Free The Hooded Hawke by Karen Harper Page B

explain to her host why.

    Waiting at the inner bailey door of the castle was Horne’s family, his wife, Joan, and three daughters. As each of the little girls curtsied and then rose, Elizabeth touched their heads as if in blessing, just as she had the thatcher’s girls on the road last week. She turned to the bishop’s smiling wife again, a pretty but plump woman, plainly yet richly garbed.
    “Is it difficult to go back and forth like a shuttlecock between your home at Winchester and this castle, Mistress Joan?” the queen inquired.
    “We do well enough, Your Majesty, when my dear husband’s enemies let us dwell in peace,” Joan replied, as they walked into the castle. Elizabeth noted how the bishop frowned and shook his head at the woman’s quick comment.
    “Forgive my wife, Your Majesty, for I asked her to mention none of our problems to you, not on this holiday where all is bright and gay.”
    “I appreciate a woman with a strong backbone, Robert.” She nodded to Joan and walked farther inside with him. Bishop Robert Horne was a handsome man, if a bit austere even for a dedicated scholar. “Tell me plain,” the queen said, “what problem pains you sore enough that your Joan would mention it at once? Has there been some sort of danger or threat here?”
    “She refers to an ongoing dispute with an influential family, the Paulets, from the next shire of Hampshire, Your Grace, Catholics, who cannot abide the changing times and are hostile to a Protestant bishop—and are fast friends with your next host, the Earl of Southampton at Titchfield.”
    “Ah. Then the Paulets and Southampton are hostile to my bishop’s queen, too—as I full well know. Say on.”
    “The Paulets and Southampton yet resent that upon your accession you immediately removed your sister’s Catholic Bishop John White and his Catholic justices and put in your own Protestant men.” Once mentioned, his woes spilled from his lips. “I have followed your suit in promoting and advancing local men of the new faith, you see, not popish leaders in this region.”
    “I do see,” she said, as Robert, with his wife now close again, escorted her to the bottom of the large, curved stone
staircase. “It is much the same in some other places,” she added, more to herself than to her hosts, “so why not in Hampshire, eh?”
    “Forgive me, Your Grace,” Robert said, speaking quicker and quieter as others of her entourage came near, “but Hampshire is—well, is different, and I believe you have not been there before.”
    “That is true, but I have heard it is beautiful.”
    “Yes, in its wild and primitive way. The forests are deeper, the people more isolated and, therefore, more independent and wayward. I swear, some of them are so peculiar and backward—so otherworldly—that you would think we had a struggle on our hands between the ghosts of the old Saxons and the pagan Roman conquerors, not the current Catholics and Protestants.”
    Strangely, what came to her mind was Ned Topside’s little fantasy with its dark depths of Sherwood Forest full of both the evil and the good. She shook her head to banish the thought.
    “Then, too,” he went on, “Fareham’s being a seaport with exports and imports means that foreign thoughts and foreign people influence the area quite as much as London does.”
    She drained the rest of her wine and put the goblet on a servant’s tray. “I will hear more of this later, Robert, in private, but for now, this cool, old castle feels good on this warm day. I pray it will serve as a most welcome haven from all that lies outside these walls—including that strange, heathen shire of Hampshire I am determined to see for myself.”
    T he next day the queen requested a tournament of sporting events. It pleased her people well to have diversion from their travels. Elizabeth herself had shot the first arrow of the match but now watched from the upper parapet walkway that encircled the castle. Besides the breezes