Philippa Gregory - The Queen’s Fool

“Your Grace, it is not good news,” Bishop Gardiner said flatly. “The rebels are marching against you. My young friend Edward Courtenay has seen the wisdom to confess to me and throw himself on your mercy.”

I saw her eyes flicker away, to one side, as her swift intelligence assessed this information; but her expression did not otherwise alter at all, she was still smiling. “And Edward tells you?”

“That a plot is in train to march on London, to put you in the Tower and to set the Lady Elizabeth on the throne in your place. We have the names of some of them: Sir William Pickering, Sir Peter Carew in Devon, Sir Thomas Wyatt in Kent, and Sir James Crofts.”

For the first time she looked shaken. “Peter Carew, who turned out for me in my time of need, in the autumn? Who raised the men of Devon for me?”

“Yes.”

“And Sir James Crofts, my good friend?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

I kept back behind her. These were the very men that my lord had named to me, that he had asked me to name to John Dee. These were the men who were to make a chemical wedding and to pull down silver and replace it with gold. Now I thought I knew what he meant. I thought I knew which queen was silver and which was gold in his metaphor. And I thought that I had again betrayed the queen while taking her wage, and that it would not be long before someone discovered who had been the catalyst in this plot.

She took a breath to steady herself. “Any others?”

Bishop Gardiner looked at me. I flinched back from his gaze but it went on past me. He did not even see me, he had to give her the worst news. “The Duke of Suffolk is not at his house in Sheen, and no one knows where he has gone.”

I saw Jane Dormer stiffen in the window seat. If the Duke of Suffolk had disappeared then it could mean only one thing: he was raising his hundreds of tenants and retainers to restore the throne to his daughter Jane. We were faced with an uprising for Elizabeth and a rebellion for Queen Jane. Those two names could turn out more than half of the country, and all the courage and determination that Queen Mary had shown before could come to nothing now.

“And Lady Elizabeth? Does she know of this? Is she at Ashridge still?”

“Courtenay says that she was on the brink of marriage with him, and the two of them were to take your throne and rule together. Thank God the lad has seen sense and come over to us in time. She knows of everything, she is waiting in readiness. The King of France will support her claim and send a French army to put her on the throne. She may even now be riding to head the rebel army.”

I saw the queen’s color drain from her face. “Are you sure of this? My Elizabeth would have marched to my execution?”

“Yes,” the duke said flatly. “She is up to her pretty ears in it.”

“Thank God Courtenay has told us of this now,” the bishop interrupted. “There may still be time for us to get you safely away.”

“I would have thanked Courtenay more if he had the sense never to engage in it,” my queen countered sharply. “Your young friend is a fool, my lord, and a weak disloyal fool at that.” She did not wait for his defense. “So what must we do?”

The duke stepped forward. “You must go to Framlingham at once, Your Grace. And we will put a warship on standby to take you out of the country to Spain. This is a battle you cannot win. Once you’re safe in Spain perhaps you can regroup, perhaps Prince Philip…”

I saw her grip on the back of her chair tighten. “It is a mere six months since I rode into London from Framlingham,” she said. “The people wanted me as queen then.”

“You were their choice in preference to the Duke of Northumberland with Queen Jane as his puppet,” he brutally reminded her. “Not instead of Elizabeth. The people want the Protestant religion and the Protestant princess. Indeed, they may be prepared to die for it. They won’t have you with Prince Philip of Spain as king.”

“I won’t leave London,” she said. “I have waited all my life for my mother’s throne, I shan’t abandon it now.”

“You have no choice,” he warned her. “They will be at the gates of the city within days.”

“I will wait till that moment.”

“Your Grace,” Bishop Gardiner said. “You could withdraw to Windsor at least…”

Queen Mary rounded on him. “Not to Windsor, not to the Tower, not to anywhere but here! I am England’s princess and I will stay here in my palace until they tell me that they want me as England’s princess no more. Don’t speak to me of leaving, my lords, for I will not consider it.”

The bishop retreated from her passion. “As you wish, Your Grace. But these are troubled times and you are risking your life…”

“The times may be troubled, but I am not troubled,” she said fiercely.

“You are gambling with your life as well as your throne,” the duke almost shouted at her.

“I know that!” she exclaimed.

He took a breath. “Do I have your command to muster the royal guard, and the city’s trained bands and lead them out against Wyatt in Kent?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “But there must be no sieges of towns and no sacking of villages.”

“It cannot be done!” he protested. “In battle, one cannot protect the battle ground.”

“These are your orders,” she insisted icily. “I will not have a civil war fought over my wheat fields, especially in these starving times. These rebels must be put down like vermin. I won’t have innocent people hurt by the hunt.”

For a moment he looked as if he would argue. Then she leaned toward him. “Trust me in this,” she said persuasively. “I know. I am a virgin queen, my only children are my people. They have to see that I love them and care for them. I cannot get married on a tide of their innocent blood. This has to be gently done, and firmly done, and done only once. Can you do it for me?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. He was too afraid to waste time in flattery. “Nobody can do it. They are gathering in their hundreds, in their thousands. These people understand only one thing and that is force. They understand gibbets at the crossroads and heads on pikes. You cannot rule Englishmen and be merciful, Your Grace.”

“You are mistaken,” she said, going head to head with him, as determined as he was. “I came to this throne by a miracle and God does not change his mind. We will win these men back by the love of God. You have to do it as I command. It has to be done as God would have it, or His miracle cannot take place.”

The duke looked as if he would have argued.

“It is my command,” she said flatly.

He shrugged and bowed. “As you command then,” he said. “Whatever the consequences.”

She looked over his head to me, her face quizzical, as if to ask what I thought. I made a little bow, I did not want her to know the sense of immense dread that I felt.

I came to wish that I had warned her in that moment. The Duke of Norfolk took the apprentice boys from London and the queen’s own guard, and marched them down to Kent to meet Wyatt’s force in a set-piece battle, which should have routed the men from Kent in a day. But the moment the royal army faced Wyatt’s men and saw their honest faces and their determination, our forces, who had sworn to protect the queen, threw their caps in the air and shouted, “We are all Englishmen!”

Not a shot was fired. They embraced each other as brothers and turned against their commander, united against the queen. The duke, desperate to escape with his life, hared back to London, having done nothing but add a trained force to Wyatt’s raggle-taggle army who came onward, even more quickly, even more determined than they were before, right up to the gates of London.

The sailors on the warships on the Medway, always a powerful bellwether of opinion, deserted to Wyatt in a body, abandoning the queen’s cause, united by their hatred of Spain, and determined to have a Protestant English queen. They took the small arms from the ships, the stores, and their skill as fighting men. I remembered how the arrival of the ships’ companies from Yarmouth had changed everything for us at Framlingham. We had known then, when the sailors had joined us to fight on land, that it was a battle by the people, and that the people united could not be defeated. Now they were united once more, but this time against us. When she heard the news from the Medway, I thought that the queen must realize she had lost.

She sat down with a much diminished council in a room filled with the acrid smell of fear.

“Half of them have fled to their homes in the country,” she told Jane Dormer as she looked at the empty seats around the table. “And they will be writing letters to Elizabeth now, trying to balance their scales, trying to join the winning side.”

She was harassed by advice. Those who had stayed at court were divided between men who said that she should cancel the marriage, and promise to choose a Protestant prince for a husband, and those who were begging her to call in the Spanish to help put down the rebellion with exemplary savagery.

“And thus prove to everyone that I cannot rule alone!” the queen exclaimed.

Thomas Wyatt’s army, swelled by recruits from every village on the London road, reached the south bank of the Thames on a wave of enthusiasm, and found London Bridge raised against them, and the guns of the Tower trained on the southern bank ready for them.

“They are not to open fire,” the queen ruled.

“Your Grace, for the love of God…”

She shook her head. “You want me to open fire on Southwark, a village that greeted me so kindly as queen? I will not fire on the people of London.”

“The rebels are encamped within range now. We could open fire and destroy them in one cannonade.”

“They will have to stay there until we can raise an army to drive them away.”