Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Read online

  I can see that Herbert Gracie is a little taken aback to find Bess in her lair, surrounded with books written up in copperplate and with two clerks head down and scribbling to her dictation. So I take the moment of his discomfort to step towards her, take her hand and kiss her, and so whisper in her ear: ‘Beware.’

  She has not the quick understanding of the Scots queen. ‘Why, what’s the matter?’ she asks, out loud like a fool.

  ‘This is Herbert Gracie, he comes from Cecil.’

  At once, she is all smiles. ‘You are welcome,’ she says. ‘And how is the Master Secretary?’

  ‘He is well,’ he says. ‘But he asked me to speak with you in private.’

  She nods to the clerks who pick up their pens, ready to go. ‘Here?’ she asks, as if a countess should do business at a clerk’s office.

  ‘We’ll go to the gallery,’ I interrupt and so I get a chance to lead the way with Bess, and try to warn her again: ‘He is inquiring after a plot to free the queen. He says you are in it. With a man called Thomas Gerard.’ Her little gasp tells me everything. ‘Wife,’ I almost groan. ‘What have you done?’

  She doesn’t answer me, she ignores me, though I am risking my own neck by whispering to her. She spins around to young Mr Gracie, standing on the stair below her, and puts out her hand to him, with her frank honest smile.

  ‘My husband tells me that Cecil knows of the Gerard plot,’ she says quickly. ‘Is this why you are here?’

  I stifle my horror at this plain dealing. If only she would take advice from me, if only she would not act as she does, always so independently.

  He takes her hand as if she were sealing a bargain with him, and nods, watching her intently. ‘Yes, it is about the Gerard plot.’

  ‘You must think me very foolish,’ she says. ‘I was trying to do the right thing.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘I was going to tell my husband today, he knows nothing of this.’

  A quick glance from Mr Gracie’s brown eyes to my horror-struck face confirms this well enough, and then he is back to Bess.

  ‘My servant, John Hall, came to tell me that someone had tried to bribe him to lead the Scots queen riding on to the moor where she would be met by her friends and taken away.’

  Cecil’s man nods again. It strikes me that all this is old news to him, he knows all about it already; what he is listening for is to hear Bess lie. This is not an inquiry, this is an entrapment.

  ‘Tell the truth, wife,’ I warn her. ‘Don’t try to protect your servants. This is important.’

  She turns her pale face to me. ‘I know,’ she says. ‘I will tell Mr Gracie the whole truth, and he will tell my good friend Mr Cecil that I am honest and loyal as I ever was.’

  ‘What did you do, when your servant John Hall came to you?’ Mr Gracie asks her.

  ‘I asked him who else was in the plot, and he named a Mr Rolleston, and Sir Thomas Gerard, and said that there might be another, greater man behind it all.’

  ‘And what did you do?’

  Bess looks at him with her frank smile. ‘Now, I daresay that you will think me a scheming woman; but I thought that if I sent John Hall back to the men with word that the plot could go ahead, he could discover the names of the plotters and if there was a greater man behind them. And then I could tell Master Cecil the whole plot, and not a small worthless strand of it.’

  ‘And has he reported back to you?’

  ‘I have not seen him today,’ she says and then she looks at him in sudden understanding. ‘Oh, have you taken him up?’

  Gracie nods. ‘And his confederates.’

  ‘He came straight to me though they had bribed him,’ she says. ‘He is loyal. I would vouch for him.’

  ‘He will be questioned but not tortured,’ Gracie says. He is matter-of-fact, I note that torture is now a routine part of Cecil’s questioning, and it can be mentioned in front of a lady in an earl’s own house without remark. We have come to this: that a man can be taken without warrant, without a word from a justice of the peace, without the permission of his master, and he can be tortured on the say-so of Cecil. This is not how it was. This is not English justice. This is not how it should be.

  ‘And your intention was only to discover the full plot before you alerted your husband or Secretary Cecil?’ he confirms.

  Bess widens her eyes. ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘What else? And John Hall will tell you, those were my exact instructions to him. To lead them on and report to me.’

  Herbert Gracie is satisfied, and Bess is plausible. ‘Then I must ask you to forgive my intrusion and I shall leave.’ He smiles at me. ‘I promised it would only be a moment.’

  ‘But you must eat!’ Bess presses him.

  ‘No, I must go. My lord expects me back at once. I was only to ascertain what you have kindly told me, take the relevant men into custody, and bring them back to London. I do thank you for your hospitality.’ He bows to Bess, he bows to me, he turns on his heel and he has gone. We hear his riding boots clatter away down the stone steps before we realise that we are safe. We never even got as far as the gallery, this interrogation all took place on the stairs. It started and was completed in a moment.

  Bess and I look at each other as if a storm has blown through our garden destroying every blossom, and we don’t know what to say.

  ‘Well,’ she says with pretended ease. ‘That’s all right then.’

  She turns to leave me, to go back to her business, as if nothing has happened, as if she was not meeting with plotters in my house, conspiring with my own servants, and surviving an interrogation from Cecil’s agents.

  ‘Bess!’ I call her. It comes out too loudly and too harshly.

  She stops and turns to me at once. ‘My lord?’

  ‘Bess, tell me. Tell me the truth.’

  Her face is as yielding as stone.

  ‘Is it how you said, or did you think that the plot might go ahead? Did you think that the queen might be tempted to consent to the escape, and you would have sent her out with these men into certain danger and perhaps death? Though you knew she has only to wait here to be restored to her throne and to happiness? Bess, did you think to entrap her and destroy her in these last days while she is in your power?’

  She looks at me as if she does not love me at all, as if she never has done. ‘Now why would I seek her ruin?’ she asks coldly. ‘Why would I seek her death? What harm has she ever done me? How has she ever robbed me?’

  ‘Nothing, I swear, she has not harmed you, she has taken nothing from you.’

  Bess gives a disbelieving laugh.

  ‘I am faithful to you!’ I exclaim.

  Her eyes are like arrow slits in the stone wall of her face. ‘You and she, together, have ruined me,’ she says bitterly. ‘She has stolen my reputation as a good wife, everyone knows that you prefer her to me. Everyone thinks the less of me for not keeping your love. I am shamed by your folly. And you have stolen my money to spend on her. The two of you will be my ruin. She has taken your heart from me and she has made me see you with new, less loving eyes. When she came to us, I was a happy wealthy wife. Now I am a heartbroken pauper.’

  ‘You shall not blame her! I cannot let the blame fall on her. She is innocent of everything you say. She shall not be falsely accused by you. You shall not lay it at her door. It is not her doing …’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘It is yours. It is all yours.’

  1570, August, Wingfield Manor: Mary

  My darling Norfolk, for we are still betrothed to marry, copies to me the playscript of the charade he must act. He has to make a complete submission to his cousin the queen, beg her pardon, assure her that he was entrapped into a betrothal with me under duress, and as a fault of his own vanity. The copy that he sends me of his submission, for my approval, is so weepingly guilty, such a bathetic confession of a man unmanned, that I write in the margin that I cannot believe even Elizabeth will swallow it. But, as so often, I misjudge her vanity. She so longs to hear that he ne