There is a rebellion in Scotland. The Scots queen’s half brother the Earl of Moray has turned against her. Though he welcomed her to Scotland and advised her earlier, he is a staunch Protestant and cannot stomach a papist queen with her papist jumped-up king. Although Elizabeth has no real interest in fighting for religion, she decides to support the bastard James Stewart, Earl of Moray, against his ordained queen and half sister. She sends him a fortune in gold to pay his followers and every messenger brings us news of his treason and demands for more help. The Privy Council ask each other, even ask us ladies, what the queen is doing, supporting a rebel against a crowned queen, sending money but not sending an army, doing enough to encourage him but not enough to ensure his victory. The French ambassador comes to court in a cold rage and says that if Elizabeth supports Protestant rebels against a legitimate half-French papist queen, they will intervene also . . . and all of a sudden, Elizabeth loses her heart for the Protestant cause and the bastard rebel; all of a sudden she remembers her loyalty to a fellow queen. To overthrow one woman in power is to threaten every woman in power. Suddenly, Elizabeth is an ally.
Besides, all the news we have from Scotland is of the young queen’s triumph, and Elizabeth hates to be on the losing side. Queen Mary raises an army and she leads it herself; she pursues her half brother in a series of running battles and finally chases him over the border. From our garrison in Newcastle-upon-Tyne he begs for reinforcements, he limps south to London, a frightened man, and Elizabeth astounds him with a strong reprimand for disloyalty to his queen and half sister. Thomasina and I exchange one bland look as Elizabeth leaves Moray and the Protestant cause in Scotland in ruins, and the court baffled as to what she really wants.
She does not surprise me. For there is no sense in how she treats me, or how she treats Katherine and her little boys. Elizabeth is driven by fear, and she takes sudden anxious decisions and then reverses them. Mary Queen of Scots will never be heir to England now, but still Elizabeth does not recognize my sister, as fearful of a powerless woman in captivity as she is by an armed rival on her border. She will not release my sister, who may die under house arrest, if she cannot be reunited with her husband and little boy. The court, the Privy Council, the queen’s allies, even her enemies look in vain for consistent strategy from Elizabeth. They do not see that it is spite not strategy that drives her against her cousins: my sister and Queen Mary. It is rivalry, not politics that persuades her. I know this, for all her cousins suffer from her spite and rivalry: me too.
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON,
SUMMER 1565
I am lying in Thomas’s arms, listening to his steady breathing, watching the sky in the window opposite his bed slowly grow from dark to pale and then blush with the peach and pink of the rising sun. I don’t stir, I don’t want to wake him; I want this moment to never end. I feel a deep sense of peace and joy with this big man beside me, his arms around me, his breath warm on the back of my neck.
There is a sharp little tap-tap on the door, and I am instantly alert and frightened. Nobody knows that I am here; I must not be found here. I raise myself up in the bed and at once Thomas is on his feet and out of bed. He sleeps like a sentry—he is always ready to wake. He moves like a big cat, silent on his broad feet, and I snatch up the sheet and hold it across my nakedness and jump down from the high bed. I step back into the room, so that I cannot be seen from the doorway. Thomas pulls on his breeches, glances to see that I am hidden, nods at me to stay quiet and still and speaks to the bolted door. “Who goes there?”
“It’s Thomasina, the queen’s dwarf!” comes the urgent hiss. “Open up, Thomas Keyes, you great fool.”
He hides a smile and unbolts the door, barring it with his arm. She does not have to duck her head to slip into the room and she sees me. “I knew you would be here,” she says breathlessly. “It’s true then. You’re married. You’d better get dressed and come at once. She knows.”
I gape at her. “How?”
She shakes her little head. “I don’t know. She asked for you the moment she woke this morning, God knows why, and then they found you were not in your bed.”
“I can make something up.” Frantically I pull on my gown, Thomas ties my laces. “I can say I was visiting a sick friend.”
“Here, let me,” Thomasina says, pushing him aside. “Great lummox. I must go. You can’t be found with two of us in your room, Thomas Keyes! That would be a scandal indeed!”
For the first time ever, I don’t correct her. I don’t say there are not two of us here, there is one princess and one dwarf, we are not two of the same thing. I don’t pause in cramming my feet into my little shoes, and tucking my stockings in the pocket of my cape. She has come to warn me because she believes in our sisterhood, one little woman helping another in a dangerous world. I won’t deny my affinity with her again. She has been a friend to me now, and a sister.
“Who told her?” I demand. I fold up my long hair and cram my hood on top. Thomasina is quick and skilled with a couple of pins.
“One of the maids,” she said. “She didn’t dare do otherwise. She just said you weren’t in your bed. Not where you are. But we’ve all known that you two were courting for months. Are you married?”
“Yes.”
“Without permission from the queen?”
“There’s no law against it,” I say pedantically. “There was a law but it was repealed.”
She laughs at me. “The queen doesn’t need a law to express her displeasure,” she says. “Ask Margaret Douglas. Ask your sister. God help you.”
She dives out of the door. “Hurry up!” I hear her call and the patter of her feet down the stairs.
Thomas shrugs on his billowing shirt and reaches for his livery jacket. “What should we do?” he asks me. “Shall I come with you to the queen?”
“No. You can’t come anyway if she’s in her bedchamber.”
“I have served her loyally since she came to the throne,” he remarks. “She knows that I am faithful.”
I compress my lips on my opinion of Elizabeth’s regard for her faithful servants. Ask Robert Dudley what rewards there are for serving her faithfully, ask William Cecil. “I’ll remind her of that, if she says anything,” I promise him.
I reach up on tiptoes and he bends down for a kiss. It is not a kiss for luck or a quick peck. He puts his arms around me and he holds me closely. He kisses me with passion, as if we may never kiss again. “I love you,” he says quietly. “Come to me at the gate as soon as you can, to tell me that things are well with you. Or send me a message that all is well.”
I show him a brave smile. “I shall come as soon as I can,” I say. “Wait for me. Wait for me.”
I go at a run to the queen’s presence chamber. Already it is filling up with petitioners and visitors who hope to catch her fleeting attention as she walks through to chapel. Half of them will be asking for clemency or pardon for men or women arrested for heresy or treason or suspicion. The prisons are crowded with suspects, the court crowded with their families. The Privy Council believe that the papists will rise against Elizabeth in support of Mary Queen of Scots. They believe that my cousin Margaret Douglas was conspiring with France and Spain to put her papist son and a papist queen on the throne. It has become a fearful country, a suspicious country, and now I am afraid and under suspicion too.
I go through the crowds to the door of her privy chamber. People make way for me—they know that I am one of the Grey girls. I see glances of pity from people whose own lives are so endangered that they have come to court for help. People under the shadow of the scaffold are pitying me. There are two guards on the doors to Elizabeth’s privy chamber. They swing open the doors for me and I go in.
Most of the queen’s ladies and some of her maids-in-waiting are already in attendance, and clearly they are all talking about me. A terrible silence falls as I walk into the room and look around at these women who have been my companions and friends for eleven years. Nobody says a word.
“Where is Blanche Parry?” I ask. She is the new first lady of the bedchamber; she will know how much trouble I am facing. Lady Clinton nods her head towards the closed door.
“She’s with Her Majesty. She is much displeased.”
There is a ripple of talk, but no one speaks directly to me. It is as if they dare not address me for fear of the contamination of treason. Nobody wants to be known as my particular friend, though almost all of them have been proud to call themselves my friend at one time or another.