means I have won,’ she said simply. ‘Won by right, accepted right and not by battle. I am queen and the people’s choice. Despite the duke himself, the people have spoken and I am the queen they want.’
‘And what will happen to the duke?’ I asked, thinking of his son, Lord Robert, somewhere a prisoner.
‘He’s a traitor,’ she said, her eyes cold. ‘What do you think would have happened to me if I had lost?’
I said nothing. I waited for a moment, a heartbeat, a girl’s heartbeat. ‘And what will happen to Lord Robert?’ I asked, my voice very small.
Lady Mary turned. ‘He is a traitor and a traitor’s son. What do you think will happen to him?’
Lady Mary took her big horse and, riding side saddle, set off on the road to London, a thousand, two thousand men riding behind her, and their men, their tenants and retainers and followers coming on foot behind them. The Lady Mary was at the head of a mighty army with only her ladies and me, her fool, riding with her.
When I looked back I could see the dust from the horses’ hooves and the tramping feet drifting like a veil across the ripening fields. When we marched through villages, men came running out of their doors, their sickles or bill hooks in their hands, and fell in with the army and matched their step to the marching men’s. The women waved and cheered and some of them ran out with flowers for the Lady Mary or threw roses in the road before her horse. The Lady Mary, in her old red riding habit, with her head held high, rode her big horse like a knight going into battle, a queen going to claim her own. She rode like a princess out of a story book to whom everything, at last, is given. She had won the greatest victory of her life by sheer determination and courage and her reward was the adoration of the people that she would rule.
Everyone thought that her coming to the throne would be the return of the good years, rich harvests, warm weather, and an end to the constant epidemics of plague and sweat and colds. Everyone thought that she would restore the wealth of the church, the beauty of the shrines and the certainty of faith. Everyone remembered the sweetness and beauty of her mother who had been Queen of England for longer than she had been a princess of Spain, who had been the wife that the king had loved the longest and the best, and who had died with a blessing for him, even though he had deserted her. Everyone was glad to see her daughter riding to her mother’s throne with her golden cap on her head and her army of men behind her, their bright glad faces showing the world that they were proud to serve such a princess and to bring her to her capital city, which even now declared for her and was ringing the bells in every church tower to make her welcome.
On the road to London I wrote a note for Lord Robert, and translated it into his code. It read: ‘You will be tried for treason and executed. Please, my lord, escape. Please, my lord, escape.’ I put it into the fire in the hearth of an inn and watched it burn black, and then I took the poker and mashed it into black ash. There was no way that I could get the warning to him, and in truth, he would not need a warning.
He knew the risks he was running and he would have known them when he was defeated and gave himself up at Bury. He would know now, wherever he was, whether in the prison of some small town being taunted by men who would have kissed his shoe a month ago, or already in the Tower, that he was a dead man, a condemned man. He had committed treason against the rightful heir to the throne and the punishment for treason was death, hanging until he lost consciousness, coming back into awareness with the shock of the agony of the executioner slicing his stomach open and pulling his guts out of his slit belly before his face so that his last sight would be his own pulsing entrails, and then they would quarter him: first slashing his head from his body and then hacking his body into four pieces, setting his handsome head up on a stake as a warning to others, and sending his butchered corpse to the four corners of the city. It was as bad a death as anyone could face, almost as bad as being burned alive and I, of all people, knew how bad that was.
I did not cry for him, as we rode to London. I was a young girl but I had seen enough death and known enough fear to have learned not to cry for grief. But I found I could not sleep at night, not any night, for wondering where Lord Robert was, and whether I would ever see him again, and whether he would ever forgive me for riding into the capital of England, with crowds cheering and crying out blessings, at the side of the woman who had so roundly defeated him, and who would see him and all his family destroyed.
Lady Elizabeth, too sick to rise from her bed during the days of danger, managed to get to London before us. ‘That girl is first, everywhere she goes,’ Jane Dormer said sourly to me.
Lady Elizabeth came riding out from the city to greet us, at the head of a thousand men, all in the Tudor colours of green and white, riding in her pride as if she had never been sick with terror and hiding in her bed. She came out as if she were Lord Mayor of London, coming to give us the keys to the city, with the cheers of the Londoners ringing like a peal of bells all around her, crying ‘God bless!’ to the two princesses.
I reined in my horse and fell back a little so that I could see her. I had been longing to see her again ever since Lady Mary had spoken of her with such affection, ever since Will Somers had called her a goat: up one moment and down the next. I remembered the flash of a green skirt, the invitingly tilted red head against the dark bark of the tree, the girl in the garden that I had seen running from her stepfather, and making sure that he caught her. I was desperately curious to see how that girl had changed.
The girl on horseback was far beyond the child of shining innocence that Lady Mary had described, beyond the victim of circumstance that Will had imagined, and yet not the calculating siren that Jane Dormer hated. I saw instead a woman riding towards her destiny with absolute confidence. She was young, only nineteen years old, yet she was imposing. I saw at once that she had arranged this cavalcade – she knew the power of appearances and she had the skill to design them. The green of her livery had been chosen by her to suit the flaming brazen red of her hair which she wore loose beneath her green hood as if to flaunt her youth and maidenhood beside her older spinster sister. Green and white were the Tudor colours of her father, and no-one looking at her high brow and red hair could doubt this girl’s paternity. The men riding closest to her as her guards had been picked, without doubt, for their looks. There was not one man beside her who was not remarkably handsome. The dull-looking ones were all scattered, further back in her train. Her ladies were the reverse; there was not one who outshone her, a clever choice, but one which only a coquette would make. She rode a white gelding, a big animal, almost as grand as a man’s warhorse, and she sat on it as if she had been born to ride, as if she took joy in mastering the power of the beast. She gleamed with health and youth and vitality, she shone with the glamour of success. Against her radiance, the Lady Mary, drained by the strain of the last two months, faded into second place.
Lady Elizabeth’s entourage halted before us and Lady Mary started to dismount as Lady Elizabeth flung herself down from her horse as if she had been waiting all her life for this moment, as if she had never skulked in bed, biting her nails and wondering what would happen next. At the sight of her, the Lady Mary’s face lit up, as a mother will smile on seeing her child. Clearly, Elizabeth riding in her pride was a sight that gave her sister a pure unselfish joy. Lady Mary held out her arms, Elizabeth plunged into her embrace and Lady Mary kissed her warmly. They held each other for a moment, scrutinising each other’s faces and I knew, as Elizabeth’s bright gaze met Mary’s honest eyes, that my mistress would not have the skill to see through the fabled Tudor charm to the fabled Tudor duplicity which lay beneath.
Lady Mary turned to Elizabeth’s companions, gave them her hand and kissed each of them on the cheek to thank them for bearing Elizabeth
