Philippa Gregory - The other queen

He understands nothing but loyalty and honor. “Yes, yes, once she is crowned queen you change sides and then it is the honorable thing to do. But how will we and our children and our fortunes be secure. Now. In these dangerous days. While everything hangs in the balance. When we cannot tell which queen will be crowned in London.”

He shakes his head. “There is no safety,” he says. “There is no safety for anyone in England now. I just have to follow the crown.”

I go then, and order them to wake the castle and turn out the guard. The great bell starts tolling like a heart booming with fear. I send them running to the kitchen to get all the stores loaded on wagons, I shout for my steward of the household to pack the most valuable goods, as we will have to take them with us, and then I go to her quarters, to the other queen’s rooms, shaking with anger that she should bring such dire trouble upon us this day, and so much more trouble to come in the days that will follow.

And as I run I open the little piece of paper that came for me, scribbled with my name, in the package from London. It is from Cecil.

If you are in danger of being captured by the army of the North, she must be killed. Hastings will do it, or if he is dead you must command your husband in the queen’s name. Or anyone whose loyalty you trust, whose silence you can guarantee. If there is no one left alive but you women, you will have to do it yourself. Carry a knife. Burn this.

At last! I think, Good God! At last! as I hear the bell tolling, and know at once that the war has started. At last they have come for me, and only a day to spare before I would have been kidnapped by that brute Hastings. I wake and dress, as fast as I can, my hands trembling with laces, and start to pack the things I must take with me, burning the letters from my ambassador, from my betrothed, from the Spanish ambassador, from his agent Ridolfi, from Bothwell. I wait for the countess or for Shrewsbury to come and beg me to hurry, hurry to run away from this castle that they cannot defend. I shall travel with them. I shall obey their orders. I dare not defy them and risk Hastings’ snatching me from them. My only safety is to stay with Shrewsbury until my army catches us.

I won’t leave Shrewsbury until I am safe with my own army. I dare not. He has been my only friend in England; I have seen no other man that I can trust. And he has never been anything but kind to me. He has never been anything but honorable. A woman with a man like this at her side would be safe. God knows how much I long to be safe.

Westmorland has sworn to me he will come wherever I am. Only if they take the road to London and to the Tower must I make my escape. If Elizabeth, in her fear, tries to put me in the dungeon where she herself waited for her death sentence, I must get away.

I don’t need to resist them, for while this war is waging, it does not matter where they take me. The lords will demand my freedom as part of their settlement with Elizabeth, wherever I am hidden. They will demand the right to our religion and the right to my freedom, and with the North up in arms she will be forced to agree. The North has always been another kingdom; Elizabeth’s rule has never run north of the Trent. No Tudor has ever ventured farther than York. If the northerners defy her she will have to make an agreement with them, whatever her preferences.

Beyond all this is a greater plan, an ambitious plan that I do not sanction. I dare not sanction it. I will not make war against a queen on her throne. But of course they all think that if a battle is joined, and it goes their way, then they can march on London. They can take me to the very throne of England itself. This is what Philip of Spain and his ambassador want. This is why his banker Roberto Ridolfi has paid over a fortune in Spanish gold. To put me on the throne not only of Scotland, but of England too. This is nothing more than my right. Elizabeth is a disowned bastard of the late King Henry; I am the granddaughter of his sister. I am the true heir and I should have the throne. I was raised to claim it as my own. They call it the “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.