I look at her, this woman who has been exiled and persecuted for her faith, this woman who married beneath her so that she might freely love and freely live. “Please help us, Lady Grandmother,” I say quietly. “I will promise anything to the queen if she will set me free. And Katherine, my poor sister.”
Stepping aboard the Suffolk barge is like stepping back into the past when I used to sail downriver with the court to Greenwich or watch the green meadows going by as we went upriver to Richmond. It is a hot day and a heavy heat sits over the stinking city, but it is pleasant to be in the center of the stream with the silk awning fluttering in the cool breeze that blows upriver from the sea. The seagulls cry overhead and all the bells of London peal out the hour as if they are celebrating my freedom. My spirits rise as we go past the familiar stone walls of the Tower and the yawning waterside entrance of the portcullis at the watergate. At least I am not making that slow walk into the prison rooms. I am in my stepgrandmother’s keeping, but I am going to a royal palace in her barge, and the sunshine is on my face and the salt-smelling wind is blowing in my hair, and I can see more than a small square of sky.
The river widens as we come towards Greenwich and then I see the Tudors’ favorite palace—our favorite palace—like a dream shore, as if it were floating on the water, the quayside golden in the sunshine, the great doors standing open. It looks so rich and friendly and peaceful I cannot believe that this will be anything like imprisonment—not in this beautiful house with the doors standing wide to the rich gardens, greens, and orchards.
Elizabeth is not here. She is on progress at Farnham Castle at Guildford, and only a few servants are in attendance, engaged in the great work of sweetening the rooms, cleaning out dusty old rushes, and laying fresh green leaves and herbs in all the public rooms. My lady grandmother’s servants are expecting her, and they line up before her apartment in the palace and bow to me as I walk in with her. I had almost forgotten how many servants it takes to service one set of rooms, one demanding woman. I am so used to my cramped room and my one maid, I am so used to a window onto a small square of sky and silence. My lady grandmother leads the way into her private hall, takes her seat on the raised dais, and gestures to me that I am to sit beside her. They wash our hands with a silver jug and ewer, and bring us cold small ale and a plate with fruits and meat, and the steward of the Greenwich household reports to my lady grandmother about the running of her apartment here, the absence of one of the grooms without permission, the rise in the price of wine.
I have no appetite. Her sharp eyes watch me as she listens to her steward and, when he has finished and bowed and stood back, she says: “You must eat, my dear.”
“I am not hungry,” I say.
“You must be,” she insists. “You had that long ride, and then the voyage on the river. Your triumph is to survive and thrive, you know. To fast and to fail is to do your enemies’ work for them.”
“I have no enemies,” I say staunchly. “I made none when I was in service to the queen, and I married a man for love who was free to love me. I have no rivals nor enemies and yet I have been imprisoned for two years. No one has accused me of anything, no one has borne witness against me. No one has reason to hate me.”
She nods. “I know. We cannot speak of it here. But anyway, you have to eat. Your course must be to survive . . .”
She does not say “and outlive Elizabeth,” but we both know that is what she means.
“I will,” I say. I give her a little smile. I see in her determination—a survivor’s willpower—a model for myself. “You did.”
She makes a little foreign gesture, a shrug from her famously beautiful Spanish mother. “A courtier has to know how to survive. I was born and raised at court and I hope to die between silk sheets, in favor.”
“I can count on a tremendous funeral,” I say bitterly. “Wherever I die. The queen loves to honor her family when they are safely dead.”
She gives a little snort of laughter. “Hush,” she says. “If you can laugh, then you can eat. They tell me your sister is in deep grief and starving herself. That’s not the way to victory. I shall write to her and give her this advice, too. It is what my friend the queen Kateryn knew; it is what your mother knew. A wise woman lives long and hopes for change.”
GREENWICH PALACE,
AUTUMN 1567
My rooms at Greenwich are adequately furnished and the queen herself sends me some silver pots for the ale and wine, after my stepgrandmother provides William Cecil with a list of the things that we need. I don’t think she minces her words as she rails about my poverty. I don’t think she spares her assurances of our good housekeeping skills. My stepgrandmother lost all her good things in the years of exile while she traveled in Europe, one step ahead of the papist spies who would have dragged her back to England for a heresy trial. Now she is determined that neither she nor her family will suffer again. She is high in favor at Elizabeth’s court and she awaits the return of the court to Greenwich when she will argue for my freedom. She is confident that I will be released, that Ned will be allowed to go to Hanworth, that my sister Katherine and Thomas will join him and Teddy, that the family will be freed and reunited. She believes that Elizabeth’s genuine devotion to the Protestant faith will overrule Elizabeth’s perverse, persistent love for her papist cousin, her lingering family loyalty to Mary Queen of Scots, her fearful defense of the rights of queens, even for one who has done so little to deserve it.
“Be brave!” the duchess says brightly to me when she sees me wearily walking in the gardens, looking out at the river where the ships spread their sails and drop the tow ropes and look as if they are ready to fly away, free as the birds that circle their masts. “Be brave! You will go where you please next spring, I swear it. I will speak for your husband, for your sister, for your brother-in-law, and for those two innocent little boys. Your life will not end in prison, like that of your poor sister Jane. You will be freed, believe it!”
I do believe her. Her husband, Richard Bertie, bends down and kisses my hand and tells me that good times will come. Everyone suffers in this troubled world, but God rewards those who are faithful to Him. He reminds me that my stepgrandmother was summoned home when her religion became the faith of England, and overnight she was no longer a damned heretic but one of the chosen.
“Besides,” my lady grandmother tells me, “Elizabeth cannot create a force for Mary Queen of Scots. She has given the Clan Hamilton a great bribe, but they will not raise an army for Mary. She has demanded that the countries of Europe starve Scotland out. But not even the French, Mary’s former family, will support a trade blockade on Scotland. Without Spanish support, without the French, Elizabeth can do nothing for her cousin: she cannot act on her own.”
“Or at any rate she dare not,” Richard Bertie supplements quietly.
My lady grandmother laughs and slaps her husband’s hand. “It is not in the interest of England to restore the papist queen to her throne,” she says. “The queen, our queen, will never work against the interest of her Protestant country. Wherever her heart yearns to be, she always has a steady head. You can be sure of that.”
“I can be sure of William Cecil,” Richard Bertie says. “His heart doesn’t yearn for a papist in trouble.”
“And in the meantime,” I ask, “what is happening to Mary, the former Queen of Scotland?”