Who even knew him before she made him steward of everything? But this is the end for Cecil’s power,’ Percy says in a low voice to me. ‘Howard hopes to drive him out, this is all part of the same plan. Howard hopes to rid us of Cecil, of his enmity to the Spanish, and to save the Scots queen from his spite, and to see him reduced at court, perhaps thrown out altogether.’
‘Thrown out?’
‘Thomas Cromwell rose greater and Thomas Cromwell was stripped of his badge of office by a Howard at a Privy Council meeting. Don’t you think such a thing could happen again?’
I try to check my smile at this but it is no good. He can see my pleasure in the very thought of it.
‘You like him no more than the rest of us!’ Percy says triumphantly. ‘We will have him thrown down, Shrewsbury. Are you with us?’
‘I cannot do anything which would conflict with my honour,’ I start.
‘Of course not! Would I suggest such a thing? We are your brother peers. Howard and Arundel and Lumley and the two of us are all sworn to see England in the hands of her proper rulers again. The last thing we want to do is to demean ourselves. But Cecil pulls us down in every direction. The penny-pinching he wants at court, the enmity to the Scots queen, the persecution of anyone but the strictest of Puritans, and –’ he drops his voice ‘– the endless recruitment of spies. A man cannot so much as order a meal in a London tavern without someone sending the bill of fare to Cecil. He’ll have a spy in your own household, you know, Talbot. He knows everything about all of us. And he gathers the information and draws it together and waits to use it, when the time suits him.’
‘He could have nothing on me,’ I say staunchly.
Percy laughs. ‘When you refused to name the Scots queen as a whore at his inquiry?’ he jeers. ‘You were his enemy from that moment. He will have a folder of papers with your name on it, gossip from the backstairs, rumours from bad tenants, envy from your debtors, and when the time suits him, or when he wants you humbled, he will take it to the queen and tell her she cannot trust you.’
‘She would never …’
‘He will have your personal servants in the Tower within the day, and a confession racked out of them that you are Queen Mary’s secret admirer.’
‘No servant of mine …’
‘No man in the world can resist the rack for long, nor the press, nor the iron maiden. Do you know that they tear out men’s fingernails now? They hang them from their wrists. There is not a man in the kingdom that can bear such pain. Every suspect says whatever he tells them to say within three days.’
‘He would not use such things on honest men …’
‘Shrewsbury, he does. You don’t know how it is in London now. There is no-one can stop him. He uses what means he likes, and he tells the queen that these are such dangerous times as need dangerous measures. And she is so fearful and so persuaded by him that she lets him do his dirty business as he wishes. He has a whole army of secret men who do his bidding and know everything. Men are arrested in the night and taken to the Tower or to hidden houses and not a justice of the peace gives a warrant. It is all on Cecil’s say-so.
‘Not even the Star Chamber orders these arrests, the queen does not sign for them, no-one but Cecil authorises them. It is all done in secret, on his word alone. The queen trusts him and his crew of informers and torturers, and the prisoners stumble out of the Tower sworn to report to Cecil for the rest of their lives. He is making a Spanish Inquisition on innocent Englishmen. Who can say that he won’t start to burn us? He is destroying our freedoms. He is the enemy of the lords and of the people alike and we must stop him. He will destroy us, he will destroy the queen. A man truly loyal to the queen must be Cecil’s enemy.’
The horses stretch their necks as we go up the hill to the manor, and I loosen my reins and say nothing.
‘You know I am right,’ he says.
I sigh.
‘She will make him a baron.’
My horse flinches as I jerk on the reins. ‘Never.’
‘She will. She pours wealth on him and she will pour honours too. You can expect him to ask for your stepdaughter’s hand in marriage for his son. Perhaps the queen will request that you marry your Elizabeth to the dwarf Robert Cecil with his hump back. Cecil will grow great. He will have a title to match your own. And we will none of us be safe to speak our minds in our own homes. He is making us a kingdom of spies and suspects commanded only by himself.’
I am so shocked that I cannot speak for a moment.
‘He has to be stopped,’ Percy says. ‘He is another Wolsey, another Cromwell. Another upstart who has come from nothing by slavish drudgery. He is a bad advisor, he is a dangerous voice in her counsels. And like both of them he will be thrown down by us lords if we act together. He has to be thrown down before he becomes overmighty. I swear to you he is a danger to the commonwealth of England. We cannot allow him to be made a lord of the realm.’
‘A baron? You are certain she is going to make him a baron?’
‘She pays him a fortune. We have to stop him, before he becomes too great.’
‘I know it,’ I say heavily. ‘But a baron!’
The queen is already through the gateway. Someone else will have to help her down from the saddle, I cannot hurry to get there in time to be the one to lift her and hold her.
‘You will dine with us?’ I ask. I cannot see who is holding her horse and who is lifting her down. ‘Bess will be glad to see you.’
‘Cecil will know we have been here,’ he says. ‘Be warned.’
‘Surely, I can invite a guest to dinner in my own house,’ I exclaim. ‘The queen will dine apart from us in her own rooms. There is no danger. What business is it of Cecil’s?’
‘Everything is his business in England today,’ he replies. ‘Within four days he will know we have been here; and everything we say at dinner will be reported to him, word for word. We are prisoners just as much as she is, when he spies on us at our very table. Do you know the name of his spy in your household? He will have one, at least: he will probably have two or three.’
I think of my own wife and her affection for Cecil. ‘Bess trusts him,’ I say. ‘He would not put spies on her. He would never put a spy in Bess’s household.’
‘He spies on everyone,’ he insists. ‘You and Bess, as us. He must fall. We have to bring him down. Do you agree? Are you with us?’
‘Yes,’ I say slowly. ‘Yes. Let us have the Queen of England advised by her peers again, and not by a man born to be a servant, supported by spies.’
Slowly Percy puts out his hand. ‘You are with us,’ he says. ‘You swear?’
‘I am with you,’ I say. ‘He cannot be a baron. I cannot see him ennobled, it is wrong. It goes against the very grain. I will bring Cecil down with you. Us lords together. We will be lords of the realm again, together.’
1569, May, Wingfield Manor: Bess
‘They can’t dine here,’ I say flatly.
My husband the earl raises his eyebrows at me and I realise that my anxiety has put the twang of Derbyshire back in my voice. ‘I am sorry, my lord,’ I say rapidly. ‘But they cannot dine here. You should not have ridden with them. You should have told them to ride on by. You should have brought her straight home as soon as you saw them.’
He looks at me as I might look at a recalcitrant maid. ‘These are my friends,’ he says carefully. ‘Fellow lords of England. Of course my door is open to them. I would be shamed not to welcome them to my home. My door is always open to them.’
‘I don’t think that Cecil …’
His face darkens. ‘Cecil does not have the command of my house, of any of my houses,’ he says. ‘I shall entertain my friends as I wish and my wife will show her good will to them.’
‘It’s not a matter of good will,’ I say. ‘It is not even a matter of my obedience. It is a matter of the safety of the Queen of Scots. What is to prevent them passing information to her? What is to prevent them plotting with her? What is to stop them riding off with her?’
‘Because they are my guests,’ he says carefully, as if I am too stupid to comprehend normal speech. ‘It is a matter of honour. If you can’t understand this, you understand nothing about me and my world. Bess, your third husband St Loe was a gentleman even if the others were not. You must know that no gentleman would plot against another while breaking his bread?’
‘They are probably besotted with her,’ I say, irritably. ‘Like half the fools in England.’
‘She is to marry the Duke of Norfolk,’ he says, his voice very calm and measured in contrast to my sharp tone. ‘She is to marry him and return to her kingdom as queen. Her future is assured, there is no need for her to plot and escape.’
Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Page 115
