Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Read online

  I can hear the soft scuffle as Ruth, my maid, climbs out of the window and then the rustle of her skirts as the porter starts to lower her. I can see the dark outline of her quietly coming down the castle wall, then suddenly the rope jerks and she gives a little whimper of fear.

  ‘Sshh! Sssh!’ I hiss up at her, but she is sixty feet above me, she cannot hear. Mary’s cold hand slips into mine. Ruth isn’t moving, the porter is not letting her down, something has gone terribly wrong, then she falls like a bag of dusters, the rope snaking down from above her as he drops it, and we hear her terrified scream.

  The thud when she hits the ground is an awful sound. She has broken her back, for sure. I run to her side at once, and she is moaning in pain, her hand clamped over her mouth, trying, even at this moment, not to betray me.

  ‘Your Grace!’ Mary Seton is tugging at my arm. ‘Run! They are coming.’

  I hesitate for a moment, Ruth’s pale face is twisted with agony, now she has her fist thrust in her mouth, trying not to cry out. I look towards the main gate. The sentries, having heard her scream, are turned questingly towards the castle, a man runs forward, shouts to another, someone brings a torch from the sconce at the gateway. They are like hounds spreading out to scent the quarry.

  I pull my hood up over my head to hide my face, and start to duck backwards into the shadows. Perhaps we can get around the castle and out of a back gate. Perhaps there is a sally-port or somewhere we can hide. Then there is a shout from inside the castle, they have raised the alarm in my chambers. At once the night is ablaze with the bobbing flames of torches and ‘Hi! Hi! Hi!’ they bellow like hunters, like beaters driving the game before them.

  I turn to one side and then the other, my heart thudding, ready to run. But now they have seen us silhouetted by their torches against the dark walls of the castle, and there is a great bellow of ‘View halloa! Here she is! Cut her off! Run round! Here she is! Bring her to bay!’

  I can feel my courage drain from me as if I am bleeding to death, and I am icy. The taste of defeat is like cold iron in my mouth, like the bit for an unbroken filly. I could spit the bitter taste. I want to run and I want to throw myself face down on the ground and weep for my freedom. But this is not the way of a queen. I have to find the courage to push back my hood and stand straight and tall as the men come running up and thrust their torches in my face so they can see what they have caught. I have to stand still and proud, I have to be seen to be a queen, even dressed like a serving woman in a black travelling cape. I have to enact being a queen so they do not treat me as a serving woman. There is nothing more important now, at this moment of my humiliation, than preserving the power of majesty. I am a queen. No mortal man may touch me. I have to make the magic of majesty all alone, in the darkness.

  ‘Je suis la reine,’ I say, but my voice is too quiet. I can hear it tremble with my distress. I stand taller and lift up my chin, I speak louder. ‘I am the Queen of Scotland.’

  Thank God they don’t grab me, nor put so much as one hand on me. I think I would die of shame if a common man were to abuse me again. The thought of Bothwell’s hand on my breast, his mouth on my neck, makes me burn even now.

  ‘I warn you! You may not touch me!’

  They form a circle around me with their bowed-down torches, as if I am a witch that can be held only by a ring of fire. Someone says that Lord Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury, is coming. He was at his dinner with Sir Francis Knollys and Lord Scrope, and they have told him that the Scots queen was running away like a thief in the night, but she is caught now.

  And so that’s how he first sees me, when he comes at a stumbling run, his tired face scowling with worry. He sees me standing alone, in a black cape with my hood pushed back from my face so that everyone can recognise me and know that they may not put a hand on me. A white-faced anointed queen of the blood. A queen in every way, showing the power of defiance, a queen in the authority of her stance, a queen in everything but the ownership of her thrones.

  I am a queen at bay.

  1568, Winter, Bolton Castle: George

  They have her ringed with torches, like a witch held in by fire, ready for burning. As I run up, my breath is coming hard and my chest is tight, my heart is pounding from the sudden alarm, I sense the stillness around her as if they are all frozen by an enchantment. As if she were a witch indeed and the mere sight of her has turned them all to stone. Her hand holds back her hood from her face and I can see her dark hair, cropped jagged and short as an urchin’s, the white oval of her face and her dark luminous eyes. She looks at me, unsmiling, and I cannot look away. I should bow, but I cannot bow. I should introduce myself, at this, our first meeting; but I am lost for words. Someone should be here to present me, I should have a herald to announce my titles. But I feel as if I am naked before her: it is just her, and just me, facing each other like enemies across the flames.

  I stare at her and take in every aspect of her. I just stare and stare like a schoolboy. I want to speak to her, to introduce myself as her new host and her guardian. I want to seem an urbane man of the world to this cosmopolitan princess. But I gag on words, I can find neither French nor English. I should reproach her for this wanton attempt at escape; but I am struck dumb, as if I am powerless, as if I were horrified by her.

  The blazing torches give her a crimson halo, as if she were a burning saint, a fiery saint of red and gold; but the sulphurous smell of the smoke is the very stink of hell. She looks like a being from unearthly regions, neither woman nor boy, a gorgon in her cold forbidding beauty, a dangerous angel. The sight of her, ringed with fire, strange and silent, fills me with wordless terror as if she were some kind of portent, a blazing comet, foretelling my death or disaster. I am most afraid, though I don’t know why, and I stand before her and I can say nothing, like an unwilling disciple terrified into adoration; though I don’t know why.

  1568–9, Winter, Tutbury Castle: Bess

  Mary, this most troublesome queen, delays as long as she can. Someone has told her that Tutbury Castle is no fit place for a queen of the blood and now Her Grace refuses to come here, and demands to be sent to her good cousin’s court, where she knows well enough that they are celebrating the twelve days of Christmas with feasts and dancing and music, and at the heart of it all will be Queen Elizabeth, with a light heart and light feet, darting around and laughing because the Scots, the greatest threat to the peace of her country, are all falling out amongst themselves, and the greatest rival to her power, the other Queen of England, their queen, is a prisoner without plans for release. Or honoured guest, as I believe I am to call her, as I set about making Tutbury something more than a rapidly improvised dungeon.

  I must say that Mary Queen of Scots is not the only one who would rather be at Hampton Court this Christmas season, and can find little joy in the prospect of a long cold winter at Tutbury. I hear from my friends who send me all the gossip that there is a new suitor for Elizabeth’s hand, the Austrian archduke who would ally us with Spain and the Hapsburgs, and Elizabeth is beside herself with the sudden surging of lust for her last chance to be a wife and a mother. I know how the court will be: my friend Robert Dudley will be smiling but guarded – the last thing he wants at court is a rival to his constant courtship of the queen. Elizabeth will be in a fever of vanity, every day will bring new pretty things to her rooms, and her women will rejoice in the spoil of her cast-offs. Cecil will manage everything to the outcome of his choosing, whatever that may be. And I should be there, watching and gossiping with everyone else.

  My son Henry, at service in Robert Dudley’s household, writes me that Dudley will never allow a marriage which would displace him from Elizabeth’s side, and that he will oppose Cecil as soon as that old fox shows his hand. But I am for the marriage – any marriage. Pray God that she will have him. She has left it as late as any woman dare, she is thirty-five, dangerously old to give birth to a first child; but she will have to grit her teeth and do it. We have to have a son from her, we have to h