Elizabeth, flying to Windsor Castle with double guards posted at the gates, the trained bands of London called to arms, scrambling to find their weapons, scouts racing up the north road, terrified that at any moment the army of the North will come marching south and demand her exile or her death, and I find myself hardpressed not to laugh aloud at the thought of her fear.
Now she knows how it feels when your people turn against you. Now she knows the terror that I felt when I heard that they would dare to wage war against their own anointed queen. She let my people rise up against me, without punishment. She let them know that they could rebel against me, their Godgiven ruler, and throw me from my throne, and now the people rise against her, and if they throw her down, who shall save her? She should have thought of that before now! I bet she is shaking in her shoes, looking out of her window at the river, straining her eyes for the first sign of the sails of the Spanish ships. She is prone to fear; by now she will be sick with terror. The French are sworn to support me, the Spanish are my loyal friends. The Holy Father himself prays for me by name and says I should be restored. But Elizabeth? Who is Elizabeth’s friend? A rabble of Huguenots in France, a couple of German princes, who else? None! She is alone. And now she is facing her own countrymen, alone.
I do everything I am bidden, packing my clothes, boxing my books and my jewels, giving my new tapestry to Mary to carry for me, and running down the stone stairs to the stable yard with the bell tolling out a warning, the maids screaming, and the dogs barking.
It is raining, a fine cold drizzle, which will mean the roads will churn into mud under our horses’ hooves and travel will be painfully slow. The soldiers are palefaced in the dawn light, fearing the powder for their pistols will be damp and they will have to face the horsemen of the North without weapons. Everyone but me looks halfsick with terror.
Anthony Babington, Bess’s sweetest young page, comes to me as I am getting into my saddle and whispers to me the code word that tells me I can trust him: “Sunflower.”
It is the impresa of my girlhood, my chosen badge, the sunflower, which turns to light and warmth and hope. “Send a message to them if you can, to tell them where I am going,” I whisper to him, hardly looking at him, as he tightens the girth on my horse and straightens the reins for me. “I don’t know where they are taking me. South, somewhere.”
His honest boy’s face beams up at me. Bless the child. His brown eyes are filled with adoration. “But I know,” he says joyfully. “I heard my lord talking. Coventry. I will tell them.”
“But you take care,” I warn him. “Take no risks. You are too young to put your head in a noose.”
He flushes. “I am eight,” he says stoutly, as if it were a great age. “And I have been in service since I was six.”
“You are a young man of courage,” I say to him, and see his boyish flush.
All the way along the road, as we ride as fast as we dare in the gray light of a wintry dawn, I see the men looking to the left and to the right, listening for the sound of drums and pipes, fearfully alert for the great army of the men of the North. They fear that they will round a bend in the road and find a wall of men, waiting to take me. They fear that even now the horsemen are closing on us, coming up on us from the rear, gaining on us however fast we ride. They know that coming down the road behind us are men who have sworn to restore the true religion and the true queen, an army on the march under the very banner of Christ, in His very name, riding to revenge sacrilege against their church, treason against their queen, sin against their country’s history. My captors know they are in the wrong, know they are outnumbered and defeated before they start. They march at speed, almost at a run, their heads down and their faces gray; they are men in abject terror.