To Shield the Queen Read Online Free PDF Page A

expected.
She was well spoken and clearly well educated, and she was certainly well dressed, but her plump face and her slightly protuberant blue eyes had an expression which made me think at once of tavern-keepers and village beldames. She had been in Elizabeth’s service since the queen was a child, and Elizabeth was employing her for love rather than suitability, I thought. Yes, the girl I had seen yesterday, looking out of the queen’s golden-brown eyes, was human enough, and capable of affection.
    However, when, that morning, I was taken to attend on Queen Elizabeth for the first time, the affectionate girl had been eclipsed by a very angry monarch. When Lady Katherine Knollys and Mistress Ashley brought me into the gallery where the queen was, we found it lined with courtiers, all keeping quiet and standing still, while her majesty marched up and down the black and white chequered floor, satin skirts swishing, costly shoes clumping and slender hands clenching and unclenching with an angry flash of gems. Just as we entered, she halted in front of a quailing individual in the dress of a messenger.
    “Oh, stop cringing, man. It is not your fault! We shall not cut your head off for bringing bad news. But if I had that impertinent chit here I might be tempted to cut her head off!”
    Swinging round, she caught sight of me and my companions. All three of us curtsied. Elizabeth fixed her gaze on me. “Ah, our new recruit, looking puzzled and alarmed. You must become informed of our concerns, Mistress Blanchard. We have just received word that Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland in her own right and Queen of France by right of her marriage to its king, is not content with all these great honours but is styling herself Queen of England as well, and although we have sent a protest by way of our ambassador, she continues to have the heralds cry all three titles before her as she goes to chapel! What do you think of that, ha?”
She barked the question as a man might. I said, “I am truly shocked to hear of this, ma’am.”
    She nodded and appeared mollified, but not for long. A paunchy middle-aged man in an elaborate mulberry velvet doublet at this point asked permission to speak. Elizabeth veered to face him. “Yes, my lord of Arundel? We are listening.”
    “It is only, ma’am, that Queen Mary is but seventeen and very pious. Perhaps all we are hearing is an expression of her youthful ardour for her faith, and her desire to see it bloom once more in lands from which it has been banished.”
    Across the gallery, a fair-haired young man clad in an azure doublet, extravagantly puffed breeches to match and skintight tawny hose which revealed how long and muscular his legs were, caught my eye and rolled his own eyes upwards, as if to say, “Lord preserve us from such nonsense.” A soberly dressed older man beside him nudged him reprovingly.
    A swarthy, hard-faced gentleman standing close to me glowered in the direction of Arundel and muttered, “Pompous ass!” I glanced at him curiously and he gave me a little bow. “Sir Robin Dudley, Master of the Queen’s Horse, at your service.”
    “This is Mistress Ursula Blanchard,” whispered Lady Katherine. “Newly come to court.”
    Dudley nodded but said no more because, like everyone else, he was too interested in Elizabeth, who was surveying Arundel in a way which made it clear that she agreed with Dudley and the young gallant in azure. For a moment I thought she was actually going to utter the words “You silly little man!” She did not, although I felt sure she had considered it.
    After a pause long enough to make Arundel blush, she said, “Piety? There is little difference between my faith and hers. We worship the same God; the rest is a dispute about trifles. No, my friend, what this concerns is power. A pious wish to expand what they call the true faith is as good an excuse as any for a country, or a ruler, with an urge towards conquest. Let us take up arms for God,