Norfolk will be calling up his tenants now, thousands will answer his call. The Northern lords will muster their great army. All the Shrewsburys achieve by bringing me here, to their most miserable dungeon, is to imprison me somewhere that I will be easy to find. Everyone knows that I am kept at Tutbury, everyone knows the road to the castle. The Northern army will come for me within weeks, and the Shrewsburys can choose whether to die in defence of their dirty castle, or surrender it to me. I smile at the thought of it. They will come to me and ask me to forgive them and to remember that they have always treated me kindly.
I respect the earl himself: no-one could fail to admire him; and I like Bess well enough, she is a good-hearted woman, though very vulgar. But this will be the end of them, perhaps the death of them. Anyone who stands in my way, between me and my freedom, will have to die. October 6th is the day and they must be ready, as I am ready: for victory or for death.
I did not choose this road. I came to Elizabeth in need, as a kinswoman imploring her help. She treated me as an enemy and now she treats her own lords and her own cousin as enemies. Everyone who thinks she is a great queen should note this: in triumph she was suspicious and ungenerous. In danger she is filled with panic. She has driven me to despair and she has driven them into rebellion. She will have no-one to blame but herself when they storm her castle and throw her into the Tower and put her on her mother’s scaffold. She and her arch-advisor Cecil have such suspicious embittered minds that they have imagined their own undoing and so brought it about. Like fearful suspicious people always do: they have dreamed the worst and made it real.
I have a letter from my ambassador, the Bishop John Lesley of Ross, who is in London, watching the unravelling of Elizabeth’s power. I found it tucked into my saddle when we mounted helterskelter for the ride to Tutbury. Even in the terrified rush to get from Wingfield Manor to Tutbury Castle there was time for a loyal man to serve me. The Shrewsburys’ own grooms are already turned to my side. Bess and her husband are betrayed in their own household. The place is full of spies, well-paid with Spanish gold, waiting to serve me. Lesley’s note, scribbled in a mixture of French and code, tells me of panic in London, of Elizabeth in a frenzy of fear at hourly reports of an uprising which is breaking out all over the country.
The Northern lords are commanded to report to Elizabeth in London on pain of death, and they have defied her. They are summoning their men and as soon as they have an army they will come for you. They have confirmed the day as October 6th. Be ready.
Norfolk too is ready. He has disobeyed her command to attend court and fled to his house, Kenninghall, in Norfolk, to muster his army. All of the east of England will march for him.
The court has abandoned the progress and dashed back to London; now they are preparing Windsor Castle for a siege. The armed bands are being called out to defend London, but they cannot be mustered and armed in time. Half the citizens are hiding their goods and getting away from the City. The place is deserted at night, filled only with fear. The Spanish will have an army landed from the Netherlands within weeks to serve your cause, and they have sent gold through their banker Ridolfi, which I have passed to Norfolk to pay your soldiers.
Victory will be ours, it is a matter of weeks, Ross.
I scrunch up the letter and put it in my pocket, I will burn it as soon as we stop for dinner. I ride with my hands loose on the reins, hardly aware of the horse. I have a picture in my mind of Elizabeth, my cousin, rushing to Windsor Castle, looking around her court and seeing in every face the overly enthusiastic smile of betrayal. I know how it is. I have seen it myself. She will feel, as I felt at Holyrood, that there is no-one she can trust, she will know, as I knew at Dunbar, that her support is draining away and her followers are promising their loyalty even as they are abandoning her. Now she knows that even Dudley, her friend from childhood and her lover for years, has plotted with Norfolk to rescue me. Her own lover, her own cousin, and every lord of her Privy Council are all on my side. Every lord in her court wants to see me freed. The common people are mine heart and soul. She is utterly betrayed. When she came to the throne they called her ‘our Elizabeth’ and now she has lost their love.
I think of Shrewsbury riding gravely beside me, his hurrying forward to lift me down from the saddle, his quiet pleasure in my company at dinner, his little gifts and his constant courtesy. He is her sworn liegeman but I have won him over. I have won every lord in England to my side. I know it. I can see it in Shrewsbury and in every man in Bess’s household. All of them long to set me free.
1569, October, Tutbury Castle: Bess
Half the things we need are left behind at Wingfield and I cannot buy fresh vegetables for love nor money in a radius of twenty miles. The countryside is exhausted and the men have run off to join the Northern army, which is mustering at Brancepath under the Earl of Westmorland, swearing loyalty to the Scots queen and a holy war for the Church of Rome. The country is on a war footing already and when I send my steward to market he says they will sell him nothing; he feels as if he is the enemy.
It is terrifying to think that out there, in the wilderness of the North, there are squires and gentry and lords calling their tenants together, mustering their friends, arming their followers and telling them to march under the banner of the five wounds of Christ to find me, to come to my house, to free my prisoner. I wake in the night at the slightest noise, in the day I am forever climbing to the castle wall to look out over the road, continually I see a cloud of dust and think it is them coming.
I have lived all my life as a private woman, on good terms with my neighbours, a good landlord to my tenants, a fair employer. Now I find myself at odds with my own people. I don’t know who is a secret enemy, I don’t know who would free the queen if they could, who would come against me if they dared. It makes me feel like a stranger in my own land, a newcomer in my own country. The people who I think of as my friends and neighbours may be on the other side, may be against me, may even be my enemies. My friends, even my kin, may take arms against me, may see me as a traitor to the true queen, my prisoner.
She herself is demure, like a novice in a convent, with an escape plan hidden in her sleeve, and my husband trustingly remarks to me: ‘Thank God that she has not tried to break free. At least she knows nothing about the uprising.’
For the first time in my married life I look at him and I think: ‘Fool’.
It is a bad moment when a wife thinks her husband a fool. I have had four husbands and I have had bad moments with all of them; but I have never before been married to a man whose stupidity could cost me my houses and my wealth.
I cannot bear it. I wake in the night and I could weep for it. No infidelity could be worse. Even with the most beautiful woman in Christendom under my roof I find I think more about whether my husband might lose my fortune than whether he might break my heart. A woman’s heart can mend, or soften, or grow hard. But once you lose your house it is hard to get it back again. If Queen Elizabeth takes Chatsworth from us to punish my husband for disloyalty, I know that I will never set foot in it again.
All very well for him to plot against Cecil like a child with naughty friends, all very well to turn a blind eye to the Queen of Scots and her unending letters. All very well to delight in the company of a woman young enough to be his daughter, and her an enemy of the realm; but to go so far that now the court will not repay us what they owe! They are beyond arguing over the bills, they do not even reply to my accounts. To go so far that they might question our loyalty! Does he think of nothing? Does he not look ahead? Does he not know that a traitor’s goods are at once, without appeal, forfeit to the Crown? Does he not know that Elizabeth would give her own rubies if she could take Chatsworth off me? Has he not given her that excuse with his stupid indiscretion with the Northern lords? Is he not exactly a fool? A wasteful fool? And wasting my inheritance as fast as his own? My children are married to his children, my fortune is in his care, will he throw everything away because he does
not think ahead? Can I ever, ever forgive him for this?
I have been married before and I can recognise the moment when a honeymoon is over, when one sees an admired bridegroom for what he is: a mere mortal. But I have never before felt that my marriage was over. I have never before seen a husband as a fool and wished that he was not my lord and master, and that my person and my fortune were safe in my own keeping.
1569, October, Tutbury Castle: George
However long that I live, I will never forget this autumn. Every leaf that falls has stripped away my pride. As the trees have gone bare, I have seen the bones of my life revealed in darkness, in coldness, without the concealing shimmer of foliage. I have been mistaken. I have misunderstood everything. Cecil is more than a steward, far more. He is a landlord, he is a bailiff. He is bailiff of all England and I am nothing more than a poor copyholder who mistook his long life here, his family’s home, his love of the land, for freehold. I thought I was a landowner here; but I find I own nothing. I could lose everything tomorrow. I am as a peasant – less, I am as a squatter on someone else’s land.
I thought that if us lords of England saw a better way to rule this country than Cecil’s unending readiness for war, Cecil’s unending hatred of all Elizabeth’s heirs, Cecil’s unending terror of boggarts in shadows, Cecil’s mad fear of Papists, then we could topple Cecil and advise the queen. I thought we could show her how to deal justly with the Scots queen, befriend the French and make alliances with Spain. I thought we could teach her how to live like a queen with pride, not like a usurper haunted with terror. I thought that we could give her such confidence in her right to the throne that she would marry and make an heir. But I was wrong. As Bess obligingly tells me: I was foolishly wrong.
Cecil is determined to throw all who disagree with him into the Tower. The queen listens only to him and fears treason where there was only dissent. She will not consult any one of the lords now, she mistrusts even Dudley. She would behead shadows if she could. Who knows what profit Cecil can make of this? Norfolk is driven from his own cousin’s court, driven into rebellion; the Northern lords are massing on their lands. For me, so far, he reserves only the shame of being mistrusted and replaced.
Only shame. Only this deep shame.
I am beyond distress at the turn events have taken. Bess, who is frosty and frightened, may well be right and I have been a fool. My wife’s opinion of me is another slur that I must learn to accept in this season of coldness and dark.
Cecil writes to me briefly that two lords of his choosing will come to remove the Scots queen into their safe-keeping and will take her away from me. Then I am to travel to London to face questioning. He says no more. Indeed, why should he explain anything to me? Does the steward explain to a copyholder? No, he simply gives his orders. If Queen Elizabeth thinks I cannot be trusted to guard the Scots queen then she has decided that I am unfit to serve her. The court will know what she thinks of me, the world will know what she thinks of me. What cuts me to my heart, my proud unchanging heart, is that now I know what she thinks of me.
She thinks badly of me.
Worse than this is a private, secret pain, of which I can never complain, which I can never even acknowledge to another living soul. The Scots queen will be taken away from me. I may never see her again.
I may never see her again.
I am dishonoured by one queen, and I will be bereft of the other.
I cannot believe that I should feel such a sense of loss. I suppose I have become so accustomed to being her guardian, to keeping her safe. I am so used to waking in the morning and glancing across to her side of the courtyard, and seeing her shutters closed if she is still asleep or open if she is already awake. I am in the habit of riding with her in the morning, of dining with her in the afternoon. I have become so taken with her singing, her love of cards, her joy in dancing, the constant presence of her extraordinary beauty, that I cannot imagine how I shall live without her. I cannot wake in the morning and spend the day without her. God is my witness, I cannot spend the rest of my life without her.
I don’t know how this has happened, I certainly have not been disloyal to Bess nor to my queen, I certainly have not changed my allegiance either to wife or monarch, but I cannot help but look for the Scots queen daily. I long for her when I do not see her, and when she comes – running down the stairs to the stable yard, or walking slowly towards me with the sun behind her – I find that I smile, like a boy, filled with joy to see her. Nothing more than that, an innocent joy that she walks towards me.
I cannot make myself understand that they will come and take her away from me and that I must not say one word of protest. I will keep silent, and they will take her away and I will not protest.
They arrive at midday, the two lords who will take her from me, rattling into the courtyard, preceded by their own guards. I find a bitter smile. They will learn how expensive these guards are to keep: fed, and watered, and watched against bribery. They will learn how she cannot be guarded, whatever they pay. What man could resist her? What man could refuse her the right to ride out once a day? What man could stop her smiling at her guardian? What power could stop a young soldier’s heart turning over in his chest when she greets him?
I go to meet them, shamed by their presence, and ashamed of the dirty little courtyard, and then I recoil, recognising their standards, and seeing the men that Cecil has chosen to replace me to guard this young woman. Dear God, whatever it costs me, I cannot release her to them. I must refuse.
‘My lords,’ I stammer, horror making me slow of speech. Cecil has sent Henry Hastings, the Earl of Huntingdon, and Walter Devereux, the Earl of Hereford, as her kidnappers. He might as well have sent a pair of Italian assassins with poisoned gloves.
‘I am sorry for this, Talbot,’ Huntingdon says bluntly as he swings down from his saddle with a grunt of discomfort. ‘All hell is on in London. There is no telling what will happen.’
‘All hell?’ I repeat. I am thinking quickly if I can say that she is ill, or if I dare send her back in secret to Wingfield. How can I protect her from them?
‘The queen has moved to Windsor for safety and has armed the castle for siege. She is calling all the lords of England to court, all of them suspected of ill-doing. You too. I am sorry. You are to attend at once, after you have helped us move your prisoner to Leicestershire.’
‘Prisoner?’ I look at Hastings’ hard face. ‘To your house?’
‘She is no longer a guest,’ Devereux says coldly. ‘She is a prisoner. She is suspected of plotting treason with the Duke of Norfolk. We want her somewhere that we can keep her confined. A prison.’
I look around at the cramped courtyard, at the one gate with the portcullis, at the moat and the one road leading up the hill. ‘More confined than this?’
Devereux laughs shortly and says, almost to himself, ‘Preferably a bottomless pit.’
‘Your household has proved itself unreliable,’ Hastings says flatly. ‘Even if you are not. Nothing proven. Nothing stated against you, at any rate not yet. Talbot, I am sorry. We don’t know how far the rot has gone. We can’t tell who are the traitors. We have to be on guard.’
I feel the heat rush to my head and for a moment I see nothing, in the intensity of my rage. ‘No man has ever questioned my honour. Never before. No man has ever questioned the honour of my family. Not in five hundred years of loyal service.’
‘This is to waste time,’ young Devereux says abruptly. ‘You will be questioned on oath in London. How soon can she be ready to come?’
‘I will ask Bess,’ I say. I cannot speak to them, my tongue is dry in my mouth. Perhaps Bess will know how we can delay them. My anger and my shame are too much for me to say a word. ‘Please, enter. Rest. I will inquire.’
1569, October, Tutbury Castle: Mary
I hear the rattle of mounted men and I rush to the window, my heart pounding. I expect to see Norfolk in the courtyard, or the Northern lords with their army, or even – my heart lea
ps up at the thought, what if it is Bothwell, escaped from prison, with a hard-riding group of borderers, come to rescue me?
‘Who is that?’ I ask urgently. The countess’s steward is beside me in my dining hall, both of us looking out of the window at the two travel-stained men and their army of four dozen soldiers.
‘That’s the Earl of Huntingdon, Henry Hastings,’ he says. His gaze slides away from me. ‘I will be needed by my lady.’
He bows and steps to the door.
‘Hastings?’ I demand, my voice sharp with fear. ‘Henry Hastings? What would he come here for?’
‘I don’t know, Your Grace.’ The man bows and backs towards the door. ‘I will come back to you as soon as I know. But I must go now.’
I wave my hand. ‘Go,’ I say. ‘But come back at once. And find my lord Shrewsbury and tell him that I want to see him. Tell him I want to see him urgently. Ask him to come to me immediately.’
Mary Seton comes to my side, Agnes behind her. ‘Who are these lords?’ she asks, looking down at the courtyard and then at my white face.
‘That one is what they call the Protestant heir,’ I say through cold lips. ‘He is of the Pole family, the Plantaganet line, the queen’s own cousin.’
‘Has he come to set you free?’ she asks doubtfully. ‘Is he with the uprising?’
‘Hardly,’ I say bitterly. ‘If I were dead he would be a step closer to the throne. He would be heir to the throne of England. I must know what he is here for. It will not be good news for me. Go and see what you can find out, Mary. Listen in the stable and see what you can hear.’
As soon as she is gone I go to my desk and write a note.
Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Page 119
