Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2: The Queen’s Fool, The Virgin’s Lover, The Other Queen. Philippa Gregory
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Lady Mary rose to her feet, her eyes narrowed with anxiety. ‘Send out Mr Tomlinson into Ware, tell him to go on to Bishop Stortford if need be, tell him to get reports from other churches. See if this is happening everywhere.’
The girl bobbed a curtsey, picked up her skirts and ran back into the house.
‘What does it mean?’ I asked, scrambling to my feet.
She looked at me without seeing me. ‘It means that Northumberland has started to move against me. First, he does not warn me how ill my brother is. Then, he commands the priests to leave Elizabeth and me from the prayers; next, he will command them to mention another, the king’s new heir. Then, when my poor brother is dead, they will arrest me, arrest Elizabeth, and put their false prince on the throne.’
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘Edward Courtenay,’ she said decisively. ‘My cousin. He is the only one Northumberland would choose, since he cannot put himself or his sons on the throne.’
I suddenly saw it. The wedding feast, the white face of Lady Jane Grey, the bruises at her throat as if someone had taken her by the neck to shake their ambition into her. ‘Oh, but he can: Lady Jane Grey,’ I said.
‘Newly wed to Northumberland’s son Guilford,’ Lady Mary agreed. She paused for a moment. ‘I would not have thought they would have dared. Her mother, my cousin, would have to step aside, she would have to resign her claim for her daughter. But Jane is a Protestant, and Dudley’s father commands the keys to the kingdom.’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘My God! She is such a Protestant. She has out-Protestanted Elizabeth, and that must have taken some doing. She has Protestanted her way into my brother’s will. She has Protestanted her way into treason, God forgive her, the poor little fool. They will take her and destroy her, poor girl. But first, they will destroy me. They have to. Robbing me of the prayers of my people is only the first thing. Next, they will arrest me, then there will be some charge and I will be executed.’
Her pale face suddenly drained even paler and I saw her stagger. ‘My God, what of Elizabeth? He will kill us both,’ she whispered. ‘He will have to. Otherwise there will be rebellions against him from both Protestant and Catholic. He has to be rid of me to be rid of men of courage of the true faith. But he has to be rid of Elizabeth too. Why would a Protestant follow Queen Jane and a cat’s-paw like Guilford Dudley if they could have Elizabeth for queen? If I am dead, she is the next heir, a Protestant heir. He must be planning to forge some charge of treason against us both; one of us is not enough. Elizabeth and I will be dead within three months.’
She strode away from me by a couple of paces, and then she turned and came back again. ‘I must save Elizabeth,’ she said. ‘Whatever else happens. I must warn her not to go to London. She must come here. They shall not take my throne from me. I have not come so far and borne so much for them to rob me of my country, and plunge my country into sin. I will not fail now.’
She turned towards the house. ‘Come, Hannah!’ she threw over her shoulder. ‘Come quickly!’
She wrote to warn Elizabeth, she wrote for advice. I did not see either letter; but that night I took the manuscript Lord Robert had given to me, and using my father’s letter as the base of the code I carefully wrote out the message. ‘M is much alarmed that she is left out of the prayers. She believes that Lady J will be named heir. She has written to Eliz to warn her. And to the Sp ambassador for advice.’ I paused then. It was arduous work, translating every letter into another, but I wanted to write something, a line, a word, to remind him of me, to prompt him to recall me to court. Some line, some simple thing that he would read and think of me, not as his spy, not as a fool, but as me, myself, a girl who had promised to serve him heart and soul, for love.
‘I miss you,’ I wrote, and then I scratched it out, not even troubling to translate it into code.
‘When can I come home?’ went the same way.
‘I am frightened,’ was the most honest of all the confessions.
In the end I wrote nothing, there was nothing I could think of that would turn Lord Robert’s attention to me, while the boy king was dying and his own young white-faced sister-in-law was stepping up to the throne of England and bringing the Dudley family to absolute greatness.
Then there was nothing to do but to wait for news of the death of the king to come from London. Lady Mary had her own private messages coming and going. But every three days or so she received a letter from the duke to tell her that the fine weather was doing its business and the king was on the mend, that his fever had broken, that his chest pains were better, that a new doctor had been appointed who had high hopes that the king would be well by midsummer. I watched Lady Mary read these optimistic notes through once, saw her eyes narrow slightly in disbelief; and then she folded them and put them away in a drawer in her writing desk, and never looked at them again.
Then, in the first days of July, one letter made her snatch her breath and put a hand to her heart.
‘How is the king, my Lady?’ I asked her. ‘Not worse?’
Her colour burned in her cheeks. ‘The duke says that he is better, that he has rallied and that he wants to see me.’ She rose to her feet and paced to the window. ‘Please God he is indeed better,’ she said quietly to herself. ‘Better, and wanting to restore me to our old affection, better, and seeing through his false advisors. Perhaps God has given him strength to get well and to come to a right understanding at last. Or at least well enough to put a stop to this plot. Oh, Mother of God, guide me in what I should do.’
‘Shall we go?’ I asked. I was on my feet already at the thought of returning to London, to court, to see Lord Robert again, to see my father, and Daniel, back to the relative safety of the men who would protect me.
I saw her shoulders straighten as she took the decision. ‘If he asks for me, of course I have to go. Tell them to get the horses ready. We’ll leave tomorrow.’
She went from the room with a rustle of her thick skirts, and I heard her calling to her ladies to pack their clothes, we were all going to London. I heard her run up stairs, her feet pattering on the bare wooden treads like those of a young girl, and then her voice, light and excited, as she called back down to Jane Dormer to take especial care to pack her finest jewels for if the king was indeed well then there would be dancing and feasting at court.
Next day we were on the road, Lady Mary’s pennant before us, her soldiers around us, and the country people tumbling out of their houses in the small villages to call out blessings on her name, and holding up their children for them to see her: a real princess, and a pretty smiling princess at that.
Lady Mary on horseback was a different woman from the white-faced half-prisoner that I had first met at Hunsdon. Riding towards London with the people of England cheering her on, she looked like a true princess. She wore a deep red gown and jacket, which made her dark eyes shine. She rode well, one hand in a worn red glove on the bridle, the other waving to everyone who called out to her, the colour blazing in her cheeks, a stray lock of rich brown hair escaping from her hat, her head up, her courage high, her weariness all gone. She sat well in the saddle, proud as a queen, swaying with the pace of the horse as we made our way to the great road to London.
I rode beside her for much of the way, the little bay pony that the duke had given me stepping out to keep pace with Lady Mary’s bigger horse. She commanded me to sing the songs of my Spanish childhood, and sometimes she recognised the words or the tune as something her mother had once sung to her, and she would sing with me, a little quaver in her voice at the memory of the mother who had loved her.
We rode hard along the London road, splashing through the fords at their summertime low, cantering where the tracks were soft enough. She was desperate to get to court to discover what was happening. I remembered John Dee’s mirror and how I had guessed at the date of the king’s death, the sixth of July, but I did not dare to say anything. I had spoken the name of the next Queen of