I could leap up and clap my hands; but I sit like the princess I am and I incline my head. “I am glad to hear it,” is all I say.
“When you are released”—he says “when,” he does not say “if”—“I hope you will tell your sister, Lady Hertford, that I have been as good a host to you as I was allowed to be.”
“I will tell her that,” I say fairly. “And I will tell her that you went to London when you were called and that you spared no effort to join with the others to persuade the queen to name my sister as her heir.”
He bows as low as to a member of the royal family.
“And,” I add, “I would be very obliged if you would visit Mr. Thomas Keyes in the Fleet Prison and insist that he is released.”
“I will raise it with my fellow members of parliament,” he promises. “Of course, no man should be held without charge.” He waits in case I have any other instructions. “Should I speak to anyone at court on your behalf?”
I smile at him. I am not going to name my friends or my few kinswomen. I will incriminate no one. “Let it all be done in the open,” I say. “Speak of me and of my sister to everyone.”
In my guardian’s absence I am allowed to walk and sit in the garden. I study and I write, I read my Bible and I draw. I even attempt some frescoes on the walls of my room, remembering the carvings of the Dudley boys’ in the stone chimney breast made by the Tower all that long time ago. I think that if Katherine and I are released, and she is named as heir and we are restored to our home, then this long painful story of family disloyalty and loss of love will be ended and the innocent children will be freed. I think of the little nephews and I pray that they will both grow up in their father’s beautiful house, under the care of both their parents, knowing themselves to be rightful heirs to the throne, certain to take their place. I think Katherine will be a good Queen of England: she will not usurp her powers or use spies and torture to get her way. Her boy who comes after her will be an honorable Protestant king, a Seymour Tudor king like my poor cousin King Edward.
After a week Lady Hawtrey receives a letter from her husband and brings it to me in my little room. She taps on the door and comes in when I call “Enter!”
“My husband has sent a letter from London to tell me how they go on,” she says, curtseying very low. “I thought that you would want to know the news.”
“I do,” I say. “Please sit down.”
She takes a stool by the fireside and I stay in my dining chair so our heads are level. She unfolds the letter and looks through it.
“He says that the House of Commons has joined with the House of Lords to remonstrate with the queen and that there have been angry scenes,” she says. “Both Houses are determined that Lady Katherine shall be named as the queen’s heir. The Privy Council agrees with parliament. The queen has quarreled with the Duke of Norfolk, with Robert Dudley, and the Earl of Pembroke.”
I listen intently. These are the queen’s key advisors and friends; the Earl of Pembroke was Katherine’s former father-in-law. I would never have thought he would have risked disagreeing with the queen over Katherine. None of these men stands to gain anything from the recognition of Katherine. Elizabeth has to see that they are doing this for the good of the country. Nor would any one of them speak against the queen unless they were certain of success.
“Now she has forbidden them to come to her presence chamber,” Lady Hawtrey reads. She looks up at me. “That’s extraordinary, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I say tersely.
“She summoned thirty men from the House of Commons and would not allow the Speaker to come to her,” Lady Hawtrey reads. “My husband says that she shouted at them.”
I turn my head to hide a smile. I imagine the provincial members of parliament were terrified before the queen, who could arrest them without warning, and hold them without trial. But they didn’t weaken. They insisted on their right to advise her, and their advice was that she must marry and get an heir, and name one now.
Lady Hawtrey takes up the last page. “He’s coming home,” she says. “He says the work is finished. He says they are victorious.”
“She named Katherine?” I whisper disbelievingly. It is the only outcome open to Elizabeth if the Houses have stood, united, against her. “She has named her?”
Lady Hawtrey folds the letter and hands it to me. “See for yourself. She has sworn it. They have granted her the subsidy, and she has promised that they shall decide on her heir.”
She looks at me. “They have won her to agreement,” she says. “Did you think that they would?”
I give a trembly little laugh. “I did not dare to hope, all I could do was pray for it. They have been courageous and she has been persuaded to do the right thing at last.”
She shakes her head in wonderment. “She is an extraordinary woman, she is answerable to no one.”
“She is answerable to God,” I say steadily. “And He will ask her for Katherine, and for her boys, Teddy and Thomas, for her husband, Ned, even for Margaret Douglas and her little boy Charles, and for me and Thomas Keyes. The God who promised us that not a sparrow falls will ask the Queen of England where her cousins are tonight.”
CHEQUERS, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE,
WINTER 1566
Queen Mary of Scotland has collapsed and is mortally ill in her troubled kingdom after an attack of the spleen. She has been unconscious for hours; they are warming her cold body. God knows what will happen. Her son and heir is still a little baby—if she should die, there will be nobody to defend him. They say that her last words were asking Elizabeth to be his Protector.
She might as well ask a cuckoo to protect the eggs that are alongside it in the nest. She might as well ask an owl to protect a mouse. But I see the skill in it; even on her deathbed Mary is outwitting Elizabeth, trapping her with the bait of a royal boy. If Elizabeth agrees to be the Protector of the heir of Scotland, she is recognizing kinship. Elizabeth, greedy for influence in Scotland, still torn between love and hate for her more beautiful younger rival queen, cannot resist. I receive a short unsigned note in a hand that I don’t recognize and conclude it is from William Cecil.
The queen is to stand as godmother to Prince James of Scotland.
That’s all; but it is the end of my hope. Elizabeth has broken her sworn promise to parliament and to her lords. She has chosen Mary over Katherine, papist over Protestant. She thinks she has seen a chance, dangled before her by Mary, who may be on her deathbed but still has more wit in her cold little finger than Elizabeth has in all her endless cunning. Queen Mary has offered her baby as bait and Elizabeth has jumped into the trap. In the hopes that Mary is dying she will claim the motherless boy as her own. He will be her adopted son and the next King of England.
I send Katherine a Christmas letter, but I have nothing to give her. In reply she writes to me and encloses a chain of gold links.
I have this, as I have so many little gifts, from my husband, who sends me his love in letters and treats. Our little boy Thomas is well and growing. Our oldest son Teddy is with his grandmother at Hanworth and she tells Ned that he is well and strong and a happy carefree child. We all pray for our freedom and for yours. I am lodged with good people who do what they can to comfort me as I enter another year, my sixth, in captivity. I am weary of it, and sad, but I believe that next year, perhaps in the new year, we will be forgiven and released. I hear the Queen of Scotland and our good queen are to come to an agreement, which will make you and I their subjects and loyal cousins. I long to see you, my sister. Farewell.