“What have I done?” Elizabeth asked, stunned.
“You will shun God no longer, you will to church, and not with Cranmer’s prayer book. But with humble instruments whereby you may learn faith, and hear God’s word only from those whose faith may teach it you … Rome … and the Pope.”
“I do not—know your faith,” Elizabeth said dazedly.
“You will know our faith—if you will stay at Court.”
It was not an invitation; it was a threat.
Elizabeth knelt again, laid a hand on Mary’s dress.
“Your Majesty, then let me leave. Let me to Hatfield or some other country place. If I have so much offended you, I cannot happily stay.”
“You’d like that well!” Mary nodded grimly. “Steal to Hatfield, and there keep your own court, and make a traitor’s nest out of your seeming retreat! ”
“I am no traitor,” Elizabeth said, and stood up before the Queen.
“See you be not, then, so you stay here and wait upon my pleasure. I’ll send you books and teachers in the morning. If you take the spirit, I shall know it, for ’twill move you soon to seek the church. I will expect you, Elizabeth, to come to me and ask to hear the mass.”
“Then, if your gracious heart will grant me that, I’ll seek it soon,” Elizabeth told her.
“Bess—” Mary’s voice broke and her distorted face suddenly held appeal—“see that you do what you do because you mean it, or—” hysteria rang in her voice—“by the light of everlasting truth that blasts the black hearts out of heretics, I’ll know it. If that should ever be … God pity you!”
“Oh God!” ejaculated Francis Verney in a yawn that rose to a howl, “if this be life at Court, I’ll sue to the Queen for foreign duty.”
He was sprawling on a bench, loose-limbed as a lanky puppy stretched in an abandonment of lazy ease. Only, every line of the young man’s body and his discontented face expressed consuming boredom, not ease at all.
In the oak window seat Sir Thomas Wyatt and Sir Peter Carew sat at cards, but though the two older men exhibited their boredom with less violence than the boy, their play was halfhearted.
They flipped the cards down carelessly, Carew shrugged indifferently at an unlucky deal, Wyatt was humming an air, out of tune, through his teeth. Ever and anon Wyatt looked from his cards to the doors at each end of the room as though expecting someone.
Carew snorted and laughed at Verney’s outburst.
“What foreign duty?”
“The garrison at Calais would have more life than this. Or a post in the Scottish wars.”
“There are no wars in Scotland,” Wyatt reminded him re-pressively.
“There are always wars in Scotland!” Verney rejoined. “If not,” he grinned, with another yawn, “I could make one.”
“Keep you here,” Wyatt admonished him. “It will not be this quiet always.”
He appeared to take the youngster’s restlessness very seriously, looking uneasy and speaking sharply. Peter Carew merely chuckled.
“Why, there’s activity enough now, is there not?”
“Aye, for my knees.” Francis rubbed them, in skin-fitting scarlet hose, with a rueful gesture. “A bell every hour of the day and a mass to hear … My father says, in Henry’s time—”
“Peace!” Wyatt interrupted with nervous eagerness. “Keep
that talk for other places and other times. You will undo us all.”
Verney shrugged petulantly. “I am sick of waiting. There’ll be no oil to take the rust from my joints if it continues thus!”
He peered at the door which opened onto the long gallery.
“Went she to mass?” His voice had dropped, softened, with the perilous, naive candor of a very young man’s voice, betraying his heart.
“The Queen?” Wyatt asked absently, his eyes on his cards.
“No! She!” Verney exploded.
“My dear Thomas,” Carew drawled with the tolerant and intolerable smile of the experienced man, “when Verney speaks of she, what she is she? What she could she be?”
Verney started up in a fury.
“Oh, stuff it in your throat, Carew! I’m sick of you both, and your schemes for her. Why in the name of God can we not do something?”
“We’ll do it,” Wyatt told him briefly and firmly. “But until we do, keep her name out of it.”
“Why?” Verney called with reckless defiance. “When all England shouts it! Have you never ridden out with the two of them and heard how the crowd murmurs its homage to the Queen, yet when her horse comes by—Elizabeth!—God! how the shouts ring out! ”
“Watch your voice, Verney,” Wyatt said with uneasy caution and looking through the door to the gallery.
“Dear Thomas, you forget,” Peter Carew reminded him. “We are in love with a purpose—he, with a woman…”
Verney’s hand went to his sword.
“Watch your voice, Peter—”
“If you watch yours,” Carew retorted airily.
Wyatt threw down his cards with a slap and walked between them.
“Be still, the two of you. We are looked upon with enough disfavor now. If we fall to quarreling among ourselves, we might as well proclaim our purpose and have done.”
He stepped to the door.
“They should be back by now—”
“Then you do know where she is,” Verney flared up again.
“She is in the gardens with Courtenay,” Wyatt said impatiently.
“That fop!”
“He’s best for our purpose. We need not use him to the end,” Wyatt said.
“Think you she’ll marry him?” Carew inquired with a malicious smile in Vemey’s direction.
“No,” Wyatt answered thoughtfully. “Or,” with a smile, “I hope not.”
“She will not!” Verney asserted hotly. “Elizabeth—marry with that petticoat? . .
“He’s Bishop Gardiner’s favorite,” Wyatt said. “And to be linked with the Bishop in this may stand us in good favor e’er we’re done.”
“I would he were another man,” Verney remarked sullenly.
“I would he carried his liquor better,” Carew said in the same flippant fashion as before.
“Well, we’ve no choice in the matter.” Wyatt’s tone was
vexed and also final. “If he’ll keep a still tongue in his head, we’re safe.”
“Safe in doing what?” Verney stormed. “Why can’t you tell us how nearly we are ready?”
“Not so, Francis.” Wyatt was affable, but firm. “The plans I’ll keep to myself.”
“We should be ready to strike now” Verney affirmed vehemently. “Did you not see the Spanish Ambassador’s face at dinner?”
“I did. And I saw him, this morning, dispatch a courier. I doubt not a ship will put out tonight to Spain, carrying a letter to Philip.”
“The Queen’s more Spanish than she is of us,” Verney complained.
“And more for the Pope of Rome than she is Queen,” Carew added, sauntering to the window and sitting down again. His cool, indifferent manner goaded the younger man to frenzy.
“If she has pledged to Philip, she’s given us the signal-” He sprang from his bench.
“God’s blood, men! Will you seal your tongues?” Wyatt implored. “We know the thing. All England knows it. What’s to be done about it lies with us. We’ll not accomplish it by shouting it to the rafters.”
“I do not find it easy to keep silent. I’m as English as you are! I do not relish being pap to Rome or Spain. Were she but Queen, then you would see a change! England for England, as it hath not been since old King Henry died. Were she but Queen, I’d give my life for her.”
“You may well have that chance!' Wyatt informed him dryly. “So may we all…”
“What matter, so we may rise and fight and put our Bess on the throne?”
Vemey reared up like an excited horse as he spoke. Wyatt took the space between them at two strides and his hands were on the young man’s throat, and he shook him.