The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [149]
When, twenty years before, the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots had been thrown out of her own kingdom by the Scottish Presbyterians, she had soon become the focus of every Catholic plot to overthrow her heretic English cousin. Held under house arrest in England, the wilful exile schemed endlessly until at last, at the start of 1587, Elizabeth had been practically forced by her own council to execute her.
‘She is a Catholic martyr,’ the Lady Albion had immediately declared and within a week she had come to visit her son, wearing the martyr’s crimson for all to see.
‘But must you openly defy the queen’s council and the bishop in this way?’ he had asked in a plaintive tone.
‘Yes,’ she had answered simply. ‘We must.’
We. That was the trouble. Whenever his mother spoke to him of the necessity of dangerous acts, she always spoke of ‘we’ – to let him know that in her mind he was infallibly included.
Ten years ago his mother had finally come into her cousin’s large inheritance. She became, therefore, a very rich woman, free to leave her fortune where and how she pleased. She never spoke of it. Neither did he. The idea that he could be loyal to the sacred cause in order to inherit her money was as unthinkable as to imagine that he would see a penny of it if he wasn’t. The nearest hint she had ever given of her position was once, when he had mentioned that his father had been short of money before his death, to remark: ‘I could not help your father, Clement. He was a broken reed.’ And in those words he thought he could hear, like a soft snap, the sentence of poverty for those who disappointed her.
‘We’, therefore, it was. The fact that she had yet to give him anything, that he now had a wife and three children and that, if he displeased the queen’s council he could count upon losing the several posts in the Forest that provided his modest income – these considerations, of course, must mean nothing if he were to keep her good opinion as they both stood before the most high God.
‘What do you desire of me, Mother?’ he managed to say at last.
‘To speak a word or two alone. I could not do it at the wedding.’ The celebration at Salisbury had been a large affair: one of her nieces had been marrying into a prominent Sarum family. To talk without risk of being overheard would have been difficult.
‘I have received a letter, Clement.’ She paused, looking at him solemnly. He wondered uneasily what was coming next. ‘From your sister. From Spain.’
Spain. Why had his mother insisted on marrying his sister to a Spaniard? A foolish question, really. Even the French, in her eyes, were not truly reliable in matters of religion compared with the Spanish. Back in Mary Tudor’s reign, when King Philip of Spain and his courtiers were in England, she had lost no time in making friends among the Spanish nobility. And sure enough, as soon as his sister Catherine reached the age of fifteen, his mother had boarded a merchant ship at Southampton and departed without so much as a by-your-leave for Spain. Once there, the whole business had been arranged in a trice. With the promise, no doubt, of a handsome dowry, Catherine had been betrothed to a Spaniard of impoverished but impeccable family – he was even related, distantly, to the powerful Duke of Medina Sidonia.
He had not seen her since then. Was she happy? He hoped so. He tried to visualize her. He had his father’s fair hair, but she was dark like her mother. She had probably turned into a completely Spanish lady by now. In which case, he thought glumly, you could be sure what her views were about the present crisis.
When King Philip of Spain had married Catholic Mary Tudor he had naturally supposed