by David Field
‘You are more than generous,’ Cecil told her, ‘but the Queen has commissioned me to equip Bradgate with sufficient servants and supplies to accommodate the Lady and her party. However, if we might prevail upon your hospitality for a few nights until this may be achieved?’
‘Of course,’ Kate agreed with a broad smile. ‘It is the least I can do in return for your bringing Thomas back to me.’
‘You might not say that once he has been back for more than a day,’ Cecil said as he dismounted and assisted the ladies from their mounts, remembering just in time to give priority to Blanche.
XX
The Council had been hastily assembled for the dreadful tidings that had just reached London. Calais had fallen to the French after some three hundred years of English occupation, and the island nation no longer had a foothold across the Channel from which to harass Paris. Philip of Spain was firmly entrenched behind the walls of Brussels, one of the great strongholds of his Spanish Netherlands, but was effectively trapped there because of the absence of any friendly port from which to return to England. It was a double tragedy and all eyes turned to Henry Neville as the one they thought best placed to break the dreadful news to Queen Mary, who was said to have made some sort of recovery from her mystery swelling malady, but who was in self-imposed seclusion inside her private residence of St James’s Palace, to which Courtiers had no access unless invited.
Neville was horrified and sought to decline the insistent demand by Council that he be the one to break the news to Mary.
‘In her present mood, she will have my head!’ he protested.
‘Then find someone whose head she desires already and give him the task,’ Lord Chancellor Heath suggested, to ribald laughter around the table. ‘Whatever means you employ — firing a message arrow into her bedchamber if necessary — Council has devolved the duty upon you, my Lord of Westmorland, so see that it is duly performed.’
The sarcastic suggestion from the Chancellor was still ringing in Neville’s ears as he walked down the long ground floor corridor in Whitehall, then caught sight of a familiar figure leaving the Exchequer Office.
‘Robert!’ Neville called.
Robert Dudley stopped and turned. ‘I was seeking William Cecil. Have you seen him around the offices here, by any chance?’
‘I have just left a meeting of Council, at which I was given a most solemn duty on a matter of utmost national importance,’ Neville told him. ‘Calais has fallen to the French and Philip of Spain remains trapped behind French lines in the Low Countries. He is in no immediate danger, but his return to England will be delayed. Someone must advise Her Majesty of both dire tidings.’
‘And Council imposed that task upon you?’
‘Indeed. But by a happy coincidence I met an old family friend just as he was leaving the Exchequer.’
‘You are not surely suggesting that I be the one to convey the ill news?’ Robert asked with a grin. ‘My neck hangs by a thread as it is.’
‘But not the only neck, as I hear tell?’ Neville replied gloatingly. ‘The Queen will not mourn for long over Philip’s continued absence, since it was she who banished him in the first place, due to his dalliance with your good friend the Lady Elizabeth.’
Robert looked round quickly, then seized Neville by the throat and held him up against the wall, glaring into his eyes with their faces only inches apart. ‘I am well aware of the way you used my sister in order to ingratiate yourself with the Queen by obtaining intelligence of Philip’s visit to Hatfield. As a matter of family honour, I should by rights run you through, and as a sworn friend of the Lady Elizabeth I should advise Her Majesty of the lie you told her regarding her sister’s reaction to Philip’s vile proposal.’
‘If it was indeed a matter in which the Lady Elizabeth was not complicit,’ Neville asked as he wriggled to free his throat from Dudley’s fierce grip in order to be able to speak, ‘then why has she taken herself off into hiding somewhere? I need only give the word and men will be sent to winkle her out of her skulk hole and convey her to the Tower.’
‘You know where she may be found?’ Robert Dudley asked as he loosened his grip completely.
Neville brushed himself down and massaged his bruised throat. ‘My spies are not restricted to Hatfield. I could have Elizabeth unearthed like a fox from its lair merely by saying the word, but as yet I have not done so, in case we suddenly have a new Queen on the throne and she repays me with an axe blade. But should Queen Mary return to rude health, I shall not hesitate to do so, unless you take from me the burden that Council has inflicted upon me.’
Two hours later a very apprehensive Robert Dudley had himself announced into the Queen’s private audience chamber in St James’s Palace, just down the road from Whitehall. He had claimed to have been sent as a representative of Council, but as Queen Mary looked up with a frown, it turned into a grimace as she ordered the usher to remain and throw out the intruder. As the attendant placed a token hand on Robert’s doublet he persisted.
‘Henry Neville sent me in his place, Your Majesty!’ he shouted.
The Queen nodded for him to be unhanded, then warned him, ‘Do not approach too closely, if you wish to avoid the miasma that has given me this burning fever of late. It is much healthier at Greenwich, but for the time being I would seem to be confined here. Now, what is it that the snivelling Neville was loath to tell me?’
‘King Philip is trapped behind the walls of Brussels, Your Majesty.’
‘Is that all? Do you have no bad news?’
‘Calais has fallen, Majesty.’
Mary looked up, at first in disbelief, then she saw the doleful expression on Robert’s face and her own fell even further. ‘When?’
‘Some weeks since, Your Majesty. Or so I was told to tell you. I have no further details, I regret to advise you.’
‘And are you here to offer to lead an army to retrieve our possession?’
‘Should Your Majesty see fit to invest me with that task, then I should be both honoured and delighted. But I did not come here with that hope.’
‘Then pray tell me what hope you did come here with. To retrieve your own family’s good name, perhaps? You will wait a long time for that.’
‘Forgive my presumption, Your Majesty, but I come here to restore love between two sisters and to retrieve the good name of your dear sister Elizabeth.’
‘Half-sister!’ Mary spat back, then gave way to a fit of coughing that threatened to shake her bony frame into separate skeletal pieces. An attendant raced towards her chair with a cloth and Mary wiped her chin before glaring up at Robert with blazing eyes. ‘Not content with seeking to usurp my throne, she thought to steal my husband! The only name she is fit to have restored is her Boleyn family name — and that is whore!’
‘Permit me, Your Majesty, but I was there during the visit by Philip to Hatfield. In truth, I accompanied him there, utterly unaware of the purpose of his visit. I was as shocked as the Lady Elizabeth when he proposed marriage to her and she sent him packing with an angry refusal. Once he had ridden off, she collapsed with the shock of it all and it was necessary to summon her lady. I know that it was that lady who gave Neville his information, which he chose to twist to his own evil ends. I know that the entire Dudley family is suspect in your eyes and that I risk my neck by even seeking audience with you in this way. By all means take my head, Your Majesty, but do not cast aside the sister who so loves you and who is so distraught at hearing all these lies told about her in order to unsettle your throne.’
‘The sister who has, by all accounts, gone into hiding?’
‘Not out of shame, Your Majesty, but out of fear of the lies that others tell of her. She wants nothing except to be reunited with you and to be of comfort to you at your bedside.’
‘You consider that you risked your life by coming here? Is my reputation among my people so awful?’
‘No, Majesty, but I am only too sadly aware of how much disloyalty has in the past stained the former goo
d name of Dudley. I bear the name like a cross upon my back and can expect no mercy if I prove in the slightest way disloyal.’
‘But, knowing that, you came to plead Elizabeth’s cause? You must love her very deeply.’
‘Indeed I do, Your Majesty, but my love for England runs even deeper and it pains me to see the glorious daughters of the illustrious Henry held apart by malicious gossip.’
‘You swear upon your immortal soul that Elizabeth did naught to encourage Philip in his offer of marriage once I am gone and that she reacted to it with anger and horror?’
‘I so swear, on my immortal soul.’
It fell silent for a moment, then Mary looked back up at Robert with watery eyes that could have held tears, or could simply have been part of the illness that had overrun her already weakened constitution. ‘If you know where my sister has hidden herself away, you may tell her that I wish once more to hold her hand, as I pass our father’s legacy on to her. I am not long for this life, and before I meet the God in whose service I have endeavoured to live my life I would seek her forgiveness and ask for prayers from her for my soul. Could you undertake that simple service for your dying Queen?’
‘It will be the most pleasurable service that I have ever performed, Your Majesty,’ Robert assured her in a voice liquid with genuine emotion as he bowed from the presence.
‘Did you ride through the night?’ Elizabeth asked Cecil.
‘I only look as if I probably did,’ he replied. ‘In truth I was up before the cocks were crowing, so this breakfast is most welcome.’
It fell silent for a moment, then Thomas voiced what everyone was thinking. ‘How do we know that it will be safe for the Lady Elizabeth to return to Hatfield?’
Cecil looked enquiringly at Elizabeth. ‘How deeply do you trust Robert Dudley, my Lady?’
‘With my life,’ she added without a moment’s hesitation, then on an afterthought she added, ‘I just hope it won’t come to that, because it’s my sister I don’t trust. Is she really dying, say you?’
‘I’m no physician,’ Cecil reminded her, ‘but the several physicians I spoke to seemed to have no doubt on the matter.’
‘And how long has she got?’
‘No-one can say — least of all those physicians. If I’m ever seriously ill and not capable of managing my own affairs, please just leave me to die, rather than expose me to those mumbling idiots. But the fact remains that if you do not at least begin your journey south in order to answer her call, your recent sojourn here will look even more suspicious. You will be taking a risk, I agree, but my best counsel is that you leave without delay. We should reach Hatfield in three days.’
‘Do we have to take him with us?’ Blanche asked with a sour nod in Thomas’s direction.
Cecil shook his head. ‘No, he is required here, to manage his mother’s estate at Knighton. I have kept my promise to his mother and now I’m happy to leave him behind. But don’t wander too far, Thomas, because I may need your very special services in the months to come, when the Lady Elizabeth becomes your Queen.’
‘If she ever does,’ Elizabeth added cautiously.
Three weeks later Elizabeth was seated under her favourite oak tree, heavily cloaked against the crisp dry air of a mid-November morning. She was trying, as she had been every day for the past fortnight, to persuade herself that today would be the day that she summoned her more intimate attendants around her and made the journey to St James’s Place, where, according to the regular despatches that came from the ever- watchful Cecil, her sister Mary was drifting in and out of life as the fever gradually increased its grip over her. Mary was now well over forty years of age and Elizabeth was idly wondering how many years she herself might have left, whether she would bear children, whether she would be acceptable to the people as their next Queen and whether she could bear the terror of being once more in Mary’s presence, when she heard a familiar voice calling urgently to her from further up the slope.
She turned and saw Blanche Parry gathering her skirts to her knees, as she ran barefoot down the grass from which the frost had barely melted.
‘Horsemen!’ Blanche yelled as she ran and Elizabeth rose to her feet in fear. Through the gate of Hatfield Palace rode a sizeable body of men, with soldiers in the Tudor royal livery flanking them on all sides. As the group closed in on her, she stood trembling in anticipation of another respectful but insistent arrest, followed by a return to the Tower, because of her failure to obey Mary’s summons. Blanche sidled up to stand next to her and instinctively the two women held hands as they waited, hearts in mouths.
The group halted and a thin man with a grey wispy beard, dressed in ecclesiastical robes, was assisted off his horse, then handed something small in a rich bag of purple velvet. He walked towards the two women and bowed, then looked at each of them in turn with a puzzled expression.
‘I am Nicholas Heath,’ he announced, ‘Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England. You will forgive my impertinence, but which of you is Elizabeth Tudor?’
‘I am she,’ Elizabeth declared resolutely, then her heart stopped momentarily as the old man knelt and held the bag up for her to take.
‘The Great Seal of England, Your Majesty. Your sister died in the early hours of yesterday morning and William Cecil advised us where you might be found. You are now Queen of England. Vivat regina.’
‘Can this be true?’ Elizabeth croaked as her heart refused to beat regularly. ‘Is Mary really dead? Am I free at last from all her persecution and did she wish me goodwill in my new role?’
She was aware of another man dismounting and through what seemed like a light mist before her eyes, Robert Dudley walked up to her, bowed the knee, took her hand and kissed it. Then he reached into his tunic and removed from it the large opal ring that had never left Mary’s hand since she had been gifted it by their father on her fifteenth birthday.
‘I was there at the end, on your behalf,’ Robert told her gently. ‘She pledged me to hand it to you as a token that the Tudor legacy has passed to you. She also said that she always loved you and wished that you could have been closer in life. This has been my first service to Your Majesty, but hopefully not the last.’
‘Please get off your knees, dear Robert,’ Elizabeth requested, unsure what else to say and fearful that she was about to break down with tears of sadness and relief.
Lord Chancellor Heath coughed politely as he told her, ‘You also have my undying loyalty, Your Majesty. Do you wish a blessing on this most profound of days?’
‘I thank you, but no,’ Elizabeth replied. ‘There will be time enough for those at my coronation, I have no doubt. But there is a Latin phrase from a psalm I once read that has remained forever in my memory and would seem appropriate for this moment.’
‘Majesty?’ Heath asked.
‘A Dominum factum est illud, et est mirabile in oculis notris,’ she murmured. Then for the benefit of Robert, still kneeling at her feet, she translated, ‘It is the Lord’s doing and it is marvellous in our eyes.’
***
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A NOTE TO THE READER
Dear Reader,
Thank you for taking the time and trouble to read this latest novel in my series on the Tudor period.
Of all of the Tudor monarchs, Elizabeth has over the years attracted the greatest interest from novelists, film companies and television producers. But only in respect of her long period on the throne of England, where she proved herself to be strong, determined, loyal and on occasions brutal in her punishment of disloyalty. But, as hopefully this novel has underlined, she was the product of her earlier years.
Her older stepsister Mary — dubbed ‘Bloody Mary’ by later Protestant propagandists �
�� undoubtedly included paranoia among her less desirable traits and long before she was thrown into queenship on the untimely death of their brother Edward VI she had grown envious of her much younger, more charismatic and more beautiful half-sister Elizabeth. That envy rapidly became jealousy, which then curdled into suspicion as her own personal life turned to dust with her failure to produce an heir and the realisation that Philip of Spain had not married her out of any desire to share her bed.
There were countless plots against Mary’s throne by those who sought to retain the Protestant form of worship and looked on in mortal fear as over three hundred of their persuasion died a grisly death by burning. Whether the young Elizabeth was truly behind any of them is a matter on which we may allow historians to disagree, but Mary was easily persuaded that she was, and the naturally light-hearted and fun-loving younger half-sister learned rapidly that whatever she did would be suspect and she spent many of her formative years either in close confinement in the dreaded Tower of London where her mother Anne Boleyn had ended her life on the block, or under house arrest in one crumbling and forsaken medieval ruin after another.
Throughout this period, however, Elizabeth was saved by her own innate ability to command love and unswerving loyalty from the few in her intimate circle. Chief among these was her lifelong companion Blanche Parry and her Surveyor of Estates William Cecil, who would be richly rewarded when the time came for Elizabeth to assume the mantle of power. For the time being, they protected her from the worst of Mary’s paranoia, no doubt making use of covert assistants such as the purely fictitious Thomas Ashton of this novel.
But even bad things come to an end eventually and after five years of relentless persecution Elizabeth emerged physically unscathed to take the throne of England for forty-five glorious years. But the mental scars of those early years never healed and as she herself faded into old age she grew suspicious and untrusting and was forced by circumstances to be as severe with Catholic plotters as her half-sister Mary had been with their Protestant predecessors.
