For God’s sake, for all of our sakes, beg the queen to muster our troops and prepare to defend the borders or we are lost. If she does not fight this battle she will lose her kingdom without a struggle. As it is, I doubt that she can win. I shall send to you the moment that the king dies. Pray God that he rallies, for without him we are lost. I warn you that I do not expect it.

Nicholas.

William Cecil read the letter through twice and then pushed it gently into the hottest part of the fire in his privy chamber. Then he sat with his head in his hands for a long time. It seemed to him that England’s future lay in the hands of the surgeons who were, at this very moment, struggling to keep King Henry II of France’s breath in his failing body. The safety of England had been guaranteed at the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis by this king. Without him, there was no guarantor, there was no guarantee, there was no safety. If he died then the avaricious ruling family of France would ride their merciless cavalry through Scotland and then through all of England.

There was a knock at the door. “Yes?” Cecil said calmly, no trace of his fear in his voice.

It was his steward. “A messenger,” he said shortly.

“Send him in.”

The man came in, travel-stained, and walking with the stiff bow-legged stride of a rider who has spent days in the saddle. Cecil recognized Sir James Croft’s most trusted servant and spy.

“William! I am glad to see you. Take a seat.”

The man nodded at the courtesy and lowered himself gingerly into the chair. “Blisters,” he said by way of an explanation. “Burst and bleeding. My lord said it was important.”

Cecil nodded, waited.

“He said to tell you that all hell broke lose at Perth, that the French queen regent could not overcome the spirit of the Protestant lords. He said his bet is that she will never be able to get her troops to stand against them. They don’t have the heart for it and the Protestant Scots are wild for a fight.”

Cecil nodded.

“The Protestants are tearing the abbeys down all the way on the road to Edinburgh. Word is that the captain of Edinburgh Castle won’t take sides; he’ll bar the castle gates against them both until law is returned. My lord’s own belief is that the queen regent will have to fall back on Leith Castle. He said if you are minded to take a gamble, he would put his fortune on Knox’s men; that they are unbeatable while their blood is up.”

Cecil waited in case there was any more.

“That’s all.”

“I thank you,” Cecil said. “And what did you think of them yourself? Did you see much fighting?”

“I thought they were savage beasts,” the man said bluntly. “And I would want them neither as allies nor as enemies.”

Cecil smiled at him. “These are our noble allies,” he said firmly. “And we shall pray every day for their success in their noble battle.”

“They are wanton destroyers; they are a plague of locusts,” the man said stoutly.

“They will defeat the French for us,” Cecil prompted him, with more confidence than any sensible man would own. “If anyone asks you, they are on the side of the angels. Don’t forget it.”


That night, with Cecil’s grave news beating a rhythm of fear into her very temples, Elizabeth refused to dance with either Sir William Pickering or Sir Robert Dudley, who eyed each other like two cats on a stable roof. What use was William Pickering or Robert Dudley when the French king was dying and his heirs were mustering an expedition to England, with the excuse of a war with the Scots to hand? What use was any Englishman, however charming, however desirable?

Robert Dudley smiled at her; she could hardly see him through the haze of pain behind her eyes. Simply, she shook her head at him and turned away. She beckoned the Austrian ambassador to take a chair beside her throne and to talk to her of Archduke Ferdinand, who would come with all the power of Spain at his back and who was the only man who might bring with him a big enough army to keep England safe for her.

“You know, I have no liking for the single state,” Elizabeth said softly to the ambassador, ignoring Sir William’s goggle-eyed glare at her. “I have only waited, as any sensible maid would do, for the right man.”


Robert was planning a great tournament for when they returned to Greenwich, the last celebration before the court went on its summer progress. On his long refectory table in his pretty house at Kew, he had a scroll of paper unrolled, and his clerk was pairing the knights who would joust against each other. It was to be a tournament of roses, Robert had decided. There would be a bower of roses for the queen to sit in, with the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York and the Galicia rose which combined both colors and resolved the ancient enmity between England’s greatest counties, as the Tudors themselves had done. There would be rose petals, scattered by children dressed in rose pink before the queen when she walked from the palace door at Greenwich down to the tilt yard. The yard itself was to be blazoned with roses and all the contenders had been told that they were to incorporate roses into their poetry, or into their arms, or armor.

There would be a tableau greeting Elizabeth as the Queen of the Roses and she would be crowned with a chaplet of rosebuds. They would eat sugared rose comfits and there would be a water fight with rose water; the very air would be scented with the amorous perfume; the tilt yard would be carpeted with petals.

The joust was to be the central event of the day. Dudley was painfully aware that Sir William Pickering was a powerful rival for the queen’s affections, a blond, well-made, rich bachelor, widely read, well traveled, and well educated. He had intense charm; a smile from his dark blue eyes sent most women into a flutter, and the queen was always vulnerable to a commanding man. He had all the confidence of a man wealthy from boyhood, who came from wealthy and powerful parents. He had never been as low as Robert; he did not even know that a man could sink so low, and his whole bearing, his easy charm, his sunny disposition all showed a man to whom life had been kind and who believed that the future would be as blessed as the past.

Worst of all, from Dudley’s point of view, there was nothing to stop the queen marrying him tomorrow. She could drink a glass of wine too many, she could be teased a little too hard, she could be aroused and engaged and provoked—and Pickering was a master of subtle seduction—then he could offer her a priceless diamond ring, and his fortune, and the job would be done. The gambling men were putting odds on Sir William marrying the queen by autumn and her constant ripple of laughter in his presence, and her amused tolerance of his rising pride, gave everyone reason to believe that his big blond style was more to her taste than Dudley’s dark good looks.

Robert had suffered many rivals for her attention since she had come to the throne. Elizabeth was a flirt and anyone with a valuable gift or a handsome smile could have her evanescent attention. But Sir William was a greater risk than these passing fancies. He was phenomenally rich and Elizabeth, with a purse full of lightweight coins and an empty treasury, found his wealth very attractive. He had been a friend of hers from the earliest days and she treasured fidelity, especially in men who had plotted to put her on the throne, however incompetent they had been. But more than anything else, he was handsome and new-come to court, and an English Protestant bachelor, so when she danced with him and they were the center of gossip and speculation, it was good-natured. The court smiled on the two of them. There was no one reminding her that he was a married man or a convicted traitor, or muttering that she must be mad to favor him. And although Dudley’s rapid return to court had disturbed Sir William’s smooth rise to favor and power, it had not prevented it. The queen was shamelessly delighted to have the two most desirable men in England competing for her attention.

Dudley was hoping to use the joust to unseat Sir William with one hard blow, preferably to his handsome face or thick head, and was drawing up the jousting list to ensure that Pickering and he would meet in the final round. He was absorbed in the work when suddenly his door banged open without a knock. Robert leapt up, his hand reaching for his dagger, heart thudding, knowing that at last the worst thing had happened: an uprising, an assassin.

It was the queen, quite alone, without a single attendant, white as a rose herself, who flung herself into the room toward him and said three words: “Robert! Save me!”

At once he snatched her to him and held her close. He could feel her gasping for breath; she had run all the way from the palace to the Dairy House, and run up the steps to his front door.

“What is it, my love?” he asked urgently. “What is it?”

“A man,” she gasped. “Following me.”

With his arm still around her waist he took his sword from where it hung on the hook, and threw open the door. Two of his men were outside, aghast at the queen’s dashing past them.

“Seen anyone?” Robert asked tersely.

“No one, sir.”

“Go and search.” He turned to the fainting woman. “What did he look like?”

“Well dressed, brown suit, like a London merchant, but he dogged my feet while I was walking in my garden down to the river and when I went faster he came on, and when I ran he ran behind me, and I thought that he was a Papist, come to kill me…” She lost her breath for fear.

Robert turned to his stunned clerk. “Go with them, call out the guard and the Queen’s Pensioners. Tell them to look for a man in a brown suit. Check the river first. If he is away in a boat, take a boat and follow him. I want him alive. I want him now.” Robert sent the men off, and then drew Elizabeth back into the house, into his drawing room, and slammed the door and bolted it.