The Other Queen (29 page)

You cannot be charged with treason unless they can show that you were plotting the death of the queen.”

He pauses; he lowers his voice. “If you wanted nothing more than your freedom then you are innocent of any charge. Remember this if anyone asks you. Always tell them that you were only planning to be free.

They cannot touch you if you insist that your only plan was escape.”

I nod. “I understand. I will be careful what I say.”

“And even more careful of what you write,” he says, very low. “Cecil is a man for written records.

Never put your name to anything he can name as treason. He will be watching your letters. Never receive and never write anything that threatens the safety of the queen.”

I nod. There is a silence.

“But what is the truth?” Shrewsbury asks. “Now that it is all over, did you plot with the Northern lords?”

I let him see my gleam of amusement. “Of course I did. What else is there for me to do?”

“It is not a game!” He turns irritably. “They are in exile, one of them charged with treason, and hundreds of men will die.”

“We might have won,” I say stubbornly. “It was so close. You know it yourself; you thought we would win. There was a chance. You don’t understand me, Chowsbewwy. I have to be free.”

“There was a great chance. I see that. But you lost,” he says heavily. “And the seven hundred men who must die have lost, and the Northern lords who will be executed or exiled have lost, and the greatest duke in England, fighting for his life and his good name, has lost…and I have lost you.”

I rise and stand beside him. If he turned his head now he would see me, looking up at him, my face raised for his kiss.

“I have lost you,” he says again, and he steps away from me, bows, and goes to the door. “And I don’t know how I will manage, how I will manage without you.”

You would not take us for a castle of victors. Hastings is surly and anxious to be home. He speaks of riding out and overseeing the hangings himself, as if the lives of our tenants were a matter of sport: another sort of kill when the weather is too snowy for hunting. The queen is pale and sickly; she complains of a pain in her side, in her leg; she has headaches and sits in the darkness of her rooms with the shutters closed against the cold wintry light. She is taking this hard, as well she might.

And my lord is as quiet and grave as if there was a death in the house; he goes quietly about his business almost on tiptoe. We hardly speak to one another except about the work of the house and family matters. I have not heard him laugh, not once, not since we were at Wingfield, when it was summer and we thought the queen would go back to her throne in Scotland within days.

Elizabeth’s justice is clamping down on our lands like a hard winter. The news of the planned executions has leaked out and men are disappearing from the villages overnight, leaving nothing but their footsteps in the snow, leaving wives like widows with no one to break the ice on the water of the well. It will not be the same here, not for a generation. We will be ruined if the strong young men run away and their sons are taken to the gallows in their place.

I don’t pretend to know how to run a country: I am a woman of no education, and I care for nothing but keeping my lands in good heart and building my houses, keeping my books, and raising my children to the best estate I can find for them. But I do know how to run a farm, and I do know when a land is ruined, and I have never seen anything more sad and sorry than the estates of the North in this bitter, bitter year of 1570.

Babington, the sweet boy page Anthony Babington, brings me my little dog, who insists on running away from my rooms to whore in the stable yard, where there is some kind of rough lady guard dog to whom he is a most devoted swain. He is a bad dog and whatever the charms of the stable-yard bitch, he should show a little more discrimination. I tell him so, kissing the warm silky head as Babington holds him and says, his face scarlet, “I washed him for you and toweled him dry, Your Grace.”

“You are a kind boy,” I say. “And he is a bad dog. You should have beaten him.”

“He’s too small,” he says awkwardly. “Too small to beat. He is smaller than a kitten.”

“Well, I thank you for bringing him back to me,” I say, straightening up.

Anthony’s hand goes inside his doublet, pulls out a packet, tucks it under the dog, and hands them both to me.

“Thank you, Babington,” I say loudly. “I am indebted to you. Make sure you take no risks,” I say softly.

“This is a graver matter than bringing a naughty dog home.”

He flushes red, like the little boy he is. “I would do anything…,” he stammers.

“Then do this,” I caution him. “Take no grave risks for me. Do only what you can do safely.”

“I would lay down my life for you,” he says in a rush. “When I am grown to be a man I will set you free myself, you can count on me. I will make a plan, we will call it the Babington plot, everyone will know of it, and I will rescue you.”

I put my fingertips on his bright cheek. “And I thank you for that,” I say quietly. “But don’t forget to take care. Think: I need you free and alive to serve me. I shall look for you when you are a man, Anthony Babington.”

He smiles at that and bows to me, a great sweep of a bow as if I were an empress, and then he dashes off, long-legged like a colt in a springing field. Such a sweet, sweet boy, he makes me think of my own son, little James, and the man that I hope he will be.

I carry the dog and the packet to my privy room where my two-winged altar stands. I lock the door and look at Babington’s parcel. I see the unbroken seal of Bishop Lesley of Ross, writing from London.

I am grieved to my heart to tell you that my lords Westmorland and Northumberland and the Duke of Norfolk are all undone. Norfolk has given himself up and is in the Tower under charge of treason, God help him. Northumberland will join him there as soon as they bring him in. He was raising an army for you in Scotland but your wicked half brother captured him and sold him to Elizabeth for a ransom. It should have been thirty pieces of silver.

Westmorland has disappeared, and the word is that he has got away to Europe, perhaps France, perhaps the Netherlands, and the Countess of Northumberland with him. She rode at the head of your army, God bless her, and now she pays a heavy price. She will be a widow in exile.

Westmorland’s own wife has gone to their country house in despair and declares she knows nothing of the plot and wishes only to live quietly in peace. She hopes that the Tudor lust for revenge will pass over her.

Your betrothed, Norfolk, is almost certain to be charged with treason, God be with him and you. Cecil will revel in this undoing of his enemies and we have to pray that King Philip of Spain or your French cousins exert themselves to ensure your safety while these brave men face accusation and die for you.

You are the third point to this plot, and there is no doubt in my mind that any evidence brought against Norfolk will implicate you. Pray God they do not dare to come near you, though all who love you are in danger of their lives. I am in constant contact with de Spes, the Spanish ambassador, for your protection.

But your loyal servant Roberto Ridolfi, who loaned money to Norfolk and brought me the Spanish gold and the promise of support from the Holy Father, has disappeared off the face of the earth. I am deeply afraid for him. I think we will have to assume that he has been arrested. But why would they arrest him and not come for me? I pray that he is safe in hiding and not captive or dead.

I myself am in fear of my own life and safety. The city is like a darkened courtyard at night, filled with spies; every footstep echoes, every passerby is watched. No one trusts his neighbor and everyone listens at every corner. Please God that the queen is merciful and Cecil does not destroy these poor men he has captured. Please God they leave you where you are, with your trustworthy guardian. I shall write again as soon as I can. I wish I had better news to send you and greater courage for myself but I remain, your faithful friend and servant, John Lesley.

I swear I will never fail you, not now, at this time of your need.

Slowly, I throw the pages one by one into the little grate. They blacken and flame and curl and I watch the smoke drift up the chimney, and my hopes with it. The Northern lords are defeated in my cause; Norfolk is in the Tower. His life will be in the hands of his cousin Elizabeth. I have to believe that she will never destroy her own kinsman, her own cousin. Surely she will not kill him for nothing more than the offense of loving me, of wanting me as his wife.

I take the diamond ring he sent to me and press it to my lips. We are betrothed to marry, he has given his word, and I mine, and I will not release him. He has sent me this valuable ring and we are sworn.

Besides, if we get through this, if he survives the charge and escapes the scaffold, then our case is as good as ever. Why should she not support him as king consort of Scotland? Why should he not have sons with me? Why should they not inherit the thrones of England and Scotland? He is still my best choice. And anyway, until Bothwell escapes, I have no other.

I take out the numbered code which is hidden in the Bible at the altar and start to write a letter to my husband, Norfolk. I shall send the letter to Bishop Lesley and hope that he can get it to my beloved. If he will stand by me now, and Elizabeth spares him, we still might get Scotland by agreement when we could not get it by battle.

Dearest Husband,

I will pray for you daily, I shall fast once a week until you are freed. I am yours and you are mine and I shall be yours until death. May God forgive those who come against us, for I never will. Be brave, be faithful, and I will too. Perhaps our friends will rise up for us and we will conquer at last. Perhaps we will win our throne in peace. Perhaps you can persuade Elizabeth, as I will try, to let us marry and restore us, her loving cousins, to our throne. I will pray for that. I will pray for the day when you are my husband in deed as well as sworn promise, and I am Queen of Scotland again.

Your wife before God, Mary

I seal it and put it ready for a chance to smuggle it out, and then Agnes comes to prepare me for bed.

My nightgown has been badly pressed and I send it away and choose another, then we pray together, then I dismiss her. All the time my thoughts are like a weasel in a cage, twisting this way and that, going round and round. I think of Bothwell, another animal in a cage. I think of him walking the length of his room, turning, and walking back again. I think of him looking out his barred window at the moonlight on the dark water of Malmö Sound, watching the sky for storms, scratching another mark on the wall to show another night in captivity. This is the eight hundredth and eighty-seventh night we have been apart, more than two and a half years. He will know that tonight, as well as I do. He will need no scratch on the wall to know how long he has been parted from me. He will be a wolf caged, he will be an eagle pinioned. But he will be himself, they will not break him. The wolf is still there, still a wolf despite the cage. The eagle is ready to soar, unchanged. Before I sleep, I write to him, who is sleepless, thinking of me.

Bothwell,

My star is in eclipse, my friends arrested or exiled, my spies in hiding, my ambassador afraid. But I don’t despair. I don’t surrender. I wait for you and I know you will come.

Don’t expect a reward. Don’t expect anything of me; we know what we are to each other, and it remains our secret.

I wait for you, and I know you will come.

Marie

The wintry days drag by. Hastings is still here, spending his time riding out to supervise the hangings of men named as rebels and given to the gallows as a pagan sacrifice to some ruthless god. I can hardly bear to leave the grounds of the castle; I cannot meet the accusing eyes of the widows in Tutbury. Inside, of course, there is nothing for me to do.

Bess keeps busy with the reports from her stewards and her endless books of accounts. She is anxious to get back to Chatsworth and summon Henry and her other children. But we cannot leave until Hastings takes the Scots queen, and we all wait upon our orders.

When they come, they are not what we expected. I go to find Bess in the little room she has commandeered for her records, with the letter from Cecil in my hand.

“I am ordered to court,” I say quietly.

She looks up at once from her desk, a ledger still open before her, ink drying on the quill pen, the color draining from her face until she is as white as the page before her. “Are you to be charged?”

“Your dear friend Cecil neglects to tell me,” I say bitterly. “Have you heard from him privately? Do you know? Am I to go straight to the Tower? Is it a charge of treason? Have you provided him with evidence against me?”

Bess blinks at my savage tone and glances towards the door. She too fears eavesdroppers now. The spies must be spying on the spies. “He does not write to me anymore,” she says. “I don’t know why.

Perhaps he does not trust me either.”

“I have to go at once,” I say. “The messenger who brought this rode with a guard of six men. They are eating in the kitchen and waiting to escort me to London.”

“You are under arrest?” she whispers.

“It is wonderfully unclear. He says I am to ride with an escort at once,” I say wryly. “Whether this is to ensure my safety or to ensure my arrival they don’t specify. Will you pack a saddlebag for me?”

At once she gets to her feet and starts to bustle towards our bedroom. I put my hand on her arm. “Bess, if I go to the Tower, I will do my best to save your fortune from the wreck of my own. I will send for a lawyer; I will settle my fortune upon you. You will not be the widow of a dead traitor. You will not lose your house.”

She shakes her head and her color rises. “I don’t think of my fortune now,” she says, her voice very low. “I think of you. My husband.” Her face is strained with fear.