The Lady of Misrule (31 page)

Hers was such a sweet smile, despite her obvious weariness, and I felt for that priest because he'd be beguiled. He wasn't to know that whatever he said wouldn't touch her. She'd heard it all before, countless times, since she was a small child. That poor man, he had no idea what he was up
against. He'd have been better off, I thought, spending his time on me. I was the sinner in the room, if he wanted one. Except that I was no more interested in listening to him than she was.

And then, mercifully, I didn't have to, because Goose was at our door, come to tell me that Mr Locke had turned up downstairs to see me. Jane could of course be left in the presence of a priest, so I followed Goose to the parlour, where I spent perhaps as long as half an hour in the company – if it could be so termed – of my parents' steward. He'd been in London when the siege had started, which had, at the time, put paid to any business he'd been there to do, and was eager to tell us what he'd experienced. ‘Shut up shop,' he said, amazed, more than several times, ‘the whole city, shut up shop.' For half an hour or so, Mr Partridge nodded sagely, Goose twiddled her thumbs and Twig chanced some begging, while Mr Locke and I exchanged appropriate pleasantries and any news, such as we had; and then, when he was sufficiently reassured that I'd survived recent events unscathed, I was free to leave him.

My return upstairs coincided with Fr Feckenham's departure. ‘And in view of how well we've done today,' he was saying brightly to Jane, ‘I'd like to ask the Queen for more time, just a day or two. Given a little longer, I don't doubt we'll find our common ground.'

I could hear Jane's smile in her voice. ‘Thank you, father, you're very kind, but, really, as I say, I'd like you to convey for me that tomorrow will be fine.'

There followed a small silence, which I took to be nothing more than his shifting in the doorway to allow me past, but then, gravely, he said, ‘My Lady, please, I beg you to reconsider.'

She was unmoved: ‘You're very kind, father, but, really, tomorrow is my final word.'

Shutting the door on him, I asked her, ‘What's tomorrow?' It was easier to ask about tomorrow, just mentioned, than the previous, mysterious night.

She was tidying the table because, had the priest liked it or not, there'd obviously been some consultation of her books. Turning to hang up my cloak, I had my back to her when she said, ‘My execution.'

There was no need for that, I was in no mood for jokes and I knocked it back at her: ‘Don't say that.'

She paused in her book-shuffling to look up at me but there was nothing in her eyes as she informed me, ‘My father was involved in the uprising.'

Her father – the man with the canopy? A man who couldn't even take down a canopy unaided. ‘Your father?'

‘Involved in the uprising.'

But that made no sense. The bodged canopy-dismantling, and then the shameful skulking from the Tower by which he'd abandoned his daughter: that man was a coward. He'd already been in more than enough trouble for a lifetime and I couldn't believe he'd go looking for any more. I must have misunderstood her. Uprising? I was thinking of Wyatt's men but perhaps she was speaking historically. Perhaps ‘uprising'
was what she called her attempt to take the throne, although then she wouldn't have been telling me that her father had been involved, because we both already knew that.

‘Hence,' was all she said.

Hence
? Baffled, I could only repeat it back to her: ‘Hence?'

‘My execution.' Offered up like that, in conclusion, she sounded almost pleased with it.

But I was stuck, repeating it back to her: ‘Your father was involved in the uprising?'

She gave me a small, humourless smile:
Would you believe it?

Well, no, actually, I wouldn't. I still didn't understand. ‘The one in favour of the princess?'

She was busy again, now with the tray. ‘The very one.'

She was humouring me.
Stop it. Stop trying to pretend this is nothing.
Because, I was realising, this was something, something had happened, something was happening, even if I wasn't clear to me exactly what, and even if her prissy table-tidying belied it.

She indicated the tray: ‘Should we take this down?'

I ignored that. ‘Your father wouldn't be involved in any uprising. He wouldn't do that.' Not when a mere six months ago he'd escaped with his life by the skin of his teeth. Not with his daughter, judged guilty of treason, held prisoner in the Tower.

‘Well, he did,' she said, and then she was going into our bedroom.

But no,
Oh no you don't,
and, quicker than she was, I got
myself between her and the door. ‘But,' I said, ‘he'd have to be an idiot to do that.'

She gave me a wry look.

No. Enough.
I hated how she was standing there, her emphatic show of tolerance as if I were a toddler on the verge of a tantrum. ‘That was for the princess.' My breathing was louder than my words. ‘The uprising. That was in favour of the princess.'
You said.

Wasn't that what she'd said? Yes, she had, I was right about that, I was damn well right and she should admit it. One of us needed to be sensible here; one of us had to get a grip.

She said, ‘I need the chamberpot, Elizabeth.'

But no,
no
, she was going to confirm it for me first: I was the one of us who was speaking sense and I needed her to confirm that for me. ‘You said Wyatt was for the princess.'

‘And he
was.'
She was surprised that I should doubt her.

‘Well then.' I stood my ground. I had to have her agree that she was in no danger, no real danger; I couldn't fathom her desire to pretend that she was.

‘Well then
what?'

‘Well then, it had nothing to do with you.' That was the nub of it: I'd got there, if with no help from her.

She said, ‘My father planned that uprising. My father and a couple of his friends.'

‘Yes,' I allowed, ‘but not
for you.
He did it for the princess. He just happens to be your father, but he didn't do it
for you.'
Why persist in the denial of it? ‘And he'll tell them,' I said.
‘He'll tell them it had nothing to do with you.' Obviously he would.

‘Elizabeth,' she sighed, giving up on the chamberpot, wandering towards the window. ‘I don't know what he'll tell them, but whatever he tells them, it's irrelevant.'

But, no, she was wrong there: it was precisely what was at issue.

‘One attempt to put me on the throne …' she shrugged,
fair enough
, in the case of a particularly merciful queen, ‘but twice …' and again a shrug, but his time huge, a giving up.

‘But it's not twice.' I spoke too loudly, had to lower my voice, ‘because this one, this… uprising' – I hated the word – ‘wasn't for you.'

She was exasperated. ‘But we don't know that!
She
doesn't know that.' The Queen. ‘My father was one of the leaders, and who knows what he was thinking? For him, it might've been for me, and next time it could be. It's too risky for her; I'm too much of a risk, I'm a threat.'

Oh for God's sake
, I almost laughed. ‘You're not a threat. You're just a girl.'

A girl, though, who would change the world.

‘Strictly speaking,' she said, ‘I'm a married woman: I could have an heir.'

Oh, well, yes, if you say so.
‘The princess,' I insisted, ‘the princess is the one she needs to worry about.'

Jane gazed over the green. ‘But she can't touch her. Too close to home. And anyway, there's nothing she can prove against her.'

I burst out, ‘But there's nothing she can prove against
you!
I mean,' and it was almost funny, ‘you were
in here'

She looked over her shoulder at me. ‘Yes, and why? Why am I in here?' Not a question, not really. And now she turned fully around to face me. ‘The Queen very nearly fell. Thousands and thousands of men marched on London. There's no place in England, now, for traitors.'

Which was all very well, but ‘She won't do it.' Those various, burly, scheming men, they'd have to face the consequences, of course they would, but ‘Not you. You know that. She won't actually do it.' Murder a girl? An innocent girl? A noble-born, serious-minded, Godly girl? Even if the Queen wanted to do it, she wouldn't dare, because she'd never live it down. Why did I feel this was a corner that needed fighting? Why was I shaking so much that I was close to being sick? The Queen wouldn't do it. She was a queen who wouldn't have her cannons fired near civilians, a queen who'd knelt on the grass to take a boy up into her arms, a queen who had said we were all her children. ‘Who told you this?' I demanded.
Let's get to the bottom of this.
Who was the source of this disgusting scaremongering?

‘Mr Partridge.'

Mr Partridge? Was that what that had been about last night?

‘Last night. He told me, and he showed me the warrant.' She was ahead of me: ‘And yes, I did check that it was signed.' There she stood, in front of me, arms folded, unyielding.

‘But so what?' I said. ‘So what if it was signed? It has to be
signed but she's bluffing.' Why couldn't she see that? ‘She signs a warrant but then she pardons you and then she looks all wonderful and merciful.'

‘But she's already done that. She's already pardoned me once. Now, she has to look strong.'

She'd seen the warrant – seen her name on it and, below, the Queen's signature – and then she'd come back into this room and crept into bed beside me and gone to sleep. And when she'd got up in the morning, she hadn't told me.
You hid this from me.
I didn't know her, I realised, I didn't know her at all, and perhaps that was why I said her name, just her name: heard myself say it, just the one syllable.

What she said, in return, was, ‘Tomorrow,' just as she'd said it to the priest. The priest: I'd forgotten him.

‘That priest's here to get you to recant.'

‘Well,' and she was faintly amused at the thought, ‘that's what he's
hoping
for.'

Relief washed over me. ‘Well then,' I said, ‘there you are: that's what this is, all this—' I flapped a hand, to sweep it all away. ‘It's all just to scare you into recanting. All you have to do is recant.'

‘Elizabeth,' and the look she gave me was kind, ‘she's not sending Father Feckenham to save me, or not in any earthly way. She's saving my soul, as she sees it. Doing her Christian duty: sending me to my maker, not to Hell. She's preparing me, or giving me the chance to prepare myself. She's doing it properly, that's all.'

This queen who was anxious to get things right.

‘But there's a chance,' I urged, ‘you know that. She'll be looking for an excuse, any excuse, anything. If you recant, she has her excuse.'

There was no arguing with that; instead, she looked almost shy. ‘But I'm not going to do that, am I.'

‘No' – she'd misunderstand – ‘no, you just have to
say
it,' as if I were explaining to a child, ‘you just
say
you've recanted. Just until you're free and—' Well, abroad, probably, if Guildford had his way. ‘Everyone'll know that's all it is.' Everyone except the Queen, the earnest little lady who'd lifted Edward Courtenay off his knees into her arms as if he were still a boy: that lady would believe whatever she wanted to believe, and more than anything she'd want to believe that the Protestant pretender had returned to the fold.

Gently she repeated, ‘But I'm not going to do that, am I.'

I laughed because it was so absurd that she'd object; I laughed even as my throat was smarting. ‘But you have to, You just… do it.' It really was as simple as that.

She seemed about to join me, and got as far as a smile, although it stayed sad. ‘But I'd never do that,' and there was a tenderness in it, this appeal to me. She whispered, ‘You know that.'

Which was when it occurred to me: ‘What happens to Guildford?'

‘He goes earlier,' she said, ‘before me.'

Goes
, and for a moment, in my mind's eye, I saw him leaving through a gatehouse, loping away to what was at least a kind of freedom: there he went, with my blessing.

‘Up on the hill, though,' she said, ‘not down here on the green like me.'

And my heart got it before I did: my animal-heart, playing dead. Not that it fooled her; her gaze went right inside me to uncover it as it cowered there.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, and she was, I could see she was, but if I kept very still then what she'd just said might somehow slide off me, roll away to become nothing and be gone. I should take a breath, I knew; I was aware of a pressing need to take a breath but I couldn't do it with her watching, I couldn't do anything with her eyes in mine, couldn't even breathe. Speak, though, I was able to do, it seemed, because I heard myself: ‘Guildford's done nothing wrong,' and that was a fact, pure and simple, incontrovertible, shining there high in the air between us.

She reflected, ‘Well,
I've
done nothing wrong.'

I asked her, ‘Does he know?' Did he know what they were threatening him with? She knew, now, but did he? There was a chance he didn't, yet.

‘Yes.'

‘Last night?' Had he, too, been told, last night?

‘Yes.'

And how odd and how shaming it was that what hurt at least as much as anything I'd heard was that they'd been together, the two of them, when they'd been told.

She was saying something about having to prepare. But no, I thought, because no one prepares for something that isn't going to happen. ‘What are you doing?' She'd gone to
the table; the chamberpot forgotten – a ruse, as I'd suspected.