The Virgin’s Lover. Philippa Gregory

would call yourself a free man?’

      ‘Yes,’ he said firmly. ‘I am free to love once more, and this time I will have nothing but the best. I will not allow base coin to drive out gold.’

      ‘Indeed,’ said Elizabeth, suddenly cool, withdrawing rapidly from dangerous intimacy. She turned and beckoned forward the lady in waiting. ‘I will have that shawl now,’ she said. ‘You may walk with us.’

      They walked in silence, Elizabeth taking in what he had told her, sifting the evidenced truth from the gloss. She was not such a fool as to believe the word of a married man. At her side Dudley reviewed what he had said, determinedly ignoring an uncomfortable feeling of disloyalty to Amy whose love, he knew, had been more faithful, and continued more strongly than he chose to portray. Of course his remaining love for her he had completely denied.

      Cecil, Sir Francis Knollys, and the queen’s young uncle, the twenty-three-year-old Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, were head to head in the private window bay of the presence chamber; behind them, the queen’s court stood around, chatting, plotting, flirting. The queen on her throne was talking with the Spanish ambassador in fluent Spanish. Cecil, one ear cocked for any danger from that quarter, was nonetheless very intent upon Sir Francis.

      ‘We have to find a means to search everyone before they come to the queen, even the gentlemen of the court.’

      ‘We would give much offence,’ the duke demurred. ‘And surely the threat comes from the common people?’

      ‘It comes from every convinced Papist,’ Cecil said bluntly. ‘The Pope’s declaration, when it is published, will make her a lamb for the slaughter as she has never been before.’

      ‘She cannot dine in public any more,’ Sir Francis said thoughtfully. ‘We will have to refuse permission for people to come in and see her at her dinner.’

      Cecil hesitated. Access to the monarch, or even to the great lords in their halls, was part of the natural order, the way things had always been done. If that were to be changed, then the court would have signalled very clearly to the people that they trusted them no more, and that they were retreating behind locked doors.

      ‘It will look odd,’ he said begrudgingly.

      ‘And she can hardly make any more public processions,’ Sir Francis said. ‘How can it be done?’

      Before Cecil could stop him, Sir Francis beckoned Robert Dudley, who excused himself from the group around him and started to come towards them.

      ‘If you add him to our councils I’m away,’ the duke said abruptly, and turned aside.

      ‘Why?’ Sir Francis asked. ‘He knows how this can be done better than any of us.’

      ‘He knows nothing but his own ambition, and you will rue the day you ever include him in anything,’ Thomas Howard said rudely and turned his back as Dudley joined the others.

      ‘Good day, Sir William, Sir Francis.’

      ‘What ails young Howard?’ Sir Francis asked as the duke pushed past another man and strode away.

      ‘I think he mourns the rising of my little star,’ Dudley said, amused.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘His father hated mine,’ Dudley said. ‘Actually, Thomas Howard arrested my father and my brothers and me and marched us into the Tower. I don’t think he expected me to come marching out again.’

      Sir Francis nodded, taking it in. ‘You must be afraid that he will influence the queen against you?’

      ‘He’d better fear that I will influence her against him,’ Dudley replied. He smiled at Cecil. ‘She knows who her friends are. She knows who stood as her friends through the years of her troubles.’

      ‘And the troubles are not over now,’ Sir Francis said, turning to the matter in hand. ‘We are talking of the safety of the queen when she goes abroad. Sir William here has news that the pope has sanctioned the use of force against her by ordinary men and women.’

      Dudley turned a stunned face to the older man. ‘It cannot be true? He would never do such a thing? It is ungodly!’

      ‘It is under consideration,’ Cecil said flatly. ‘And we shall hear the confirmation soon enough. And then the people will learn of it.’

      ‘I’ve heard nothing of this,’ Robert exclaimed.

      — Oh, have you not? — Cecil hid his smile. ‘Nonetheless, I am sure of it.’

      Dudley was silent for a moment, shocked by the news, but noting at the same time that Cecil had a spy in the very court of the Bishop of Rome. Cecil’s network of intelligencers and informers was growing to impressive proportions. ‘It is to overthrow the natural order,’ he said. ‘She was anointed by one of his own bishops. He cannot do it. He cannot set the dogs on a sacred person.’

      ‘He will do it,’ Cecil said, irritated by the young man’s slowness. ‘Indeed, by now, he probably has done it. What we are considering is how to prevent anyone obeying it.’

      ‘I was saying that she must be kept from the people,’ Sir Francis said.

      A bright laugh from the throne made all three of them break off, turn and smile at where the queen was flirting with her fan and laughing at Ambassador Feria, who was coloured up – torn between frustration and laughter. They all three smiled at her, she was irresistible in her joy, in her playfulness, in the brightness of her energy.

      ‘The people are her greatest safety,’ Dudley said slowly.

      Cecil shook his head, but Sir Francis checked him with a hand on his sleeve. ‘What d’you mean?’

      ‘The Pope makes this a matter of the common people, he invites them to attack her; but he does not know this queen. She should not hide from the few men or women who would do her harm, she should go out and draw the love of all the rest. Her greatest safety would be if every man, woman or child in this country would lay down their lives for her.’

      ‘And how would we achieve that?’

      ‘You know it already,’ Dudley said bluntly to Cecil. ‘You saw it. In the coronation procession she won every single heart in that crowd. We have to take the risk to take her out to the people and know that they will be the ones that protect her. Every Englishman should be one of the queen’s guard.’

      Sir Francis slowly nodded. ‘And when it comes to an invasion they would fight for her.’

      ‘A single man with a single poignard is almost unstoppable,’ Cecil said bleakly. ‘She may win over a hundred, but if one is against her, and he is the one with the knife, then she is dead, and it is at our door.’ He paused. ‘And a Catholic queen inherits, and England is a cat’s-paw of France, and we are ruined.’

      ‘As you say, unstoppable,’ Robert rejoined, not at all overwhelmed by the gloom of this picture. ‘But your way, you give her twenty guards, perhaps thirty. My way: I give her the whole of England.’

      Cecil grimaced at the younger man’s romantic language.

      ‘There will still be some places that we cannot admit the people,’ Sir Francis pursued. ‘When she is dining, when she goes through the halls to her chapel. There are too many and they press too close.’

      ‘That, we should restrict,’ Robert concurred. ‘And we can serve her dinner without her being there.’

      Cecil drew breath. ‘Without her being there? What is the purpose of that?’

      ‘The people come to see the throne and the plate and the great ceremony,’ Robert said airily. ‘They will come anyway. Provided that there is a good show they don’t need to see her in person. High days and holidays she must be there to show that she is well and in good spirits. But