The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [56]
‘I know. That mountebank Elder,’ Philippa said.
‘John Redshanks,’ said Ascham thinly. ‘An amateur cosmographer from some puny church in a place called Dumbarton. Who claims Henry Darnley to surpass the late King Edward—the Lady Elizabeth—the Grey children as a Latinist.’
‘And me,’ said Philippa.
Fastidiously, Roger Ascham laid down his quill. ‘He does not presumably know of your existence, for which you should be thankful. Unless he is a friend of your husband’s. In which case you would do well to deliver your husband a warning. No offers from that quarter will ever do good to anyone except the Lennoxes. I have heard them exhort the Queen to have her sister executed time without number. Fortunately, the Emperor’s Ambassador has been as strong to dissuade her. The present talk is of marrying Madam Elizabeth to the Margrave of Baden, or any other small state lacking a coastline. They will be hard put to it to find a grate for that coal to burn in.’
‘What cause have they to banish her?’ Philippa said. ‘I heard that her devotions were constant and her discretion alarmingly total. And when the child is born, she will be a further remove from the throne.’
‘It is true,’ Ascham said. ‘A son will bring Burgundy and the Low Countries to England. If Don Carlos were to die, it might unite England wholly with Spain. But is there going to be a child?’
It was not the sort of question asked by Jane, or by Austin, or by any of the plain gentlewomen surrounding the Queen. Philippa said, guardedly, ‘There is a cradle. She speaks of it sometimes. And she is plumper, they say, and of a better colour than before.’
‘She is happier,’ Ascham said. ‘But irregularity in her health there has always been. You have seen the blood-letting. You know of the medicines she takes. And if she has conceived, what chance will the child have? The hours of prayer on her knees, like her mother. The hours of studying papers, of committee with her ministers: this vast council of time-serving Privy Councillors, half of whom should be given provincial duties and sent back to their estates. Gardiner—Paget—Cecil—Petre … how can she know whom to trust, when during the last reign nearly all of them were against her?’
‘She trusts you,’ Philippa said. ‘In spite of the Roman beast and its dogmatic filth in tail-rhymed stanzas, not to mention a few other injudicious pronouncements.’
‘Do you suggest,’ said Ascham with hauteur, ‘that she should have appointed Elder? She took me because she had none better, as she should refuse retirement to William Petre. He has been there so long, he is a Council register in himself. While princes come and vanish like swallows, the land needs some weight in the saddle. Only pray that she doesn’t solicit safe birth for her heir by impossible largesse to the Pontiff. The banished friars are returning, I hear, and the Knights of St John are restored: soon the crown will give back its church lands, and Reginald Pole will be Archbishop of Canterbury, if they make sure to ordain him beforehand.’
Philippa’s brown eye surveyed him. ‘The Crown may give up its church lands, but I doubt if anyone else will be persuaded. The Earl of Bedford proclaimed that he cared more for his sweet Abbey of Woburn than for any fatherly counsel from Rome, and forthwith tugged off and cast down his rosary. The King was far from amused.’
‘I saw him amused only once,’ Roger Ascham said thoughtfully. ‘At a Brussels procession. They had a bear playing the organ, with the keys tied to the tails of twenty cages of cats. It was extremely noisy. The Prince laughed himself into tears. I wonder if he will do the same if … no,’ Master Ascham chided himself. ‘It is bad luck to anticipate disaster. In any case, we have gossiped enough: our time is at an end for today. Collect your books. Do you know Bartholomew Lychpole?’
The secretariat was not large. Philippa said, ‘The man in brown, who always wears spectacles?’
‘Yes. He wanted to speak with you. Wait.’ He bustled out.
Philippa was alone in the room when Master Lychpole arrived. She fastened her