The Other Queen (23 page)

“great enterprise of England” and they swear it can be done. If the people of England rise to defend their faith, shall they consent to a settlement that leaves a heretic on the throne to rule them? What is the point of rising against Elizabeth unless we throw her down forever? The people of England want a queen of their faith, one pledged to tolerance and fairness who will restore the church and the old ways of England.

This is not my plan, I do not plot treason. I would never encourage rebellion against an anointed queen, however badly she has betrayed me, however false her claim. But I have lived long enough to know that all things are decided by God. When the tide is running strongly it will carry all the boats. If God gives us a great victory and the army of the North rides on to take London, then it is God who gives me the throne of England and I would be an ungrateful daughter to refuse it.

I think of Elizabeth, flying to Windsor Castle with double guards posted at the gates, the trained bands of London called to arms, scrambling to find their weapons, scouts racing up the north road, terrified that at any moment the army of the North will come marching south and demand her exile or her death, and I find myself hard-pressed not to laugh aloud at the thought of her fear.

Now she knows how it feels when your people turn against you. Now she knows the terror that I felt when I heard that they would dare to wage war against their own anointed queen. She let my people rise up against me, without punishment. She let them know that they could rebel against me, their God-given ruler, and throw me from my throne, and now the people rise against her, and if they throw her down, who shall save her? She should have thought of that before now! I bet she is shaking in her shoes, looking out of her window at the river, straining her eyes for the first sign of the sails of the Spanish ships.

She is prone to fear; by now she will be sick with terror. The French are sworn to support me, the Spanish are my loyal friends. The Holy Father himself prays for me by name and says I should be restored. But Elizabeth? Who is Elizabeth’s friend? A rabble of Huguenots in France, a couple of German princes, who else? None! She is alone. And now she is facing her own countrymen, alone.

I do everything I am bidden, packing my clothes, boxing my books and my jewels, giving my new tapestry to Mary to carry for me, and running down the stone stairs to the stable yard with the bell tolling out a warning, the maids screaming, and the dogs barking.

It is raining, a fine cold drizzle, which will mean the roads will churn into mud under our horses’ hooves and travel will be painfully slow. The soldiers are pale-faced in the dawn light, fearing the powder for their pistols will be damp and they will have to face the horsemen of the North without weapons.

Everyone but me looks half-sick with terror.

Anthony Babington, Bess’s sweetest young page, comes to me as I am getting into my saddle and whispers to me the code word that tells me I can trust him: “Sunflower.”

It is theimpresa of my girlhood, my chosen badge, the sunflower, which turns to light and warmth and hope. “Send a message to them if you can, to tell them where I am going,” I whisper to him, hardly looking at him, as he tightens the girth on my horse and straightens the reins for me. “I don’t know where they are taking me. South, somewhere.”

His honest boy’s face beams up at me. Bless the child. His brown eyes are filled with adoration. “But I know,” he says joyfully. “I heard my lord talking. Coventry. I will tell them.”

“But you take care,” I warn him. “Take no risks. You are too young to put your head in a noose.”

He flushes. “I am eight,” he says stoutly, as if it were a great age. “And I have been in service since I was six.”

“You are a young man of courage,” I say to him, and see his boyish flush.

All the way along the road, as we ride as fast as we dare in the gray light of a wintry dawn, I see the men looking to the left and to the right, listening for the sound of drums and pipes, fearfully alert for the great army of the men of the North. They fear that they will round a bend in the road and find a wall of men, waiting to take me. They fear that even now the horsemen are closing on us, coming up on us from the rear, gaining on us however fast we ride. They know that coming down the road behind us are men who have sworn to restore the true religion and the true queen, an army on the march under the very banner of Christ, in His very name, riding to revenge sacrilege against their church, treason against their queen, sin against their country’s history. My captors know they are in the wrong, know they are outnumbered and defeated before they start. They march at speed, almost at a run, their heads down and their faces gray; they are men in abject terror.

Agnes and Mary and I ride three abreast in silence, a secret smile passing between us from time to time, hard put not to laugh out loud. I look ahead and there is poor Shrewsbury, his face stony with worry, his eyes raking the horizon. Beside him rides my lord Hastings, his face grim, a sword at his side, an assassin’s dagger hidden in his coat. He will not enjoy the experience of running before a greater force; he will hate the stink of panic that his men give off as they hurry along the road.

Bustling behind us, left far behind as usual, is the redoubtable countess Bess, organizing stores to follow us, no doubt sending messengers to London for news, desperate to end up on the right side, desperate to know what the right side will be. I shan’t have her in my household whatever side she decides to turn her coat. I don’t forget she would have handed me over to Hastings. I don’t forget she fears that I want her husband. I so despise a jealous wife and I have spent my life hounded by the fears of less beautiful women.

She was in the courtyard as we scrambled into the saddle; she was at my side as her husband lifted me up to my horse, trust her not to give us a moment together. She was there even before the page boy Babington. She took my hand and raised her strained face to me. “I swear you will be safe,” she promised quietly. “If you are in danger I will come to you and set you free. If Cecil sends word that you are to be taken to the Tower, I shall get you safely away. I am on your side. I have always been on your side.”

I did not let her see my leap of joy.Non, vraiment! Of course, I have no expectation of her saving me, she is such a liar! This promise is nothing but her desperate bid to hold both sides at once. But what this tells me is that she thinks the Northern army will win. Whatever news she has from London, it warns her that things are going badly for Elizabeth’s men, so badly that Bess wants me to know that she is my friend. She has the news from London in her pocket and now she wants to be my ally. I am watching Bess, Countess of Shrewsbury, turn her back on everything she believes in, desperate to be on the winning side. I don’t laugh out loud, I don’t even let her see my amusement. I press her hand gently in mine. “You have been a good friend to me, Countess,” I say sweetly. “I shall not forget you or your husband when I come to my own again.”

When a woman thinks her husband is a fool, her marriage is over. They may part in one year or ten; they may live together until death. But if she thinks he is a fool, she will not love him again.

So think I, jogging down the road south, my head bowed against a freezing sleety drizzle, Tutbury abandoned behind me, a battle or, worse, a defeat before me. A murder commanded of me, and a treason trial hanging over me. This tragedy has happened to me. Me, who thought that I had chosen so well, that I would end my life a countess, with a husband I admired, in a house that is one of the best in England. Now I am riding behind a train of wagons carrying my most valuable goods, desperate to get them stowed somewhere safe before we are plundered, trapped between two advancing armies. And all this because my husband is a fool.

A woman has to change her nature if she is to be a wife. She has to learn to curb her tongue, to suppress her desires, to moderate her thoughts, and to spend her days putting another first. She has to put him first even when she longs to serve herself or her children. She has to put him first even when she longs to judge for herself. She has to put him first even when she knows best. To be a good wife is to be a woman with a will of iron that you yourself have forged into a bridle to curb your own abilities. To be a good wife is to enslave yourself to a lesser person. To be a good wife is to amputate your own power as surely as the parents of beggars hack off their children’s feet for the greater benefit of the family.

If a husband is unfaithful, a good wife will wink at it. Men being who they are, she is not missing much: the quick thrill of being put up against a wall or being squashed on wet grass. If he is a gambler she can forgive him and pay off his debts. If he has a temper she can keep out of the way, or soothe him, or fight him. Anything that gets her safely through the day, until he apologizes in tears—as violent husbands so often do. But if a husband jeopardizes his wife’s house, her fortune, her prosperity, if he puts at risk the very thing she has dedicated her life to amass, then I cannot see how she can ever forgive him. The only point in being a wife is to get a house and fortune and the children to inherit them. And the terrible danger in being a wife is that the husband owns all: everything that she brings to him on marriage, everything that she inherits or earns during that marriage. By the law of the land, a wife cannot own anything independently of her husband, not her house, not her children, not herself. On marriage she signs every single thing into his keeping. So if a husband destroys what she brings him—loses the house, spends the fortune, disinherits the children, abuses her—then she can do nothing but watch herself slide into poverty.

He is a fool and I fear that she will never love him again. And she was a fool to choose him.

And yes. This is the case for me. I allow him to gamble without reproach, I avoid his occasional moments of bad temper, I even turn a blind eye to his adoration of the young queen, but I cannot forgive him for putting my house at risk. If he is found guilty of treason, they will behead him and take his possessions and I will lose Chatsworth and everything that my previous husbands and I gathered together. I cannot forgive him for taking this risk. I am more frightened by this than by the thought of his beheading. To lose Chatsworth would be to lose my life’s work. To lose Chatsworth would be to lose my very sense of myself. He is a fool, and I am Mrs. Fool, and he will make me Mrs. Fool without a house, which is worse.

Bothwell,

Written in haste—they are taking me to Coventry. Our moment is now! I can promise you a fight to win.

Come if you can, come whatever it costs you. Come now!

M

Westmorland has an army of more than a thousand at Brancepath Castle, and a note palmed to me when we stop for dinner tells me that they have already been joined by Northumberland’s men. This makes them now two thousand strong. Two thousand—this is an army that can take the North; this is an army large enough to take London.

They are on their way to free me, Norfolk marching north to join them from Kenninghall and the three holy armies, his, Northumberland’s and Westmorland’s, carrying the banner of the five wounds of Christ, will unite and ride down the road to Coventry for me.

I don’t even expect much of a battle. Shrewsbury has a couple of hundred men riding with us, and Hastings no more than forty. None of them has the stomach for a fight. Half of them are Catholic; many of them are sympathetic to my cause. I see it in their shy sideways grins when I ride among them, and in the way they duck their heads in a bow when I go by. When we march past a derelict wayside shrine, half of them cross themselves and their officers look the other way. These are men who were christened in the Papist church; why should they want anything changed? Why should they die to defend a change that has brought them nothing but disappointment?

Dusk is falling on our first day of travel as Shrewsbury comes back to ride beside me. “Not far now,” he says encouragingly. “Are you not too tired?”

“A little,” I say. “And very cold. Where are we to spend the night?”

“Ashby-de-la-Zouche,” he says. “Lord Hastings’ castle.”

I am seized with fear. “I thought…,” I begin, and then I bite off what I thought. “Do we stay here? I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to be in his house.”

He puts out his hand and touches my glove. He is as gentle as a girl. “No, no, we are here only for one night. Then we will go on.”

“He won’t keep me here? Lock me up when we arrive?”

“He cannot. You are still in my charge.”

“You won’t release me to him? Whatever he says?”

He shakes his head. “I am to take you to Coventry and keep you safe.” He checks himself. “I should not have told you where we are headed. You will not tell your ladies or your servants, please.”

I nod. We all know already. “I promise I will not. And you will keep by my side?”

“I will,” he says gently.

The road turns ahead of us and we clatter towards the looming house, dark against the darkness of the winter afternoon. I grit my teeth. I am not afraid of Hastings. I am not afraid of anyone.

Shrewsbury comes to my rooms after dinner to see that I am comfortable and well served. I half expect him to offer me my freedom, to propose some kind of escape. But I wrong him. He is a man of determined honor. Even when he is losing he will not cut his losses. He is doomed tonight, and yet he smiles at me with his usual courtesy, and I see the affection in his weary face.

“You are comfortable?” he asks me, looking around at the rich furniture which Bess has hastily unloaded and assembled in the bare rooms. “I am sorry for the poor accommodation.”

“I am well enough,” I say. “But I don’t understand why we have to ride so hard, nor where we are going.”

“There is some unrest in the northern counties and we want to ensure your safety,” he says. He shifts his feet; he cannot meet my eyes. I could love this man for his hopeless honesty; I think he is the first man I have ever known who is incapable of telling a lie.