We draw up outside his handsome London house, almost a palace in size, and his servants in his livery throw open the double doors and I walk in. There is no one there to greet me but the steward of his household, who bows to me and offers to show me to my rooms.
“Where is Sir Thomas?” I ask, stripping off my riding gloves and handing them to my lady-in-waiting. “And Lady Gresham?”
“Sir Thomas is ill, he has taken to his chamber, and Lady Gresham has gone out,” he says, clearly embarrassed at their neglect of their duty and their lack of respect to me.
“Then you had better take me to my rooms and tell Lady Gresham that she may attend on me as soon as she returns,” I say sharply.
I follow him up the great staircase and he leads me past several big double doors to a single door, set in the corner of the building. He opens it. I go in. It is not a box as I endured at Chequers, but it is not a great handsome room to match the imposing house. It is a privy chamber without a presence chamber, and it is clear that I am not to live here as a princess with my own little court.
Beyond it is a bedroom with a good-sized bed and an oriel window over the noisy street below so that I can watch like a nosy merchant’s wife and see Sir Thomas’s tradesmen coming and going, and the clerks going into their counting houses.
“We were told it would not be for long,” the steward says apologetically. “We were told that you are going to court.”
“I believe so, and this will do for the time being, if you have nothing better,” I say coolly. “Please show my lady-in-waiting and my maids to their rooms. And you may bring some wine and water and something to eat. You may serve it in the chamber outside, my privy chamber.”
He bows himself out and I look around me. It is pleasant enough—God knows, it is a thousand times better than the Tower—and it is good enough until I get back to court.
The happiest, best thing that might happen to me has occurred: a great good in itself, and a harbinger of happiness to come. I cannot even think of it without wanting to drop to my knees and thank God for mercy. My husband, my beloved husband Thomas Keyes, has survived the cold and the hunger and the cramped quarters of the worst prison in England, and finally been released. I get the news in a note from him, himself, the first I have received since we were parted with one kiss, with our farewell kiss. This is the first note that he has ever written me. I know that he is no great scholar and it is not easy for him to express himself in writing, so I treasure the scrap of paper and the careful script. This is better than a poem, better than a ballad, these are the true words of an honest man, my honest man.
I am to go to Sandgate Castle in my home county of Kent where I was once captain so I know it is a snug billet and I am glad with all my heart to be freed. I pray for you and for your freedom daily and that you will wish to come to me, who loves you as much as I did the day I first saw you when you were a little poppet not ten years old on a horse too big for you. Come when you can—I will be waiting for you. For I am and will always be your loving and constant husband TK
I cannot bring myself to burn this, though I have burned every other letter I have received. I put it in the French Bible that belonged to Katherine, where Ned Hertford wrote the birth dates of his sons, my nephews, in the flyleaf. I slide it between the pages and I look at it every day.
My first act is to write to my stepgrandmother at court and ask her to speak to the queen about when I am to wait on her.
I don’t complain of my rooms but I was happier with you. And besides, Sir Thomas is half blind from studying his profit-and-loss ledgers, and lame from an old injury, and his wife is quite hateful. It’s not a cheerful household. I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to. Clearly, they don’t want me. They have no children of their own and the place is as tenderhearted as the mint where he spends most of his time.
I may not like my lodgings but at least they are a change of scene and a sign that I am on my way back to freedom. In this I am luckier than Mary Queen of Scots, who is not on her way to Scotland after all—her half brother has reneged on his promise to accept her return and the Protestant lords don’t trust her either. She will stay on with my aunt Bess at Wingfield Manor until her return can be agreed. She is in a most beautiful house and she will be richly served, but I don’t envy her. Like me, she is in a halfway house, within sight of freedom but, somehow, not quite free. We both have to wait on the rise of Elizabeth’s compassion, and that is rarely in full flood tide.
GRESHAM HOUSE, BISHOPSGATE,
LONDON, SUMMER 1569
The court is on progress when the most extraordinary news reaches us in London. It seems that our cousin Mary Queen of Scots has outwitted her host, my aunt Bess, and offended, just as Katherine offended, just as I offended. Absurdly, though married to the missing Earl of Bothwell, she has promised herself in marriage and—if that were not dreadful enough for the spinster queen—her choice has fallen on a great English nobleman. Everyone says that she is betrothed to marry Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk—Elizabeth’s kinsman from the Boleyn side—and he has fled from Elizabeth’s court and nobody knows where he has gone.
Sir Thomas dashes out of his house first thing in the morning and does not come back till midnight. Nothing is more hateful to merchants than uncertainty, and if Elizabeth has to send an army against her mother’s own family, the Howards, then she will have to fight most of Norfolk, and it is impossible to predict how it will end. It will be the Cousins’ Wars all over again. It will be a war as bad as those in France—a war of religion. It will be two queens fighting over the future of England. It will be a disaster for my country and for my sisters’ throne.
Elizabeth abandons her summertime progress and rushes the whole court to Windsor Castle to prepare for a siege. She has spent her life in terror, waiting for this one event; and now she has brought it on herself. She has always feared that her heir would marry a mighty subject and together they would turn on her, and now she thinks that Thomas Howard will raise the whole of the east of the country against the court, and the Northern lords will call out their hardened forces to rescue the Queen of Scots. Both regions are known papist; neither region loves the Tudors.
I can hear the bands of citizens and apprentice boys training to defend London. And I swing my window open to look out and see them parading up and down with broom handles over their shoulders in place of pikes.
They say that the Duke of Norfolk will march on Windsor, they say that the Northern lords will march on my aunt Bess’s house and take her guest from her by force. Aunt Bess and her husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury, who were so proud of hosting a queen, have to bundle her from Wingfield Manor to Tutbury Castle and prepare the place for a siege. England is breaking into two camps again—as it did before—and Elizabeth’s long game of playing one religion against another, one ally against another, one cousin against another, has collapsed into panic.
The Northern lords are riding under a banner that shows the five wounds of Christ. They are making this a holy war and every papist in England will support them. This is a new Pilgrimage of Grace like the one that nearly overthrew the old king Henry VIII, and the treasonous Northern parishes are ringing the bells backwards in every church to signify that they are rising for the old religion and the young Scots queen.