The other queen

1570, JANUARY, TUTBURY CASTLE: GEORGE

There is no peace for me. No peace at home, where Bess counts up our losses every day, and brings me the totals on beautifully written pages, as if mere accuracy means they will be settled. As if I can take them to the queen, as if anyone cares that they are ruining us.

No peace in my heart, since Hastings is only waiting for the countryside to be declared safe before he takes the other queen from me, and I can neither speak to her nor plead for her.

No peace in the country, where I can trust the loyalty of no one; the tenants are surly and are clearly planning yet more mischief, and some of them are still missing from their homes, still roaming with ragtag armies, still promising trouble.

Leonard Dacre, one of the greatest lords of the North, who has been in London all this while, is now returned home. Instead of seeing that the battle is over, and lost, even with Elizabeth’s great army quartered on his doorstep, he summons his tenants, saying that he needs them to defend the queen’s peace. At once, as always, guided by the twin lights of his fear and his genius at making enemies, Cecil advises the queen to arrest Dacre on suspicion of treason, and forced into his own defense, the lord raises his standard and marches against the queen.

Hastings bangs open the door into my private room as if I am traitor myself. “Did you know this of Dacre?” he demands.

I shake my head. “How should I? I thought he was in London.”

“He has attacked Lord Hunsdon’s army and got clean away. He swears he will raise the North.”

I feel a sinking fear for her. “Not again! Is he coming here?”

“God knows what he is doing.”

“Dacre is a loyal man. He would not fight the queen’s army.”

“He has just done so and is now an outlaw running for his life like the other Northern earls.”

“He is as loyal as—”

“As you?” Hastings insinuates.

I find that my fists are clenched. “You are a guest in my house,” I remind him, my voice trembling with rage.

He nods. “Excuse me. These are troubling times. I wish to God I could just take her and leave.”

“It’s not safe yet,” I say swiftly. “Who knows where Dacre’s men might be? You can’t take her away from this castle until the countryside is safe. You will raise the North again if they kidnap her from you.”

“I know. I’ll have to wait for my orders from Cecil.”

“Yes, he will command everything now,” I say, unable to hide my bitterness. “Thanks to you, he will be without rival. You have made our steward our master.”

Hastings nods, pleased with himself. “He is without equal,” he says. “No man has a better vision of what England can be. He alone saw that we had to become a Protestant country, we had to separate ourselves from the others. He saw that we have to impose order on Ireland, we have to subordinate Scotland, and we have to go outward, to the other countries of the world, and make them our own.”

“A bad man to have as an enemy,” I remark.

Hastings cracks a brutal laugh. “I’ll say so. And your friend the other queen will learn it. D’you know how many deaths Elizabeth has ordered?”

“Deaths?”

“Executions. As punishment for the uprising.”

I feel myself grow cold. “I did not know she had ordered any. Surely there will be trials for treason for the leaders only, and…”

He shakes his head. “No trials. Those who are known to have ridden out against her are to be hanged. Without trial. Without plea. Without question. She says she wants seven hundred men hanged.”

I am stunned into silence. “That will be a man from every village, from every hamlet,” I say weakly.

“Aye,” he says. “They won’t turn out again, for sure.”

“Seven hundred?”

“Every ward is to have a quota. The queen has ruled that they are to be hanged at the crossroads of each village and the bodies are not to be cut down. They are to stay till they rot.”

“More will die by this punishment than ever died in this uprising. There was no battle, there was no blood shed. They fought with no one, they dispersed without a shot being fired or a sword drawn. They submitted.”

He laughs once more. “Then perhaps they will learn not to rise again.”

“All they will learn is that the new rulers of England do not care for them as the old lords did. All they will learn is that if they ask for their faith to be restored, or the common lands left free to be grazed, or their wages not driven down, that they can expect to be treated as an enemy by their own countrymen and faced with death.”

“They are the enemy,” Hastings says bluntly. “Or had you forgotten? They are the enemy. They are my enemy and Cecil’s enemy and the queen’s enemy. Are they not yours?”

“Yes,” I say unwillingly. “I follow the queen, wherever she leads.” And I think to myself, Yes, they have become my enemies now. Cecil has made them my enemies now, though once they were my friends and my countrymen.