“You shall have it,” I promise him. I see one of William Cecil’s men approaching the gate, and I smile at Thomas and slip away. “I have given you my word.”
The first night we sleep undisturbed till dawn in each other’s arms. When his head lies beside mine on the pillow, we are as equals, his broad forehead against my little one, his gentle kiss on my smiling mouth. His long legs stretch down to the bottom of the bed, his feet extend over the edge, and I occupy only the top half of the bed, but side by side, with the curtains drawn around us, we are equals, we are one.
The second night I wake at midnight to hear the Westminster Abbey bell tolling over and over, the low haunting note that says that someone has died.
“Elizabeth,” I whisper in my moment of waking, the wish coming before the words, the wish coming before the thought. I wake to joy as I half dream, half believe that it is the announcement of Elizabeth’s death and my sister will be Queen of England.
Thomas hears the mourning bell too and springs out of bed and ducks to avoid the roof beams. “I must go,” he says, and scrambles into his livery. I get up, too, pulling on my shift.
“Shall I do your laces?” he turns, halfway to the door.
“I’ll manage. You go,” I say briefly. I know that he will be desperate to do his duty, to guard the gate against whatever bad news is coming.
He leaves his room at a run, and I throw a shawl over my head like a poor woman and go down the stairs and across the yard. I think I will get to my rooms unseen, but there, coming out of the ladies’ rooms, is Thomasina. In one glance she takes in my half-dressed state, my tumbling hair. But she has no time for comment.
“It’s for Kat Ashley,” she says over the insistent tolling of the bell. “God bless her. We’ve lost her.”
“Lost her?” I say stupidly.
“She has died. She was failing fast. The queen is heartbroken,” Thomasina says. “She left the dancing and ordered the bells to toll and the court into mourning. She says that Kat was like a mother to her.”
“She was,” I agree solemnly; but I think: and even daughterly devotion didn’t stop Elizabeth arresting Kat and holding her in the Tower.
I dash into my room and cram on my hood and then rush to the queen’s rooms to find her presence chamber shaded, with the shutters closed and everyone exchanging the news in hushed voices. Inside the private rooms the favored courtiers whisper low-voiced remarks. Many people will miss Kat Ashley; but everyone knows that this leaves a vacancy among Elizabeth’s ladies that an ambitious woman might fill, and a gap among her advisors that someone will seize.
I go to the bedchamber door. Aunt Bess, looking weary, comes out as I wait outside. “Will you take over from me for an hour?” she says. “She wants two of us in there all the time to sit with her and grieve.”
I nod and go in.
The room is shuttered and the fire is lit, it is dark and stuffy. Elizabeth is lying in bed, sheets drawn up to her chin, fully dressed, only her shoes slipped from her feet. Her ruff is crumpled around her neck, her eyes are smudged with paint, the ceruse is smeared on her pillow, on her askew red wig. But in her grief she looks almost like a child. Her suffering is as naked as any orphan in the streets. Elizabeth is always alone, though she fills her court with flatterers and time servers; and now, with the death of the woman who has been at her side since childhood, she realizes it all over again. Kat Ashley came to her when she had lost her identity. She had been a beloved princess, the daughter of an adored wife, then she was put away, forgotten, her title and her name taken from her. When Kat Ashley first came to the little girl, she found a child all but destroyed. She rebuilt her pride, she taught her a love of scholarship and of faith. She taught her to survive and be cunning, to trust no one. Kat was the only woman in the world who loved Elizabeth then, and now she has gone. Elizabeth turns her face into the pillow to muffle her shaking sobs, and I think—yes—now she is alone indeed, now perhaps she will understand what it is to love someone truly and be taken from them. Now perhaps she will have pity on Katherine, an orphan, parted from her husband and son.
William Cecil himself comes to the queen’s rooms, waits for me to come out to the privy chamber, and asks me to take a message in to the queen in her bed.
I hesitate. “She is seeing no one,” I say. “And Blanche Parry is to be the first lady of the bedchamber.”
He bends down so he can speak quietly in my ear. “It would be well that she heard this first from you,” he says, “since I cannot enter.”
“I’m not your best choice for bad news,” I say reluctantly. I can feel a sense of dread in my belly, although I think there can be nothing wrong with my sister: William Cecil would not torture me like this if Katherine were ill. “What’s happening?”
“Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, has married the Queen of Scots,” Cecil says quietly. “Keep your voice down.”
He does not need to warn me not to exclaim. I know how disastrous this is for England. I keep my expression blank as well. “Henry Stuart?”
“Yes. And she has made him king.”
Now my face is frozen like a mask. Mary Queen of Scots must be madly in love, or simply mad to give the crown and the throne to a youth who could be bought for a sovereign. I guess that she so wanted to be the wife of a king once more that she thought she would make one, choosing to ignore that Henry is a born courtier without any touch of the regal.
William Cecil admires my stillness, and goes on: “She has put herself far beyond any possibility of succeeding to the English throne—a papist and now with a weak husband. She is no threat to us. We would never have accepted Dudley as a King of England coming in at her side; we certainly won’t have Darnley. We will not have a papist king and queen, and not even the French will support her, married to a man like him.”
“It is her undoing,” I whisper. “She has thrown away her future for a boy.”
“Yes,” Cecil confirms. “Clearly she has been persuaded that he and his father can defeat her enemies. Already they have persuaded her to raise an army to make war on her own people, on the Protestant lords: her own people of our religion. She has made herself into our enemy. So for England, there is only one possible heir left. Mary Queen of Scots is a declared enemy to our religion, Margaret Douglas is her mother-in-law, your sister is the sole remaining heir. The queen will see this now, so take her the news yourself, and stand before her while you tell her, so that she knows what a faithful family she has.”
Elizabeth’s fury with her rival queen quickly replaces Elizabeth’s grief. She rises from her bed, orders a private funeral for Kat Ashley, and then storms into the Privy Council, demanding that they make war on the Scots.