“All the more reason he should do everything in his power to help us succeed,” Sir Edward countered.

“France,” I murmured, “begins to look most inviting.”

“We must do one or the other.” Will righted his chair and resumed his place at table, reaching for his wine goblet. “Flee or fight.”

I did not think his choice and mine would be the same. “When is this rebellion to begin?” I asked Sir Edward.

“Palm Sunday.”

“But that’s months away. Sometime in mid-March and this is only the first week in January. How can you possibly think that your plans will remain secret that long?”

“We are pledged to keep silence.”

And yet, I thought, you blithely share every detail with Will who, for all you know, truly has converted to the Catholic faith.

Three days later, when Tom Wyatt paid another visit to Carter Lane, I realized that he was even less adept at secrecy than Sir Edward. He boasted that he’d been in touch with the new French ambassador, and that he expected support from that quarter when he called the men of Kent to arms.

“It is time for me to go to Cowling Castle,” I told Will when Tom left.

“What need to be parted now, sweeting? Soon all will be put right.”

I had my doubts about that, but short of reporting the rebels to the queen myself, there was nothing I could do to stop the march of events. “I am not supposed to be here with you,” I reminded him. “With all this plotting and scheming going on, the last thing we should do is draw official attention to this house.”

Reluctantly, Will agreed that it would be best if I left. We spent the night in loving and said a tearful farewell when I set out the next day.

Both Birdie and Griggs had remained with me at Aunt Elizabeth’s house and now accompanied me into Kent. Will and I had agreed that I would stay with my parents until after the rebellion had succeeded in deposing Queen Mary. I did not mention it to Will, but I still intended to ask Father for the loan of one of his manor houses. I would make sure it was in readiness to receive us should the rebellion fail.

I reached Cowling Castle the next day. I’d expected my father and mother to be there, and my youngest sibling, Edmund, who was now fourteen, but I was surprised to find all my brothers in residence.

“Have you brought messages?” George demanded. At twenty, he sported a beard just like Father’s, but he was taller and thinner than our sire, almost lanky. His eyes were bright with anticipation.

The same fever burned in Thomas and John and Henry and William and made my blood run cold. They were waiting for word from Tom Wyatt. My brothers meant to rise up to prevent the queen’s marriage to Philip of Spain.

“I see there is no common sense in this house, either,” I said.

They found this sentiment amusing.

“Now you sound like Mother,” Henry complained, “always trying to spoil our fun.”

I thought it the better part of valor to listen rather than argue. There was no reasoning with men spoiling for a fight. When we joined my parents for supper, Mother and I were the only ones to say aloud that the failure of such an attempt would bring disaster down upon us all.

“You cannot help being afraid,” my brother Thomas informed me in a low, condescending voice. He was well equipped to look down his nose at me. That hawklike appendage was the longest in the family. Unlike George and William, he had not grown a beard, most likely because he knew women found the cleft in his clean-shaven chin attractive.

“And why is that?” I asked, well aware that I would not like his answer.

“Women are weak. That is why we must rid ourselves of Queen Mary. Women are always ruled by their husbands. No one was enthusiastic about being ruled by King Guildford, but at least he was an Englishman.”

“Gil Dudley would never have been king. Queen Jane refused to grant him the title. She told him he’d have to be content with a dukedom.”

“She’d have given in. Women are—”

“Yes, I know—weak. And yet you intend to put another woman on the throne in Mary’s place. What if Elizabeth does not marry to suit you?”

Plainly Thomas had not thought that far ahead. I rolled my eyes, amused and appalled at the same time.

“I have no objection to replacing Queen Mary with Queen Elizabeth,” I said, “but this rebellion is doomed from the start. The plot is too complex. Even I—a mere woman—can see its obvious flaws.”

“What flaws?” Thomas demanded, offended.

“The most blatant of them is the lack of a single leader who can rally all of England to Elizabeth’s cause. The Duke of Suffolk is not capable of it. Neither is Cousin Tom.”

“Traitor,” Henry muttered, meaning me.

Thomas looked me up and down, a speculative expression on his face. “Perhaps we should lock you up until the rebellion is under way.”

“I am not about to sneak out of the castle in the dark of night and run off to court to warn the queen. She would not listen to me anyway.”

Only from Father did I detect any hint of sympathy, but he made no attempt to defend me from my brothers. Mother, too, remained silent, although the worry lines in her forehead deepened with every harsh word her children spoke to one another.

“Better safe than sorry,” my brother John muttered. “We could put you in Aunt Elizabeth’s old rooms.”

“Truce, Bess,” George said, slicing into an apple. He held out a section as a peace offering. When I just glared at him, he ate it himself.

“We have to take up arms,” Edmund said with all the seriousness a fourteen-year-old boy can muster. The scattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose made him look even younger. “The Spanish stand ready to invade.”

“How do you know that?” I demanded.

“Everyone says so.”

Exasperation brought me to my feet. I braced both hands on the table and enunciated each word distinctly. “There is no proof that anything will change with this marriage. Mary Tudor is not weak. You will find out just how strong she is if you go through with this. She will not hesitate to execute every one of you.”

George applauded.

Thomas just grinned at me, refusing to take seriously a single word I’d said. “Only if we fail, sister dear,” he said. “Only if we fail.”

45

Shortly after I arrived at Cowling Castle, my cousin Wyatt sent word from his country seat at Allington Castle to those he had recruited to come to a meeting on the twenty-second of January. It was Master Rudstone who brought the message, the same man who’d come to Cowling Castle years before to inform Aunt Elizabeth that she was a widow at last. He had other news as well. One of the conspirators had been questioned by the queen’s men. A second had lost his courage and fled abroad.

Even with the original plot in disarray, Tom Wyatt refused to give in. An insurrection would still take place. It would simply start earlier, before Queen Mary had time to prepare.

My brothers William, George, and Thomas left with Rudstone. Father chose to remain at Cowling Castle and kept the younger boys with him. John and Henry were furious at being prevented from joining what Henry called “the fun.” Edmund felt the same but was less vocal about it. All three were big for their ages and eager to prove their manhood in battle.

I shuddered every time I thought of it. I’d chosen the losing side once before. If Mary Tudor crushed her foes again, she would exact a terrible revenge on anyone who had twice turned traitor.

“Is there no way to stop them?” I asked my mother. “If matters fall out in the worst possible way, I could lose not only my husband, but my father and all six of my brothers to the headsman’s ax.”

“It is worse than that, I fear.” Mother’s hands shook, but she continued to embroider tiny leaves on a collar. “Only your father is a peer. The others could suffer the full penalty for treason—to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.”

I felt myself blanch. “There must be something we can do,” I whispered.

Mother patted my hand. “Learn patience, Bess. It is a woman’s lot to sit and wait. And pray.”

“But which prayer book should the prayers come from?” I snapped at her in my bitterness.

“If you wish to be useful, you can make bandages.”

“I would prefer to avoid the need for them.” But when she left her fancywork to fetch a length of cloth, I went to work cutting it into long strips.

On Sunday, the twenty-eighth day of January, two messengers arrived at Cowling Castle. One brought word that Tom Wyatt had raised his standard at Rochester, just four miles away, and was now in open rebellion against the queen. The other reported that the Duke of Norfolk and an army of the queen’s men were massing at Gravesend to put down the insurrection. Norfolk had been freed from the Tower, where he had been since Old King Henry’s time, as soon as Mary become queen. Father rode at once to Gravesend.

He returned with word that the bulk of the royal force consisted of six hundred foot soldiers who had been recruited from the city of London and that among those men were rebels, ready to change sides the moment they encountered Wyatt’s forces. “I intercepted a messenger on my way back here,” Father added. “A courier en route to France. The French ambassador sent him to Wyatt’s camp first. I relieved him of his dispatches and sent the dispatch bag to Bishop Gardiner in London.”

He could not have chosen a more dangerous ally, I thought. Gardiner despised Will for his evangelical views and because he’d been granted Winchester House after Gardiner was deprived of it and imprisoned.

“Whose side are you on?” I asked of father in confusion. “If you expect Queen Mary to emerge victorious, how could you have allowed William, George, and Thomas to join the rebels?”

“I am on the side of the Brookes of Cobham,” Father said. “When this is over, either your brothers or I will need a pardon. If Wyatt fails, I’ve just paid the price to keep my sons out of the Tower.”

“But you support a return to King Henry’s church, don’t you? You cannot want England to be Catholic.”

“Do not criticize your father, Bess,” Mother said. “You would play just as devious a game to keep your husband safe.”

The next morning, Father sent a message to the Duke of Norfolk, the late Earl of Surrey’s father. Father advised the duke to postpone any confrontation with Wyatt until Norfolk had more men.

By nightfall, Father’s scouts brought word that the Duke of Norfolk had not heeded Father’s warning. When Norfolk’s forces met those of my cousin at Strood, the London men, as expected, turned their coats. To a man, they went over to Cousin Tom, taking with them all the duke’s ordnance. The duke had been fortunate not to be captured.

At eleven the next day, just as we were sitting down to dinner, an explosion shattered the peace and quiet of Cowling Castle. The noise was terrifying. Grim faced, father ordered all women and children to stay inside. He and the three of my brothers still at home—John, Henry, and Edmund—went to investigate. Father sent Edmund, the youngest, back to us with the news that we were under siege.

“It’s Cousin Tom.” Edmund sounded as if he could not believe what he’d seen. “He’s brought his army here to attack us. John says the turncoats must have told him about Father warning the Duke of Norfolk.”

In spite of Father’s orders, I climbed up onto the battlements to see for myself. The sight before me was daunting. Hundreds of men had spread out before the castle, William, Thomas, and George somewhere among them.

“How can my brothers condone this?” I asked Father. “Would they destroy their own home?”

Another explosion shook the walls, this one from the other side. “He’s using two of the guns he captured from the Duke of Norfolk to batter the main gate and the other four to assault the back of the castle,” Father said. “Return to your mother, Bess. There is nothing you can do here.”

“Can you hold the castle?”

“I will try.”

“What if you surrender? Won’t that prove you meant Tom Wyatt no harm?” A cold wind eddied over the ramparts, making my skirts whip at my ankles.

“It might, but at the same time it would convince the queen that I’d been conspiring with Tom Wyatt all along. If he fails, we lose everything.”

Father’s voice was edged with desperation. He faced a terrible dilemma. Three sons were on one side of the walls, three on the other. If the rebellion succeeded, his heir would keep the family fortunes safe. If Queen Mary defeated the rebels, and she believed Father had remained loyal, then all would be well. But to prove his loyalty, he had to hold Cowling Castle as long as he could, even if that meant loss of life. Even if one or more of those lost were his own sons.