The Other Queen (38 page)

With them I am among people who love me, who laugh at silly familiar jokes, who like my pictures in the gallery, who admire my abbey silver. My daughters love me and hope to become women like me; they don’t despise me for not holding my fork in the French style. At Chatsworth I can walk around my garden and know that I own the land beneath my boots and no one can take it from me. I can look out my bedroom window at my green horizon and feel myself rooted in the country like a common daisy in a meadow.

Our peace is short-lived. The queen is to return and my family will have to move out to accommodate her court and the guests from London. As always, her comfort and convenience must come first, and I have to send my own daughters away. William Cecil himself is coming on a visit with Sir Walter Mildmay and the Queen of Scots’ ambassador, the Bishop of Ross.

If I had any credit with the merchants or any money in the treasure room I would be bursting with pride at the chance to entertain the greatest men of the court, and especially to show Cecil the work I have done on the house. But I have neither, and in order to provide the food for the banquets, the fine wines, the musicians, and the entertainment, I have to mortgage two hundred acres of land and sell some woodland. My steward comes to my business room and we look at each parcel of land, consider its value and if we can spare it. I feel as if I am robbing myself. I have never parted with land before but to make a profit. I feel as if every day the fortune that my dear husband Cavendish and I built up so carefully, with such determination, is squandered on the vanity of one queen who will not stop spending and will repay nothing, and the cruelty of another who now delights in punishing my husband for his disloyalty by letting his debts rise up like a mountain.

When William Cecil arrives with a great entourage, riding a fine horse, I am dressed in my best and at the front of the house to greet him, no shadow of anxiety on my face or in my bearing. But as I show him around and he compliments me on everything I have done to the house, I tell him frankly that I have had to cease all the work, lay off the tradesmen, dismiss the artists, and indeed I have been forced to sell and mortgage land, to pay for the cost of the queen.

“I know it,” he says. “Bess, I promise you, I have been your honest advocate at court. I have spoken to Her Grace as often and as boldly as I dare for you. But she will not pay. All of us, all her servants, are impoverished in her service. Walsingham has to pay his spies with his own coin and she never repays him.”

“But this is a fortune,” I say. “It is not a matter of some bribes for traitors and wages for spies. This is the full cost of running a royal court. Only a country paying taxes and tithes could afford her. If my lord were a lesser man she would have ruined him already. As it is he cannot meet his other debts. He does not even realize how grave is his situation. I have had to mortgage farms to cover his debts; I have had to sell land and enclose common fields; soon he will have to sell his own land, perhaps even one of his family houses. We will lose his family home for this.”

Cecil nods. “Her Grace resents the cost of housing the Scots queen,” he says. “Especially when we decode a letter and find that she has received a huge purse of Spanish gold, or that her family have paid her widow’s allowance and she has paid it out to her own secret people. It is Queen Mary who should be paying you for her keep. She is living scot-free on us while our enemies send her money.”

“You know she never will pay me,” I protest bitterly. “She pleads poverty to my lord, and to me she swears she will never pay for her own prison.”

“I will speak to the queen again.”

“Would it help if I sent her a monthly bill? I can prepare the costs for every month.”

“No, she would hate that even worse than one bigger demand. Bess, there is no possibility that she will fully repay you. We have to face it. She is your debtor and you cannot force her to pay.”

“We will have to sell yet more land then,” I say gloomily. “Pray God you can take the Scots queen off our hands before we are forced to sell Chatsworth.”

“Good God, Bess, is it that bad?”

“I swear to you: we will have to sell one of our great houses,” I say. I feel as if I am telling him that a child will die. “I will lose one of my properties. She will leave us with no choice. Gold drains away in the train of the Scots queen and nothing comes in. I have to raise money from somewhere, and soon all we will have left to sell is my house. Think of me, Master Cecil, think of where I have come from. Think of me as a girl who was born to nothing but debt and has risen as high as the position I now enjoy, and now think of me having to sell the house that I bought and rebuilt and made my own.”

B—

I will not fail now. This is my chance. I will not fail you. You will see me on my throne again and I shall see you at the head of my armies.

M

This is my great chance to seduce Cecil and I prepare as carefully as a general on campaign. I do not greet him as he arrives; I let Bess supervise the dinner and so wait until he has rested from his journey, dined well, drunk a little, and then I plan my entrance to the Chatsworth dining hall.

The doorway faces west, so that when I enter, the great doors thrown open behind me, the sun comes in with me, and he is dazzled by the light. I am wearing my signature black and white, the white veil that suits my face so well, sitting square on my forehead, just a few tendrils of hair curling around my face. My gown is cut tight, so tight I can hardly breathe—these months in prison have made me fatter than I like—but at least I have the exaggerated curves of a fertile young woman; I am not a spinster stick like the queen he serves.

I wear a ruby crucifix at my throat: it demonstrates the pure whiteness of my skin and will please the Bishop of Ross. My slippers are ruby red too, as is the discreet half-hidden petticoat that Cecil will see as I lift my gown over the step and show the prettiness of my ankles and my embroidered stockings. The mixture of devotion with the ruby red cross and provocation with the ruby red heels and scarlet petticoat should be enough to muddle most men into a slight fever of lust and respect.

Cecil, Mildmay, Ross, and Shrewsbury all rise and bow low as I enter. I greet Shrewsbury as my host first—it gives me such confidence to feel his hand tremble at my touch—and then I turn to Cecil.

He is weary—that’s the first thing that strikes me about him, weary and clever. His dark eyes are set deep in a lined face; he looks like a man who keeps his own counsel. And he does not look impressed by either the ruby cross or the pretty shoes. I smile at him but he does not respond. I see him taking me in, studying me like a secret message, and I see the rise of a little color to his sallow cheeks.

“I am so pleased to meet you at last,” I say in French, my voice very low and sweet. “I have heard so much about the good counsel that you give my cousin. I have wished for so long that I had a wise advisor for myself.”

“I do my duty” is all he says, coldly.

I move on to Sir Walter Mildmay and then I greet my bishop with affection. Sometime in this visit we will seize a moment for him to tell me, face to face, the progress of Ridolfi’s plot, “the Great Enterprise of England,” and the news of my betrothed and my supporters. But in the meantime I have to pretend that we write nothing, that we plan nothing, that great deeds do not shimmer between us like exciting ghosts. I greet him like a queen quietly pleased to see her ambassador after a long silence.

They have papers for me to sign and seal, and Shrewsbury suggests that we go to the smaller family room so that we can be more private.

I take Cecil’s arm and let him lead me to the privy chamber. I smile up at him and laugh at his remarks about the journey. I tell him of my own ride to Wingfield and back again and how much I love to ride out.

I tell him that my pantaloons for riding have scandalized Bess but that she allows me out in them after I told her that they are worn by my mother-in-law, Catherine de Medici herself. This makes him laugh, reluctantly, like a man who seldom does so. I ask him attentively after the health of the queen, and I look surprised and interested when he tells me of the Anjou proposal.

He asks me what I think of the bridegroom and I twinkle at him and let him see that I am laughing at the thought of it, and yet I answer him seriously enough and say that I know nothing against young Henri.

Indeed, he was offered once to me, though I found it possible to refuse the honor. He smiles down at me; I know I have amused him. I slide my hand a little farther into his arm. He bends his head to say something quietly to me, and I look up at him from under my eyelashes, and I know that this man is for the winning, and I can win him.

And all the while I am thinking, In his doublet he carries the document that will set me free. All the while I am thinking, This is the man that killed my mother. All the while I am thinking, I have to make him like me, I have to make him trust me. Best of all if I could make him hopelessly besotted with me.

So what did you think of her?” I ask Cecil when they have met half a dozen times to talk and finally all the documents are signed and sealed and the horses at the door and Cecil is ready to leave.

“Most beautiful,” he says. “Most charming. A real heart stealer. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted her gone from your door, even if she were not prohibitively expensive.”

I nod.

“Clever,” he says. “Not educated like our queen—no scholar, no tactician—but clever and with a constant eye to her own interests. Cunning, I don’t doubt, but not wise.”

He pauses, smiles at me.

“Elegant,” he says. “In her mind as well as her stature. Perfect on a horse, paradise on a dance floor, sweet as a nightingale when she sings, beautiful as a portrait. A delight. A very picture of a queen. As a woman, a pleasure to watch, a lesson in charm. The men who say there is no more beautiful queen in Europe speak nothing but the truth. More than that, I think she is the most beautiful woman I have ever met. Engaging, desirable. Perhaps perfection. And so young, and such a radiance about her—a woman who could turn your heart right over.”

I blink. Then to my embarrassment I feel hot tears rise under my eyelids and I blink again and brush them away like dust. I have seen my own husband fall in love with this damned siren, but I thought that Cecil, with his incorrigible hatred of Papists, of the French, of female vanity, would be immune. But it seems that even he can be seduced by a smile and an upward glance. The way she looks up at a man would make any honest woman want to slap her. But even in my jealousy I cannot deny her beauty.

“She is,” I admit. “She is perfection.” I am aware I have gritted my teeth and I unlock my jaw and smile at this new and most unlikely recruit to the huge circle of men who are in love with Mary Queen of Scots.

“I must say, I did not expect you, of all people, to fall for her too.” I try to speak cheerfully but I feel very heavy in my heart at this sudden new suitor.

“Oh, she is irresistible,” Cecil says. “I feel the magic. Even I, with so many reasons to dislike her, feel her peculiar, powerful charm. She is a queen beyond queens. But Bess, not so fast; ask me what else would I say of her.”

He smiles at me, understanding everything. “Let me think. What else do I see in this perfect princess?

She is untrustworthy, an unreliable ally but a frightening enemy. A determined Papist and foe to everything we have done and hope to do in England. She would bring back the church and drive us back into superstition. There is no doubt in my mind that she would burn us Protestants until all opposition to her was ashes. And she lies like a bargee and deceives like a whore. She sits like a spider at the center of a web of plots that corrupts or ensnares almost every man in the country. I would call her the most dangerous enemy to the peace of the commonwealth that we have ever faced. She is enemy to the peace of England, she is enemy to our queen, she is my enemy. I will never forget the danger that she poses nor forgive her for the threat that she is to my queen and to my country.”

“You will get rid of her to Scotland soon?” I ask urgently. “You will make her queen and restore her?”

“Tomorrow,” he says grimly. “She might as well be in Scotland as here. She is as great a danger to us in Scotland as here, I don’t doubt. Wherever she is she will be surrounded by men so far gone in love with her that they are ready to die for her; she will be a focus for Spanish plots and French betrayal. Whether she goes to Scotland or to hell, I have to get her out of our country, or out of this life, before she costs the lives of more innocent men, before her plots take the queen’s life, before she destroys us all.”

“I don’t think she would take the queen’s life,” I observe. It is hard for me to be just to her, but I have to say it. “She has a great respect for the sanctity of royal blood. There is no doubt in her mind that an ordained monarch is sacred. She would oppose Elizabeth, but she would never have her killed.”

Cecil shakes his head. “The men she plots with would see both women dead, to serve their cause. That is why she is so dangerous. She is an active, energetic fool in the hands of wicked men.”

They try to make sure that I have no time alone with Bishop Lesley, but I need only a moment, and I seize that moment when he is mounting his horse in the stable yard, and Bess deep in conversation with her great friend William Cecil.

“This agreement will send me back to Scotland with an army for my protection,” I say quickly to him.

“You will watch that Cecil and Elizabeth hold to it. This is my future. You will ensure that they don’t double-cross us.”

“Trust me,” he says. He hauls himself into the saddle. “If you are not back in Scotland by next spring, then Philip of Spain himself will come to restore you to your throne. I have his word on it.”

“His own word?”