“You may tell your father that he has his passport from the Queen of Scots, at my request,” Elizabeth says to Henry Stuart. He flushes like a girl and drops to one knee. Elizabeth smiles on him. “Will you want to go to Scotland with him?” she asks.
“Not to leave you!” he exclaims, as if his heart might break. “I mean, forgive me, I spoke too swiftly. I will do whatever you command, whatever my father commands. But I don’t want to leave this court for another. Does one go from the sun to the moon?”
“You will have to go, if your father needs you,” Elizabeth rules.
His eyes shine as he flicks his long fringe out of his eyes; he is as adorable as a golden spaniel puppy. “May I not stay?”
Elizabeth reaches out to him and sweeps the blond locks from his rose-petal face. “Yes,” she says indulgently. “I cannot spare you. Your father, Lord Lennox, shall go and settle his business on his lands and you shall stay safe as a little bird in the nest with me.”
Cecil raises his eyebrows at the queen’s doting tone, and says nothing. Henry Stuart presumes to catch Her Majesty’s hand and presses it to his lips. Elizabeth smiles and allows him to take the liberty.
“I shall never leave you,” he swears. “I couldn’t bear it.”
Certainly, I know that he won’t, for Thomas Keyes has orders not to let him out of the gate. But this is the masque of courtly love, and that is more important than any mundane truth.
“I know you never will,” Elizabeth purrs, like a fat cat with the pleasure of his attention.
“I am not like Robert Dudley! Isn’t he going to Scotland to marry the queen?” Darnley asks, dropping poison on the sugarloaf.
Elizabeth’s face convulses under the paint. “He goes for love of me,” she rules.
WHITEHALL PALACE,
LONDON, AUTUMN 1564
James Melville, a softly spoken Scots charmer, deployed by Mary, his queen, to inveigle Elizabeth into declaring her as heir, comes to our court at the end of the summer. The days are warm, but the nights are getting cooler; the leaves are changing color and blazing in bronze and gold and red. Elizabeth, who loves the hot weather, lingers over her summer pleasures and insists that we go out on the royal barge to see the sunset on the river, even though the twilight brings a cold wind down the valley.
The queen summons the Scots diplomat to sit beside her throne at the center of the barge. I am on one side, Kat Ashley, restored to favor, on the other. Thomasina the dwarf is standing on a box in the prow so that she can see the flow of the silvery stream ahead. I turn my gaze away from her. I don’t like to see her standing up like a child to wave at the fishermen, at the rowers of the wherries.
Elizabeth is head-to-head with the Scots advisor. Whatever she is saying, she hopes to keep it secret. But I can read his discreet smile as clearly as my sister Jane could read Greek. I know exactly what she is telling him—she is telling him that he has to persuade Mary Queen of Scots to marry Robert Dudley, and in reward she will be given my sister Katherine’s rights: she will be named as Elizabeth’s heir. She is promising him that Katherine will be kept under house arrest until that day, that any campaign for her will be silenced, that any publications will be suppressed. Elizabeth is favoring Mary Queen of Scots as her heir, and my sister will be ignored by everyone until it is agreed.
I dare not glance across at Kat Ashley, who must disapprove of this madness as much as Melville, as much as William Cecil, as much as the reluctant bridegroom, Robert Dudley himself. I dare not look at any of the ladies for fear of someone winking at me. None of us thinks that when the moment comes for him to leave, Elizabeth will bring herself to let her lover go. None of us thinks that Mary will be grateful for a castoff. None of us thinks that Robert Dudley—even with his immense ambition—will dare to reach as high as a queen who is not already compromised by his lovemaking. But Elizabeth gives every appearance of being determined; and she whispers and whispers earnestly to the Scots ambassador, until, finally, he nods in agreement, bows, and steps back.
Elizabeth leans back in her chair and smiles at her beloved Kat. “He’ll do it” is all she says. “He will convince her. And she will take Dudley.”
“I can see why Melville will try—for the great prize of seeing his queen as heir to the throne of England. But will Dudley do it? Will you?”
Elizabeth turns her head. “I can trust no one but Robert with her,” she says in an undertone. “And I trust her with no one but him. If she were to marry Don Carlos of Spain or the French duke, then we have an enemy at our back door, and papist priests pouring across the Tweed. But Robert will save me, as he has done before. He will marry her and master her.”
“But you will have to let him go,” Kat says gently. “You will have to send him into the arms of another woman.”
“Perhaps it won’t be for a while,” Elizabeth says vaguely. “It will take a long time to arrange, surely? And we might all stay together sometimes. We could have a northern court at York, or Newcastle, or Carlisle, every summer, for all the summer. We could have the Council of the North and Robert could command it. Certainly, once she is with child, he could come home to England.”
“With child,” Kat repeats, her eyes on the queen’s face. “She is young and fertile. They say that she is crying in her bed at night for a husband. What if she falls in love with Sir Robert and they make a child of love? Have you thought how you will feel when you hear that she is carrying his baby? How do you think he will feel when his wife is carrying the Dudley heir to the throne of Scotland and England? Don’t you fear that he will love her, then? Wouldn’t any man love his wife then?”
I can see Elizabeth grow paler under the paint on her face. I guess that her stomach is churning with jealousy. “He should father a prince,” she defends her own idea. “He is a man entirely fit to own a kingdom. And perhaps it will take so long that she will be past her childbearing years before they are married.”
“She’s twenty-one,” Kat says flatly. “How long do you think you can stretch it out?”
Elizabeth pulls a fur over her shoulders and turns a furious face towards me. I flinch from her dark glare. “Anything is better than her sister,” she says abruptly, nodding her red head towards me. “I won’t have a rival in my sight. I won’t have my heir setting up house with a Seymour, quartering royal arms on her heraldry, while everyone flocks to her side. I won’t have a young woman like Katherine Grey in my court, and everyone making comparisons.”
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON,
AUTUMN 1564
Nobody believes that the queen intends to part with Robert Dudley. But she persuades James Melville that she means it, and William Cecil makes preparations for a meeting of Scots and English commissioners at Berwick to sign a marriage agreement and an alliance. Thomasina the dwarf looks at me with a hidden smile, as if we two, who see Elizabeth when she is not showing off her dancing, or her music, or her scholarship to the Scots ambassador, know more than these men who are obliged to admire her. To make her favorite a worthy suitor, she decides that he has to be Earl of Leicester and Baron Denbigh, and all the court attends the great hall to watch Robert Dudley, the son of a traitor and the grandson of a traitor, kneel before the queen and arise an earl. Queen Mary must be assured that Elizabeth loves Robert Dudley like a brother, and respects him as a temporal lord. But Elizabeth cannot even complete this charade without spoiling the scene. As he kneels in homage she caresses the back of his neck. The Scots ambassador sees it; we all see it. She might as well announce to the world that she loves him and he is completely under her thumb. It is impossible: Mary Queen of Scots will never take Elizabeth’s leavings when they are not even pushed to the side of her plate. It is as if Elizabeth’s spittle is still on him.
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON,
WINTER 1564
I am hurrying into court one evening in November with a cold mist coming off the river and a haze of drizzle around the torches in the courtyard when Thomas looms out of the shadow of the doorway to th
e main gate as if he has been waiting for me.
“Thomas!” I exclaim. “What are you doing here? I can’t stop. I have to go to the great hall.”
His big face is scowling, his bonnet is crushed in his great hand. “I had to see you.”
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s trouble for you,” he says miserably. “Oh, Mary, God knows that I wish I could spare you.”
I swallow down my fear. “What is it? Not Katherine? Not one of her boys?”
He drops to one knee so his head is level with mine. “No, thank God, she is safe as a little bird in a cage. It is your uncle. He has died.”
“She has beheaded him?” I whisper my greatest fear.
“No, no. It’s not that bad. They say it was grief.”
I feel myself go still and quiet. He was never a loving kinsman—but he suffered imprisonment for supporting Katherine, and he was a good guardian to her. Now that he is dead she has lost her guardian. And another of our family has died through the disfavor of a Tudor. Truly, they are hard masters to serve, impossible to love.
“God save his soul,” I say without thinking.
“Amen,” says Thomas devoutly.
“But what about Katherine? Oh, Thomas. Do you think the queen will free her now? She can’t stay at Pirgo without him.”
He takes my hand and holds it between his broad palms. “No, pretty one. That’s the bad news on top of bad news. They’re sending her to William Petre. I myself saw the guard ride out to fetch her, as if she were a prisoner likely to break out. They’re not freeing her, they’re moving her, and will keep her even closer.”
I frown. “Sir William Petre? Is he still alive? I thought he was sick. He must be a hundred and two, at least.”
He shakes his head. “He’s not yet sixty, but they’re putting a heavy burden on him. Perhaps he was the only one who lacked the skills to wriggle out of it.” He looks at me, his big face creased with concern. “It might be all right. He has a pretty house; she may like it there. Her little boy may be allowed to play out in the gardens.”
“Where? Where does he live?”
“Ingatestone Hall in Essex. You’ve been there, do you remember it? It’s halfway to New Hall.”
“I have to see her,” I say with sudden determination. “I have to go and see her. I can’t stand this any longer.”
I wait until Elizabeth has finished the dinner and danced with the new earl, Robert Dudley. He exerts himself to charm Elizabeth and make her laugh, and everyone continues to congratulate them on his rise to greatness, and her good judgment in recognizing the extraordinary value of this man. But has she done enough to persuade Queen Mary to have him? Baron or not, earl or not, Mary Queen of Scots will not have Elizabeth’s castoffs without a firm promise that she will be given my sister’s rights, and the conference at Berwick between the Scots and English advisors is struggling to make an agreement. Elizabeth is determined that Mary shall marry Robert Dudley and be named as her heir. Mary insists that the inheritance comes before the marriage. Nobody asks how two queens who trust each other so little can make a lasting agreement.
But at least Elizabeth is in a happy mood tonight. I hold out her satin nightgown, warmed before the fire, as someone else serves sweetmeats and a third lady-in-waiting brings sweet wine for her, while the grooms of the bedchamber stab the bed and look underneath it for enemies, as if we truly believe that she is going to spend more than ten minutes in there once the door is shut. I wait till she is settled in her chair by the fire and she has everything that she might want, and I go towards her and kneel.
“Don’t go any lower, Lady Mary, or you will fall under the log basket,” she says, and everyone laughs. I feel Thomasina’s steady gaze on my face as I am insulted before them all. I rise to my full height. Even now I am only level with Elizabeth’s unfriendly eyes.
“Your Majesty, I ask you for a very great favor,” I say quietly.
“Have you thought carefully?” she asks. “Before asking me for a great favor?”
“I have.”
Her eyes dance with amusement. “Which of you, though he took thou therefore, could put one cubit unto his stature?”
I flush scarlet as everyone sycophantically laughs at the queen’s wit. “I want to add luster to your reputation for mercy, not height to myself,” I say quietly. I can feel Thomasina’s eyes on my face as if they would burn me.
The good humor is wiped from the queen’s face as if she had taken a sponge to the white lead. “I can think of no one who deserves my mercy,” she remarks.
“My sister Katherine,” I say very quietly. “We have lost our uncle, her jailer. I have just learned that he has died of grief at Your Majesty’s displeasure. The turning away of your beautiful countenance has killed him. I know that Katherine my sister does not eat, and cries all day. She suffers, too, under her great queen’s disfavor. I fear that she has not the courage to live without your goodwill. I beg you, at the very least, to let me visit her.”
She takes just a moment to consider my petition. I see that Thomasina is holding her breath. Her ladies wait. I wait.
“No,” she says.
I can only write to Katherine.
My dear sister,
I hope that you can be comfortable at Ingatestone, and that your little boy brings you joy. I know you will have heard comforting news from Hanworth. Your oldest boy and the earl, his father, are both well, and long to be with you again.
I am well at court, and Her Majesty is so filled with grace and tenderness, so judicious with her great power, that I don’t doubt you will be forgiven some day soon. I do ask for you.
Oh Katherine, I miss you so much.
With love
Your sister
Mary
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON,
WINTER 1564
While I wait and hope for a reply, Sir William Cecil walks beside me in the gallery one day, shortening his long stride to my little paces, and bending down so that he can see my face.
“I hear that you have written to your sister?”
I imagine he read the letter the minute that I gave it to my page and asked him to deliver it to Katherine at Ingatestone. Indeed, the last paragraph was written for the queen to see.
“Yes,” I say guardedly. “No one told me that I was not allowed to write to her. I was inquiring after her health and assuring her of my sisterly love.”
“The letter was perfectly allowable,” he assures me. He stops and, with a little tip of his head, invites me to sit beside him in a window seat, where he can see my face without stooping. I pull over a low stool and use it as a step to climb up. He knows that I do not want assistance, and when I am settled, he sits beside me.
“I have sorrowful news for you about Lord Hertford,” he says.
My first thought is that my brother-in-law has died. I think that the news will be the end of my sister. I grit my teeth and say nothing. I raise my eyes to his face and wait for him to speak.
“He has been taken from the care of his mother and sent to live with Sir John Mason in his house in London,” William Cecil says.
“Why?”
The old courtier shrugs his shoulders, as if to tell me that he cannot say, and anyway, I know as well as he does that there will be no good reason. Elizabeth has no cause for her spite against Ned and his little boy, my sister’s son, except that he was at her court and fell in love with another woman. “I am sorry for it,” he says heavily.
“And Teddy, the little boy, goes with his father?”
Cecil bows his head. “No.”
I can hardly speak for distress. “Where has she taken Katherine’s boy?”
“He is left with his grandmother at Hanworth. He can live more freely with her in his family home.”
“Raised as an orphan?”
“In his family home, by his grandmother. He will be safe under her guidance.”
“My God, Katherine will be heartbroken!”
Elizabeth’s advis
or knows all about heartbreak. He only nods.
I steady myself. “Is there anything we can do?” I ask quietly. “Anything? Is there anything we can do to get them all back together again?”
“Not yet,” he says gently. “But I have some hopes.”
“What?”
“If the Scots marriage between the queen and Robert Dudley is given up, then the Scots queen will never be named as heir to England. Our queen will see that she has no heir but Lady Katherine.”
“And is the marriage between the Queen of Scots and Robert Dudley given up?” I ask.
Cecil chooses his words. “The Scots have called the bluff,” he says quietly. “They have said that they will accept him, if their queen is declared heir to England. They have invited him to Edinburgh, but now that it comes to it, I think Her Majesty won’t order him to go. We cannot deliver Robert Dudley. He will stay in England.”
This is enormous news that William Cecil tells me so quietly. Once again, there is no Protestant heir but my sister. As I take a shuddering breath I see that William Cecil is watching me.
“Whatever Her Majesty wishes,” I say humbly.
William Cecil nods his approval. “I am sure she will judge rightly.”
He draws a letter from inside his black velvet jacket. “This came first to me, as it must. But it is for you. I am sorry there is no good news.”
I look at the broken seal. It is from Katherine. I smile at her defiance. She is using the Seymour seal of angel wings on her folded letter. The seal has been broken and the letter read. Sir William’s spies see everything. He gets to his feet, bows to me, and leaves me to read my letter from my sister.