I am writing at my desk when there is a tap at the door and Mary Seton comes flying into the room, her hood half-pushed off her head. “Your Grace, you will never believe—”
“What?”
“Elizabeth has been excommunicated! The Holy Father himself has published a papal bull against her. He says she is a usurper with no right to the throne and that no Christian need obey her. He says it is a holy duty to pull her down from her borrowed power. He is calling upon every Christian in the world to defy her. He is calling on every Roman Catholic to rebel! He is calling on every Roman Catholic power to invade! He is calling all Christians to destroy her. This is like a crusade!”
I can hardly breathe. “At last,” I say. “I was promised this. The Northern lords told me that Roberto Ridolfi had the Holy Father’s word that this would be done. But when I heard nothing, I thought it had all gone wrong. I even doubted Ridolfi.”
“No! He was true to you. The bull was published last year,” Mary whispers, out of breath. “In time for the uprising. But the bull has only just arrived. Oh! If only it had come before! If it had come during the uprising! All of England would have turned against Elizabeth.”
“It’s not too late now,” I say rapidly. “Everyone of the true faith will know it is their duty to throw her down and that the Holy Father has named me as Queen of England. And besides, it will force my family in France, and Philip of Spain, to act. It is not only justice but now it is their holy duty to put me on my throne of Scotland, and England too.”
Mary’s eyes are shining. “I will see you wear your crown again,” she declares.
“You will see me wear the crown of England,” I promise her. “This does not just mean my freedom, it means that the Pope recognizes me as the true heir of England. If the Holy Father says that I am Queen of England, who can stand against me? And all the Papists in the world are bound by their faith to support me. Mary, I shall be Queen of England and Scotland. And I shall crown my son as Prince of Wales.”
“Thank God that the Holy Father has ruled in your favor!”
“Thank God for Ridolfi, who put my case to him,” I say quietly. “He is a great friend to me. God keep him, wherever he is. And when I come to my own again he shall be among the men who can claim their reward for serving me.”
1570, MAY,
CHATSWORTH:
BESS
Ihear them ringing the bells in the church at Chatsworth as I am ordering the linen for the Scots queen’s bed. She is to come here within a few days, and my heart rushes in sudden terror. It can’t be an uprising again. Pray God it is not the landing of the Spanish armada. I send one of the page boys racing to discover what is amiss now. He comes back and finds me in the laundry room, a list of linen in my shaking hand, and tells me that the queen Mary Stuart has been declared the true Queen of England and the Pope has called on all those of the old faith to destroy the bastard Elizabeth and put the true queen, Mary, in her place, and there is an uprising for her in Norwich and they say the whole of the east of England will turn out for the true queen and the true faith.
I am so shocked for a moment that I pretend I want some fresh air and go out to the gallery and sink down on a bench among all the painted saints. I can hardly believe that this nightmare goes on, goes on and on, and we never achieve victory, and we never achieve peace. I look at my painted saints, as if they could tell me the answer to the purgatory of the times that we endure. God knows we are a small country and there are very few of us with a vision as to how the country should be. Now the old scarlet whore of Rome has called down on us the rage of the rest of Christendom: Philip of Spain, Madame Serpent in France—they will think that battle against us is a crusade, a holy war. They will think themselves commanded by God to destroy us. They will come against us; united they will master us.
“We are so few,” I whisper to myself. It is true. We are a little island, with enemies for neighbors in Ireland and France and the Spanish Netherlands just half a day’s sail away. We are so few who really understand what destiny God has given us. We are so few who are prepared to serve as His saints to bring the purity of His true church to England, His chosen country. We are surrounded by enemies, we are tempted by Satan, we are besieged by the superstitions and lies of the old faith; they will destroy us if they can.
I tell the boy to run and order the vicar to stop them ringing the bells. Tell him it is my command. If they are pealing to sound a warning, we none of us need to be reminded that we are on the edge of disaster. An old woman on the throne, no heir in the nursery, a faith under constant threat, a nation in the making which could be wiped out in a moment. On the other hand, if they are ringing the peal, as they did at Durham and York, at Ripon and even in the end at Barnard Castle, to say that the old faith will triumph, then they can silence the bells and go to hell while my word carries any weight in Derbyshire.
I am a Protestant. I will live and die a Protestant. My enemies will think that is because it has been a religion to profit me; cynics will point to my gold candlesticks and my lead mines and my coal mines and my stone quarries, and even to these stolen painted saints in my gallery. But what the cynics don’t understand is that these are the goods that God has given to me as a reward for the purity of my faith. I am a Protestant through and through. I don’t acknowledge this Stuart Papist queen; I deny the wisdom of the priest of Rome; I deny the sanctity of the bread and wine. It is bread, it is wine. It is not body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary was a woman, like any of us; Jesus was a carpenter, a working man proud of his tables, as I am a working woman proud of my houses and lands. The kingdom of the saints will come when the world has earned purity, not when enough money has been poured into the collecting plate of the church. I believe in God—not in a wizard doled out at a price by the priests of the old church. I believe in the Bible, which I can read for myself in English. And more than anything else I believe in me, in my view of the world. I believe in my responsibility for my own destiny, guilt for my own sins, merit for my own good deeds, determination of my own life, and in my accounts books which tell me how well or ill I am doing. I don’t believe in miracles, I believe in hard work. And I don’t believe that Queen Mary is now Queen of England just because some old fool in Rome chooses to say so.
1570, MAY, ON THE
ROAD TO CHATSWORTH:
MARY
We are at our happiest, eccentric pair that we are, the greatest nobleman in England and the rightful queen, when we are on the road traveling together. I learned that he loved me when we were riding by night, on the way to Coventry. In the heart of danger, he thought only of me. But I had learned to value him long before then, on our first journey: when we were riding from Bolton Castle to Tutbury and I hoped that he would escort me back to Scotland within days. I learned, on those journeys, to enjoy a pleasure in his company that I have never felt with any other man. I do not desire him; the idea is laughable—no woman who has known Bothwell could settle for a safe man, an honorable man, or even a quiet man. But I feel that I can rest on him, I can trust him to keep me safe, I can be myself with him. He reminds me of my father-in-law Henri II, the King of France, who always cared for me so well, who treasured me as his little pearl, who always made sure that I was well served and honored as the Queen of Scotland, the next Queen of France, and Queen of England. Shrewsbury’s quiet constant care reminds me of being a treasured girl, the favorite of the wealthiest and most powerful man in Europe. With him, I feel like a young beauty again, the girl that I was: unspoiled, untroubled, filled with absolute confidence that everything would always go well for me, that everyone would always love me, that I would inherit my thrones one after another and become the most powerful queen in the whole world by right and without contradiction.
We ride side by side and he talks to me of the countryside and points out the features of the landscape. He is knowledgeable about birds and wildlife, not just the game, but the songbirds and the little birds of the hedgerows. He cares for the land; he lo
ves it like a countryman and can tell me the names of the flowers and laughs when I try to say their impossible names like “ladies’ bedstraw” and “stitchwort.”
I am allowed to ride ahead of the guards these days. I am a queen with attendants once more, not a prisoner with jailers, and for once we ride in fresh air, untroubled by companions and not surrounded by a crowd in a storm of dust. At every village, as ever, the common people come out to see me, and sometimes they gather around the gibbet at the crossroads where the body of a man, dead for my cause, swings in chains. Shrewsbury would take me quickly past these gruesome puppets but I pull up my horse and let the people see me cross myself and bow my head to say a prayer for the soul of a good man who died for the true faith and the true queen.
At almost every village I see the quick, half-hidden movement as the good men and women cross themselves too and their lips whisper the words of a Hail Mary. These are my people; I am their queen. We have been defeated by Elizabeth and her traitorous army once, but we will not be defeated again. And we will come again. We will come under the flag of the Pope. We will be unbeatable. She can be very sure of that.
“We will go from Chatsworth on to Wingfield,” Shrewsbury says to me as we stop to dine on a riverbank, a simple meal of roast meats, breads, and cheeses. “Chatsworth is so much Bess’s house, she begrudges every penny she spends there if it is not on her eternal rebuilding and refashioning. I would rather have you under my own roof, and Wingfield Manor has been in my family for generations. And from Wingfield, if you can agree with the queen, I am to escort you to Edinburgh.”
“I will agree,” I say. “How can I refuse her? She has me as her prisoner; there is nothing worse that she can do against me. We are both entrapped. The only way I can be free, and that she can be free of me, is for us to agree. I have nothing with which to bargain against her. I am forced to agree.”
“Even to her holding your son?” he asks.
I turn to him. “I have been thinking of that, and there is a solution I would consider, if you would help me?”
“Anything,” he says at once. “You know I would do anything for you.”
I savor the words for a moment, then I go to the main question. “Would you serve as his guardian? If Prince James were to live with you, in your house, would you care for him, as you have done for me?”
He is astounded. “I?”
“I would trust you,” I say simply. “And I would trust no one else. You would guard him for me, wouldn’t you? You would care for my boy? You would not let them corrupt him? You would not let them turn him against me? You would keep him safe?”
He slips from his stool and kneels on the carpet that they have laid on the riverbank under my chair. “I would lay down my life to keep him safe,” he says. “I would devote my life to him.”
I give him my hand. This is the last card in the pack that I have to play to get myself back to Scotland and ensure at the same time that my son is safe. “Can you persuade Cecil that James shall come to you?” I ask. “Propose it to him as your own idea?”
He is so in love with me that he does not stop to think that he should ask his wife first, or that he should beware when an enemy of his country asks for a special favor.
“Yes,” he says. “Why would he not agree? He wants a settlement, we all do. And I would be honored to care for your son. It would be as if…to guard him for you would be like…” He cannot say it. I know he is thinking that to raise my son would be as if we had married and had a child together. I cannot encourage him to speak like this; I have to keep him carefully placed: in his marriage, in the esteem of his peers, in the trust of his queen, in his position in England. He is of no use to me if they think of him as disloyal. If they think too badly of him they will take me from him and not trust him with my son.
“Don’t say it,” I whisper passionately, and it silences him at once. “Some things must never be said between us. It is a matter of honor.”
This checks him, as I knew it would. “It is a matter of honor to us both,” I say to make sure. “I cannot bear that men should accuse you of taking advantage of your position as my guardian. Just think how dreadful it would be if people should say that you had me at your mercy and dishonored me in your thoughts.”
He almost chokes. “I would never! I am not like that!”
“I know. But it is what people would say. People have said terrible things about me, for all of my life. They might accuse me of trying to seduce you, so that I could escape.”
“No one could think such a thing!”
“You know that is what they think already. There is nothing that Elizabeth’s spies will not say against me. They say the worst things about me. They would not understand what I feel…for you.”
“I would do anything to protect you from slander,” he declares.
“Then do this,” I say. “Persuade Cecil that you can guard my son James, and I can get back to Scotland. Once I am back on my throne I will be safe from scandal and from Cecil’s spies alike. You can save me. And you can keep James safe. Keep him safe for love of me. It can be our secret. It can be the secret of our two hidden hearts.”
“I will,” he says simply. “Trust me, I will.”
1570, JUNE,
CHATSWORTH:
GEORGE
It is agreed, thank God, it is agreed and will shortly be sealed and signed. The queen is to be returned to Scotland and I shall be guardian to her son. Nothing less than this duty would console me for the loss of her. But to stand as father to her boy will be everything. I shall see her beauty in him, and I will raise him as she would wish. My love for her will be invested in him; she will see a good young man come from my care. She will be proud of him; he will be a boy of my making, and I will forge him into a good prince for her. I will not fail her in this. She trusts me and she will find me trustworthy. And it will be such a joy to have a little boy in the house, a boy whose mother is a woman of such beauty, a boy that I can love for his mother’s and for his own sake too.
It seems that our troubles may be over. The riots in Norwich have been put down with rapid brutality and those Catholics who have heard of the papal bull against Elizabeth are not hurrying forward to put their heads into a noose. Norfolk is to be released from the Tower. Cecil himself argued that though his offense is great, his crimes do not amount to treason. He is not to face trial, nor the death sentence. I am more relieved by this than I show to Bess when she tells me.
“Are you not pleased?” she asks, puzzled.
“I am,” I say quietly.
“I thought you would have been delighted. If they do not accuse Norfolk, then there can be no shadow over you, who did so much less.”
“It is not that which pleases me,” I say. I am irritated by her assumption that all I think of is my own safety. But I am always irritated by her these days. She cannot say a word that does not grate on me. Even when I know that this is unfair, I find that the way that she walks into a room sets my teeth on edge. She has a way of putting down her feet, heavily like a woman going to market, a way of carrying her eternal accounts books, a way of being always so busy, so hardworking, so efficient. She is more like a housekeeper than a countess. There is no grace about her. She utterly lacks any elegance.
I know, I know, I am wickedly unfair to blame Bess for lacking the charm of a woman raised in a court and born to greatness. I should remember that she is the woman I married for choice, and she has good looks, good health, and good spirits. It is unfair to complain that she does not have the looks of one of the most beautiful women in the world or the manners of the queen of one of the finest courts in Europe. But we have such a being in our house; such a paragon smiles at me each morning; how can I help but adore her?
“So what pleases you?” Bess asks encouragingly. “This is good news, I think. I expected you would be happy.”
“What pleases me is that I shall be spared his trial.”
“His trial?”
“I am still Lord Hi
gh Steward of England,” I remind her, a touch sourly, “whatever your friend Cecil thinks of me and would do against me if he could. I am still Lord High Steward and if a peer of the realm is to be tried for treason, then I would be the judge who would sit on his case.”
“I hadn’t thought,” she said.
“No. But if your good friend Cecil had brought my true friend Norfolk to trial for his life, it would have been I who would have been forced to sit with the axe before me and bring in a verdict. I would have had to tell Norfolk, a man I have known from his boyhood, that I found him guilty, when I knew he was innocent, and that he was to be hanged and disemboweled while still alive and cut into pieces. D’you not think I have been dreading this?”
She blinks. “I didn’t realize.”
“No,” I say. “But when Cecil attacks the old lords, this is the consequence. We are all torn by his ambition. Men who have loved each other all their lives are thrown one against the other. Only you and Cecil don’t see this, for you don’t understand that the old lords are as a family of brothers. Newcomers cannot know this. You look for conspiracies; you don’t understand brotherhood.”