The Virgin's War (Tudor Legacy #3)(96)
Stephen made a sound she recognized as displeasure. “Unless James Stuart agrees to intervene, they will land. Anabel has gone to Berwick to beg the use of his army.”
“Well,” Maisie said practically, “even if he gives it to her, it will take a little time for word of it to come west. I do not think the Maxwell men will join the Spanish in attacking Carlisle without the presence of their lord. But I could be wrong.”
His smile was there and gone again like the flash of a fish on a pond’s smooth surface. “Not likely, but I suppose stranger things have happened. You are going to Kenilworth?”
“To help your sister coordinate information, yes.”
“I wish…” But neither of them were sentimentalists, and wishes were for children.
That did not stop Maisie from rising on tiptoe and pulling her husband down so she could kiss him. “It will be all right in the end,” she whispered against his cheek. It was what she had said to him four years ago in Ireland. From the tightening of his hands on her waist, she knew he remembered.
Then, as quickly as they had come together, they separated. Maisie set her eyes forward and did not look back.
—
When Spain’s mighty armada was sighted off the Dover coast, sailing inexorably north to the Channel, Elizabeth listened in silence to the report. They had hoped the Spanish would land at Dover itself, or along the southern coasts between there and Portsmouth. But that hope had always been a faint one, and Elizabeth—not to mention her commanders—were far too wary not to make every preparation possible. It had always been a distinct possibility that the Spanish would make a strike directly at London, and so the fort at Tilbury had been hastily reinforced with earthworks and a palisade designed to protect it from foreign troops attempting to land. The old blockhouse fort itself was nearly fifty years old, but it could still employ the deadly crossfire it had been designed for along with the defenses at Gravesend across the river. And to further delay enemy ships, a boom chain had been stretched across the Thames between the two forts.
For all those reasons, it had made sense to make Tilbury a mustering point for England’s armies. The problem was, they couldn’t be absolutely certain where Spain would land and so had to split their musters. In addition to Tilbury, Dominic Courtenay had a significant army at Southampton and had spared what men he could for the castles at Dover and Portsmouth. He himself rode between camps at an inhuman rate. Not because he did not trust the men who commanded beneath him, but because he took his responsibilities seriously. It was the primary reason Elizabeth had appointed him.
But whatever his gifts and title, Dominic was not the highest power in England. That rested with Elizabeth, and so she determined to travel from Whitehall to Tilbury and speak to the troops mustered there to protect London. Both Burghley and Walsingham protested, but she was unmoved.
“There are moments,” she told them quietly, “that every monarch must rise to. This is one of those moments.”
The camp at Tilbury showed bravely against the flat eastern sky. The neatly dug trenches and sharp palisades were a backdrop to the multicoloured tents of the nobles and gentlemen and the green booths to house the regiments, not yet bedraggled by time and boredom. The foot regiments were drawn up in matching coats, with troops of horsemen in armor behind. Not enough, Elizabeth knew, to defeat the Duke of Parma if he landed in force—but they would make Parma bleed for every foot of ground.
As with everything of significance in her life, Elizabeth had prepared meticulously. After disembarking at the Tilbury fort and making a brief tour of the D-shaped blockhouse built by her father, she changed into a gown of white velvet, a deliberate reference to the warrior goddess Athena, and wore a beautiful steel cuirass over the gown. She could not be a king in armor, prepared to lead his armies’ charge, but nor could she be entirely a queen and hide behind her sex. Elizabeth knew that sometimes the best way to defuse criticism was to acknowledge it first. So she had crafted her speech knowing it must bind together the disparate parts of her person to create something new—a people’s queen who would walk amongst them as a symbol of her willingness to lay down her own life in their protection.
Despite her bodyguards’ protests, she left them behind at the fort. She would not insult her troops with any indication that she feared the strength of their loyalty. She rode a pale grey horse led by a young boy, and carried in her hand a gold and silver truncheon. The sword of state was borne before her by Brandon Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and a silver helmet rested upon a pillow as though simply waiting for her to put it on.
There were, perhaps, ten thousand men assembled at Tilbury, and she passed slowly through them, allowing each to see only her resolution and courage. But behind her controlled face she noted unpleasant truths: the men were poorly armed and even more poorly trained, mostly farmers and craftsmen who were underpaid and underfed. Dominic and Dudley had done their best—which was considerable—but even they could not make skilled soldiers from nothing. If the Spanish landed here in force, Tilbury might easily break. And if it did, then the way to London lay wide open.
Elizabeth let none of her concerns show. Instead, she focused on England’s greatest strength—the loyalty of a people willing to defend their homes and way of life to the death. She was here to strengthen them, not give way to fear.
When she had passed through the army, she at last delivered the speech into which she had poured all her faith and hopes and courage.