Not five minutes later they heard a rustling behind the curtain of the confessional. Its rear door adjoined the former priest’s room. The curtain opened and out stepped Thomas Parry. Elizabeth’s mouth fell open at the sight of her steward dressed in the homespun smock and leggings of a servant.
He made a low bow to her. “Your Grace.”
She jumped up. “Thomas!”
“Shhh!” Honor said.
Elizabeth shot Honor a look of wonder. “How…?”
Honor was pleased with herself despite the dangers that still lurked. “I discovered some interesting byways in this ancient heap.” She had found that dressed in her laundress’s garb, with lowered head and a plodding gait, she was as good as invisible to Bedingfield’s household staff and his guardsmen, both within and without the decrepit palace grounds. On one reconnoiter through the kitchen and down its dank back stairs she had discovered a musty, cobwebbed room, a former root cellar, it seemed. The hinges on its creaking door to the outside were so rusty they half seized as she pushed it open. And it took several hard shoves against the tangle of thorny shrubs outside, grown wild, before she could open it enough to crawl through. She had been astonished to find herself at the base of the courtyard’s outside wall. A track led through trees toward the river. An old delivery path, she guessed. The root cellar, so long unused—for generations, perhaps—appeared to have been forgotten. The door was definitely unguarded.
“Master Parry cannot stay long,” she told Elizabeth, “but long enough to give you news of your estates and your friends. Even a little news of the world.”
Elizabeth laughed and grabbed Parry’s hand. “Thomas, you are the answer to a maiden’s prayer.”
For half an hour the Princess and her steward talked like old friends long apart, eager to catch up. Honor followed as best she could as they discussed Elizabeth’s staff and servants at her various homes: her houses at Hatfield and Ashridge, her castle at Donnington, and her other estates. Many of these people had been dismissed by the Queen, and Elizabeth was concerned about them. After hearing all the gossip about an old governess’s pregnant granddaughter and a chamberlain’s gout, Honor was impatient for substantial news. She wanted reports of Elizabeth’s friends in high places, people the Queen could not slight without paying a price. She was glad when Elizabeth asked Parry about Sir William Cecil.
“Have he and Mildred settled into their house at Wimbledon? How do they find it?”
“Drafty.”
They both laughed.
Honor stifled a groan at this chitchat. She asked Parry, “Will Sir William stand again for Parliament?”
“Yes, his seat for Lincolnshire is all but certain.”
Honor’s mind ran ahead. Parliament could wield some power if it wanted to, because of its grip on the country’s purse strings, and Elizabeth could hope for support among its many members discontented with Queen Mary. She said to the Princess, “Parliament sits in several months, my lady, and if we—”
“Oh Lord, what good can those bumpkins do us?” She turned to Parry. “What news of the Countess of Sussex, Thomas?” Honor itched to press her point, but held her tongue. The countess was Elizabeth’s close friend.
“She has fled her husband, my lady,” Parry answered. “Been abroad for months.”
“That’s the last straw for Radcliffe, I warrant.”
“It was. He has washed his hands of her.”
“Ah, my dear, good Anne. She suffered enough from that brute.” She added with a shiver, “He positively gloated when he brought me to the Tower, he and Winchester.”
Honor wanted news that
mattered.
She put it firmly to Parry. “Sir, what doings at court should we know about?”
He thought for a moment, scratching his head. “The brawls get worse.”
“Of course,” Elizabeth said with a scoff, “since the Spaniards rule the roost.”
“Aye, my lady. But more of them get their heads knocked every week they remain.”
Honor knew of the enmity between the English courtiers and the haughty Spaniards of Prince Philip’s entourage. When Philip had arrived to marry the Queen last summer, he had brought with him over a dozen of the greatest nobles in Spain, all strutting their magnificence in everything from their wardrobes to their horses, and all bringing their own enormous retinues. Philip himself was the most magnificent. When his treasure was transported for storage at the Tower, Londoners had watched in resentful awe as twenty carts rumbled through the streets carrying his ninety-seven treasure chests full of gold. Since then, the resentment had erupted in fistfights throughout London between the Spaniards and the English, and there was fighting in the halls of the palace almost every day. Courtiers drew swords at every slight, real or imagined. Three Englishmen and a Spaniard had been hanged after a recent murderous brawl.
Parry said helpfully, “I know of news
outside
the court. Master Gresham has his old place back.”
“Oh?” Elizabeth said. “I thought he was not Catholic enough for my sister.”
“Seems she cannot do without him.”
Honor had heard as much. The government was dependent on the Antwerp money markets for loans to bridge the gap between its revenues and expenditures, and Sir Thomas Gresham, the Crown’s agent in Antwerp, had managed this cleverly and resourcefully until Mary came to the throne and sacked him. She had appointed a man whose religion was impeccable but whose inept dealings had forced England to pay ever higher interest rates, up to fourteen percent, leading to a crippling exchange rate. Now, she had been forced to rehire Gresham. One more example, Honor thought, of this Queen’s incompetence as a ruler. All that mattered to Mary was religion. Of that issue she was totally in control.
Honor had shuddered at the recent reports. The burnings had begun. One of the first was John Hooper, bishop of Worcester, a tenacious Protestant. He had been in prison for months for preaching that the Catholic tenet of Christ being physically present in the eucharist wafer was absurd. Last week, they had burned him at the stake. With green twigs laid at his feet, and no merciful wind to quicken the flames, he had been roasted alive for three-quarters of an hour.
Parry broke in on Honor’s thoughts. “The Queen’s physicians say she will be delivered of her child in April,” he said. “Cardinal Pole ordered a
Te Deum
sung at St. Paul’s in thanks to God.”
Old news, Honor thought. She felt disappointed, frustrated. Parry was an able administrator, and fiercely loyal to the Princess, but he was not at court. He could not tell Honor what she needed to know for Elizabeth’s sake. The state of the Queen’s mind. The state of the Queen’s heart.
Elizabeth went on, her tone icy with disdain, “Mayhap, when this blessed royal child arrives, its mother will pull in her claws and molest me no longer.”
Honor said sternly, “Do not believe it, my lady. You are in danger as long as the Queen fears you.”
“What is there to fear?” she wailed. “I am her prisoner. I can do nothing!”
“You can draw men to you, and she knows it.”
As I know it,
Honor thought,
and as Parry knows it, and Sir William.
And how many others? How many men of wealth and influence would rally to this girl’s side if needed? But that must wait. Before she could consider such things, she first had to keep Elizabeth alive.
“My lady,” she said, “you must ask Bedingfield to write another letter.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Another plea to the council? That dump of deaf old men? It took me weeks just to get the toad to take my dictation, and all for what? They refused my every request.”
Honor knew how this had stung Elizabeth. The council had ignored her as though she were a common felon, granting nothing she had asked for. No move closer to London. No more ladies to attend her. No writing materials. No hope.
“I don’t mean a letter to the council,” Honor clarified. “I mean a letter to the Queen herself.”
“Why? She
hates
me.”
“You have the power to tame that hate. Quiet her fears. Calm her jealousy.”
“Jealousy?” Elizabeth said, incredulous. “I am a captive and she is queen!”
“She is a woman.” A plain woman hopelessly in love with her husband, by all accounts, Honor thought. A woman of thirty-nine, nervously facing her first childbirth. “She is human. She once suffered as you do now. She was an outcast, stripped of her titles and rank in the days when her mother was cast aside. You and she have more in common than you think. Write to her, as woman to woman. Be kind. Be gentle. Wish her and her baby well. It may do you a world of good.”
Elizabeth was studying her with a quizzical look. “I know not how to judge you, Mistress Thornleigh.”
“I think I have proved myself,” Honor said with a nod at Parry that said
I brought you him.
“That you have. Yet you are full of contrary advice. ‘Stir the people’s anger’ one moment. ‘Love the Queen’ the next. I know not what to make of you.”
“Make me right. Follow my advice. Read the book by Machiavelli I brought you, and follow
his
advice.” She quoted the Italian:
“Only those means of security are good, are certain, are lasting, that depend on yourself and your own vigor.”
Elizabeth put on her most haughty face, unwilling to be pushed. “I shall consider it.”
6
The Rosary
March 1555
H
onor wiped a trickle of sweat from her brow, her spade idle in her hands as she took in what Adam had just said. “A project?” she asked warily. “What kind of project?”
She was preparing the soil for transplanting some rose bushes to the borders of her herb garden. Dirty knobs of snow clung stubbornly to hollows in the earth, like vagrants claiming squatting rights, and despite the body warmth the work generated, the March wind chilled her nose and fingertips. She had allowed herself a few days at home before returning to Elizabeth at Woodstock, and in this brief time she longed to start things growing. The Princess was proving a frustratingly obstinate pupil, but of
this
endeavor—tending her flowers and her herb garden—Honor was master.
But Adam’s news was serious. To steady her spade, Honor jammed it into the garden loam. That shot a pain to her rib that made her wince.
“Here, let me,” he said. He took the spade from her, set his boot on the blade’s top edge, and sank it effortlessly into the earth. “Why not let the servants do this for you?”
“I like doing it. What kind of project?”
“A monastery.”
She stared at him. He couldn’t be serious.
“Just a small one,” he said. “A priory, she calls it.”
“I don’t care if it’s big or small or covered with honey and feathers. Why involve yourself in such a thing? Especially with Frances Grenville.”
“It’s hardly involvement.” He flung a spadeful of stony dirt toward the raspberry canes trained on a wooden lattice, and frowned as pebbles clattered against the latticework. “What did you plant last year, stones?”
“Roses like stony soil. How much are you donating?”
He rested his hand on the top of the spade handle and gave her an indulgent smile. “Don’t worry, it’s just a token. It’ll be mostly her money.”
“Then why involve you at all?”
With a shove of his boot, he dug the spade in again. “She wants someone to help her make decisions.”
“There’s her brother.”
“You’re right. The fact is, she has another motive. Her idea is to mend the rift between us, the two families.”
Honor took back the spade and hacked the soil with a vigor that took the place of the retort on the tip of her tongue:
a little late for that.
“She could have just invited me to supper,” she muttered as she dug.
Adam shrugged. “I think she’s a rather lonely old lady.”
Honor had to laugh. “She wouldn’t appreciate you calling her old. She’s of an age with her friend the Queen. Forty, perhaps.”
He seemed mystified at the correction. “Exactly.”
She laughed again, but more soberly, her suspicion all but confirmed. Adam might be unaware of what a handsome young dog he was, but she doubted that Frances Grenville was unmoved. When would he take a wife? she wondered. They had heard that the Korteweg girl had hastily been married to someone else, a man whose fortune satisfied her father, and it seemed to Honor that Adam had put that misadventure behind him, his heart relatively unscathed. She was glad. She hoped he would settle down with an English girl here at home. But would he want to, given the anxious atmosphere of Queen Mary’s regime?
She looked to the house where a pair of swifts darted past the eaves, trading undulations in flight as though they flew as one. The late afternoon sun lit up the windows of her second-story study with a rosy gold light that warmed her in the deepest part of herself. Speedwell House. Home. She heard giggling, and looked down to the water meadow where two maids were strolling up to the house with baskets full of fresh cut rushes. A pair of swans glided on the stream. Behind the house, a horse in the stable whinnied. There was a faint smell of wood smoke. How she loved this place.
But, she thought with a sigh, there was still much to do to get it back to normal. The rooms still felt hollow, echoing. After the rebellion the Queen’s agents had confiscated all their moveable goods, and so far Richard had replaced only the most essential furniture—beds, kitchen blocks, dining table for the great hall, desks, not much else. Too much debt. And he was too busy working day and night to reestablish his cloth works, since the Queen’s men had taken away everything there, too, looms and all. But they were making progress, step-by-step, and she felt sure Richard would have the business prospering again within a year or so. Speedwell House would soon feel like home again. She cast her gaze across her herb garden. She loved how the hyssop and thyme and winter savory stayed green all through the winter. And soon the speedwells around the sundial would blossom in a carpet of blue. She couldn’t wait for warmer days so she could sow parsley seeds and lavender and lemon balm. She took in a deep breath of the chilly spring air, fresh and full of promise.