‘Nor I.’ I looked at the dark water around us and remembered my thoughts of sinking out of reach.
‘Why do you take the risk of meeting me like this?’ Cecil dropped all pretence of pleasantries. And by ‘risk’ he did not mean drowning.
All the wrong questions crowded into my mouth, not what I had planned to ask at all. They leapt out of the corners where I had kept them for the last six years.
‘Why did you send Abel White away?’ I gripped the gunwale and leaned closer to him. ‘Why did you never tell Henry that I had written him a warning?’
‘That’s all in the past now.’
‘I still want to know.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I know that I was in danger then. I need to understand the patterns of my life to be ready when danger comes again.’
‘I suppose you do.’ He sounded amused. He fell silent and shifted on his bench as if in pain. ‘You know as well as I do the risk you took by sending that warning. What if the king had learned that you had guilty knowledge and never told him? I could not let the heir to the throne run that same risk. It was brave of you, but you didn’t think it through.’
I nodded dumbly. Along with the rebuke, I heard the word ‘brave'.
‘The prince is too honourable,’ said Cecil. ‘He would have gone straight to the king, not thinking straight, neither. And where would that have left you?’
‘Why did you protect me? Why didn’t you let me speak in Coventry?’
‘To what end?’ He hesitated. ‘Why waste your life or freedom? The plot was already known. Your father was already out of danger, as was your brother. I needed nothing more. Certainly not a brave, if foolish, self-sacrifice.’
‘And my guardian conspired with you?’
‘He believed in your innocence. And in your love for your brother.’
‘Do you still have my letter now?’ I knew before I asked that he did. A man like Cecil never destroyed a possible weapon.
He nodded. ‘But secure.’
So long as you’re alive, I thought. ‘Am I in danger from my father?’
‘No more than anyone else is. Unless you feel compelled to confess old sins.’
‘You know the king’s mind better than anyone,’ I said. ‘You shape his mind – everyone knows that to be true. What is he going to decide to do with me in the end? What do you want him to decide?’
Cecil shifted again. I saw a pale flash of teeth. It might have been either pain or a tight smile. ‘You talk about what used to be. Things are much changed. I no longer know the king’s secret mind. He no longer cares what I advise.’
‘I can’t believe that!’ I exclaimed.
‘You don’t want to believe it, my dear. I’m the best father you and your brother ever had, but I can’t protect you for much longer. Who wants to believe that their protector is failing?’
I gaped into the shadows. This was not where I had imagined our conversation going. ‘I need your help, my lord. I care what you advise. I don’t know what to do…’
There was a splashing in the water beside the boat. A sleek head broke out of the water. Hands grabbed the gunwale. I had recognised him by the time he pulled himself into the wherry.
‘Henry!’ I whispered
‘No names, dear heart.’ He reached for a blanket folded on the seat beside me and wrapped himself in it. When he sat next to me, I felt his body shaking with cold.
‘You deign to join us, after all,’ said Cecil.
‘I knew I wouldn’t get a word in edgewise before,’ Henry said cheerfully. ‘So I left you to it. Are you done?’
‘Not yet!’ I turned to my brother. ‘Have all your swims been a cover for such meetings?’
‘Not all,’ said Henry. ‘But a good many. How else could we hide from the king how often we speak together and thathis chief adviser shares news and intelligence with the hated heir? What have you left to ask?’
‘I want to know if the shifting and battling will ever end for me?’ I said. ‘Or is the king merely tormenting me? Does he mean to go through with this Palatine marriage, or will he change his mind yet again? Will I end up like the Lady Arbella, teased with possibilities until I snap. Does he want to drive me to take action, as she did, to give him an excuse to throw me into the Tower, or have me executed as a traitor? I want to know the truth. Instead, I must try to make sense of shreds of gossip and rumour and…’ I almost said, ‘stolen letters’ but stopped myself in time.
There was a beat of silence in which I became absolutely certain that Cecil knew all about those filched copies and ‘borrowed’ paintings.
‘You’re safer innocent,’ said Henry.
‘You speak like our father!’ I clapped my hand over my mouth the minute the words were out. ‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘But I have never found innocence to be a safe condition.’
‘She speaks the truth,’ said Cecil. ‘Her grace will make as strong an ally for England as any husband, no matter where she goes. If she is kept informed.’
At these words, I felt an astonishing rush of almost-love for him.
We had crossed half way over the Thames, close enough to Southwark to hear the distant shouts for ‘Oars’ and cries of vendors. A pair of dogs barked excitedly at each other across the river from opposite shores.
‘You can’t imagine how much I need to learn,’ I said. ‘I hate the thought of this proposed Palatine marriage yet fear that it might be my duty, for the good of England. What must I do for England?’
Cecil sighed and shifted again.
‘Savoy would swallow you up. You must resist Savoy. If the only bride offered to your brother by Spain is the thirddaughter of the king, the six-year-old Infanta – and if, even so, Spain insists that the prince converts to Catholicism – I doubt whether Savoy, faced by the Bourbon-Hapsburg alliance, would honour your father’s demands. You will never be allowed in the end to raise your children as Protestants in a Catholic country.’
‘Which you will do in the Palatine,’ said Henry, pretending that his teeth were not rattling.
‘The Elector is the most important of the German princes,’ said Cecil. ‘But not so war-like as your brother.’
I felt Henry’s shoulders jerk in a silent laugh. I surmised an old argument between them.
‘The Elector is young,’ continued Cecil. ‘But if he shows that he can exercise power, he may be able to calm hostilities in Europe. He is the least likely of your suitors to draw England into the continental religious wars.’
‘Why should England not be drawn in?’ demanded Henry. ‘I still don’t see why you are so firm against war. Surely you don’t still hold to our father’s opinion that the Papists are no threat to England?’
‘England can’t afford another war when it can scarce afford a king.’ Cecil leaned back and murmured something through the rear curtains. The wherry turned back towards the Privy Stairs.
‘You must serve as a peace-offering,’ said Cecil. ‘Not a pointless sacrifice. I advise you to encourage the Palatine marriage. I fear that I no longer have the power to make it happen.’
Henry reached out and gripped my hand in his icy one. ‘Promise me that you will marry this German Frederick. The king does not listen to me, but together Cecil and I might still have a small influence with Parliament and the people. We will help you.’
Cecil having small influence was unthinkable. But reasonable thought seemed to have deserted Whitehall.
I looked from one shadowed face to the other. At the very least, they cut through the confusion and offered me a clear purpose. I nodded.
‘I’m afraid I have a poor thanks to give you in return for your advice,’ I said. I fumbled in my hanging pouch for the folded paper Tallie had brought me some weeks before.
I held it out now to Cecil. ‘Giving this to you feels like an unfriendly act,’ I said. I leaned forward to put in within reach of the long-fingered hand on his short arm. An exchange of intelligence.
He took it.
‘A work of your cousin, Bacon,’ I said. ‘In circulation but not yet published. I’ve no doubt that you’ve seen it already…’
Cecil tilted the paper to catch the lantern light. ‘Ah, yes,
“Of Deformity".
My cousin’s faint praise.
“Certainly there is a consent between the body and the mind.”
What a pleasing turn of phrase he has.’
Cecil could not possibly read in that near darkness. He knew the words by heart. ‘…
“persons that they think they can at pleasure despise".
And again, here, we make
“good spials and good whisperers".
At least he grants us the possibility of “Discipline and Virtue".’
He folded the paper and tucked it inside his cork girdle. ‘No matter. I’ve had worse. But I thank you for your care in warning me. We all seem to be counting our enemies now.’ He turned his head to look out over the water. ‘An easier task than it used to be. They grow bolder and begin to come out of the trees.’
Cecil is dying, I thought suddenly. I didn’t think he wanted to live. Henry was right. Our father’s coldness was killing him.
Wee Bobby was not afraid of our father. He was afraid for England and was pouring his knowledge into Henry while he still could.
How fragile we all are, I thought. Henry shivering. Cecil beginning to withdraw his force from the world. I felt a surge of remembered fear, alone in the forest.
I was not happy, but I was clear.
‘Are you ill, your grace?’ Tallie asked me quietly, as I rose to go to bed that night.
‘The world is ill,’ I said. ‘And I fear that it’s beyond me to cure.’
‘Is it the Palatine marriage?’
‘No!’ I said. ‘Yes! … In part. I don’t know!’ I glanced at my ladies playing cards by the fire, joined tonight by several gentlemen. Fire glowed through a half-bottle of claret and made small bright pools in the bottoms of their glasses.
‘I can’t say… Which of those gallants is yours?’
‘The fair one at the end of the table swears he loves me.’
With a lover’s alertness, Lynn seemed to hear us and turned his head from his cards to nod gravely.
‘Does he want to marry you?’
‘Men swear a great many things they don’t mean. Before they have you.’
I turned my head away. ‘And after they have you?’
Oh, my poor, poor mother!
‘Shall I call him over to us?’ I asked. Even as I spoke, Lynn made his excuses to the table and stood up.
Tallie leapt to her feet. ‘Pray excuse me, your grace.’ By the time Lynn drew near, she had disappeared into my bedchamber.
I don’t know what her problem is, I thought, watching his graceful bow. He might be a mere yeoman’s son, but I’d have taken him before any man on offer to me. And for Tallie, a yeoman’s son attending the Prince of Wales was a large step up from a footman.
I couldn’t bear it if she were to leave me to live with a husband in my brother’s household. But I would be marriedvery soon, one way or another. My new husband might not want me to bring a blackamoor woman with me. Tallie might not want to go where he took me, and she was her own mistress now. I could not force her.
I followed his wistful glance. ‘She can be a prickly cow,’ I said. ‘Have patience and persevere. At first, I had to be patient almost past enduring. Now I value her above any woman I know.’
He looked startled, then he grinned. ‘I didn’t think it possible, your grace, because my own opinion of her was already so high, but you have just added to her worth.’
I liked him. And not only because he knew how to turn a compliment back onto me. I resolved on the spot to make a good marriage for Tallie if I couldn’t manage one for myself.
Then Tallie brought me the copy of a letter written by a court gentleman to the English ambassador at The Hague, about Cecil.
… it is on all hands concluded that his Lordship must shortly leave this World, or at least disburden himself of a great part of his Affairs, almost all our great Affairs are come to a Stand, and his Hand is already shrewdly missed.
‘Cecil has gone to Bath,’ Henry said, when I showed it to him. ‘To try for a cure in the waters.’
‘A cure for what? How ill is he?’
‘Fierce headaches and cold sweats.’ Henry studied his hands for a moment. I thought that concern for Cecil was making him look drawn. ‘His belly is grown even more distended than before.’
‘I hear good reports of the waters in Bath,’ I said, to try to cheer him.
‘Our father’s coldness is killing him,’ said Henry again.
‘Don’t let it kill you, too. Perhaps the Golden Weasel is having Wee Bobby poisoned! Bacon has already murdered him with his pen.’ I stopped to consider my own suggestion. I ached to believe what I had just said, but unless Carr’s apothecary knew a poison that caused the liver to distend and swell, Cecil was being eaten by a canker.
‘How do I look?’ Henry asked unexpectedly.
I looked at him and let myself see the dark half-moons under his eyes. ‘As handsome as ever!’ I slid the stolen letter safely inside my bodice. ‘Like the future king of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Americas.’
MARCH – MAY 1612
We stood in a row in front of the king, like guilty pupils being called to account. Cecil, looking white and ill, with damp standing on his forehead. Sir Thomas Lake, the Earl of Northampton, Shrewsbury, me. The king glared at us from his chair, wine glass in hand, Carr at his shoulder. From his loose limbs and the devil in his eye, it was clear that my father had been drinking for several hours.
‘Who let this happen?’ He scanned our faces for an answer. Then he turned to Cecil. ‘I should have damned your advice and sent my Rochester, after all, to deal with that French bitch-queen.’ He reached back and laid his hand on the arm of Carr, the viscount, as if steadying himself.
‘And you!’ He turned next to me. ‘You’re no use at all, Bessie!’
The public announcement had been made in Paris. France and Spain had now formalised their proposed alliance, through the same double-marriages our father still wanted for Henry and me.
‘Why didn’t your spies give us more warning?’ Back to Cecil.
The Chief Secretary looked down wearily at the papers in his hand. ‘We have known the French queen’s plans for the marriage of her children ever since the death of the French king,’ he said. ‘I’m sure that your majesty will have read the letters from my agents in Paris.’ He glanced at Carr, who for many months had been screening the king’s papers as well as his petitioners.