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By Root 2980 0

Lymond had never shown any desire for security. Now, lodged at last in a land where his special gifts would be quite unsurpassed, he had an opportunity for dominion which he could expect nowhere else. Philippa had been aware, since the silence which succeeded her last letter, that she must write another, and in fairness set in it what she had learned from Sybilla’s sister, the Abbess. The expedient by which she had hoped to hurry Lymond’s return to his mother was likely, she now knew, to have the opposite effect. And to expect anything else to draw him from the brilliant prospect before him was childish.

She thanked Lychpole, and even gave him some of the coins in her purse towards his goodwill when her letter to Lymond should be written.

But she wrote first to Kate at Flaw Valleys, and not until after Christmas, when the endless Masses were over, and the playlets by Udall, and the masques of Venuses and Cupids, and the subdued but infinite bickering between Spaniards and Englishmen. Philippa, with her light hand on the lute and her hard-won suppleness for the dance, had been much in demand over Christmas, and had been in some degree thankful to see the exhausting Don Alfonso disappear with his superior to Brussels for a spell, although this left Allendale’s quiet company, so undemanding that it troubled her conscience, the more she enjoyed it.

Then, after Christmas, her spare time was mortgaged by her mistress. The Queen was not well. Fatigue and wandering pains; an increasing number of the headaches which always had plagued her were all added to the strain of the disturbed, warring court she ruled over, and the uneven, unpredictable course of King Philip’s affections, and the interminable planning and plotting for the good of her people, with the barometer of their temper as odd and variable as her husband’s. And all the time her courtiers watched her, assessing her bulk and her colour, her temper, her energy, her appetite, and counting each day of her pregnancy.

With the dignity of long, bitter solitude, the Queen never confided. Observant and sensible, Philippa simply deduced what was necessary and did it. Sometimes she was required to read; sometimes to sing; sometimes to take sides in some abstract discussion which was merely a treadmill on which an over-active mind could exhaust itself. She led the Queen to indulge her pleasure in instruction, and was lent books; and learned with genuine humility how her performance on the spinet could be improved. She undertook, for Shrovetide, to arrange a Turkish masque with the Master of Revels.

She was left little time for reflection. Don Alfonso had no sooner left than she was invited by Lady Lennox to her house, the old Percy manor, at Hackney, and there met the child Henry Darnley and his tutor John Elder, who addressed her in Latin, inquiring how Master Ascham’s young bride was faring.

Philippa, the silent repository of a great deal of Spanish gossip about Master Ascham’s sweet Mag, also disliked being quizzed about it, and especially in Latin. She said in the same language, ‘As well as your master, I hope,’ and Elder bowed with a grimace. Lady Lennox’s husband, of uncertain religious allegiance, was not much to the fore in this court of bouncing princely prelates, although the unseen influence of his plotting made itself felt from time to time. He suffered an ailment, they said, which made him nervous of solitude. It was the only reason Philippa in her tarter moments could think of for his adherence to the brilliant Margaret. Ruffled, Philippa lowered her gaze to John Redshanks’s nine-year-old pupil and greeted him also in Latin.

There was a silence, during which the blue pebble eyes of Henry Lord Darnley stared sagging at Philippa. Then he sneered.

It was a very juvenile sneer, starting round the nose and disappearing under the eaves of the cheeks. ‘I am afraid, Madam,’ said Lord Darnley in English, ‘your Latin is not of the same order as mine.’

Taking her time, Philippa measured him from head to foot with her eye. She grinned. ‘I should hope not!’ she said; and,