Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2: The Queen’s Fool, The Virgin’s Lover, The Other Queen. Philippa Gregory

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СКАЧАТЬ around the table. ‘And they will be writing letters to Elizabeth now, trying to balance their scales, trying to join the winning side.’

      She was harassed by advice. Those who had stayed at court were divided between men who said that she should cancel the marriage, and promise to choose a Protestant prince for a husband, and those who were begging her to call in the Spanish to help put down the rebellion with exemplary savagery.

      ‘And thus prove to everyone that I cannot rule alone!’ the queen exclaimed.

      Thomas Wyatt’s army, swelled by recruits from every village on the London road, reached the south bank of the Thames on a wave of enthusiasm, and found London Bridge raised against them, and the guns of the Tower trained on the southern bank ready for them.

      ‘They are not to open fire,’ the queen ruled.

      ‘Your Grace, for the love of God …’

      She shook her head. ‘You want me to open fire on Southwark, a village that greeted me so kindly as queen? I will not fire on the people of London.’

      ‘The rebels are encamped within range now. We could open fire and destroy them in one cannonade.’

      ‘They will have to stay there until we can raise an army to drive them away.’

      ‘Your Grace, you have no army. There are no men who will fight for you.’

      She was pale but she did not waver for a moment. ‘I have no army yet,’ she emphasised. ‘But I will raise one from the good men of London.’

      Against her council’s advice, and with the enemy force growing stronger every day that they camped, unchallenged, on the south bank of the city, the queen put on her great gown of state and went to the Guildhall to meet the Mayor and the people. Jane Dormer, her other ladies and I went in her train, dressed as grandly as we could and looking confident, though we knew we were proceeding to disaster.

      ‘I don’t know why you are coming,’ one of the old men of the council said pointedly to me. ‘There are fools enough in her train already.’

      ‘But I am a holy fool, an innocent fool,’ I said pertly. ‘And there are few enough innocent here. You would not be one, I reckon.’

      ‘I am a fool to be here at all,’ he said sourly.

      Of all of the queen’s council and certainly of all of her ladies in waiting, only Jane and I had any hopes of getting out of London alive; but Jane and I had seen her at Framlingham, and we knew that this was a queen to back against all odds. We saw the sharpness in her dark eyes and the pride in her carriage. We had seen her put her crown on her small dark head and smile at herself in the looking glass. We had seen a queen, not filled with fear of an unbeatable enemy, but playing for her life as if it were a game of quoits. She was at her very best when she and her God stood against disaster; with an enemy at the very gates of London you would want no other queen.

      But despite all this, I was afraid. I had seen men and women put to violent death, I had smelled the smoke from the burnings of heretics. I knew, as few of her ladies knew, what death meant.

      ‘Are you coming with me, Hannah?’ she asked pleasantly as she mounted the steps to the Guildhall.

      ‘Oh yes, Your Grace,’ I said through cold lips.

      They had set up a throne for her in the Guildhall and half of London came from sheer curiosity, crowding to hear the queen argue for her life. When she stood, a small figure under the weighty golden crown, draped in the heavy robes of state, I thought for a moment that she would not be able to convince them to keep their faith with her. She looked too frail, she looked too much like a woman who would indeed be ruled by her husband. She looked like a woman you could not trust.

      She opened her mouth to speak and there was no sound. ‘Dear God, let her speak.’ I thought she had lost her voice from fear itself, and Wyatt might as well march into the hall now and claim the throne for the Lady Elizabeth, for the queen could not defend herself. But then her voice boomed out, as loud as if she were shouting every word, but as clear and sweet as if she were singing like a chorister in the chapel on Christmas Day.

      She told them everything, it was as simple as that. She told them the story of her inheritance: that she was a king’s daughter and she claimed her father’s power, and their fealty. She reminded them that she was a virgin without a child of her own and that she loved the people of the country as only a mother can love her child, that she loved them as a mistress, and that, loving them so intensely, she could not doubt but that they loved her in return.

      She was seductive. Our Mary, whom we had seen ill, beleaguered, pitifully alone under virtual house arrest, and only once as a commander; stood before them and she blazed with passion until they caught her fire and were part of it. She swore to them that she was marrying for their benefit, solely to give them an heir, and if they did not think it was the best choice then she would live and die a virgin for them; that she was their queen – it meant nothing to her whether she had a man or not. What was important was the throne, which was hers, and the inheritance, which should come to her son. Nothing else mattered more. Nothing else could ever matter more. She would be guided by them in her marriage, as in everything else. She would rule them as a queen on her own, whether married or not. She was theirs, they were hers, there was nothing that could change it.

      Looking around the hall I saw the people begin to smile, and then nod. These were men who wanted to love a queen, who wanted a sense that the world could be held fast, that a woman could hold her desires, that a country could be made safe, that change could be held back. She swore to them that if they would stay true to her, she would be true to them and then she smiled at them, as if it was all a game. I knew that smile and I knew that tone; it was the same as at Framlingham when she had demanded why should she not take an army out against tremendous odds? Why should she not fight for her throne? And now, once again, there were tremendous odds against her: a popular army encamped at Southwark, a popular princess on the move against her, the greatest power in Europe mobilising, and her allies nowhere to be seen. Mary tossed her head under the heavy crown and the rays from the diamonds shot around the room in arrows of light. She smiled at the huge crowd of Londoners as if every one of them adored her – and at that moment they did.

      ‘And now, good subjects, pluck up your hearts and like true men face up against these rebels and fear them not, for I assure you, I fear them nothing at all!’

      She was tremendous. They threw their caps in the air, they cheered her as if she were the Virgin Mary herself. And they raced outside and took the news to all those who had not been able to get into the Guildhall, until the whole city was humming with the words of the queen who had sworn that she would be a mother to them, a mistress to them, and that she loved them so much she would marry or not as they pleased, as long as they would love her in return.

      London went mad for Mary. The men volunteered to march against the rebels, the women tore up their best linen into bandages and baked bread for the volunteer soldiers to take in their knapsacks. In their hundreds, the men volunteered; in their thousands, and the battle was won; not when Wyatt’s army was cornered and defeated just a few days later, but in that single afternoon, by Mary, standing on her own two feet, head held high, blazing with courage and telling them that as a virgin queen she demanded their love for her as she gave them hers.

      Once again the queen learned that holding the throne was harder than winning it. She spent the days after the uprising struggling with her conscience, faced СКАЧАТЬ