Queen of Ambition (4 page)

“Stuff and nonsense! Who will want to harm me in Cambridge? If in the whole realm there is a stronghold of support for me, it’s in Cambridge. It was the seedbed of the English Protestants. These young men are my subjects as much as any of their elders. They are being kept away from the plays and dissertations, but if they wish to participate in my welcome for just a few merry, lively minutes, why not let them? Robin here is not indifferent to our safety, or our dignity and position—or his own, either—and yet he agrees with me. Do you not, my sweet Robin?”

The queen’s sweet Robin, very splendid in the gold-slashed crimson that was his favorite color scheme, bowed to her and to Cecil. “I trust none of them will be threatened, whether deliberately or by accident. If Your Majesty wishes me to take part in a playful sword fight—elegantly planned and carefully rehearsed, of course, and at a safe distance from your person—I am at your disposal.”

I eyed Dudley doubtfully. I had on occasion had reason to be grateful to him, but I did not like or trust
him and Elizabeth’s evident preference for him had often worried me—though, unlike Cecil, I suspected that she did not trust him either. Entranced by him she might be, but Elizabeth was one of the few people I have ever encountered who could look at a member of the opposite sex and distinguish between attraction and reliability. She knew a dangerous man when she saw one. Which did not stop her from now and then making alliance with him against the gravity of Cecil.

Like Elizabeth, Dudley now glanced in my direction. “Good morning, Mistress Blanchard.”

I responded with another polite curtsy and Elizabeth, with a flick of her long, jeweled fingers, signaled to me to take up a position behind her chair, beside Kate Knollys. Obeying, I found myself looking straight into the faces of Cecil and Dudley. I observed at once that Dudley’s swarthy face was grave, but that his dark eyes were agleam with malicious humor, while Cecil, despite the controlled tone of his voice, was pale with rage, the permanent worry line between his blue eyes deeper even than usual. As for Elizabeth, I had sensed her mood at once.

Elizabeth’s moods were so marked that sometimes they amounted to different personalities. She could be a queen with all the splendor of sovereignty about her—and then change in a moment to a vulnerable young woman whose elaborate gowns seemed too heavy for her. She could be a railing fishwife, an ethereal moon goddess, or a pouncing, bright-eyed cat, ready on the instant to play or to claw. The latter Elizabeth was the version that most exhausted and exasperated the dignified Cecil, and this morning, most
decidedly, he was trying to cope with a mischievous feline.

Even as I took my place, however, Elizabeth’s mood altered. The cat slid out of sight and the queen edged into the ornate chair in its stead. Suddenly, the royal plural was not a matter of form, but was being wielded like a weapon. “Master Secretary, you are not to think that we do not appreciate your care for us. But in this matter, you are overruled. This began, if we understand aright, as a students’ jest, and what Master Woodforde and his brother wish to do, is take the jest over, give it official blessing, and thus control it. If we forbid it, these hotheaded young men may think of some other jest, and perhaps then get themselves into trouble. No, let them play their little comedy, under official aegis. And now, gentlemen, we wish to be private with our ladies. I have not addressed a single word of greeting to Mistress Blanchard. Come round before me, Ursula. How well you look. The air of Sussex must suit you.”

“Ma’am,” I said, curtsying again as I came around to the front of her chair. Then I inquired: “Did I hear the name of Woodforde mentioned?”

“You did. What of it?”

“Is he a smallish man, not very striking, who looks like some kind of clerk or scholar?”

“We have not personally seen him,” said Elizabeth. “But he is a scholar, yes. He is employed as a tutor at Cambridge. Cecil?”

“It sounds like the same man. I take it you have come across him? That is quite possible; he is at court just now,” said Cecil, and then, changing the subject in
a smooth fashion which I recognized as a warning not to pursue the matter of Master Woodforde, he added: “My wife, Lady Mildred, has a message for you—a somewhat lengthy one, concerning Meg. When your hours of duty are past, you will find me in my study. I have my usual Richmond quarters. Please attend on me and we can discuss what she has in mind. It may take some time.”

“But I shan’t release you until your duty is over,” Elizabeth said, smiling. “I have not seen you for far too long and in a day or two you will be setting off for Cambridge. You are to be sent there with an advance party of official harbingers, led by Master Henderson, to see that all is in order for my visit.”

“That is why I was recalled from home so soon?” I asked.

“It is, indeed. Master Cecil suggested that you should be included among the harbingers. You have always understood my requirements very well and your advice will be of value. Good day, Sir William,” added Elizabeth, coolly dismissing them. “Good day, Robin.”

I had no opportunity to see Cecil that day, for the rest of it was spent with the queen. With her other ladies, I attended on Elizabeth while she held an audience for the Spanish ambassador, walked in the garden, and watched a game of tennis. Later, we sat talking and sewing together, but within call, while she spent an hour, as she often liked to do, studying books from her considerable library of works on history and politics.
Then came supper, cards, and music, until at last, she withdrew with her ladies of the bedchamber and I could go to bed.

But in the morning, Elizabeth had a conference with her Treasurer and I was free at last to seek Cecil out in his study. It was a pleasant room overlooking the Thames. Reflections from the river rippled across the paneling and the flat ceiling with its crisscross of narrow beams and its exquisitely carved and painted Tudor roses of red and white. The leaded window was open and from outside came the gentle tinkle of the musical weather vanes which were one of Richmond’s most charming features.

Cecil rose courteously to greet me and came around the desk, limping. “Is it your gout?” I asked him with concern.

“It is. No one seems able to recommend a cure. I try this diet and that, but my old nurse’s medicines seem to work best, though heaven knows what she puts in them. Since I’m the chancellor of Cambridge, I shall have to accompany the queen—indeed, I intend to get there ahead of her to make sure all is as it should be. Dear old Nanny has agreed to come too, and bandage my gouty foot for me. To her, I think I’m still the little boy she used to scold for getting his feet wet.”

I urged him to sit down again and he did so but not behind his desk. Instead, he moved to a settle just under the window and sank onto it, hitching the hem of his formal dark gown up so that it would not touch his swollen foot, which was bandaged and encased in a soft slipper. He beckoned to me and I took the other end of the settle. Studying his face, I saw again how
marked was that line between his eyes, and noticed that his fair beard was fading from flaxen to gray. He looked tired.

“The queen,” he said abruptly, “has a brilliant mind. Her grasp of political theory, of the motives of rulers and the art of diplomacy, never fails to astonish me. My wife is an intellectual woman but Elizabeth surpasses her by far. Most of the time, that is. At other times,” said Cecil with feeling, “although she is now thirty years of age, a few months older than you, Ursula, she behaves as though she were playing games—
chess
games—with people as her pawns. She is doing it now and I am at my wit’s end to know how to manage.”

“What is she like in the council chamber?” I asked curiously.

“In council? She has a mind like a rapier. She makes her points like a swordsman thrusting. But the tone in which she makes them varies with her mood. And even in council,” said Cecil gloomily, “there are times when I think she is playing with us. You have been away from the court for some time. Did you know that she has revived that business of offering Robin Dudley’s hand in marriage to Mary Stuart of Scotland?”

“Yes.” I nodded. The previous evening, while Elizabeth was reading, I had sat at the opposite side of the room with the other ladies, and in low voices, they had regaled me with the latest gossip. “But surely,” I said, “she doesn’t mean it.”

“God knows what she means! I don’t think she knows herself. I can see the point of offering Mary a
husband of Elizabeth’s own choice, yes. It would put a stop to the ambitions of Lady Lennox. She hasn’t recently mentioned aloud that she has a good-looking son who would be interested in uniting two descendants of Henry VII by marrying Mary himself, but I doubt if she has forgotten it. An uneasy prospect. What if they had a healthy son!”

I nodded. “England would have a Catholic dynastyin waiting and the risk of a party gathering round it.”

“Precisely, especially if Elizabeth goes on refusing to marry and produce an heir of her own.” Cecil turned away from me for a moment to stare through the window. He had given his devotion to Elizabeth and to the Protestant movement in a public way from which there was no retreat. The day a Catholic ruler ascended the throne of England, Cecil would have to flee or risk death.

“Though even young Darnley might be better than a Spanish marriage,” Cecil said as he turned back to me. “At least we have his mother here in England as surety! But what we need most of all is an heir of the queen’s body. Again and again, the council has
pleaded
with Elizabeth to take a husband. She fobs us off by promising to marry when it should be convenient. As far as I can see, it will be convenient the day after the Last Trump, and meanwhile, Mary of Scotland is her likeliest heir. Getting Mary married off to a Protestant with no royal blood would be an excellent idea. She’s welcome to Dudley! Except for the small difficulty that she has made it clear that she isn’t in the least interested in him—the queen’s horsemaster, she calls him—and Dudley has made it
equally clear that he isn’t interested in her, and as for Elizabeth, well, if he did suddenly pack his saddlebags and announce that he was off to Scotland to seek his fortune, I think she would have him carried off to the Tower between two huge Yeomen of the Guard with his feet six inches off the ground. She’d never let him go! I don’t know what she’s about. Whatever game she’s playing, I don’t understand the rules. And now, my dear Ursula, we have this royal Progress to Cambridge University.”

“I gathered yesterday that there was a … a difficulty.”

“Difficulty!” It came out as an explosion. “I should think there is! This visit, Ursula, is a significant occasion. As you no doubt heard the queen remark, Cambridge was where the English Protestant movement began, the place where Martin Luther’s ideas first took hold. A visit by Queen Elizabeth means something—it signals very clearly that she and her council have chosen to be on the Protestant side of the religious divide. It has to be a success—
has
to be. And in the middle of all the preparations … !”

He broke off, as if lost for words. I said quietly: “Who is Master Woodforde?”

Cecil studied me thoughtfully. “You apparently managed to come across him before you’d been at court for five minutes. You have the oddest knack in these things. How did it come about?”

“It was pure chance. I was passing the door to Lady Lennox’s chambers when she burst out of it, in the middle of an argument with a small man in a black gown. She addressed him as Master Woodforde. He
was saying that he would do anything to get back into her favor and she was saying that she would favor him most if he were in his coffin. I think he’d got into her rooms uninvited and been lying in wait to plead with her.”

“Yes. That is the man. His name,” said Cecil, “is Giles Woodforde—Dr. Giles Woodforde, strictly speaking, although he never seems to use the title. He likes to say that he’s an unassuming man. He was once in Lady Lennox’s service, as a tutor, originally to her son Henry Darnley, and after Darnley outgrew him, he stayed on to instruct other young people in her household. Then he was dismissed for some reason—I don’t know exactly what except that he managed to displease Lady Lennox in some way. Maybe religion had something to do with it. She’s a Catholic sympathizer and he’s from a good, solid Protestant family. He was born in Cambridge and studied at the university. After he left Lady Lennox’s service, he went back there and became a tutor in Latin and Greek at King’s College. He’s here now in the company of some other university representatives who have come to discuss details of the queen’s visit with me. Which brings me to the matter we were discussing when you joined us yesterday.”

“It sounded more like an argument than a discussion,” I said.

“It was! This is the situation. The queen is to arrive in Cambridge on the fifth of August. Now, these days, some of the students go home in the late summer, ostensibly to help their fathers get the harvest in, but some have slack modern attitudes and use that as an excuse to slip away early.”

Contemplating slack modern attitudes, the hardworking Cecil sniffed disdainfully. “And just for once,” he said, “I wish more of these youths were modern idlers! I also wish that they were controlled as they were in the last century when they weren’t allowed into the town at all unless a senior university member accompanied them. Now they have more freedom—and I am sorry to say that few of them are leaving the university early this year. The prospect of seeing the Queen is too exciting. Most will still be there on August fifth, ready to make pests of themselves if given the ghost of a chance. So, from the start, I have made it clear that the students are
not
to create a nuisance during the queen’s visit. They may be allowed to cheer respectfully from a distance as she rides in but no more.

“At least,” said Cecil with irritation, “that is how I planned it. But now … it seems that Woodforde has a half brother. Same mother, different fathers, which accounts for their different stations in life. While Giles Woodforde is a scholar, his older half brother, Roland Jester, runs a pie shop in what is called Jackman’s Lane in Cambridge, and it is a place where undergraduates are permitted to go. They are still not allowed to frequent taverns and aren’t encouraged to mix with the townsfolk, but nowadays they have to have
some
places in which to congregate and Jester’s Pie Shop is one of them. It serves meat pies and cheese and small ale which can be consumed on the premises. By agreement with the university authorities, it closes in the afternoon so as not to encourage students to linger over midday gatherings. But gather there they certainly
do, and it appears that Jester overheard them planning a rag.”