the greatest men in England. I am the greatest landowner north of the Trent and you are the queen’s own cousin and a duke.”
“Yes. And that is why we are in danger. We are his rivals for power. He will destroy anyone who challenges him. Today the Queen of Scots faces his tribunal. Tomorrow it could be me, or any that have dared to challenge him: Percy, Dacre, Sussex, Arundel, Dudley, the Northern lords, you. He has to be stopped,” Howard says, his voice a low rumble in my ear. “Wouldn’t you stop him if you could?”
“It can’t be done,” I say cautiously. “The queen is free to choose her own advisors, and she trusts him like no other. He has been at her side since she was a young princess. What could we accuse him of?”
“Stealing Spanish gold! Pushing them to the brink of war! Making an enemy of France! Driving half the country towards treason with his constant suspicion and spying on people who want nothing more than to worship in the old way! Look at the court! Have you ever been at court before and felt yourself so fearful? It is filled with spies and plots.”
I nod. It is undeniable. Cecil’s fear of Papists and his hatred of foreigners stalk England.
“This last idiocy of his is the worst,” Howard says furiously. “That a ship should take refuge from bad weather in our port and be seized! He makes us a nation of pirates and the seas unsafe for our shipping.”
I can’t disagree. The Spanish treasure ship was blown into Plymouth expecting sanctuary, and Cecil, the son of a poor man, could not resist the gold it carried. He stole the gold— simple as that. And now the Spanish are threatening a blockade of trade, even war, if we do not pay it back. We are utterly in the wrong, all because Cecil is utterly in the wrong, but he has the ear of the Queen of England.
Howard masters his irritation with some difficulty. “Please God we never see the day when you come to me and say I was right to fear him and we should have defended ourselves, but now it is too late and one of our own is on trial for some trumpedup charge. Please God he does not pick us off one by one and we too trusting to defend ourselves.” He pauses. “His is a rule of terror. He makes us afraid of imaginary enemies so we don’t guard ourselves against him and against our government. We are so busy watching for foreigners that we forget to watch our friends. Anyway, you keep your counsel and I’ll keep mine. I’ll say no more against Cecil for now. You will keep this close? Not a word?”
The look he gives me persuades me, more than any argument. If the only duke in England, cousin to the queen herself, should fear his own words’ being reported to a man who should be little more than a royal servant, it proves that the servant has become overmighty. We are all growing afraid of Cecil’s knowledge, of Cecil’s network of intelligencers, of Cecil’s growing silent power.
“This is between the two of us,” I say quietly. I glance around to see that no one is in earshot. It is amazing to me that I, England’s greatest earl, and Howard, England’s only duke, should fear eavesdroppers. But so it is. This is what England has become in this tenth year of Elizabeth’s reign: a place where a man is afraid of his own shadow. And in these last ten years, my England seems to have filled with shadows.
1568, WINTER, BOLTON CASTLE: MARY
I refuse, I utterly refuse to wear anything but my own gowns. My beautiful gowns, my furs, my fine lace collars, my velvets, my petticoats of cloth of gold were all left behind in Holyroodhouse, dusted with scented powder and hung in muslin bags in the wardrobe rooms. I wore armor when I rode out with Bothwell to teach my rebel lords a lesson, but it turned out I was neither teacher nor queen, for they beat me, arrested me, and hunted Bothwell down for an outlaw. They imprisoned me and I would have died in Lochleven Castle if I had not escaped by my own wits. Now, in England, they think I am brought so low as to wear handmedowns. They think I am sufficiently humbled to be glad of Elizabeth’s castoff gowns.