Elizabeth I (22 page)

Sir Anthony was there to welcome us, almost pulling me from my horse.

“I am near speechless,” he said. “I am honored beyond words that my sovereign comes here to me.”

“It is I who am honored—to have subjects like you,” I assured him. “And I bring a gift from some of your neighbors,” I said, pointing toward a cage of honking geese, which the fairgoers had insisted we take. Not the usual royal gift, but I was curious to taste their famous birds.

It was growing dark. I was aching from the long hours in the saddle; I wanted to go to my chambers. Let there be no dinner, no entertainment, tonight!

We were whisked through the quadrangle and toward the principal lodgings, where Sir Anthony and his wife had vacated their quarters for me. I was to have at my disposal the withdrawing room, great chamber, and parlor, which backed onto the Great Hall. Even in the fading light, I could see the beauty of the great lantern atop the roof of the hall. But more beautiful were the oriel windows of my rooms, glowing with light, telling me that within there would be rest.

The beds were set up, reassembled from their pieces; the linens and pillows, beaten and fluffed to dispel the road dust and spread for me and the ladies in their adjoining chamber. Candles burned yellow in their sconces, throwing the wooden paneling behind them into shadowed relief. A warmed posset in a silver mug was handed to me to sip just before I lay down. The joy of taking to my bed at last, after a long day, was exquisite.

But I could not sleep. After all my longing to lie down, I remained wide awake. I could hear Marjorie, Helena, and Catherine breathing heavily in the next room.

Silently I rose from the bed, tucking my feet into slippers and finding a wrap. I grasped the candlestick by my bed and stole out of the room. I could guess the arrangement of the rooms; they always followed a similar pattern. The smallest, most private bedroom opened into a larger chamber—where my ladies now slept—and that would open into a larger chamber, and then into a larger. I passed through that first one as silently as I could. I would find the gallery and walk briskly; surely that would bring sleep to me. Perhaps I had been sitting too long in one position in the saddle en route here.

In the outer chambers it was deep dark; the large windows did no good when there was no moon. I stumbled on the uneven flooring but caught myself before falling.

I found the long gallery, a tunnel stretching into invisibility. One flickering torch at the far end served to show me its length. The great house slept as if under a spell.

A gaping door opened halfway down, its threshold a marble step. I stepped inside, expecting the same dead, dry smell as the stone gallery. But the unmistakable odor of incense and something else ... something familiar ... hit me.

I could see nothing. It was utterly black. I shuffled carefully, feeling the floor with my feet, extending my arms. I bumped into a pew, and realized I was in the chapel. That smell ... It was the smell of old satin vestments. I heard a slight scurrying sound and instinctively shivered and pulled my feet back. Rats? But it came again, heavier, and belonged to a bigger animal. It belonged to a man.

Now a light showed itself, a candle held aloft. A group of men were huddled at the far end of the chapel, near the baptismal font. I could make out the shine of vestments draped over a back. A priest was officiating at something. A murmur of voices—the priest's asking questions and several others answering. Then the trickle of water, then more murmuring. This was a baptism. Someone was being baptized at midnight in a dark church.

I held myself absolutely still—not out of fear but out of a wish to be unseen, so that I could observe. I needed to see everything.

But the light was so dim. I could only make out the number of people—five—and that they were all men. Like wraiths they dissolved and dispersed, slipping quietly away from another door near the altar.

After a long time passed in dead silence, I crept up to the font. The smell of incense was strongest here; the rim of the font was still slippery with drops of water. On the floor lay a neglected square of paper. I could see that it featured a saint's face; I picked it up.

Someone had just turned Catholic, in utter secrecy.

T
he sun shone brightly on the long table stretching the length of Anthony Browne's orchard, set up for a picnic. The specters of the night before seemed a smoky dream. Had I not kept the paper with the saint's picture, I would have had no proof, even in my own mind, that it had ever occurred. But now I looked up and down the table, imagining rosaries in hands that held only spoons, hearing Latin when the accents were good, hearty Sussex, seeing Jesuits in every black-cloaked guest. As all the senior household officials wore black gowns, similar to those in a college, that made for a lot of Jesuits.

It was well known that Sussex harbored Catholics, and it had long been rumored that Cowdray was a center of conversions. The households of Catholic aristocrats served as religious havens. But the loyalty of Anthony Browne was equally well known, and I made him an example of how religion and treason must be kept separate. It was not treason to
be
a Catholic, only to heed the pope's call to turn me off my throne. The troubling question always was, Until the test came, whom would a Catholic choose to follow? The execution of Mary Queen of Scots, removing any Catholic alternative to me as queen, and the failure of the English Catholics to rise up during the Armada crisis, seemed to have answered the question. But their leaders, exiled Englishmen fomenting plots and plans across the Channel, did not give up so easily. They continued sending a stream of missionary priests to convert the country back to Catholicism. As a result, Catholicism had become a secret, household faith, with the great estates able to maintain chapels and hide priests on the grounds. When the inspectors came calling, the priests could live for days inside the secret rooms called “priest's holes.” They had to be small to escape detection in the walls. It was impossible to catch them all, although several hundred had been arrested.

Now I looked at the smiling face of Anthony Browne, wondering if even he knew of the midnight happenings in his chapel. Perhaps they did not see fit to tell him, lest they endanger him.

The late-summer breeze was tickling the leaves in the orchard, and all around we could hear overripe apples thumping to the ground. Cowdray was an oasis of fertility and green in the barren countryside, but as the food was set before us—platters of the special geese from the fair, as well as local game, fish, cheeses, bowls of pears, fritters, and pitchers of beer and ale—I wondered how Anthony managed to feed us all.

The table stretched, so Anthony told me, almost fifty yards. They had spread a fair linen runner upon it, and wooden platters and goblets made us feel as informal as a traveling court ever could. I breathed in deeply, savoring the smell of the fallen apples. At a time like this, it was easy to feel that I was surrounded by honest, simple folk. But around me, for all that they had discarded their ruffs and padded breeches, the courtiers were as self-seeking as wolves.

On one side of me sat my host, and across from him, John Whitgift—an interesting juxtaposition. Old Burghley and old Hunsdon had remained at home, but their sons, Robert and George, respectively, were sitting, bright-eyed, farther down. My ladies, as always, sat together, wearing straw bonnets to protect their skin. Under the trees a group of musicians played country tunes, rollicking melodies that knew not of allegory and classical allusion. A maid was fair, not “the handmaid of Aphrodite,” and a man was brave, not “like unto Hector.” The people who knew and loved these songs, humming along with them, sat at the far end of the table.

“You have a loyal following, Sir Anthony,” I said, nodding to them. I sipped my cider, fresh pressed, still sweet, and not yet heady.

“As Your Majesty knows,” he said slowly, “loyalty is the most valuable trait in those we deal with.”

Did
he know of the secret ceremony in his chapel? Or was someone being disloyal to
him
? “And the hardest won,” I said. If he did know, he was playing a dangerous game.

“I sought out the chapel for prayer this morning,” said Whitgift suddenly, leaning forward.

“I had meant to show it to you after this,” said Anthony. “I fear I was too slow in my duties as host.” Did he look alarmed that Whitgift had examined it first?

“This old nose,” said Whitgift, touching the long, thin ridge, “has smelled incense too many times to be mistaken in its scent. Sir, your chapel reeked of it this morning.”

“Perhaps,” replied Anthony, “your nose has lost its discernment. The years will do that. I speak as someone who shares the burden of time. Why, I know the apples here smelled much sharper in my youth.”

“I can still smell a polecat, and the incense was almost as powerful.” Whitgift had provoked our host, confirming my suspicions. Now I must tug his collar and call him to heel.

“There is nothing illegal about incense,” I said loudly. “Do we not burn incense to drive away moths and cover up sickbed odors? Come, come, sir, you fret yourself. Enjoy the fresh country air, and think on the joys of being outside. Why, only a clergyman would seek out a cold, dark chapel on such a day.”

“Ma'am, I
am
a clergyman, the foremost in the land.”

“And showing it, John, and showing it.” I waved my hand. “Dancers. Here come the dancers!” Trooping into the garden, dressed in wide flouncing skirts and homespun britches, the village boys and girls presented me with a bouquet and read a welcome speech, then clapped for their musicians to begin. To the sound of pipe and tabor, the dancers spread out under the trees, stately at first, then moving faster. Anthony and his wife got up to dance, then George Carey, rising with one of the maids of honor; soon the dappled sunshine under the trees was a swirl of movement. I looked around me; only I, Whitgift, and Robert Cecil were left. It was obvious why: Each of us was either too august, too holy, or too misshapen in some way.

The dancers under the trees ... Oh, there had been a time when Leicester would have taken my hand and we would have risen together and danced until we were out of breath.

“If I may,” a voice was saying. I saw a young man standing before me, his hand extended. “All ceremony is put aside, so my master said,” he continued. “Rather like the master of misrule on Twelfth Night. And so I make bold to ask if you would dance with me.”

He was tall, powerfully built, with reddish-brown hair. His accent was unmistakably Yorkshire.

I rose and gave him my hand, and he led me out to an open place, apart from the other dancers. He wasted no time but immediately began the steps of the dance, a simple country one, nothing like the dances Leicester had so excelled at. This required speed and strength, but no subtlety.

His dark eyes scrutinized me, and I hoped it did not show that I was pleased to have been rescued from my station and appointed place. “Everyone knows of your artful dancing,” he said. “I was hoping to see it for myself.”

His head bobbed down and then he straightened up again, as the step required. He was a compelling presence.

“Who are you, sir?” I asked.

“When all the rules are suspended, are we obligated to tell our true names?”

“When the Queen asks you, yes,” I said. He knew I was the Queen; why should I not know him?

“I would like to say Gawain or Richard the Lionheart, but I am only Guy Fawkes of Farnley, footman to Sir Anthony Browne. Not even a sir.”

“You are a long way from your home in the north,” I said.

“And will go farther still,” he said. “I am just come of age, and now need serve no man. I mean to go to the Continent, learn fighting.”