Never had Robert seen the Queen in such a rage.

“These are not my father’s days!” she cried. “I do not send my ministers to the block to make way for others who fancy their rewards! If Cecil is against the marriage of Mary of Scotland to Norfolk, then so is Cecil’s mistress! And you, my lords, should look to your own ways, for it may well be that you will find yourselves in the sort of trouble you plan for Cecil. As for the Queen of Scots, she had better have a care or she may find some of her friends shorter by a head!”

It was clear that the enraged lioness was going to protect her cub Cecil, and that if the lords were to go on with their project, they must do so in secret.

Shortly after that meeting there was a plan to arrest Cecil out of hand, but Robert, who knew of their plans, was alarmed. He was aware of the Queen’s nature; he knew how furious she would be if her ministers acted against her orders and her well-known wishes. He knew that she was a woman who, having once given her loyalty, was not lightly to be turned from it. Cecil had been her good friend; if he had failed in his policy—and the Queen would not admit that he had—he had served her faithfully.

Robert therefore disengaged himself from the plotters and warned them that, unless they desisted, he would have no alternative but to tell the Queen what they intended to do. Cecil himself came to the rescue by offering to modify his attitude; he declared that if the Queen consented to the marriage he would not stand against it.

The Queen of Scots was a born schemer. She could not wait for the propitious moment. She was binding Norfolk more closely to her. Robert saw what was happening. He knew that if there was a rising—and he believed that Norfolk, under the influence of Mary, might be foolish enough to attempt one—civil war would sweep the land; and he, having sided with those who were for the marriage, might be perilously involved.

Elizabeth was his Queen and his love; he would never work with any against her. He felt his position to be dangerous, however, and that it was necessary for him to have an immediate audience with the Queen.

Even so, if he put his case frankly before her, he could not be sure that Elizabeth would entirely acquit him of mischievous dabbling. He knew his Queen better than any one else did; so he retired to his bed in his manor at Tichfield.

It was not necessary to feign sickness, for he was sick with anxiety. He sent a messenger to the Queen, telling her that he thought he was dying and that he must see her before he left this world.

Then he lay back on his pillows, rehearsing his apologies while he waited for the coming of the Queen.

Elizabeth was with her women when the message was brought to her. She rose, and they noticed how she swayed a little. Robert dying! It was impossible. She would not allow it. Her sweet Robin, her Eyes, the man she would love until she died! They were too young to part. There must be many years left for them to be together.

Kat was beside her. “Bad news, Your Majesty?”

“We must leave at once for Tichfield.”

“My lord of Leicester?”

“He is ill … asking for me.”

Kat turned pale. She more than any knew of her mistress’s feelings for that man. It would break Elizabeth’s heart if aught happened to him.

“Do not stand staring!” cried the Queen. “ We will set out at once. We will take doctors and simples … elixirs which must bring him back to health.”

As she rode to Tichfield, she thought of all he had meant to her. She could not get out of her mind the memory of his face behind the prison bars in the Beauchamp Tower.

She hurried to his bedchamber. The sight of him in his bed, wan and exhausted, hurt her profoundly. She knelt by his bed and, taking his limp hand, covered it with kisses.

“Leave me,” she said to Kat and those who had accompanied her. “I would be alone with my lord.”

“Robert,” she said when they had all gone. “My dearest Eyes, what ails you, my sweet Robin?”

He murmured: “Your Majesty, it was good of you to come to sweeten my going.”

“Do not speak of it. It shall not be. I’ll not allow it. You shall be nursed back to health. I myself will nurse you.”

“I, your humble servant, have called you to my bedside …”

“God’s Body!” she cried. “My humble servant indeed! You are my Robert, are you not? There are times when I seem to be the humble servant.”

“Dearest lady, I must not waste the time that is left to me. I must talk with you. There is a plot afoot and I do not hold myself guiltless. I believed that it would be good for England if Norfolk married Mary. Dearest, I feared your life to be in danger while the succession was unsettled.”

“Have done with the succession. It is a bogey that haunts you.”

“Nay, ’tis not so. I fear now that Your Majesty may be in danger. Norfolk makes plans, I fear, in secret with the Queen of Scots. Many of your lords are involved in this … as I myself have been. They meant no treason. They fear Your Majesty to be in danger. Their plan is no more than to restore Mary to Scotland with a good friend of England as her husband, and to satisfy France and Spain by proclaiming Mary your successor.”

“I see, I see,” she said.

“Then I am forgiven for the part I played in this—though I was thinking only of my dearest lady’s safety? Then I am to die happy?”

She bent over him and kissed him. “If there was aught to forgive, my darling, it is forgiven.”

“Now I shall die happy.”

“You’ll do no such thing!”

He smiled at her wanly. “I know, dear lioness, that it is forbidden to speak of death in your presence. There again I crave your pardon. You are strong. You are impatient of death. You are immortal.”

“Come,” she said, with a “pup” of her lips, “we are going to get you well. I myself shall see to that.”

Then she called to her women. She would try her physician’s new medicine. It should cure my lord of Leicester. She commanded him to be cured.

“Already,” said Kat, “he seems miraculously recovered. He looks almost himself.”

“Her Majesty’s presence at my bedside is more health-giving than any elixir,” he murmured.

Elizabeth set about restoring him to health; but meanwhile she sent a messenger to Norfolk bidding him return to Court.

Norfolk was now in the Tower.

Elizabeth’s ministers were of the opinion that Norfolk was loyal to her, but had been led astray, and that he might be released with a warning not to dabble in treasonable matters again.

But the Queen was unsure. She insisted that they wait awhile, keeping him a prisoner while they waited.

Norfolk had many friends at Court, and some of these smuggled messages to him concealed in bottles of wine. This trick was discovered, and the Queen, declaring that Norfolk was guilty of treason, summoned Cecil to her.

“Now, Master Cecil,” she said, “we have proof of his treason.”

“How so, Madam?” asked Cecil.

“These letters which have been sent to him in bottles. What better proof?”

“They prove nothing except that he received messages in bottles, Your Majesty.”

The Queen merely glared at her minister.

“Madam, I will send you the statute of Edward III in which there is clear statement of what does and what does not constitute treason.”

“So you are all for letting Norfolk go that he may plot my downfall?”

“Why not marry Norfolk to someone else, Your Majesty? That would be the best way to put an end to this plan for marriage with Mary.”

She smiled at him. She could trust Cecil. His mind worked in the same way as her own. “I think, Sir Spirit, that you have a good plan there.”

But even as he was leaving her presence a messenger arrived, with the news that all through the North of England the bells were ringing backward. The men of the North, those ardent Catholics who had risen against her father in the Pilgrimage of Grace, were now ready to rise again; and they looked on Mary Queen of Scots as their leader. The Queen was aghast. War she dreaded more than anything; and here was war in her own country, the most hated of all wars: civil war.

Cecil said: “They will try to reach Mary, and our first task must be to remove her from Tutbury. I will send men there at once. We will send her with the utmost speed to Coventry.”

The Queen nodded her approval.

Civil war! Her own people rising against her. The thought made her wretchedly depressed until her anger replaced such feelings. Mary had caused this. Wherever Mary was, there would trouble be. Mary was her hated rival whom she longed to put to death, but for the sake of royalty—that divine right of Kings—she dared not.

The rebellion was speedily quelled. Poor and simple men from the hamlets and the villages were hanging from the gibbets for all to see what happened to those who rebelled against the Queen.

In her wrath, men said, she is as terrible as her father was.

Six hundred men who had followed their leaders were now lifeless hanging corpses, and the North was plunged into mourning.

They must learn, said Elizabeth; they must understand the rewards of treason to the throne.

But Mary she merely kept more closely guarded, while Norfolk lived on in the Tower.

Norfolk had learned his lesson, said the Queen; and she was not entirely sure that he was responsible for the rising. As for Mary, adulteress, murderess, and fomenter of plots that she might be, as a Queen she was apart from ordinary mortals.

Elizabeth’s ministers shook their heads in sorrow and anger. They assured her that she risked her life while Mary lived; she also risked the safety of England.

Elizabeth knew she was risking much, but she felt that in tampering with the privileges of royalty, she risked more.

Mary could not learn her lessons and it was not long before she was plotting again. This time the services of a Florentine banker, named Ridolfi, were employed. Ridolfi lived in London, where he had a branch of his business, but he traveled freely about the Continent, and for this reason he was chosen to carry messages between the Pope, the Spanish ambassador, and the Catholic peers in England.

Norfolk, now home at his county seat, was still under some restraint since his release from the Tower. He was approached by Ridolfi, and, weakling that he was, under the spell of Mary to whom he had been sending money and gifts, found himself once more drawn into mischief and danger.

This time the danger was unmistakable, for messages had come from Alba himself, who promised that if Norfolk would start a revolt, he would send an Army to England to consolidate any success.

The Queen, snapping her fingers at Cecil’s detractors, had created him Lord Burghley; and Burghley was not a man to forget that Norfolk was under grave suspicion, although no longer a prisoner. A messenger from Ridolfi was captured as he landed in England from the Continent, where the Florentine now was. The message was vague and merely indicated that all was going well; but Burghley and his spies were on the scent; and when Norfolk’s servants were put to severe questioning, it was discovered that a plot was in train, involving Norfolk, Mary, the Catholic peers, and—most disturbing—the Pope, Philip, and his commander Alba.

Burghley’s spies were busy and, when letters were smuggled in to Mary, they were intercepted; so the plot was discovered before it had fully matured.

Burghley could restrain his impatience no longer; he presented his evidence to the Queen, with the result that Norfolk was arrested and the Spanish ambassador sent back to his own country.

Now the Queen’s ministers were calling for the blood—not only of Norfolk but of Mary. Elizabeth was calm, as always in moments of danger.

Strangely enough she was still reluctant to execute either Norfolk or Mary. The truth was that she hated strife; she hated executions. Her father and sister had left a bloody trail behind them, and she did not wish to rule as they had—by fear. She had given her consent to the execution of the six hundred at the time of the rebellion, but that, she assured herself, had had to be, for royalty must be maintained and men must learn that it was a cardinal sin to rise against their ruler. Yet, Burghley would reason with her, had not Norfolk rebelled? Was not the Queen of Scots more worthy of death than those six hundred men?

What he said was true. But Mary was a Queen, and Norfolk was the first peer in the land.

She faced her ministers; she listened to their railings against Mary and Norfolk.