My poor aunt Bess! I have news of her from my host, Sir Thomas, who speaks to me briefly as he meets me, walking through the great hall to go into the garden. He tells me that she is fleeing south, riding hard with a little force, trying to get away from the advancing Northern army, which is sweeping down through England. Aunt Bess is ordered to get Queen Mary behind the walls of Coventry Castle before the Northern lords capture her and her household and massacre them all. Elizabeth has mustered an army from among the London merchants and apprentice boys, Sir Thomas has sent his own men and they are marching north, but they will be able to do nothing if every village is against them and every church is holding a Mass and declaring itself for the freedom of Mary Queen of Scots. They are almost certain to arrive too late. Elizabeth’s Council of the North is pinned down in York, surrounded by the forces of the Northern lords. And still there is no news of the army from Norfolk and Thomas Howard at the head of it who could be marching to Coventry to save his bride or marching on London to claim her throne.
GRESHAM HOUSE, BISHOPSGATE,
LONDON, WINTER 1569
Sir Thomas tells me that there is a Spanish armada armed and waiting to sail from the Spanish Netherlands, coming to reinforce the army of the North and release Mary Queen of Scots. He says that it will be possible to make peace with the Spanish—they will probably settle for the return of Queen Mary to her Scots throne, and the declaration of her as Elizabeth’s heir—but the Northern lords may not settle so easily.
“You think that the Duke of Norfolk and the Spanish and the Northern lords can be made to betray each other?” I ask.
He makes a face, a moneylender’s, gold merchant’s face of judging one risk against another. “Betrayal is always possible,” is all he says. “It’s all we’ve got left.”
Elizabeth is lucky, Elizabeth always was lucky, and now fortune smiles on her again. Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, is the first to break—he submits to her authority. He does not raise an army but he surrenders to her, and for his reward she arrests him and sends him to the Tower. The Spanish don’t sail because they doubt the Northern army will march with them; the Northern army give up and go back to their own cold hills because without the Spanish they dare not challenge Elizabeth; and Elizabeth, who did nothing but hide behind the stout walls of Windsor Castle, comes triumphantly to London and proclaims herself the God-given victor.
GRESHAM HOUSE, BISHOPSGATE,
LONDON, SPRING 1570
My poor aunt Bess has lost her fourth husband, everyone says. But not this time to death, leaving her a handsome inheritance: she has lost her earl to love, to scandalous adulterous love, for everyone says that he is in love with my cousin Mary Queen of Scots and that is why he failed to guard her, or warn of the uprising.
There is enough in this to make Elizabeth hate him for admiring Mary, and to hate poor Aunt Bess—blaming her for the irresistible attraction of the beautiful queen. Bess falls from royal favor, which she has worked all her life to win. Even worse for Aunt Bess, she and her unhappy husband cannot live in her lovely house (I remember her writing to me of her many houses) because they have to keep the Scots queen under close guard and she is to be locked up in the dismal and damp Tutbury Castle. Mary is miserably imprisoned, and Aunt Bess is imprisoned with her, just as I am imprisoned in the handsome house at Bishopsgate and my unwilling hosts are imprisoned with me.
But there is no predicting anything. My host, Sir Thomas, tells me that changeable times are bad for the value of currency and now he does not know what a shilling is worth against a sou. When I ask him what has happened now, he tells me that Lord Moray—the queen’s faithless half brother and Regent of Scotland—has been shot dead and now the Scots lords are calling for the return of the Queen of Scots. Last summer they would not have her when Elizabeth was going to return her, now they want her back but Elizabeth has learned to fear her. Instead of the rightful queen, Elizabeth sends my cousin Margaret Douglas’s husband, the Earl of Lennox, to be regent.
Even I can see this is unlikely to be a popular choice; is he really going to bring peace to a divided country? Is he going to greet his hated daughter-in-law when she returns to her kingdom? Is he going to do anything but pursue the Scots lords that he accuses of murdering his son and so start their battles all over again?
GRESHAM HOUSE, BISHOPSGATE,
LONDON, SUMMER 1570
I hold in my hands that rare and precious thing, a letter from my husband, Thomas. It has come to me in my clean linen, so someone has bribed a laundress to get this one page to me. It is good paper—he must have gone to the clerks at Sandgate Castle and bought a sheet—and he writes a clear steady hand, not a scholarly style, but one that could be easily read by anyone, good for sending a brief order to a gatekeeper beyond hailing distance.
My love, I am far beyond hailing distance. But I hear you. God knows I will always, always listen for you.
Dear Wife,
I have spoken to Archbishop Parker (who I know is a good man) about our business, and asked him if it is not true that in a marriage no man should put us asunder. He is going to be a means to the queen for mercy and ask that I be permitted to live with my wife. I would go anywhere to be with you, I would join you in any captivity and hope to make your prison a little easier for you as the thought of you did for me. I will be your faithful and constant husband in deed as in thought, TK
It has to be good news for me that Thomas Howard, the queen’s kinsman, is released from the Tower without charge, and stays in London under house arrest. If he, a second cousin, guilty of betrothing himself to an enemy queen, can be released, if she can be returned to Scotland, then there is no sense in keeping me imprisoned.
“I have asked for your release,” Sir Thomas says to me stiffly when he comes to the door of my privy chamber to pay a courtesy visit. “I am assured that you will be released next year.”
I write to Thomas:
Dear Husband, I have had so many promises of freedom that I have learned to trust nothing, but if I can come to you, I will do so. I pray for you every day and I think of you with such great love. I am so happy that you are free and my only wish is to be with you and be a good mother to your children. Your constant and loving wife MK
I sign myself “MK” for “Mary Keyes.” I do not deny my love for him nor my marriage to him, and I kiss the fold of the paper and then melt the sealing wax and drip it into the spot and imprint my family seal. He will know to lift the seal and take the kiss.
GRESHAM HOUSE, BISHOPSGATE,
LONDON, SPRING 1571
Sir Thomas is beside himself with excitement and his bad-tempered wife at last has some joy in her life. Elizabeth is coming to visit the merchants’ hall and the shops that he has built, and then she will dine in his house. Extraordinarily, they will serve my cousin the queen a banquet in the rooms below mine, but I am not to be present. Though I am in the house at her command, I am not to be seen.
“Not see her?” I ask flatly. For a moment I had thought that I would simply join her train of ladies as they entered and she would use this visit to bring me back into royal service without an apology for my arrest, without comment. Elizabeth is so strange in her ways and so cold of heart that I thought her quite capable of taking me back to court without another word spoken.
“No,” Lady Gresham says crossly. “I asked my husband to explain to Lord Burghley that it would be better if you were not in our house at all, for fear of embarrassment, but he says that you shall stay in your room and that there is no embarrassment for anyone.”
“Lord Burghley?” I ask.