by David Field
THE QUEEN IN WAITING
Tudor Saga Series
Book Five
David Field
Table of Contents
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
A NOTE TO THE READER
MORE BOOKS BY DAVID FIELD
I
As the distance narrowed between the horse-born parties that were progressing sedately towards each other through the village of Wanstead in August 1553, it was obvious that each of them was escorting a royal princess. From Colchester in the north-east came the victorious Mary Tudor, on her final journey into London to claim the crown that was hers, following the defeat of the hastily assembled and ill-commanded mob that had sought to challenge her birth right. From the London direction rode her younger sister Elizabeth, anxious to pay homage and clear her name of any complicity in the failed tilt at the crown by Lady Jane Grey and her supporters.
Although they were both daughters of the late King Henry, they had little else in common and they rarely met face to face. Mary was by far the older of the two, at thirty-seven years of age and time had not been kind to her. The rosy cheeks that had so delighted her father when he would bounce her on his knee had become jowls heavy with displeasure and disapproval, and the red hair that was a legacy bestowed on all the Tudor children had darkened over the years as she began more and more to resemble her late mother Katherine in her Spanish duskiness and slightly squat stature. Her nineteen-year-old sister Elizabeth, by contrast, had inherited the lithe and supple frame of her mother Anne Boleyn, along with her father’s natural height, and her flowing golden-red hair announced to the nation that she was truly her father’s daughter.
Elizabeth ordered her attendants to halt the progress as she slipped from her modestly gilded palfrey and walked slowly ahead to kneel humbly in the summer dust of the roadway. Then it was Mary’s turn to halt her southerly progress and allow her Master of the Horse to assist her as she dismounted from the sparsely equippaged courser. She walked to where Elizabeth was kneeling and put out two slightly over-fleshed hands to raise the younger girl to her feet with a satisfied smile. There were tears in Elizabeth’s eyes as the two held hands and Mary was the first to break the almost tangible silence.
‘Thank you for obeying my command. It will make things easier for both of us.’
‘Indeed it will,’ Elizabeth replied, ‘but I come as a sister as well as a loyal subject.’
‘But will you, as a sister, accompany me into London, to show the people that there is finally an end to our mothers’ conflicts?’
‘Willingly and with loyalty, should you be in any doubt of that. Let us command our attendants to combine their ranks as we present you to the people for their loyal greetings.’
The two companies blended in with each other in alternating rows and as they approached the northern outskirts of the city they were joined by entertainers and musicians summoned earlier from Hampton Court Palace. Triumphantly, the two sisters rode side by side through cheering exultant crowds that were relieved to witness the overt denial of any lingering family warfare that might be bad for trade. The fifes blared, the tabors rattled and thumped, and acrobats and mummers danced and cavorted at the head of the long cavalcade that welcomed the new Queen on her passage to the Tower, the traditional residence of all incoming monarchs who were awaiting their official anointing.
The cynical observer would not have been certain which of the two was receiving the louder applause and raucous adulation. ‘God Bless Your Majesty!’ and ‘Long live our new Queen!’ could be heard from hundreds of common lips, but since very few of them had ever seen either woman they could have been forgiven any uncertainty. Both were dressed for the occasion, but Mary was conscious of her less than regal natural looks and her somewhat dumpy middle-aged image and to prevent anyone mistaking her for a royal governess she was decked out in Courtly finery that featured cloth of gold in abundance, with large and costly gems flashing in the sunlight, her slightly greying hair hidden under a silver edged French hood. Given the gusty wind that whistled through the narrow passageways between jettied tall buildings she was obliged to hold it down with one hand while waving graciously to the crowds with the other, her Master of Horse keeping a tight rein on her mount from close alongside.
Elizabeth, by stark comparison, might have been mistaken for the Mother Superior of a convent, had it not been for her obvious blushing youth. Her flawless complexion required no cosmetic and she allowed her luxuriant red locks to blow freely as she rode sedately along in a severely cut black gown, with a white ruff the only indication that she was not in fact in holy orders. Joan of Arc herself could not have looked more ravishingly pure, but there was a studied reason for Elizabeth’s lack of ostentation. She was desperate to live down a skilful but unkindly circulated rumour that she was promiscuously free with her favours. Five years previously, during the Regency of her brother Edward VI, she had been accused of immoral behaviour with Thomas Seymour, in whose residence she had been lodged as a companion to the Queen Dowager Catherine Parr. According to the scurrilous tittle-tattle, Elizabeth had, at the tender but marriageable age of fourteen, been discovered in an embrace in her bedchamber with Thomas Seymour.
To make matters worse, Seymour had subsequently been executed for what was popularly believed to have been an attempt on King Edward’s life in a bid to place Elizabeth on the throne. The previously high spirited and playful Elizabeth had learned the hard lessons of being an heiress to a crown and the daughter of an adjudged whore when Mary had sent inquisitors on a fruitless mission to harass both Elizabeth and intimate members of her private household into admissions that her staunchly Protestant sister had been secretly plotting to seize the throne of England. It was further alleged that Elizabeth had been encouraged in this by those of her shared religion who saw in the future accession of Mary, as the next in line under their father’s will, the return of England to the Roman form of religion under the dominance of the Pope.
Elizabeth’s name had been dragged into further alleged treasonous associations when Edward had died, seeking by means of his will to pass the crown of England to a distant cousin. Jane Grey had visited Edward regularly, first in his nursery and then in his teenage Court and had become a favoured companion. Whether Edward had bequeathed the crown to her out of natural love and affection, or to thwart the ambitions of the pious and devout Mary to restore England to the religion of her mother, the result had been the same. Mary had been obliged to retreat into the diehard Catholic eastern counties and summon the faithful under her battle banner and in her hour of victory she retained the strong belief that her wayward sister Elizabeth had somehow been behind it all.
Elizabeth and Jane Grey had formed a natural friendship while seated around Edward in his chambers and Elizabeth was fearful that she would now be confined within the same Tower in which her mother had met the axe, even though she had not only been innocent of the ambitions of the Grey faction, but had known nothing of them. A display of modest loyalty was clearly required if she was to avoid the bloody backlash that was imminent.
Elizabeth smiled graciously down at the cheering mob from the stately conveyance in which she sat along
side the short-lived Queen Anne of Cleves, whose robust farmer’s wife looks had caused Elizabeth’s father Henry to dismiss her from their marital bed without consummating their union. Elizabeth was conscious that all eyes were on her, not just male ones for a change, and she wished, for once in her life, that she had not inherited her mother’s ability to pierce hearts with her natural graceful beauty. Mary needed little excuse to resent the woman half her age, and had already accused Elizabeth of seeking to amend, in her own favour, the line of succession laid down by the father they had in common.
Mary was on her way to claim her crown, whereas Elizabeth’s main objective at present was to retain her head.
II
Two men who had recently been released, in Mary’s first act as Queen, from lengthy sojourns in the Tower were now awaiting her summons in the anteroom to the royal apartments that she was temporarily occupying within that same Tower complex. They were uneasily aware of the uncharacteristic generosity of their saviour and were now waiting to learn the price of their freedom.
Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk and hard-line Catholic conservative, had spent the longer period in the Tower, as the result of the treason of his son, the Earl of Surrey, in sporting heraldic devices that properly belonged only to the monarch. With him was the former Bishop of Winchester Stephen Gardiner, a clergyman of the old school and a stern opponent of the Seymour faction that had itself fallen from favour in the last days of the reign of King Edward, to be replaced by the Northumberland entourage who were now largely to be found as prisoners in the place from which Gardiner had recently been released.
‘Why are we summoned?’ Gardiner asked nervously. ‘She cannot be naming us in the treason of the Grey girl, since we were here in the Tower when that scoundrel Northumberland sought to make his weakling son King by marriage.’
‘Peace, Stephen,’ Norfolk growled as he stared through the mullioned glass at the early autumn shower that was refreshing the green on which it was anticipated that over-ambitious heads would shortly be landing. ‘We were released only last week and we have not had time to commit further alleged offences. But I suspect that our new Queen is about to seek payment of the account we are already overdue.’
‘How so?’ Gardiner asked, his ecclesiastical brain unable to think beyond the mysteries of the Sacrament.
Norfolk smiled his infamous fox-like smile as he enlightened him. ‘I’m advised that when the traitor Northumberland pressed upon Council to recognise his new daughter-in-law Jane Grey as Queen, there were very few voices raised in protest. It was only when news came south that Mary’s forces were prevailing that the more faint-hearted changed their allegiance in order to preserve their necks. In short, there was a brief period in which the Council that our incoming Queen now has at her disposal voted to deny her claim to the throne, which means that Mary has no-one in her current Council in whom she can place her entire trust.’
‘And?’
‘And we are about to redress the balance, I suspect. We are both known for the strength of our Catholic beliefs and it was our opposition to Reformist policies that landed us in this awful place for so long. You are the perfect person to lead us back to Rome, while I am the head of the most senior family in the realm to remain true to the old religion. The forces that gave her victory in the field were in the main men drawn from my many estates in the Eastern counties. Prepare yourself for further high office, Stephen, but never lose the trust of she who is about to place you in it.’
At this moment the usher told them, ‘Her Majesty is graciously disposed to admit you now’, and the two elderly men shuffled into the presence and shakily bowed the knee before being invited to rise and take the seats that had been placed alongside the one occupied by Mary.
‘How goes your freedom, Norfolk?’ Mary asked bluntly, in a reminder that he owed his new monarch a favour.
Norfolk smiled. ‘Hopefully it will be all the sweeter when the air is cleansed of the foul smell of heresy.’
Mary inclined her head towards Gardiner. ‘A sentiment that you presumably share, my lord Bishop? Although the influx of the Devil’s work across this land was partly of your making, was it not?’
‘Your Majesty?’ Gardiner croaked, his throat went dry with apprehension.
‘Were you not one of those gutless sycophants who assisted my father to exclude the blessings of God from this realm in order to marry that whore who replaced my mother in the royal bed?’
After struggling to get the words out, Gardiner adopted a pleading tone as he sought to justify his actions. ‘It was loyalty to the anointed monarch and nothing more that led me into the folly of recognising a sham marriage that owed more to the wickedness of the concubine than the mere male weakness of the duped victim. Against such devilry any man would have been powerless and it was a regrettable consequence of such evil that the true religion was denied us for so many years.’
‘You can take that amused smirk off your face, Norfolk,’ Mary commanded him, ‘since you were no better. You allowed Wolsey to get away with the excuse that it was the Pope who stood in the way of the annulment of my mother’s lawful marriage to my father, when in fact it was his own fleshly weakness. He had a mistress and two children, did he not, while notionally supervising a Church that required its anointed to practice celibacy? The advent of a new Church here in England, independent of Rome, not only offered him the prospect of his own minor Popedom, but also the freedom to give full rein to his lust?’
‘You will of course be aware that I was no friend of Wolsey’s, Your Majesty,’ Norfolk reminded her. ‘In fact, we had been at odds since boyhood. But had the Pope given his blessing to the annulment, then not even Wolsey could have stood in its way.’
‘Be that as it may,’ Mary countered with a frown, ‘you must both be wondering why my first act as Queen of England was to release you from the Tower. Was it simply my sympathy for each of you regarding the injustice you had suffered, think you?’
It was a dangerous question, whatever might be its answer and Gardiner looked helplessly across at Norfolk in the hope that he would come up with an appropriate answer. They were conducting a silent duel with their eyes when Mary gave a sadistic chuckle and answered her own question.
‘You were wise not to rise to that bait, either of you. But the simple answer, is it not, is that you are now both beholden to me, both for you original release and for allowing you your continued freedom?’
‘Indeed, you are most merciful, Your Majesty,’ Norfolk grovelled, earning a snort from Mary.
‘You did not suffer the loss of any grease from your tongue whilst a guest in the Tower, Norfolk, but I will not toy further with you, given the stout support I received from your estates in my successful recovery of the crown that was left to me by my father. I take it that you will consent to serve on my Council?’
‘Willingly and happily, Your Majesty.’
‘And given that I intend to seek from that same Council the reversal of your attainder, would you also consent to resume your former duties as Earl Marshall of England and Lord High Steward?’
‘I have happy memories of occupying both honourable offices, Your Majesty, so I will of course gratefully resume them.’
‘It was in the office of Lord High Steward that you performed a great service to the nation by ridding it of the Boleyn harlot, was it not? Even though I have heard it said — wrongly, I have no doubt — that the evidence was somewhat lacking in parts. But you had no scruple against sending your own niece to the block?’
‘None whatsoever, Your Majesty. For the noble House of Howard, it was a welcome cleansing of the Augean Stables.’
‘And may I therefore assume that, as Lord High Steward, you will see your way clear to ensuring the conviction of the Grey girl, her husband, her father-in-law Northumberland and anyone else who can be implicated in the conspiracy against my throne?’
‘You may so rely on me, Your Majesty.’
‘Good. It would seem that we are ad idem in
some important matters. Now then, Gardiner, what do you think I require of you?’
‘The restoration of the true faith, Your Majesty?’
‘In due course, yes, and swiftly, before our souls be further perjured. For that purpose, you would resume your clerical career and perhaps advance it?’
‘With the deepest of respect to your royal person,’ Gardiner mumbled, ‘only his Holiness can appoint the Archbishop of Canterbury.’
Mary’s responding chortle was not pleasant. ‘Your ambition is greater than I thought, my lord Bishop. I thought, perhaps, until you have done the necessary work, you would resume your clerical duties at Winchester? Although by all accounts your authorised deputy has been managing the offices satisfactorily in your absence — perhaps because he had so much practice while you were supposed to be conducting them?’
As Gardiner blushed and Norfolk allowed himself a soft guffaw, Mary smiled at her own wit before continuing. ‘As Winchester, your first duty will be to crown me, since I have other plans for Cranmer, none of which will be to his liking. Then I require you to resume your attendance in Council, where you will begin to unstitch the heretical garments that you wove, first under my deluded father, then my dim-witted brother who fell so heavily under the Seymour influence that he was persuaded to spread Reformist poison through our churches. You will undertake to undo your own folly?’
‘I will, Your Majesty.’
‘Good. And to ensure that those in Council who are wont to nod off while you drone on pay more attention to what you are telling them, I wish you also to take on the mantle of Lord Chancellor. In that capacity you will remove the stigma of illegitimacy from my birth, proclaim to the world that my mother’s marriage to my father was valid, and design terrible punishments for those who refuse to return to the old religion, which you will restore without undue delay. Bearing in mind that the role of Chancellor is, by tradition, held by he who is also Archbishop of Canterbury, will you agree to my terms for occupying the first of these offices?’
