Elizabeth I by Margaret George Read Free Book Online Page B

your soldiers and sailors risk their lives to protect yours, if you have so little care for it yourself.”
    How dare he make such an accusation? “I have more care for England than for my own life,” I retorted. “I will lay that down if it stirs up the courage of the people to resist.” I could not sit on the sidelines, removed from action. “I want to see the naval action,” I insisted. “I want to go to the south coast, where I can look out and see what is happening, rather than cower in a bunker in the Midlands!” Yes, I would go see it all for myself. This waiting, this second- and thirdhand news, was unbearable.
    “That is not bravery but recklessness.”
    “I can be there in a day.”
    “No, no! The council will never permit it.” He looked anguished. “You cannot, you must not, hazard your person. What a prize for the Spanish! If they killed you, they could display your head to all the troops. If they captured you, off to the Vatican you would go, in chains. How does this help your people?”
    “William Wallace’s dismemberment seems to have had no ill effect on his legacy in Scotland. Quite the opposite.” I sighed. “I go nowhere tonight, in the dark. I send you back to your troops at Windsor—without me.”
    He could not order me or force me. No one had it in his or her power to command me. He set his mouth in a hard line of frustration and bowed.
    “Dear cousin, I trust you,” I said. “Keep vigilant at Windsor. And it is time the Earl of Leicester’s army assembled itself at Tilbury. I shall give the orders.”

7
    A fter he had left, Catherine all but wrung her hands. “If he was this grim, it is worse than he told us. My father does not like to cause undue alarm.”
    “I know that,” I said. “I knew it when he didn’t resort to his usual oaths and curses.” Hunsdon liked to sprinkle his speech with rough soldiers’ words and didn’t care what the rest of the company thought of it. But today he had been too shocked to speak in his normal coarse fashion. “Who can know what is really happening? That is the cruel part.” Thirty years a queen, and in this hour of supreme test, I was in the dark and could not lead. I looked out the window. The beacons had burned out. They had done their job.

    The next morning a strange sight greeted us: Sir Francis Walsingham in armor. He clanked into the privy chamber, walking stiffly. He carried the helmet under his arm. Approaching us, he attempted to bow but could only bend halfway. “Your Majesty,” he said, “you must transfer to St. James’s in London. It can be guarded better than Richmond. Hunsdon told us of your refusal to take refuge in the countryside. But it is imperative that you move to St. James’s. Hunsdon’s army of thirty thousand can secure the city.”
    “My Moor, why are you got up like this?” I asked.
    “I am prepared to fight,” he said.
    It was all I could do not to laugh. “Have you ever fought in armor?”
    “No. But there are many things we have not done before that we must be prepared to do now,” he said.
    I was touched that he would even attempt such a thing—he, the consummate indoor councillor.
    Behind him Burghley and his son Robert Cecil came into the chamber.
    “So, my good Cecils, where is your armor?” I asked.
    “My gout won’t let me into armor,” said Burghley.
    “And my back—” Robert Cecil demurred.
    Of course. How thoughtless of me. Young Cecil had a twisted back, although he was not hunchbacked, as his political enemies claimed. The story was that he had been dropped on his head as a baby. But that was manifestly untrue, for his head not only was uninjured but contained a brilliant mind.
    Suddenly I had an idea. “Can a breastplate and helmet be made for me, quickly?”
    “Why—I suppose so,” said Robert Cecil. “The Greenwich armory can turn things out fast.”
    “Good. I want them by tomorrow evening. And a sword, the right length for me.”
    “What are you thinking