a London tavern without someone sending the bill of fare to Cecil. He’ll have a spy in your own household, you know, Talbot. He knows everything about all of us. And he gathers the information and draws it together and waits to use it, when the time suits him.”
“He could have nothing on me,” I say staunchly.
Percy laughs. “When you refused to name the Scots queen as a whore at his inquiry?” he jeers. “You were his enemy from that moment. He will have a folder of papers with your name on it, gossip from the backstairs, rumors from bad tenants, envy from your debtors, and when the time suits him, or when he wants you humbled, he will take it to the queen and tell her she cannot trust you.”
“She would never…”
“He will have your personal servants in the Tower within the day, and a confession racked out of them that you are Queen Mary’s secret admirer.”
“No servant of mine…”
“No man in the world can resist the rack for long, nor the press, nor the iron maiden. Do you know that they tear out men’s fingernails now? They hang them from their wrists. There is not a man in the kingdom that can bear such pain. Every suspect says whatever he tells them to say within three days.”
“He would not use such things on honest men…”
“Shrewsbury, he does. You don’t know how it is in London now. There is no one can stop him. He uses what means he likes, and he tells the queen that these are such dangerous times as need dangerous measures. And she is so fearful and so persuaded by him that she lets him do his dirty business as he wishes. He has a whole army of secret men who do his bidding and know everything. Men are arrested in the night and taken to the Tower or to hidden houses and not a justice of the peace gives a warrant. It is all on Cecil’s sayso.
“Not even the Star Chamber orders these arrests; the queen does not sign for them; no one but Cecil authorizes them. It is all done in secret, on his word alone. The queen trusts him and his crew of informers and torturers, and the prisoners stumble out of the Tower sworn to report to Cecil for the rest of their lives. He is making a Spanish Inquisition on innocent Englishmen. Who can say that he won’t start to burn us? He is destroying our freedoms. He is the enemy of the lords and of the people alike and we must stop him. He will destroy us, he will destroy the queen. A man truly loyal to the queen must be Cecil’s enemy.”
The horses stretch their necks as we go up the hill to the manor, and I loosen my reins and say nothing.
“You know I am right,” he says.
I sigh.
“She will make him a baron.”
My horse flinches as I jerk on the reins. “Never.”
“She will. She pours wealth on him and she will pour honors too. You can expect him to ask for your stepdaughter’s hand in marriage for his son. Perhaps the queen will request that you marry your Elizabeth to the dwarf Robert Cecil with his humpback. Cecil will grow great. He will have a title to match your own. And we will none of us be safe to speak our minds in our own homes. He is making us a kingdom of spies and suspects commanded only by himself.”
I am so shocked that I cannot speak for a moment.
“He has to be stopped,” Percy says. “He is another Wolsey, another Cromwell. Another upstart who has come from nothing by slavish drudgery. He is a bad advisor; he is a dangerous voice in her counsels. And like both of them he will be thrown down by us lords if we act together. He has to be thrown down before he becomes overmighty. I swear to you he is a danger to the commonwealth of England. We cannot allow him to be made a lord of the realm.”
“A baron? You are certain she is going to make him a baron?”
“She pays him a fortune. We have to stop him, before he becomes too great.”
“I know it,” I say heavily. “But a baron!”
The queen is already through the gateway. Someone else will have to help her down from the saddle, I cannot hurry to get there in time to be the one to lift her and hold her.