Philippa Gregory - The other queen

Of course, he does not dine with us. I had forgotten. We all go to eat our dinner in the great hall; he goes alone, to eat alone in his cell. He cannot dine with us, he is banished from our company, and I will never put my arm around his shoulders again.

Ihave no great love for the Scots queen, God knows, but it would take a woman with a harder heart than mine not to defend her against our new house guest and temporary jailer, Ralph Sadler. He is a hard-hearted bad-tempered old man, utterly immune to any form of beauty, whether it be the white hoarfrost on the trees here at Sheffield Castle or the pale, strained beauty of the Scots queen.

“I have my orders,” he says hoarsely to me after she has withdrawn from the dinner table, unable to bear his slurping his pottage for another moment. She whispers of a headache and takes herself from the room. I could wish I could escape so easily, but I am the mistress of a great house and I must do my duty by a guest.

“Orders?” I ask politely, and watch him spoon up another great swallow in the general direction of his big mouth.

“Aye,” he says. “Defend her, protect her, prevent her escape, and if all else fails…” He makes a horrible gesture with his flat hand, a long cutting movement across his own throat.

“You would kill her?”

He nods. “She cannot be allowed to get free,” he says. “She is the greatest danger this country has ever faced.”

I think for a moment of the Spanish armada that they say Philip is building right now in his fearsome shipyards. I think of the Pope demanding that all of the old faith disobey Queen Elizabeth, authorizing them to kill her. I think of the French and the Scots. “How can she be?” I ask. “One woman alone? When you think of all that we face?”

“Because she is a figurehead,” he says harshly. “Because she is French, because she is Scots, because she is Catholic. Because none of us will ever sleep sound in our beds while she is free.”

“Seems a bit hard that a woman should die because you can’t sleep,” I say waspishly.

It earns me a hard look from this hard old man, who is obviously unaccustomed to a woman with opinions. “I heard that she had won you over, and your lord,” he says nastily. “I heard that he, in particular, was very taken.”

“We are both of us good servants to the queen,” I say staunchly. “As Her Grace knows, as my good friend Lord Burghley knows. No man has ever doubted my lord’s honor. And I can be a good servant to Her Grace and yet not want to see the Scots queen murdered.”

“You might be able to,” he says gloomily, “but I cannot. And in time, I expect there will be more who think like me than think like you.”

“She might die in battle,” I say. “If, God forbid, there was a battle. Or she might be killed by an assassin, I suppose. But she cannot be executed: she is of blood royal. She cannot be charged with treason: she is a consecrated queen. No court can judge her.”

“Oh, who says?” he asks suddenly, dropping his spoon and turning his big face on me.

“The law of the land,” I stammer. He is almost frightening in his bulk and with his temper. “The law of the land which defends both great and small.”

“The law is what we say it is,” he boasts. “As she may yet discover, as you may one day see. The law will be what we say it should be. We shall make the laws and those who threaten us or frighten us will find that they are outside the protection of the law.”

“Then it is no law at all,” I maintain. After all I am the wife of the Lord High Steward of England. “The law must defend the high and the low, the innocent, and even the guilty until they are shown to be criminal.”

Sadler laughs, a rough loud laugh. “That may have been so in Camelot,” he says crudely. “But it is a different world now. We will use the laws against our enemies, we will find evidence against our enemies, and if there is neither law nor evidence, then we will make it fresh, specially for them.”

“Then you are no better than they,” I say quietly, but aloud I turn to my server of the ewery and say, “More wine for Sir Ralph.”

My betrothed is fighting for his life in a courtroom, judged by men as fearful as he. My son is far from me. The only man who could save me now is far, far away, himself imprisoned, and I don’t expect ever to see him again. My worst enemy is my new keeper, and even Bess, the falsest friend a woman ever had, is repelled by his harshness towards me.

I am starting to feel afraid. I would not have believed that Elizabeth could put me in the charge of such a man. It is to dishonor me, to make such a man my custodian. She would know this: she has been a captive herself. She would know how a harsh jailer destroys a prisoner’s life. He will not let me walk in the park, not even in the frozen snow in the morning, he will not let me ride out, he will allow me no more than ten minutes’ walk in the cold yard, and he has been talking to Bess about reducing my household once more. He says I cannot have my luxuries from London, I may not have letters from Paris. He says I should not have so many dishes for dinner, nor fine wines. He wants to take down the cloth of estate which marks my royal status. He wants me to have an ordinary chair, not a throne, and he sits without invitation, in my presence.

I would not have believed that this could happen to me. But neither would I have believed that Elizabeth would put her own cousin, her closest kin, on trial for treason, especially as she must know that he is guilty of nothing but his ambition to marry me—which, though disagreeable to a woman of Elizabeth’s gross vanity, is hardly a crime. He rode out in no rebellion, he sent no money of his own to any rebellious army—why, he lost the French gold he was supposed to send. He obeyed her order to go to court though his followers hung on to the leathers of his stirrups and the tail of his horse and begged him not to go. He surrendered Kenninghall, his own great house, disinheriting his own children: just as she asked. He stayed obediently at his London house and then went, as ordered, to the Tower. He met Ridolfi, several times, it is true. But I know, as they must know, that he would not have laid a plot with him to murder Elizabeth and overthrow her country.

I am guilty of that—good God yes, I don’t deny it to myself though I will never confess it to them. I would see Elizabeth destroyed and the country free of her illegal, heretical rule. But Thomas Howard would never have done so. To be cruelly frank—he is not the man for it, he has not the stomach for it. There is only one man I know who would plan it and see it through, and he is in a well-guarded room with bars on the window, facing the sea in Denmark, thinking of me, and will never throw his life down on a gamble again.

“I have no prospects,” I say gloomily to Mary Seton as we sit over our own private dinner in my chamber. I will not dine with Ralph Sadler; I would rather starve.

Around us, about forty companions and servants sit down to dine, and the servers bring dish after dish for me to take a small helping and send them out around the hall. They still bring in more than thirty different dishes, a tribute to my importance as a queen. I would be insulted by less.

Mary Seton is not gloomy like me; her dark eyes are dancing with mischief. “You always have prospects,” she whispers in French. “And now you have another Sir Galahad ready to serve you.”

“Sir Galahad?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe he is more a Sir Lancelot. Certainly a nobleman ready to risk everything for you. One who has come in secret. One whose name you know. One that you don’t expect, and one who has a plan to get you out of here before the end of the trial. Before the shame of having your business discussed in open court.”

“Bothwell,” I breathe at once. I have an instant certainty that he has got away from Denmark. For what prison could hold him? Bothwell, free and coming to my side, will have me out of here and on a horse to Scotland in a moment. Bothwell will raise an army in the borders, turn the country upside down. Bothwell will take Scotland as if the country were a reluctant woman and make her know her master. I could laugh aloud at the thought of him free. What a fox among a hen coop he will be when he is on his horse with his sword drawn once more. What a nightmare for the English, what a revenge for me. “Bothwell.”

Thank God she does not hear me. I would not want Mary to think that his name ever comes to my mind. He was my undoing. I never speak of him.

“Sir Henry Percy,” she says. “God bless him. He sent this; it came to me from the hand of young Babington. Sir Ralph watches you so close we did not dare try to get it to you till now. I was going to hold it till bedtime if I had to.”

She hands me a little note. It is brief and to the point.

Be ready at midnight. Put a candle at your bedroom window from ten of the clock if you are ready to come tonight. At midnight tonight, blow out the candle and let yourself down from the window. I have horses and a guard and will have you away to France at once. Trust me. I would give my life for you.

Henry Percy

“Do you dare?” Mary asks me. “Your closet window faces outwards over the garden; that must be the one he means. It is a drop of forty feet. It is no worse than Bolton Castle and you would have got away then but for the rope breaking on that girl.”

“Of course I dare,” I say. At once the candles burn brighter and the smell of dinner is so appetizing that I feel my mouth water. My companions in the room are dear friends who will miss me when I am gone but who will delight in my triumph. At once, I am alive again, alive and with hopes. I think of Sir Ralph Sadler’s consternation and Bess’s destruction when I get away from their guardianship, and I cannot help but giggle at the thought of their faces when they find I am gone in the morning. I shall get to France and I shall persuade the king and his mother that they must send me home to Scotland with an army great enough to dominate the Scots lords. They will command that Bothwell be freed to lead my army. They will see the advantages of it, and if they do not, I shall apply to Philip of Spain for help. I could go to him, or to the Pope, or to any one of a dozen wealthy Papists who would help me if I were away from here and free from the wicked imprisonment of my cousin.

“Oh no! Did you not promise the Earl of Shrewsbury that you would not escape while he was away from home? He asked for your word of parole and you gave it.” Mary is suddenly aghast at the memory. “You cannot break your word to him.”

“A promise under duress is worth nothing,” I say cheerfully. “I will be free.”

Ialmost fall asleep straining my eyes in candlelight, trying to read the notes I have made during the day of Norfolk’s trial. The words that I have scribbled merge and go hazy before my eyes. The evidence from Bishop Ross is enough to destroy Norfolk but it has come from a man so terrified that he cannot even make up a convincing story. Half of the evidence has clearly been dictated by Cecil and attested by men out of their mind with terror and pain. The other half of it has no support from anyone, no witnesses; it is no evidence. It is nothing but Cecil’s lies, undiluted shameless lies.

I am weary to my soul at the thought that if I were a better man I would stand up and denounce Cecil for a false advisor, demand that the lords stand with me and that we go to the queen and insist that she listen to us. I am the greatest man in England, I am the Lord High Steward, it is my duty and honor to defend England against bad advisors.

But to my shame, I know, I am not that man. As my wife would be quick to explain I have neither the wit nor the courage to state and defend a case against Cecil. I do not have the prestige with my peers; I do not have the ear of the queen. Worst of all: I no longer have pride in myself.

The last man to challenge Cecil is before us now on a charge of treason. If we had stood against Cecil when he first took sway over the mind of the young princess, or if we had backed Dudley against him in those early days, or if we had even backed Howard against him only months ago…But we are like a besom of sticks; if we stood together we would be unbreakable, but Cecil will snap us off one by one. There is no one here who will rise to save Thomas Howard. There is no one here who will rise to overthrow Cecil. Not even I, who know of Cecil’s spying, and his lies, and the quiet men who do his bidding all around the country, the men who are trained in torture, the men who have taken the laws of this country and said that they shall not stand, that Cecil’s imaginary dangers are greater than the law, the men who lie for him and care nothing for the truth. I know all this, and I dare not stand against him. Actually, it is because I know all this that I dare not.