Bess does not even defend herself. “If Norfolk had not engaged to marry the Queen of Scots in secret, then he would not have been in trouble,” she says stoutly. “It is nothing to do with Cecil’s ambitions. It is all Norfolk’s own fault. His own ambitions. Perhaps now that he has withdrawn, we can all be at peace again.”
“What d’you mean, withdrawn?” I ask.
She has to hide a smile. “It seems your great friend is not very gallant to his ladylove. Not very chivalrous at all. Not only has he given her up and broken off the betrothal; apparently he also suggested that she should take his place in the Tower, as surety for his good behavior. It seems that there is one man at least who does not long to die for love of her. One who would happily see her in the Tower for treason. One man who is quite prepared to walk away from her and make a better life for himself without her at all.”
1570, JUNE,
CHATSWORTH:
BESS
There is no peace for a woman who tries to run a proper household with a spendthrift guest and a husband who is a fool. The greater the queen’s freedom, the greater the expense for us. Now I am told that she can entertain visitors, and every sensation-seeking gawper in the country comes to watch her dine and help themselves to some dinner as they do. Her wine bill alone is more in a month than mine is in a year. I cannot begin to balance the accounts; they are beyond me. For the first time in my life I look at my books without pleasure but with absolute despair. The pile of bills grows all the time and she brings in no income at all.
Out goes the money on the queen: her luxuries, her servants, her horses, her pets, her messengers, her guards, the silk for her embroidery, the damask for her gowns, the linen for her bed, the herbs, the oils, the perfumes for her dressing table. The coal for her fire, the best wax candles, which she burns from midday till two in the morning. She has them burning while she is asleep, lighting empty rooms. She has silken carpets for her table—she even puts my best Turkey carpets on the floor. She has to have special goods for her kitchen, sugars and spices all have to come from London, her special soap for her laundry, the special starch for her linen, the special shoes for her horses. Wine for the table, wine for her servants, and—unbelievably—best white wine for her to wash her face. My accounts for keeping the Scots queen are a joke; they have only one side: expenditure. On the income side of the page there is nothing. Not even the fifty-two pounds a week we were promised for her. Nothing. There are no pages of receipts, since there are no receipts. I begin to think there never will be, and we will go on like this until we are utterly ruined.
And I can now say with certainty we will be ruined. No house in the land could keep a queen with limitless numbers of servants, with numberless friends and hangers-on. To keep a queen you need the income of a kingdom and the right to set a tax, and that we do not have. We were once a wealthy couple, wealthy in land, rents, mines, and shipping. But all these businesses have a balance of money coming in slowly and quickly going out. It was a balance which I managed superbly well. The Scots queen has thrown this balance all wrong. Quickly, amazingly quickly, we are becoming poor.
I shall have to sell land on a great scale. The little borrowings and sales I have bodged together since she arrived will no longer suffice. I shall have to raise mortgages. I shall have to enclose and put up the rents for tenants who are already behind in their payments, having wasted the winter in chasing around with the Northern army, which was her fault too. I shall have to levy extra payments on houses that are still missing men—hanged or run away for Mary Stuart. She will force me to be a harsh landlord and I shall get the blame for it. I shall have to take common land away from good villages and enclose it for crops. I shall have to drive people from their fields and make their gardens into sheep runs. I shall wring cash from the land as if it were a damp rag. This is not how to run a good estate. This is not how to be a good landlord. I shall become greedy in my need for money, and they will hate me and blame me for it and say I am a hard landlord and a harsh money-grabbing woman.
And she is not just expensive. She is a danger. One of my servants, John Hall, comes to me, his eyes down but his palm eager. “I thought you should know, my lady. I thought you would want to be informed.”
Will I ever again hear a muttered preamble like this and think it is going to be nothing more than a broken vase? Will I ever get back to the time when I feel only irritation? Now, and forever, I am going to feel my heart pound with dread, waiting for the news that she has escaped or that she has sent out a letter or received a guest who will ruin us.
“What is it?” I ask sharply.
“I thought you would be glad to know I was loyal.”
I itch to slap him. “And you will be rewarded,” I say, though every bribe is just another cost. “What is it?”
“It is the queen,” he says, as if I could not have guessed. “There is a plot to release her. The gentlemen offered me a gold sovereign to bring her to the high moor and they would ride away with her.”
“And she agreed?” I ask.
“I haven’t asked her yet,” he says. “I thought I should come straight to you. I am loyal to you, my lady, whatever bribe I am offered.”
“You shall have two guineas for this,” I promise. “So who are the gentlemen? What are their names?”
“Sir Thomas Gerard is the man,” he says. “But it was his friend met me at the inn, a gentleman called Rolleston. But whether there is a greater man behind them, I don’t know. I know another man who would be glad of the information.”
I wager you do, I think miserably; there are more spies than shepherds in England these days. The disloyalty of the people has become so intense that everyone keeps a servant to watch every other. “Perhaps you could sell to another buyer. But you are my man and serve me only. Go back to this Rolleston and tell him that you need to know who is in the plot. Say that it isn’t safe to go ahead without knowing who is engaged. Tell him you will do it, and ask him for a keepsake to show to the queen. Then come back to me.”
“Lead them on?”
I nod.
“And you will entrap them?”
“If we have to. Perhaps they mean nothing. Perhaps it will all come to nothing.”
1570, JUNE,
CHATSWORTH:
MARY
Husband Bothwell,
I will be safe. Cecil himself is coming here to Chatsworth to make the agreement with me. I am to be restored to my throne in Scotland. I will ensure your release the moment I am back, and then they shall see what a neighbor they have. They will reap the whirlwind and we two shall be the storm that breaks on them.
Marie
I spend my afternoons in the Chatsworth gardens, in a moated stone tower that stands alone, surrounded by a lake stocked with golden carp and dappled by overhanging willows. The stone steps lead down from my tower to the little stone bridge which reflects in the water beneath it, a dark green arch looking up at gray stone walls. Dragonflies hover over the water like blue arrowheads and swallows dip and drink.
Shrewsbury calls it my bower and says that it is my own kingdom till I have another. He has promised I shall spend my days here, quite undisturbed. He leaves a guard on the shore side of the bridge, not to keep me in, but to make sure no one troubles me in the afternoons when I laze on a day bed in the shade of an arch where the white Tudor roses are just in bud, slowly unfurling white petals.
I lie on my silk cushions, listening to my lute player who sings me the dreamy songs of the Languedoc, songs of love and longing, impossible romantic stories of poor men adoring cruel mistresses, the birds singing with him. There are skylarks in the parkland; I hear them caroling with each wingbeat as they climb their way heavenwards. I would not even know that they were named skylark but for Shrewsbury. He showed me them in flight, pointed out the little bird on the ground, and then taught me to listen for their aspiring, soaring song. He told me that they sing as they fly upwards, each wingbeat bringing out another glorious burst of melody, and
then they close their wings in silence and plummet to their nest.
There is nothing for me to do here at Chatsworth, this summer; nothing I can do. I need neither strive nor worry. I have only to wait for Elizabeth’s agreement, for Cecil’s permission, and at last I can be confident that their assent must come. They may not like it, but I have won, yet again, by simple inheritance. My half brother is dead and there is nobody else but me for the throne of Scotland. Soon Elizabeth will die and there will be nobody but me for the throne of England. I will have my thrones by right since I am a queen born and bred, a sacred being with inalienable rights. They have fought against this inexorable progress and I have fought for it, but in the end it is my destiny. It is God’s will that I shall be Queen of Scotland and Queen of England andvoilа ! His will be done.
I ride out in the morning in the beautiful woods, sometimes up to the hunting tower that clever Bess designed and built for its view all around this wildly beautiful countryside, and sometimes I ride out onto the moors. I am free to go where I please and I am accompanied only by a courtesy guard, and by Shrewsbury: my dearest companion and only friend. In the afternoon I lie in the sun and doze.
I dream. Not the nightmares that haunted me in Scotland but a dream that I am back in France, in the sunshine of my childhood. We are dancing in the gardens of Fontainebleau and the musicians—oh! there are fifty musicians to play for us four children!—the musicians are playing for us and we call for the same tune over and over again so that we can practice our dance.
We are rehearsing for the coming of the king, the King of France, the dazzling Henri II, my father-in-law, the only father I have ever known, the only man who ever loved me without exacting a price, the only man I can trust, have ever trusted.
He rides up and jumps from his horse, his bonnet aslant on his dark head, his chestnut beard and mustache sleek. He catches me in his arms—me before everyone, before his son and heir, before his daughters. “My precious girl,” he says in my ear. “Every day you are more beautiful, every day more exquisite. Say you will jilt little Francis and marry me.”
“Oh, yes!” I cry without a moment’s hesitation. I bury my face in the silky hair of his beard and inhale the scent of his clean linen and the smell of his cologne. “I would marry you tomorrow. Will you divorce Madame Serpent for me?”
This is very naughty of me but it makes him roar with laughter. “Tomorrow, my darling,ma chйrie . At once! Tomorrow I will do it. Now show me your dance.”
I smile in my sleep and turn to the sun. Someone, one of my maids, moves a curtain of damask so that the sun shall not shine on my face. My skin must stay as pale as cream. My beauty must not be made ordinary by daylight. He said I must always be shielded from the sun, always dressed in the best silks that could be had, always wearing the finest jewels; nothing but the best of the very best for the little dauphine.
“You will be Queen of France when I am dead, my little princess,” he says to me earnestly. “I shall leave my kingdom in your care. You are the one with the wit and the will. I trust you.”
“Papa-Your-Grace, don’t talk of it,” I whisper.
“You will be Queen of Scotland,” he reminds me. “And when Mary Tudor dies you will be Queen of England.”
I nod. Mary Tudor is the last legitimate heir of Henry VIII, only daughter of his wife Katherine of Aragon. After her, since she has no child, comes me, the granddaughter of King Henry’s sister.
“And you must take your throne,” he says to me. “If I am gone, don’t forget this. If I am alive I shall put you on the throne of England, I swear it. But if I am dead you must remember this. You are Queen of Scotland, France, and England. You must claim your inheritance. I command it.”
“I will, Papa-King,” I say solemnly. “You can depend on me. I will not forget, and I will not fail.”
He puts his finger under my chin and turns up my face to him. He bends his head and kisses me on the lips. “Enchanting,” he says. His touch makes me feel faint and warm.
“You will be the finest queen the world has ever known. And you will win England and Scotland for France. You will create a kingdom greater than William of Normandy. You will be Queen of France, England, and Scotland. You will have the greatest kingdom the world has ever known and I have raised you to be the greatest queen. Never, ever forget this. It is your destiny, it is the destiny that God has laid on you. You are to be the greatest queen in Christendom, perhaps in the world. It is God’s will. Obey Him.”
1570, JUNE,
CHATSWORTH:
GEORGE
Iam about to mount up to ride out with the queen when I hear the clatter of a small guard of horses and a man with a small group of companions rides up the drive under the big arching trees. He comes to the stable entrance, without hesitation, as if he has studied a map of my house and knows where everything is.
Warily, I hand over the reins of my horse to the stable lad and go to meet him. “Yes?”
He dismounts and pulls his hat from his head and bows low to me. Not very low, I notice. “My lord Shrewsbury?”
I nod. I recognize him as one of the men that I sometimes see at court, standing behind Francis Walsingham, when he, in turn, is standing behind William Cecil. So he is a spy, yet another spy. So he is an enemy to the freedom of the people of England, however plausible and charming he will try to be.
“I am Herbert Gracie. I serve Master Cecil.”
“You are welcome,” I say politely. I see by his clothes that he is a gentleman, this is one of the hidden men of Cecil’s affinity. God knows what he wants here with me. “Will you come into the house?”
“I won’t delay you,” he says, nodding to my horse. “Are you about to ride out with the queen?”
I smile and say nothing. I do not need to tell Cecil’s servants what I do in my own house.
“Forgive me,” he says. “I will not delay you. I wanted to speak with you for only a moment.”
“You have come a long way for only a moment,” I observe.
He has a rueful, merry smile. “When you serve my lord you soon get accustomed to long rides and scant results,” he says.
“Do you indeed?” The last thing I want to hear is the hardship of Cecil’s service and the rigors of life as a dirty spy.
“A word only,” he says. I go to the corner of the stable yard with him and wait.
“A servant of your wife has met with three conspirators and plotted to release the queen,” he says flatly.
“What?”
“He reported back to her, and she gave him two guineas and told him to go on with the conspiracy.”
“This isn’t possible.” I shake my head. “Truly. Bess would never free the queen.I am more likely to free her than Bess.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“Bess dislikes her,” I say unguardedly. “Women’s jealousy…They are like the sea and the shore; they cannot help but beat against each other. Two strong women under the same roof, you cannot imagine…”
“Only too well! Does she dislike her so much she would try to get rid of her by helping her run away?”
I shake my head. “She would never plot against Queen Elizabeth, she would never go against Cecil…” As I protest, a truly horrible thought strikes me as to what Bess might be capable of. Would she, overactive, businesslike, spiteful as she is, try to entrap Queen Mary in an unsuccessful escape attempt? So that she would be taken from us? “I had better speak to her.”
“I’ll have to come too,” he says carefully.
I bristle at once. “You can trust me, I should hope.”
“We can trust no one,” he says simply. “Your wife has taken some part in a plot with Sir Thomas Gerard to free the queen. It is my task to find out how far the plot has gone. I shall have to question her. It is a courtesy to you, my lord, and to Master Secretary Cecil’s friendship with you and with your wife, that I come to you first. That I speak to you privately and that there are no immediate arrests.”
I try to h
ide my shock. “There can be no need for arrests…,” I protest weakly.
“I have the warrants in my pocket.”
I take a breath. “Well, I shall see Bess with you,” I stipulate. “She is not to be put to question.” Whatever she has done, I think to myself, they shall not see her without my protection. She is a determined woman, and when she thinks that something is the right course she will do it, and damn the consequences. Damn her, actually.
“She’ll be in the muniments room,” I say, and we are turning towards the house just as the queen comes through the garden door into the yard and calls gaily, “Chowsbewwy!”