Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (287 page)

*  *  *

But it was not all as easy as Elizabeth learning her way round the corridors and back stairs of the warren that was Whitehall Palace. When they went out in the streets there were many who doffed their caps and cried hurrah for the Protestant princess, but there were many also who did not want another woman on the throne, seeing what the last one had done. Many would have preferred Elizabeth to declare her betrothal to a good Protestant prince and get a sensible man’s hand on the reins of England at once. There were many others who remarked that surely Lord Henry Hastings, nephew to King Henry, and married to Robert Dudley’s sister, had nearly as good a claim as Elizabeth, and he was an honorable young man and fit to rule. There were even more who whispered in secret or said nothing at all but who longed for the coming of Mary, Queen of Scots and Princess of France, who would bring peace to the kingdom, a lasting alliance with France, and an end to religious change. She was younger than Elizabeth, for sure, a sixteen-year-old girl but a real little beauty, and married to the heir to the French throne with all that power behind her.

Elizabeth, new-come to her throne, not yet crowned or anointed, had to find her way round her palace, had to put her friends in high places and that quickly, had to act like a confident Tudor heir, and had somehow to deal at once with her church which was in open and determined opposition to her and which would, unless it was swiftly controlled, bring her down.

There had to be a compromise and the Privy Council, still staffed with Mary’s advisors but leavened by Elizabeth’s new friends, came up with it. The church was to be restored to the condition in which Henry VIII had left it at the time of his death. An English church, commanded by Englishmen and headed by the monarch, that obeyed English laws and paid its tithes into the English treasury, where the litany, homilies, and prayers were often read in English; but where the shape and content of the service were all but identical to the Catholic Mass.

It made sense to everyone who was desperate to see Elizabeth take the throne without the horror of a civil war. It made sense to everyone who longed for a peaceful transition of power. Indeed, it made sense to everyone but to the church itself, whose bishops would not countenance one step toward the mortal heresy of Protestantism, and, worst of all, it made no sense to the queen, who was suddenly, at this inopportune moment, stubborn.

“I won’t have the Host raised in the Royal Chapel,” Elizabeth specified for the twentieth time. “When we have Christmas Mass, I will not have the Host raised as an object of worship.”

“Absolutely not,” Cecil agreed wearily. It was Christmas Eve and he had been hoping that he might have got to his own home for Christmas. He had been thinking, rather fondly, that he might have been there to take Christmas communion in his own chapel, the Protestant way, without drama, as God had intended it, and then stayed with his family for the rest of the days of Christmas, returning to court only for the great feast of present-giving on Twelfth Night.

It had been a struggle to find a bishop who would celebrate Mass in the Royal Chapel before the Protestant princess at all, and now Elizabeth was trying to rewrite the service.

“He will let the congregation take communion?” she confirmed. “Whatever his name is? Bishop Oglesham?”

“Owen Oglethorpe,” Cecil corrected her. “Bishop of Carlisle. Yes, he understands your feelings. Everything will be done as you wish. He will serve at the Christmas Mass in your chapel, and he won’t elevate the Host.”

*  *  *

Next day, Cecil cradled his head once more as the bishop defiantly held the pyx above his head for the congregation to worship the body of Christ at the magical moment of transubstantiation.

A clear voice rang out from the royal pew. “Bishop! Lower the pyx.”

It was as if he had not heard her. Indeed, since his eyes were closed and his lips moving in prayer, perhaps he had not heard her. The bishop believed with all his heart that God was coming down to earth, that he held the real presence of the living God between his hands, that he was holding it up for the faithful to worship, as they must, as faithful Christians, do.

“Bishop! I said, Bishop! Lower that pyx.”

The wooden fretwork shutter of the royal pew banged open like a thunderclap. Bishop Oglethorpe turned slightly from the altar, and glanced over his shoulder to meet the furious gaze of his queen, leaning out from the royal pew like a fishwife over a market stall, her cheeks flaming red with temper, her eyes black as an angry cat’s. He took in her stance—up from her knees, standing at her full height, her finger pointing at him, her voice commanding.

“This is my own chapel. You are serving as my chaplain. I am the queen. You will do as I order. Lower that pyx.”

As if she did not matter at all, he turned back to the altar, closed his eyes again, and gave himself up to his God.

He felt, as much as he heard, the swish of her gown as she strode out of the door of the pew and the bang as she slammed it shut, like a child running from a room in temper. His shoulders prickled, his arms burned; but still he kept his back resolutely turned to the congregation, celebrating the Mass not with them, but for them: a process private between the priest and his God, which the faithful might observe, but could not join. The bishop put the pyx gently down on the altar and folded his hands together in the gesture for prayer, secretly pressing them hard against his thudding heart, as the queen stormed from her own chapel, on Christmas Day, driven from the place of God on His very day, by her own muddled, heretical thinking.

*  *  *

Two days later, Cecil, still not home for Christmas, faced with a royal temper tantrum on one hand and a stubborn bishop on the other, was forced to issue a royal proclamation that the litany, Lord’s Prayer, lessons, and the ten commandments would all be read in English, in every church of the land, and the Host would not be raised. This was the new law of the land. Elizabeth had declared war on her church before she was even crowned.

*  *  *

“So who
is
going to crown her?” Dudley asked him. It was the day before Twelfth Night. Neither Cecil nor Dudley had yet managed to get home to their wives for so much as a single night during the Christmas season.

Does he not have enough to do in planning the Twelfth Night feast, that now he must devise religious policy?
Cecil demanded of himself irritably, as he got down from his horse in the stable yard and tossed the reins to a waiting groom. He saw Dudley’s eyes run over the animal and felt a second pang of irritation at the knowledge that the younger man would see at once that it was too short in the back.

“I thank you for your concern but why do you wish to know, Sir Robert?” The politeness of Cecil’s tone almost took the ice from his reply.

Dudley’s smile was placatory. “Because she will worry, and this is a woman who is capable of worrying herself sick. She will ask me for my advice, and I want to be able to reassure her. You’ll have a plan, sir, you always do. I am only asking you what it is. You can tell me to mind my horses and leave policy to you, if you wish. But if you want her mind at rest you should tell me what answer I should give her. You know she will consult me.”

Cecil sighed. “No one has offered to crown her,” he said heavily. “And between you and me, no one will crown her. They are all opposed, I swear that they are in collusion. I cannot trace a conspiracy but they all know that if they do not crown her, she is not queen. They think they can force her to restore the Mass. It’s a desperate position. The Queen of England, and not one bishop recognizes her! Winchester is under house arrest for his sermon at the late queen’s funeral, Oglethorpe in all but the same case for his ridiculous defiance on Christmas Day. He says he will go to the stake before he gives way to her. She wouldn’t let Bishop Bonner so much as touch her hand when she came into London, so he is her sworn enemy too. The Archbishop of York told her to her face that he regards her as a heretic damned. She’s got the Bishop of Chichester under house arrest, although he is sick as a dog. They are all unanimously against her, not a shadow of doubt among them. Not even a tiny crack where one might seed division.”

“Surely a scattering of bribes?”

Cecil shook his head. “They have become amazingly principled,” he said. “They will not have Protestantism restored to England. They will not have a Protestant queen.”

Dudley’s face darkened. “Sir, if we do not have a care, they will make a rebellion against the queen from inside the church itself. It is a very small step from calling her a heretic to open treason, and a rebellion by the princes of the church would hardly be a rebellion at all. They are the Prince Bishops; they can make her look like a usurper. There are enough Catholic candidates for the throne who would be quick to take her place. If they declare war on her, she is finished.”

“Yes, I
know
that,” Cecil said, keeping his irritation in check with some difficulty. “I am aware of the danger she is in. It’s never been worse. No one can ever remember a monarch in such uncertainty. King Henry never had more than one bishop openly against him, the late queen, at her very worst of times, had two; but Princess Elizabeth has every single one of them as her open and declared enemy. I know things are as bad as they can be, and the princess clinging to her prospects by her fingertips. What I
don’t
know is how to make an absolutely solid Roman Catholic church crown a Protestant princess.”

“Queen,” Dudley prompted.

“What?”

“Queen Elizabeth. You said ‘princess.’ ”

“She’s on the throne but not anointed,” Cecil said grimly. “I pray that the day comes when I can say ‘queen’ and know it is nothing more nor less than the truth. But how can I get her anointed, if no one will do it?”

“She can hardly burn them all,” Dudley said with unwarranted cheerfulness.

“Quite so.”

“But what if they thought she might convert?”

“They’ll hardly believe that, after she stormed out of her own chapel on Christmas Day.”

“If they thought that she would marry Philip of Spain, they would crown her,” Dudley suggested slyly. “They would trust him to forge a compromise. They saw him handle Queen Mary. They’d trust Elizabeth under his control.”

Cecil hesitated. “Actually, they might.”

“You could tell those men, in the strictest confidence, that she is considering him,” Dudley advised. That’s the best way to make sure everyone hears it. Suggest that he will come over for the wedding and create a new settlement for the church in England. He liked her before, and she encouraged him enough, God knows. Everyone thought they would make a match of it as soon as her sister was cold. You could say they are all but betrothed. She’s attended Mass almost every day for the last five years, they all know that well enough. She is accommodating when she has to be. Remind them of it.”

“You want me to use the old scandals of the princess as a mask for policy?” Cecil demanded sarcastically. “Hold her up to shame as a woman who bedded her brother-in-law as her own sister lay dying?”

“Elizabeth? Shame?” Dudley laughed in Cecil’s face. “She’s not been troubled by shame since she was a girl. She learned then that you can ride out shame if you keep your nerve and admit nothing. And she’s not troubled by lust either. Her “scandals” as you call them—excepting the one with Thomas Seymour, which got out of hand—are never accidental. Since her romping with Seymour led him to the scaffold, she has learned her lesson. Now she deploys her desires; they do not drive her. She’s not a fool, you know. She’s survived this far. We have to learn from her, learn to use everything we have: just as she has always done. Her marriage is our greatest weapon. Of course we have to use it. What d’you think she was doing all the time that she was flirting with Philip of Spain? She wasn’t driven by desire, God knows. She was playing the only card she had.”

Cecil was about to argue but then he stopped himself. Something in Dudley’s hard eyes reminded him of Elizabeth’s when he had once warned her of falling in love with Philip. Then she had shot him the same bright, cynical look. The two of them might be young people, only in their mid-twenties, but they had been taught in a hard school. Neither of them had any time for sentiment.

“Carlisle might do it,” Cecil said thoughtfully. “If he thought she was seriously considering Philip as a husband, and if I could assure him that by doing it, he would save her from heresy.”

Dudley put a hand on his shoulder. “Someone has to do it or she’s not queen,” he pointed out. “We have to get her crowned by a bishop in Westminster Abbey or all this is just mummery and wishful thinking. Jane Grey was queen as much as this, and Jane Grey’s rule was ten days long, and Jane Grey is dead.”

Cecil shrugged involuntarily, and moved away from Dudley’s touch.

“All right,” Dudley said, understanding the older man’s diffidence. “I know! Jane died for my father’s ambition. I know that you steered your course out of it at the time. You were wiser than most. But I’m no plotter, Sir William. I will do my job and I know that you can do yours without my advice!”

“I am sure you are a true friend to her, and the best Master of Horse she could have appointed,” Cecil offered with his faint smile.

“I thank you,” Dudley said with courtesy. “And so you force me to tell you that that animal of yours is too short in the back. Next time you are buying a saddle horse, come to me.”

Cecil laughed at the incorrigible young man; he could not help himself. “You are shameless like her!” he said.

“It is a consequence of our greatness,” Dudley said easily. “Modesty is the first thing to go.”

*  *  *

Amy Dudley was seated in the window of her bedroom at Stanfield Hall in Norfolk. At her feet were three parcels tied with ribbon, bearing labels that read “To my dearest husband from your loving wife.” The writing on the labels was in fat irregular capitals, like a child might write. It had taken Amy some time and trouble to copy the words from the sheet of paper that Lady Robsart had written for her, but she had thought that Robert would be pleased to see that she was learning her letters at last.