The Virgin’s Lover. Philippa Gregory

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      On a second table, equally as long as the first, was a map of the streets of London from the Tower to Westminster Palace, drawn like a snake along a vellum roll. The palace was marked with the time that the procession should arrive, and the time that it would take to walk from one place to another was marked along the way. A clerk had painted in, as prettily as an illuminated manuscript, the various stopping places and the tableaux that would be presented at each of the five main points. They would be the work and responsibility of the City of London, but they would be masterminded by Robert Dudley. He was not taking the chance of anything going wrong on the queen’s coronation procession.

      ‘This one, sir,’ a clerk said tentatively. Robert leaned over.

      ‘Gracechurch Street,’ he read. ‘Uniting of the two houses of Lancaster and York pageant. What of it?’

      ‘It’s the painter, sir. He asked was he to do the Boleyn family too?’

      ‘The queen’s mother?’

      The clerk did not blink. He named the woman who had been beheaded for treason, witchcraft and incestuous adultery against the king, and whose name had been banned ever since. ‘The Lady Anne Boleyn, sir.’

      Robert pushed back his jewelled velvet cap and scratched his thick, dark hair, looking in his anxiety much younger than his twenty-five years.

      ‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘She’s the queen’s mother. She can’t just be a gap. We can’t just ignore her. She has to be our honourable Lady Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, and mother of the queen.’

      The clerk raised his eyebrows as if to indicate that it was Robert’s decision and would fall on his shoulders and no-one else’s; but that he, personally, preferred a quieter life. Robert let out a crack of laughter and cuffed him gently on the shoulder. ‘The Princess Elizabeth is from good English stock, God bless her,’ he said. ‘And it was a better marriage for the king than others he made, God knows. A pretty, honest Howard maid.’

      The clerk still looked uneasy. ‘The other honest Howard maid was also executed for adultery,’ he pointed out.

      ‘Good English stock,’ Robert insisted unblinkingly. ‘And God Save the Queen.’

      ‘Amen,’ the clerk said smartly, and crossed himself.

      Robert noted the habitual gesture and checked himself before he mirrored it. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Are all the other pageants clear?’

      ‘Except for the Little Conduit, Cheapside.’

      ‘What of it?’

      ‘It shows a Bible. Question is: should it be in English or Latin?’

      It was a question that went to the very heart of the debate currently raging in the church. Elizabeth’s father had authorised the Bible in English and then changed his mind and taken it back into Latin again. His young son Edward had put an English Bible into every parish church, Queen Mary had banned them; it was for the priest to read and to explain; the English people were to listen, not to study for themselves. What Elizabeth would want to do, nobody knew. What she would be able to do, with the church full-square against her, nobody could guess.

      Robert snatched his cap from his head and flung it across the room. ‘For God’s sake!’ he shouted. ‘This is state policy! I’m trying to plan a pageant and you keep asking me questions about policy! I don’t know what she will decide. The Privy Council will advise her, the bishops will advise her. Parliament will advise her, they will argue over it for months and then make it law. Pray God people will obey it and not rise up against her. It is not for me to decide it here and now!’

      There was an awkward silence. ‘But in the meantime?’ the clerk asked tentatively. ‘The cover of the Bible for the pageant? Should it be English or Latin? We could put a Latin copy inside an English cover if she preferred it. Or an English copy. Or one of both.’

      ‘On the cover write BIBLE in English,’ Robert decided. ‘Then everyone knows what it is. Write it in big letters so it is clear it is part of the pageant: a prop, not the real thing. It is a symbol.’

      The clerk made a note. The man-at-arms at the door walked delicately over to the corner, picked up the expensive cap, and handed it to his master. Robert took it without acknowledgement. Other people had been picking up for him since he was a child of two.

      ‘When we’ve finished this, I’ll see the other procession,’ he said irritably. ‘Whitehall to Westminster Abbey. And I want a list of horses, and check that the mules are sound.’ He snapped his fingers for another clerk to step forward.

      ‘And I want some people,’ he said suddenly.

      The second clerk was ready with a writing tablet and a quill in a little pot of ink.

      ‘People, sir?’

      ‘A little girl with a posy of flowers, an old lady, some sort of peasant up from the Midlands or somewhere. Make a note and send Gerard out to find me half a dozen people. Note this: one old lady, frail-looking but strong enough to stand, and with a strong voice, loud enough to be heard. One pretty girl, about six or seven, must be bold enough to cry out and take a posy of flowers to the queen. One bright apprentice boy to scatter some rose petals under her horse’s feet. One old peasant from somewhere in the country to cry out, “God bless Your Grace”. I’ll have a couple of pretty merchants’ wives as well and an unemployed soldier, no, rather, a wounded soldier. I’ll have two wounded soldiers. And I’ll have a couple of sailors from Plymouth or Portsmouth or Bristol, somewhere like that. Not London. And they are to say that this is a queen to take the country’s fortunes overseas, that there is great wealth for the taking, for a country strong enough to take it, that this country can be a great one in the world, and this queen will venture for it.’

      The clerk was scribbling furiously.

      ‘And I’ll have a couple of old men, scattered about,’ Robert went on, warming to the plan. ‘One to cry for joy, he’s to be near the front so they all see him, and the other one to call out from the back that she’s her father’s daughter, a true heir. Get them all spaced out: here …’ Robert marked the map. ‘Here, and here. I don’t mind what order. They are to be told to call out different things. They are to tell no-one they were hired. They are to tell anyone who asks that they came to see the queen out of love for her. The soldiers in particular must say that she will bring peace and prosperity. And tell the women to behave with propriety. No bawds. The children had better come with their mothers and their mothers should be told to make sure that they behave. I want people to see that the queen is beloved by all sorts of people. They are to call out to her. Blessings, that sort of thing.’

      ‘What if she doesn’t hear them, sir?’ the clerk asked. ‘Over the noise of the crowd?’

      ‘I’ll tell her where she is to stop,’ Robert said firmly. ‘She’ll hear them, because I’ll tell her to.’

      The door opened behind him and the clerk stepped swiftly back and bowed. William Cecil came into the room and took a sweeping glance at the two tables covered with plans and the sheets of paper in the clerks’ hands.

      ‘You seem to be going to much trouble, Sir Robert,’ he remarked mildly.

      ‘I would hope so. Her processions are entrusted to me. I would hope that no-one found me wanting.’

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