more loyal than you and me, eh, Countess? Shall you get another grand house from this, d’you think? How would half of Northumberland suit you?”
“It’s no more than I’ve paid out already,” I say.
“Richly rewarded,” he remarks with intense pleasure. “We will be richly rewarded. God blesses us, doesn’t He? Praise Him.”
1569, DECEMBER, COVENTRY: GEORGE
I should be glad, I should be singing an anthem, but I cannot delight in her defeat. It is clear to me now that my heart has been divided in these hard days, and I cannot seem to be a whole man again. I should be as happy as the others: the relief in Bess is palpable; Hastings has cracked his hard face into a smile. Only I have to pretend to happiness. I don’t feel it. God forgive me, I feel such pity for her. I feel her defeat as if it were my own cause that is lost.
I go to her room and tap at the door. Mary Seton opens it and her eyes are red from weeping. I understand at once that the queen knows of her downfall; perhaps she knows more than I do. She has been receiving secret letters even here, even in Coventry, and I cannot blame her for that.
“You know, then,” I say simply. “It is over.”
She nods. “She will want to see you,” she says quietly and holds the door wide.
The queen is seated in her chair of state by the fireside; the cloth of estate is shining golden in the candlelight. She is as still as a painting as I come into the room, her profile outlined in gold by the glow from the fire. Her head is slightly bowed, her hands are clasped in her lap. She could be a gilded statue entitled “Sorrow.”
I step towards her. I don’t know what I can say to her or what hope I can give her. But as I move she turns her face up to me and rises to her feet in one graceful movement. Without words she comes to me, and I open my arms and hold her. That is all I can do: wordlessly hold her, and kiss her trembling head.
1569, DECEMBER, COVENTRY: BESS
So, it is over. Good God, I cannot believe that it is over, and I have my goods safe in my wagons and I can go home again. I have a home to go to. I cannot believe it, but it is true. It is over. It is over, and we have won.
I should have predicted this; I would have predicted it if I had kept my wits about me. But I am a vulgar farmer’s daughter in very truth, and all I could think about was burying the silver and not about the will and the wit of the rival armies. Elizabeth’s army finally arrived on their sluggish march at Durham and sought an enemy to engage and found they had gone, blown away like mist in the morning. The great army of the North marched to meet the Spanish armada at Hartlepool and found nothing. At once they doubted every plan. They had sworn to restore the old church, so they held their Mass and thought that was done. They were for freeing the Scots queen but they were none of them sure where she had gone and they were counting on the Spanish pikemen and Spanish gold. They did not fancy facing Elizabeth’s army without either, and to tell truth they wanted to slip off to their homes and enjoy the peace and prosperity that has come with Elizabeth. They did not want to be the ones to start another war between kin.
Alas for them. The Spanish doubted them and did not want to risk their army and their ships until they were certain of victory. They delayed, and while they hesitated, the Northern army waited at Hartlepool, straining their eyes to see over the white wave tops for the whiter sails, and seeing nothing but the gray skyline and wheeling gulls with the cold spray of the North Sea blowing in their disappointed faces. Then they heard that the Duke of Norfolk had submitted to Elizabeth and written to Westmorland and Northumberland, begging them not to march against their queen. He dropped his head and rode to London though his own tenants hung on his horse’s tail and stirrup leathers and begged him to fight. So there was no Spanish fleet, there was no great army led by the