Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Read online

  Robert snatched his cap from his head and flung it across the room. ‘For God’s sake!’ he shouted. ‘This is state policy! I’m trying to plan a pageant and you keep asking me questions about policy! I don’t know what she will decide. The Privy Council will advise her, the bishops will advise her. Parliament will advise her, they will argue over it for months and then make it law. Pray God people will obey it and not rise up against her. It is not for me to decide it here and now!’

  There was an awkward silence. ‘But in the meantime?’ the clerk asked tentatively. ‘The cover of the Bible for the pageant? Should it be English or Latin? We could put a Latin copy inside an English cover if she preferred it. Or an English copy. Or one of both.’

  ‘On the cover write BIBLE in English,’ Robert decided. ‘Then everyone knows what it is. Write it in big letters so it is clear it is part of the pageant: a prop, not the real thing. It is a symbol.’

  The clerk made a note. The man-at-arms at the door walked delicately over to the corner, picked up the expensive cap, and handed it to his master. Robert took it without acknowledgement. Other people had been picking up for him since he was a child of two.

  ‘When we’ve finished this, I’ll see the other procession,’ he said irritably. ‘Whitehall to Westminster Abbey. And I want a list of horses, and check that the mules are sound.’ He snapped his fingers for another clerk to step forward.

  ‘And I want some people,’ he said suddenly.

  The second clerk was ready with a writing tablet and a quill in a little pot of ink.

  ‘People, sir?’

  ‘A little girl with a posy of flowers, an old lady, some sort of peasant up from the Midlands or somewhere. Make a note and send Gerard out to find me half a dozen people. Note this: one old lady, frail-looking but strong enough to stand, and with a strong voice, loud enough to be heard. One pretty girl, about six or seven, must be bold enough to cry out and take a posy of flowers to the queen. One bright apprentice boy to scatter some rose petals under her horse’s feet. One old peasant from somewhere in the country to cry out, “God bless Your Grace”. I’ll have a couple of pretty merchants’ wives as well and an unemployed soldier, no, rather, a wounded soldier. I’ll have two wounded soldiers. And I’ll have a couple of sailors from Plymouth or Portsmouth or Bristol, somewhere like that. Not London. And they are to say that this is a queen to take the country’s fortunes overseas, that there is great wealth for the taking, for a country strong enough to take it, that this country can be a great one in the world, and this queen will venture for it.’

  The clerk was scribbling furiously.

  ‘And I’ll have a couple of old men, scattered about,’ Robert went on, warming to the plan. ‘One to cry for joy, he’s to be near the front so they all see him, and the other one to call out from the back that she’s her father’s daughter, a true heir. Get them all spaced out: here …’ Robert marked the map. ‘Here, and here. I don’t mind what order. They are to be told to call out different things. They are to tell no-one they were hired. They are to tell anyone who asks that they came to see the queen out of love for her. The soldiers in particular must say that she will bring peace and prosperity. And tell the women to behave with propriety. No bawds. The children had better come with their mothers and their mothers should be told to make sure that they behave. I want people to see that the queen is beloved by all sorts of people. They are to call out to her. Blessings, that sort of thing.’

  ‘What if she doesn’t hear them, sir?’ the clerk asked. ‘Over the noise of the crowd?’

  ‘I’ll tell her where she is to stop,’ Robert said firmly. ‘She’ll hear them, because I’ll tell her to.’

  The door opened behind him and the clerk stepped swiftly back and bowed. William Cecil came into the room and took a sweeping glance at the two tables covered with plans and the sheets of paper in the clerks’ hands.

  ‘You seem to be going to much trouble, Sir Robert,’ he remarked mildly.

  ‘I would hope so. Her processions are entrusted to me. I would hope that no-one found me wanting.’

  The older man hesitated. ‘I only meant that you seem to be going into much detail. As I remember, Queen Mary had no need of great lists and plans. I think she just went to the Abbey with her court following.’

  ‘They had carriages and horses,’ Robert observed. ‘And an order of procession. Lady Mary’s Master of Horse made a list. I have his notes, actually. The great skill of these things is to make them appear that they have simply happened.’

  ‘Triumphal arches and tableaux?’ William Cecil inquired, reading the words upside down from the plan.

  ‘Spontaneous demonstrations of loyalty,’ Robert said firmly. ‘The City Fathers insisted on it.’

  He stepped between Cecil and the table, obscuring his view. ‘My Lord Secretary, this is a very young woman whose right to the throne has been contested almost since the day of her birth. The last young woman whose right to the throne of England was contested had a crown crammed on her head in secret and lost it in hiding. I think it important that this young woman is seen as the true heir, is seen as the people’s delight, and is seen to take her crown as publicly and as gloriously as possible.’

  ‘Lady Jane was not the true heir,’ Cecil pointed out to Lady Jane’s brother-in-law, not mincing his words. ‘And the crown was crammed on her head by a traitor, also beheaded for treason. Your father, actually.’

  Dudley’s gaze did not waver. ‘He paid the price for that treason,’ he said simply. ‘And I paid for my part in it. I paid in full. There’s not a man in her court that has not had to loosen his collar and turn his coat once or twice in recent years. Even you, sir, I imagine, though you kept yourself clear of our disgrace.’

  Cecil, whose hands were cleaner than most, let it go. ‘Perhaps. But there is one thing I should tell you.’

  Dudley waited. Cecil leaned towards him and kept his voice low. ‘There is no money for this,’ he said heavily. ‘The treasury is all but empty. Queen Mary and her Spanish husband have drained England dry. We cannot pay for tableaux and fountains running with wine, and cloth of gold to drape around arches. There is no gold in the treasury, there is barely enough plate for a banquet.’

  ‘It’s as bad as that?’

  Cecil nodded. ‘Worse.’

  ‘Then we will have to borrow it,’ Robert declared grandly. ‘For I will have her crowned in state. Not for my vanity, which I know is not of the smallest, not for hers, and you will find she is no shy violet either; but because this puts her more firmly on the throne than a standing army. You will see. She will make them hers. But she has to come out from the Tower on a great white horse and with her hair spread over her shoulders and she has to look every inch a queen.’

  Cecil would have argued but Robert went on. ‘She has to have people crying out for her, she has to have tableaux declaring her as the true and only heir: pictures for the people who cannot read your proclamations, who have no knowledge of the law. She has to be surrounded by a beautiful court and a cheering, prosperous crowd. This is how we make her a queen indeed: now, and for the rest of her life.’

  Cecil was struck by the vividness of the younger man’s vision. ‘You really believe it makes her safer?’

  ‘She can make herself safe,’ Robert said earnestly. ‘Give her a stage and she will be the only sight anyone can see. This coronation gives her a platform that will put her head and shoulders above anyone else in England, her cousins, rival heirs, anyone. This gives her men’s hearts and souls. You have to get the money so that I can build her the stage, and she will do the rest. She will enact the part of queen.’

  Cecil took a turn to the window and looked out over the wintry gardens of Whitehall Palace. Robert drew closer, scanning the older man’s profile. Cecil was nearing forty, a family man, a quiet Protestant through the Catholic years of Mary Tudor, a man with an affection for his wife and for accruing land. He had served the young Protestant king, he had refused to be a part of the Jan