he repeated. He wore his sword, which he seldom did at Combe. ‘They will pray for us.’ He nodded back at the house.
Our little cavalcade clattered off with a jingling of harness and squeak of leather on leather. Unfamiliar men-at-arms rode close around me on all sides. Their swords, saddle maces and faces told me what they were, but in place of identifying livery or badges, they wore plain leather jerkins and padded vests. No standard identified our party.
Skulking through the early dark of autumn with the hood of my plain wool cape pulled forward to hide my face, I felt like a fleeing criminal.
‘Whose men are you?’ I asked the rider on my right.
‘We all serve the king, madam.’ He turned his head away suddenly towards the shadows of the trees beside our muddy track.
‘What do we fear?’ I asked.
‘Ambush.’ No title, to hide my identity from any prying ears.
I fell silent inside my hood, which smelt of damp sheep.
The other horses closed more tightly around me as we passed through the village of Stoke and did not open out again until the lights of the last outlying farm were far behind. I wondered which they feared more—attack, or that I might tighten my leg around the horn of my side saddle and race away to join the rebels.
With less on my conscience, I might have enjoyed the ride. The carefree girl who had entered the forest yesterday might have pretended that she fled through the night like an escaping highwayman, triumphant at an audacious raid. But I felt a demon thrashing around us in the darkness, laying waste to my former life. In the dark gaps between trees, I saw the distorted face of the young man in the forest. His helpless rocking as I looked back. Twice I imagined that I heard hoof beats running beside us in the dark.
I had been to Coventry once before, the previous year. I remembered a bumpy carriage ride in the April sunlight, and the generosity of lengthening evenings. I had been accompanied by both Haringtons, and a troop of ladies from neighbouring estates. Lady Harington had sent one woman away for wearing her bodice cut too low. Then she had reshaped the wire of my standing collar and changed the order in which we were to travel.
On our tour of the streets, cheering crowds and ranks of waving livery men—cappers, mercers, tailors and drapers—stood to watch us pass. I remembered catching a thrown cap and placing it on my own head amid a burst of laughing cheers.
This time, we rode almost unseen through the dark streets. Two watchmen raised their lanterns curiously but quickly lowered them again at a sign from my escort. This time, in spite of the warm welcome given me by a Mr Hopkins of Earle Street, a close friend of Lord Harington, I felt like a prisoner. The two men-at-arms stationed outside my door seemed more like warders than guardians.
‘You can sleep at ease tonight, your grace,’ Mr Hopkins told me. The citizens of Coventry had posted an army of guards around the house in case the Papist army attacked. No one, he said, could get in, or out.
Seeing my person secured, Lord Harington assured me one last time that all would be well. Free for the time of his great charge, he rode off in visible high spirits to confront the Popish army now rumoured to have gathered on Dunsmore Heath.
Again, I waited. Three days passed. I received no official visitors or delegations. I heard no news from Combe, London or anywhere else. I dined alone in my chamber. I tried to eavesdrop through my half-open door but heard nothing. I smiled at an endless string of different grooms and maids who found an excuse to have a look at me, but none could be induced to gossip. I read, I stitched, I walked in the small walled garden. I began to write a heroic poem but tore it up. I practised scales on my new lute though I could not find it in me to sing. At noon on the fourth day, I heard a disturbance in the stable yard, then men’s voices on the floor below. Footsteps climbed the stairs. I left the door and sat on a chair by the fire.
My maid opened the door to a strange man-at-arms. Like my escort to Coventry, he wore no identifying livery badge.
‘What news?’ I demanded.
He stepped aside to escort me from the room.
A small lop-sided shape waited for me below in Mr Hopkins’s great parlour. There was no mistaking him for anyone else. This was a far greater man than my temporary host.
‘My Lady Elizabeth.’ He sketched an off-kilter bow.
He should have been in London questioning traitors in the Tower.
Robert Cecil, now Lord Salisbury and the English Secretary of State. My father’s chief advisor. Here in Mr Hopkins’s large parlour, his sharp, intelligent eyes on my face. He cleared his throat.
If we were to stand side-by-side, he would reach no higher than the top of my ear. The fur collar of his loose gown did not quite disguise the uneven slope of his shoulders. Why then, did he cause such fear in me?
I struggled to hold his gaze.
Neither of us spoke. It was my part to speak. Unlike my conscience, my mind was blank.
‘Has something more happened?’ I asked at last.
‘More than…?’
‘About…?’ I tried to wipe my thoughts clean, leaving only what Lord Harington had told me. But I could not remember clearly. ‘About the fearful plot?’ I was certain at least that Lord Harington had told me about a plot.
‘And did your guardian tell you about the quick wit of the king, your father, in perceiving the threat?’
I could not remember.
‘My father?’ I echoed.
I had seen no attendants waiting in the hall. No secretary waited behind the little table below the window. Cecil was alone. I could think of no good reason why he had come here in apparent secrecy.
After another pause, Cecil pointed to a high-backed, unpadded chair-of-grace.
Flushed and angry with myself for needing his prompt, I sat. I noticed that he had slender, long-fingered hands, like a woman. Then I remembered to nod for him to sit as well.
‘Thank you, your grace.’ He perched at the front of a second chair-of-grace and smoothed the skirts of his robe over his knees. He cleared his throat again and spoke a little too loudly, as if I might be deaf. ‘The king, your father was the agent of his own salvation. Praise God.’
‘Praise God,’ I echoed.
‘A loyal subject had brought me an anonymous letter.’ He looked away.
‘A loyal subject?’ I echoed again. Thank God, Harington had prepared me for the letter. I laid my hands on the arms of the chair and closed my fingers carefully around the oak grape leaves carved on the ends.
He nodded. ‘A warning from a loyal Catholic lord.’ He met my eye with a half-smile. His words rolled on smoothly. ‘Which I showed to the king. His majesty saw at once what had escaped me—that it concerned the hidden intent to blow up the opening of Parliament.’ He paused. ‘The terrible plot was uncovered. Thanks be to God!’
I murmured an incoherent piety.
Not my letter after all! I felt my hands fly into the air like startled doves and quickly clasped them together in my lap.
His small lumpy bulk leaned forward. He braced his elbows on the chair arms, so that his long feminine fingers dangled from awkwardly suspended hands.
I looked away. I wished those eyes would stop looking at me and at my clasped hands. I wished the room were not so strange and close, nor hung with tapestries of bloody battle scenes. I ached to be back at tedious, familiar Combe. I had misplaced all my rehearsed lies. I was sick with waiting.
‘Why are you here, my lord?’
He