Not many weeks after Philip’s departure, I was allowed to meet Aunt Kat in London and ride with her to Hatfield, where we would join Elizabeth. Mary had finally allowed Elizabeth to leave her side—as long as she stayed at Hatfield and behaved herself, she’d admonished.
Aunt Kat and I had a tearful reunion, with much embracing and many kisses. I quickly realized, however, as we rode north from London, that Aunt Kat’s house arrest had not made her any more docile and compliant than had Elizabeth’s.
“It does a body good to go about where one wishes.” Aunt Kat sighed with contentment as we rode our palfreys at a slow pace, the outriders happily dawdling along with us. “Our time is coming, Eloise, you mark my words.”
“What do you mean?” I asked absently, paying more attention to the soft green of the countryside than her nattering words.
“Mary is barren, her husband is gone, and old Bishop Gardiner is at death’s door.” Aunt Kat sounded meanly pleased about all this. “Our princess shall be queen, and sooner than you think.”
I turned to her, my alarm rising. “How do you know this, Aunt Kat? You have been confined longer than I have.”
Aunt Kat sent me a sage nod. “I have my ways. I know that Mary wishes to confiscate the lands of good people who fled to Geneva and other more tolerant places, but she has enough opposition not to act too hastily. Well, we’ll see if she has her way, but I think not. A mistake, the burnings at Smithfield. London chokes on the smoke of her victims, and Mary will not last.”
I could see that Aunt Kat had not lost her taste for meddling.
“James Colby has been often to visit me,” Aunt Kat continued. “He was able to bring me messages. No, Elizabeth’s cause has not died.” She smiled, a woman content.
“Mary watches her,” I cautioned. “Philip might have persuaded Mary to let Elizabeth out of prison, but Philip is gone, not to return, I think.”
“Mary will obey Philip whether he be near or far,” Aunt Kat said. “Mary lives to hear a word of praise from him. But there are plenty who want Mary gone, and they hardly keep a secret of it.”
“You hardly keep a secret of it either,” I pointed out.
Aunt Kat seemed perfectly willing to chat openly of treason, with riders around us, although they were out of earshot. Her boldness showed me more clearly than the crowds who’d come out to laud Elizabeth as we’d ridden to Greenwich how much love for Mary had waned.
Mary had snatched shopkeepers out of their homes and burned them for reading the Bible in English and refusing to recant. These people were not wealthy enough to flee England and live in comfort abroad, which meant they had to remain and face Mary’s wrath.
Mary had bullied Parliament into allowing her marriage to Philip, who cared nothing for England but how it profited his father’s empire. Now, that prince had run off to the Netherlands to make them behave, and Mary had not produced an English heir.
Therefore, Elizabeth had become the new hope. I felt a qualm of direst foreboding.
Christmas that year was particularly festive. Elizabeth was home with her favorite ladies and gentlemen, including the Parrys, Roger Ascham, and the Countess of Sussex, Anne Calthorpe, who was estranged from the husband who’d led Elizabeth to the Tower. Aunt Kat and Uncle John were reunited, and Elizabeth even had visits from Dr. Dee, the famous astrologer.
As Advent wound on, people came and went from the surrounding countryside—including a Mr. Kingston, two young men called Verney, Sir Christopher Ashton, who was fervently devoted to Elizabeth, and James Colby. At Hatfield, excitement mounted, and because of Colby, I knew everything that was being planned from the start.
“The French ambassador is with us,” Kingston said as we sat at table in Aunt Kat’s private chamber at Hatfield one night in December. Outside, the world was cloaked in darkness, and a cold rain had fallen, but it was still not icy enough for snow. “Sir Henry assures us that the money will come from France’s coffers. He will lead a force from there.”
The reason for this new eagerness to form an uprising was Mary’s continued obstinacy. She’d raged at her Parliament this autumn when they’d fought her taking away lands belonging to the Protestant exiles, and again when she’d declared she wished to return her own lands to the monasteries that had been broken up by her father.
The men of Parliament had tried to point out that the Crown actually had very little money. Returning the monastic lands would be a financial disaster.
But Mary adamantly wished it—God had informed her that this was necessary to heal the rift between monarch and church that her father had created. Mary had gone so far as to lock the men of Parliament into the debating chamber until she had her way. They’d resisted, and now they wanted no more of her.
“Mistress Rousell is our go-between with the princess.” Kingston gazed straight at me. “You know how to keep her informed, with no one the wiser?”
“Better than you can know, Mr. Kingston,” I assured him.
“Eloise is trustworthy,” Colby said, and my pride warmed at his words.
They had great courage, I thought, to sit here over ale in Elizabeth’s own house and plot to overthrow the queen. Sir Christopher promised he would depart to France and meet with Henry Dudley, a cousin of Robert, and together they would raise an invasion force.
Kingston, with Colby’s help, would put together an army in the west, and other loyal gentlemen would gather in the south and east. The French king would pay for much of this rebellion, in return for us driving Hapsburg Philip and Mary his wife out of England. The armies would take London and Mary’s person this time, placing Elizabeth on the throne before Philip could act.
Kingston fished a coin from his pocket. It had been severed in two, the cut half ragged. “When I am sent the other half of this, they will be ready in France. And we will see an end to this hideous farce.”
I believed them rash and foolish, but I knew better than to state that opinion among these half-drunk, conspiracy-mad gentlemen. They wanted Mary gone, dead if she had to be.
I thought again of Mary as we’d left her in Greenwich, ill and melancholy. Her only desire now was God’s work, she’d made known. She vowed to return the lands and money the Crown received from the raided monasteries and to convert those stubbornly clinging to the reformed religion.
