Kat was beside her. “Bad news, Your Majesty?”
“We must leave at once for Tichfield.”
“My lord of Leicester?”
“He is ill … asking for me.”
Kat turned pale. She more than any knew of her mistress’s feelings for that man. It would break Elizabeth’s heart if aught happened to him.
“Do not stand staring!” cried the Queen. “ We will set out at once. We will take doctors and simples … elixirs which must bring him back to health.”
As she rode to Tichfield, she thought of all he had meant to her. She could not get out of her mind the memory of his face behind the prison bars in the Beauchamp Tower.
She hurried to his bedchamber. The sight of him in his bed, wan and exhausted, hurt her profoundly. She knelt by his bed and, taking his limp hand, covered it with kisses.
“Leave me,” she said to Kat and those who had accompanied her. “I would be alone with my lord.”
“Robert,” she said when they had all gone. “My dearest Eyes, what ails you, my sweet Robin?”
He murmured: “Your Majesty, it was good of you to come to sweeten my going.”
“Do not speak of it. It shall not be. I’ll not allow it. You shall be nursed back to health. I myself will nurse you.”
“I, your humble servant, have called you to my bedside …”
“God’s Body!” she cried. “My humble servant indeed! You are my Robert, are you not? There are times when I seem to be the humble servant.”
“Dearest lady, I must not waste the time that is left to me. I must talk with you. There is a plot afoot and I do not hold myself guiltless. I believed that it would be good for England if Norfolk married Mary. Dearest, I feared your life to be in danger while the succession was unsettled.”
“Have done with the succession. It is a bogey that haunts you.”
“Nay, ’tis not so. I fear now that Your Majesty may be in danger. Norfolk makes plans, I fear, in secret with the Queen of Scots. Many of your lords are involved in this … as I myself have been. They meant no treason. They fear Your Majesty to be in danger. Their plan is no more than to restore Mary to Scotland with a good friend of England as her husband, and to satisfy France and Spain by proclaiming Mary your successor.”
“I see, I see,” she said.
“Then I am forgiven for the part I played in this—though I was thinking only of my dearest lady’s safety? Then I am to die happy?”
She bent over him and kissed him. “If there was aught to forgive, my darling, it is forgiven.”
“Now I shall die happy.”
“You’ll do no such thing!”
He smiled at her wanly. “I know, dear lioness, that it is forbidden to speak of death in your presence. There again I crave your pardon. You are strong. You are impatient of death. You are immortal.”
“Come,” she said, with a “pup” of her lips, “we are going to get you well. I myself shall see to that.”
Then she called to her women. She would try her physician’s new medicine. It should cure my lord of Leicester. She commanded him to be cured.
“Already,” said Kat, “he seems miraculously recovered. He looks almost himself.”
“Her Majesty’s presence at my bedside is more health-giving than any elixir,” he murmured.
Elizabeth set about restoring him to health; but meanwhile she sent a messenger to Norfolk bidding him return to Court.
Norfolk was now in the Tower.
Elizabeth’s ministers were of the opinion that Norfolk was loyal to her, but had been led astray, and that he might be released with a warning not to dabble in treasonable matters again.
But the Queen was unsure. She insisted that they wait awhile, keeping him a prisoner while they waited.
Norfolk had many friends at Court, and some of these smuggled messages to him concealed in bottles of wine. This trick was discovered, and the Queen, declaring that Norfolk was guilty of treason, summoned Cecil to her.
“Now, Master Cecil,” she said, “we have proof of his treason.”
“How so, Madam?” asked Cecil.
“These letters which have been sent to him in bottles. What better proof?”
“They prove nothing except that he received messages in bottles, Your Majesty.”
The Queen merely glared at her minister.
“Madam, I will send you the statute of Edward III in which there is clear statement of what does and what does not constitute treason.”
“So you are all for letting Norfolk go that he may plot my downfall?”
“Why not marry Norfolk to someone else, Your Majesty? That would be the best way to put an end to this plan for marriage with Mary.”
She smiled at him. She could trust Cecil. His mind worked in the same way as her own. “I think, Sir Spirit, that you have a good plan there.”
But even as he was leaving her presence a messenger arrived, with the news that all through the North of England the bells were ringing backward. The men of the North, those ardent Catholics who had risen against her father in the Pilgrimage of Grace, were now ready to rise again; and they looked on Mary Queen of Scots as their leader. The Queen was aghast. War she dreaded more than anything; and here was war in her own country, the most hated of all wars: civil war.
Cecil said: “They will try to reach Mary, and our first task must be to remove her from Tutbury. I will send men there at once. We will send her with the utmost speed to Coventry.”
The Queen nodded her approval.
Civil war! Her own people rising against her. The thought made her wretchedly depressed until her anger replaced such feelings. Mary had caused this. Wherever Mary was, there would trouble be. Mary was her hated rival whom she longed to put to death, but for the sake of royalty—that divine right of Kings—she dared not.
The rebellion was speedily quelled. Poor and simple men from the hamlets and the villages were hanging from the gibbets for all to see what happened to those who rebelled against the Queen.
In her wrath, men said, she is as terrible as her father was.
Six hundred men who had followed their leaders were now lifeless hanging corpses, and the North was plunged into mourning.
They must learn, said Elizabeth; they must understand the rewards of treason to the throne.
But Mary she merely kept more closely guarded, while Norfolk lived on in the Tower.
Norfolk had learned his lesson, said the Queen; and she was not entirely sure that he was responsible for the rising. As for Mary, adulteress, murderess, and fomenter of plots that she might be, as a Queen she was apart from ordinary mortals.
Elizabeth’s ministers shook their heads in sorrow and anger. They assured her that she risked her life while Mary lived; she also risked the safety of England.
Elizabeth knew she was risking much, but she felt that in tampering with the privileges of royalty, she risked more.
Mary could not learn her lessons and it was not long before she was plotting again. This time the services of a Florentine banker, named Ridolfi, were employed. Ridolfi lived in London, where he had a branch of his business, but he traveled freely about the Continent, and for this reason he was chosen to carry messages between the Pope, the Spanish ambassador, and the Catholic peers in England.
Norfolk, now home at his county seat, was still under some restraint since his release from the Tower. He was approached by Ridolfi, and, weakling that he was, under the spell of Mary to whom he had been sending money and gifts, found himself once more drawn into mischief and danger.
This time the danger was unmistakable, for messages had come from Alba himself, who promised that if Norfolk would start a revolt, he would send an Army to England to consolidate any success.