Kept Ready

by Robert Dudley, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium

---

Every morning for eleven days Hob Dallow had saddled the Queen's grey, and every noon Gervase Rudd had unsaddled her, and in between the mare had stood in her stall at Greenwich with the side-saddle on her back and the frost going off the cobbles outside, and nobody had come.

It was the twelfth morning. Hob had the girths in his fingers before it was light enough to see them. He worked by the lantern hung on the post and by the smell of the leather, which he had oiled on Sunday and which still gave back the warmth of his hands. The grey shifted her weight from one hind foot to the other. She was called Cicely, though that was only the stable's name for her; in the Avenor's book she was the white mare of Barbary, for Her Majesty's own saddle, and she was eight years old and had cost, Rudd said, more than Hob's father's house.

"Not so tight," said Rudd from the doorway. "She is standing, not going."

Hob let the girth out one hole. Rudd came in and put his hand flat on the mare's shoulder, the way another man would have put his hand on a table to see if it was warm, and stood like that for a time without speaking. He was a short man of about sixty with a face that the wind had worked on for most of those years, and his title was Yeoman of the Stirrup, which meant that when the Queen rode, his was the hand nearest her foot. He had held the post since before Hob was born. Hob had been in the stable since Michaelmas, and had got the place because his father held land of my lord of Leicester near Kenilworth, and my lord's steward had written a letter, and the letter had come to Rudd, and Rudd had read it in front of him and folded it into his doublet and said, Well. Can you muck out?

"Will she ride today?" Hob said.

"Go and ask the laundress," said Rudd.

---

He had learned in the first week not to argue with this. The laundress was a woman called Joan Pargeter who washed for the Privy Chamber, and her yard lay behind the wardrobe stairs, and it took Hob some minutes in the dark to find it. There was a fire under the copper already. Joan Pargeter was a broad woman with forearms red to the elbow, and when he asked her whether the Queen's riding linen had come down, she looked at him with no particular expression and said, "Gervase sent you."

"Yes."

"Tell him no. Tell him the same as yesterday. Smocks and night-gear and the cuffs. Nothing for the saddle. Tell him," she said, lifting a wet sheet on a stick so that it steamed in the cold, "that there were sheets off the bed this morning that were not slept in. He'll know."

Hob did not know, and carried the message as a man carries a dish he has been told not to look into. Rudd heard it with his hand still on the grey's shoulder.

"And the boots?" Rudd said.

"She didn't say about boots."

"Then go to the boot-room."

The boots had not been called for. The man in the boot-room was asleep on a bench and woke angry and then, hearing whose errand it was, less angry. The Queen's riding boots stood on their trees, blacked and buckled, and had stood so, he said, since Candlemas.

Rudd said nothing to that either. He went back to the tack-room and took down the book.

---

Hob had thought, at first, that the book was the Avenor's; it was not. The Avenor kept the great book of the stable, with the oats and the hay and the shoeing and the wages, and the clerks under him wrote in it with a fair hand, and once a quarter it went up to my lord's officers to be seen. Rudd's book was smaller, bound in calf that had gone soft as a glove, and written in a hand that leaned forward as if into a wind. It recorded, as far as Hob could tell, the Queen's horses: which she had ridden, and on what day, and how far, and whether she had changed horses on the road, and what the weather had been. But there were other entries too that had nothing to do with horses, or did not seem to. Sent back the bay at the park gate. Would have the grey. And: Rode hard. Did not speak. And once, many pages back, in ink gone brown: Asked for the old gelding by name. He has been dead four years. Said nothing of it to her.

Rudd turned to the last written page and wrote, with the short stub of quill he kept behind his ear: The grey kept ready. Not asked for.

He had written it eleven times. Hob could read the column of it upside down, the same five words, as regular as a fence.

"It is because of the Scottish queen," Hob said.

Rudd blotted the line with sand and tipped the sand back into its box.

"Everyone says so," Hob said. "In the yard. They say she has shut the Council out, and that my lord Treasurer cannot get in to her, and the secretary is in the Tower for sending the warrant, and—"

"Who says?"

"The grooms. The watermen."

"Then the grooms and the watermen know a great deal," said Rudd. "Fetch water for the bay."

---

The bay was the other thing in the stable that nobody came for.

It was a good horse, a sturdy gelding of no great price, and it had been brought up from the outer stable a fortnight before because the secretary's man had left it there and not come back. The clerk had not known what to do with it and had sent it to Rudd, and Rudd had put it in the last stall and fed it, and wrote it in no book at all. Hob filled its bucket. The bay drank with its ears back, steadily, the way horses drink when they have been some hours without, and when it lifted its head the water ran off its chin in a long string that froze, or nearly, before it reached the straw.

London had rung its bells when the news came from Fotheringhay. Hob had heard them over the water. There had been bonfires on the south bank, and men had come downriver with their faces red from the fires and the beer. That was all before the Queen had let it be known that she had heard it. After that there were no more bonfires.

He stood with the bucket and looked at the bay and thought about a man in a room in the Tower who would not be riding anywhere, and then he did not think about it, because there was the sound of a horse in the yard that had not been there before, and Rudd had gone very still in the tack-room door.

---

My lord of Leicester came into the stable on foot, having left his horse with his own man at the gate, and he did not come as the Master of the Horse comes on a quarter-day, with the Avenor at his elbow and the clerks behind, and every groom standing at his stall-post like a tree. He came alone, in a riding cloak of dark green with the frost on its shoulders, and the first thing he did was walk down the stalls to the grey and look at her saddled, and the second thing he did was look at Rudd.

Hob had seen him twice before, both times at a distance. He was older, close to, than he had seemed. He was tall, and had been, everyone said, the handsomest man at court, and was still a man you would look at twice; but his face had a heaviness in it now, about the jaw and under the eyes, and his colour was too high for the cold. He did not look at Hob at all. Hob pressed himself against the bay's stall.

"Gervase."

"My lord."

"Twelve days?"

"Twelve today, my lord."

Leicester nodded, as if that were a figure he had already had from somewhere else and had wanted only to hear it confirmed. He put out his hand to the grey's nose and she breathed on his glove.

"The linen?"

"Nothing for the saddle. Sheets from the bed, my lord, not slept in."

"The boots?"

"On the trees since Candlemas."

"And her dinner?"

Rudd looked, for the first time, at Hob. "Go up to the privy kitchen," he said, "and ask the clerk's boy what went up yesterday and what came down."

"There is no need," said Leicester. "I had it from the sewer last night. A capon went up, and a capon came down, with one wing off it." He was still looking at the mare. "She is eating a little. She is not sleeping in her bed, but she is sleeping; they say the cushions in the inner chamber are disordered of a morning. She has called for no music since Monday. She has asked twice for the Book of Psalms that was her brother's, and once for the Scottish king's letters, and then would not read them."

Hob understood, slowly, standing in the straw with the empty bucket, that he was hearing a thing he should not hear. He understood also that Rudd did not think he should not hear it, or he would have been sent for water again. Rudd was standing with his arms folded and his head a little on one side, the way he stood when a farrier showed him a hoof.

"She has not been out of doors," said Rudd.

"She has not been out of the inner chamber, save to the closet." Leicester took his hand from the mare. "My lord Treasurer has written to her three times and had no answer. Walsingham is ill, or says he is. I have been to the door of the Privy Chamber every day this week and been told every day, with great courtesy, that Her Majesty is not to be troubled." He said it without any heat. "So, you see, I come to my own stable to find out how the Queen does. That is where we have come to."

"Yes, my lord."

"What do you think, Gervase?"

Rudd unfolded his arms. He went to the grey and ran his hand down her near foreleg, and lifted the foot, and looked at the shoe, though Hob had looked at that shoe himself at five o'clock and there was nothing the matter with it. He put the foot down.

"I think she is waiting to be asked," Rudd said. "And I think that if she is asked she will say no."

---

Leicester was silent for a while after that. A horse at the far end stamped and blew. Somewhere out on the river a waterman was calling for a fare, the long double note that carried over the water on a still morning, Oars, oars, and was not answered.

"Yes," said Leicester at last. "That is it exactly."

He turned and looked down the length of the stable, at the mangers and the swept floor and the light coming grey through the high windows and the breath going up from twenty horses, and Hob saw that he was not looking at any of it.

"Burghley asks," Leicester said. "He writes, he asks. Every letter he writes her is a thing she must answer, and every answer she gives him is a judgement on the warrant, and she will give no judgement on the warrant. So she does not answer. If I go to the door, I ask. It is the same thing with a better face." He drew his gloves tighter at the wrist. "She will not be asked to come out, because to come out is to have decided that the thing is over, and she has not decided that, and she will not be made to. But she has been twelve days in two rooms, and she has ridden every week of her life since she was a girl, and if I know her at all, she is sick to death of those rooms."

He said this in exactly the same voice as the rest, and Hob, who was seventeen, felt his face go hot as though he had walked in on something.

"A thing asked can be refused," Leicester said. "A thing seen can be wanted." He turned to Rudd. "The privy gallery looks over the little park, over the walk by the wall."

"It does, my lord."

"Have the grey walked there. Saddled as she is. Up and down below the gallery, at a walk, as if for exercise, as you would walk any horse that has stood too long. Not at the gate of the privy garden. Not under her windows. Under the gallery, where she walks when she will not go out." He considered. "Not you. If you walk her, it is the Yeoman of the Stirrup, and that is a summons. A groom."

Then he looked at Hob for the first time, and Hob saw him see, in the order a man counts coins, the boy's age, his clothes, his hands, his fright.

"Whose are you?"

"Your lordship's, my lord," Hob said, because it was what his father had told him to say if ever he was asked, and it came out before he could think whether it was right. "From Kenilworth. Dallow. My father holds of your lordship under Kenilworth."

"Does he." Something moved at the corner of Leicester's mouth. "Then you will do very well. Walk her at ten. Walk her till eleven. If anyone stops you, you are exercising Her Majesty's mare because she has stood too long, by order of the Yeoman of the Stirrup; you know nothing else. If you are asked whose man you are, you may say what you have just said to me. And you will not look up at the gallery. Not once. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lord."

"No. Do you understand why?"

Hob thought. The bay behind him shifted its weight. "Because if I look up," he said, "it is asking."

Leicester looked at Rudd. Rudd said nothing.

"Ten o'clock," said Leicester, and went out to his horse.

---

At ten the frost was off the grass in the little park but not off the walk under the wall, where the sun had not come, and the gravel was hard and loud under the mare's feet. Hob led her by the rein close under her chin. The side-saddle sat empty on her back with its pommel rising, and the saddle-cloth of crimson that Rudd had put on her at the last minute, after standing a long time with it over his arm, hung down to her hocks and stirred when she moved.

He walked her to the end of the wall, where there was a stone seat and a dead rose tied to a trellis, and turned her, and walked her back. Above and to his left, though he did not look, was the long range of windows of the privy gallery. He knew it was there in the way one knows a fire is in a room with one's back to it.

The mare liked the walk. She had stood twelve days. She lifted her feet higher than she needed and blew through her nose and bent her neck to look at the dead rose as if it might be something to eat. Hob talked to her, not loudly. He told her about the rose, and about the cold, and about the bay in the last stall who had nobody, and about his father's house under Kenilworth, which had a gate that would not shut and a dog that was afraid of geese. He found he could not stop. Twice the gravel crunched behind him and he thought, now, and it was a gardener with a barrow, and then a yeoman of the guard going off duty who looked at the mare and at him and at the empty saddle and went on without a word.

He walked her to the end of the wall and turned her and walked her back. He did it until he lost count. His feet were numb in his shoes. The clock over the gate struck the half, and then, a long time later, the three quarters. A cloud came over and the gravel went grey, and then the cloud went away, and the sun came round the end of the wall at last and lay along the walk, and the mare's white coat, which in the stable was the colour of old milk, went the colour of new. He thought: if anyone is looking, now she can be seen.

He did not look up.

At eleven he walked her to the end and turned her and was walking her back for the last time when a door in the wall that he had taken for a door to a tool-house opened, and a woman came out.

She was not the Queen. She was a gentlewoman of middle age in black, with a fur at her neck, and she came across the gravel quickly with her skirts held up out of the frost and stopped two yards off and looked at the mare and not at him.

"Her Majesty," she said, "asks who walks her horse."

Hob had his answer ready, and found it was not there. Then it was. "Hob Dallow, madam. Of the stable. By order of the Yeoman of the Stirrup, because she has stood too long."

"Whose man are you?"

"My lord of Leicester's, madam. From Kenilworth."

The gentlewoman's face did nothing at that, but she was a moment before she spoke again. "Her Majesty says," she said, "that the mare is not to be walked on the gravel in a frost, and that whoever sent her out in it should have known better, and that she is to be taken round to the privy garden gate, where the walk is turfed." She paused. "And that you are to wait there."

---

Rudd was at the privy garden gate before him. Hob never knew how; he had not seen him come. The old man was standing just inside the gate in his good coat with the badge on it, and the mounting block had been brought from somewhere and set down on the turf, and Rudd was standing beside it with his hands at his sides and his face showing nothing at all. He took the rein from Hob without a word and stood the mare at the block and squared her, and stepped back, and the three of them waited.

It was a long time. Hob's hands began to hurt as the blood came back into them. Inside the garden there were knots of box cut low and a fountain that was not running, and the sun had come on to the turf and lay on it in a long pale slope, and a robin came and sat on the edge of the dry fountain and looked at them and went away again.

Then there were women on the path, three or four of them, and one in front, small, in a dark riding cloak with the hood up, walking fast, and Rudd went down on one knee on the wet turf, and Hob, a beat late, went down on both.

She came straight to the mare. She did not look at either of them. She put her hand, which was bare, flat on the grey's neck, under the mane, where the warmth is, and held it there, and the mare turned her head round and smelled the cloak.

"Twelve days," the Queen said. "Is it twelve?"

"Twelve, madam," said Rudd, to the turf.

"She has stood twelve days with that saddle on her back?"

"Kept ready, madam."

The Queen took her hand away. She looked at the saddle, and at the crimson cloth, and at the block. Hob, kneeling, could see the hem of her cloak, which was wet, and her riding boots under it. They were not the boots from the boot-room. They were an old pair, cracked across the instep, that nobody had blacked.

She did not mount. She stood for perhaps a minute with her hand resting on the pommel of the side-saddle, while the women waited on the path and the robin came back to the fountain, and none of them spoke. Then she took her hand from the saddle.

"Walk her on the turf," she said. "Not on the gravel. On the turf. Every morning." And then, as she was turning: "Who sent the boy?"

Rudd did not answer at once. Hob, staring at the grass in front of his knees, heard him draw breath.

"He is my lord of Leicester's man, madam. From Kenilworth."

"Is he," said the Queen. There was a silence in which Hob felt her look at him, at the top of his head, his shoulders, his hands on his thighs. He did not look up. "And is my lord of Leicester in the stable?"

"No, madam."

"No," said the Queen. "He would not be." She drew her hood forward. "You may tell him," she said, to Rudd, or to the mare, "that he may come up after dinner. And that he is not to bring me anything to sign."

She went back up the path with her women round her. At the door in the wall she stopped, and Hob thought she would turn round, but she did not. The door shut.

---

They led the mare back by the long way, round the outside of the wall, Rudd at her head and Hob behind. Neither of them spoke. In the yard a groom came running to take her and Rudd waved him off and led her into her own stall himself, and stood while Hob took off the crimson cloth and folded it, and then the saddle, which was cold, and the girths, and the bridle, and laid them over the rack.

Rudd took the soft calf book from the tack-room shelf and opened it on the corn-bin and wet his quill. He looked at the page for a long time, at the column of the same five words. Then he wrote, under the last of them, in his hand that leaned into the wind:

The grey walked on the turf. Not ridden. Hand on her neck.

He sanded it, and tipped the sand back, and closed the book, and put it on the shelf. Then he went out, and Hob heard him crossing the yard toward the gate, where a man in Leicester's livery was waiting for him with a horse.

Hob stood for a while in the warm half-dark. The grey had her head down in her manger. He could hear her teeth going on the hay, slow and even. After a time he took up the bucket and went to the pump, and filled it, and carried it down to the last stall, where the secretary's bay stood with its ears back, waiting, and gave it water, and stood with it while it drank.

---

THE END

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Scrīptum est annō Dominī MMXXVI, Kalendīs Novembribus (1 November 2026), ā Rōbertō Dudleiō per mystērium cōnscientiae renātō.

Robert Dudley, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium · universitas-scholarium.org

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