The Other Queen Read online

Slowly, I throw the pages one by one into the little grate. They blacken and flame and curl and I watch the smoke drift up the chimney, and my hopes with it. The Northern lords are defeated in my cause; Norfolk is in the Tower. His life will be in the hands of his cousin Elizabeth. I have to believe that she will never destroy her own kinsman, her own cousin. Surely she will not kill him for nothing more than the offense of loving me, of wanting me as his wife.

  I take the diamond ring he sent to me and press it to my lips. We are betrothed to marry, he has given his word, and I mine, and I will not release him. He has sent me this valuable ring and we are sworn. Besides, if we get through this, if he survives the charge and escapes the scaffold, then our case is as good as ever. Why should she not support him as king consort of Scotland? Why should he not have sons with me? Why should they not inherit the thrones of England and Scotland? He is still my best choice. And anyway, until Bothwell escapes, I have no other.

  I take out the numbered code which is hidden in the Bible at the altar and start to write a letter to my husband, Norfolk. I shall send the letter to Bishop Lesley and hope that he can get it to my beloved. If he will stand by me now, and Elizabeth spares him, we still might get Scotland by agreement when we could not get it by battle.

  Dearest Husband,

  I will pray for you daily, I shall fast once a week until you are freed. I am yours and you are mine and I shall be yours until death. May God forgive those who come against us, for I never will. Be brave, be faithful, and I will too. Perhaps our friends will rise up for us and we will conquer at last. Perhaps we will win our throne in peace. Perhaps you can persuade Elizabeth, as I will try, to let us marry and restore us, her loving cousins, to our throne. I will pray for that. I will pray for the day when you are my husband in deed as well as sworn promise, and I am Queen of Scotland again.

  Your wife before God, Mary

  I seal it and put it ready for a chance to smuggle it out, and then Agnes comes to prepare me for bed. My nightgown has been badly pressed and I send it away and choose another, then we pray together, then I dismiss her. All the time my thoughts are like a weasel in a cage, twisting this way and that, going round and round. I think of Bothwell, another animal in a cage. I think of him walking the length of his room, turning, and walking back again. I think of him looking out his barred window at the moonlight on the dark water of Malmц Sound, watching the sky for storms, scratching another mark on the wall to show another night in captivity. This is the eight hundredth and eighty-seventh night we have been apart, more than two and a half years. He will know that tonight, as well as I do. He will need no scratch on the wall to know how long he has been parted from me. He will be a wolf caged, he will be an eagle pinioned. But he will be himself, they will not break him. The wolf is still there, still a wolf despite the cage. The eagle is ready to soar, unchanged. Before I sleep, I write to him, who is sleepless, thinking of me.

  Bothwell,

  My star is in eclipse, my friends arrested or exiled, my spies in hiding, my ambassador afraid. But I don’t despair. I don’t surrender. I wait for you and I know you will come.

  Don’t expect a reward. Don’t expect anything of me; we know what we are to each other, and it remains our secret.

  I wait for you, and I know you will come.

  Marie

  1570, JANUARY,

  TUTBURY CASTLE:

  GEORGE

  The wintry days drag by. Hastings is still here, spending his time riding out to supervise the hangings of men named as rebels and given to the gallows as a pagan sacrifice to some ruthless god. I can hardly bear to leave the grounds of the castle; I cannot meet the accusing eyes of the widows in Tutbury. Inside, of course, there is nothing for me to do.

  Bess keeps busy with the reports from her stewards and her endless books of accounts. She is anxious to get back to Chatsworth and summon Henry and her other children. But we cannot leave until Hastings takes the Scots queen, and we all wait upon our orders.

  When they come, they are not what we expected. I go to find Bess in the little room she has commandeered for her records, with the letter from Cecil in my hand.

  “I am ordered to court,” I say quietly.

  She looks up at once from her desk, a ledger still open before her, ink drying on the quill pen, the color draining from her face until she is as white as the page before her. “Are you to be charged?”

  “Your dear friend Cecil neglects to tell me,” I say bitterly. “Have you heard from him privately? Do you know? Am I to go straight to the Tower? Is it a charge of treason? Have you provided him with evidence against me?”

  Bess blinks at my savage tone and glances towards the door. She too fears eavesdroppers now. The spies must be spying on the spies. “He does not write to me anymore,” she says. “I don’t know why. Perhaps he does not trust me either.”

  “I have to go at once,” I say. “The messenger who brought this rode with a guard of six men. They are eating in the kitchen and waiting to escort me to London.”

  “You are under arrest?” she whispers.

  “It is wonderfully unclear. He says I am to ride with an escort at once,” I say wryly. “Whether this is to ensure my safety or to ensure my arrival they don’t specify. Will you pack a saddlebag for me?”

  At once she gets to her feet and starts to bustle towards our bedroom. I put my hand on her arm. “Bess, if I go to the Tower, I will do my best to save your fortune from the wreck of my own. I will send for a lawyer; I will settle my fortune upon you. You will not be the widow of a dead traitor. You will not lose your house.”

  She shakes her head and her color rises. “I don’t think of my fortune now,” she says, her voice very low. “I think of you. My husband.” Her face is strained with fear.

  “You think of me before your house?” I say, trying to make a joke of it. “Bess, this is love indeed.”

  “It is love,” she emphasizes. “Itis , George.”

  “I know,” I say softly. I clear my throat. “They say I am not allowed to say goodbye to the Queen of Scots. Will you give her my compliments and tell her that I am sorry I cannot say farewell?”

  At once I feel her stiffen. “I will tell her,” she says coldly, and she moves away.

  I should not go on, but I have to go on. These may be my last words to the Queen of Scots. “And will you tell her to take care, and warn her that Hastings will be a rigorous guardian. Warn her against him. And tell her that I am sorry, very sorry.”

  Bess turns away. “I will pack for you,” she says icily, “but I can’t remember all of that. I shall tell her that you are gone, that you may be tried for treason for your kindness to her, that she has cost us our fortune and our reputation and she may cost your life. I don’t think I can bring myself to tell her that you are very, very sorry for her. I think the words would make me sick.”

  1570, JANUARY,

  TUTBURY CASTLE:

  BESS

  Ipack for him, throwing his things into saddlebags in a cold fury, and I send a manservant on a carthorse with food for the first day so he is not reliant on the poor fare of the Derbyshire inns. I see that he has his new hose and a change of linen in his bag, some good soap and a small traveling looking glass so he can shave on the road. I give him a sheet of paper with the latest accounts in case anyone at court chooses to see that we have been ruined by our care of the Scots queen. I curtsy to him and I kiss him goodbye as a good wife should, and all the time the words he wanted me to say to the queen, the tone of his voice when he spoke of her, and the warmth in his eyes when he thought of her eat away inside me as if I had worms.

  I never knew that I was a passionate woman, a jealous woman. I have been married four times, twice to men who clearly adored me: older men who made me their pet, men who prized me above all others. I have never in my life before seen my husband’s gaze go past me to another, and I cannot reconcile myself to it.

  We part coldly and in public, for he sets off from the courtyard, and though they w