The twelve days following my arrival at St James’ were among the longest I have ever known. What they were like for Elizabeth, I hardly like to imagine. I sometimes think that the only thing that kept her heart up during those interminable nights and days was the obliging attitude of our temperamental English weather.

  Reports were constantly coming in. Sir Francis Drake was back, and taking charge of things. Before I had arrived at St James’, the English ships had moved out to intercept and attack, and as had been clear from the battle plan, the Armada had taken up a defensive position. Our own ships had manoeuvred cautiously; aware that to approach too close might let the Spanish formation close its jaws on them.

  That same evening had brought further good news. In fact, when I arrived, I found the queen in reasonable spirits. There had been an explosion on board one of the Spanish vessels, crippling her but not sinking her. English sailors had managed to board her. She was carrying foodstuffs and the sailors had seized as many barrels as possible, including casks of wine, salt beef and beans. More viands for our men and less for the Spanish, a matter for rejoicing.

  But after that, for many days the reports were simply of fighting. They arrived regularly, brought by a stream of messengers. The English had been ready, much readier than Philip had expected, and had completely put a stop to any notion of landing Spanish soldiers in a sudden swoop to set them marching on London before our defences could be mustered.

  Nor, said one of the messengers gleefully, had there been any sign of a fleet laden with the Duke of Parma’s soldiers crossing the North Sea from the Low Countries to descend on East Anglia and sail up the Thames. Philip’s commanders had depended on him, and his help wasn’t forthcoming.

  ‘He keeps his word!’ Elizabeth said. Christopher had made his visit to the duke, and returned to say that terms had finally been settled. Parma would stay out of the invasion. The dragged-out decoy talks in Ostend were over. Our delegates were already home.

  Meanwhile, the weather turned wet and often stormy, with fitful, gusty winds, although there were occasional breaks. Once or twice the queen took advantage of clear skies and took us all hunting in the handiest piece of forest: Epping Forest, a lengthy ride to the north-east but a good day in the fresh air. The Armada was reported as trying to approach Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight but failing to do so because a powerful south-west gale had set in and driven them off course. The next news was that they were heading for Calais.

  ‘For France?’ Elizabeth said uneasily. It was possible that in Catholic France, they might find a friendly reception.

  ‘They won’t land there,’ the messenger said reassuringly. ‘Our ships have surrounded them. Our fleet can manoeuvre more quickly than theirs. We have better vessels! And now, so I understand, Sir Francis Drake has recommended fireships.’

  The fireships were tried. Eight of them were launched at midnight on Sunday the seventh of August. When we heard the details, Elizabeth was grimly pleased; I saw her father in her then. King Henry the Eighth would, I think, have been pleased in the same savage fashion. The fireships scattered the Armada well and truly and for that I too was thankful and yet, to my own surprise, I had a twinge of pity for the Spaniards. I didn’t speak of it to anyone, least of all the queen, but those towering vessels, all aflame, advancing through the darkness, would have terrified the bravest of men, and the moment when a fireship reached a galleon must have been unbelievably horrible.

  The sails of the Spanish vessels would be down presumably, but in my imagination I felt how a vessel would judder from the impact, how the fireship, which by contrast would have sails up and all ablaze, would loom over the men on deck, how the heat would scorch them, how the flames would lean in the wind and set the masts burning. Then fire would race over the deck … there would be oarsmen, slaves, probably chained to their benches, God help them! Thinking about it made my stomach turn to water.

  We heard that after the fireship attack, the wind veered about and during a swing to the south-west, forced the Spanish vessels to run before it, northwards through the North Sea. We heard that some of them, perhaps trying to keep in sight of the coast, followed the Norfolk coast round into the Wash and then, as the erratic wind veered to the north, were trapped by what the latest messenger called standing waves.

  ‘What the devil are standing waves?’ Elizabeth demanded.

  ‘Why, Majesty, they happen when the tide is running one way and a strong wind is blowing against it. The waves get trapped between them and they seem to stand, like walls of water. If the Spanish had any notion of trying to land there, they would have been blocked as completely as if the walls of water were walls of stone. Some of their vessels were already badly damaged by the fireships. Being driven on to standing waves could have sent some of them to the bottom and very likely did.’

  The wind changed again, back to the south-west, and the remainder of Philip’s grand Armada was reported to be racing before it, still further to the north. But report also said that despite the fireships and the unfriendly winds, at least a hundred of the Armada vessels had survived, and were apparently under the command of highly skilled captains. England was still in peril. The army that had been raised to defend our shores in the south might now have to race north to challenge a Spanish attack there. It was currently gathered at Tilbury, a deep-water port on the Thames, under the command of the Earl of Leicester, awaiting further orders.

  When the news was brought to her, Elizabeth sat in her study to examine it. I stood behind her, watching her hands, those long-fingered, white hands of which she was so proud, as she read the scroll. I saw her back straighten. Her head came up.

  ‘This is the crucial moment. Our navy and God’s good winds have repelled the enemy from Portsmouth and London. But now the danger is racing north, in some disarray, but if the Armada is a wounded hornet, it still has its sting. If they try to land in the north, we must be ready. But before our men march or embark for the north, we must show them that their queen is no timid creature cowering behind City walls, but a strong leader who is with them in deed as well as in words. We must go to Tilbury.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  The Heart of a King

  ‘Certainly I had something to do with it,’ said the Master of the Revels, Sir Edmund Tylney, as the barge slipped downstream along the Thames towards Tilbury. ‘Who else would be consulted? I arrange masques, provide costumes and properties when Her Majesty’s players put on a performance. I organize processions. I searched the storehouse where I keep my properties and found that silver cuirass that the queen is wearing, and when we get to Tilbury, I understand – I hope – that the horse that will be waiting there for her, is something quiet, that won’t mind trumpeters. The trumpeters were my idea.’

  ‘They’re certainly loud,’ I said. We were in the second barge of the procession that was gliding down the Thames towards Tilbury. The queen was in the first, which had Tylney’s trumpeters stationed in the bows. Every now and then they sounded a mighty fanfare.

  ‘Did you choose the horse, sir?’ I asked. If Brockley had been with us, he might well have asked first as he was interested in all things equine. But I had no attendant. There would be local people at Tilbury to watch but the queen wished her personal contingent to be as small as possible. ‘If you want a protective escort, Ursula, which I seriously doubt,’ said my royal sister, ‘you can have the Master of the Revels on one side of you and Lord Burghley on the other. Walsingham is still too unwell to attend. I would have allowed Christopher Spelton to be present because he has given such admirable service lately, but he wishes to stay at home. He has motherless children to look after.’

  He had indeed, and for the moment, Mildred was in no case to help him. He had returned from his final trip to the Netherlands not only with Parma’s final agreement to stay out of the conflict but also with the news that Berend Gomez had been found guilty of heresy and would have died at the stake except that at the moment when sentence was passed, he had snatched a phial of poison from his underclothing and swallowed the contents. He had died within hours despite all that the physicians could do. He was brought to trial still in the garments he was wearing when he was arrested. No one had searched him.

  Mildred went to West Leys while Christopher was away on that final journey, and on his return, she at once asked for word of Berend. When he told her what had happened, she had been completely overset, weeping with thankfulness that Berend had not been made to die by fire, weeping with relief because she knew she was a free woman now, whether or not her marriage to Berend was legal and also weeping in simple grief for him.

  I was still at Hawkswood when Christopher brought her back, and she at once took to her room and stayed in it for nearly a week. I let her have meals taken to her, let her get it all out of her system. She had eventually emerged, and after that, the first storm over, she became very quiet and thoughtful. I was thankful for that. She would have to be the mistress of the house while I was with Elizabeth.

  Tylney was answering my question about the queen’s horse. ‘It was up to the Earl of Essex to decide what the queen should ride. He’s the present Master of Horse! I heard that he was thinking of something that would catch the eye, something that would impress the troops – typical of him!’

  Sir Edmund raised a well-manicured hand to push an errant lock of white hair back beneath his red velvet cap. ‘Leicester was an excellent Master of Horse,’ he said, ‘but Essex is all magnificent ideas and not much sense of reality. I had a word with him. A fine prancing stallion, all fire and trampling hooves, may be a goodly spectacle, I said, but if the queen were to be thrown, that would be a spectacle of a different sort. He listened to me, God be thanked, and what I expect to find awaiting Her Majesty when we get to Tilbury is a sixteen-year-old white gelding with a nice broad back and all the excitability of a suet pudding. Leicester told me about it, grinning.’

  From my other side, Sir William Cecil said: ‘We’re nearly there.’

  We were not part of the official procession, just part of the queen’s entourage, following her about or watching from a distance. She was to make an overnight stay so most of her ladies-in-waiting were with her, together with council members and some other dignitaries. We were all to spend the night in a nearby manor house and the queen’s ladies would have to maid each other.

  When we disembarked from the barges, the next thing was a two-mile walk to West Tilbury, where the soldiers were quartered. Only the queen was mounted. Elizabeth was an impressive spectacle, of course. The promised white gelding had been waiting for her and if the horse itself was a stolid animal that wouldn’t have caught anyone’s eye on its own, its trappings made it splendid. It needed to be placid, because the trumpeters, marching ahead of her, continued with their fanfare all the way.

  It was a windy day with scudding clouds and bursts of sunshine. Once at Tilbury, we were met by a crowd of folk from the nearby village and its manor, although they were being kept back by some slightly harassed guards who didn’t want to keep people too far away from the queen they regarded as their own property, but knew they must also insist on a distance that was respectful.

  We also found, stretching far across an open space, the encampment where the soldiers were for the moment being accommodated. Some of them had brought womenfolk. Elizabeth at once began to ride about among the tents, leaning down to talk to people, to a woman tending a fire, a soldier cleaning his sword, and to a blushing and anxious new recruit who had to be nudged into his bow by an equally anxious sergeant. Elizabeth laughed, and then they laughed with her.

  Her escort for this part of her visit was simple, four gentlemen and two young boys. They were ordinary folk, chosen to represent her people. But they were still an escort, and they took their task seriously. They smiled and bent courteous heads to the people they passed, but all the men were armed.

  I think everyone had aching feet by the time that first day was over. The accommodation we had been promised in a local manor house was ready for us (I never did find out whose house it actually was) and there we were given a late dinner and beds. The council members dined with the queen, but the rest of us ate separately and only her bedchamber ladies saw her that evening, although we were all under the same roof.

  Next day, the formal part of the excursion took place. It began with a march past and an exhibition of cavalry manoeuvres. The final part of the proceedings, when she was to address her troops, came in the afternoon. Before that, came dinner. The queen and the earls in her retinue dined in a general’s tent while everyone else had soup and bread and cheese in the manor house.

  That sounds uninspiring but was not. The soup, made of meat and vegetables, was a dinner in itself, and there were two kinds of bread, white manchet and dark rye, and we had a choice of cheeses, including Dutch cheese, in firm golden slices, with a red rind. Its price was probably about to go up. There was wine to go with it, or water if preferred.

  Later, we were taken to the place where Elizabeth was to make her speech, to find that the soldiers had been gathered in readiness, rank on rank of them, with their officers trying to keep them in their tidy rows despite their evident desire to press forward for a better view. They were not all professional soldiers; many were men and youths who had left their farms and trades to take up arms against the Armada. Some of them had makeshift weapons like billhooks and pitchforks and from the look of their untidy lines, they had hardly ever been drilled, if at all.

  Suddenly and unpleasantly, I recalled witnessing Parma’s troops being drilled, being moved about like counters in a game of chess, and charging their targets with drawn swords as though they were going into battle. I could only hope that Parma would go on keeping his word to us.

  Elizabeth approached her men in all state. The leader of the procession was the Earl of Ormonde. He was Lord Treasurer of Ireland and had spent much time there, which explained why I had never seen him before. A tall, lean figure of a man, walking proudly, head held high, he was in full armour and he bore the Sword of State, unsheathed, holding it upright before him.

  Behind him, came a man leading a charger, a powerful bay stallion, high-stepping and caparisoned in white leather and silver buckles.

  ‘She has to have a warhorse present, even if she isn’t sitting on it,’ Tylney explained. Elizabeth herself rode behind the charger on her placid white gelding, and if the horse wasn’t a striking figure, its rider made up for that. She was magnificent.

  Tylney had chosen to present her as the virgin queen, Diana reincarnated. Her gowns were of white velvet and her jewels were pearls and diamonds. ‘White jewels only. I insisted,’ Tylney remarked to me now. ‘I am particular about details.’

  She had been spectacular enough on the first day, but this time, the gown was longer, with glittering cloth of silver slashings on the sleeves. As on the day before, she wore the silver cuirass rooted out from Sir Edmund Tylney’s warehouse. But now she also wore a silver helmet although some of her hair was showing and in it were jewelled clasps, bigger ones than on the day before, and her big drop earrings, also much larger than on the day before, were set with pearls. There were diamonds in her pristine ruff. Whenever the sun came out, she sparkled.

  As before, she had her escort of four men and two boys, walking close beside her, but today the Earls of Leicester and Essex, who was actually Leicester’s stepson, rode on either side. And her dignity was palpable. No one could have mistaken her for anything other than a queen of a great nation.

  Tylney and I followed the procession and found ourselves a good place to stand, not too far from the queen and if only the wind would drop a little, we thought we would be able to hear something of what she said. The front ranks of the soldiers would probably be able to hear as well. The ones behind them would have to be content with looking at her and hearing her voice in the distance.

  I know what she said because afterwards, Cecil let me see a copy of the speech she had prepared and had studied for hours during the preparation for the Tilbury visit, so that she would be able to deliver it, if not quite word for word, then nearly.

  Ormonde stepped aside as they came close to the soldiers, and the charger too was led aside. Leicester and Essex withdrew a little as well. Elizabeth rode forward to face her troops alone.

  I thought how lonely she seemed. She was the queen and therefore the leader of the army awaiting her words. Because of them, she must appear wonderful, gallant, full of optimism and power; the kind of power that can even defeat a Spanish Armada, the kind of power that armies will follow and fight for.

  I had not been born to one of King Henry’s lawful wives, but I was still his daughter. Just a little change in circumstances and it could have been me, alone out there except for a placid white gelding, looking at what was most of my land army, knowing that even now, there might still be enough soldiers on the surviving Armada vessels to wipe this modest force out completely. Trying to put heart into them while the heart within me quailed and trembled. I have never been more thankful for my bastard origin.

  Elizabeth began to speak and the wind, spitefully, grew stronger. She had a carrying voice but I could make out only snatches. I heard her begin, however. She was declaring her trust in them.

  My loving people … some have warned us against committing ourselves to armed multitudes in case of treachery … I will not distrust my … faithful people … I lost most of the next passage but then she moved the horse a little, probably wanting to give the men a better chance to hear and for a few moments most of her words did reach me … I have resolved to live or die amongst you … to lay down for God, for my realm of England and for my people, my honour and my blood … I may have the body of … feeble woman but I have the heart and stomach of a … king of England … think it foul scorn … any prince of Europe should dare to invade … my realm. I myself will take up arms …

 

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