The Other Queen Read online

  “I don’t know anything,” she says with her naughty, confiding gleam.

  “I have just been telling him that this Ridolfi might have used your name without your leave,” I say. “He doesn’t believe me, and I find I don’t even believe myself. You know Ridolfi, don’t you? You authorized him, didn’t you? You sent him to the Pope, and to the duke in the Netherlands, and to Philip of Spain; you ordered him to plan an invasion? Even though you are sworn to a new agreement with Elizabeth? Even though you signed your name to her peace treaty? Even though you promised Morton that you would weave no plots and send no letters? Even though you promised me privately, between the two of us, at my request, that you would take care? Even though you know that they will take you away from me if I don’t guard you?”

  “I cannot live like a dead woman,” she whispers, though we are alone and there is no sound in the garden but the haunting late afternoon song of the thrush. “I cannot give up on my own cause, on my own life. I cannot lie like a corpse in my coffin and hope that someone is kind enough to carry me to Scotland or to London. I have to be alive. I have to act.”

  “But you promised,” I insist like a child. “How can I trust anything, if I hear you promise on your honor as a queen, if I see you sign your name and place your seal, and then I find that it means nothing? You mean none of it?”

  “I am imprisoned,” she says. “Everything means nothing until I am free.”

  I am so angry with her and I feel so betrayed that I turn my back on her and take two hasty steps away. It is an insult to a queen: men have been banished from court for far less than turning their back. I check when I realize what I have done, but I don’t turn to face her and kneel.

  I feel like a fool. All this time I have been thinking the best of her, reporting to Cecil that I have intercepted messages and she has not received them. I have told him I am sure she has not invited them, that she attracts conspiracies but does not conspire herself, and all this time he has known that she was writing treasonous, rebellious instructions, planning to overthrow the peace of the country. All this time he has known that he was right and I was wrong, that she was an enemy and my tenderness towards her was itself a folly, if not treason. She has played the part of a devil and I have trusted her and helped her against my own interests, against my own friends, against my fellow Englishmen. I have been a fool for this woman, and she has abused my trust and abused my household and abused my fortune and abused my wife.

  “You have shamed me,” I burst out, still turned away from her, my head bowed and my back to her. “Shamed me before Cecil and the court. I swore that I could keep you safe and away from conspiracy and you have made me false to my oath. You have done whatever wickedness you pleased and you have made a fool of me. A fool.” I am out of breath; I end in a sob of mortification. “You have played me for a fool.”

  Still she says nothing, and still I don’t turn to look at her.

  “I told them that you were not plotting, that you could be trusted with greater freedom,” I say. “I told them that you had entered into a treaty with the queen and made a promise to Morton and you had sworn these on your honor. I said that you would never break your word. Not your word of honor as a queen. I promised this on your behalf. I said that you had given your word. I said that was as good as a gold coin. I told them that you are a queen, a queenpar excellence , and a woman incapable of dishonor.” I take a shuddering breath. “I don’t think you know what honor is,” I say bitterly. “I don’t think you know what honor means. And you have dishonored me.”

  Gently, like a petal falling, I feel her touch. She has come up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. I don’t move and gently she lays her cheek against my shoulder blade. If I turned, I could take her in my arms and the coolness of her cheek would be like a balm on my red and angry face.

  “You have made a fool of me before my queen, before the court, and before my own wife,” I choke out, my back tingling under her touch. “You have dishonored me in my own house, and once I cared for nothing more than my honor and my house.”

  Her hand on my shoulder grows firmer; she gives a little tug on my jacket and I turn to look at her. Her dark eyes are filled with tears, her face twisted with grief. “Ah, don’t say so,” she whispers. “Chowsbewwy, don’t say such things. You have been a man of such honor to me; you have been such a friend to me. I have never had a man serve me as you have done. I have never had a man care for me without hope of return. I can tell you that I love—”

  “No,” I interrupt. “Don’t say another word to me. Don’t make another promise to me. How should I hear anything you say? I cannot trust anything you say!”

  “I don’t break my word!” she insists. “I have never given my true word. I am a prisoner: I am not bound to tell the truth. I am under duress and my promise means noth—”

  “You have broken your word, and with it, you have broken my heart,” I say simply, and I pull away from her grip and walk away from her without looking back.

  1571, OCTOBER,

  SHEFFIELD CASTLE:

  BESS

  Acold autumn, and the leaves falling early from the trees, as if the weather itself will be hard on us this year. We have escaped disaster by a whisper, a whisper, nothing more. The Queen of Scots’ spy and plotter, Roberto Ridolfi, had every great power in Christendom in alliance against us. He had visited the Pope in Rome, the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, the King of Spain, and the King of France. They all sent either gold or men or both, ready for an invasion which was to murder Queen Elizabeth and put Queen Mary on the throne. Only Ridolfi’s boastful whisper of the plot reached the keen ears of William Cecil and saved us.

  Cecil took the Queen of Scots’ bishop to stay with the Bishop of Ely as a house guest. It must have been a merry party. He took his servant to the Tower and broke him on the rack, under the stones, and by hanging him from the wrists. The man—an old servant of the Queen of Scots—told the torturers everything they asked, and probably more besides. Then Norfolk’s men were taken into the Tower and sang their songs as their fingernails were pulled out. Robert Higford showed them the hiding place for the letters, under the tiles of the roof. William Barker told them of the plot. Lawrence Bannister decoded the Queen of Scots’ letters to her betrothed, Norfolk, filled with love and promises. Then finally they took the Queen of Scots’ friend and ambassador, Bishop John Lesley, from his stay in Cambridgeshire to the harsher hospitality of the Tower and gave him a taste of the pain that had broken lesser men, and he told them everything.

  Another round of arrests of men named as traitors and Norfolk himself was thrown back in the Tower again. It is unbelievable, but it seems that after giving his complete submission to our queen Elizabeth, he went on writing and plotting with the other queen and was deep in the toils of the Spanish and the French, planning the overthrow of our peace.

  I do believe we were within a day of a Spanish invasion that would have destroyed us, murdered Elizabeth, and put this most true heir to Bloody Mary Tudor—Bloody Mary Stuart—on the throne of England, and the fires in Smithfield would have been burning hot for Protestant martyrs once more.

  Thank God Ridolfi was a braggart; thank God the King of Spain is a cautious man. Thank God the Duke of Norfolk is a fool who sent out a fortune in gold by an unreliable courier and the plotters betrayed themselves. And thank God Cecil was there, at the center of the web of his spies, knowing everything. For if the other queen had her way, she would be in Whitehall now, Elizabeth would be dead, and England, my England, would be lost.

  My husband the earl has grown dark along with the colder nights and drawn in as they have done, into silence. He visits the queen in her rooms only once a week and asks her with bleak courtesy if she is well, if she has everything she needs, and if she has any letters that she would like dispatched by him, if she has any requests or complaints for him or for the court.

  She replies with equal coldness that she is unwell, that she requires her freedom, that she dema