Philippa Gregory - The other queen

“Bess, I am afraid of Henry Hastings. He can wish me nothing but harm. Let me stay with you. I demand it. I command you. Write to Cecil and tell him I demand to stay with Lord Shrewsbury.”

But the way I say her husband’s name, “Chowsbewwy,” suddenly triggers her rage.

“You have spent half my husband’s fortune, my own fortune,” she spits out. “The fortune I brought to him on my marriage. You have cost him his reputation with his queen; she doubts our loyalty because of you. She has ordered him to London for questioning. What do you think they will do to him? They think we favor you.” She pauses, and I see the evil flash of her jealousy, the envy of an older woman for my youth, for my looks. I had not thought that she felt this. I had not known that she saw how her husband is with me. “They think that my husband favors you. It will not be hard to find witnesses to say that he favors you. Exceptionally.”

“Alors, Bess, you know very well—”

“No, I don’t know,” she says icily. “I don’t know anything about his feelings for you, or yours for him, or your so-called magic, your so-called charm, your famous beauty. I don’t know why he cannot say no to you, why he squanders his wealth on you, even my own fortune on you. I don’t know why he has risked everything to try to set you free. Why he has not guarded you more closely, kept you to your rooms, cut down your court. But he cannot do it anymore. You will have to resign yourself. You can try your charms on the Earl of Huntingdon and see how they work on him.”

“Huntingdon is Queen Elizabeth’s man,” I say desperately. “You know this. He is her kin. He courted her for marriage. He is the next heir to her throne after me and my boy. Do you think I can charm him?”

“God knows, you are welcome to try,” she says sourly, curtsies and walks backwards to the door.

“Or what?” I ask as she goes. “Or what? What will become of me in his keeping? You are sending me to my death and you know it. Bess!Bess!”

Icannot sleep. I cannot eat either as it happens. I cannot sit quietly in my chair or take any pleasure in riding out. I have bought four days of safety for her by arguing that they have not a strong-enough guard, that with the Northern army on the march—who knows where?—they dare not ride out with her. They could take her straight into an ambush. No one knows how many men have joined the Northern lords. No one knows where they are now. Hastings, grumbling, has sent for more of his men.

“Why bother?” Bess asks me, her brown eyes cold. “Since she has to go anyway. Why see that Hastings has a strong guard? I should have thought you would have wanted her to be rescued.”

I want to tell her, “Because I would say anything to keep her under the same roof as me for another day.” But that would make no sense at all. So I remark, “The news from all around is that Westmorland and Northumberland are on the move and their army is more than two thousand strong. I don’t want to send them out into trouble. It does us no good at all if they go from here into an ambush.”

Bess nods, but she does not look convinced. “We don’t want her trapped here,” she says. “The army will swarm to her like wasps to a jam pot. Better she goes than they set siege to us here. Better that she goes sooner rather than later. We don’t want her here. We don’t want her army coming here for her.”

I nod. The newlywed husband and wife that we were only months ago did not want her here, interrupting our happiness. But us? Now we are divided in our wishes. Bess thinks only of how to get herself and her fortune safe through this dangerous time. And for some reason, I cannot think at all. I cannot plan at all. I think I must have a touch of the gout that I had before. I have never felt so light-headed and so weary and so sick. I seem to spend hours looking out the window across the courtyard to where her shutters are closed. I must beill. I can think of nothing but that I have only four days left with her under my roof, and I can’t even devise a reason to go across the courtyard and speak to her. Four days and I may spend them like a dog sitting outside a shut door, not knowing how to get in. I am howling inside my head.

It is dawn when I hear the hammering on the great house gate. I am awake at once, certain that it is the Northern army come for her. George does not move; he lies like a stone, though I know he is wide awake; he never seems to sleep these days. He lies and listens with his eyes shut; he will not talk to me or give me any chance to talk to him. Even now, with the hammering at the door, he does not move—he is a man who has had someone else to open his door for all his life. I get crossly out of bed, pull a robe around my nakedness, tie the strings, and run to the door and down the stairs to where the gate-keeper is swinging open the gate and a mud-stained rider clatters into the courtyard, his face white in the dawn light. Thank God it is a messenger from London and not a force from the North. Thank God they have not come for her and no one here to face them but me in my nightgown and my husband left abed, lying like a gravestone.

“Name?” I demand.

“From Cecil.”

“What is it?”

“War,” he says shortly. “Finally it is war. The North is up; the lords Westmorland and Northumberland have declared against the queen, their men out, their banners unfurled. They are riding under the banner of the five wounds of Christ; every Papist in the country is flocking to join them. They have sworn to restore the true religion, to pay proper rates to working men, and”—he nods to the royal lodgings—“free her and put her back on her throne.”

I clutch the robe to my throat; the chill air is as icy as dread. The mist coming off the water meadows is as wet as rain. “They are coming here? You are sure?”

“For certainty. Here. Your orders,” he says, digging into his satchel and thrusting a crumpled letter at me. With a breath of relief, as if paper alone can save me, I recognize Cecil’s writing.

“How far are they? How strong the army?” I demand, as he swings down from the saddle.

“I didn’t see them, thank God, on my way here, but who knows?” he says tersely. “Some say they will take York first, others Durham. They could take York and restore the kingdom of the North. It will be the great wars all over again, but worse. Two queens, two faiths on crusade, two armies, and a fight to the death. If the Spanish land their army for her, which they can do within days from the Spanish Netherlands, it will be all over, and we will be dead.”

“Get what you want from the kitchen, but say nothing to them,” I tell him and go back to my bedroom at a run. George is sitting up in bed, his face grim.

“Wife?” he asks.

“Read this,” I say, thrusting it at him and climbing on the bed.

He takes the letter and breaks the seal. “What’s happening?”

“The messenger says that the lords of the North have their army and are on the march,” I say briefly. “They have declared war. They are coming here for her.”

He shoots a quick look at me and spreads the letter. “This is from Cecil. He says we are to get away south immediately. We have to take her to the castle at Coventry at once for safekeeping. He will command us from there. We have to get south before they rescue her. We must go at once.” He jumps from the bed. “Sound the alarm,” he says. “I shall have to rouse the guard and take her at once. And you go to her and tell her she has to make ready to leave at once.”

I pause at the doorway, struck by a bitter thought. “I wager she knows all about it,” I say suddenly. “They will have told her when they visited. When you let her talk with them in private. She will be in their confidence. She will have had secret letters. She has probably been waiting for them all this last week.”

“Just get her ready to leave.”

“What if she won’t go?”

“Then I will have to tie her to her horse,” he says. “An army of fifty could take this place in an hour. And half our servants would free her for love, and open the gates for her. If they set a siege we are lost.”

I am so glad to hear of his planned brutality to her that I am halfway out the door before the thought strikes me. “But wait, my lord. Wait! What if they win?”

He checks in his rapid dressing, the laces for his riding trousers in his hands. “If they win?”

“What if the army of the North takes and holds the North? What if Westmorland and Northumberland are victorious and march on London? What if the Spanish arrive to support them? What if Howard brings in the east of the country and the Cornish get up for the old religion, the Welsh too? What if they defeat Elizabeth, and we are imprisoning the future queen? What if you are tying the next Queen of England to her horse? Then we are traitors and will die in the Tower.”

My husband shakes his head, baffled. “I serve the queen,” he says flatly. “I have given my word as a Talbot. I have to do as my king commands. I don’t serve the side that I guess might win. I serve the king. Whatever it costs me. If Mary Queen of Scots is victorious and becomes Mary Queen of England, then I will serve her. But till then, I serve the crowned queen, Elizabeth.”