Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Read online

  Bess’s eyes narrow. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Cecil says Dudley told her. He must have thought she would accept it.’

  ‘She does not?’

  ‘She has ordered Norfolk’s arrest,’ I say, clutching the letter. ‘Cecil writes to me. Norfolk is accused of treason, the queen’s own cousin, the greatest man in England, the only duke. He is fled to Kenninghall to raise an army of his tenants and march on London. Cecil says it is … it is …’ I cannot catch my breath. Wordlessly I wave the letter. She puts a hand on my arm.

  ‘What does Cecil say?’

  I am choking on my words. ‘He says the duke’s betrothal is part of a treasonous plot by the Northern lords to rescue the queen. And we … and we …’

  Bess goes white as the napkin in her hand. ‘The betrothal was part of no plot,’ she says rapidly. ‘All the other lords knew as well as we …’

  ‘Treason. The queen is calling it a treasonous plot. Norfolk is suspected, Throckmorton has been arrested. Throckmorton! Pembroke, Lumley, and even Arundel are confined to court, not allowed home, not allowed more than twenty-five miles from the court, wherever the court may be. Under suspicion of treason! Westmorland and Northumberland are ordered to London at once, on pain of …’

  She gives a little whistle through her teeth, like a woman calling hens, and takes a few steps around as if she would lift the paintings off the walls and put them into hiding for safe-keeping. ‘And us?’

  ‘God knows what is going to happen to us. But half the court is under suspicion, all the lords … all my friends, my kinsmen … she cannot accuse us all … She cannot suspect me!’

  She shakes her head, like a stunned ox struck by a hammer. ‘And us?’ she persists, as if she can think of nothing else.

  ‘She has summoned the whole of the Council of the North, on pain of death, to court. She even suspects the Earl of Sussex, Sussex! She says she will question him herself. She swears that he shall tell her to her face what the Northern earls are planning. Cecil says that anyone who so much as speaks to the Queen of Scots is a traitor! He says that anyone who pities her is a traitor. But that is everyone. We all think the queen should be restored to …’

  ‘And us?’ she repeats in a whisper.

  I can hardly bring myself to say it. ‘We have to take Queen Mary back to Tutbury. The queen’s orders. She thinks we cannot be trusted to keep her here. She says that we are unreliable. She suspects me.’ The words hurt me even to say them. ‘Suspects me. Me.’

  ‘What of?’

  Her words are like a knife. I don’t even correct her speech, I am beyond improving her. ‘Cecil writes that they know the Northern lords met her. They know that they came and dined with us and stayed overnight. Their visit was not authorised and now he tells me that we should not have let them in. He says I am guilty of negligence; if not worse. He dares to say such a thing to me. He says that he knows I passed Norfolk’s letters to her and hers to him. He says I should not have done so. He all but accuses me of being hand in glove with Norfolk, he all but accuses me of plotting with him and with the Northern lords to set her free. He calls them traitors, condemned to death, and says I am in league with them.’

  Bess gives a little hiss, like a snake.

  ‘He all but says I am guilty of treason.’ The terrible word drops between us like a falling axe.

  She shakes her head. ‘No. He cannot say that we did not serve him. He was told. He knew everything that passed. We never gave her a letter that he didn’t see. She never spoke with anyone but we reported it to him.’

  I am in such a hurry to confess my faults that I do not hear what she is telling me. ‘But Bess, you don’t know. There was a conspiracy. There is a conspiracy. Not against the queen, God forbid. But against Cecil. Norfolk and the rest of us lords joined together against Cecil.’ I am so distraught I can hear my voice tremble and I can’t make it steady. ‘It was nothing to do with the Scots queen. It was about bringing Cecil down. They came to me, and I swore to act with them. I said I would join with them to bring down Cecil. Westmorland and Northumberland invited me to join with them. I agreed. I said that Cecil should be humbled.’

  Her sharp dark eyes fasten accusingly on my face. ‘You plotted against Cecil!’ she exclaims. ‘You didn’t tell me …’

  ‘You know that I am no friend of his …’

  ‘You can love him or you can hate him but don’t tell me you joined a plot against him!’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ I sound weak, even to my own ears.

  ‘I know that one man rules England, one man advises the queen, and that man is Cecil. I know that my safety and your safety is that he must never doubt our loyalty to the queen and to him.’

  I swallow on a dry mouth. I feel like retching. ‘Us old lords …’

  ‘Cocks on a dunghill,’ she says, foul-mouthed as the farmer’s daughter that she is. ‘Old cocks on an old dunghill.’

  ‘Us old lords, the true lords of England, feel that Cecil is overreaching himself. We should advise the queen.’

  ‘By putting the North into arms against her? By raising the east led by Norfolk? By calling out a rebellion of Papists? By overthrowing the safety and peace of the kingdom?’

  ‘No, no,’ I say hastily. ‘That was never the plan. They never spoke to me of anything about that. We wanted to put Cecil into the place where he should be: steward to the queen, not her chief advisor, not chief counsellor to the throne. She should listen to her cousin, she should listen to us, she should be guided by us lords, the peers of the realm, the natural God-given leaders, the men that God has appointed to rule …’

  Bess stamps her foot in temper. ‘You have ruined us with this folly,’ she spits at me, shrill as a shrew. ‘I swear to God, my lord, you have judged most badly. You have overreached yourself. You may be able to tell the difference between supporting Howard and attacking Cecil, but Cecil will not. He will weave these single strands up into one thick rope of a plot and hang you all with it together.’

  ‘You cannot know that.’

  Her head rears up. ‘Of course I know it. Anyone of any sense would know it! I know him. I know how he thinks. He is the only man who knows what England can be, who plans for this country. He is the only one who thinks, not of the old days, but of what will be, who looks forward and not back. The queen is guided by him night and day. Who could ever be such a fool as to think that the queen would ever go against him? She never has done! She has never gone against his advice! She is his creature. It is Cecil who rules. She sits on the throne but the power is with Cecil.’

  ‘Exactly!’ I chime in. ‘He is overmighty.’

  ‘Hear yourself! Yes! Think! You say it yourself! He is overmighty. So he is too mighty for you and those fools to pull down. Even acting together. And if he thinks you are against him he will destroy you. He will spin the queen a long yarn and hang the Northern lords for the treason of planning an uprising, punish Norfolk for the treason of this betrothal, and throw you into the Tower forever for being a part of both.’

  ‘I knew nothing of either. All I joined with was a wish to see Cecil reduced. All I said was that I was with them to bring Cecil down.’

  ‘Did you speak to the Northern lords of Norfolk’s marriage to the Queen of Scots?’ she demands, as passionately as a wife would force a husband to confess to a secret lover. ‘When they visited that night? Did you agree with them that it would be a very good thing for Norfolk, and for yourselves, and a bad thing for Cecil? Did you say it would be good for her to take her throne in Scotland with him as her husband? Did you agree that the queen did not know of it? Did you say anything like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I admit, as reluctantly as an unfaithful husband. ‘Yes, I think I may have done.’

  She throws down the napkin to the floor with the thread and the needle. I have never seen her careless with her work before. ‘Then you have destroyed us,’ she says. ‘Cecil does not have to make it all one plot. Indeed, it is all different strands of the same p