The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [63]
The news of that small exchange reached Philippa by way of Alfonso Derronda, who had returned, full of fresh vigour, with his master. Since the Queen had not heard of it, Philippa did not mention it to Jane Dormer, or the quiet jokes of another kind, to do with the frightened King’s quest for companionship.
‘The baker’s daughter is better in her gown than Queen Mary without her crown,’ ran the limp couplet Don Alfonso quoted to her at the Lady Day joust, when Ruy Gomez and Sir George Howard, trimmed in white, were the challengers and ran twenty courses with the King and his company, in yellow and blue. ‘Did you hear of the new plot at Cambridge? To make Courtenay King and marry him to Elizabeth? They say the Queen isn’t pregnant, but means to pass off some child as her own. I wish she would,’ said Don Alfonso cheerfully. ‘It would be better than waiting.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Philippa crossly. ‘Of course she is pregnant. If Philip runs off, what’s more, she’ll probably have a miscarriage.’ The King was wearing ridiculous feathers in yellow and blue on his helmet, and they had resurrected her red Turkish robes for his attendants.
‘Not runs off,’ Don Alfonso chided her with extreme affability. He was wearing a new pair of earrings and a black braided coat, expensively furred to midcalf. ‘We must all choose our words, including King Philip. If he goes, it must seem a necessary and seemly journey. On the other hand,’ Don Alfonso said thoughtfully, ‘the King may linger longer than we think. He is not perhaps the world’s greatest administrator and the Duke of Alva is going to Brussels next month. I imagine King Philip would prefer to leave all the knottiest problems until after Alva has gone. If he does well, he will then get the credit. If he fails, then at least it won’t be Alva who enlightens the Emperor.… So there is to be a child. Tell me, why does she endanger its future by allowing these burnings?’
More than a hundred staves had been broken. On the field, a messenger from the Queen hurried down for the second time to beg King Philip to have a care for his health. Philippa thought of the long hours of prayer and toil: how the exiled friars had been recalled, the Crown stripped of its church lands, poor though it was: the Queen’s own laborious translation of Erasmus burned at her confessor’s suggestion. ‘I had rather lose ten crowns,’ Mary Tudor had answered all remonstrances, ‘than place my soul in peril.’
‘On the contrary,’ Philippa said. ‘The burnings are her bargain with God. The recanted souls will save her child and her marriage.’
Don Alfonso, his eyes on the joust, gave an impatient click of the tongue. ‘She is to be pitied.’
‘No,’ said Philippa with sudden extreme grimness. ‘She is to be loved.’
The blue and yellow feathers twisted. King Philip was riding off early. ‘By him?’ asked Don Alfonso.
The week before Easter, the King and Queen moved to Hampton Court Palace, there to await the birth of the Queen’s child. Before she moved with them, Philippa had a long talk with Robert Best, of the staff of the new Muscovy Company, who had been a fellow-pupil in Russian with Chancellor, until the demands of the forthcoming voyage forced Diccon to cancel the lessons. Immediately after that, she wrote the long-delayed letter to Lymond, and entrusted it to Bartholomew Lychpole,