A feeble sun, jaundiced in the morning mist, is rising over the Lambeth marshes when they reach the crossing. To Nicholas’s joy, the ferry is on its way back from a previous journey, inching across the water, the pole-men labouring at their shafts in the pale morning light. It offers only a small delay, but perhaps Lord Grey is already across and on his way. If he is, he can’t have more than fifteen minutes’ head-start.
While he waits impotently on the Westminster side for the ferry to come to him, Essex becomes almost apoplectic. Nicholas wonders if he’s going to call upon God to part the waters. But not even God, let alone England’s Earl Marshal – for however much longer Her Majesty intends to leave him in the office – can make a Lambeth ferryman hurry. The St Mary’s bell chimes the halfway mark of the morning’s seventh hour before they wade through the stinking mud to stand helplessly – almost comically so, to Nicholas’s mind – amidst the farm carts and country passengers as the great contraption makes its snail-like progress once more towards the Lambeth side.
From the stables close to the church, new mounts are brought out. As Essex swings up into the saddle, one of his gallants – Sir Christopher St Lawrence – announces loudly that he’s spoken to the head ferryman. A rider from Westminster has gone before them – by the ferryman’s account, a man even more impatient than Essex.
‘We are betrayed!’ shouts one of the earl’s party.
Southampton glares at Nicholas. ‘A clerk, you said. Mind your own business, you said. Who was it?’
There seems to be no point in denial. ‘It was my Lord Grey,’ Nicholas says. ‘And he didn’t need me to tell him anything.’
‘I’ll ride ahead like the wind, Your Grace,’ says St Lawrence theatrically, though Nicholas can see he is in deadly earnest. ‘I’ll slay the bastard before he reaches Nonsuch. Better yet, let me go on. I’ll cut off Robert Cecil’s scabrous head. I’ll have it ready for you, as a present.’
For one awful moment Nicholas thinks Devereux is going to give St Lawrence his blessing. He stares as the earl’s mud-splattered face, trying to read his mood, trying to fathom where on the arc the pendulum lies. Armed and bloody rebellion in the presence of the queen – whether it fails or succeeds, the executioners will be busy for months.
And then Essex slowly shakes his head. It is the first restrained gesture Nicholas has seen him make in hours.
‘No,’ he says, the lover’s longing returning to his eyes. ‘I will not seek her favour with blood on my hands.’ And then, with a yell of determination and resolve as though he is leading his party into battle, he drives his fresh horse forward. Setting their spurs to their horses’ flanks, his gallants follow. The morning air is split with the whinnying of stung, surprised animals and the shouts of their riders.
Southampton and two others manoeuvre their horses to box Nicholas in, giving him no option but to go forward.
‘Lag behind’ – Southampton snarls as he slaps one hand on the guard of his sword – ‘and I’ll run you through, myself.’
In Nonsuch park the grazing deer scatter like terrified survivors of a catastrophe as the riders plunge over the puddles on the London road. The mist has thinned a little, revealing ahead the pale ashlar walls that King Henry raised around his love-nest for Jane Seymour – a love-nest she would never live to enjoy, but which the king’s daughter, Elizabeth, by the Grace of God, Queen of England, France and Ireland, now enjoys as her inheritance.
Nonsuch looks to Nicholas like the country seat of a mythical eastern potentate set down in the soft fields of Surrey. Its towers stand like minarets, their gilded onion-domes gleaming gold in the weak autumn sunlight. From the white stucco panels on her walls the gods and heroes of antiquity observe the approaching horsemen like a phalanx of protectors, frozen for all time by some magician’s spell. If Nicholas were not in such uncertain company, he would feel a sense of homecoming.
Nonsuch has been part of his life for almost a decade. It was to this palace that he had come on his first mission for Robert Cecil, sent to entrap its then-owner Lord Lumley, a known Catholic. The Cecils had wanted Lumley destroyed, and Nonsuch – sold out of the Tudor family more than forty years past – returned to Elizabeth. It had not ended as the Cecils had planned. Nicholas had saved John Lumley from their ambitions, giving him time to negotiate an arrangement with the queen that gave her back Nonsuch, but allowed him and his wife to remain in the home they loved. Nicholas had become something of a son to the dour Northumberland baron. It was in the private chapel at Nonsuch that Nicholas had married Bianca Merton.
These thoughts and memories fill his head now, as the party races across the wide bowling green in front of the outer gatehouse, divots of grass flying from the pounding hooves.
The doors to the outer gatehouse are wide open. Has Grey been waylaid? Nicholas wonders. Has he only just arrived? Why aren’t the doors shut and barred? Are the white walls of Nonsuch about to be stained with blood?
He can see the guards scurrying in the archway. He waits for them to slam the doors closed or at least cross halberds, blocking the way inside. But they don’t.
And Essex intends to stop for no one. He slows the pace only a little, from a full gallop to a canter. Wisely the guards throw themselves out of the path of the oncoming horses. Recognizing several of the riders’ faces, they can do little but stare. Then the party is through the arch, the sound of hooves echoing like the frantic hammering of a crazed drummer.
In the outer courtyard startled servants flee to the safety of the kitchen wall. A ham joint rolls in the mud like a severed head.
The last barrier lies directly ahead: the inner gatehouse that gives onto the secret heart of Nonsuch, the inner courtyard. Through it, Nicholas can see the grand fountain with its statue of a rearing horse – one of John Lumley’s most prized works of art – and beyond it the wide steps leading to the royal chambers.
Surely now there must be guards hurrying to block the way? Where are the halberdiers with their axe blades, guarding Her Majesty’s privy chambers? An awful thought occurs to Nicholas: Essex has conspirators within the royal household. Perhaps Lord Grey is one of them.
He can see John Lumley standing on the steps to the royal apartments, looking on with calm puzzlement in his eyes. His mournful face, scholar’s gown and grey beard make him look older than his sixty-six years, a wintry man, no matter what the season. As the riders come to a halt in a spray of gravel, Lumley descends a couple of steps, unconcerned, as though mud-caked madmen on horseback are common fare at Nonsuch and of only passing interest.
‘My lord of Essex, you should have sent us earlier warning. I would have had your usual chamber made up,’ he says, his soft Northumberland burr robbing his words of even the faintest accusation.
Essex is already down, Southampton and the others in the process of dismounting. Only Nicholas stays in the saddle.
‘Stand aside, sirrah,’ the earl says, brushing past Lumley as he strides up the steps towards the entrance to the privy lodgings. ‘This is not your house now.’