The Other Queen Read online

  “Don’t even think it,” I warn her flatly. “Thomas Howard would never raise an army against Elizabeth. Whatever he has written to you, whatever anyone has said to you, whatever you dream: don’t think it. He would never lead out an army against the queen, and no one would follow him against her.”

  I speak very stoutly but I think she can hear the fear in my voice. The truth is that all of Norfolk and most of the east of England would turn out for the duke, whatever his cause, and all the north is solidly Papist and devoted to the Papist queen. But her beauty is impenetrable. I cannot tell what she is thinking as she smiles at me. “God forbid,” she murmurs devoutly.

  “And Your Grace,” I say more gently, as if she were my daughter, without good advice, and misunderstanding the powers that are ranged against her. “You have to rely on the queen to restore you. If all goes well, the queen will overcome the Scots’ objections and return you to your throne. The agreement is all but made. You can marry the duke then. Why not reassure the queen of your loyalty now, and wait for her to send you back to Scotland? You are close to your restoration. Don’t put yourself at risk.”

  She widens her eyes. “Do you really think she will send me back in safety?”

  “I am sure of it,” I lie. Then I check myself. There is something about her dark, trusting gaze that makes me hesitate to lie. “I think so, and in any case, the nobles will demand it.”

  “Even if I marry her cousin and make him king?”

  “I believe so.”

  “I can trust her?”

  Of course not. “You can.”

  “Despite my half brother’s treachery?”

  I did not know she was getting news from Scotland, but I am not surprised.

  “If the queen supports you, he cannot stand against you,” I say. “So you should write to her and promise your loyal friendship.”

  “And does Secretary Cecil now want me returned to my throne in Scotland?” she pursues sweetly.

  I feel awkward, and I know I look awkward. “The queen will decide,” I say weakly.

  “I hope so,” she says. “For my sake, for all our sakes. Because, Bess, don’t you think, like your friend Robert Dudley, that she should have provided me with an army and sent me back to Scotland as soon as I arrived? Don’t you think she should have honored her promise to me at once? Don’t you think she should have defended a fellow monarch at once? A fellow queen?”

  In my discomfort, I say nothing. I am torn. She has a right to be returned to Scotland. God knows she has a right to be named as heir to the throne of England. She is a young woman with few friends and I cannot help but feel for her. But she is planning something, I know it. She has Norfolk dancing to her tune and what dance has she taught him? She has Robert Dudley in her set and most of the queen’s court are tapping their feet to her song. How many dancers are learning her steps? What is the next movement she has choreographed for us all? Good God, she has me so frightened for myself and for my goods. God alone knows what men see in her.

  1569, SEPTEMBER,

  WINGFIELD MANOR:

  GEORGE

  Iam one of the greatest men in England: who dares accuse me? What dare they say of me? That I have failed in my duty? Plotted against my own queen? Against my own country? Shall I be bundled into the Tower and accused? Shall I sit in a new inquiry, not as judge but as prisoner? Do they think to bring me to trial? Shall they forge statements against me? Will they show me the rack and tell me it would be better for me if I sign a document now?

  There is wickedness abroad, God Himself knows it: omens and portents of bad days. A woman gave birth to a calf near Chatsworth; the moon was blood red at Derby. The world will be turned upside down and men of family, men of honor, will be shamed. I cannot bear it. I run to find Bess with the letter, this damned insulting letter from Cecil, clenched in my hand. I am raging.

  “I am betrayed! I am suspected! How could he think this of me? Even if he thought it, how dare he say it? How dare he write it to me?” I burst into the laundry room at Wingfield where she is at peace, surrounded by sheets, dozens of maids all around her, mending.

  She takes one cool look and rises to her feet and whisks me out of the room to the gallery outside. Beautifully framed pictures, of anonymous saints and angels, smile down at us as if they were not at all perturbed to find themselves cut out from altarpieces by Bess’s late husband to become nameless smiling faces in our gallery. I shall be like them, I know it, I shall be excised: cut away from my frame and nobody will know who I am.

  “Bess,” I say brokenly. I could weep; I feel as weak as a child. “The queen…”

  “Which queen?” she asks quickly. She glances out of the window to the terrace where the Scots queen is walking with her little dog in the glow of late summer sunshine. “Our queen?”

  “No, no, Queen Elizabeth.” I do not even notice the power of what we have just said. We are become traitors in our own hearts and we do not even know. “Dear God! No! Not her! Not our queen; Queen Elizabeth! Queen Elizabeth knows all about the betrothal!”

  Bess’s eyes narrow. “How do you know?”

  “Cecil says Dudley told her. He must have thought she would accept it.”

  “She does not?”

  “She has ordered Norfolk’s arrest,” I say, clutching the letter. “Cecil writes to me. Norfolk is accused of treason, the queen’s own cousin, the greatest man in England, the only duke. He is fled to Kenninghall to raise an army of his tenants and march on London. Cecil says it is…it is…” I cannot catch my breath. Wordlessly I wave the letter. She puts a hand on my arm.

  “What does Cecil say?”

  I am choking on my words. “He says the duke’s betrothal is part of a treasonous plot by the Northern lords to rescue the queen. And we…and we…”

  Bess goes white as the napkin in her hand. “The betrothal was part of no plot,” she says rapidly. “All the other lords knew as well as we…”

  “Treason. The queen is calling it a treasonous plot. Norfolk is suspected, Throckmorton has been arrested. Throckmorton! Pembroke, Lumley, and even Arundel are confined to court, not allowed home, not allowed more than twenty-five miles from the court, wherever the court may be. Under suspicion of treason! Westmorland and Northumberland are ordered to London at once, on pain of…”

  She gives a little whistle through her teeth, like a woman calling hens, and takes a few steps around as if she would lift the paintings off the walls and put them into hiding for safekeeping. “And us?”

  “God knows what is going to happen to us. But half the court is under suspicion, all the lords…all my friends, my kinsmen…she cannot accuse us all…she cannot suspect me!”

  She shakes her head, like a stunned ox struck by a hammer. “And us?” she persists, as if she can think of nothing else.

  “She has summoned the whole of the Council of the North, on pain of death, to court. She even suspects the Earl of Sussex, Sussex! She says she will question him herself. She swears that he shall tell her to her face what the Northern earls are planning. Cecil says that anyone who so much as speaks to the Queen of Scots is a traitor! He says that anyone who pities her is a traitor. But that is everyone. We all think the queen should be restored to—”

  “And us?” she repeats in a whisper.

  I can hardly bring myself to say it. “We have to take Queen Mary back to Tutbury. The queen’s orders. She thinks we cannot be trusted to keep her here. She says that we are unreliable. She suspects me.” The words hurt me even to say them. “Suspects me. Me.”

  “What of?”

  Her words are like a knife. I don’t even correct her speech: I am beyond improving her. “Cecil writes that they know the Northern lords met her. They know that they came and dined with us and stayed overnight. Their visit was not authorized and now he tells me that we should not have let them in. He says I am guilty of negligence, if not worse. He dares to say such a thing to me. He says that he knows I passed Norfolk’s letters to her and hers to him. He sa