Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Read online

‘Because this way, I can ride as fast as a man,’ Queen Mary said, and that was the end to it, despite Bess’s murmur that it was no advantage to us if she could outride every one of her guards.

  From that day she has been riding on her own saddle, astride like a boy, with her gown sweeping down on either side of the horse. She rides, as she warned Bess, as fast as a man, and some days it is all I can do to keep up with her.

  I make sure that her little heeled leather boot is safe in the stirrup, and for a second I hold her foot in my hand. She has such a small high-arched foot, when I hold it I can feel an odd tenderness towards her. ‘Safe?’ I ask. She rides a powerful horse, I am always afraid it will be too much for her.

  ‘Safe,’ she replies. ‘Come, my lord.’

  I swing into the saddle myself and I nod to the guards. Even now, even with the plans for her return to Scotland in the making, her wedding planned to Norfolk, her triumph coming at any day now, I am ordered to surround her with guards. It is ridiculous that a queen of her importance, a guest in her cousin’s country, should be so insulted by twenty men around her whenever she wants to ride out. She is a queen, for heaven’s sake; she has given her word. Not to trust her is to insult her. I am ashamed to do it. Cecil’s orders, of course. He does not understand what it means when a queen gives her word of honour. The man is a fool and he makes me a fool with him.

  We clatter down the hill, under the swooping boughs of trees, and then we turn away to ride alongside the river through the woods. The ground rises up before us and we come out of the trees when I see a party of horsemen coming towards us. There are about twenty of them, all men, and I pull up my horse and look back at the way we have come and wonder if we can outride them back to home, or if they would dare to fire on us.

  ‘Close up,’ I call sharply to the guards. I feel for my sword but of course I am not wearing one, and I curse myself for being overconfident in these dangerous times.

  She glances up at me, the colour in her cheeks, her smile steady. She has no fear, this woman. ‘Who are these?’ she asks, as if it is a matter of interest and not hazard. ‘We can’t win a fight, I don’t think, but we could outride them.’

  I squint to see the fluttering standards and then I laugh with relief. ‘Oh, it is Percy, my lord Northumberland, my dearest friend, and his kin, my lord Westmorland, and their men. For a moment I thought that we were in trouble!’

  ‘Oh, well met!’ Percy bellows as he rides towards us. ‘A lucky chance. We were coming to visit you at Wingfield.’ He sweeps his hat from his head. ‘Your Grace,’ he says bowing to her. ‘An honour. A great honour, an unexpected honour.’

  I have been told nothing of this visit, and Cecil has not told me what to do if I have noble visitors. I hesitate, but these have been my friends and my kin for all my life; I can hardly make them strangers at my very door. The habit of hospitality is too strong in me to do anything but greet them with pleasure. My family have been Northern lords for generations, all of us always keep open house, and a good table for strangers as well as friends. To do anything else would be to behave like a penny-pinching merchant, like a man too mean to have a great house and a great entourage. Besides, I like Percy, I am delighted to see him.

  ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘You are welcome as ever.’ I turn to the queen and ask her permission to present them. She greets them coolly with a small reserved smile and I think that perhaps she was enjoying our ride and does not want our time together interrupted.

  ‘If you will forgive us, we will ride on,’ I say, trying to do whatever she wants. ‘Bess will make you welcome at home. But we won’t turn back just yet. Her Grace values her ride and we have just come out.’

  ‘Please, don’t change your plans for us. May we ride with you?’ Westmorland asks her, bowing.

  She nods. ‘If you wish. And you may tell me all the news from London.’

  He falls in beside her and I hear him chattering to entertain her, and occasionally the ripple of her laughter. Percy brings his horse alongside mine and we all trot briskly along.

  ‘Great news. She is to be freed next week,’ he says to me, a broad smile spread across his face. ‘Thank God, eh, Shrewsbury? This has been an awful time.’

  ‘So soon? The queen is going to free her so soon? I heard from Cecil only that it would be this summer.’

  ‘Next week,’ he confirms. ‘Thank God. They will send her back to Scotland next week.’

  I nearly cross myself, I am so thankful at this happy ending for her; but I cut short the gesture and instead put my hand out to him and we shake hands, beaming. ‘I have been so concerned for her … Percy, you have no idea how she has suffered. I have felt like a brute to keep her so confined.’

  ‘I don’t think a faithful man in England has slept well since that first damned inquiry,’ he says shortly. ‘Why we did not greet her as a queen, and give her safe haven without asking questions, God knows. What Cecil thought he was doing, treating her like a criminal, only the devil knows.’

  ‘Having us sit as judges on the private life of a queen,’ I remind him. ‘Making all of us attend such an inquiry. What did he want us to find? Three times her enemies brought the filthy letters in secret and asked the judges to read them in secret and make a verdict on evidence that no-one else could see. How could anyone do such a thing? To such a queen as her?’

  ‘Well, thank God you did not, for your refusal defeated Cecil. The queen always wanted to be fair to her cousin, and now she finds a way out. Queen Mary is saved. And Cecil’s persecution is thrown back to the Lutherans where it belongs.’

  ‘It is the queen’s own wish? I knew she would do the right thing!’

  ‘She has opposed Cecil from the very beginning. She has always said that the Queen of Scots must have her throne again. Now she has convinced Cecil of it.’

  ‘Praise be. What’s to happen?’

  He breaks off as she has pulled up her horse ahead of us, and turned to call to me. ‘Chowsbewwy, can I gallop here?’

  The track ahead of her is even, grassy and rises steadily uphill. My heart is always in my mouth when she thunders off like a cavalry charge but the going is firm and she should be safe. ‘Not too fast,’ I say, like a worried father. ‘Don’t go too fast,’ and she waves her whip like a girl, wheels her horse, and takes off like a mad thing with her guards and Westmorland trailing behind her, hopelessly outpaced.

  ‘Good God!’ exclaims Percy. ‘She can ride!’

  ‘She’s always like this,’ I say, and we let our horses go after her for a long breathless gallop until she pulls up and we all come tumbling up to her side, and find her laughing with her hat blown askew and her thick dark hair falling down.

  ‘That was so good!’ she says. ‘Chowsbewwy, did I frighten you again?’

  ‘Why can you not ride at a normal pace?’ I exclaim and she laughs again.

  ‘Because I love to be free,’ she says. ‘I love to feel the horse stretch out and the thunder of his hooves and the wind in my face and knowing we can go on and on forever.’

  She turns her horse for she cannot go on and on forever, or at least not today, and leads the way back to the castle.

  ‘I have prayed every night to see her restored to her own again,’ I say quietly to my friend Percy; and I hope he cannot hear the tenderness in my voice. ‘She is not a woman who can be confined in one place. She does indeed need to be free. It is like mewing up a falcon to keep her in one small place. It is cruel. I have felt as if I were her jailor. I have felt that I was being cruel.’

  He shoots a sideways look at me, as if considering something. ‘But you would never have let her go,’ he suggests in an undertone. ‘You would never have turned a blind eye if someone had come to rescue her.’

  ‘I serve Queen Elizabeth,’ I say simply. ‘As my family have served every King of England since William of Normandy. And I have given my word as an English nobleman. I am not free to turn a blind eye. I am honour bound. But it does not stop me caring for her. It does not st