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We were at Kenninghall for three days on siege alert, but still Lord Robert and his company of cavalry did not come. The gentlemen from the country all around the manor came pouring in with their servants and their kinsmen, some of them armed, some of them bringing blacksmiths to hammer out spears and lances from the pruning hooks, spades and scythes that they brought with them. The Lady Mary proclaimed herself as queen in the great hall, despite the advice of more cautious men, and flying in the face of a pleading letter from the Spanish ambassador. He had written to tell her that her brother was dead, that Northumberland was unbeatable, and that she should set about negotiating with him while her uncle in Spain would do his best to save her from the trumped-up charge of treason and sentence of death which was certain to come. That part of his letter made her look grim, but there was worse.
He warned her that Northumberland had sent warships into the French seas off Norfolk, specially to prevent the Spanish ships from rescuing her and taking her to safety. There could be no escape for her, the emperor could not even attempt to save her. She must surrender to the duke and give up her claim to the crown, and throw herself on his mercy.
‘What can you see, Hannah?’ she asked me. It was early morning, and she had just come from Mass, her rosary beads still in her fingers, her forehead still damp with holy water. It was a bad morning for her, her face, sometimes so illuminated and merry with hope, was grey and tired. She looked sick of fear itself.
I shook my head. ‘I have only seen for you once, Your Grace, and I was certain then that you would be queen. And now you are. I have seen nothing since.’
‘I am queen indeed now,’ she said wryly. ‘I am proclaimed queen by myself at least. I wish you had told me how long it would last, and if anyone else would agree with me.’
‘I wish I could,’ I said sincerely. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘They tell me to surrender,’ she said simply. ‘The advisors I have trusted all my life, my Spanish kinsmen, my mother’s only friends. They all tell me that I will be executed if I continue with this course, that it’s a battle I can’t win. The duke has the Tower, he has London, he has the country, he has the warships at sea and an army of followers and the royal guard. He has all the coin of the realm at the Mint, he has all the weapons of the nation at the Tower. I have this one castle, this one village, these few loyal men and their pitchforks. And somewhere out there is Lord Robert and his troop coming towards us.’
‘Can’t we get away?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘Not fast enough, not far enough. If I could have got on a Spanish warship then, perhaps … but the duke has the sea between here and France held down by English warships, he was ready for this, and I was unprepared. I am trapped.’
I remembered John Dee’s map spread out in the duke’s study and the little counters which signified soldiers and sailors on ships all around Norfolk, and Lady Mary trapped in the middle of them.
‘Will you have to surrender?’ I whispered.
I had thought she was frightened; but at my question the colour rushed into her cheeks, and she smiled as if I had suggested a challenge, a great gamble. ‘You know, I’m damned if I will!’ she swore. She laughed aloud as if it was a bet for a joust rather than her life on the table. ‘I have spent my life running and lying and hiding. Just once, just once I should be glad to ride out under my own standard and defy the men who have denied me, and denied my right and denied the authority of the church and God himself.’
I felt my own spirits leap up at her enthusiasm. ‘My la … Your Grace!’ I stumbled.
She turned a brilliant smile on me. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Why should I not, just once, fight like a man and defy them?’
‘But can you win?’ I asked blankly.
She shrugged, an absolutely Spanish gesture. ‘Oh! It’s not likely!’ She smiled at me as if she were truly merry at the desperate choice before her. ‘Ah, but Hannah, I have been humbled to dust by these men who would now put a commoner such as Lady Jane before me. They once put Elizabeth before me. They made me wait on her as if I were her maid in her nursery. And now I have my chance. I can fight them instead of bowing to them. I can die fighting them instead of crawling to them, begging for my life. When I see it like this, I have no choice. And I thank God, there is no better choice for me than to raise my standard and to fight for my father’s throne and my mother’s honour, my inheritance. And I have Elizabeth to think of, too. I have her safety to secure. I have her inheritance to pass on to her. She is my sister, she is my responsibility. I have written to her to bid her come here, so that she can be safe. I have promised her a refuge, and I will fight for our inheritance.’
Lady Mary gathered her rosary beads in her short workmanlike fingers, tucked them into the pocket of her gown and strode towards the door of the great hall where her armies of gentlemen and soldiers were breaking their fast. She entered the head of the hall and mounted the dais. ‘Today we move out,’ she announced, loud and clear enough for the least man at the back of the hall to hear her. ‘We go to Framlingham, a day’s ride, no more than that. I shall raise my standard there. If we can get there before Lord Robert we can hold him off in a siege. We can hold him off for months. I can fight a battle from there. I can collect troops.’
There was a murmur of surprise and then approbation.
‘Trust me!’ she commanded them. ‘I will not fail you. I am your proclaimed queen and you will see me on the throne, and then I will remember who was here today. I will remember and you will be repaid many times over for doing your duty to the true Queen of England.’
There was a deep low roar, easily given from men who have just eaten well. I found my knees were shaking at the sight of her courage. She swept to the door at the back of the hall and I jumped unsteadily ahead of her and opened it for her.
‘And where is he?’ I asked. She did not have to be told who I was asking for.
‘Oh, not far,’ Lady Mary said grimly. ‘South of King’s Lynn, I am told. Something must have delayed him, he could have taken us here if he had come at once. But I cannot get news of him. I don’t know where he is for sure.’
‘Will he guess that we are going to Framlingham?’ I asked, thinking of the note that had gone to him, naming her destination here, its spiral on the paper like a curled snake.
She paused at the doorway and looked back at me. ‘There is bound to be one person in such a gathering who will slip away and tell him. There is always a spy in the camp. Don’t you think, Hannah?’
For a moment I thought she had trapped me. I looked up at her, my lies very dry in my throat, my girl’s face growing pale.
‘A spy?’ I quavered. I put my hand to my cheek and rubbed it hard.
She nodded. ‘I never trust anyone. I always know that there are spies about me. And if you had been the girl I was, you would have learned the same. After my father sent my mother away from me there was no-one near me who did not try to persuade me that Anne Boleyn was true queen and her bastard child the true heir. The Duke of Norfolk shouted into my face that if he were my father he would bang my head against the wall until my brains fell out. They made me deny my mother, they made me deny my faith, they threatened me with death on the scaffold like Thomas More and Bishop Fisher – men I knew and loved. I was a girl of twenty and they made me proclaim myself a bastard and my faith a heresy.
‘Then, all in a
