offering me a kiss. “Showsbewy,” she says and then she laughs. “I cannot say it. Shall I call you something else?”
“Call me Chowsbewwy,” I say. “You are the only person ever to call me that.”
She stands before me and I cup my hands for her booted foot. She takes a grip of the horse’s mane, and I lift her, easily, into the saddle. She rides unlike any woman I have ever known before: Frenchstyle, astride. When my Bess first saw it, and the manilla pantaloons she wears under her riding habit, my wife swore that there would be a riot if she went out like that. It is so indecent.
“The Queen of France herself, Catherine de Medici, rides like this, and every princess of France. Are you telling me that she and all of us are wrong?” Queen Mary demanded, and Bess blushed scarlet to her ears and begged pardon and said that she was sorry but it was odd to English eyes, and would the queen not ride pillion, behind a groom, if she did not want to go sidesaddle?
“This way, I can ride as fast as a man,” Queen Mary said, and that was the end to it, despite Bess’s murmur that it was no advantage to us if she could outride every one of her guards.
From that day she has been riding on her own saddle, astride like a boy, with her gown sweeping down on either side of the horse. She rides, as she warned Bess, as fast as a man, and some days it is all I can do to keep up with her.
I make sure that her little heeled leather boot is safe in the stirrup, and for a second I hold her foot in my hand. She has such a small, higharched foot, when I hold it I can feel an odd tenderness towards her. “Safe?” I ask. She rides a powerful horse; I am always afraid it will be too much for her.
“Safe,” she replies. “Come, my lord.”
I swing into the saddle myself and I nod to the guards. Even now, even with the plans for her return to Scotland in the making, her wedding planned to Norfolk, her triumph coming at any day now, I am ordered to surround her with guards. It is ridiculous that a queen of her importance, a guest in her cousin’s country, should be so insulted by twenty men around her whenever she wants to ride out. She is a queen, for heaven’s sake; she has given her word. Not to trust her is to insult her. I am ashamed to do it. Cecil’s orders, of course. He does not understand what it means when a queen gives her word of honor. The man is a fool and he makes me a fool with him.
We clatter down the hill, under the swooping boughs of trees, and then we turn away to ride alongside the river through the woods. The ground rises up before us and we come out of the trees when I see a party of horsemen coming towards us. There are about twenty of them, all men, and I pull up my horse and look back at the way we have come and wonder if we can outride them back to home, or if they would dare to fire on us.
“Close up,” I call sharply to the guards. I feel for my sword but of course I am not wearing one, and I curse myself for being overconfident in these dangerous times.
She glances up at me, the color in her cheeks, her smile steady. She has no fear, this woman. “Who are these?” she asks, as if it is a matter of interest and not hazard. “We can’t win a fight, I don’t think, but we could outride them.”
I squint to see the fluttering standards and then I laugh with relief. “Oh, it is Percy, my lord Northumberland, my dearest friend, and his kin, my lord Westmorland, and their men. For a moment I thought that we were in trouble!”
“Oh, well met!” Percy bellows as he rides towards us. “A lucky chance. We were coming to visit you at Wingfield.” He sweeps his hat from his head. “Your Grace,” he says bowing to her. “An honor. A great honor, an unexpected honor.”
I have been told nothing of this visit, and Cecil has not told me what to do if I have noble visitors. I hesitate, but these have been my friends and my kin