“Am I released?” I ask him.
He bows his head to hide his embarrassment, so I know that I am not. “To stay with Sir William Hawtrey,” he says quietly. “A brief stay, I understand.”
“Why?” I ask bluntly.
He bows again. “My lady, they don’t tell me.”
“But why Sir William Hawtrey?”
He makes a helpless little gesture. “I know nothing more than that I am to escort you to his house.”
“It seems I am to know nothing, too.”
CHEQUERS, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE,
AUTUMN 1565
It takes us all day to ride from Windsor, over the river and through the Chiltern Hills, and my happiness comes back to me as soon as I am on horseback and looking around at the green horizon, the stooks of straw in the fields, and the neat little villages where people come out to stare at the guards and at me, and my groom who rides beside me, and my maid who rides pillion behind one of the guards.
We carry no standard, so nobody knows that I am a prisoner of the queen. This is another sign of Elizabeth’s fears. She does not want the country to know that she has arrested yet another of her cousins for no good reason. From the very start of Katherine’s imprisonment people have demanded that she should be free, and complained that Margaret Douglas cannot be held because her son has married the queen’s rival. But I don’t expect anyone to call my name as they called for Katherine or called for Jane. There is no one who will ride to my rescue: my friends are all at Elizabeth’s court, in her power. My family is lost to me. My dearest and most trustworthy ally is my husband, and I don’t know where he is, nor how to get a letter to him.
Sir William Hawtrey, a good old man of nearly forty-five years, with his wealthy young wife standing behind him, greets me at the doorway of his handsome house of Chequers and takes me by the hand to lead me inside. He treats me with an odd mixture of deference—for I am sister to the only heir to the throne—and anxiety—for he has been forced to agree to keep me as his prisoner.
“This way,” he says pleasantly, leading me up the stairs to the northeast wing. He opens a door to a tiny room, big enough for a bed and a table and chair. At once, I recoil.
“Where are my rooms?” I ask him. “I cannot stay here.”
“The queen commanded it,” he says uncomfortably. “I think you are just staying for a night or two. There was no other room that was secure . . .” His voice trails away.
“Sir William,” I say earnestly, “I have done nothing wrong.”
“I am sure,” he says gently. “And so you are certain to be pardoned and recalled to court. This is just for a little while, a night or two.”
I look round. My maid hovers on the threshold; there is hardly room for her to serve me.
“Your maid will be housed nearby, and she will sit with you during the day, and serve your meals,” Sir William says. “You are to walk in the garden as you wish, for your health.”
“I cannot live like this,” I say.
“You won’t have to!” he assures me. “This is just for a short stay. I don’t doubt that she will forgive you, and you will return to court.”
He makes a gesture again, ushering me into the room, and I go in. I have a horror of him touching me. I hate to be pushed about, or lifted up. Nobody must ever think that they can just pick me up and place me where they want me to be without my consent. I go to the little window and pull up a stool so that I can stand high enough to look out over the parkland. It is beautiful, like Bradgate, like my home. Dear God, it feels like years and years since Jane and Katherine and I were children at our home.
I can see the sunset in the little square panes of my high window. It is a beautiful evening, the sun going down and the moon rising. I wish on the moon, as I have done since I was a little girl and my sister Jane told me that it was pagan nonsense and I should pray for my desires and not throw away my thoughts on vain wishing. The evening star sits like a little diamond on the horizon and I wish for my freedom on the star, too, and for Thomas on every star in the sky.
The tap and then the noise of the opening door behind me makes me turn. It is poor Sir William looking weary and troubled. “I just came to make sure that you had everything that you need.”
I nod my head without answering. It was a mean dinner, and he knows it. One of royal blood should be served with twenty courses. I ate tonight like a poor woman.
“I shall write to the queen and ask her to release me,” I say. “Will you take my letter and see that it gets to her?”
“I will,” he says. “And I will add a petition of my own. She must show mercy to you, and to your sister, and to your cousin Lady Margaret. And Lady Margaret’s younger son.”
I am alarmed for the little boy. “You can’t mean Charles Stuart? He cannot have been arrested? He’s only a child.”
His face is unhappy as he nods. “He’s being held in a private house in the North.”
“He’s only ten years old!” I exclaim. “His mother is in the Tower of London, his father and brother in Scotland—why would the queen not leave him at his home among his servants and friends? He’s not strong, and he is all alone in the world. He is no threat to anyone. He must be lonely and frightened as it is, all on his own at home. Why put him in a strange house and declare him a prisoner?”
There is a silence. We both know why. As a warning to all of us that the queen’s displeasure will fall on us and even on our children, even on innocent babies. As a warning to all of us that she is a Herod. She loves none of her kin until they are dead and she can honor them with a funeral. She likes none of her cousins anywhere but in prison. She loves them in the tomb.
Sir William shakes his head. “For sure, I pray that she will release all her cousins soon.”
I write to William Cecil to ask him to represent to Her Majesty that Katherine and I have never spoken one word of conspiracy against her, that—unlike the Queen of Scots or Lady Margaret—we have never spoken of our closeness to the throne. We have both fallen in love, but this is no crime. We have married without her permission, but this is not illegal.
I get a brief unsigned note in reply saying that my sister and her little boy are well at Ingatestone, her elder son is with his grandmother at Hanworth, her husband still imprisoned in London. My husband, Thomas Keyes, is in the Fleet Prison. The anonymous author of the note says that the queen will be approached to release us all into more generous keeping—especially Thomas Keyes, who is very confined. The matter will be put before the queen “as soon as is convenient.”
I sit in my little room with the note in my hand for a long time before I come to my senses and thrust it into the embers of the fire. I understand that the queen is still in such a vile mood that nobody dare suggest anything to her, not even William Cecil. I know something else—which I knew already—that she has no kindness or generosity to me or to my sister. And now I know that Thomas is suffering for me. I wonder exactly what the writer means by “very confined.” I am afraid that they have put Thomas into a small room. There are cellars in the Fleet Prison that are low and damp. The rats run across the floor. Have they put my handsome big-boned husband in a cage?
He will be shamed, I know, to be imprisoned in the Fleet Prison—the common jail for criminals, forgers, and drunkards. When Sir William comes the next day, before the serving of my poor dinner, I ask him if he has any news of Thomas Keyes.
I recognize his anxious look now. His gaze goes to the floor, his face folds into lines of worry, he touches his silvery gray hair. “I have no news, I have only heard gossip,” he starts.